Suggestion: Show mass reclaimed by engineers

archsimkat · 7 Jun 2021, 07:36

As the title says, my suggestion would be to show mass reclaimed by engineers in the same way you can see mass killed by combat units.

This feature alone would be a nice quality of life feature for both playing and viewing. It would:

help especially lower level players see the impact of reclaim and the value from investing into reclaiming engineers.
provide more information for coaches in their training sessions.
help higher level players refine their build orders.
create these exciting moments for casters where you can see the impact of a "hero engineer".

One potential downside is the impact on sim speed, due to having do these arithmetic calculations on the fly, but a different thread has concluded that the mass-killed calculation for determining veterancy has a negligible effect on sim speed.

https://forum.faforever.com/topic/1986/about-the-veterancy-system

I would like someone more knowledgeable to weigh in on this issue, but it seems to me that this mass-reclaimed system would be implemented in a similar fashion to the mass-killed system and likely have the same order of magnitude impact on the sim speed—which would be negligible.

The other "downside" (that is, barrier to implementation) is the development work required to implement such a system. Once again, I am not knowledgeable on this topic and would like someone to weigh in, but considering the mass-killed veterancy system was implemented in 2017, I assume this suggestion is reasonable to implement as well.

It seems to be the benefits far outweigh the downsides. Let me know what you guys think! Would people like such a feature or are there other arguments against such a feature that I haven't covered?

archsimkat · 6 Jul 2021, 04:44

One of the many examples of the impact the change from units killed to mass killed had—how it allows you to better analyze the impact a unit had and also how it creates these hero moments:

https://youtu.be/CzXnlBbuHZ0?t=7209

Valki · 6 Jul 2021, 06:52

Just a thought, but can engineers gain veterancy for reclaiming? Who knows might be easier to implement.

Then you know that 1 vet equals say 500 reclaimed.

Jenstad · 6 Jul 2021, 12:43

Would be very cool information to see thats for sure, and like arch says it could create som really cool hero engineer moments and be good to analyse if the engie reclaiming was worth it.

Anachronism_ · 6 Jul 2021, 16:33

This is an interesting idea. However, if it wouldn't have any impact on the game itself (ie: if it doesn't give 'hero' engineers more health/etc), perhaps it should be created as a UI mod or a local in-game setting?

Jip · 6 Jul 2021, 18:25

This requires passing information from the sim to the UI - it can't be a UI mod therefore. I have no idea how to keep track how much an engineer is reclaiming , maybe via two unit callbacks (StartReclaim and StopsReclaim) and keep track of the time it was reclaiming?

Valki · 6 Jul 2021, 18:32

@jip said in Suggestion: Show mass reclaimed by engineers:

This requires passing information from the sim to the UI - it can't be a UI mod therefore. I have no idea how to keep track how much an engineer is reclaiming , maybe via two unit callbacks (StartReclaim and StopsReclaim) and keep track of the time it was reclaiming?

But then what if you reclaim a live building? Unless you can add another check then its free real veterancy.

Dragun101 · 6 Jul 2021, 20:23

@jip said in Suggestion: Show mass reclaimed by engineers:

This requires passing information from the sim to the UI - it can't be a UI mod therefore. I have no idea how to keep track how much an engineer is reclaiming , maybe via two unit callbacks (StartReclaim and StopsReclaim) and keep track of the time it was reclaiming?

What it properlt requires is adding “Update Consumption” function after “Issue Reclaim” issued I can do some testinf after I get home