beating a dead horse - Area Commands

I'm very new to FAF but I have some experience with Forged Alliance and SC2. Already I'm considering quitting due to the outdated UI. Which is too bad because I really like the base game and I have a lot of nostalgia for Supreme Commander

Yes Yes, I've seen the online forums. It's been battled over to death; the Area Commands. Especially the Area Reclaim order seems to raise a lot of concern. I'm not going to be re-using the old arguments because I know it won't lead anywhere. I just wanted to make 2 points I haven't seen anyone else make before and try to change some minds

1. I'm sure implementing Area Commands in FAF would do great for retaining new players such as myself. And more new players = longer and healthier lifespan of the game. New players have no chance of matching the high APM of old veterans who got used to the outdated UI - putting them at a tangible disadvantage simply because they aren't fast enough at clicking rocks

2. If Area Commands (including Area Reclaim) lower the skill ceiling and - as others have argued - "dumb down" the game, so too does Area Selection (click&drag). After all Area Selection is an Area Command. So, according to this line of reasoning, using Area Selection should be completely removed because it makes the game require less APM. You should only be able to select multiple units by holding shift and left-clicking on each individual unit. Alternatively, whenever using Area Selection, a 2 second input lag should be implemented - the equivalent of efficiency loss when using attack move instead of spamming manual reclaim

Just my 2 cents

After having played BAR which has much better command capabilities (like line move or area commands) I think Sup Com could greatly benefit from having that too, it just makes gameplay more fun.
I doubt it's gonna happen in FAF though, we'd probably need a new game for people to accept stuff like area reclaim. It's a bit like with StarCraft where people get aggressive when you suggest longer unit queues or even repeat queues.

Is this like an improved version of attack move or patrol? If so QOL change would be great. Currently, reclaim is very derpy on trees, as sometimes engi will priotize tree clumps that are behind others causing them to break trees to get in reclaim range.

As a fan of area commands I'm willing to integrate it. There are performance issues to take into account. Queueing a lot of individual commands in quick succession can slow down the game - just look at Spread Attack when you have 200 bombers. If this does get accepted, we'd need to find a way to balance the number of commands.

Area commands like Area recalim are banned,all you need to do is report that with evidence since those types of mods are forbidden by rules

Those mods are sim-related and are not banned as far as I am aware. They're just unranked. See also the mod vault:

I agree, I would like the reclaiming proces to be much easier. SupCom always had the philosophy to take simple tasks outside your hand so you can focus on the big decisions.

What I would like to see is to give the engineer 3 buttons.

1. Reclaim area, focussing on getting as much mass in as is possible
2. Reclaim area, and make the income as steady as possible
3. Reclaim area, focus first on small mass spots and safe the big mass spots for later.

Isn't patrol/attack move engis basically a reclaim area order? As long as you are lacking mass, the engis will prioritize reclaim over other tasks.

@h-master said in beating a dead horse - Area Commands:

I agree, I would like the reclaiming proces to be much easier. SupCom always had the philosophy to take simple tasks outside your hand so you can focus on the big decisions.

What I would like to see is to give the engineer 3 buttons.

1. Reclaim area, focussing on getting as much mass in as is possible
2. Reclaim area, and make the income as steady as possible
3. Reclaim area, focus first on small mass spots and safe the big mass spots for later.

Prioritizing reclaim would require sorting it and that is out of the question performance-wise.

@xayo when you use patrol/attack move the engineer takes breaks after each individual reclaim, but with manual reclaim there's no breaks. The difference can be quite significant from what I've seen. When reclaiming big groups of trees the manual reclaim engineer can be so much more efficient that it allows the player to skip an additional generator or two in their initial build - saving mass, time and energy and allowing for a much faster rush

Yes and that extra efficiency is only needed at a high level, I would say 1.6+. If you are below that level you shouldn't worry about such things, attack moving is just fine. If you have the APM and time in game to manually reclaim go ahead, if you don't then just attack move. If we would introduce an area command which would result in manual reclaim orders being placed on all the props & wrecks in the area it would break nearly every single high level BO and also drastically change how the game is played on a high level while making the lower level games actually harder because the economy management would become a lot harder with sudden influxes of resources from reclaim.

Not to mention that 'important' mass reclaim is often hidden/mixed in with other almost/virtually useless props, so I'm not sure it would actually be on the same level as manual reclaim. If you're not sure why you aren't winning try reaching out to coaches.

I've almost never seen a 500 rated player attack move to get reclaim, 99% just ignore the reclaim altogether. What makes you think that changing the attack move button for an area command reclaim button will make them take the reclaim all of a sudden?

I see this as something that could be useful not just for reclaim but more generally
e.g. instead of needing to select a group of bombers, and then shift-click on every enemy in an area before using spread-attack, you just click the 'attack area' button, click to drag over the area in question, and they will randomly target any enemy in the area (at the time the command is issued, so it's a 1-off order).

Similarly with engineers they would randomly reclaim anything in that area, and keep reclaiming until the area is cleared of reclaim.

@optymistyk said in beating a dead horse - Area Commands:

I'm sure implementing Area Commands in FAF would do great for retaining new players such as myself. And more new players = longer and healthier lifespan of the game. New players have no chance of matching the high APM of old veterans who got used to the outdated UI - putting them at a tangible disadvantage simply because they aren't fast enough at clicking rocks

Im not sure why you think that this is an issue.

As a 'new' player, I was very sad that FAF did not have area reclaim, line move, area split attack, and more QOL move types that Zero-k and BAR had, but I was willing to shrug it off because the game is over a decade old. Some people may not have made that compromise.

What is BAR? I cannot google "BAR Game" and get anything relevant.

I remember being blown away by how good the command and control features of FAF were, though before this I played Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds, so having air transports assist factories and moving patrol routes already placed was mind blowing... in 2007.

@TheWheelie
He probably sees it as an issue because he misses those features from other similar games and thinks he would have more fun if they were implemented here. Seems reasonable.

@Jip
Would it be possible to implement some sort of "order limit" of like 50 per tick or something? Then all the mods that reshuffle orders would have to dole them out over time, not slowing the sim horrifically.

@maudlin27
It seems like what you would ideally want is some kind of "Area of Operations" command system. Where you designate an area and then things follow out orders within that area without leaving it. Like you plop down a few points and give an order of "Clear the reclaim in here" or "Move around and fight stuff but don't leave the area" (Fixing air patrol issues, lol)

There is a tradeoff with manual reclaim, attack move, attack move from fac, and patrol. Some require constant engie babysitting, some require apm, some give engies more freedom at the cost of them not making you aware they’re idle.

If you add area commands you entirely eliminate this part of the game because it’s strictly dominant. The only thing it doesn’t destroy the point of is attack move from factory which gives engies more range.

This does not add more decisions nor improve micro potential like advanced target priorities does and so I fail to see how it improves anything except give dudes that think they lose because they "can't spend 150 apm on clicking rocks" one less excuse.

you can ignore what i said i went full psycho

@kalethequick search for "BAR RTS"