Reclaim Brush

Having to manually click numerous pieces of individual reclaim can get very tedious, and mindless spam clicking of rocks is not what this game is about. I'd like to add a reclaim brush to the game (either directly or via UI mod). Imagine it like a brush in a visual editor (ie: paint), where you manually apply a circular brush, but instead of painting the terrain, it shows a visual circle where the brush would give manual reclaim orders within if used there. I could make it so the brush has a fixed size and only gives reclaim orders to wrecks/props within the 'brushed' area above a set minimum mass/energy value threshold. Alternatively, I could potentially make brush size and the minimum value threshold adjustable, if desired.

This would be a nice quality of life improvement to the game, and I believe the amount of 'automation' that this would add would be comparable to spread move/spread attack/attack move. We already have things that add more automation than this would (ie: advanced target priorities, eco manager, the new automated fabricator behavior, etc). So, I don't see a good rationale to have things like that but not this. Additionally, I could make it so that the brush is limited to being a small size if desired.

This is effectively the same as area commands which has already been heavily discussed on this forum here https://forum.faforever.com/topic/2054/beating-a-dead-horse-area-commands/12?page=1

and on the old forum which I will link when I find it

Edit: found em, have fun reading
https://forums.faforever.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=13632
https://forums.faforever.com/viewtopic.php?f=41&t=8471&start=20

The rationale to not add it is what you said. Attack move exists and does what you said except it’s slower than manual reclaim. The only reason to add it is because dudes think the reason they lose is because they don’t click rocks all game for which I declare skill issue.

I agree that an alternative already exists, but it is also about making the game feel more modern. A feature like this would fit right into that.

Note that doing this via UI mod, assuming that you manage to get it to work, is considered an exploit .

Then just change the icon that pops up with attack move into a giant reclaim circle (diff radius for fac and default attack move) but don’t make it as efficient as manual reclaim. Nobody cares about the cosmetics of it.

If the argument is that modern requires it to be as efficient as manual reclaim, I fail to see how that logically flows.

If the argument is that modern requires it to be as efficient as manual reclaim, I fail to see how that logically flows.

I don't think it should be as efficient. It can't, if we still want a reasonable performing game.

It is primarily about feeling modern .

So what makes a game feel modern?

How about something like this?
Visually more clear to know what your engineer are actually reclaiming.

I often mess up causei send engi to reclaim with attack move but they only reclaim close to the destination but not everything that might be in between and this make is clearer.

I added a circle like this to the additional camera stuff mod

I'm quite sure this is already done by the additional camera stuff or so?

Well, the answer got posted above lol. Just seconds before my post.

@blackyps said in Reclaim Brush:

So what makes a game feel modern?

Forms of automation.

As an example, a move feature that we intend to implement at some point that allows you to do this:

Where you select units (black), click drag a line (blue) and the units automatically divide themselves across the line (grey).

But the issue with these type of mods (and the suggestion made by Penguin if it includes a unique reclaim order for each prop) is that we have a limited command queue. We don't want to flood that too much, but these type of automations add a lot of pressure on the queue.

Having read through those threads Sheikah linked, it seems this feature should be added imo. Some points and counterpoints in favor of adding a reclaim brush:

1. It would be a QoL improvement
2. It would make the game more fun for most players - Most players would rather spend their apm microing units, dodging shells, basebuilding, using activated powers like OC/stealth/etc, scouting, adjusting buildqueues, focusing on macro, managing drops, etc than spam clicking rocks/etc.
3. It would make the game more modern
4. It would add a feature many new players expect based on the features of similar games and would help slightly with player retention
5. It would be consistent with FAF's precedent/pattern of adding UI improvements/features that reduce click count and improve QoL for most users - some examples:
   o spread attack
   o spread move
   o templates
   o hotbuild
   o gazui
   o advanced target priorities
   o eco manager
   o supreme scoreboard's 1-click resource sending
   o easy ringing of storages/pgens/fabs
   o automated mass fabricator behavior
6. Its functionality would be clearer than attack move's functionality is (especially for new players) - attack move often sends units in seemingly bizarre ways that I (a 1700 with coding knowledge) haven't even figured out yet, it seems to auto stop/end the order when the player's storage is close to full (people often want to overflow/keep reclaiming/not have the order cancelled), it reclaims things of lower value, and it is less clear exactly what area it applies to when clicked
7. Spam clicking rocks/tedious micro is not the point of this game - some satire from a relevant thread:
   
   
   
8. High APM players could still take advantage of their high APM - While this would be a nice QoL feature that would do a decent job, it would not be optimally efficient in general, and so, high APM players could still manually click rocks to their hearts' content to gain some advantage. However, after the first few minutes of the game, high APM players would still generally be better off spending less of their high APM on spam clicking rocks and instead taking advantage of their high APM by spending more of their APM on fun things (see point 2) and strategic things (ie: thinking about game macro, strategy, and tactics).
9. Attack move and regular manual reclaim would still be desirable to use in many cases; this feature would obviously compete with them, but it would not replace them, as there are pros and cons to each in comparison to the others.
10. This can be implemented in a way that's not laggy and doesn't add too much processing burden - It can be done in a sensible way, and it can have limitations to its impact on processing, if desired (ie: small max brush size, tick-based limitations, max order limitations, etc).

Most of your points here are just reiterating what people said without addressing any single rebuttal presented in the threads.

I’ll do two:

1. would make the game more fun for most players - Most players would rather spend their apm microing units, dodging shells, basebuilding, using activated powers like OC/stealth/etc, scouting, adjusting buildqueues, focusing on macro, managing drops, etc than spam clicking rocks/etc.

I would put a strong 95% of players below 1500 that think manual reclaim is a necessity to get better at overestimating the impact it does. Your reclaim brush will not change the fact these players have terrible scale, game sense, and eco management which faster rock clicking currently does not solve and a reclaim brush will put them no further in solving. If they attack moved and left their engies alone (and in fact spent more time optimizing where engies go rather than sending 10 in 1 clump all reclaiming the same thing) then they would already be better.

2. functionality would be clearer than attack move's functionality is (especially for new players) - attack move often sends units in seemingly bizarre ways that I (a 1700 with coding knowledge) haven't even figured out yet, it seems to auto stop/end the order when the player's storage is close to full (people often want to overflow/keep reclaiming/not have the order cancelled), it reclaims things of lower value, and it is less clear exactly what area it applies to when clicked

If the feature causes reclaim to keep being collected even while overflowing a full bar, it actively is an even worse tool for newer players and is pretty much a noob trap.

Explain:

• The situation I would manual reclaim
• The situation I would use reclaim brush
• The situation I would use attack move

If reclaim is just manual reclaim speed, it supercedes the former. The latter is only relevant for fac attack move range.

Honestly the lack of an area reclaim brush seems to be a non-issue to me.
We have attack move that acts as a big circular brush (that you can't drag). Sure, it's more clunky than a paintable brush, but it's not like there is no way to automate reclaim. The added utility of such a feature doesn't outweight the drawbacks we have to consider.
When such a brush exists people will obviously very generously paint the map with it. Jip already mentioned the burden on the command queue. So we need something to limit the amount of orders it generates. If you limit the brush size too much it is clunky to use again, if you limit the commands in some technical way, you get inconsistent behaviour that will look like a bug to the players. You also need to find a good way to sort the order of the reclaim orders to come close to manual reclaim efficiency, which seems to be what you want.
So we do all this to deal with the consequences of easier reclaim mechanics when manual reclaim is not at all relevant to win games. Manual reclaim is boring to me, so I just don't do it. The average amount of manual reclaim orders I issue per game is probably less than 10. I got to a 1000 rating and I certainly don't feel that I am outmatched by the superior reclaim skills of my opponents if I wanted to climb higher.
We don't need complicated QoL improvements for features that are not relevant. If you don't want to click rocks then just micro your tanks instead. There is nothing stopping you other than the collective delusion that you somehow need to manual reclaim all the time to be good. And I honestly don't know where that comes from. It's at most used at the start of the game when there isn't really anything else to do anyway. If you make this faster, what will you do with your idle time instead?

To make a shitty comparison, people explaining manual reclaim is their reason for being bad would be like explaining the reason you’re bad at chess is because you mouse slip or don’t move your pieces fast enough. It’s more impactful than that obviously but that’s about as high on the tier list of priorities as it should be for players.

You manually reclaim as you naturally find time for it by speeding up all 80 things more important than it on the map. I would say the huge focus on making some nobrain click button is because it’s an obvious thing you can immediately point to as “causing” a game loss rather than looking at something way more complex like lack of information, lack of game plan, incorrect map reading, and so on.

In terms of modernity, the attack move function already accomplishes the necessary automation. If people want to make it look more intuitive by all means, but there is no need for a manual reclaim brush to exist.

@ftxcommando
Your response to my point #1 does not counter it... You seemed to argue against something that I didn't say instead... and you seemed to continue to argue against something I didn't say in your next post...

Regarding your response to point #2, I could add something that makes it toggle pause in that case if desired, but that is not my preference. Manual reclaim already has the same functionality of overflowing to teammates and such, and attack move overflows energy very frequently for that matter. The feature would still be useful without being a noob trap. I imagine the average noob would actually end up with more used reclaimed resources per game, on average (even if some of them are wasted), if this feature is added.

Explain:

• The situation I would manual reclaim

I'd use manual reclaim where there are individual things I specifically want to reclaim, and when I find it more efficient to use my APM on optimal manual selection of which specific things to reclaim in which order (min/max'ing my unit's walking distance vs build range, my reclaim priority order, my type of reclaim focus for my economic situation, etc).

• The situation I would use reclaim brush

I'd use the reclaim brush when I want to reclaim several sources of reclaim above the minimum mass/energy value threshold without reclaiming the less valuable stuff, while spending less APM to do this than I would with regular manual reclaiming.

• The situation I would use attack move

I'd use attack move when I want to get all the reclaim that attack move gets, which would be significantly more extensive than what I imagine the reclaim brush would get. Additionally, there are many situations where I would want to use the reclaim brush to get the high value stuff first and queue an attack move order to get the rest of the stuff afterwards. Beyond that, I'd use factory attack move when I want to take advantage of the cheaty extra range that gives...

@BlackYps

See thread 1, thread 2, and thread 3 for many examples of people that such a feature clearly would matter to, even if the lack of such a feature is a non-issue for you personally.

See my above explanations for different use case/utility explanations.

See point 10 for efficiency/excessive painting concerns; this can be done in a way that is consistent. We can discuss the technical stuff further in the #game-repository channel on the FAF Discord if you'd like, but I'd rather not bog this thread down with a bunch of technical stuff.

There is no need to sort the reclaim by value. Sorting could be done, but that would be a greater processing drain that I'd rather avoid. The feature would be quite useful with or without sorting.

See points 2 and 8 for examples of what players could do with their time.

Similarly to with FTX, most of the rest of what you said seems to be arguing against stuff that I didn't claim instead of countering the points that I actually made...

Correct me if I’m wrong, but using attack move with commander to reclaim does not produce the same behavior as with an engineer. Since the ACU is prioritized as a combat unit it doesn’t reclaim things in its path. The only way to have an acu auto reclaim is to use patrol, which doesn’t work very well. So a reclaim brush that specifically issues only reclaim orders would be useful for allowing useful auto reclaim with your commander

No one counters the points you made because you didn’t make any of the points, you just decided to summarize them. You gave a sparknotes of 3 threads while coincidentally ignoring all the arguments related to how the entire fulcrum of the “need” for this feature is met by attack move (in terms of something to automate reclaim) and all the dudes saying that it’s different because it’s slower than manual reclaim have no idea what they’re talking about.

What is this feature for? To make the 2000s in LotS have an easier time closing the gap with Tagada? Nexus doesn’t even do manual reclaim that much and often just relies on coherent attack moves.

People below this level arguing about the difference between manual and attack move are delusional, as long as u get the mass and spend it you’re winning the game. Like you list “oh look at all the things people could be doing besides clicking rocks” when the whole POINT is that they should ALREADY be doing that because deciding to improve their skill by increasing their ability to click rocks is like choosing to chisel a rock by punching it. Doesn’t matter what low rated dudes “think” is the reason they are low rated.

To reiterate I don’t care about making reclaim automation more intuitive, as above the example with acus is incoherent with the rest of the interaction attack move has with mobile bp. But anything talking about making it better than attack move in terms of speed is a bad balance decision for the game.

I doubt that it makes the life for lower ranked players easier. Having three different reclaim-orders seem a bit overwhelming until it becomes a habit. Most of them just use patrol (referring to my experience as a trainer) and max. click wrecks or huge rocks (150+ mass) but that's about it.
I heavily assume it's going to be a thing for ~1000-1500 ranked players and honestly? The ones who manage to manual click should get the reward of having a slight advantage since they spend the time. e.g. Canis, while one dude micros the units and the other one gets bad trades for that but clicks the rocks, he should get the advantage. For me it's like a decision to either micro or manually reclaim since you have to think about the advantage each options give you at that certain point. Since many maps have manual reclaim and I prefer that over microing units early on, for me it's the decision to build less labs and focus on getting a more optimised starter-BO than most other people, giving me an advantage over time.

I do agree that it has a smaller impact than most players think, but for high ranks the small details/advantages matter and shouldn't just get removed. Imo if the brush gets added, engis should autododge labs etc. since that also just consumes APM and if you lost one engi it doesn't hurt/it's only a small advantage if you keep it since you build 300 during the game. For me that's the same argumentation.

@FtXCommando

I clearly made many points. Sourcing some of my points/supporting details from those threads doesn't make my points invalid, nor does it mean that arguing against claims others made in those threads (that I didn't make) is arguing against the points I made...

Regarding, what the feature is for, see several of my previous points and explanations...

Some examples of what I personally would use this feature for myself:

In more competitive games (ie: in tournaments), I'd use the reclaim brush some of the time when I would otherwise do other things. It would replace some of my attack move orders and manual reclaim orders, as well as some of my other time use. However, it would save me time on manual reclaiming that I could then use for other micro'ing, strategic decision-making, looking at what I've scouted, etc. It would also result in my overall reclaiming being better (ie: I'd use it on some groups of t1 wrecks surrounded by trees that I otherwise wouldn't get efficiently because I wouldn't want to spend the APM on manually reclaiming them. So I'd otherwise use an attack move order that would result in me getting the wrecks more slowly because it would get many of the trees before many of the wrecks).

In more casual games, I'd like to use it to be better able to be more chill/relaxed with reclaim clicking without sacrificing as much quality compared to doing more intense high-APM/high-effort manual reclaiming, among other things. For example, in generic 1.3k+ games on canis, if 1 air player tryhards with manually clicking numerous 38 mass rocks early game, and the opposing air player does not, that often makes a significant impact on the game, and whether or not to do that in the 1.5k+ range often comes down to whether a player wants to play in a chill/relaxed/lazy way or a stressed/intense/tryhard way.

@Sladow-Noob

Regarding this being a desirable feature for new players, see points 1-6. That outweighs the tiny cost of the very slight increase in complication.

Regarding you wanting players with more time to do things to be rewarded for their high APM, see point 8.

Your argument regarding engis autododging/etc is a slippery slope fallacy. See my OP and point 5.