Reclaim Brush

BlackYps

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

TheVVheelboy

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.

Jip

@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.

Anachronism_

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:

It would be a QoL improvement
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.
It would make the game more modern
It would add a feature many new players expect based on the features of similar games and would help slightly with player retention
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
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
Spam clicking rocks/tedious micro is not the point of this game - some satire from a relevant thread:
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).
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.
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).

FtXCommando

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

I’ll do two:

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.

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.

BlackYps

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?

FtXCommando

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.

Anachronism_

@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...

Zeldafanboy

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

FtXCommando

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.

Sladow-Noob

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.

Anachronism_

@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.

TheWeakie

@penguin_ said in Reclaim Brush:

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).

The issue is that you get it wrong from the get go. In a competitive game the time you spend manually reclaiming (aside from the start) is bassically zero, so you're not freeing up any time for other things. The only impact something like this will have is an increase in general reclaim efficiency, but that is a balance thing and has nothing to do with the reclaim brush.

Sladow-Noob

@penguin_ said in Reclaim Brush:

@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.

Ngl I have the feeling you simple didn't understand my point, especially "Regarding you wanting players with more time to do things to be rewarded for their high APM, see point 8."

FtXCommando

Penguin show me one replay where game loss happened due to failure to capitalize on manual reclaim. I’ll even take the canis replays you’re talking about.

Exselsior

Lower rated players massively overstate the importance of manual reclaim. Anyone under, say, 1800 ladder can get away with zero manual reclaim outside of clicking 75 mass or more rocks manually on 99% of maps. I’m hit or miss if I feel like doing manual reclaim myself and I have never once felt I lost a game because I didn’t manual reclaim enough. I’ve had several top players give me feedback and not a single one has mentioned manual reclaim other than maybe one or two map specific meta stuff where one of the first engineers gets some reclaim orders while waiting on the next engy to come out since you don’t have anything else to do. And that was for some very high level map specific stuff that won’t win or lose games outside of the top 1% or whatever. Only other exception was doing a bit of manual reclaim with acu on dead land units to fix a stall.

People would be much better suited by pressing alt and right clicking a location with an engineer that at least vaguely makes sense to get reclaim and then using their brainpower and apm to figure out how much power they should be making to spend their mass. That’ll actually help them increase rating, not worrying about which of the 50 methods of reclaim they can use to get a bit more mass .5s faster.

maudlin27

Most arguments against seem to be that manual reclaim isn't that important (in terms of helping you win the game). If anything, that's another argument for the change (since it's not going to have much of a balance impact)!

I'd bet most people playing the game find it more fun to do things other than playing 'click rock not tree simulator'. Something that therefore reduces the APM required for manual reclaim (and therefore the need to do this) is likely to increase fun for such people. The change also removes a source of frustration with not being able to properly execute a decision - as mentioned above, if you want your ACU to reclaim an area, there is no suitable option at present. Unlike engineers, you don't have a sub-optimal attack-move order option, and if you do patrol then that can cause various issues/unintended consequences. It is also still sub-optimal to choosing the reclaim targets yourself, just not as sub-optimal as an attack-move order, so people wanting to eke out small advantages that make use of higher apm will still be able to.

So we have a mechanic that isn't fun, can at times be frustrating, and seems generally accepted by proponents of it posting here to not result in a decisive difference between games being won or loss. Other than this mechanic rewarding people with high APM, what's the benefit of banning a reclaim brush type option?

Also, why is it acceptable to automate/reduce apm with features like mex capping and mass fab automation, but not with reclaim?

FtXCommando

The benefit is that it can matter at higher levels and it's an additional skill hurdle to overcome. It's the high rated players that tend to be in favor of keeping it, it's the low rated players that think it's some big deal gameplay nuance that they need to rehearse in sandbox to be good. I also think most of the arguments about attack move, manual reclaim, and this new brush being useful as a trifecta are BS and one will become a noobtrap. I see zero reason to make a new attack move that carries the efficiency of manual reclaim beyond soothing the hearts of dudes that have 0 clue why they actually lose games. Any argument about modernizing the game is already held by attack move or some sort of replacement of attack move with some other function that can then be more intuitive but keep the baseline notion of being less efficient.

I'd also say most of your arguments there apply just as equally to removing manual reclaim in general rather than adding a reclaim brush.

Cyborg16

My impression from reading this is that it has zilch to do with winning/losing games and everything to do with whether the implementation is simple and easy to use or another command few want to learn.

Also, I don't understand the level of energy in this thread — it's not something that will really change the game (basically Ftx's argument IIUC).

Jip

@penguin_ said in Reclaim Brush:

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

The command queue is seriously limited in how much orders it can take care of. We'll take the ringing feature as an example.

Do the following:

Spawn in 10 t3 RAS SACUs
Make a t3 extractor
Move away from the extractor (you can teleport using alt + t)
Continuously try to ring the extractor with storages and fabricators (in rapid succession, just keep clicking)
See how much the game stutters by looking at how the SACUs move

This means that making 130 (10 * (4 + 9) = 130) orders cause a noticeable stutter. Let alone if these happen two or three times in a row.

Now imagine if a player uses several (say 10) engineers to create some reclaim orders over a large naval battle they had in front of their bay. The ocean floor is populated with air wrecks, hover wrecks and boat wrecks. It can easily be 200+ wrecks for the average during the late game. That means we'd need to make at least 200 individual orders over 10 engineers. We likely want some redundancy, so lets say that every wreck is part of a queue of at least two engineers. That makes for 400 individual orders. And now imagine you missed a bunch of those reclaim orders because you forgot the offset with the ocean so you redo it, causing another 400 orders.

Tada, you have significant stutters .

Let alone that:

you'd need to make semi-efficient choices for the engineers to determine their reclaim. How do you determine that? And what does efficient mean?
the input size (engineers or reclaim) will always be a relative large set (anything between 50 to 500 individual reclaim instances is not unusual after a late game fight). Processing such a large set is not recommended when you are on a strict budget (and we are - very much so. Game still slows down!)
there would be several people trying to issue these type of commands at the same time (say, within a few seconds after a battle is over)

And then we're assuming that there are no players with malicious intend .

and it can have limitations to its impact on processing, if desired (ie: small max brush size, tick-based limitations, max order limitations, etc).

A user should not have to deal with arbitrary limitations because the game can't manage it. If that is the case then it shouldn't be part of the game to begin with.

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 (1) spread attack
o (2) spread move
o (3) templates
o (4) hotbuild
o (5) gazui
o (6) advanced target priorities
o (7) eco manager
o (8) supreme scoreboard's 1-click resource sending
o (9) easy ringing of storages/pgens/fabs
o (10) automated mass fabricator behaviori:

Some of these cause significant performance issues: (1), (2) and (10) can flood the command queue quite easily, this can cause stutters during the late game. (7) is replaced by the automated mass fabricator because it could happily disable hundreds of fabricators, causing a jump in sim time. And (6) has some insanely detailed target priorities which turns out to be quite expensive on the sim, as I'm trying to tell you all in another topic.

These are not exactly great examples when we're talking about performance.

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=20d this video in one of the threads:

Found a video in one of the topics:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGjYqpTLMOo

I got to give it to them, it does look fancy .