Allow repeat build for (air) experimentals

Could you implement it by having a ui button in engineers to repeat build experimentals; then you put code in the callback for when construction finishes (which triggers for each engineer assisting the experimental I think) and if a toggled engineer just finished building a mobile experimental it gets given an order to build another experimental of the same type in the same spot if it is able (ie the right faction and tech)?

Unless I’m mistaken in how reliably the callback triggers, the only bit I don’t know how to do would be the ui button for engineers to give the option (but if this was hard then you could just have a hotkey to toggle and some sort of vfx so you can tell which engineers have been toggled); the callback logic part itself I’d have thought would be relatively straightforward

@nex said in Allow repeat build for (air) experimentals:

Or are you still against it @Jip ?

I'm personally not convinced of a solution that doesn't involve a build pad that acts like a factory. Maybe even a different build pad for each experimental.

Without a build pad, how would it work? As an example: say you have multiple tech levels building a Fatboy. When finished, through some scripted mechanic the tech 3 engineers / SACUs will re-issue the build order. They can't start constructing right away however, because the Fatboy needs to move first. This takes between 10 to 15 seconds. Then, once they start building, the scripted mechanic needs to somehow decipher which non-tech 3 engineers were building the experimental and the scripted mechanic needs to re-issue the assist order on the Fatboy that is being constructed. But, the scripted mechanics also needs to check and confirm that the engineers did not receive new orders in between (that is possible too), and whether the engineers were assisting the Fatboy or just happened to be assisting because of a patrol or an attack move order.

You can't assist the tech 3 engineer with non-tech 3 engineers to call it a day. Because then they do this:

you had all of your t3 engineers assisted to one of them (makes it easy to requeue), but after finishing construction of the t4 they will all move towards the assisted engineer and block the building site you wanted to use

And even if we manage all of this and create a dummy-proof feature that just works, the next thing people will ask is what BlackYps mentioned:

@blackyps said in Allow repeat build for (air) experimentals:

The next problem once you automated repeat build is how do you automate setting the rally point? The game never expected mass building of experimentals, so all sorts of (technical) choices around them makes it difficult to now add repeat building on top.

And once we're there then we essentially made a build pad. But one that doesn't look like a build pad. Instead we have a scripted mechanic that is difficult to maintain, difficult for (new) players to understand and difficult for observers to see while casting.

edit: and I sort of agree with @BlackYps where he writes that it is okay for the game to be come difficult when you can spent more than 1000 mass a second. Managing your engineers is part of the game

@jip My idea for how it'd work was a lot simpler.
just a repeat button for the engies order queue. No shenanigans with assisters or anything.
just once the exp is built tell them to build the same exp in the same spot, that should make all units occupying the build area try to move away or not? (including the just finished exp).

Maybe this repeat function would (if it even can) also apply to non-build orders, but that might be hard to do.

@jip said in Allow repeat build for (air) experimentals:

But, the scripted mechanics also needs to check and confirm that the engineers did not receive new orders in between

This I'd also completely ignore, since normal factory repeat also just repeats the entire queue and simply appends whatever just finished again.

@jip said in Allow repeat build for (air) experimentals:

And even if we manage all of this and create a dummy-proof feature that just works, the next thing people will ask is what BlackYps mentioned:

and that's where I'd draw the line. It's not an exp factory, it's a repeat function for engineers.

I can totally agree that this is something we don't really need and I'd personally be against a build pad solution, just to make exp units work again like non-exp units.
But if someone comes around with a working implementation for engineer repeat build, I wouldn't say no.

Isn't there a mechanic to rebuild a structure if it's destroyed while assisting it? How similar is that to this?