Allow repeat build for (air) experimentals
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Not sure if possible but would be great if you could repeat build experimentals in the same spot so you don't have to requeue every time it's completed, or resort to drawing a line which makes ur buildpower move around a lot. Especially useful for scenarios where you have >1000 mass income, be it in a real game or in coop/sandbox/ai games.
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And this is how we get to experimental factories
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No, this is where we draw the line in my opinion
A work of art is never finished, merely abandoned
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Proposal for experimental factory:
It would be super cheap (like 500 mass) and take up a lot of space. It would contribute only as much build power as a T1 engineer.
It's a T3 structure so of course it can only be built by a T3 engineer
There are 4 different versions of it, one per faction, BUT every experimental factory is able to queue up experimentals from all 4 factions
HOWEVER, you can only start making an experimental if there is a T3 engineer of the correct faction within the vicinity. So if you use a cybran T3 engineer to make Cybran's "experimental factory," you could start building an Ahwassa out of it, but ONLY if there's a Seraphim T3 engineer within a certain close range to the factory. Every time it wants to start making a new T4 unit, it performs a check of all nearby ALLIED units, if the check comes up empty, it skips making that unit and moves to the next item in the queue (the same way a T2 support factory will "skip" making a T2 mobile missile launcher if you have no HQ)
When a regular factory starts making a unit, that unit cannot be selected until it is done. But when this experimental factory starts making a unit, it CAN be selected immediately (like any other T4 that is being built)
Whatever waypoint (or waypoints/patrol order, etc.) of the experimental factory at the time the unit STARTS making would be given to that experimental unit. After the unit starts construction, you could change the unit's initial orders just by selecting it.
Any engineers that are ordered to assist the experimental factory would assist the T4 that is under construction until it is finished.
The experimental factory itself would not have a lot of HP. BUT if the experimental factory is destroyed, that should NOT in any way affect the experimental unit that is under construction (other than: losing the build power equivalent of a single t1 engineer and maybe the engineers that were assisting the experimental factory would lose their orders and stand there idle until the player gives them new orders). The player would still be able to continue assisting that experimental unit's construction.
It would also mean all you have to do is bring a friendly ACU with T3 engineering suite or a friendly T3 engineer next to an ally's experimental factory to allow construction of that faction's experimental units without actually gifting the engineer
This would allow players to reserve space to churn out air or land experimentals, without reducing the other costs (build power, mass, energy). It would only save APM without giving other advantages. There would be no adjacency bonuses.
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@jip said in Allow repeat build for (air) experimentals:
No, this is where we draw the line in my opinion
In reference to which post? If this is responding to bullies post, why?
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I don't like the idea. Having to manage your buildpower by microing your engies can be annoying at times, but it has also become a FAF staple. It forces you to work tidy in some sense and I like it for it.
That said, I also think it is a rather weird inclusion to make, when you make a repeat build for air experimentals, but not for any other experimental. -
@spikeynoob said in Allow repeat build for (air) experimentals:
In reference to which post? If this is responding to bullies post, why?
Because you're here to play a game. This is part of that experience
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@jip said in Allow repeat build for (air) experimentals:
@spikeynoob said in Allow repeat build for (air) experimentals:
In reference to which post? If this is responding to bullies post, why?
Because you're here to play a game. This is part of that experience
I feel like the same could be said in opposition to the fancy shift g stuff you just added, or to the auto mex capping on right click. I'm not for or against the suggestion either way, it just seems slightly odd to oppose this specific case of automation but approve of others. I don't mean to do some sort of "gotcha" just interested in the reasoning.
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Just have the behavior of assisting t4s with engies have them place the t4 again if they are capable. I don’t see why it’s any different than assisting a factory with your engies. Gameplay justification is weird, you drag a line of t4 near your engie clump and reset it after 3-4 t4s now.
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@spikeynoob said in Allow repeat build for (air) experimentals:
I feel like the same could be said in opposition to the fancy shift g stuff you just added, or to the auto mex capping on right click. I'm not for or against the suggestion either way, it just seems slightly odd to oppose this specific case of automation but approve of others. I don't mean to do some sort of "gotcha" just interested in the reasoning.
To me they're not the same. It would take you a lot of time to distribute attack orders across moving units (yours) and targets (enemies). The experience would be frustrating; without shift-g you would likely not even bother trying.
In contradiction to this: it's 1 click and then you're done. The only thing you need to do is not forget about it. I'm sure there could be a UI mod that can send you a personal ping as a reminder to queue the next experimental.
On top of that, say we do want this hypothetically. How would the interaction work exactly? How do you communicate to your engineers that this specific (air) experimental is the one that you want to keep building? And how can you as a player (or as an observer) observe this behavior happening?
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@jip said in Allow repeat build for (air) experimentals:
@spikeynoob said in Allow repeat build for (air) experimentals:
I feel like the same could be said in opposition to the fancy shift g stuff you just added, or to the auto mex capping on right click. I'm not for or against the suggestion either way, it just seems slightly odd to oppose this specific case of automation but approve of others. I don't mean to do some sort of "gotcha" just interested in the reasoning.
To me they're not the same. It would take you a lot of time to distribute attack orders across moving units (yours) and targets (enemies). The experience would be frustrating; without shift-g you would likely not even bother trying.
In contradiction to this: it's 1 click and then you're done. The only thing you need to do is not forget about it. I'm sure there could be a UI mod that can send you a personal ping as a reminder to queue the next experimental.
On top of that, say we do want this hypothetically. How would the interaction work exactly? How do you communicate to your engineers that this specific (air) experimental is the one that you want to keep building? And how can you as a player (or as an observer) observe this behavior happening?
I can see distribute orders being different, but what about the assist capping feature. It automates something that otherwise you would do manually into 1 click.
I would think this feature could look like enabling the repeat build button on engis, then when an engi is finished building an exp it just requeues on the same position. If a group of engis is set to repeat then which ever is fastest starts the building and the other ones just repair the existing construction. Maybe this could be done in a way where you can queue multiple experimentals and it just loops through the queue building them on the originally specified location.
Currently spending ur eco on a paragon is quite stressful. It is quite hard to spend it all unless you spam a ton of build power on game enders. It would be nice if i could just set a bunch of engis to pump out czars without worrying about either pathing being shit or having to requeue them in a circle around the bp.
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@stormlantern said in Allow repeat build for (air) experimentals:
That said, I also think it is a rather weird inclusion to make, when you make a repeat build for air experimentals, but not for any other experimental.
i left it inbetween parentheses because it was just an idea but i forgot to elaborate on it in my post. I initially mainly said it because air experimentals move out of the way way easier meaning t3 engies wont obstruct the build site like they probably would with land t4s while the land t4 is moving out of the way. I disagree with my past self though and think this should be for land t4s aswell
@jip said in Allow repeat build for (air) experimentals:
I'm sure there could be a UI mod that can send you a personal ping as a reminder to queue the next experimental.
this isn't the problem, the problem is that its tedious to reselect your t3 engineers around the t4.
- you wait for the t4 to leave the area, box select the t3 engineers, and queue a new one, pray to god no other unit is inside your box selection
- you shift box select the engineers and deselect everything that isnt a t3 engineer, can sometimes be many things, does not work well with a mod i use, but personal issue i guess
- 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
alternatively you could queue up multiple t4s but this will mean your bp will move around a lot which will lead to you floating mass. micromanaging engineers to resolve this is not an option in the scenario i mentioned: >1000 income, especially >5000 with a paragon. you'll have way too many groups of engineers to micromanage like that, and requeueing t4s is quite the hassle especially when you don't have all the space in the world
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@waffelznoob I get your points but automating it isn't trivial. A lot of your problems would still apply, but then from a code perspective instead of a user flow perspective.
What would be a 'trivial solution' is the 'build pad' idea of @arma473, where you can create a faction-specific build bad to build land and air experimental units from. Would give you everything you need with the bonus of being able to queue different experimental units and even set up rally points for them.
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hmm, i feel like that is a bit too radical to solve the minor issues im bringing up
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tbh if you're in a game that's gone long enough to be mass producing experimentals like that, you should have no problem getting an engie from a teammate. Just build engineering stations and have a small number of T3 engies starting the experimentals to avoid pathing hell. This feels like such a niche issue as to not be worth radical changes or a lot of coding.
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you could slightly increase the niche where this is usefull, by allowing the looping function for all buildings. (This would also keep the user experience consistent)
That way engineers could automatically rebuild defenses that get destroyed and such. (walls probably?)
For the use case on t4 production, I don't see how this is more engaging gameplay than limiting factory queues to 5 units and disallowing repeat.
whether it is feasible to implement I cannot say. -
well once you have 1k income maybe consider Engineer presets instead? they are much less prone to milling around between builds.
altho - what would be interesting is if these presets came with their own ' factory' module similar to new fatty / carriers that you could select separately and which would have repeat build option available for XP's. If you could place two templates on repeat build that didn't disappear, they could have orders to move off and the boys would alternate between after each finishes
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@nex said in Allow repeat build for (air) experimentals:
whether it is feasible to implement I cannot say.
That's the issue, these may be considered as minor issues but scripting the behavior appears to be quite difficult on first sight.
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I think it is acceptable if the game experience is not as fluent or convenient when you have > 1000 mass income. You are approaching the limits of the game and only natural that you will run into nieche usage scenarios more and more that not present in the average game.
That wouldn't be an argument against it if it was easy to fix, but it seems like there are no easy/good options to solve this, so it seems acceptable to me to leave it as isThe 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.
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@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.
You don't really need a rally point do you?
the next build order will tell the unit to clear the buildspace and that's it.
sure they will "clump up" next to it, but there is just so much you can do without an awkward UX.All in all we are at the point where it's a nice to have, so if someone finds himself worthy enough to implement it we'd take it?
Or are you still against it @Jip ?
