Discussion about the interrupt pathfinding hotkey and a mod showcase

[Katawunga]

So I have found some things that warrant a general discussion about the interrupt pathfinding hotkey and its uses. I will lay out the process in the order in which I encountered them.

What is the interrupt pathfinding hotkey?
For those who do not know, the interrupt pathfinding hotkey, as the name suggests, interrupts pathfinding such that an action by an engineer, for example, executes immediately after the hotkey has been pressed, if the target of the order is in range. So far, so good. It helps alleviate issues such as poor engineer pathfinding or frustratingly slow loading of transports.

What is the capture range?
Seems unrelated, but hear me out. When issuing a capture order with any unit capable of capturing (T1, T2, T3 engineers, all drones, SACUs, and ACUs), it's a well-known bug (or feature, I don't care) that the capture range is smaller, roughly the same as the build range of a T1 engineer. That is, approximately a range of 7. For reference, an ACU has a build range of 12. In many cases, this leads to the capturing unit crawling extremely close to the target before the capture begins, probably because most people don't know the exact capture range.

What did I do?
To help with this (mostly fringe) problem, I wanted to make a UI mod that shows the capture range when in capture mode. Pretty simple and similar to the Build Range Preview mod in the vault. I uploaded it today; its name is simply "Capture Range", but don’t rush to download it. Rather, keep reading.

What is the problem?
I first had to figure out the actual capture range of each unit capable of capturing. The previously mentioned range of 7 was not yet known to me. I also didn’t know that all units share the same capture range. It actually shocked me that every unit shares the same range, despite different build range values. So, while trying to figure all of this out such that the mod would display the correct ranges, I placed engineers and SACUs/ACUs in wall prisons to prevent them from moving, improving reproducibility. However, the experiments revealed a deviation in the capture range of units when they were immobile in wall prisons compared to when they were free to move.

What is the actual capture range?
When immobile, the capture range is about 12 units. This is equal to the build range of an ACU. This holds true for all units capable of capturing. Therefore, a T1 engineer, which supposedly has a build range of 7, can capture units as far as 12 units away if its path to the target is blocked.

What is the problem with the interrupt pathfinding hotkey?
When interrupting pathfinding with this hotkey, the capture range of all units increases from 7 to 12. The same effect occurs when the engineer is blocked by walls or terrain.

What are the implications?
As capture orders are probably the least common type of order, this initially didn’t seem like a significant issue. That being said, certain scenarios—like T2/T3 ACU drops into bases with some T1 PDs—come to mind, where this increased range could play a significant role. In such cases, it would greatly buff the drop. However, since you would need to press the interrupt pathfinding hotkey after each new capture command, the effect is quite cumbersome to use and thus limited in practice. This is when I discovered a UI mod by 4z0t called "Instant Assist", which automatically interrupts pathfinding when issuing an assist or guard order. His goal was likely to address issues where engineers behave with the intelligence of a potato. I subsequently modified his code to include capture orders as well. This effectively made any unit capable of capturing default to a capture range of 12 units (equivalent to the ACU’s build range).

Conditions and example
--When within the inner circle, every unit capable of capturing will start capturing immediately.
--When outside the inner circle, every unit capable of capturing will walk up to the enemy unit before starting the capture.
--When outside the inner circle but within the outer circle and with pathfinding interrupted, every unit capable of capturing will start capturing immediately.

Thanks for reading
And that is all for now. In case you are curious, my UI mod "Capture Range" shows two range rings while capturing: a smaller one for the "normal" reduced capture range of 7 (T1 engineer range; all units have this range) and one outer "increased" range of 12 for when the pathfinding gets interrupted either by walls, terrain, or the hotkey (ACU range; all units have this range if pathfinding gets interrupted). I did not include the automatic issuing of the pathfinding interrupts in this mod, as I thought that it might not be fair (?). What are your thoughts on everything I have mentioned up to this point? Is this inteded or acceptable behaviour?

Sidenode
Hives are immobile by definition since they are structures. Their capture range is always 12, like the buildrange of an ACU, irrespective of their level or own build range value.

Addendum
I have uploaded the other part of the showcased functionality as a UI mod called "Instant Capture". As the name suggests, engineers within capture range of their target will immediately begin capturing, instead of first giving the target a kiss. It requires the UI mod "ReUI.Core" version 1.0.0 or higher to work.

[Nomander]

Good post. If you want you can take a look at/contribute to 4z0t's rings for all mod, it's set up to display range rings on top of units and currently there's no capture preview iirc.

As for interrupt pathfinding, it can get a bit out of the original scope with certain commands (attack move causing long range reclaim, load into transport from long range, capture from long range). We already filter the order to engineers only, but we could go further and filter by command type too, so it only works on what we want for good gameplay. Alternatively we should implement interrupt on assist/capture/auto ranged reclaim into the game going by the (poorly enforced) policy of integrating important mods into the game.

[Jip]

Great analysis, I agree.

The purpose of the hotkey was to provide a nudge that players can use to micro the build range of the engineers. That way you don't need to do a move order before each build order. You just have to time hotkey at the right moment.

There are more, alternative and unforeseen side effects to this hotkey. Some are mentioned by @Nomander . There's been earlier discussions to just remove it. And I think I'm in favor of that because of these side effects. I'm not sure about integrating it to automate it - that was not the purpose, and it changes the game in a similar way that area commands do too in my opinion. Which some players were very negative about.