Feature idea/request to uber/modders

To increase that awesomeness of this game and reduce some of that annoying micro

Would it be possible to make units produced from a factory automatically join a command group (crtl+1 group) this would help make it possible to have multiple attack and defense forces at your command with a press of one button, the most useful of this would be press 3 and all your fighters produced from 2 air factories are at your command while pressing 4 would select all your bombers created from 2 other air factories so you can split them apart or bring them as you require but the groups also replenish themselves ^^

Another thing that would be very cool is if there was danger area command you could drag over an area like your opponents base that would make it so patrolling units and non combat units such as fabbers on an area build mex or area reclaim avoid that area and path around it entirely.

I just thought these ideas would be awesome ^^ please let me know if it would be possible or your thoughts about it below community

5complicated8me

But, but, but micro... O.O

Instead of command groups I'd like to see unit selections fixed: Always fighters and never engineers, unless engineers are the only unit in the box. Not this horrible "if you make a box over 10 engineers and 9 tanks the engineers are selected because there is 1 more". How am I supposed to know if there are 10 engineers and 9 tanks before I select anything?

I think something like shift + selection box should select engineers, etc.

Yeah, definitely need a better system. The current is so bad people thought it was a bug until garat confirmed it works as intended right now.

We compalined about this a long time ago, and sorian specifically said he would mention it to the others, yet nothing happened.

We also complained about a missing matchmaking system and missing symmetric maps and many other things we have by now.
Matchmaking is planned to hit PTE within a day or two if I remember correctly.
Their TODO-list has to be quite long :S

Ya I do also find that a problem because if I want to select fabbers is basically when they are idle and I have a key bind for that, sometime I'll have to learn the select all ground forces keybind or put it somewhere easy to push so I don't mess up my fighter patrols, though I feel like the auto production into command groups would be pretty cool, perhaps it could even be done when a unit exits a teleportal so you now have command groups on different invading planets... etherway I think there are alot of possible extra features or changes that could be done to change or improve the game I just put in two of the most unique ones I could think of... Would they beable to technially be added into the game do you guys think or is there a problem with the engine or tech limits for this sort of thing?

Micro is annoying xD there are plenty of rts's and moba's for microstrategy I would like what I was promised big armies and macro game play, 3D planet maps are amazing for macro and strategy but with so few units in the current meta we don't get to macro often

Um. You totally know there's 10 engineers because you selected them instead of your tanks. xD Dur. Little bubble that says [Engineer Image x10] helps haha. In fact, I'd question why you have 9 tanks sitting around with 10 engineers. That's either idle units, which shouldn't be happening, or a large construction project, which tanks shouldn't be mingled in the construction circle, and I dunno why they'd be there, or why they were put there. Maybe you built construction units out of the same factory as tanks! Gasp! Blasphemy! :O
Take above with a dose of comedy, it's good for your health.

That said, I think you have a very excellent point. I've personally just never found this to be a problem any time I play PA since I normally solve this by controlling where I put the mouse on the screen relative to where the units are. I'm pretty good at judging whether I have more A or B. Doesn't fix it for anyone else, though, so I dunno what to suggest, here. I like it as it is now, but totally understand it could be better. Shift-click probably isn't the way to go, though, since shift adds ALL selected units into the current selection, and that's a really good mouse mechanic that I'd like to stay.

Murcanic, your suggestion about factories automatically building into a unit group was already Total Annihilation, worked extremely well, and I see no reason why it isn't already in PA right now. (unless it is and I dunno about it). It's absolutely invaluable to do this with your units in a macro game.

Also, the 'Anti-Area' command is an amazing idea, and I'm pretty sure I've seen this come up a few times in the past during Beta and Alpha. Not sure it's origin, but I think they would be a great addition to macro builds. You could area command the planet in mex, then anti-area the enemy base. Keep a few guardian units with your fabbers, and you're basically set from raids.

Edit'd : cuz clarity and better English.

My primary gripe is not being able to select ground only for example. If I have fighters area patrolling over my base, it's a few extra clicks to remove them afterwards. Those few clicks annoy me.

Sure, however i think this one smaller problem was just forgotten about whereas ladders and symmetric maps were a much larger/difficult problem. Hopefully they change it sooner rather than later.

I agree on wanting this fixed. Though I do kinda understand why Uber is struggeling here: Managing work on "big stuff" and "small stuff" in parallel is not easy at all.

If only "Mauru" would fix the Advanced Unit Selection mod!

I thought that mod was very useful, and could have been expanded to include most of the things that have been mentioned in this thread. However, I would settle for just updating it to work in the current build.

We just need a modifier key to 'select only fabbers from selection' (either pre or post selection). Pretty sure I asked for it ages ago. Selecting fabbers can be a really fiddly, micro intensive task at the moment.

Yeah basically we need a working version of what mauru implemented. I think hotbuild had such a function at some point as well. It just conflicts with the hotkeys to build stuff when engineers are involved.

I'd like to see something like X-key+click-drag selects ground combat units, Y-key+click-drag selects air combat units, Z-key+click-drag selects fabbers, etc. Unless this already exists... idk, I'm too lazy to check.

It basically did exist as a mod -> Advanced Unit Selection, but it doesn't work in the current build, most likely because they changed the way event handling worked and it would take some effort to update it.

It would also go a long way if we were able to select units via their icon hitbox and not just their model hitbox. Then double click select all would be vastly easier to do for example.

@murcanic
Yea you can mod factories to auto-assign units to control groups. Custard has done it some time in the past with a modified version of autofactory.

nice I'll have to talk to him about it as I would find this useful