Advanced Controls, command bugs, and quality of life improvements

Everyone has had that case when you start to wonder why your opponent has more units even though you are winning every single engagement until you realise your commander has been walking in circles for 2 minutes instead of building factories, or having an infinite reserve of levelers stuck at the exit ramp of a T2 factory. This thread is to list all known bugs that have something direct to do with game play, as well as quality of life improvements regarding UI.

If you have recordings of anything listed here or know exactly how to replicate a specific bug, post it in the thread and Ill add it to the main.



1. Command and unit bugs

1.1 Units rolling out of factory get stuck at edge of exit ramp.

Cause: placing a factory on an unlevel pathable surface (craters, ramps, other pathable CSG) so that either one end sticks in the air at an extreme angle or one is dug into the terrain

How to prevent: Avoid placing factories on CSG or at extreme terrain

How to fix: Give a delivery order to the factory to export units from the other side. The bugged units will still be alive and functioning, picking them up with pelicans and dropping them off is probably the best option

Example:



1.2 Units perpetually shooting at wreckage, as long as it´s in range, even if there are other living enemy units nearby. Really problematic in terms

Cause: accidentally giving an attack order to a wreckage

How to prevent: pay extra attention to the units you attack. This will happen to you regardless if you attack manually.

How to fix: the attack will continue as long as your units are in range. This happens a lot more than people observe because usually the shots actually hit and destroy the wreckage fairly quickly, but in the case they miss you need to give them a different attack order. If its sparks that are wasting all of your energy you can give them a hold fire command, but that will only pause the behaviour and not override it. The problem is significantly less common when you have AoE or homing units in your group like shellers and grenadiers, because they will hit and destroy the wreckage. Alternatively, reclaim it.

Examples:



1.3 Units missing fire. Most common examples are levelers and gill-e missing at a certain specific range, but all units that fire more than a single shot per burst (Dox) will often miss 50% of their shot.

Cause: The centre of the unit mismatches the gun placement (where the projectile comes out of) Requires adjustment to models to be corrected (check @n00n 's equilibrium mod for an example of what fixed levelers look like)

How to prevent: not much you can do. the effect is present only for certain ranges for some units, so try to figure that out experimentally for yourself

How to fix: give the units that are missing another target where they can be useful. Preferably the target should be closer/further from the one they were currently shooting at. If that's not an option, move them closer.

Example:



1.4 Units tracking manually attacked target even after vision of it is lost. Best example is scouting a fab and ordering your boombots to attack it, before your air scout is chased away. Boombot will follow the fab even when it has moved away from previous location at an unpredictable direction.

Cause: Its related to how the engine works.

How to prevent: you can't as of right now. Have other units around guarding.

Example:




1.5 Pelicans will pick up units from the location where the unit was when the pickup order was issued, even

Cause: Its related to how the engine works.

How to prevent: You cant

How to avoid: You cant

Examples:



1.6 Fabricators not facing targeted structure while building/assisting. meta state building? Little to no delay when switching fabrication target

Cause: presumably engine, its a fairly recent change.

How to prevent: You cant

How to fix: You cant

Examples:



1.7 Commander stuck in-between buildings/ walking in circles when on a specific move/build queue

Cause: The commander's turning radius can sometimes sinc exactly with the room he has to manoeuvre around, especially in between power generators

How to prevent: Build in a line/ leave enough room in-between buildings

How to fix: Give him a move commander and restart the entire queue/Push him with units

Examples:



1.8 Nukes disappear upon completion

Cause: Nuke launcher is powered off at the moment the nuke is completed

How to prevent: Dont power off your nuke launcher right before you finish the nuke.

How to fix: You cant. Often the nuke will be lost, and the nuclear launcher will be unable to build anymore.

Examples:



1.9 Nukes and Unit cannons stuck in the air instead of hitting their target. Accounts for some of the most infuriating situations in PA, as well as the coolest screenshots



1.10 Units wander into CSG when on factory rally

Cause: pathing engine

How to prevent:

How to fix:

Examples:


1.11 Fabbers split from group. When adding structures or orders to groups of fabricators often all but the first one will immediately switch to the buildings you have just added instead of finishing what they were previously doing first.

Cause: There are two cases: often this is down to the programmed fabber behaviour, but in some cases, some of these fabbers were not assigned an actual build queue but to assist the primary one instead. Therefore the build commands override the assist one and they split off to the newly queued structures.

How to prevent: In the cases where it's just the fabricator behaviour the only thing you can do is first order them to complete the building they were constructing, and while still holding the Shift key redoing the entire queue after that to include your new orders as well.

How to fix: send them back to assist the first fabricator.

Examples:



1.12: Fabricators don't use full build range when target is in the water/on the shore/ on unpathable CSG. Alternatively if they are a group instead of a single fabricator, often only the first will start construction while the rest stop and stay still nearby/ continue to next structure queued (check 1.11) This is especially problematic for naval fabricators as they are less mobile than all the rest.

Cause: unknown fab behaviour bug

How to prevent: give an explicit order to all fabricators to move as close as possible to the metal extractor/location and queue the build command after the movement one

How to fix: No known way.

Examples:



1.13 Lobs don't reach their full displayed range.

Cause: Unit weapon bug, unknown source cause.

How to prevent: You cant.

How to fix: Order attack commands up to around 2/3 to 3/4 of the attack range

Examples:


1.14-> YOUR FAVOURITE BUG! Contribute in comments



2. Commands and Quality of life improvements

2.1 Pelicans are unable to receive more than one pickup order per queue. If a pelican is already caring a unit it will ignore the command or stop in place. If a pelican is on a preexisting move queue and is given a pickup order, that may override everything else from the queue and go for the pickup.

Suggested behaviour: give them the ability to stack carry orders. This should in theory be doable not only with individual units, but also with area commands if the command is issued for execution after the previous ones are complete, similarly to fabricator metal extractor area build commands.

Examples:



2.2 Assist commands at the end of a build queue dont work. If you are building a factory with your commander (I assume other fabs as well) and queue them to construct another unit, than come back to assisting the first factory in it's production of units, the fabricator will just stay idle instead of helping.

Examples:



2.3 Fabricators travel to every single metal location to check if it has metal on it. Regardless if it's your own, your ally's. I dont remember what the situation is with your opponent's, but this renders multiple independent fabricators area building metal much less time efficient, especially when doing a planet wide build.

Examples:


2.4 -> Other quality of life improvements

A line going from a selected nuke launcher to the cursor. Sometimes it can be difficult to figure out the path a nuke will take on larger planets. even on smaller planets targeting something vaguely on the opposite side is almost like gambling which path the nuke will take.

Being able to queue up a command to enter a teleporter. gosh that would be nice.

Visually distinct csg on desert, lava and ice biomes. csg can be the key to winning an engagement, but most people cant see it from the distance they play at. This might be an underlying reason people use moons and "metal" csg soooo much more than anything else. you could slightly alter the textures directly so the bases have a little bit more contrast or you could have a button that outlines everything a certain height from the ground. I dunno.

trees in the desert biome are all but invisible, but they can seriously effect ones ability to macro, being both an untapped resource and an obstacle for construction. Make em bigger, or change to green cactus or pink flowers or something.

Need some easy way to distinguish between teams in unshared armies. some alteration to strategic icons should be enough, like adding a bit of red to team one, blue to team two etc. how that colour is added is a tough one, my first instinct is to add a small tag to each icon, but maybe that would be distracting from what the icon is. perhaps changing the black parts, or the outline of them. or you could have a colour picking system where each team has a certain section of the colour wheel to work with, excluding greys, off whites and blacks except for one team.
It really doesn't help that the dropdown that should indicate who's on what team is a fickle wench that works seemingly less than half the time for that purpose.

I don't know how tall an order this would be, but having some ui indication of which planets will collide naturally would be wonderful.

have units control-clicked to the front of a build order removed from the repeat build queue. I have occasionally built an extra 20 bot fabs where combat units would've been far more useful.

If you select 3 fabbers and give them a build order. The second and third fabber sometimes decide they don't want to build the first item in the order.

One exit ramp teleporters would be nice. The space needed makes them super hard to build on some maps.

When this has happened to me, it's because I've given the order to fabber 1, then told fabbers 2 & 3 to assist 1. Then I grab all 3 of then and shift-queue additional structures. At that point fabbers 2 & 3 drop the assist order and start on the added items. Fabber 1 will join the team after it finishes what it was originally ordered to build.

I was just editing that in x)

"1.8 Nukes disappear upon completion"

Was about to report this bug until I see it has long since been reported. It's still a problem.

I seem to find i get a bug where units wont build, they expell the resource but it never goes to use, commander and fabbers do this alot.

Will say i have no problem with fabbers going to already built on metal. Pick your expansions, World build, reque your fabbers everynow and then to avoid previously built on locations, Attention still in the favour of world build.

More common cause: Your units target is behind the wreckage, doesn't realise the wreckage is blocking the shot so doesn't path around/select different target that it has a clear shot to.
I think its an engine limitation.

Cause: The automatic command on a Factory that is building is actually a Repair command not an Assist command, when Fabber arrives it finds the Factory is already 100% built & stops.

Fix: queue the default Repair then manually add an Assist -> if the Factory is still building when it gets there the Fabber helps Build or it switches to the Assist Factory if its been completed meantime.
Alternative: rather than Assist set a small area Patrol, they'll arrive & help build the Factory or Assist it if its already completed (but they may just wander off & help something else instead)

It'd be cool if they would just auto-convert from Repair to Assist though.

Actually with a bit of testing you can save a click by going straight to the manual Assist command.
The Fabbers will help complete the Factory if its still building or automatically switch to helping build units/if the Factory is already completed when they arrive.

So it would be best if WG would switch the default action queued on an in-build Factory from Repair to Assist.