Suggestion: Prioritise Button

I want to suggest a imho usefull feature.

As you probably know from games like TA spring you can give a con or a factory a "wait"-order. so its stops building and continue when you click the wait button again.

often i find it usefull to have a function to prioritise an order.
so instead of set a few of your units/buldings to "wait" (because you need your resources atm for an adv. energyplant to be build) you should be able to only give one "prioritise-order" to the adv. energyplant and so all your resources are streaming automaticly into that engeryplant.

of course that should not replace the possibilty give a wait-order, but i would be very helpful in many cases i think.

I wouldn't mind this terribly. I see no reason not to do it, aside from vets being butthurt about eco management being too newb-friendly.

Yes, see that point about vets....

But i do not know a single game with that feature. this is what makes me wonder.

I wish MEX energy consumption was prioritized, there's literally no reason you wouldn't want that outside of 100% storage. Sure, you can argue energy stalls are easy enough to navigate but then it's only new players that are struggling and it becomes a noob trap.

I think Uber said they're against a priority system but I don't know why. It's not a preprogrammed response any more than patrol or anything else that involves foresight.
http://zero-k.info/Wiki/EconomyGuide (bottom of page)

Priority button can get complex very quickly if players forget to switch it of etc.
I find simply switching of what is not needed or not important better then hot key it so it is easier to turn back on when ready.

In TA I had metal makers hot keyed for flipping between on/off as needed.

I'm not sure how it gets complicated - it only matters when you are stalling. If you are stalling higher priority projects will receive resources before normal priority and low priority. Naturally you would want to prioritize mass production and if you're energy stalling the production of power generators. It seems more complicated to need to pause a dozen other projects or factory queues because I want my power generator to build ASAP.

It get complicated when you break it down.
what happens if you priorities some thing?
Do some thing automatically shut down for you at random to free up resource? Or that project get all the resources every thing else have to make do with the left over resources?
What happens it there is more then one prioritised but not enough resources for all the prioritised projects to utilised all the resources at full capacity?
If you are building a generator for example and you want to build it fast do you prioritise the builder or the building? what if you prioritise both?

What if you prioritised a builder unit and it wonders off building how do you find it again to turn it off cause your economy is bottoming due to wrong projects prioritised?

that's how it works yes. high priority projects get resources first.

It would work just like it does now then.

if the building is prioritized the building will be high priority, if the builder is prioritized anything the builder makes will be high priority. priority could be indicated in the strategic view for easy management.

Your economy would not 'bottom out' because of priorities. I already explained that in the post above. It only matters when the economy is already 'bottoming out'. And if you are 'bottomed out' high priority projects will get resources first.

Priority can be indicated on the strategic view, Zero-K does this. I should clarify calmesepai, this isn't a system I just came up with. This is a system that has been developed on Spring RTS over time because of its superior functionality, it has already gone through far tougher scrutiny than you or I will give it. But you don't have to take my word for it, you can test it out yourself: http://springrts.com/wiki/Games

Well I guess I better test it out then.

@calmesepai, with respect to the complications you raise priority is no more complicated than the current system. It works like a waterfall with prorating at the partial level.

On each economic tick you have a certain amount of available resources, these are income+storage. I'll define priority recursively.

There is M_n metal available for the nth priority level.
There is a set of constructors, C_n, which are at priority level n. Their maximum metal drain in D_n.

Code:

if M_n > D_n then
        Constructors C_n work at full speed.
        M_n-1 = M_n - D_n
else
        Constructors C_n work at a prorated speed distributing M_n amongst themselves evenly.
        M_n-1 = 0
end

Work up from 1 as the highest priority level. Calculate the metal available for C_1 then C_2 etc... to the highest level.
To start off the recursion M_1 = total available metal.

Just a note; Priority isn't a Spring feature. It was added with some gameside lua. So not all Spring games use Priority, I think Zero-K and EvoRTS are the only games which have the gadget.

Ah, my mistake. thanks for the correction.

My idea was not about instruducing a hole new system, where (probably) every unit/structure have a priority-silder or something. this would be waaay too complex and you would not be able know whats going on over time.

I thought of this in a very simple way:
It should be a button in the UI (or a shortcut) that will pause all other factories or fabbers exept the ones of the selected building that you want to complete now. OR in case of a factory that is producing units: pause all facs and fabbers exept the selected fac and its assisting fabbers.

The button should do the work for you of pause all other buldingprocesses and then start them again.
Sure, if you would do it manualy you probably wont stop all other buldingprocesses - but that would be the deal for getting fast free resources for the current task.
I think in terms of gameplay there should be the possibility for the player to build for example an advanced pgen when its eco is stalling atm, but with the downside that while hoding the button (or toggle it) all other projects will stop.

So it can be a tactic choice to use it, or not too use it. But i this this could sometimes be very helpful.

Schulti, with a bit of micromanagement your button acts just like a 2-state priority system.

The problem with pausing every process except the one you want completed is that you might excess metal. But this is simple enough to circumvent, if you are excessing metal and energy then cancel your priority order and construction will resume at full speed until you start stalling on a resource. But before you stall simply press the priority button before that resource reaches 0.

Basically your idea rewards players quite significantly for staring at their resource bar and hitting a button every few seconds. If they do this they are able to easily prioritise some tasks without excessing metal. If they don't do this they are either unable to prioritise tasks or will probably excess metal whenever they try.

My english it not the best, but i think i got your point. but wheres the problem with that? Every player should be able to use his full eco for what he wants to build. i´m searching for a way to give players an easy option to do this in that special case.

You have to choose if its worth it to prioritise, lets say, a nuke to be build in under 2 minutes, but therefore all your 40 factories don´t build units in that time. if your metal is wasted because you dont have enough buildpower. theres nothing to do against.

I think of this as an option you can use in critical situations - not the hole game.
if there are points that i miss, or that can be an exploit, maybe we can try to find a solution ?!

Yeah I would really like this to rush a certain expensive unit or quickly sort out my eco problems.

Maybe this is a very good and short summary of what i wanted to say

I agree, the pause everything else button seems far more useful than a pause single factory button. I don't know how many times in SupCom I've paused something and forgotten to unpause it.

With a pause everything else button a single button on the HUD is all that's need to let the player resume all, regardless of if that construction is selected or not.

I don't think microing this feature to maximise your eco is a bad thing either. It would be a pretty demanding thing to do in terms of player time and that time would be better spent expanding their map control had they not stalled in the first place.

And ZaphodX is right, rushing late game units/structures would be very useful.

Oh god I've just pictured the mod suggestion before it happens. A giant paperclip appears and says "it appears you're wanting to nuke your opponent to death would you like some help?"

Pause on a factory?
Oh hells yes please!


Pause on global production: How would this work?

The priority from Zero-K is the best approach for streaming resource allocation that I've seen so far.

Pausing factories and constructors is a far more annoying concept, as you have to select the units you *don't* want to build... possibly across planets. And then you have to unpause them later. And you have to select the right number so that just the intended amount gets reallocated, and not more, or you'll waste resources as your economy overflows. It's not a good idea, too involved and too essential for performing well.