So I'm digging area commands, they're great. But would it be possible for fabbers to divide themselves up to perform tasks? If I try to build all the mexes on a moon with 30 fabbers, they all just crowd around each build side sequentially. It would be more efficient if they divided up into groups and had several projecting underway at once. Otherwise the build power of so many fabbers is lost in the jostling for room to lathe.
Hm... That's a pretty good idea. If you select say, 30+ fabbers and give them an area command to build 5-10 metal extractors, they could split off into groups of 5 or 10 fabbers and build them. I approve!
I like this but how are the maths worked out? What I mean is, is the ratio something up to us to choose at the time giving the command, if so how would that work? if not what exactly will be the ratio for splitting up?
Could easily stall the econ... Perhaps a mod would be possible where a user can adjust a slider for the divisor.
I can see how it's annoying if its not intentional, one completed pelter is much more useful than 5 incomplete ones. I don't see how it would stall though, 30 fabbers building is the same regardless. You would either go number of projects / number of fabbers or max-fabbers style eg: max out at 10 fabbers and the remainder move on to a new project.
I like the idea of having a method to divide up fabbers as you designate an area work command. Maybe just an option to hot-key a simple split like 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, of the selected group. So rather than always doing it, it is something that you can select on a case by case basis.
There is a mod for FA that allows the splitting of orders. So if you have a group of units that should do a couple of sequential things (shift-queued), then you press ctrl-G, and the orders split up. I guess that would work in PA as well.
Not sure exactly how this would work but just use smaller groups and put a bit of micro into it. Split your group up as you like and give the area command for the whole planet for each group and each group will build 1 at a time. Just not sure how they will "split up"... I mean are they all going to try and do it in the one spot and spread from there... I suppose you could just start your area command in a different spot thus getting different pathing for each group, its not that much extra work really, given that the area command has just saved you a heap of work. -Felix
I've used this method before, problem is unless start spot is radically different they all move towards a single construction area together, find the task is already being done and then move on... useful for moon expansion when you don't expect many enemies to disturb you.
Yeah. Unfortunately area commands are broken, in that if you tell 1 fab to build mex, it should actually just go to the nearest spot, then go for the nearest spot on its list where there is not already a metal extractor. So you can tell 4 teams of 2 fabs to build mexes in the same area, rather than 1 team of 8.
The biggest issue I have seen is (you are in a hurry): When you select your first 10 fabbers and area command mexes on the whole planet you can no longer setup new mex area commands on that planet because all those mexes are 'queued-up' with ghost mexes. You actually have to be really careful how you place your areas if you want to use separate groups of fabbers. It would be nice if we could remove queued construction and if we could do it with an area command as well. That would certainly let you back track some orders without locating the original fabber group and starting from scratch.
Imo ctrl+ mouswheel would be a fast way to switch through the split options when placing an area command.
You can still selectively use the area command around a single mass spot with a mex ghost already on it and it will build, if this helps
Your very welcome, just remember the ghost wont disappear, and later somebody will try to build there. However that can be a good thing if the mine is destroyed in the meantime.
It is a feature everyone hopes for. As far as seeing it soon, it is a difficult task to program. It is hard to program how to spread out tasks most efficiently. For instance, if you just do it like dealing cards, handing one task to one unit until you hand them all out, then the game won't know when to prevent unit overkill in attacks, or which path is most efficient for building, or how to divide up builders to do tasks in a chain or all spread out in different directions depending on range and directions of target and targets close to other targets. You might at first end up with builders chosing the FARTHEST point first, or taking the longest path between the last few structures, or assigning as much firepower to ants as levelers, or assigning ants against levelers and levelers against ants. It will be a long road until the game is amended to do the right things in the right scenarios by default.
I've simply been grouping units and assigning multiple area commands to units, only really useful for metal expansion though. I think ultimately these kinds of choices will be left down to how you control units for the large part.
