Currently you can give an area command to either include up to half of the planet, or the entire planet. You can't just say "the entire planet except this area" For cases like the enemy having established a TP beachhead with AA or just containing the enemy in thier base you want your air units to fly everywhere, except over the base/into the flak. Also you want your fabricators to grab mex spots everywhere but the enemy base. To use it you would drag the area to be exlucded as you do now select the area to be affected by the command. Then hit/hold a modifier key and it would "invert" the selection: The cicle over the enemy base becomes a cycle for the entire planet but the enemy base. Might even be possible to do this with a UI mod, not sure where the limit exactly is.
This is an awesome idea! But... Why hit a key if you can drag a small random circle, and drag it inwards to flip and invert it? Because keys... not all players are aware of them existing. Did you know there is a key to zoom instantly to the air or orbital level?
Yea, like circles could always be dragged outwards by moving the mouse to the right (like.. raw mouse input that goes to the right of teh mouse's own orientation) and inwards by moving it to the left. That way you wouldn't need additional keys.
You could have it work similar to the current area commands where you drag a circle with the mouse over an enemy's base but the entire area outside of the circle is the area selected and the inside of the circle created by the player is treated as a no-go zone by the units being issued the order
Don't like this idea, just shift 'n' drag a few more circles, lazy bugger.... Edit: ONLY JOKING. Seriously, fairly nice idea.
Nice idea, i could see some use in inverted command. E.g. for ordering doxes to patrol outside your base. Or just in general for commands which are bigger than half the planet.
That is exactrly what I am talking about. Instead of setting patrol in the area, you set the patrol to anywhere but the area you are marking. Basically your patrol area is "full planet surface" minus "the area you marked".
Until uber impliments this, how hard would it be to mod? you can currently emulate this affect with the regular area command, its just very dificult, you view the planet so the enemy base is on one side, and you can just see the opposite side of the planet. patrol-drag there to edge of the enemy base and your done. +100 for the ops suggestion, would make this very easy.
You could find uses for this actions for every single command existing in the game and for many different scenarions. Why could you only do it for whole planet, could you maybe give "anti-command" which deletes the command for specific area? You drag a circle, then you give anti-command which would exclude the command for certain area? Little summary and some new: FrontCom: =isolate/supress the enemy or deny map control other use could be for harashment: attack everything except the enemy main base. This would send troops to quickly harash automatically everywhere in the planet except the territories you think are too dangerous and use anticommand. also when giving attack commands you could exclude some certain areas or buildings: attack the base, but then you could exclude maybe teleport or some factories if you want to prioritize on units or eco. Now you have to always select which you specifically want to destroy, not what you don't want to destroy right now. What do you think @elodea think? EcoCom/PlanetCom: =Build eco everywhere except hostile territory. other use is for Reclaim: reclaim everywhere except hostile territories. StratCom: =Patrol everywhere except hostile territory.
Nice idea but I think it sounds easier to implement than it is. You have not specified how you going to prevent units from walking through the excluded area. The current area commands exploit the fact that they are concave. By that I mean the shortest line between two points within the area is entirely contained within the area. This is true as long as the area command is smaller than half the planet or trivially true if it contains the entire planet. Area commands that take up between half and the entire planet are not concave. A unit randomly walking towards a location within the area command may walk through the excluded area. There are solutions but they result in different behaviours.
I think we are talking about different things here. I talk about a area command whose area of effect would be the inversion of the marked area. So it is only really helpfull to make one exclusivion zone. I think that might be doable via client mods as in basic you just have to look for: 1. Radius of the planet. 2. Center point of the Area you would normally palce, then find the exact coutenr point on the opposite side of the planet. 3. Radius of the area you would normally give the order in. Then give the following command to the server: GiveAreaCommandToServer (Command Type = original command type, center point = counterpoint from step 2, radius = Planet radius from step 1 - Raduis from step 3). If I had the time to learn yet another language I would propably have done it myself by now Multi exclusion (something like "mark area as dangerous") would be good too, but also a lot hardet to implement, both on UI and pathfinding side.
Oh, what do i think? It seems like the next logical step after area commands to include anti-area commands. I don't see anything wrong with it in terms of gameplay. Maybe you'd just let cntrl or some key be a modifier that allows you to delete certain areas from a previously set area command. I don't know how technically feasible it would be though. It seems like it might be expensive performance wise especially given how expensive planet wide area patrols are currently.
The only thing expensive about area commands currently is the amount of ram it can use on the server. It has no impact clientside, since our computers ARE NOT the ones making the calculations. Too many of y'all seem to forget that fact, I know for a fact I would not be able to run a PA game without the servers. As for the anti area commands, it's definitely a good idea, could be expanded to cancel orders that are in the middle of a queue as well ( say you placed a shitton of queued buildings, but decide you don't want a couple of buildings afterall, but they are in the middle of the queue.)
The way I could see this be done is have an "anti/undo" key that would serve a similar function that the shift key currently has (ie the addon effect) However, it's function in effect would be to "cancel-out" an order, whether it be a single click, or an area click. As for area clicks, it would only cancel out the area you selected, not the entire thing. The reason why I say a hotkey that's similar to the shift key, is so you are able to cancel out specific functions without canceling out wanted functions. For example: You (with scouts selected) give an area patrol order for the entire planet (using the normal patrol hotkey or ui button, & then click dragging) but don't want them over your base (press patrol hotkey/ui, area drag a circle over your base) Wallah, you have an area command with an exception over your base
