Some quick quality of life suggestions

Discussion in 'Planetary Annihilation General Discussion' started by endless24, January 14, 2015.

  1. endless24

    endless24 Member

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    Sup. I have a few suggestions for quality of life improvements that appear to me to be easy to implement.

    -Multiple pages on the leaderboards so the entirety of a league (and their most recent replay) can be viewed instead of just the top 10.
    -Displaying your current rank on the end-of-game victory or defeat screen (the one with chrono cam, re-queue, etc. buttons)
    -There may be some controversy around this one, but displaying whatever value is used to determine your rank (relative to others) within a league.

    This last one pertains to the gameplay and might be more difficult to implement, so I'm putting it apart from the others.

    -Add a modifier (activated by holding a key such as ctrl) for multiple-building construction orders that splits up fabbers among each individual construction order evenly. For example, if you have 16 fabbers and issue a line-build order for 6 power gens while holding this modifier key, it would assign two fabbers (total fabbers / 6) to each power gen and the remaining four (total fabbers % 6) fabbers to the first, second, third, and fourth power gens in the construction order.

    This would allow for more efficient construction of a large number of structures with a large number of fabbers, since they won't waste time clustering up on the build plot of each structure only to instantly complete it and spend more time clustering up on the next one. This is most noticeable when building large numbers of mass extractors: all fabbers assigned to the order will gather on a single mass point, stop, instantly build it, and have to accelerate on to the next one.

    My suggestion when assigning a mixed group of advanced and basic fabbers to multiple-build advanced structures is to evenly assign the basic fabbers to assist the advanced fabbers and to then assign the advanced fabbers to carry out the construction order as described above.
  2. ace902902

    ace902902 Active Member

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    All the yes in the world. Everyone is always bitching about the last feature not being in, but they haven't given any suggestions to how it could be properly implemented.
  3. endless24

    endless24 Member

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    I'm glad there's some interest in that feature; I liked the idea but I wasn't sure if the demand would exist.
  4. g0hstreaper

    g0hstreaper Well-Known Member

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    I really like and dislike the first one for only a few simple reasons (The rest are great suggestions) , I really like the idea of seeing who is near or around you in the ranked pool, then you can play with those around and above you so you can increase your skill.

    I don't like however seeing every single players most recent replay. The top 10 are there because they are the best of that division and they should be what players should watch to improve their play instead of seeing what # 56 is doing. -Again just a suggestion on a already good suggestion ;)
  5. Poddighe

    Poddighe Member

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    Thumbs up for all the suggestions.
  6. tatsujb

    tatsujb Post Master General

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    honestly rank and game count should be visible anytime your name is.
  7. Yaegz

    Yaegz Active Member

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    I think everyone can agree people want more information regarding their rank and experience. A profile page depicting wins and losses with a match history would be awesome. Also, I wanna know how many points I am gaining or losing with each game. Plus, you should be able to see the entire leaderboard not just the top 10. Top 10 for anything other than Uber is a practically random sample of players. The worst Uber player is still technically better than the best Platinum player.

    Also,I think the last suggestion is unnecessary. If you are concerned with clumping of fabbers then why not select half as many and queue up two lines of buildings or three. I am ok with 'micro' giving players a small macro advantage. The difference will be negligible either way. I think Uber's time is better spent on the leaderboard suggestions.
  8. endless24

    endless24 Member

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    I had a feeling that someone might argue against it on the basis of skill-based macro, and I have to agree that simplifying or automating it too much would make it uninteresting (see: Star Ruler 1). However, I would like to defend it on a few bases:
    1. It does not seem terribly difficult to implement.
    -Identifying whether or not a key is being held down while issuing a build order is trivial.
    -Functions to directly issue a build order to a fabber presumably already exist - else how would Sorian's AI function?
    -The math behind it is simple; I half described it in the post above.

    2. I disagree that the difference would be negligible. It's most noticeable with area-build orders, and particularly metal extractors in large orbital games when attempting to capture an entire planet worth of metal at once: delays in construction and inefficient travel paths absorb an unreasonable amount of time unless a ton of micromanagement as you described is applied. This micromanagement is pretty intense and has a significant impact on how quickly the build order gets done - a hell of a lot more significant than worker stacking in SC2 (a far more micro-focused game), for example.

    3. This automation mostly addresses the fringe case of large-scale area build orders, which are presently tedious to manage. I don't think it will excessively simplify the macro game.
    Last edited: January 14, 2015
    sigmud2 likes this.
  9. Zaphys

    Zaphys Well-Known Member

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    I feel you man... it's been quite a long time asking for a decent in-game player profile feature :(

    UBER (@jables ) please...

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