Let's Talk about Mods in Competitive Games

You are unable to use the DEFAULT PiP system (which only allows for one window) to view an entire planet at once. The most you can see is around 85-90% due to physics and line of sight. That's what I'm getting at.

there you go. there it is.

there's your "MATH"

I can't believe so far I'm the only one calling out this farce. this is proposterous

Hehe yeah I'm in UK, my fiancee got me a jar as an extra on my birthday... I was so impressed with it it's now my avatar

My point is that UberMap is no more unfair than multiple PiP windows, just better for performance. Saying that this is an unfair advantage would be equivalent to suggesting multiple PiP windows be banned. Which, I should mention, was one of the features the devs were quite proud to have included in the game.

Ok, that would be unfair if one players has it and the others don't. So why don't we recommend all players adopt it? It's clearly a superior use interface.

yes. cola colin's map should be vanilla.

thing is he's still working out lag issues it causes

But change is scary!

Autofactory gives you more units, this is because you can't always take the time to get a new factory active the first second its done.

like when Titans came out scary? /s

Autofactory gives you units that you don't want when you don't want them by spamming ants into your factory that's already got a nice infinite build queue of drifters going.

Yes, I see that now. Well, it doesn't exactly 'give' you more units, it just takes advantage of the choices you make (build a factory) without needing any intervention from you. It's like saying Siri gives me a pizza because I say "siri remind me to buy a pizza in 12 hours". My personal preference is to allow the automation arms race as I think it could take competitive PA to interesting places. But I sympathize with the seeming consensus from top players that this changes the game into something they don't like, which is what I think this thread is really about, and that's totally fine. It's just not really an issue of fairness unless only some players can use it.

'xcept basically most of us like the idea of where this could go.

Sure, but ants is better then nothing.

Not on Pacific they aren't.

Or you can just look at what happens every time the person's metal efficiency drops. Do things randomly pulse on and off to maintain perfect energy or not.

Only issue I can see there is when you've queue up a line of factories and then go do something else for a while.
Only reason it's an issue at all is we can't give our construction 'plans' orders until construction begins. IMO that should be possible, and autofactory should be useless.

You can't use pip's to instantly move your camera to any position (it's always fixed as the direct point opposite your main camera), which is one of the main advantages. And you can't use the default pip to have 100% view of every single planet in a multiplanet system.

Well I still feel like either we all use the exact same mods, or none at all when competing.

Reduce the number of variables that could throw off a game.

And besides, time management is a skill, that if one person automates, can give them a undeserved advantage.

(And can't you change the autobuild mods unit that it selects?)

True, but that's just an improvement to camera controls.
I really don't see UberMap's main features as exploitative or abusing any of the game's mechanics. It's just a UI mod done very well, covering many individually reasonable features.

Here's an example; let's say there was a mod that displayed a grey map projection in the corner, no visual cues, which could be moused over for a terrain preview, or clicked on to move the camera. That would be a pretty reasonable camera control mod, and is not really abusing or exploiting the game in any way.
Now let's say it displays terrain features. It's more useful for displaying the map and moving around it; still just a useful camera control mod, and I don't think anyone would argue for it to be banned.
Now let's say we're using 4 separate PiP views. We can see all the units on the planet. I don't think most people would have a problem with that one; they might, I suppose, but I'm quite sure the devs intended for this to be possible, so I don't think it's fair to argue against it.

In my opinion, each individual function that UberMap is responsible for (except for units ghosts), if done by separate mods, is perfectly reasonable. The fact that they've all been conveniently integrated into a single mod doesn't change that. It doesn't fit into the same class as Free Energy or Autofactory. Fighting the camera controls was never meant to be part of the gameplay, and is meant to be highly customize-able, so I don't see any issue with camera / display mods.

No what UberMap is is what people where begging for back in alpha up until the end of gamma.

Can't believe that now that it's finally here people are complaining.