Feature: UI: Strategic Whiteboard

I don't see anything that can be expressed by a whiteboard can't be expressed by labels.
Adding a label and type "You go through here" is much faster than draw a line then type "You go through the line that I draw" in chatting, and much clearer than just draw a arrow. And cause the words on labels can also be shown in the chatting too, they are easier to get noticed.

I would suggest that this feature along with a VOIP service, like teamspeak or skype would be very cool to plan out assaults.

looks fun, but I think pinging an attention marker, and than a move marker around something followed by an attack marker works just as easy..

Do you need different types of markers? I find markers with text work well enough.

There's that old saying, a picture is worth a thousand words. There are definitely cases where I would like to actually draw out an attack plan with curved arrows to tell my teammate how units should move, and also shapes to specify how they should build up defenses or position their defensive units.

There are also cases where you'd like to draw the shape that a series of enemy units is positioned in, since they will disappear once the fog of war returns after scouting.

It's not difficult to allow players to draw arbitrary lines on the map. It's just about the easiest thing to implement in OpenGL. I say let's have all of markers, labeled markers, and the ability to draw and erase freeform shapes.

I'm sure players will find a use for all of these tools.

It happens frequently, that you may want to describe "go here, then here and then attack here" in order to describe a particular flanking manoeuvre and attack angle. Doing that with markers seems more tedious and isn't as clear as drawing actual arrows.



Also p3n15es.

I have seen at least 300 games in Zero-K, none of them has a player describing a precise plan to another player by drawing lines, it is always some simple things like "occupy these metal spots", which can be expressed by labels effectively.

Whilst I can see how you could draw on the map, how are you gonna describe plans involving multiple planets. Drawings in 3d space isn't trivial.

I dunno, just seems like _TALKING_ with your team might be more effective than drawing lines everywhere.

I'm betting you the number one feature this would be used for is drawing giant dicks on the map.

One way to deal with drawn map spam is to either have an expiry where it fades out after a while (either by default, chosen in game settings or overridden by the person drawing), so old tactics automatically fade out and remove themselves after 3-5 minutes. You could also potentially have an option to block drawings from the odd idiot on your map, thus removing the issue of said penii everywhere.

There should be a command to locally remove all map drawing up until this point.