Global Construction Orders

Not sure I understand what that diagram is...

I'm sure there is a way to implement your idea in any case. I'm just 50/50 on whether it'd be worthwhile. I think this might be something to discuss properly in alpha?

I am convinced it would be worthwhile. As I said, it's more powerful with the same amount of micro needed. And I assume you will have to build more structures in PA than and SupCom and TA. Thus having an improved construction model/ tool would be appropriate. Also, if the Orders as First-Class Entities thing is implemented, I guess the build model that I propose would require only a little more work as it's based on the same mechanics... I think.


And that diagram is a graph

Oh I understand the diagram now. That whole paragraph with the nodes and the egdes made it sound way, way more complicated than it actually is.

Well yeah, if you could offer build queues to groups of engineers with automatic paralellisation, that would be kinda cool, although in practice unless you had massive resource stockpiles (which you should almost never have) it could be a pretty bad way to construct bases in gameplay terms.

Are you implying one would have never been building more than 1 building at a time in SupCom/ TA?

I'm implying that if you have a group of engineers in one place, and you want to build a set of buildings in one place, 95% of the time it's going to be more efficient to concentrate all of that buildpower on one building, finish it, and then move onto the next.

Half finished buildings contribute nothing, so why have loads of them ongoing at the same time?

The exception would be when you want to build in different places (so that engineer travel time becomes non-negligible when estimating efficiency).

Whether people always build efficiently in SupCom / TA... some do, some don't.

Personally I would mostly use improved construction UI when including engineers in an army so that I wouldn't I have sort out the units every time I wanted to build something. But if I came across other uses I would probably use those too.

That would definitely be a benefit, yes. To increase that effect you could include a "passive assist" mode for engies. That means they can have primary order, like "go to coordinates XY" but thereby be in passive assist mode. That Is, if an engie is doing some task other than building and you place a building marker somewhere around it (passive assist would need a small range limit – 30 meters or so, dunno), he would stop what he was doing and start building the facility corresponding to the marker you just placed. If the engie is just assisting a building process (so that he is not the only engie involved in building that specific structure) he would also stop assisting the building process and start building the marker you just placed.

Idea?

To be honest I can't think of a single thing that has been discussed lately that is going to make this game more playable and remove needless player management from tasks that distract from the main aim of the game. And for that matter fun.

The tools available to manage your base and economy in SC and SC:FA were OK-ish, which in itself was a large game. Imagine how tedious and distracting it will be when you have similar bases across several worlds. You don't want to be doing that all the time. You want to be thinking about your next strategic move or concentrating on preparing for an immanent battle, not worrying about if an engineer on your 3rd planet has built that critical T3 power generator yet. Your whole supply infrastructure from resource to factories supplying your front line need this feature to keep the game running smoothly with as little micro as possible. In the end, when the game gets this large, even tasks that would not normally be considered as micro, IMO, become thus simply because of the scale of the game.

I totally agree. Each generation these games get larger and more complicated. Therefore the tools available to the player need to be smarter and more sophisticated. They say this is a nxt gen RTS. We need next gen UI and AI to make this game playable and to an extent more widely appealing.

I am pleased to hear that


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Okey, after a fruitful discussion, I wanted to summarize our ideas (also eventual cons). What I did was to first collect all good stuff by simply quoting it. Please assist me, and tell me if I might have forgotten important ideas, quote them yourselves. Note that I will not take such ideas into account that were more or less off topic, even if they were good (for example the offline template editor) .When I have some time I will write a summarized text and edit it to the start post, maybe also add it to the suggestions in the PA-shoutwiki.

Okay here we go:

So please feel free to add to this compilation. Of course also new ideas are still welcome!