On Templates, Base Planning, and you

As my futile attempt to get some kind of compromise between pro and anti-AI members of this board, let's talk about the place where they meet right in the middle, templates.

Frankly, I think the Template system in Supcom was a good start, but it was merely a start that could use loads of improvement to become everyday usage for every player. I think the overhaul required is in the UI department as well as usability, the idea of templates in itself has no problem. However, deploying it when simply queuing the buildings yourself may be a shorter solution was a pain. Let's talk about some improvements and hear your ideas as well.

Suggestion 1: Selectable structure 'ghosts'

So we know the common building ghost that existed in Supcom, existed in TA (to some extent) and pretty much every game like TA since then. You select an engineer, anything capable of building a structure or stationary unit, click an area on the terrain, and a 'ghost' of that structure appears there. Indicating that the unit will get to building it eventually. While holding 'shift' or an appropriate modifier key, multiple 'ghosts' can be made which indicate where the engineer is going place the structure. This practice has gone back to TA and earlier, where in TA only the imprint of the building on the map was shown.

If I can tell the engineer to move to every ghost of that structure and simply start the building, immediately abandon that building, and then move to the next one to do the same thing. I'm left with the nanolathed 'frame' of the building. Which I can select and queue all the units I want from. Most of these frames take a long time to blink out of existence, so I could even send multiple engineers behind the first engineer to actually finish that building.

Considering this, why can't the same principle apply to the building ghosts? They are simply buildings that don't exist yet, but they are as much of a part of my overall strategy as any tank in my factory queue or upgrade that my commander is working on.

With selectable structure ghosts, I can suddenly tell factories to produce, turrets to aim in a specific direction, artillery to fire on a hot target, structures to upgrade before they even exist yet. A clear savings in APM later down the line when I may be busy with operations in the field and not have time telling my structures to create and upgrade.

What happens if the engineer who has those buildings 'ghosted' is destroyed? Then the 'ghosts' disappear. It might be a good idea to not let that happen, as it's the trade-off to being able to plan your base several steps in advance. It runs all the benefits of planning far into the future with the risks of not being able to quickly change plans in the short-term. Put that engineer on a separate hotkey and check back with him every now and then to ensure he hasn't eaten an errant plasma bolt.

How do we keep from losing half of our base due to an (un)lucky hit on our engineer pool?

Suggestion 2: Group placed templates as a singular entity instead of multiple 'ghosted' buildings

Grouped building templates were a bit of a pain in Supcom. If I told an engineer, commander, anything to work on a template, it would proceed to start building the template usually by build time. Ignoring queuing and position. And there was no way to make buildings in parallel.

Here's an idea to solve that problem: While buildings can retain their ghost forms, why not also group placed building templates under a single entity that highlights the entire group before it is completed.

Perhaps I would have a template, A, consisting of structure 1, 2, and 3. If I were to place this template, the three structures would appear as building ghosts, but also appear under a single icon, similar to if they were grouped via hotkey. Selecting the icon would allow me to switch build order of the three structures as well as assign multiple engineers to the icon to allow parallel building of the structures (the 'template' icon inheriting the build-order traits present in a typical unit factory, icons representing the buildings that make up that template as well as an option to move the icons forward or backward in the queue). Structure 1 could be moved backwards in the queue, putting structure 2 at the top. Any engineers assigned to the template past this point would instead build structure 2 instead of reinforcing structure 1. Structure 3 could also be cancelled in this way, leaving the other two structures unaffected.

Forward bases could be quickly constructed this way by just selecting a primary engineer, placing a template, and then assigning secondary engineers to the now-placed template while the primary engineer sits in relative safety outside of harms way. Allowing for safe remote construction of unattended templates.

Suggestion 3: Miniature copy-and-paste templates ('Mini-Templates' if you prefer)

One problem with templates was the fact that you had to navigate the UI to quickly place a collection of structures. I feel this was inefficient for something that should be secondary nature to every commander.

What if we had the ability to 'copy and paste' structures, as it were? If I were to select a group of buildings, "copy" with a key combination (perhaps ctrl+c?) and then select an engineer and paste (perhaps ctrl+v?), I could get the engineer to treat the 'copied' template as I had ordered the template to be built from the templates menu.

For example, if I were to make three buildings, Structures 1, 2, and 3. If I were to select them, press ctrl+c, a 'mini-template' would have been created containing structures 1,2, and 3. As well as their relative positions, rotations, etc. If I were to select an engineer and 'paste' the mini-template, it would create the template 'ghost' as if I had placed any ordinary template. The key difference being that this mini-template does not show up in the templates menu, and is lost forever when a new 'mini-template' is created by 'copying' another set of structures.

I feel this is a very important template addition as it allows for temporary templates. It would be very nice to have templates that are loaded for the sake of quickly pasting or duplicating portions of an established base. Or even templates that are made for the sake of quickly repairing serious damage by copying a section of a base that may be destroyed and pasting it later for engineers to clean up from.

If this comes in combination with suggestions 1 and 2, building ghosts could also be added to mini-templates. Allowing for extremely fast base growth assuming resources are available. Let's say I have two structures, structures 1 and 2. If I were to copy those structures and paste them. I now have structures 1, 2, 3, 4. With 3 and 4 being ghosts awaiting construction. If I were to select the now 4 structures (including the two which are currently being constructed) and copy those, I could paste them again, doubling the number of structures and giving me structures 1, 2, 3, ... 7, 8 (with only two of these structures being currently constructed). And so on, so fourth.

Conclusion

These are all ideas that I've had in mind for a very long time regarding basebuilding in TA-like games. So I am eager to hear any thoughts regarding them. I am perfectly okay with any modifications, usage, or derivatives that may arise from these aforementioned suggestions that I have had. It's currently very late right now, so my post may have some logical errors or areas that are not clear. So feel free to ask about any of it if you want clarification.

Thank you

This is a great idea! I hope this makes it in!

The Copy&Paste idea is pretty interesting too. Perhaps we could have a general Copy function too. Select some mobile, "copy" will copy their order queue. Select another bunch, "paste" drops it in.

these are all excellent ideas, they allow you to get a lot of the legwork done in what is traditionally a slow micro intensive portion of the game. it also allows you to do things like pre-set patrol routes for buildings which have not yet been built. a massive timesaver.

That said i would not tie the order queue to the unit itself, I would tie it to a specialist 'Template' AI (optimised for speedy template construction with a variety of tools allowing prioritisation etc.) or a 'Foreman' AI (optomised to build and maintain bases). this preserves the build order and various other things you have set up in the build template in case your engineer dies and allows for other engineers to be assigned directly to the template instead of the unit building it. This allows neat stuff like parallel construction or having one of your constructors automatically going off site to reclaim rubble to speed overall construction.

i was thinking about this earlier today, and i decided what i really wanted from a template system was:

The Ability to design, Name, Organize / Categorize template types independent of active game play, perhaps in a sandbox type construction area where i can just design templates without having to fight against an AI or actually play the game while i design

A Clean, category Tabbed UI Menu (by this i mean separate the templates into personalized categories, ie. production, defensive, power generation, fabrication, storage, etc...) to select My Templates from when i want to build them, each template showing an overhead schematic indication the layout and building types contained within the template and allowing me to customize the build order within the template before i place it down.

and finally the ability to rotate the whole template on the map when i place the construction order

thinking about this earlier in the day i was tossing about the idea of construction that was not reliant on selecting a specific construction unit similar to the earlier settler games where you simply ordered a building built and your little minions just did it, you didn't select a specific individual to carry out the task you just indicated that you desired X type of building built there, but then i remembered that they were idiots and sometimes took hours to build some buildings if they thought others were more important so i think i would rather the ability to assign multiple construction units to the template without any dependency on the survival of a single unit to continue the construction effort.

I'm a real supporter of build templates. I used them heavily in Sup Com. I really liked perfecting the placement of buildings to get the most out of the available space and adjacency bonuses. I've already mentioned this before and I am sure others have too: Offline template editor.

[1]An offline template editor would be a great tool. It would allow players the opportunity to work out the best ways to group buildings (and in what build order) when they aren't in the heat of battle.

[2]Being able to edit templates once they are created would be great for experimenting with different build orders simply by shuffling things around in a build queue style template interface. This was already present in Sup Com, so you could see the build queue but it was not editable.

[3]To take this idea further, I'd like to see them saved as 'files' that the player can name, save and recall in the editor. Allowing for quick identification in game. One of the big problems with the Sup Com templates was that they were simply represented by a single icon of the first building in the queue.

[4]I'd like to see more information available in the template editor so that the player doesn't have to calculate it himself, such as the total build time, total mass and energy consumed for the build etcetera. Individual building vitals are already displayed when the buildings are selected, so a running to total would be nice. Might even be a nice feature for in game too.

[5]I'd like to keep templates the same as they were with respect to when placed, each building remained a separate entity that was movable independently from the other structures in the queue. You could also cancel specific buildings individually. The only issue with this was that you had to find the original engineer used to build the template to cancel it, as only one instance of the queue existed in that specific engineer. I don't see that as a problem but there needs to be some kind of indication of the engineer in charge of the project.

[6]I don't see any issue why you couldn't change your build order priority on the fly by selecting the engineer and drag-dropping the icons around. It's just like changing the build order you would like in a factory should be. Regarding the template, we're using two separate entities to manage the template in game or in the offline editor: The build queue and the map. The build queue is going to manage what is built and in what order. The map screen is going to dictate where it's built. Both should be editable offline, online and on the fly.

[NB]I think you mentioned engineers built templates in an apparent random order when you created them in Sup Com. Try selecting the buildings in the order you want them built when you create the template and see what happens - I think you'll find they are built in the order they are selected.

EDITED: I just remembered while I was reading that someone previously mentioned the ability to rotate a template might be a nice option. Allowing it to be manipulated to better make use of available space.

Templates in Forged Alliance are built in the same order as the original group the template was taken from.

Otherwise, some great suggestions in there.

Doh! Sorry, It's been so long that I forgot.

I can't believe I forgot that, that is probably one of the biggest things I would like to see out of templates.

The wonderful GAZ_UI mod gives you the ability to rotate templates in SC:FA...

Isn't that called "Skirmish against the easy AI"?

You could use skirmish to do that and indeed that is where I made my templates, but I was really thinking about a stand-alone editor where you aren't actually playing so you can do all the things I mentioned in point 3 in your own time.

I liked this idea from the other thread lol.

I liked the idea of making the template stretchable, I mentioned changing it's queue if you wanted defences earlier or later but the way you suggested it do that is good too, I ESPECIALLY like templates laying out ghost buildings that you can move before they adamantly begin building, and I liked the idea of having a place you can pull multiple templates from (a certain template for a certain situation).

A lot of implementing, but good for condensing clicking.

+1 to selecting and ordering ghost structures

Great Ideas!!
Heres $.02 for the suggestion box:

If i select a pack of 6 Engineers and build a template that contains 6 buildings; i want to be able to toggle the ability for the engineers to either all concentrate on one building at a time, or each start thier own building. This would support all types of construction: offensive, defensive, and neutral.

Thanks! I like that people are still reading those suggestions I had, I support them now as I did when I first wrote them.

Now is a good time to bring them back up because we're at the stage of the game when this kind of stuff is actually being designed, when I wrote this, we were still unsure if the game would have mass extractors.

I'm still feeling like "Sandbox mode + infinite resources economy setting" (which was an option in Vanilla SupCom, as I recall) gets you 90% of the way towards your editor without requiring the game logic for a "separate template editor space".

Ok, I can think of a few tweaks to make an analog for a template editor:
Put the commander in a sandbox game on the coastline of a flat continent; make him able to build anything at 1000x build speed, resource generation and movement speed. Done.

So I had an idea when SupCom came out - what about if you could build a block/formation/whatever of defensive structures, but maybe a team of transport units could pick that block-o-death up and plop it wherever you needed to. Think of four choppers tied to that structure and flying across the map with it. That way your transportation takes risk (could be shot down by fighters en route) and you still have to do the clickity clickity click to make the thing. Perhaps, make it once, then repeat? It might set up a nice way to rapidly assemble a forward base at home, then drop it into position later.

I agree that cutting out some of the tedious clicking might cut to the chase a bit better. But I'm not really excited about plain set and forget templates because it cuts down on the actual playing of the game. Maybe I'm thinking too TA and SupCom though. Multiple planets may require different ideas.

why would you ever want them to build separately? they build more quickly with all 6 engineers constructing the same structure

Walking time. If construction time of 1 engi is 10 seconds and walking time between sites is also 10 seconds, you want to split as they will get done faster.

That said, it would be easier to have a generic split commands tool that assigns a command queue between units.

yep it occurred to me walking time could matter but i still don't see it likely anybody has templates where walking time makes a difference

the rare example i could think of is somebody using a template for very far apart precisely placed static defense, although if you have the range overlays toggled you really wouldn't need templates for this

In supcomm the hive or kennel could assist from a distance so if you wanted to build a line of turrets having 1 engineer start each would be really nice.