Ideas from Zero-K

Yes! Someone agrees with me on this!

googlefrog,
Enhancements you list are a must for a complex RTS! Having the option to Issue more complex commands when time is of the essence is important! but you also go a step farther combining it with different selections and behaviors. You do a good job in your game. Some feel a bit clunky in game but probably just need tuning or the current UI but the reasoning behind them is very sound.
I love the visual cues for artillery and area effect weapons.
The harvest/repair in this area is quite handy and just enough different from the normal path based version for both to be useful.

It is primarily part of another command. If you have a unit with an 'A'ttack order on some unit or location and ask the unit to move somewhere, it will gain a movement-independent attack to its previous attack command.

You can also set it manually. I found that once I rebound my keys (wait is nearly pointless, so I set MIA to 'W' and wait to shift-W), I started using MIA alot.

It's really handy when you want to micro some tanks about, but make sure they shoot a particular target.

Did it in a SupCom mod. Awesome happened.

Uber please listen to the Zero-K guys they have done miracles all those years.

As a new Zero-K player I second all the stuff in this thread That game basically solves all of the UI problems I was fearing for.

(Just... do the tutorial a bit better? )

Well, the UI does a lot of nice things, but it's far from perfect. FA's UI is probably the smoothest, most solid RTS UI I've used. But ZK certainly has a lot of nice bits that, if combined with the FA UI, would result in a very nice system.

Once you get custom formations though, you never go back. FA's formations are still too clunky. And yes, sometimes I DO want my shield generators in front...

With the new keyboard shortcuts, I basically don't use the panel anymore. (at least not after I re-bound wait and set-target)

Actually, after comparing them quite a bit recently, I find that as much as I love the custom formations, I can play FA just fine with its formation implementation. However, ZK's camera, especially the strategic zoom, isn't quite up to par with FA's, and I find it to be a much more important feature. Being able to rebind hotkeys is nice, but again, not a big deal once you get used to the default.

Suffice it say, while ZK has a lot of nice features, many of which are listed in this thread, FA's UI has the better foundation, and that's what we'll want to build on. (Or we could go to the classic Supcom interface. Cause everyone loved that!)

Would be awesome if the devs could read this. Zero-k has alot of very nice and unique features i think alot of other games are missing.

I find that formations aren't really necessary when you are constantly needing to move and blob about anyway.

a very interesting post. I hope the devs are considering these ideas

love all of this. Persisten scouting is already in. I know ETAs are being worked on and i think Uber also has the intetion to have some more nifty UI and command features than just "select-right click".
I can't see anything here to throw away, most of these features were intergrated to FAF, so I see the idea of these features being implemented to PA as the natural progression of things.

They are a must, not eye candy. this is what chews micro into macro.

I'll be perfectly redundant here but : "PA is the ultimate macro game"

Isn't that just box selecting?

Sweet Sweet thread necro...

Zero-K was fun. Implement stuff...

at least the custom formation stuff is really important.
i was not really able to play any other RTS game since i become so in love with this feature form Zero-K.

what i dislike on PA as it is now (short after beta release) is that the units are polonized all time, or they all packed on 1 small dot and splitting them is a very hard work with microing, wich is a stuff that takes like 1 second with the custom formation stuff.

just mark all, draw a circle or a line, and they do split off well.

also it sucks when there is a bunch of tanks or bots, and they all want to move to 1 point, how they all try to go to this point and all hanging on each other.

(btw if you have a game, and it is laggy, just choose all your armys that are idle and order them to STOP, then the lag can sometimes (because the lag seems to be caused when all the units try to find a path to the point or something, wich is surrounded by the other own tanks that all want to go there), with the custom formation stuff this would not happend anymore so often, since usually ppl will spread theyre units over an area or in a long line, instead of pumping them all to 1 point)

so please at least this function would help alot, also the circle stuff, click 1 thing to reclaim and drag the mouse away to define a circle in wich all stuff wil be reclamed and stuff, is also very missing in PA as it is now.

for those who dont understand or cant imagin it, see this video (the first 2 minutes will be enough to understand how amazing the zero-k custom formation solution is)

as you see the normal moving is also still working, so it would not anyhow bug new players that dont know about this feature, since for them nothing is changing.

Well, I guess the thread has been thoroughly resurrected now. I'll just say that while some of the interface ideas in the OP are pure strokes of genius (that IMO show how open source can be a great breeding ground for ideas), something that should definitely NOT be replicated from Zero-K is the intrusive tooltips and the small buttons (for instance the ones to switch from one category of build items from another). Overall the UI doesn't follow Fitt's Law at all. It is fiddly and in places would be more appropriate for a word processor.

Those are very good features that deserve more attention as well.

Wow.

That line-dancing thing is just mine blowing.
It just seems to intuitive and powerful!

Line dancing is really a low hanging fruit, it don't have technical difficulties like strategic zoom or multi planetray battles do, so I always wonder why non of the commercial RTS designers ever used this idea.

How do you know it's low hanging fruit?