Build Queue Suggestion: Draggable items.

I appreciate that we're on the verge of the alpha, but I thought I'd drop a simple idea which I've personally not seen in previous RTS games which might make things a little more flexible from a UX perspective.

FWIW: I tried to search, but search seems very awkward to use.. It keeps locking up saying to wait if I try to perform more than 2 searches within a minute. Very annoying.
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I'd love to have more control over the build queue.

Initially, I'm talking about the build queue of a factory, but I guess this might also work for the build\order queue of other units. Although I haven't given that much thought yet.

So... what being able to drag and drop units about within the build queue?

Simple point click and drag. Anything but the first item (ie the one being built - although there would maybe be cause to move that until later in the queue) could potentially be moved to somewhere else in the queue.

Just a thought

What do yo think?

Sounds like it could be useful for reorganizing the build queue in a factory.
I think you can add this just on top of the standard factory queuing as seen in SupCom without interfering with other functionalities.

yeah you could do this in supcom, hopefully it returns

Erm seriously?

I just ran a quick test.

This doesn't seem to work in SupCom, SC:FA or SupCom2

Are you sure?

It was a mod for sup com I believe.

Excellent. If anyone does remember the name of said mod, I'd be interested.

GAZ_UI iirc.

Thanks thaPear

That was the one.

oh lol. I always thought that was a default feature. Yeah it should definitely be integrated for PA.

In sup com you were able to create 1 unit and press the repeat button and it would.....repeat. I really hope in PA we will be able to do this :mrgreen:

idk, i think after 17 years of that feature in Total Annihilation they will probably cut it from PA

And Supreme Commander.

I'm sure they are totally going to remove the repeat function :lol:



I only use GAZ UI, but I've never tried re-ordering my units in the queue.
I should give that try.

Sometimes I forget a factory with repeat on. Did that on a Cybran T3 air factory recently and when my forces where all but depleted I realized I had an armada of 300 Strategic bombers laying around. XD

At first, I thought you meant drag the unit icon onto the map and it would add a unit to the build queue and send it to that spot. Multiple rally points. Now THAT would be cool with a repeat function. It could automagically make a pseudo-formation of your choosing. Might be useful.

Or being able to box select several orders and drag them to the front. Or being able to save a particular build queue and easily duplicate the queue. Or being able to repeat the current order X times, instead of indefinitely. That would be great if want, say, 3 task forces of specific compositions. I hope they include the factory assist feature. That was very useful.

I'd love to be able to add non-repeating units to the front of a queue.

If your factory is churning out tanks, it would be great to be able to chuck a single engineer to the front marked as non-repeating, the factory builds that and then returns to the infinite tanks...

I often have requirements like that during gameplay, and you either have to remember to turn repeat off briefly and back on when the engineer is built or delete the engineer when it goes to the back of the queue. Means you can't sort the whole deal out in one hit.

Anyone else think that is worth having?

Agreed, although could sort of do this in SupCom. If you had a series of factories assisting a main factory you could queue non-repeating units on a slave factory and they would be prioritized over the main factory queue.

Ahhhhhhh, I did not know that! Many thanks

See my other thread -> Build Queue Suggestion: Draggable insertion point

Although I see how you could do a one off add-and-drag of a single engineer unit using the technique in this thread.

I figure if your build queue contains draggable items, it could also contain selectable items.

Once selected these could be copied to the clipboard as a sequence, and then pasted multiple times, back to the same queue (at the current insertion point) or perhaps into another queue.

All manner of things become possible when better build queue tools are available.