Personal requests from RTS vet

Just a quick list of features I think are needed for a complete RTS experience. Some may already be planned some may not, I apologize if I'm beating a dead horse in some regards.

1: Formation's, including options for things like tanks in the front, bots in the back.

2: A summary list of units currently selected, including the number of each listed and the option to selected a category from that list, so I can box a group of units and only select AA, so I can move and form different groups and formations mid battle. Double clicking is not precise enough, don't want another group of AA units outside the ones I want moving as well.

3: Highlighting selected units in strategic view. Pretty simple, perhaps Options for color coding borders, red = units, blue = buildings, yellow = fabs, etc

4: Select commander and Idle fab buttons or hot keys, would prefer buttons myself, but some may not.

5: infinite factory loop button.

6: Auto rebuild option for fabs, perhaps linked to a patrol option. Rebuilds destroyed buildings from the wrecks.

7: Auto reclaim, probably already planned.

8: Target preferences, options for targeting only one type of unit, bot/aircraft/tank/building or not, for units

9: Visible way point, attack order, move order, rally point orders, color coded?

10: Click and drag building placement, to create multiple buildings, I think essential , most likely planned though.

11: Mobile Radar units, pretty simple.

12: A firing limit on single enemy units for my units. To prevent mindless overkill per shot, doesn't feel right having 100 tanks shoot one fab with 100 enemy tanks 2 inches behind it, when 4 shots are enough.

Well that's all. Thanks for reading and I welcome criticism.

These are good suggestions.

1) This is a planned feature (though the exact system hasn't been worked out yet).
2) Also planned, in fact I can't wait to implement it.
3) Also planned. the problem with color coding is that the icons are already colored by army. Maybe we could add something behind the icons?
4) Currently 'c' will select the commander, and 't' will track whatever is selected. A hotkey for fabs is incoming as well. You can also add units to a control group (ctrl+number to set group, just the number to recall the group). Expect all hotkeys to be rebindable at somepoint.
5) Yes. definately.
6) I'll ask Mike about that.
7) same as above.
8) Not sure. So how would this be setup?
9) Hold shift. the effect needs a lot of work, but the logic is already there.
10) yep, maybe after you can't build buildings on top of each other.
11) wait for orbital.
12) I am already trying to get support for this.

I'm torn: as much as I want this feature, I want to be modding it in myself. If it comes down to asking the community, I will shout and scream in favour of this being implemented. I'm sure that everyone that downloaded OKC will do the same.

The SupCom way was that units held a private target priority list. For modders, it was a fairly trivial task to map double right-click to a function that temporarily added that class of unit to the top of the list for the currently selected units.

In regards to No:8 on the list, I think it should be implemented because units seem to be able to fire at multiple types of targets, and are targeting walls and other things over potential threats.

At the very least I think a target priority list for each unit should suffice, with things non-combat related at the very bottom and obvious targets like AA firing at air and fighters targeting bombers, rather then other fighters at the top.

I think in a game designed around macro compositions, it makes sense to make sure your composition is suited to fighting your enemy's unit make up rather then trying to create an advantage through micro.

Also in regards to the color coded highlighting in strategic view, used a stronger black outline and then a colour, I created an example here:

Nothing selected: http://imgur.com/dgUyzxc
Commander selected: http://imgur.com/dd7EhR4

Makes a difference, I think. Simply change the colors for different types of units, keeping all of them bright neon colors, white might work for commanders, Bright Neon blue for fabs, bright Red for attacking units and bright green for buildings, with a stronger outline so the color will work with any other, even the same, like so: http://i.imgur.com/Ba0HsHI.jpg

Wow, this reads like a list of SupCom features to me.

You'll get some of this, others will be there in a different form and some others just won't be there. We'll see how it all ends up as we continue development.

Personally, I love the line-formation system of Spring because of its flexibility. If I wanted to do what the OP described I could select my unit types and draw the formation I want. A move in formation order might complement that well. In SupCom you could hold right-click after an order and decide which way a formation would face or move towards.

I think a Zero-K style "Resurrect" on engineers would be a great fit there especially given we have a single faction, it makes sense. It does exactly what you think, bringing a wreck back to life. For engineers to do that on patrol over reclaim however it should probably be a stance or toggle.

BulletMagnet, a member of this forum, actually made a mod to prioritize unit types in SupCom. There were some engine limitations though and it bugs out. I think that and all his other modded improvements would be a great addition to the game. http://forums.gaspowered.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=34776
If you double right clicked an enemy your units would prioritize that unit type.

But there's a lot of other great features in there as well. For example target-locking which made it so your commander (or any other unit) would prioritize the last unit it was ordered to attack, even if you issue a move order subsequently. That would be great for players who use their commander in combat.

BulletMagnet also tried that in the thread I linked. I fully support it, these are robots there's no reason for them to be programmed to do silly things.

A split attack order would probably be nice as well:
http://www.faforever.com/forums/viewtop ... f=2&t=3834

Since the Black-Ops guys frequent this forum I can mention they integrated this feature into Black-Ops.

I think it's a bit unfair to say its a list of sup com features, most games which feature large macro scale battles with huge numbers of units are going to lean towards having certain features out of necessity. Options for continuous building and fabber auto replacement would be example of this though I don't think Sup Com had the latter one (probably would have been a good addition).

Actually on the note of the auto fabber-replacement, I think whether that's useful will largely be a feature of how defence is conducted. Your base expansion fabber groups don't really need it but if your running forward defences that are often destroyed and reconstructed it helps push the game towards macro rather than micro. Also on this topic an option to have fabbers auto-rebuild destroyed buildings could be extremely helpful in such a situation. Personally considering how many planets we might be trying to manage simultaneously I'm in favour of most things that expand automation and Macro but I'm sure this is the kind of thing that will be worked out during testing. Once the game is more complete people will either clamour for these features or just not see a need for them.

I think there are so few large scales RTS games like this, its only natural to take anything good from each successor and add it to the next, in terms of features. Leaving something out just because its in another game, doesn't make sense to anyone.

Tbh I consider TA, SupCom and FA (and its modded versions) and now PA one big series of games (SupCom2 did nothing for the series or the genre, except maybe flow field getting some limelight). And I think the development should reflect that to some extent. Of course no one wants SupCom or TA ported straight with just round maps.

I think he just meant that's what it felt like reading, I thought the same :lol:. I wouldn't worry though, Neutrino was the lead programmer of SupCom&FA.

I'm sure you guys have your own ideas but I envisioned something not too different from what we currently have:
>Select Building, left click to place
>Hold left click to change facing/orientation
>Hold ctrl to save that facing/orientation and then drag in direction for multiple structures facing the same way

The main advantage of the above implementation is how familiar it would be for players used to shift-drag. Players might want to control the size of gaps between dragged structures (perhaps for pgens or mines/walls/dragonsteeth) so that could be mapped to the + - numpad keys like Spring. Templates would also be useful there.

Is there no design document in place with a list of everything that you will be putting in?

No there isn't. They said that they have some general ideas what they want to do, but don't have everything planned out yet and will rely on iteration and feedback on what will be implemented in the end.

Which is why our requests for certain features is important input.

I honestly don't want infinite build queues. They sound like a good idea, but IMHO, it's much better to just implement mass production modifiers. Click is 1 unit, Shiftclick is 5, ctrlclick is 20, altclick is 100. Infinite loops can just get so damn messy.

rly? didn't TA even have factory loops?

I don't see how pressing one button once is more messy then having to re-queue your factories at some point. If you have multiple sets of factories on multiple planets remembering which factory is not producing and which is and jumping between them world to world will be messy. Hell on massive maps it would be a nightmare.

Well, I'm fine with both so long as there are mass-production modifiers. The reason for this is that sometimes, I want a factory to actually stop building units after a certain point. For example, build 5 engineers, 5 fighters, 5 more engineers, then build 50 fighters, and then shut up because I probably don't need you anymore.

maybe i misunderstood, in supcom you could choose whether your factory queue looped or expired and whether or not to pause production

Yeah, there was no infinite loop build in TA. You could in SupCom though.

if there is no factory que loop there is no way you can say your trying for macro over micro.
as hundreds of units are grinding into each other i dont want to have each dead unit being another click i have to do..
as it is holding off on playing alpha due to this one feature not being in. not having a replenishing sustained assault is micro on the worst level.

You didn't play TA much did you?