I've been watching a few matches on Youtube and I noticed that as the army gets bigger it gets harder to select the exact units you want. Having the option to select in free form (you know like in Gimp or Photoshop) would make selection, splitting, and keeping formation easier. I just think it should be a part of the game.
If you mean by exact units, selecting all of the type you want? Just triple click on one unit, and it will select all of the units that are like.
I think this problem has more to do with the lack of a selec tion bar (When you select a bunch of units it shows a list of all the units you selected and allows you to remove units from that selection).
I think he means instead of just dragging a box, to be able to also draw a line around the units you want. Could be useful.
This is what I am talking about. It's also called the "lasso tool" and basically it's just about being able to draw a circle (or any other shape) around the units you want to select. Also having a line select wouldn't be bad where you select only the units you draw a line through. In RTS games, traditional box selection always felt lacking and not always optimal when units weren't lined up well to split or were close to one another. I just thought more flexible free-form selection tools may make moving army management easier.
I'd prefer this to be done as a mod. Can't wait to see some of the awesome UI mods that emerge as the API is exposed.
Word! Especially annoying is when I try to select a bunch of troops and get all the airs selected which fly on a patrol. A simple selection bar would be highly appreciated.
Yeah I tend to agree with this. I see it being more time consuming and only being useful in isolated instances.
Yeah...lasso would only be helpful when u have a grouped army and u want certian units to move or when you on a massive isolated place...thats where 'shift' comes in.
If you use it for a while you become realy fast with the lasso selection tool. So no, "time-to-use" wouldent be much of a issue. However it seems needlessly complicated to me (i dont realy have any issues selecting the units i want atm and i belive it would be even harder to select the exact units you want with a lasso tool, since its easy to make mistakes with that tool when your using it fast).
Actually a lasso system could work if you're smart about it. Drawing a complete circle or filling in the last line of a polygon might take too long. I thought that was a problem but then I remembered this video: I think the contour based system looks pretty good so I now have some hope for lasso selection. Also I should clarify, I don't know the creator of the video or the multitouch system. They just took Zero-K (as they are free to do so) and made some extra widgets (or maybe even modified Spring but I doubt it) to showcase their multitouch system.
Lasso: I think you should more think of it like a tool, thats there everytime (in differnet situations/contexts) and when you need it - you can. maybe it will be less effective for directing an army, but think of building metal extrators. draw little rings where the spots are and the fabber will do the rest. would be pretty nice!
Having the option there is always a nice thing. If Uber can implement it as a feature, everyone's a winner!
I think it might be worth having as an option, particularly if you consider the 3D spherical nature of PA maps. For example, say you have a lot of units on a small asteroid - there might be a cluster of units on the 'horizon', and a small group you wish to select (which you have a birds-eye view of). It might be difficult (with a box) to select the units directly 'below' you without accidentally selecting those on the horizon. Compounded to this is the fact that these objects, being mostly spehcial, don't map well to squares Also units (at least at the moment) don't go around in square formations like in Sup Cop, so if you have a big cluster of units on a small asteroid, it's going to be near impossible to select those directly beneath you without drawing a box around most of or all of the asteroid - perhaps over the horizon and any units standing there. I liked the modified lasso shown in the video above, it looked a lot quicker than closing the loop.
Let me just quote from a different thread in that context: While I can't deny that free form selects could come handy in some scenarios, they still feel like overkill to me - and a lot of unnecessary mouse movement in many situations. It's actually quite easy to approximate any organic shape by a set of overlapping circles (much better than it was possible with rectangles!) with much less effort than drawing the actual outline all by hand.
I agree with Exterminans. Any new system will take a little while to get used to, but I think the circle selector would perform better overall. Even better, give us the option to choose in the menus!
