Feature: UI: Unit selection subgroups w/back button

I don't even have to write this post, I said it almost 6 years ago:
Selected Units: Selection Summary A La Homeworld 2

Here's a video of how it works in Homeworld 2:


I would only add the ability to switch between the groups quickly with Tab, which I think Starcraft II does, and previewing the sub-selection by highlighting the units when you mouseover their selection icon.



Really could have used that in Supreme Commander...

EDIT: We did actually have this in Supreme Commander, but there didn't seem to be a way to go back to the overall selection once you selected a subgroup, and there were no hitpoints on the unit icons. Homeworld would also only let you go back once, not all the way. I think right-clicking to go back makes sense, and shift+clicking to deselect. There has to be an easy way to go back, and it doesn't need an extra keyboard key binding.

Re: UI: Homeworld unit selection summary

Does anyone not understand what this feature is?

Re: UI: Homeworld unit selection summary

I have no idea what I'm seeing in that picture, really.

It's Homeworld, all right, but what do you want to show us? what do these cryptic icons mean? The Japanese text doesn't help, either.

Re: UI: Homeworld unit selection summary

I think I know what you you mean, if I'm not mistaken its similar to what was employed in Company of Heroes, whereby you could give orders to your selected group, or move/special orders to units of the same same type within that group, without having to deselect/reselect the group itself to give new orders.

Incidentally the two games were both made by Relic, so I'm sure its the same concept; I think CoH had a more fleshed out version of what was seen in HW2

Re: UI: Homeworld unit selection summary

It basically groups selected units by type. You can see in the new screenshot I put up, the quantities ("2x", "3x", ...) beside the unit icons, along with their aggregate hitpoints distributed across all units.

The most useful way I see this feature being used is if you click+drag a screen full of different types of units, you will be able to see a breakdown of what types of units there are, and how healthy they are. You can then select a subgroup of units based on type, and go back to your previous selection if you want. Cycling through these groups with Tab, like in Starcraft II, would be a great key binding.

This is also useful if you have several types of units as part of a control group that you have sent in to battle far away off-screen. You can simply press Alt+(Number) to select them, and instantly see how many of them are left and how healthy they are. You don't even have to look at them on screen to see what happened during combat.

This feature will drastically help detangle different groups of units in the same location, provide quick summarized details to help you understand what is happening to your armies.

Re: Feature: UI: Homeworld-style unit selection summary

Okay I have another idea. How about instead of merely breaking down sub-groups of units by type, you could also have a breakdown on arbitrary properties such as remaining hitpoints.

Then you could easily choose all of your unhealthy units and send them home for repair.

Another useful one would be to select units based on speed. Then you could manually coordinate attacks much easier. (I know Supreme Commander had a coordinated sync speed attack feature, but this feature would give you more control).

Each separate breakdown (unit type, hitpoints, speed) could be displayed at the same time. It would effectively be like faceted search on popular shopping sites like NewEgg.com.

Re: Feature: UI: Homeworld-style unit selection summary

I think this is a good feature, but because there are so many ways to aggregate the info from a selection of units, this should probably be left for UI mods to do.

Re: Feature: UI: Homeworld-style unit selection summary

Okay last night I pulled up Forged Alliance and discovered that the game did break down unit selections by type.

However when you had all units of the same type selected, it wouldn't display each unit and their hitpoints. The breakdown wouldn't even show hitpoints at all. There also wasn't a way to go back to the parent selection after selecting a subgroup. It needed a lot of work.

Re: Feature: UI: Homeworld-style unit selection summary

Why do you want to see the individual hitpoints? When I have 100 units, I dont care about an individual units hitpoints. In my opinion, it would be useless information which complicates the UI. I think Supcom did it really well.

Re: Feature: UI: Homeworld-style unit selection summary

Sometimes you're not selecting a ton of units, and you'd like to see individual hitpoints of units that aren't easy to see on screen because of all the other crap in the way. If you have a few expensive, specialized units that are spread out on the map, and would like to find the injured ones, for example.

Here's a way to avoid the problem your'e suggesting: When you select a group of units of the same type, it would show their aggregate hitpoints with a group icon and the quantity of units selected by default. Then when you click that group icon, you would get the icons of every one of those units, and be able to go back with right-click. That way you aren't shown too much detail by default.

This was added to the original post:

Made a wiki page for this feature.

Added Selection Subgroups to the wiki page.

Yes, sometimes I do want to select my damaged units only and send them off for repair. And sometimes I would micro large groups to manually look for and select damaged units to give them move orders, one by one. A way to autoselect units that are below X% health would make this process a lot easier.

And I do not want it.

Not all micromanagement is bad! Some micro is the result of wanting better-than-normal results out of your units or unexpected behavior. In the original Command and Conquer, a Mammoth Tank could be encouraged to fire its air-only missiles at ground targets; is this micro or an exploit? Either way, it produces atypical behavior. In Total Annihilation, you could have a T3 construction bot begin constructing a T3 building, let a group of T1's take over, then march the T3 unit elsewhere. How about this? Is this proper micro, or should we ask for a feature that lets all construction units to build all units once one T3 constructor comes online? Or how about in TA where a group of hawks can be commanded to re-attack a target after they hit it, so they will do a 180 degree wingover and strafe it again, rather than fly across the map.

I guess my point is, at what point are you micromanaging expected behavior and when does it become micro to squeeze out something better? I personally feel that repairing is the latter; repairing is nice, but always being able to command damaged units to retreat for repairs, at the touch of a button? negating the micro for that would change the whole flavor of combat. It would be a constant struggle for any units to kill any other units because half of them would be retreating all the time.

Getting back to the OP question, I see no harm in showing stats on what is selected. IE, you rubberband a hundred units and it displays "30 light tanks, 20 medium tanks, 49 artillery, 1 construction kbot that does not belong". Its only slightly more information, and does not matter if it starts to clutter the interface because its information that can be ignored if required. But beyond that is, IMO, excessive.

Your units should do the most optimal thing on their own without micro. The whole point of this game is to enhance strategy by reducing micro.

Your example mammoth tank should know what is a greater threat and fire at that target regardless of what its missiles are meant to do.

In Total Annihilation Hawks should strafe targets by themselves. Flying across the map after hitting a target with a single missile is both inefficient in terms of killing, and it exposes the aircraft to much more AA than necessary. This required everyone using a lot of micro to fly hawks effectively, but the optimal behaviour would have been easy to write in to the AI. If you think the Hawk would be even more overpowered, then increase its cost or adjust some other property, but don't balance the game by forcing micro-management.

Most optimal thing is not an easy problem. Less stupid thing, that's probably doable.

Yeah, theres just too much situational stuff going on to expect them to be optimal unless the units are so horribly one-dimensional that there is only 1 or 2 optimal options ever.

Mike

Sure, optimal is the ideal to work towards. Not-stupid is still good progress.