I'm a web developer, which means I spend a lot of time pondering and designing interfaces. Which means I tend to notice a lot of UI decisions in my games, especially in RTS. Now I see PA is shaping up really well, but I want to share some insight I've gained from other, (often obscure) RTS titles and their UIs over the years. UI can be split into two branches: Input (commands) and output (visualisation of the battlefield situation for the player). I want to focus on the first part right now, since the seconds gets is getting an overhaul anyway and will be easier to adjust with mods. Establishing Common Ground: "Separation between thought and action should be as small as possible" Some common thoughts a general might have include: Attack that outpost with ground Must increase overall air defense Establish a fortified outpost here And you know how they are usually solved. 1) can be quick - unless you don't have the right units on group. 2 & 3) usually contain a lot of searching builders and placing queues. Over and over and over. And the more time and clicks go into one intent, the bigger the separation. And I personally hate being forced to do this repetetive busywork, when I want to be planning and executing strategy. On Building... Since expanding with buildings is so relevant, the first solution is probably build templates. That will condense repeated expansion packs into a few clicks. But since it's not really feasible to expect the player to make a template for every intention, the next step is removing part of the micro: finding and selecting builders with useful status. That status would be: in the current area, idle, or with little remaining queue, limit to 5. The rest of the micro is then necessary depth. On Destruction... Multiple fronts are a given standard in PA. Really managing them however, is one of the highest arts in RTSs. Usually it just deteriorates into going back and forth frantically, hoping the opponent misses something first. To counter this, unit groups must be able to act independent enough that you don't have to correct their course every 5 seconds. Guarding via patrolling is too clumsy on slower units, it needs a dedicated guard stance. While attacking is just a series of commands with no hierarchy. To improve upon this, I suggest reversing the command order: instead of finding and selecting units first, then issuing an order, one could first issue an order, and then select the units for it. The advantage in this is that the UI can then help by suggesting the relevant units and offer options for execution, such as timing, or separation by domain. Got a lot more swirling in my head, but am too tired to continue today. Addendum: all these command suggestions would be an optional structure upon the current micro; simply because one can not hope to match the depth of possibilities with them. They should instead focus on reducing the occasions when one has to resort to low-level commands.
Good ideas. I'm also not a fan of the current UI, but Uber has announced that they're rebuilding and improving it.
But you're right. I'll even do you one better. What if the UI had a button the build a outpost, but it could be a defense, eco (around a metal) offense, (factories of a choice air naval or land.), orbital, or nukes, with the ability to pick the size of said outpost.
with an action then unit interface you could set offensives to automatically launch when a specific unit count is reached. That would be really cool. Or you could assign specific factories to provide for offensive maneuvers while others are set to take defensive actions. That would be very cool and it would remove a lot of the logistics from the game. I also like the "build an outpost here" idea that would also be very cool. I think a mod that allows the player to set priorities for a custom AI and then mash them up against other players custom AIs would be a lot of fun.
So I absolutely love this. One idea for building is stronghold style building - Build menu always visible, select building and place "modal" and maybe little popup with unit count or highlight of clickable expandable radius for all nearby builders who will then move towards it and build it. Hope that made sense? Just off the top of my head. As for attack. What about same concept as above. A menu with attack button you click on general local areas. If you attack 2 areas close to eachother, then nearby forces will split evenly for flanking manuevers. Perhaps on the dotted line "focus line" i think they call it, you can click and drag a mid-point. To give example of the above: 100 dox entering base. Click ambigious attack icon and click twice in enemy base. Dox "focus line" is now 2 lines. Click and drag a middle point on left side to further out left, and click and drag middle point on right side to further right out. Now they will move in a flank manuever. All done in under 5 seconds and with maybe 4 to 5 clicks. Easily adjustable as fog of war lifts. etc. Finally I'd like to see fabricators have a maneuver or stance to allow you to throw them into your armies and they can repair while moving. Perhaps at a reduced rate or greater econ expense? Just for a slight boost to strategy and make diversity more appealing than pure spam. Edit: PS: Units from factories, some sort of UI for moving 20 units to a spot, then once 20 accumulate send them to another spot and start queueing 20 to waiting spot again. Send waves instead of stream.
Hmm... can I volunteer that the second thing sounds a lot like individual unit intelligence. Essentially it's the difference between micromanaging individual troops ( making units dodge incoming shots, retreating damaged units and healing them) and being a general like Alexander the Great (or better exanples) etc. and carrying out those kind of unit movements.
Seems I got some people thinking and got some great ideas in return! Brilliant! I'll try to crystallise this into an implementation: Strategic Locations Strategic Locations are markers on the map visible only to one player. They determin an area with position and radius, and can be freely adjusted by dragging them around on the battlefield. Orders can be appended to an SL, for example: Order units to other location once enough have gathered Search&Destroy any hostile unit entering the SL Repair/Rebuild any building within the SL SL can also be used for quicker commands: order any unit to a point on the "orbit" of the SL, they will attack the area from that side. patrol / guard + click on SL: you can move the area to adjust to the changing position on the battlefield, instead of repeatedly having to select units and issue orders again SL can be quickly sprung to via camera hotkeys -------- Now something on unit intelligence: from Stormingkiwis response I somewhat infer that this is a no-go by word of the devs? I tried to find the confirmed/rejected feature list again, but failed right now. In any case, though unit intelligence is hard to scale, I was recently taught that it is in fact very much possible, even for huge armies. As a case in point I need to point a finger now, to a game called AI War - Fleet Command. In it, you often have to leave units alone to defend an area. Units will then automatically search&destroy enemies. Their target preference dependent on a) what they are best against (there are a lot of attack multipliers), and b) what they deem the biggest threats. They are not perfect at it of course, and direct supervision often improves efficiency, but its a huge help regardless! This isn't a decision on a unit-level of course, since that would never scale with the thousands of units involved, but rather on a group-level, which should also make it viable in PA.
seriously this is beginning to be a duplicate thread, https://forums.uberent.com/threads/uber-do-you-agree-pa-needs-a-huge-ui-update.52662/ https://forums.uberent.com/threads/community-requested-ui-features-0-1.53170/ https://forums.uberent.com/threads/gui-mock-up.52739/ https://forums.uberent.com/threads/unofficial-official-gui-discussion-thread.52055/ your ideas are great, but its time to go put them where it matters. Culverin is our GUI guru, and I believe Uber will listen to him.
