Prefab bases

I did a quick search and didn't find what I was looking for so I don't know if it has been suggested before, but here goes.
Basically I was thinking of ways to make it easier for the player to control multiple planets at the same time. For instance, what if you want to try and colonize several planets at a time? Say, there are four planets in the system, you have a big fight on the main one where you spawned, and you decide to try and colonize the other three planets by sending out fabbers with aestreas's or however they are spelled

The idea I had was of a 'prefab base' that you could create before starting a game in an editor like the system editor or something.
You could create a layout for a base with factories, walls, defenses, radar towers and power generators for a general flat area, and save it as a layout plan. This layout plan could then be found while playing the match, hidden under a prefab plan button. Then all you need to do is select the fabber on the new planet, click on the prefab plan button, select the layout you wish to use and place it on the area you want your base to be built.
The fabber then goes on it's merry way to create the entire base without you needing to devote a lot of time planning out one base at a time while the other colonies or your main planet might also require attention.

It'd surpise me if there wouldn't come build templates at some point. They are just a bare necessity. If you need them in SupCom you need them in PA all the more. I'd though like to see them done more intelligently than in SupCom. With parts of your template being build in parallel if you have more than one engie. Especially important for cheap structures such as wall segments.

The only thing I ever used Build Templates in SupCom was for adjacency. Metal Storage around Extractors, T1 pgens around factories and walls around T1 turrets.

Mike

So? I have like a dozen different templates, ranging from t1 PD with walls over spread out t1 gen fields to even a forward base for 81 km maps and 3 different sized t3 eco farms. And since PA plays more like SupCom on 81 km maps...

If you are suggesting templates would be a waste of time for PA I strongly disagree.

I was going to say templates too, but reading ahead it seems he's not talking about that but about a mod/game mode where you start with prebuilt units/base.

This was also something you had in supcom, but you only had 1 version, it wasn't configurable.

if supcom had it then PA needs it all the more : )

No, it's not about pre-built bases. I dislike that in every game I've played.
I have however suggested adding a tool in the menu that allows you to design a base that could pop up during the match as a 'ghost base' like the ghost buildings before you place them.

Call them build templates and every body knows what you are talking about...

yea, the name for that is template. and they're not 'ghosts', they're your build queue that shift allows you to see.

Ghost is an established term for the not yet built structures though. Quite a bit shorther than 'build queue that shift allows you to see' too

or queue.

Right, well excuse me for not being entirely knowledgeable on every term known to man. English does not happen to be my native language.

Please don't put words into my mouth. If you want me to clarify something just ask instead of making an assumption.

Don't do that, don't make assumptions. SupCom and PA may be similar in many aspects, but they are still different in far more ways than they are similar and you have to consider ALL aspects of something and can't just assume that because it will work just because it previously worked in something similar.

Mike

No, the queue is teh entirety of the to be build buildings. A ghost is a member of teh queue.

Maybe you should just be less vague in the first place. So far you have said nothing substantial.
Also, I was not putting words in your mouth. I was trying to make the most of your post and used that quite important word "if", wich declares that the following utterance is bound to a condition, which happnes to be what I had to assume you were implying since your entire post's purpose has to be to imply something, otheriwse it's worthless, given that it conveys no unimplicative inofrmation of any relevance.

Yea neither is it mine. I just wanted to inform you thusly (that people call them build templates). Did we now all have our share of being cocky to each other?

Yeah to try and manage multiple battlefields you really need it to be as easy and as little time/micro as possible. For example I want the first radar I immediately build to give me a ping if enemies are spotted after it is built. I also want the factories in the build template to be pre-queued with units. I also think I would want it to give me a drop-down option to use one of my pre-set build templates immediately after queuing up the unload command on an astraeus, or after building a teleporter.

This would be awesome sending out multiple astraeus/orbital fabbers to colonise planets and after giving the order to unload/build a teleporter they would automatically queue up on building pre-queued bases and alert you if that first radar showed enemy units on the planet you land on.

I think they could make a neat system for building 'build templates' simply by allowing you to save a queue and recall it.

It wouldn't need to be a very complex system imo. Just select a builder- click a 'record queue' button- produce your queue as normal and then click a 'save queue' button or such like afterwards.

The saved queues should appear in a build bar just above the standard build options for easy recalling. I also think that if you place the queue with part of it over non build-able land it should produce the queue and just miss out and effected buildings.

Some great uber "notes" right there

omg, this so much! Bring orders as first class entities into it and it'd would be UI-power paradise!

I love the idea of build templates, but some concerns would need to be addressed.

1. What happens if some terrain gets in the way of the build template? Does that portion of the template just not get built?

2. What happens if part of the template is later destroyed? Would it get added back into the queue? Certainly that would reduce micro, but it would introduce so many other problems though.

3. Build templates composed on one size of planet might not work on a planet of a vastly different size. Curvature really does matter.

However, I'd think that some kind of templating system would be super-useful. Consider plopping down a template comprised of two flak cannons, a T3 tower, a catapult, an umbrella, and surrounded by two layers of wall. This would take the average player what, maybe 20 seconds? So much less micro if templates could be introduced.

I would expect it to work much like line/cluster building does now. If it cannot be built it is skipped and the next one in the line is built. Try building a cluster of energy stores in the center of your base, only the ones that can fit will actually get built.

Templates are sort of in the game already. There is a place to input bulk placement of multiple stuctures with one click using "array of array of booleans", but I am not familiar with that at all and tried to figure it out.

Anyway, most things wouldn't bode well from cookie cutter build though, considering random mex placement and terrain and such.

I wouldn't mind it, but so far it is nice we have lots of tools to speed place like line build and such.