[Suggestion] Let me know what my shared army's players are doing!

Discussion in 'Planetary Annihilation General Discussion' started by kryovow, November 9, 2014.

  1. kryovow

    kryovow Well-Known Member

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    It happens quite often, that some players "manage" the same things. It would be a great set of features, if you could see what is going on with your teammates..
    • Player's selection: Which player has which units selected? Is someone microing those bots or not? Has someone already selected that planes I wanna take? I'm sure someone can find a sweet solution to that how it can be implemented in the UI
    • Orders: Who gave a certain move order? Who planned this building? Could be activated by pressing a key or toggling something.
    • Planet focus: Show in the system list who is currently on which planet. Do I have to watch that moon or is someone already there?

    Maybe this would be even doable with a mod, but i doubt it. It needs special info from the server I guess
  2. philoscience

    philoscience Post Master General

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    Agree this would greatly improve the experience. A simple way to do it might be to have a selection-highlight color per player that all players on a team see. There is a mod out there that does this for each player seperately, to show what is selected, but it would be fantastic to have that information shared across people. Are there hooks for this @cola_colin?
    stuart98 likes this.
  3. gunshin

    gunshin Well-Known Member

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    HOW DOES THIS HELP 1v1?!
  4. stuart98

    stuart98 Post Master General

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    There are other game modes that matter besides 1v1s bro.
  5. drz1

    drz1 Post Master General

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    Could you also extend this to coloured queued orders?
    Hold shift and see what everyone on your team is intending to build, and where their units are going, all colour coded?
    philoscience likes this.
  6. LeadfootSlim

    LeadfootSlim Well-Known Member

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    Colors for queue orders and perhaps strategic icons of selected units would be fantastic, but tough to distinguish. For example, using red, green, and blue when you're up against red, green, and blue enemies...

    Perhaps shades of the team's color, with a color guide/legend on the side to indicate which ally is set to which sub-color?
  7. SolitaryCheese

    SolitaryCheese Post Master General

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    Seriously?

    [​IMG]


    Answer: In short, it doesn't. If you read the title, you can see the topic is on shared armies.


    Best regards,
    Captain Obvious

    .​
  8. mwreynolds

    mwreynolds Well-Known Member

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    I was thinking that you could have a team main colour and then secondary colors for each team member for unit selections. This would help casters know who it playing on which planet.
  9. philoscience

    philoscience Post Master General

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    I think you may have missed the joke.
    Clopse likes this.
  10. squishypon3

    squishypon3 Post Master General

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    This is gunshin, I doubt he was joking. ^^;
    SolitaryCheese likes this.
  11. immorhys

    immorhys New Member

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    Ahh I was thinking about this a week ago.

    I reckon show the other players cursor location, like in Black and White.

    Show movements as they do them, but not show orders, would avoid fighting over units, without spamming the UI?
  12. zaphodx

    zaphodx Post Master General

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    Glow outline on units, with the colour of the player who last gave them an order. Coloured move orders would also help.
    squishypon3 and philoscience like this.
  13. philoscience

    philoscience Post Master General

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    +1000
  14. mot9001

    mot9001 Well-Known Member

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    What about doing the same as in Zero-K where you can always see the cursors of your teammates?
    nawrot likes this.
  15. eroticburrito

    eroticburrito Post Master General

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    Good ideas. I agree, as it's always good to know what your team mates are up to, and we shouldn't have to resort TeamSpeak.

    Slight logistical issues with colour coding units by who has selected them/given them orders;

    In Shared Armies mode everybody who 'Shares Armies' on the same Team is the same primary colour.

    Perhaps this is where Secondary Colours could come in handy, with Units' Secondary Colours (and glow outlines/selection circles/move orders) turning different colours based on who last selected them.

    This would mean that on the Black Team, for instance, you'd have Black-Green, Black-Red, Black-Yellow etc. with shared Eco/Unit control as you do now, but different Secondary Colour tags to allow us to differentiate between whose stuff is whose (loosely speaking), and who is controling what.

    It'd also give Secondary Colours a purpose like Primary Colours which goes beyond just aesthetics.
    Last edited: November 10, 2014
    LmalukoBR likes this.
  16. crizmess

    crizmess Well-Known Member

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    It would be really tricky.
    Due to the fact that we project a 3d space to a 2d surface (your monitor) your cursor isn't just a single point in space, it is a line extending from your eye point to infinity.
    It would look funny if you would see cursor lines of other players hovering around a planet.

    Cheers,
    criz.
  17. nawrot

    nawrot Active Member

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    Or maybe Uber devs play one zero-K game per month, to see what can be done. Zero-K has a lot of good ideas that are done well.
  18. immorhys

    immorhys New Member

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    I suppose the other question to raise, is how do people generally play shared?

    My experience is we basically share economy, but not really mess with other peoples units/bases that much, except to steal the occasional fabber, or to grab some units for quick defence work. On the less 'co-operative games' I've played, we've had constant fabber steals, people stopping build queues, destroyed ecom etc.

    I think the overlays/colors/cursors would allow better use of units. I've occasionally managed attacks where my blob of units and a teammates blob of units attacked from each side (from our separate bases), but it would be good if people could do this during any attack, grab 1/2 the units, the other player realises that they are being helped, and then manage/micro a co-ordinated strike.

    However, I haven't played with teamspeak, and I think that is probably a must to actually get some sort of workable teamwork. Typing is just not realistic in this game, the APM is too high to stop and carefully phrase battle plans.

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