(suggestion) locking secondary camera pan

Hi everyone, this is my first time posting a thread on the PA forums. I first hated PA, then I thought meh, now... I LOVE IT! I am really happy with the progress the game has made and the very big UI improvements.

But to the topic, me being a starcraft player I am a little bit spoilt with the highly fluid and polished UI of starcraft. So far PA has made fantastic progress with the UI and is very intuitive with key shortcuts, secondary map, control groups etc.

However this is just one change that would probably help a lot of players (like myself) who are a bit more anal when it comes to management of macro and micro. The way you can view the planet and have a secondary cam was actually a really good addition and made orientation far less confusing.

So my suggestion is to be able to lock camera mouse pan on secondary while still being able to pan on the main view of the world. Since I am an RTS player who uses hotkeys and control groups ALOT and the last thing I want to be doing is taking my hand off other shortcuts to pan a camera (ehk) I would prefer a mouse for panning, I wish there was some way to have the secondary locked while still panning with mouse of main view. This will make it a lot easier to manage a base or micro a battle (whichever you prefer to be on the main or secondary) and open up a bit more of a skill gap from the good players to great players.

A small change like this would make me and a lot of other serious RTS players happy. Let me know your thoughts and PLEASE DO NOT BASH ME FOR BEING A STARCRAFT PLAYER, I am not making any attempt whatsoever to make this game like starcraft as I have been accused of when I mention I am a player even with small suggestions like this one.

do you mean the PiP window?

Yes that is correct, basically I want to enable mouse camera pan but not have that effect on the PiP window, its really annoying.

Firstly, welcome to the forums- and btw there is nothing wrong with being a Starcraft player. Although I love the TA / Supcom games, I started out with Warcraft (proper Warcraft) and have both Starcraft games so I do know Blizzard know how to make a good interface.

I must admit I've read your post a couple of times and I'm not sure exactly what it is your asking for....

Are you asking to be able to set 'pole lock' (which forces a planet to keep North at the top) independently for the main and PIP views or?

No that's not it, I'll try explain it better. Basically what I want to do is with the PiP window, I want to be able to lock the camera in place where I choose it (for me I want to do this on top of my base) So I can move around and micro my army on the main one while quickly going back to the PiP to build stuff, however when I do do that when I have the mouse camera pan active, it goes off in different directions when I accidentally clip the edge of the window then having to re-center it on top of my base, which is really annoying, being able to have like a little button to lock camera in current position would be nice

Ah got you! So basically we need a simple 'lock camera' button for the PIP? I would imagine this should be fairly simple to do, if Uber don't implement this then I think a modder might be able to quite easily (people have already done all sorts of stuff with the camera).

That's it yeah, I'm still a bit new to PA overall, are there actual client side mods that people can use to improve their experience? Because that is what I'm gathering with thinking modders might do it

Yeah there are *lots* of mods already available. There is a really nice tool call 'PAMM' (PA Mod Manager) that gives you easy access to all the released mods and allow you to turn them on / off and update them as / when they get updated. Link:
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/rel-pa-mod-manager-crossplatform-version-with-atom-shell.59992/

Please note that when Uber releases a new build, it's a good idea to turn any mods you've got off before trying the new update (as sometimes they can cause weird problems if the mod hasn't been updated). Once you know the new build is working turn them back on again.

If you want to play competitively at all, 2 mods I'd highly recommend:

PA-Stats (gives you more detailed info about your games and gives you access to the 1 v 1 and 2 v 2 ladders) and System Sharing (allowing you access to shared maps for events and such).

From the way you are talking, I'm not sure that you are aware that you can already pan the camera by clicking and dragging with the middle mouse button.

No that's not the issue- he is saying that he inadvertently *moves the PIP camera* when using it to manage his base. It sounds like quite a neat set-up actually.

Keep your base open in the PIP to issue orders there, whilst having the main view focused on the main battle.

In that scenario it would be better to lock the camera for the PIP.