For a game which is marketed to focus on strategic and tactical combat, there sure is alot of base building annoyances. Having to select an engineer, select the correct extractors and place them over and over (since there are many tiny expansions). The extractors are so easily destroyed by air that I have to re-check them very often. Engineers gets destroyed, having to queue it all over again. I find myself focusing on base building 90% of the time spent in a game, mostly because of these resource buildings.
So here are some suggestions:
1. Replace all resource building buttons with one.While a minor thing, it prevents clicking the wrong type. It would even only use one hotkey.Keep the in-game models the same; If it's placed on a metal spot, it builds a Metal extractor, Radioactives extractor for radioactives, Amplifier on a power generator and a Quantum relay if built on empty ground.
2. Autobuilding engineers.If an engineer is near a resource point, it would automatically start building on those resources.Think about it, now you have to spend several seconds building on an expansion. With this option, all you'd have to do is select an engineer and right klick that node on the map.
3. Followed by 2, Imagine a drop-down list with different levels of automation.Level 0, nothing is different from what it is now.Level 1, the engineers automatically builds resource buildings if they are near resource points.Level 2, the engineers would first do Level 1 stuff, then build a radar followed by a couple of AA buildings.Level 3, followed by some other defense buildings.
4. Building by click and drag.Placing a building, if you click and drag, it would construct 2x2, 3x2, 3x3 etc evenly spaced.
5. Blueprinting.Something Supreme commander had (or maybe it was mods..) is the ability to save constructed buildings as a blueprint, usable between games, to easily place say a group of defensive buildings.
Suggestion number one is a solid one but I do not agree with the rest of the stuff.
What I would like to see is the ability to drag build stuff like quatun relays and fatories.. Maybe Have extractors work the same way. Select engineer select area and it would build on every deposit automatically.
I quess I did not read OPs post very well since drag and build is already listed.
1 and 4 should be a must in the Next Update, but i guess we need to wait to see if the Dev's can make it happen, but there is some priorities first, so we need to wait for optimizations.
These suggestions all have a nice logic to them, I think. I wish the devs had time to really do something about this before release, but most likely they don't. Plus I think they have bigger fish to fry (army leader selection, units cancelling orders, too restrictive static leash, more efficient army organization). I'm also not sure they want to do something about this. It's possible that the current system is exactly what they want. Some of these ideas have been brought up in prior posts, but I don't recall whether a dev has commented on them.
Exactly, it's not like I know what their vision of the game is. It's perfectly fine to have these aspects, to have to build every single resource extractor. But it doesn't really go hand in hand with a "focus on combat" philosophy. Look at any 6 player map and the amount of resource points they have and you just know you have to build on every single one of them, some multiple times because war. Which is fine, but takes a lot of attention away from unit management.
I like your ideas. It is really annoying queuing engie resource buildings all along a huge map, would be much easier if i could Q them from one region to the next and they start the resource building there automatically (unless I queue'd a building), or alternatively just build resource nodes without an engineer like Etherium did - another zone control resource RTS..
Also, an indicator for +quanta seems like a must have.
I'm ok with different buttons for each of the resources but maybe that's because they are the only hotkey'd buildings, which I find VERY weird. I'd like all buildings to have a button hotkey... (Grey goo did this in an interesting and simple way)
Yes 1 and 4 and 5 seems great suggestions.
I heavily disagree with 2 and 3, mostly because automating constructor like that would remove a bit of the mechanical component of the game where no fitghing is happening.
You would present nothing to the player to do rather than just wait for stuff to finish. I bet this would give a lot of players the feeling of the game being slow.
Addendum: the orbital building buttons should have an indicator if that building has been built/queued so you know you already built it, or haven't lost it. Perhaps a green checkmark in one of the corners?
This is interesting because since you say you do want an area select option, that would indicate to me that you would like to at least simplify the current 'place each resource building' process. Correct me if I am wrong. Why is it then, that you do not think automation is viable?In your case, you select an engineer, press the presumably one hotkey, drag and drop.In my case, I select an engineer and move order to a region.The results are the same, one is quicker than the other with less actions. Additionally, by having an engineer idle in a region, if a resource building is lost, it would start building a new one without your input.
Just because the engineers could do things by themselves when idle does not mean you can not order them around. You'd still move them to the power plant and queue up the resources and factories for that perfect build order just as you do now in the beginning minute of a match. The automation would shine after that time, when you could do other things but instead have to queue up resource buildings.
The game is in one aspect slow. You order these slow units over great distances. This gives you time to do strategic and tactical valuations.However, that time is eaten up by another aspect the game: You need to constantly build, and make sure the base is in order, especially expanding and making sure you haven't lost a resource building because one bomber got through your defense. While base building is my favourite part of RTS games, the only reason the game gives you the impression that the game is not slow: do chores.
Because at times I want better control over the building. It would also be frustrating to have units start building stuff without ordering them to. This can have bad effect on economy.
Perhaps they could add an auto bot helper to help manage the micro? 'Auto perform ___ upgrade action on all dreadnoughts'. Capturing each node should auto populate all resource collectors, but you can manually rebuild them later if destroyed or something.
I could not agree more. Engineer babysitting is not fun or strategic in any way. And when you play humans, and they bomb your rear resources (which is often difficult to notice in the heat of a half dozen battles), it's even more of a major pain to find the damaged/missing nodes, get a engineer to them, and micro them to rebuild everything.
Blueprinting would be great, as having to repeat the defensive buildings build orders is yet another monotonous task.
Also, some are not aware, but there is an auto build/join in the game (it does not yet seem to be fully functional), so when finished, that will REALLY help cut down on the busywork and let us focus on the gameplay.
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