Factory Scroller for Placement Phase

Frostion

I would think that most people would agree, that the Unit Scroller was a great success

I personally think that it has enhanced the gameplay quite a bit and taken the experiance to a higher level. Thanks to DanVanAtta / @LaFayette / all the dev’s work, all the testing and input given by a lot of people during development and implementation.

I have long thought about a little additional feature making use of the same or similar mechanics: A Factory Scroller for use during the placement phase!

I imagine that the scroller could scroll through the different territories, one by one, showing pictures of each territory’s factory units still able to build. The factories would be removed as they reach max build.

This could speed up gameplay, reveal hard to spot / hard to remember factories and maybe secure a more correct placement phase for the players. At least I would see it very usefull.

What about it? Would it be hard to do? Is it a good idea?

TheDog

I like it, its a good idea that I would use.

ubernaut

@Frostion what map is that?

beelee

@ubernaut Iron War

Frostion

Hmm? Not as much support as I expected Maybe it is just me that has a hard time and lack overview when placing units on maps with many factories. Or is this lack of interest because the devs know that this is (for some reason) very difficult to implement?

With my non-existing knowledge of coding the engine, I just thought that a feature like this could just reuse the territory/unit scroller.

Well at least some of us liked the idea

TheDog

Im sure its on LaFayette very nice to have list.

As Im biased I would put the improvement of the AI at the top of the to do list and thats a very big project.

SilverBullet

any and all "improvements" are good imo.

ubernaut

@Frostion seems like a good idea but I haven't yet had much time with the existing thing so was refraining from comment.

LaFayette

This suggestion does seem like a natural extension of the unit scroller. Having something indicate how much factory capacity and to count that down, and to scroll between seems useful

Frostion

@LaFayette My first thought was that the factory scroller could just scroll through factories still being able to place and remove factories when they have used up placement slots. The counter is presented (right now) at the factory when players place. So I did not see it that necessary to also include that info in the right side bar.

But whatever works would be better than having no factory scroller i guess

LaFayette

Little is worse than building the wrong feature or building it in a way that makes it effectively the wrong thing. If I came across as 'my-way-or-the-highway', I apologize.

Having a count for units left to place could be confused with the number of units remaining to place in total. A factory not coming back into focus when it's had max placement is something I had not thought about.

I still wonder if there is reason/room to have that construction capacity count somewhere or if having it be in the placement dialog (after clicking a factory) is enough. I think it might be hard to know until it's been play-tested, which means starting minimal and adding things as needed would be my reaction to this kind of situation.

For expectations I think I'll be doing other TripleA projects for a good couple months. It's worthwhile though to queue and bake ideas, others can pick them up and the more refined an idea the easier it becomes to build. (Meanwhile I'm looking to overhaul how network communication is done and this would remove the need for bots and replace them with network bridges.)

Frostion

@LaFayette To give a suggestion in regards to a counter, I first thought of two methods that I later discarded. One was just a little "x something" like the units-to-be-placed has above, or the white count number at the factory like on placed units have. But I figured that both of these production indicators would maybe lead to confusing.

So my suggestion would be to have a counter after the territory name. Like "Berlin (Production X)". This would mean the whole territory. Then the individual factory free producti capability would be seen when placing, just like it works now.

What about it?