Unit Scroller Issues & RFC on Changes

[LaFayette]

I'd like to try and get this ready to be shipped in 2.6. (cc/ @Frostion). Feedback submitted any later than a week or two from now will cause rework and likely will be too late (that's akin to moving furniture, someone comes in a week later and says "no, the couch should be there", then a new person 2 weeks later and says, "no, over there", meanwhile the couch has to be put somewhere).

A) Sleep Button

I think it turns out the 'sleep' button makes sense but is just not that useful. Specifically because:

• 1. It's pretty easy to cycle through all units, typically there are not that many that would be put to sleep.
• 2. Sleeping units are not persisted in save games.

\B) Next vs Previous & Skip

The unit scroller idea is largely taken from 'civ'. Civ has three concepts:

• 'F' to fortify (mostly equivalent to what we were calling 'sleep'),
• 'S' to 'sentry'
• 'space bar' to 'skip'

Civ has no concept to go back to the previous unit.

After using the unit scroller quite a bit in 2.5, I found:

• previous is just not useful. When selecting a next unit, either they are to be moved or skipped
• space bar colliding with the actively selected button (the last button used) creates a very glitchy seeming UX. See previous comment for more details. TL:DR, we must avoid key bindings to the space bar.
• In multiplayer games, the ordering of units was not deterministic, 'previous' did not always go to the previous unit.

I think it makes sense to therefore have 3 options with the following key-bindings:

• (s) skip
• (.) next
• (a) activate-all (AKA, unskip-all)

I am unsure whether 'activate-all' needs a key binding.

[Frostion]

B ) Regarding the Next and Previous buttons:
The Civ unit cycler can surely give inspiration to Triple A, but in Civilization players have like 5-20 units to managed and move. Players have no problem maintaining an overview of the tactical situation. In World at War, in Iron War, in Total World War for example, it is totally different. There can be like 1000 movable units on the map.

Players can have like 100+ units to move every turn, scattered over 50-75 territories worldwide. And I would say that every single TripleA unit movement a player does during his turn really affects many other of that same player’s movement decisions afterwards. With the players (sometimes) having 20 times more units to move than in Civilization, we are in a totally different league in regards to the complexity of unit movement and how struggle to keep track of every thing.

TripleAs need for a unit scroller is way different that Civ's, even though its most important function might be the same: To not forget any units. But with the huge amount of units to manage, the "Next" and "Previous" buttons are (as they are now) good tools to shuffle around the map and get that overview of all units to move, territories to keep in mind, threats to deal with etc. <-- This possibly BEFORE actually moving any units. Also, WHILE scrolling territories and moving SOME units is can be great to skip others and get back to them later, as the one might actually want to first move other units into place, before finally determining what to do with other units / temporarily skipped units.

I think that we have to keep in mind, that players have totally different playstyles and routines in regards of handling the TripleA UI. Some players use the shortcut keys constantly, others only click, buttons and menus. Some play simple maps like World War II Classic (with maybe no real need for a Unit Scroller), while others only have interest in huge complex maps (with a massive need for Unit Scrolling).

B2: Maybe the Unit Scroller should be worked on to address these differences in play style, maybe be made so it could be activated / deactivated in engine settings? Even better, maybe every single button (PREV / WAKE / SLEEP / SKIP / NEXT) should be individually chosen in setting to be displayed / not displayed? That would be a be a much better approach than to just removing buttons.

B3: Also, to address the issue of the current Unit Scroller seemingly scrolling randomly through the territories, in no logical order, maybe the scroller could be made to scroll on the basis of territory location / grid location starting at the top left 0,0? Or maybe scroll in alphabetical order? Whatever makes most sense.

A) Regarding “Sleep” option
There are many maps with many units that many players would like to put to “Sleep”. Again I think this is a matter of play style, preferred maps and how individual players use the UI and current scroller. I will refer to B2 as my answer. Make it customizable, Please don’t just remove the button.

(Off topic, but Civilization's “Sleep” is not the same as “Fortify”. “Sleep” is what most units (workers, settlers, ships, mounted, armored, air units etc.) do when ordered to go inactive until waken, moved or attacked. “Fortify” can ONLY be done by foot soldiers and gives them a defensive stat bonus. It is like “digging in”. Since TripleA units do not get bonuses when ordered to go inactive, they would in Civ terms just “Sleep”, right up until they “Wake Up”. I’m glad TripleA v2.6.22436 at least still represents "Sleep" with a Moon and the shotcut “S”.)

Final thoughts:
With all the above said, I am of course strongly advocating for the buttons to remain … not be removed. Or even better, made into optional buttons in a customizable unit scroller.

PS: Why are units with no movement shown in the version where buttons are removed? This is also the case in the latest pre-release 2.6.22@dbde499ccc

[Cernel]

@LaFayette It should be possible to shrink the right bar more. The minimum right bar should be settable per map (a way is having it determined by the wideness of the smallMap image) instead of being hardcoded.

You can use my 270BC Wars map for testing.

[TheDog]

@LaFayette If you are shrinking the right bar, remember you can remove the Notes tab.

[Cernel]

@TheDog I don't think that is really related: even with the current minimum wideness, I think that is already too little for the tab (so you would widen the right bar anyway).

I agree that the notes feel a bit out of place as a tab, but I'm not sure about what is the better alternative, while the window one has a long history of issues for a gaming program with many other windows and prompts, mostly related to either hiding prompts or being hidden itself. For example (this issue is the same both for unit help and game notes):
https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/issues/8607

[LaFayette]

@Frostion my perspective is informed from playing WaW, does that change your calculus? While '160' units to move is accurate, many of those could be in the same stack and effectively it's fewer.

If a person wants to cycle through all units one time before moving, couldn't they use the 'wake-all' functionality?

Is sleep used heavily in single-player games? In my experience vs AI, I would use it for a couple of AA, out of many units, it was kinda marginal. For multi-player, on WaW, it's kinda useless as a person rarely does more than 3-5 rounds.

[LaFayette]

Let's stay focused on the UX so that the scroller can be made better. I still see many players not realizing they can use it at all, or what it is, and then make the rookie mistake of neglecting to move a unit.

[LaFayette]

I'm still unsure about resurrecting the previous and next buttons. If a person really wants to cycle through all units before toggling them as moved, assuming sleep remains removed, why not cycle through all units once and then use alert-all to go back through them?

Can I get some more feedback on how exactly the previous button is useful as well. The ordering is not very deterministic, if you can see a unit on the same screen, then it seems that cycling is not super useful. On the other hand, if a unit is on the other side of the map, then previous also does not seem useful as well.

Please pay attention to exactly how you use this feature. IN which circumstances does everyone use the following?

• previous
• sleep
• wake-all

Really would appreciate as much feedback as possible here from those that have been using the unit scroller.

[butterw]

So far (on v2.5 release) I haven't really used the Move unit scroller (I keep it collapsed). One thing I noticed is that Aircraft which combat moved are not counted in Non-combat moves, I think it would make sense to offer a separate count for those, as they need to be rebased.
Non-combat move scroller display would show: "42 +6" if 6 air units combat moved, instead of just "42".

[TheDog]

Im on 2.6.172, I only use Forward and Back buttons, using the back button is new for me.

When I move a unit, it appears to reset the unmoved stack and go back to the top of the stack, so I have to cycle round to the point of where the moved unit was and continue, this is not user friendly.

[LaFayette]

@thedog said in Unit Scroller Issues & RFC on Changes:

When I move a unit, it appears to reset the unmoved stack and go back to the top of the stack, so I have to cycle round to the point of where the moved unit was and continue, this is not user friendly.

Would you mind describing this in more detail so I can more precisely understand what you are observing?

[TheDog]

@LaFayette
Before I was guessing what happened, but here is a little bit more detail;

where letters = Territories and numbers = units in those territories.
D2 = Territory "D" with 2 units in it.

A1, B1, C1, D2, E2, F1, G1

Say I move the 1st unit in E2, it should return to E2, but it actually goes to D2.
If I move the 2nd unit in E2, it should return to F1, but it actually goes to G1.