Allow user to specifically choose amphibious offloaded units in battle chooser

Cernel

@rainova said in Allow user to specifically choose amphibious offloaded units in battle chooser:

@cernel Now that I give a minimum of attention to it, your screenshot clearly has enlarged (so, being raster ones, qualitatively degraded) units: those images you are displaying are certainly in excess of the 64 pixels on both axis they are supposed to be.

That's just because I have set my Windows system settings to scaling 150% (on my 4k screen; even with glasses, my vision is not that sharp).

Do you believe that is a correct or else advisable behaviour for TripleA? I would say a raster-images-based program should always work at 100% scaling default, no matter if the general (Windows or whatever) zoom is set otherwise. Having a more than 100% scaling display for raster images means displaying much worse looking images: inexperienced users may believe that the map itself really looks that bad and not even consider resetting their zoom at 100%.

At the very least, every user should be asked whether or not to apply the system zoom to TripleA too upon installing the program (and also having a way to change such setting thereafter).

I've detailed this issue here:
https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/issues/746

Here are the screenshots with 100% scaling:

Don't you think they look much better, especially the "270BC Wars" ones? If you agree they do, why is TripleA worsening the quality of its own maps? Would you agree that at least my "270BC Wars" map is well visible on 4k monitors without any zoom? You can also take a look at the "Conquest of the World" map, which was specifically made primarily for 4k monitors.

Marines with non-withdrawal icon separate

Marines with non-withdrawal icon separate and vertically centered

Marines with non-withdrawal icon undercut

Carthage units with non-withdrawal icon separate

Carthage units with non-withdrawal icon separate and vertically centered

Carthage units with non-withdrawal icon undercut

@Cernel - and everybody who likes to contribute: What's your preference?

I prefer the ones with the non-withdrawal icon separated and vertically centred. You have to think that TripleA may have, in the future, many of such "status" icons, which would have to display for the same group of units.

Next question - marine bonus: Currently - since I have included @Trevan's code (thank you very much ) - non-withdrawable units are shown first, because they are (a little) less valuable.
How would you like it with Marines and any other units with marine bonus: Shall non-withdrawable units with marine bonus be shown after their withdrawable equivalents,
because having an attack bonus is more significant than being non-withdrawable?

If so: Let's imagine we have marines with normal attack 2 and marine bonus +2 and also improved infantry with normal attack 3 and no marine bonus, and both marines and improved infantry are attacking from land and from sea. What unit order would you like?

A)

withdrawable marines (attack 2+0)

non-withdrawable improved infantry (attack 3+0)

withdrawable improved infantry (attack 3+0)

non-withdrawable marines (attack 2+2)

(sort first by attack including bonus, then by non-withdrawable)

B )

withdrawable marines (attack 2+0)

non-withdrawable marines (attack 2+2)

non-withdrawable improved infantry (attack 3+0)

withdrawable improved infantry (attack 3+0)

(sort first by attack without bonus, then by bonus, then by non-withdrawable)

If you prefer A) - let's assume we now have the some horseman (attack 4, marine malus -2) and some sellsword (attack 2, no marine bonus/malus) attacking. What would you prefer:

A1)

non-withdrawable horseman (attack 4-2)

non-withdrawable sellsword (attack 2+0)

withdrawable sellsword (attack 2+0)

withdrawable horseman (attack 4+0)

(sort by attack+marine bonus/malus, then non-withdrawable, then attack)

A2)

non-withdrawable sellsword (attack 2+0)

withdrawable sellsword (attack 2+0)

non-withdrawable horseman (attack 4-2)

withdrawable horseman (attack 4+0)

(sort by attack+marine bonus/malus, then attack or unitType, then non-withdrawable, then attack)

First of all, your last description doesn't make sense to me, since you call "attack", on its own, potentially twice (first in an "or" relation with "unitType" and subsequently alone) and I'm not clear what you mean by "then attack or unitType" and what you mean by "unitType".

Moreover, as a matter of listing, I believe you have made the wrong listing for A1 (Please edit your post or clarify what I'm missing.), acconding to your own description: the correct one (based on my reading of your description) should have been
A1)

non-withdrawable sellsword (attack 2+0)
non-withdrawable horseman (attack 4-2)
withdrawable sellsword (attack 2+0)
withdrawable horseman (attack 4+0)

All that said, I would order the units primarily based on their own power (the dice at which they hit multiplied by the number of dice they roll), then, lacking better tie-breakers, I would give a higher value to units having a higher basic (before applying any marine bonuses) power, then based on the status (so to assure that units which are dinstinguished soley by that remain one next to the other). Therefore, I certainly prefer "A", but, regarding the second choice, I prefer "A2" as a matter of listing.

However, I believe that other elements, for example the cost of the unit, are more important than the basic attack value. Thus, if the "sellsword" costs more than the "horseman", I would have the listing as (which happens to be the same as your A1)

non- withdrawable horseman (attack 4-2)
non-withdrawable sellsword (attack 2+0)
withdrawable sellsword (attack 2+0)
withdrawable horseman (attack 4+0)

(sort by attack+marine bonus both multiplied by attackRolls, then cost, then attack multiplied by attackRolls, then non-withdrawable)

Side note, for the very last tie-breaker (which would not matter in the examples), I would go with the order the units are presented in the game file (sorting by attack+marine bonus both multiplied by attackRolls, then cost, then attack multiplied by attackRolls, then non-withdrawable, then unitType order in the "unitList" of the game (XML) file).

RaiNova

@cernel pointed out mistakes in my question, thanks. Since it is already 1h old, I cannot change it any more and post the correction here:

Let's imagine we have marines with normal attack 2 and marine bonus +2 and also improved infantry with normal attack 3 and no marine bonus, and both marines and improved infantry are attacking from land and from sea. What unit order would you like?

A)

withdrawable marines (attack 2+0)
non-withdrawable improved infantry (attack 3+0)
withdrawable improved infantry (attack 3+0)
non-withdrawable marines (attack 2+2)

(sort first by attack including bonus, then by non-withdrawable)

B )

withdrawable marines (attack 2+0)
non-withdrawable marines (attack 2+2)
non-withdrawable improved infantry (attack 3+0)
withdrawable improved infantry (attack 3+0)

(sort first by attack without bonus, then by bonus, then by non-withdrawable)

If you prefer A) - let's assume we now have the some horseman (attack 4, marine malus -2) and some sellsword (attack 2, no marine bonus/malus) attacking. What would you prefer:

A1)

non-withdrawable sellsword (attack 2+0)
non-withdrawable horseman (attack 4-2)
withdrawable sellsword (attack 2+0)
withdrawable horseman (attack 4+0)

(sort by attack+marine bonus/malus, then non-withdrawable, then attack)

A2)

non-withdrawable sellsword (attack 2+0)
withdrawable sellsword (attack 2+0)
non-withdrawable horseman (attack 4-2)
withdrawable horseman (attack 4+0)

(sort by attack+marine bonus/malus, then attack or unitType, then non-withdrawable)

Thanks in advance for your input

RaiNova

This post is deleted!

RaiNova

How about this order of sort criteria:

own power
cost (for a transport, cost includes the units that go down with it)
defense
movement of unit type
base attack
everything above being equal air units are less valuable than land or sea units
air units are more valuable the more movement points they have left
everything above being equal non-withdrawable units are less valuable than withdrawable units
allied units are less valuable than own units
respective allies according to their order in the game file
unit types in their order in the game file

As far as I know, the casualty selection dialog puts units that are already damaged before casualty selection, in their own categories. If so, I`d add

units with more damage are less valuable

Technology advancements can change some of the above attributes. It take it that should also be considered.

Cernel

@rainova Especially since by now we have added so much information to this topic to make it almost unreadable to anyone who didn't follow it so far, I think generally reworking how casualties are assigned as default should rather be its own topic (especially since it is higly impactful on virtually every TripleA user).

Nevertheless, let me just point out that, usually, the mobility of a unit is scarcely a positive item, casualties wise: fast units are usually worth less than their fighting value, to account for the strategic advantage of having a higher movement, which is mostly given by being able to reach the frontline faster (For example, in World At War, you usually want to take out armoredCar before elite, even though the armoredCar is more expensive, so there you see that, while having a higher mobility is still a positive thing, you don't really want to be too keen to give a positive value to mobility when you are selecting casualties because often most of the benefit of that mobility has already been used on a strategic level to reach the frontline faster.).

For the matter at hand, I rather suggest you furnish the current exact list of how the engine auto-selects casualties, and we merely sort out where to add the non-withdrawable status within it.

Trevan

@rainova I don't think the UI causualty selection should be this advanced. Just split the non-retreatable units from the retreatable units and keep them together. I don't think the UI should worry about power, bonus, etc.

@Cernel you seem to be talking about the default casualty selection which isn't the same thing that @RaiNova is talking about. He is just talking about how to display the UI where the user can pick which casualties to select.

Cernel

@trevan said in Allow user to specifically choose amphibious offloaded units in battle chooser:

@Cernel you seem to be talking about the default casualty selection which isn't the same thing that @RaiNova is talking about. He is just talking about how to display the UI where the user can pick which casualties to select.

Do we possibly want not to list units' groups by the same order as pre-selected casualties?

Trevan

@cernel said in Allow user to specifically choose amphibious offloaded units in battle chooser:

@trevan said in Allow user to specifically choose amphibious offloaded units in battle chooser:

@Cernel you seem to be talking about the default casualty selection which isn't the same thing that @RaiNova is talking about. He is just talking about how to display the UI where the user can pick which casualties to select.

Do we possibly want not to list units' groups by the same order as pre-selected casualties?

TripleA has never done that before so I'm not sure why it should do it now. It doesn't seem to give any value. The order of units in the selection dialog should be similar to all other selection dialogs. That's how the user sees the units being sorted. Whether the user internally sorts them different is something the UI shouldn't attempt to guess.

RaiNova

@cernel said in Allow user to specifically choose amphibious offloaded units in battle chooser:

I would say a raster-images-based program should always work at 100% scaling default, no matter if the general (Windows or whatever) zoom is set otherwise.

Start java.exe with the additional command line argument
-Dsun.java2d.uiScale.enabled=false, see https://news.kynosarges.org/2019/03/24/swing-high-dpi-properties/
@LaFayette you may want to do this

It does look better.

I've detailed this issue here:
https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/issues/746
The issue was closed. For overall brevity, I added the info here.

Cernel

@rainova So, can that be made so that is the default everyone gets when installing TripleA and maybe adding a line to "vmoptions" or something to set it true if preferred?

RaiNova

@cernel said in Allow user to specifically choose amphibious offloaded units in battle chooser:

@rainova So, can that be made so that is the default everyone gets when installing TripleA and maybe adding a line to "vmoptions" or something to set it true if preferred?
@LaFayette May I relay that to you?

Cernel

@rainova said in Allow user to specifically choose amphibious offloaded units in battle chooser:

@cernel pointed out mistakes in my question, thanks. Since it is already 1h old, I cannot change it any more and post the correction here:

Let's imagine we have marines with normal attack 2 and marine bonus +2 and also improved infantry with normal attack 3 and no marine bonus, and both marines and improved infantry are attacking from land and from sea. What unit order would you like?

A)

withdrawable marines (attack 2+0)

non-withdrawable improved infantry (attack 3+0)

withdrawable improved infantry (attack 3+0)

non-withdrawable marines (attack 2+2)

(sort first by attack including bonus, then by non-withdrawable)

B )

withdrawable marines (attack 2+0)

non-withdrawable marines (attack 2+2)

non-withdrawable improved infantry (attack 3+0)

withdrawable improved infantry (attack 3+0)

(sort first by attack without bonus, then by bonus, then by non-withdrawable)

If you prefer A) - let's assume we now have the some horseman (attack 4, marine malus -2) and some sellsword (attack 2, no marine bonus/malus) attacking. What would you prefer:

A1)

non-withdrawable sellsword (attack 2+0)

non-withdrawable horseman (attack 4-2)

withdrawable sellsword (attack 2+0)

withdrawable horseman (attack 4+0)

(sort by attack+marine bonus/malus, then non-withdrawable, then attack)

A2)

non-withdrawable sellsword (attack 2+0)

withdrawable sellsword (attack 2+0)

non-withdrawable horseman (attack 4-2)

withdrawable horseman (attack 4+0)

(sort by attack+marine bonus/malus, then attack or unitType, then non-withdrawable)

Thanks in advance for your input

I've really the feeling this is getting bogged down in minor details. I think chances are that noone (else than me) will answer you here. Moreover, the few that might answer are likely not to read the whole topic attentively before doing so because so much information has been added to this topic that I doubt many will want to go through it.

My suggestion is just add the "non-withdrawable" wherever you want and possibly have this new feature (arguably a problem fix) done for 2.6. The order of losses autoselection can be reorganized after this new feature is already available.

RaiNova

@trevan said in Allow user to specifically choose amphibious offloaded units in battle chooser:

@rainova I don't think the UI causualty selection should be this advanced. Just split the non-retreatable units from the retreatable units and keep them together. I don't think the UI should worry about power, bonus, etc.

Thanks for your wisdom. So I did not change the unit order. Then I came across this test case:

To me it looks the non-withdrawable elephant should be shown first, i.e.

@Trevan, @Cernel, everybody: What's your preference?

Cernel

@rainova I believe the root of the problem is the fact that, as I understand it, the program is always not showing the undamaged state of the unit if none are present at that state. I would go with your second example, but I would rather have the penultimate row (the one showing the image of a damaged non-withdrawable warelephant) having a first column showing a "x0" non-damaged non-withdrawable warelephant, whereas the "x2" damaged non-withdrawable warelephants (which are shown on the first column) would be shown on a second column.

Again, I also think these are minor matters: I would certainly take any one of the proposals so far made over not having this feature at all.

Trevan

@rainova
The non-retreatable row and the retreatable row should have the same number of columns. So there is some other issue that is causing the non-retreatable row to not show the damaged column.

Cernel

@trevan said in Allow user to specifically choose amphibious offloaded units in battle chooser:

@rainova
The non-retreatable row and the retreatable row should have the same number of columns. So there is some other issue that is causing the non-retreatable row to not show the damaged column.

It is actually not showing the non-damaged column and moving the damaged column in the place of the non-damaged one. I have assumed this is not an issue but intentional (not to show the non-damaged and non-withdrawable units because there are none).

@Panther Do you think it is better to call land units which cannot retreat as non-withdrawable or non-retreatable? Is there a definite difference between retreating and withdrawing?

Trevan

@cernel said in Allow user to specifically choose amphibious offloaded units in battle chooser:

It is actually not showing the non-damaged column and moving the damaged column in the place of the non-damaged one. I have assumed this is not an issue but intentional (not to show the non-damaged and non-withdrawable units because there are none).

Ah, good point. I didn't notice that those were damaged elephants. So I think it is working fine as is. But I do agree with you that it should probably show the non-damaged units but with 0 in them. That can be a later improvement.

Panther

@cernel said in Allow user to specifically choose amphibious offloaded units in battle chooser:

@Panther Do you think it is better to call land units which cannot retreat as non-withdrawable or non-retreatable? Is there a definite difference between retreating and withdrawing?

Actually I don't know whether there is a difference between the meaning of "to retreat" and "to withdraw" in English language.

But maybe a native speaker can tell us ...

As we are talking about retreat-rules I would prefer "retreat", in case the wording makes no difference.

TheDog

to withdraw, is an organised move away from the battlefront
to retreat, is not as organised as a withdraw (its messy & chaotic)
as an aside to rout, is a every man for themselves

So in TripleA terms either withdraw or retreat is fine, but I too would also go with retreat.

Cernel

To me, to say that something is "withdrawable" sounds more natural than "retreatable", so I've wondered how frequent each of them is over the internet.

In google, "retreatable" gives 16,300 results, whereas "withdrawable" gives 1,260,000 results (writing both within quotation marks). Honestly, I didn't expect such a huge difference: may someone else check this on google out of curiosity?