Suggestion: Smart rally points

[Mad`Mozart]

Going to post it here since this forum section seems more active than "suggestions".

Watching one of the replays, i got reminded of the cancer i had back when i played actively too managing all my factories and production in the game, if it got very intesne. On such maps like Vya, where you have to manage two fronts at once, give orders to your offensive units, engineers, manage eco, reclaim, advance in tech levels, its easy to lose track of which factory does what exactly. Or its a damn pain looking for that initial factory you had your main unit queue going to this side, so you can attach more available factories to it. And then you still end up with that random rally point on couple other factories you gave while you were pushing, feeding free mass to your enemy. Pure cancer!

So here's a brilliant solution to aid it: smart rally points! To put it simply, its a rally point you can put anywhere on map, which essentially is a factory but has no build power. All you have to do, is to assisst it with your factories the same way you assisst your main factory with a desired unit queue. Its purpose is to make production management easier so you can focus more on the game and unit movements.



Behavior.

First, it needs some large enough UI icon being not too obstructive at the same time. I was thinking of something like the hydro one. You can put as many of those as you like and move them around the map. Once selected, it also highlights the currently attached factories to it and has the same UI in the bottom part as a factory itself. Repeat button acts the same; pause button/command will pause every attached factory to it, same with stop/clear all orders; probably requires extra command/button to release factories so their assist order is cut and they are put in the idle state. Essentially such smart rally point would work just as that main factory you're spamming your queue from - you just queue units in that thing instead. And it's also extremely visible which makes it very intuitive to use. With couple clicks you can control which and how many units you want to produce, and where to send them.

It gets a little bit tricky tho with addition of tech tiers. Say you have 5 t1 facs pumping out them mantis already, and just got a t2 HQ and attached it. Should it also produce mantis since there are no t2 units in the queue? Or let it have separate queues for separate tiers? Or both but with a higher tier prodution priority? Its the part im not exactly sure about, but im positive if this thing is ever to exist it will be easy to fine tune it with tests for best utility.



So, as im obviously not a programmation disciple, im not going to code it. But if anyone gets inspired by the idea and decided to make a mod, that'd be cool. Or implement it in whichever other balance mod you've made. Or!!! even have it added to the core game too!

[Uveso]

Well, i don't say it's impossible, but i dont see any way to do this.

Factory assisting and breakassist are c-engine commands:

Code: Select all

IssueFactoryAssist(platoon, data)
BreakOffFactoryAssist(platoon, data)

After assisting a factory, the c-engine is managing the buildorders.
And it's only accepting real factories that are actual building stuff.

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You need at least a moile factory like the FATBOY that can be assisted. (in fact you can assist the fatboy with factories!)

Maybe a mobile factory lead bot like the Fatboy but smal and fast.
Could have a toogle for mobile / stationary.
Should maybe cloaked if not moving.