reference). I even did some proofing with players like root, who are sensitive to lag. I'm pretty sure I have found the exact details that cause lag, which helped me formulate an idea to address one of the more blatant issues.
Idea: make engineers ignore collision with other other units.
I'd like to call this ability the "Mechanic" ability. A mechanic usually climbs on top of, crawls under things to inspect them. Giving this to an engineer doesn't seem to awkward; a T1 eng might be hidden under large buildings, but I find that more acceptable than accepting lag. I was hoping to at least get some play-testing... if all it took was to give it the same code that allows fatboys and GCs to walk through things, that would be great, but I expect it to take a little more, as Fatboys and GCs still bump into each other and I don't want engineers to bump into each other or interfere with land exp pathing. Maybe decrease their "bounding box", but not their hit box (as to not affect how hard it is to kill them with non-AoE weapons) for quick testing?
I am pushing this idea, since people are comfortable with spamming engineers, accepting the issues with lag and pathfinding, for the sake of being competitive. I want to address the lag. I'm not against eng swarms, just the lag they cause. I can quote some high level players saying that you cannot have too much build power, and that T1 eng are the most cost effective. Unless something else is more cost effective, they will continue building them and the lag and pathfinding issues will not be solved.
In my lag finding tests, I found that eng that are simply assisting in construction causes minimal sim speed lag. That is, assisting in the most literal sense, not moving, just shooting their "beam" and helping to build. What I found was that if you tell many engineers to directly assist an Air Fac, they will try to spread out and form a "perfect ring" around it, and in between the construction of each unit, they have a tiny bit of time to improve their formation, causing a decrease in sim speed. The movement of engineers told to assist the fac, or another eng that's already assisting, trying to fit in, also causes simspeed AND pathfinding lag. Pathfinding lag is not as well known--it's when land units take a while to respond to movement commands. In fact, it can be exploited, and create chances to snipe an enemy ACU, by simply creating a "clusterfuck" (issue an order to a large number of engineers that are packed together, which requires them to move for example). You can inadvertently cause this kind of lag, for example, when you are at +400m and +27000 and playing back spot in Seton's, and find that you cannot bottom out mass yet from making only ASF, as that would mean a -400 and -40000 drain, so you opt to build a CZAR. I'm sure you know how frustratingly slow that can be, sending all your engineers over... and what if the spot is not clear and has some trees or plane wrecks and your ACU/SCU/T3 eng twirls and dances before walking over to reclaim it, and have to walk back out? If you sent the engineers early, to be ready to assist, that would drastically reduce path finding responsiveness.
I'm hoping that by removing the requirement for engineers to find clear paths, instead taking direct paths (that are easier on the CPU), allowing them to bunch up on each other and pass through each other, this makes the game more responsive and less frustrating to play. I hope this makes the end game phase of the game more appealing. I also hope this makes people more willing to build something for the sake of strategy.
If all that fails, I'd like T2 and T3 engineers to have a larger build radius, maybe a radius of 7 for T2 and 10 for T3 (equiv to ACU/SCU), so they don't have to move as often. A small movement boost, maybe +0.5 (to 2.4 speed) for T2 and +1.0 (to 2.9 speed) and T3, would be helpful too. Just a simple change to make late game a bit more bearable and making using engineers not require skill and familiarity with the game engine's nuances. The Sparky is 3.0 and land units with heavy armor and weaponry are faster, but why are engineers so slow? Because they store 40 mass? Heck, you can increase that too to make T2 and T3 engineers more appealing, as who would find building mass storage efficient, besides around teched up mass extractors?
If I knew how to code this in, I'd go as far as posting before and after videos of gameplay that shows lag and unit responsiveness to move commands, with many moving units (mostly engineers) out on the field.Statistics: Posted by Stratocaster — 15 Feb 2013, 21:23
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