UI mods you use and why

[Ithilis_Quo]

quickTemplate 1V - when you press click on building and click middle button on mouse and scroll it will automatic offer you template that you have with that unit. While i dont use hotbuild, and love template this is my way how to build fast and effective.

[tatsu]

god this thread is amazing. I didn't know about more than half the amazing mods I found in here. why isn't ALL of this vanilla? you can always turn it off if you don't want it.

[tatsu]

Okay so after (*ALOT!*) of fiddling around I've compiled my own list.

I'm not going to list version numbers in it because I noticed people in this thread recommended mod versions with new versions out and after some time someone reading my post will have the same problem as well (i'm also gonna copy some descriptions people gave because I'm lazy and I didn't really wanna do the descriptions myself) :

• common mod tools - you need this for lazyshare and some other mods. In almost every modded game there's a mod base like this. As a coder I agree with having it this way
• idle engineer : - you can't possibly waste build power after turning this onMade redundant by UI PARTY.
• UI Party : - can I say WOW. WOW OMG THIS NEEDS TO BE MADE VANILLA RIGHT FUCKING NOW !!!111! the sheer NUMBER of features! -A better version of idle engineer; preselected factory when you spawn..... the number of times I miss-clicked on game start and lost this split second of early advantage because I had to reselect the commander and he doesn't start building quite as soon....
• Reveal Positions : - Shows which players started on which positions. Sounds kinda big until you realize you don't need a mod to do this, it's simply quality of life mod. also fun fact you can click on the text box to remove it once you've gathered that info so no it doesn't get in the way in the slightest.
• Supreme Economy EM-edition - Shows mex information as well as the top sources of eco drain. I modified it to show my number of t3 mexes as well.
• SelenDeselect : - i don't actually use this at all I just think it should be a stock part of the game. i always forget to use selen block early game in fact the only times where I did I hadn't even started using this mod yet and now I forget to.
• Additional Camera Stuff : - multiple things regarding worldview; minimaps and camera actions. once again basic stuff. should be stock. the kinda shit starcraft players complain FA lacks over starcraft. and I agree. it does lack these actions. stock.
• Nice Shadows : - it says better looking shadows and enhanced perf. I honestly can't see the difference on either but if you say so buddy.
• Notifications : - the name says it all. I'm test running this but I think I'll like it. EDIT : I like it.
• Notify : - the upgrade enque part of this mod should be vanilla just on the basis of how blatantly obvious it is that Chris Taylor would have done it himself had he had the time. otherwise it tells your teamates what upgrades you're getting in team chat and even lets you see their percentage on ras as an icon on the map as well as your own wich is fucking epic. everything about this mod is epic except for playing phantom and having forgotten to turn it off and you're a phantom. now I'll be honest that kinda sucks but it was my own fault.
• LazyShare : - you know how much you love the redundancy of opening up the team menu to give someone getting an upgrade energy twenty hundred billions times? ....Yeah.
• Better LOD : - so this apparently lags your game if you're not running top gear especially the extreme version of it. I'm running the normal version and I have a really really good pc. I'll be test running this mod but I have the prejudice about it that I'll love it because it sells the promised land in it's description : you get to have the reclaim UI poput at higher zoom distance. f*** Yeah! it always fukin annoyed me how mass poped out of view further out then the reclaim right-click did.
• Improved close up camera : - this is an acquired taste and a personal preference. this mod allows you to zoom in more. Way more. it doesn't force it though. like you don't zoom in more on spawn or some shit you can just do a few extra scrolls to get in closer for that real cinematic feel. I've yet to have had a single instance of it zooming me in further than I wanted. I guess by now everyone here is quite expert at getting the exact amounts of ticks they wanted from their scroll wheel.

my two favorite mods and pretty much the only mods i used intensely before this thread. These mods are.... i dunno ... not crucial but really they do make your quality of life way better and what they do is all in their name (I REALLY REALLY think they should be stock) :

• FA sequentially upgrading extractors : - the use is a bit convoluted but still less so then playing vanilla FA. you gotta make a selection of mass points FROM THE SAME TIER!!! that you want upgraded (could be all of them) and you click on a green mass button that is permanently there next to your eco bar. it upgrades them one by one. you can also select another group and press again and what's fun about that is that it considers them separately and upgrades both groups at the same time and that even works if mass points from the two groups overlap. If you're pro-level you'll probably dislike this mod because of how it selects which mass point will be upgraded pretty much randomly and the tiny amount of APM it'll save you won't be worth that displeasure. then again you can just use it only at the time where it's convenient to you and the rest of the time carry on as you normally would so having it on can't hurt. it certainly can HELP new players.
  
• UI Mass Fab Manager FA : - it turns mass fabricators on and off. everyone should have this preinstalled in the spirit of fairness. you select mass fabs and add them to the "list of handled mass fabs" they'll then randomly be turned on or off not based on location but strictly based of the optimal number of mass fabs you can have running and still keep positive energy productionI just noticed ecoManager made this one redundant.

this mod in this thread isn't really compatible :

• supreme scoreboard : - not compatible with lazyshare + eco manager and while scoreboard is better than lazyshare, eco man is way better than both and you get to choose between having two good mods or one.

these mods I tried but it turned out they were making the game lag or crash (mainly due to incompatibility with UI party) :

• Selection Deprioritizer : - may not be your cup of tea. but after having played FA 8 years nonstop now. seems to me it should be vanilla. or at least something you go look for and turn on because you start to want it after 300 games played or so. box select will only select a type of army with these priorities : naval; land; air (air should be hotkey'd either way so it works out.)
• Selection Cost UI : - gives their cost
• Selection Lock : - this one is redendant because UI party already uses it and builds on top of it but it is FUCKING obvious and I don't know why it wasn't there from the very start. doesn't select units on assist duty.
• Selection Sort : - in the build bar it shows your selection sorted instead of out of order. real neat.

and this obviously : viewtopic.php?f=2&t=9778

yes I know that one's not a mod but hey since 99% of these are quality of life improvements why not call this thread : "quality of life improvements you use and why"?

[tatsu]

[*]Reshade
Not a UI mod as such, but a shader injecter similar in vein to sweetfx or enbseries. Combined with better LOD, makes FA graphics seriously sweet[/list]

is this as a mod or do you mean shader FX? I found shader FX to be a bit of a letdown in the end. if it wasn't shuch shit on snow maps and didn't recolor the whole UI as well it would have been fantastic.

[nine2]

Tatsu just turn off split screen in options and your 'uiparty bug' goes away

[Morax]

So, Better LOD, I noticed that it is quite easy to view reclaim from nearly all the way zoomed out; however, one cannot actually issue a reclaim command unless you are zoomed in to a certain level or more. This makes it fairly useless to me since the game perf hit is quite bad.

Supreme Economy:

Being able to see upgrading structures and a UI that organizes the most mass-energy-consuming building/unit is phenomenally useful which assists in staying zoomed out by quite a bit and not having to track down, for instance, the mex with a "progress bar."


I'm going to continue investigating these mods. The supreme economy one right-off-the-bat is making my stomach turn worse than it has before...

[Lionhardt]

snip ...all dem mods

You better play some unit heavy test game with that mod setup. I suffered severs frame drops and stuttering with a subset of your mods all active at the same time. I could not quiet nail it down, but having selection Deprioritizer, Selection Sort and UI Party all on and only these on, were enough for performance to go down massively. Any of these mods alone did not cause any noticeable hit, but together they did.

[tatsu]

snip ...all dem mods

You better play some unit heavy test game with that mod setup. I suffered severs frame drops and stuttering with a subset of your mods all active at the same time. I could not quiet nail it down, but having selection Deprioritizer, Selection Sort and UI Party all on and only these on, were enough for performance to go down massively. Any of these mods alone did not cause any noticeable hit, but together they did.

I'm playing one right now it's going fine.

I just noticed that my mod setup made massfab redundant.

[tatsu]

Tatsu just turn off split screen in options and your 'uiparty bug' goes away

how do you do that permenantly ?

I did mention using "end" at the beginning of each game.

[tatsu]

snip ...all dem mods

You better play some unit heavy test game with that mod setup. I suffered severs frame drops and stuttering with a subset of your mods all active at the same time. I could not quiet nail it down, but having selection Deprioritizer, Selection Sort and UI Party all on and only these on, were enough for performance to go down massively. Any of these mods alone did not cause any noticeable hit, but together they did.

I'm playing one right now it's going fine.

I just noticed that my mod setup made massfab redundant.

ok now I see what you were talking about. like 3 minutes and 20 seconds into the game it just crashes. with a selection box still on the screen.