Area Commands

[keyser]

Manual reclaim is still mostly better.

well it is manual reclaim, but automated... So it's 100 times better than doing it yourself

[JaggedAppliance]

IceDreamer's post doesn't make much sense to me:
If you have the APM to do the manual reclaim and I don't, you will have more stuff to kill me with. I

he's basically saying the APM can be used in much more dangerous "rating gap digging" ways than that.

If it could be then people wouldn't do manual reclaim, they'd do those 'more dangerous' things. Manual reclaim is only really used in the first couple minutes anyway, after that it's very rare because it's not actually an efficient use of apm to click on a hundred rocks at 7 mins. Area reclaim will just make everyone get more reclaim easier in mid game and people will still click on rocks and trees at the start of the game. No one is making lots of manual reclaim orders while allowing an army to fight a battle or their eco balance to go astray, and if they are then they suck.

[Viba]

Manual reclaim is still mostly better.

well it is manual reclaim, but automated... So it's 100 times better than doing it yourself

Did you actually try the mod? Manual would still be superior in most cases...

[Wesmania]

I'm very much in support of area reclaim, especially if it ignores trees and such. There's still marginal utility in completely manual reclaim since I imagine the reclaim order could be suboptimal from time to time.

[AdmiralZeech]

I've just watched this Youtube video and i think the point that is being made in it is pretty much the core of the issue we seem to have with this mod.

In case you don't wanna watch it or just listen to it the point is that a change that lowers the skill floor tends to lower the skill ceiling as well. I think we all agree that thats pretty much what the area command mod would do if it were to be implemented or used by the majority of the playerbase.
The important question is: Are we willing to sacrifice some skill ceiling height to make the game more accessable or not?

Spoiler: show

Which interestingly is something that may very well contribute to this issue.

Maybe we can even find a middle ground and make the mod in some way inferior to manual reclaim. But since i'm not a coder i have no idea if such a thing is possible and how hard it would be to do.

Wow, either you are terrible at summarising, or you have the most selective hearing ever!

Your post makes it sound like he's saying that you shouldn't do things that lower the skill floor, because you risk lowering the skill ceiling. But that's not what he's saying at all?

His entire video supports something like Area Commands! His point is, that "boring", "uninteresting", "maintenance" tasks, even if they are skillful, should be removed. If that results in a lowering of the skill ceiling in a particular area, the correct solution is to fix it with interesting skillful mechanics, rather than keeping the boring element.


Anyways, that's entirely irrelevant when we're talking about UI, anyways. Imagine this conversation:

Dev A: "Hey, our testers have found a problem with our RTS. You can just build ~100 units or so, and then move them all into the enemy base, and nothing can stop you. It's an automatic win."

Dev B: "Let's do that Starcraft thing where you can only select 12 units at a time! So it will take a lot of micro to move that many units!"

Dev A: "SO SKILLFUL!"

Dev B: "Wait wait... let's make it so you can only select ONE unit at a time. We can be TWELVE TIMES more skillful than Starcraft!!"

Dev A: "You are on a roll today!"

So yeah, having a poor UI is a lazy and bad way to introduce skill in your game. (Unless you're making a game like Octodad, I guess.)

If we can improve the UI, we do it. If it results in a deficit of skill in an area of the game, you add interesting and meaningful mechanics to improve the impact of skill.

Designing a good game is more than just worrying about the skill floor and skill ceiling. It's about the quality and the entertainment value of the skillful mechanics. You can make an FPS that requires pixel-perfect drag and drop of bullets into a clip just to reload, and it will be the most skillful FPS ever, but it will be a terrible game.

[biass]

His point is, that "boring", "uninteresting", "maintenance" tasks, even if they are skillful, should be removed.

If you said this about something that was objectively "boring", would agree, but we're not talking about 1v1 games on crag dunes.

If that results in a lowering of the skill ceiling in a particular area, the correct solution is to fix it with interesting skillful mechanics, rather than keeping the boring element.

Yes, like idle time

please stop spamming "muh ui" its maddening and the issues behind area reclaim goes far deeper then that

[PhilipJFry]

Wow, either you are terrible at summarising, or you have the most selective hearing ever!

Your post makes it sound like he's saying that you shouldn't do things that lower the skill floor, because you risk lowering the skill ceiling. But that's not what he's saying at all?

I think you misunderstood what i wrote here.

I've just pointed out that lowering the skill floor tends to lower the skill ceiling as well. Wether or not this will make the game more fun or interesting to play is incredibly subjective thats why i put a question at the end so people would think for themselves what they want instead of outright telling them the objectively superior decision.

Spoiler: show

which of course is mine :>

His entire video supports something like Area Commands! His point is, that "boring", "uninteresting", "maintenance" tasks, even if they are skillful, should be removed. If that results in a lowering of the skill ceiling in a particular area, the correct solution is to fix it with interesting skillful mechanics, rather than keeping the boring element.

So yeah, having a poor UI is a lazy and bad way to introduce skill in your game. (Unless you're making a game like Octodad, I guess.)

If we can improve the UI, we do it. If it results in a deficit of skill in an area of the game, you add interesting and meaningful mechanics to improve the impact of skill.

Designing a good game is more than just worrying about the skill floor and skill ceiling. It's about the quality and the entertainment value of the skillful mechanics. You can make an FPS that requires pixel-perfect drag and drop of bullets into a clip just to reload, and it will be the most skillful FPS ever, but it will be a terrible game.

Just to make this a little bit more clear:
I'm in favor of introducing area commands into the game.

What i don't want to see is other commands becoming redundant because of it. Which is something that probably won't even happen anyway since area reclaim cannot take into consideration what wreck/stone has more mass and is therefor more important, reclaim distance+move commands and so on.

[vongratz]

A little question...Where is the so called area command mod to DL? I dont found anything like this in the vault.But the Vaulthaveaproblem,I dont foundthe Farm mod directly,only when I digitate.

Thamks in advance.

[PhilipJFry]

The mod is in the mod vault. Its called Area Commands v2.9.

[J0sh]

How does it work ?

I select engies, press ctrl and right click to define a zone to reclaim and ... nothing, engies don't move.