SMD/Nuke Timers

[Spy_Emanciator]

Long timer's in the game need finished by at current production timers.

Right now the timers are subject to an observation paradox where the timer functions at one speed while being closely monitored by the player and another much slower (if not completely halted) speed when the player is micro'ing other units or watching the whole board. This is leading to a sort of glitch battle of wills where nuke players and smd players are intentionally disrupting the function of their opponents long timer. This is not sportsmanlike play and adds nothing valuable to the game other than headaches and nausea.

Please use a more protected code for these important long timers and show a clock based finish time that prevents studdering and sabotage. The timers listed on by the units page should hold true and the addition of additional production power needs to be reflected in some way. Also noticing that engineering stations are getting a percentage benefit over engineers.

Spy_Emanciator.

[ZLO_RD]

Hard to understand... This is not Dune 2, you don't have to look at your silos to make them load faster.
But there is a problem with all silos right now (Nukes, antinukes, TMLs, nuke subs...). When you are stalling mass even a little bit they stop builsing missiles almost completely.

[Spy_Emanciator]

Hard to understand... This is not Dune 2, you don't have to look at your silos to make them load faster.
But there is a problem with all silos right now (Nukes, antinukes, TMLs, nuke subs...). When you are stalling mass even a little bit they stop building missiles almost completely.

Yes it's not easy to see as you assume everything is working correctly, but i'm talking about green mass on the bar, no power stall and the timers can shut down completely only to jump back to life when focused on hard. (aka zooming in really close and monitoring the bar) There is a serious percentage being applied to the production power of building these objects (aka they take long but spend little mass) and it could be related to fractional rounding errors in this split of production time vs mass use.

All i'm asking for is a timer, relating for game clock that shows, ok at this number of engineers and base production, what game clock to the second will the smd be done. Same applies to nukes, and experimental builds. Will help people make better judgements and prevent sabotage from effecting these slow timers where an unaware player might not notice.

[biass]

so ya got a video of this happenin or

[Spy_Emanciator]

so ya got a video of this happenin or

I'll take on next time I notice it. Its happened enought I'm sure its an issue. Its not a hard coding thing to add timer based numbers in, and this will make it impossible to break this part of the game.

[Louvegarde]

I have not worked a lot with SCFA's engine for the moment, but
- I have doubts that adding a timer display (UI) will solve any internal engine problem
- I have doubts that the position of your camera in the world effectively makes a building work slower or faster, except if we're talking of the whole simulation being slowed down or sped up
- I have doubts this technique is actively used to sabotage SMD of other players at it is the first time I ever hear of it.

However, I hope to be surprised with the replay you're going to bring up to back up your claim. If you can actually prove your point, I think that's going to be an interesting issue to look into.

[MayorDamage]

wouldn't a replay desync if it were at all possible?

[Uveso]

If you make a video of the issue please make sure you are NOT reclaiming anything at this time.
Thank's.

[Spy_Emanciator]

Many RTS games show the high level players rapidly selecting units while not giving them commands to "refresh them" its like a cpu priority table and when you select the unit it refreshes the code pertaining to that one unit to the top of the loop. This is the type of mechanic involved. Failing to do this leads to slower units and less effectiveness and i think this type of mechanic is seeping over to smd timers.

I have not worked a lot with SCFA's engine for the moment, but
- I have doubts that adding a timer display (UI) will solve any internal engine problem
- I have doubts that the position of your camera in the world effectively makes a building work slower or faster, except if we're talking of the whole simulation being slowed down or sped up
- I have doubts this technique is actively used to sabotage SMD of other players at it is the first time I ever hear of it.

However, I hope to be surprised with the replay you're going to bring up to back up your claim. If you can actually prove your point, I think that's going to be an interesting issue to look into.

Kind of hard to document because if i look at it then the problem is being cleared. thus making it a paradox. If i made a video of me micro'ing other units to demonstrate it's sluggish progress, then I would have no timer reference to compare to. So again, add numbers to the bar like doing comm upgrades, so we can even begin to understand if its a problem or not and how bad.

[PhilipJFry]

zoom in on the smd with your minimap or enable split screen and zoom in on the smd there