Transport loading

[Iszh]

I ve recently asked in aeolus if it is possible to make an ui mod for loading planes. My problem was i want to transfer an army from a to b maybe in the middle of heavy air defense and i expect half of the planes to be shot. I took 30 percivals and loaded manual 3 in each plane. Would be nice if i can select 10 continentals and 30 percivals and then press a button and the mod is autospreading equal to the transport planes. THat would improve for uef especially deadly percival snipes which are nearly impossible atm since you can micro 10 minutes your percivals in the planes. I tested in sandbox that for the mass of a czar or beetle you could easily create a deadly drop snipe with uef. I landed those 30 percivals in the middle of a heavy base with lots of shields point defenses and sams. I used 7 spread sams. The shields and the t3 acu died so fast that not even a koloss would have saved this acu. But to enable such a tactic you need better loading features.

I cant program it but i imagine it could be possible to check tech levels of planes and land units and then calculate the average needed space if spread. if this is to complicated maybe a special marker would be nice to introduce. A marker like the start point of a ferry route where you can sent planes for assist and units to load but without unloading them automatically just for creating big drops.

[mirroredwang]

you can just select both units & transports and use the unload order on ground (UI button or hotkey works)

you can also send units on their way and set transport to assist units, dunno how well that works tho

off the top of my head

EDIT: or just use ferries lol

[Lionhardt]

Ferries do not solve this. What Iszh is saying is:

You have a set of transports transports T. The sum of all slots of all transports in T = t. You have a set of u units U. All units in U take up u slots. Also t > u. Now you want to spread U across T such that all transports in T carry at least one unit and also there is no transport that could carry an additional unit while there is a transport that carries more than the average units carried per transport.

This gets more complicated with different transport sizes and different units types (that take up differing numbers of slots) but basically it's this:

Code: Select all

# assume each unit takes up 1 slot
# assume each transport has the same number of slots

from collections import deque



units = deque([0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9])

transports = [[],[],[]]

###########################################################

def load(transport, units):
   transport.append(units.popleft())

done = False
while not(done):
   for t in transports:
      if not(len(units) == 0):
         load(t, units)
      else:
         done = True
      
###########################################################
      
for t in transports:
   print t
   
###########################################################

# Output:

# [0,3,6,9]
# [1,4,7]
# [2,5,8]

# what normally happens:

# [0,3,6,9]
# [1,4,7,2]
# [5,8]


So, normally transports get filled up completely. You end up with completely full transports, possibly one half full one and a bunch of empty transports. That sucks, because transports are cheap and unis are expensive. You want to lose as few units as possible per transport shot down. Therefore you want to spread the load evenly.

[Exotic_Retard]

currently you can do the following:

select all your units; shift click all the transport.
the units will load onto the transports in order, and when one is full go to the next.
the problem is its really slow because the units only carry out the next order after they bump the transport.

the game knows which units will fit onto the trans, as it says "transport is full" as soon as you give the order.

what would be great is if units' orders would be cancelled to fill if they cant fit on that transport.
this would make loading onto multiple and single trans much easier and nicer looking as well.

the problem would happen if a unit dies on the way to a transport. this is probably why they work like they do now. its an edge case but its still a thing.
two ways to go about this:
- only cancel load order if there is another load order in the queue (most likely very hard to do)
- or just ignore it and say if you want to move through dangerous area then you should queue a move order next to the trans then a load order.

hope this helps

[Lionhardt]

Your described method though does also not spread the units evenly across ALL available transport slots, does it?

So if we have 3 transport with 6 slots each:

[0|0|0|0|0|0]

[0|0|0|0|0|0]

[0|0|0|0|0|0]

and 15 units (1 x is 1 unit):

xxxxx
xxxxx
xxxxx

then we want:

[x|x|x|x|x|0]

[x|x|x|x|x|0]

[x|x|x|x|x|0]

and not

[x|x|x|x|x|x]

[x|x|x|x|x|x]

[x|x|x|0|0|0]

[JaggedAppliance]

Well transports aren't cheap and I'd rather them load fully and leave transports empty than have 4/6 slots filled on every trans.

[Lionhardt]

Bu not in the situation Iszh is describing. Therefore he proposed an option for this alternate loading scheme. And this scenario does happen fairly frequently in longer games like FFAs.

[nine2]

I went to make this mod once, until I realized it needs to be integrated into faf - Ui mod won't cut it because ui mod can't issue orders

[nine2]

I have code that divides any army into N logical groups, taking into account unit importance (highest mass first) and position. All that is needed it the extra bit to actually issue the load order. And to integrate it

[Lionhardt]

is it in the vault?