Global Construction Orders

Hey!
Idea: Orders to construct buildings are not assigned to engineers directly, but globally. Engineers are assigned to the orders afterwards. You simply have a build menu like in C&C Red Alert or Tiberian Sun. You select the facilities to be built, place them n the map and then you order engineers to build them. That way you get rid of the need of having selected an engineer every time you want to place a structure that might be built not until few minutes anyway…
An example for another case where this might be helpful:

You want to raise a wall – like in SupCom. The single wall segments don’t take long to be built, even for a single t1 engineer. So having more than 3 of them building the same wall segment is not really efficient. You rather want all the engineers that you ordered to build the wall to evenly spread across the lengths of the wall. Okay, so with area commands and global construction order this could be achieved without tedious micro!

What do you think of that?


Here's a graphic to illustrate the basic mechanic:


http://i.imgur.com/LRT66.jpg



Edit:

Look here for area commands.

Also have a look at this. It's an idea quite similar, just less specific regarding building stuff.



Edit2:

Good idea. It would be good to give players both choices. The problem is what if you assign T1 engineer to T2 base layout?

It can possibly work, but these are the problems I foresee.
If you place a building far away from your base. what will your engineers do? Build all other buildings closer first, or all rush to this building?

I think this idea should only apply to idle engineers and only to close by objects. So if you have an idle engineer it will automatically help out, but won't move across the entire map on its own. It could automatically assist factories as well.

@ sokolek: Well, one possible solution would be that you don't have engineers of different tech levels. Another solution could be, a tech 2 engineer has to initiate the building process like in SupCom.

No, I don't see that problem. When you tell them to auto assist then yes, but who says you could not by selecting an engineer and then rightclicking the to be built structure order him to build THAT specific structure?

Also: Area Commands...

This is an interesting idea. Here are some ideas I'd like to throw into the pot:

It sounds a lot to me like you are talking about build templates. These were a great help in sup com FA and I was sad to see that removed in sup com 2. However, sup com 2 was a vastly different game. I see how most people are more inclined towards the sup com and FA games than sup com 2 and I believe most people want that sort of game and that is what Uber want to make.

Assigning a template to a group of engineers on a planet would be a similar process to the way templates worked in FA. Templates are only available as long as an engineer of the highest tech level structure are present in the selected group. I don't see why this would cause a problem.

In sup com 2 only one engineer is able to build a structure at once. This would ruin the game IMO. In the concept video I believe I saw multiple engineers working on one structure at the same time. This also means that, in theory, this could work in a similar way to the templates in FA. Where a group of engineers could build a template together as a group without the need for all the engineers to be at the top tech level.

What I really think would be great is an offline or out-of-game template editor that would allow you to plan templates and save them for use in-game.

I was not talkig about templates. However, I aldready made a thread on Advanced construction templates. I also cover the idea of an offline template editor, as you proposed. Have a look.


Edit: btw could the "nay voters" be as kind as to tell what they don't like about the idea? In my opnionon it would be a vast improvement of the basic building mechanic, without changing the way of how it used to work in SupCom (and TA I guess). It is mainly a change in UI - an improvement in UI.

Sounds great on the surface. But it seems to negate priorities entirely. And eventually you'll plan a building where local units are unavailable, but one unit waaaaay over there is, so he takes an eternity to head on over. Meanwhile, the local engineers finish their projects and won't touch the one thats not being built, because the other engineer reserved it.

Sounds like a lot of work programming in the coordination when it already takes little effort to press a "select next idle engineer" button.

Your example does not make too much sense. You need to control your engineers in every RTS. Especially on SupCom (don't know about TA). Having idle engineers equals wasted resources in most of the cases. So when the local engineers finish what they were doing when you placed the building order, then you need to take care of them and give them something new to do - in this case build the building that was ordered to build before.

Also why do you assume any engineer that was not ordered to build that thing would do so without being ordered to? Because he is in assist mode? Well I don't see the problem then... all in all you example is not consistent.


Edit: This sounds kind of rude... was not intended.

I like this idea a lot as long as the units tasked do so in a manner which is efficient. In SupCom FA engineers had an ETA for all of the buildings that they had queued up so it would be easy for them to be auto assigned to help build local things instead of pulling other engineers from far away as it would know that the travel time would out way the remaining ETA of the closer engineers construction.

Auto Assisting would need to be a toggle-able option because assisting, especially with a large group of engineers could cost an enormous amount of resources which may not be available at that time.

And engineers should still be able to be manually selected and ordered like originally in TA and SupCom for priority queues.

The way I picture it it would allow for easier automation and building during battles and on the battlefront which was always tedious in SupCom because of the need to individually control the engineers separately while moving the army.

I completely agree with everything you said. You also could add that you can give the to be constructed buildings priority values!

like this:


<to be constructed building>[<Value>]:

A[5], B[4], C[4], D[3], E[2], F[1], G[1], H[1]

That would come out as:

A
BC
D
E
FGH


Time corresponds to the vertical axis, several letters in one line mean those are constructed simultaneously.



Edit: Btw. meanwhile I think area commands are mandatory for this system to fully live up to what it can do.

I feel that I may not know what you are meaning by 'area commands,' could you clarify?

I like this idea but think there should be an AI associated with it to balance resources and prevent far a way engineers trying to travel half the map every time you place something. also keeping the functionality of individual commands and the option of exclusion from the engineer pool.

Overall, taking all the posted consideration, I feel that this is a very strong inclusion in the game.

Love the idea of queuing production and letting AI direct engineers to complete tasks. I touch on a similar idea in my thread here: viewtopic.php?f=61&t=36937

Benefits I see in this system:
1. If an engineer dies before starting something queued for construction the order to build remains, another engineer in the vicinity would finish production automatically.
2. New engineers off the production line would instantly assist whatever's in the universal build queu automatically.
3. If the structure queu is empty engineers could have default behavior to repair structures and/or assist factories.

Solves the frustrating problem of microing late game production in Supcom, which would get overwhelming at the scale PA is expected to achieve.

My thread ties this system to managing production as the game scales, specifically grouping structures to be managed at different levels: independant structures (as in Supcom), bases (see thread for details) and entire planets.

We're not talking about "every RTS", we're talking about the situation you set up. Do I need to control my engineers, or will area building control them for me? If an engineer goes idle, he's not going to assist in the building planned by another bot halfway across the map, because he hasn't started building it yet.

My example made perfect sense. The problem is that area building only works if there are engineers sitting around nearby to help out. If there isn't, whats to stop it from picking an engineer to build a requested building when that engineer is halfway across the map? Are you going to make it conditional that a unit needs to be X units away to work on a project? Who decides that conditional? If there are no local engineers, does the project sit there untouched? When engineers finish their current construction, will they automatically assist in local building, when I most likely will not want them to? If a distant engineer is headed to start a tech 2 project, will a local tech 1 engineer sit idle intentionally waiting for the distant engineer to start the project just so he can assist?

The barrage of questions aren't meant to be answered one by one. They're meant to illustrate that theres a lot of work that needs to be done, both by the developers in creating a new system, and the player in managing and sometimes overriding the system, when the only point of the system as per your original post is to eliminate the need to select which engineer works on a project.

So like I said. Sounds great on the surface, but overall seems unworkable and improves nothing.

A similar function with engineers can already be employed by issuing a patrol command? Work in /this/ area and build or repair anything you come across. This is fine as it is IMO. Along with a user generated template at the heart of it I can imagine something along these lines working. Essentially there still needs to be input from the player at some point to dictate things.

And more food for thought:

Before I start, I will say I am assuming that the whole point in this idea is that the player is "away" somewhere else concentrating on more pressing matters. Most likely another planet and does not want to be managing the construction of this particular area at this time. Baring that in mind...

Firstly we think about resources. Global resource will dictate the speed of building across the entire player's empire. Therefore if a whole bunch of engineers are busy building away in some backwater then this will have a large impact on the players economy, possibly impacting on unit construction or simply the construction of more important items. Add a few more similar planets and the problem becomes multiplied. Before you know it your economy is stalled. Where as this is largely down to the player to manage, there needs to be some kind of way to limit the resources consumed proportionally to the amount of resources available.

Secondly the issue raised about engineers being destroyed, halting the build que. Again I assume the player is not concentrating on this particular place and if it was an area of combat then it would have the players attention. For this reason I feel this is a non-issue. Also, by assigning multiple engineers to perform the same build que (something not possible in sup com 2), it would be possible to allow for these losses.

Thirdly, I'm really not sure how they are thinking about pulling this off. Someone mentioned the ETA on buildings from sup com. This is an interesting concept derived from that idea. I am not sure how the game could crunch all the processes going on in real time. A way to get around this would be that while the player is not viewing the area the ETA simply calculates when each building is completed based on the number of engineers and resources available. This removes the need for any of the previously discussed commands to be in place. There would still be a requirement to prioritise but genuinely most people do that when they create the que anyway.

What I like about this is that it would be possible to maximize construction efficiency without 'unnecessary' micromanagement. I feel that a system could be implemented that uses some of the traits of this engineer order concept. While all specific orders like those normally given to selected engineers would/should be given priority, and like wolfdogg said about this being similar to the patrol command in SupCom it could work much like an improved version of that. One where engineers set to patrol an area will start constructions that were designated in the area instead of only assisting and reclaiming, also they should auto repair units in the area of course.

Look here for area commands. Areas commands would solve pretty much all the probmels youguys assume.


@ theavatarofwar: ...I could only repeat what I already said.

While I like the idea in principle, I think it would require far too much logic in it, in order to be useful and not screw things up.

It's better to decide things for yourself. And similar things like suggested in the original post can be achieved with proper area commands as well, as thelambaster points out. Although it wouldn't particularly solve the problem of engineers starting to build something on their own, that is queued up from somewhere else.

Great link! I like a lot of these ideas