Automatic assignment of units produced in factories to groups

[Monsterovich]

Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZW96vRUwhsk

Demo2: https://youtu.be/tZ6OHeIE65E

Basically this idea but without the UI (honestly don't need it).

[Raptor959]

I suspect this feature will raise the maximum continuous pressure of combat to a degree that I don't think the game was intended to ever be without the usage of commanders, However with how popular high power/oil NTW games are I think most players won't protest that change.

The closest comparison I can make is how having or not having a mini-map changes how players perceive and play a game.

[Monsterovich]

@Raptor959

I suspect this feature will raise the maximum continuous pressure of combat to a degree that I don't think the game was intended to ever be without the usage of commanders

Commanders just suck because they ruin the unit control/management in the game. They are only used by 0.001% of players if not less. And it's not about NTW/high/low oil at all. Unit management shouldn't be tied to balance otherwise it's some kind of fake difficulty.

The balance of commanders is based on unit experience, and in the game units die very quickly. The units with high experience are usually few. In addition, commanders are easily killed and then the "squad" is disbanded. Players without commanders have more advantage in the game by default because they don't have to waste time on building commanders and manage them.

BTW, what do you think of the idea then to make the repaired units back the assigned group, or is it better not to do that?

[Raptor959]

Ignoring how commanders were bugged in many ways thereby preventing them from being useful, The primary reason commanders were not powerful was that they took too long to gain any form of veterancy. It used to take 1024 kills to get a hero commander now it takes only 96.

Unit control/management in this game is broken in general because the Formation Speed Limiting command has been broken and disabled for so long players forget it is supposed to exist or what it even does. Pressing the F11 key toggles formation speed limiting on and off. With formation speed limiting turned ON, Units assigned to a group or commander will functionally restrict their top speed to that of the slowest unit assigned to said group or commander.

BTW, what do you think of the idea then to make the repaired units back the assigned group, or is it better not to do that?

An excellent feature and buff if restricted to only commanders assigned to a group, If enabled with regular units it will raise the maximum continuous pressure of combat to a degree that I don't think the game was intended to ever be without the usage of commanders.

[Monsterovich]

An excellent feature and buff if restricted to only commanders assigned to a group

Answer the question: how many times in a year have you seen a player in multiplayer play commanders.

[Raptor959]

Many dozens of times. Since the changes I have been using commanders every single time I play multiplayer, Which isn't super often as I pretty much only play against my friend who has only recently has started to experiment with commanders.

As a commander player here is what I have learned about maximizing the power of commanders, Scavengers are a valuable resource of unit experience and shouldn't be obliterated at the nearest opportunity. The effect of rolling out even just a single professional rank commander early in the game is nothing to be scoffed at.

[Monsterovich]

Many dozens of times. Since the changes I have been using commanders every single time I play multiplayer,

I've been playing for YEARS.

They're useless crap in terms of unit management and balance. Just like 99.9% of players do the same. They're probably good in single player, but they need a separate balance for multiplayer because they're useless there.

EDIT: Oh, and I forgot that they can only posses a limited number of units. Then this whole argument makes no sense because it's a different mechanic altogether.

[Monsterovich]

Units repair demo: https://youtu.be/tZ6OHeIE65E

[Raptor959]

Commanders had been literally non-functional due to bugs for nearly 2 decades.
It hardly been more than a year since commanders had their kill requirements reduced by over 96%.
It's not reasonable to expect players to have been learning to use commanders while they were in such a poor state.

Furthermore just because a pre-command-limit research-upgrade rookie commander can only control 6 units it doesn't mean its useless at unit management or worthless as a force multiplier. The improvements to your unit speed, accuracy, damage resistance, and reduction in enemy accuracy from having an experienced commander has readily visible consequences in and outside of combat.

[Monsterovich]

It's not reasonable to expect players to have been learning to use commanders while they were in such a poor state.

Yeah, I get it, still need to make the groups more convenient. To finally be able to separate units into their specialties, because before that you have to add to groups manually, and it takes a lot of time and more clicks.

The fewer clicks the better, it makes gameplay less intense.

Speaking of commanders: maybe they'd be less useless if you could spend energy to improve them and improve XP of regular units (in the squad). It's just an idea.

[Monsterovich]

For more convenience, I made the display of groups on the UI.

[Raptor959]

So how does this interface with the already extant commander factory assignment system?

[Monsterovich]

So how does this interface with the already extant commander factory assignment system?

Groups are groups and commanders are commanders. We've already figured that out. Commanders are not affected in any way.

[Raptor959]

The reason it's not perfectly obvious that assigning a factory to a unit group overrides assignments to a commander, and vice versa, Is that it is actually very desirable to be able to have a factory produce units for both a commander and a unit group simultaneously.

The way this would work is that when commanders are assigned to a unit group, A factory can be assigned to both the unit group and the commander at the same time without overriding each other. The factory will assign new units to the commander like normal but once at the command limit production would continue with units being assigned to the unit group the commander is assigned to. This would buff commanders in high power ntw games.

[Monsterovich]

This would buff commanders in high power ntw games.

Dammit, I'm already tired of explaining that commanders are a different mechanic and it needs a total rebalance because it's going nowhere in the present. In NTW games you have literally hundreds of units of different specializations. Commanders are not going to be able to handle that in any way. That's why people use groups for VTOL among other things. This PR is a major improvement for groups.

It would be good to make commanders such "hero"-type units who can give separate improvements to the squad in addition to increasing the characteristics (invisibility, shields, radar countermeasures, etc.), then using them DO make sense, but so far they are near-useless units in MP.

[Raptor959]

You are just plain wrong if you think there isn't any overlap in purpose between commanders and unit groups and assigning factories to unit groups and commanders.

I am getting tired of explaining that commanders already have been totally rebalanced into actual relevance because for nearly 20 years they used to be literally broken on top of being underpowered, All the talk about giving commanders flashy gimmicks just tells me that veteran players are so utterly stuck in one mindset about the game that only the most conspicuous of changes will make them think twice about commanders.

Similar can be said about VTOL sensors and how they didn't function as intended, The only practical way to use VTOL units were to assign them to a group and order them to patrol/circle.

[Monsterovich]

All the talk about giving commanders flashy gimmicks just tells me that veteran players are so utterly stuck in one mindset about the game that only the most conspicuous of changes will make them think twice about commanders.

That's not the point. The point is that you need to manage dozens and hundreds of units, and the goal of the game is to make units as many as possible. Commanders are not suitable for this task and will never be, starting from the fact that they have a limited limit of units and ending with their mechanics and management. Commanders are more difficult to manage than groups and more vulnerable, so they need to be made worth building at all.

[Raptor959]

That's not the point. The point is that you need to manage dozens and hundreds of units, and the goal of the game is to make units as many as possible.

Yes. Because a factory assigned to a commander stops producing units when it reaches its unit cap, Commanders get in the way of the continuous unit production NTW games demand. This would no longer be the case if factories could keep producing units once the commander hits its limit.

Commanders are not suitable for this task and will never be, starting from the fact that they have a limited limit of units and ending with their mechanics and management.

Commanders are very close to being meaningfully useful on the NTW battlefield regardless of the command limit because at their minimum they focus fire and improve long damage output which is very much in the realm of mathematical undecidability in its gameplay impact.

Since so many bugs have been fixed the only management and mechanic problems left with commanders is that they don't have a separate retreat threshold which harms their survivability/micromanagement and that you have to continuously mess with factory assignments on high power games to maximize unit production, Which the automatic assignment of units produced in factories to groups could be used to solved.

[Monsterovich]

Today built a build for version 4.4.2 with this PR, it's a necessary feature. Please merge. :)