3 feature requests

posted on November 22nd, 2010, 6:23 am

ok so id like to see 3 major feature's implemented in fleetops.

1) show average income rate per minute in top left with total resources (like it is in supreme commander)
2) show average expenses rate per minute in top left with total resources (like in supreme commander)
3) have an infinite build button on ship yards, so that one could possibly produce say intrepids from a yard without having to press the 'I' so many times. or something to the effect of this feature.

posted on November 22nd, 2010, 7:00 am

I like 3.

The other two might be nice to have as well. Useful information I'm sure in some contexts. How does this help you in supreme commander (never played). Does it allow you to better prepare your fleet, knowing what you will be able to afford? Plan research, ship building, station building better etc? 

posted on November 22nd, 2010, 7:04 am

It makes production management easier... f.e. seeing the need to switch from di heavy ships to tri heavy ships more quickly.. for the dominion seeing if u have enough supply miners... etc.

posted on November 22nd, 2010, 7:11 am

basically in supreme commander it helps you to know how many factories u can have constantly producing without running out of resources and hence your production slowing down. (fyi supreme commander is basically the successor to 'total annihilation').

it would help the fleetops player by telling them what yards they can keep constantly producing and what resources they are going to run out of before actually running out of them.

also it will help in balancing tri and di usage. for instance typically one might be be producing di heavy ships, so there will be a shortage of di and an over supply of tri, how ever if one knows exactly how much of each resource they are using per minute of di and tri they can then balance their resources by producing more tri heavy ships

posted on November 22nd, 2010, 11:35 am

They would all be useful features, especially the repeat queue button.  But I don't know how practical a "show expenses" thing would work in FO, because it varies minute by minute (a ship isn't a constant drain on resources like in Supreme Commander).

posted on November 22nd, 2010, 3:10 pm

The devs didn't like number 3 in the past when its been requested, but the first thing sounds interesting . I think number 2 could be implemented as well, as long as cost was simply divided by time of ship/station construction - it just wouldn't be as useful as Supreme Commander indications.

posted on November 22nd, 2010, 3:25 pm

1,2 3 are all on the ideas list. i am not against infinite build lists. i wouldn't find a supreme commander like interface here too bad either. the question is if it fits in the concept. we try to avoid too much automation, we don't want to support 'easy' mass fleet building and also the question is if infinite queues are necessary in a game like armada. one thing is sure though - build queues will get some improvements at some point in the future.

posted on November 23rd, 2010, 12:04 am

with total annihilation (and supcom) they use dynamic resource systems, so resources are taken each second. a2 uses the all-up-front method, where construction only starts when all the money is available. so showing the rate per second that resources are being used at would not be very helpful, as your resources just disappear in chunks anyway.

i personally prefer the TA way, where resources come and go per second, and when you are making too much, construction pauses briefly to let mining catch up. i just doubt its possible to mod a2 into that.

as for building lots, having build queues support more than 10 items would be nice. in TA if u hold down shift while clicking the build button, it queued up 5 of that.

posted on November 23rd, 2010, 8:21 pm

I support these ideas.

@Myles

Its per minute not second.

posted on November 23rd, 2010, 9:32 pm

@Myles

Its per minute not second.

its per game tick, which at standard speed is about a second. not a minute. i still play this game so i do know it very well.

the system works by having resource making units create a fixed amount per tick, and building takes a fixed amount per tick based on what is doing the building, what it is building, and how many are helping.

posted on November 24th, 2010, 5:33 am

I would definitely like number 3, also with a slightly longer queue so I don't need to get back to it as often (a big problem, especially since there are no messages to tell me a queue ran out (might be a good feature to request...), and I can't exactly requeue while microing ships.)

The first two should be options to set individually, as they would, for most players, take up more screen space than they are worth I think. The resource income and used averages would be great for Dominus' testing, and maybe useful for people who want to perfect their build order.

posted on November 24th, 2010, 5:25 pm

i personally prefer the TA way, where resources come and go per second, and when you are making too much, construction pauses briefly to let mining catch up. i just doubt its possible to mod a2 into that.

Sure it is, you run out of cash and new construction stops.

posted on November 24th, 2010, 5:29 pm

Sure it is, you run out of cash and new construction stops.

He's talking about current construction.  It's a system where units take a certain amount of resources per time to complete (one ship could cost 20 gold/second for 15 seconds).

posted on November 24th, 2010, 5:34 pm

I never liked construction done like that, it always bugged me in Command & Conquer. It's better the current way; stockpiling enough to build, then set it aside when building so it doesn't get used for something else by mistake.

posted on November 24th, 2010, 6:01 pm

I never liked construction done like that, it always bugged me in Command & Conquer. It's better the current way; stockpiling enough to build, then set it aside when building so it doesn't get used for something else by mistake.

Neither did I, as you'd have to constantly put stop timers on stations so that they'd build what you wanted them to build