spam button

posted on August 7th, 2011, 4:59 pm

I think there should be a control at all ship-yards labelled "Spam". when you click the button and select a unit it will keep producing that unit even after 10 ships are produced, you keep on automatically adding the same ship class when you actually micro your ships around the enemy. It would be like a general's last command before going into battle "produce these ships until you can produce them no more". I was thinking that maybe something like this could be adapted to the Borg. maybe the construction-ship will automatically produce the ships taking into account the collective uplink construction time.

I mean I think you all know the problem. you've just had an attack force raiding the enemy base and you given some massive micro to make it out of there alive. but when you come back you see in horror that nothing had been constructed since you left and you remember that you accidentally didn't max out your shipyard or you stayed away so long that the construction queue emptied out long before you got back and you have near-unlimited resources but no ships, the enemies have got 2-3 fleets waiting to attack you.

maybe as balance you can give small resource or supply penalties per ship, maybe its something that the yard has to research at different times for each race (eg: Dominion rely on spaming so their research is cheap and early-game, Fed need to change their queue quickly in the beginning, so their research is mid-game and and at a good price)

please don't say "its a balancing issue" and leave it at that, try to think of a fix and if you can't, tell me what is the problem.  I am aware that some races need this more than others, so maybe we can make more penalties for them.

posted on August 7th, 2011, 5:15 pm

Actually the devs were considering putting this in until (I believe) the players requested that it not be put in because microing ship production should require some skill. About the Borg having this I do not see how that would be possible due to the way the Borg build ships. In order to implement this the devs would have to extensively account for modules and AI uplink placement. Besides the devs are trying to find new ways to prevent players from spamming

posted on August 7th, 2011, 5:17 pm

I thought it sounded familier...

posted on August 7th, 2011, 5:48 pm

yes but... there can always be ways to stop spamming with this: more cost/ship ratio; weaker ship; no passives; no rank-ups; or all together. I mean, I don't see the fairness of saving your vets from extinction through impressive micro and ending up with a huge fleet at your door because because of your ill-timed raiding. it would just be something when your attention is controlling fleets instead of making them. and also it would be at specific times of the game (except  Dom, they can't survive without it. or its really hard to) feds spam Mon/Int spam at the beginning, but this would be available when you got better ships then Int/Mon and it wouldn't help spamming these, weaker clones, unless you're out for a while

posted on August 7th, 2011, 6:11 pm

So you suggest a research, instead of manual selecting your yard like every 15 minutes and press the I button 10 times, which kinda takes 2 seconds... call me stupid, but i seriously don't get it.

Fully agree with Funny on this one.

posted on August 7th, 2011, 6:13 pm

i think returning to your base to do building is part of micro. so it shouldnt be given to you.

but maybe the computer could flash the resource count if 1500 dil/tri is accumulated. so you will get a reminder that you need to build something. of course make the numbers higher for borg as they need to save money for cubes.

posted on August 7th, 2011, 6:39 pm

I think perhaps the screen display could be redesigned.... perhaps to help the player with their job of ship building, and station building, and upkeep with specials...

Maybe some form of what has been discussed for commentators could be used for players, and it could be customizable to show what the player needed.

For instance, perhaps on the left side of the screen is a bar with icons that show stations that have been built, and if you click on them a bar pops out to show reaserch that has been completed.  Then you can double click it to go back to that station, it will pop up on the bottom bar (the normal one) and you can do your reaserch or ship building.

Terrible way to explain it i know (perhaps somone can help me or expand on it) but i think this could be helpful for both commentators and players....

posted on August 7th, 2011, 7:28 pm

Terrible way to explain it i know (perhaps somone can help me or expand on it) but i think this could be helpful for both commentators and players....

sounds like your talking about permanent gui components for buildings. like in (at least some, i havnt played them all) command and conquer games. so no matter where you were you could see info about buildings on the left side of the screen.

the natural extension of that is to allow building/researching using this interface.

would probably be a lot of work to get a2 to do this.

posted on August 7th, 2011, 11:29 pm

I think perhaps the screen display could be redesigned.... perhaps to help the player with their job of ship building, and station building, and upkeep with specials...

Maybe some form of what has been discussed for commentators could be used for players, and it could be customizable to show what the player needed.

For instance, perhaps on the left side of the screen is a bar with icons that show stations that have been built, and if you click on them a bar pops out to show reaserch that has been completed.  Then you can double click it to go back to that station, it will pop up on the bottom bar (the normal one) and you can do your reaserch or ship building.

Terrible way to explain it i know (perhaps somone can help me or expand on it) but i think this could be helpful for both commentators and players....

i like this idea

posted on August 8th, 2011, 3:52 am

For instance, perhaps on the left side of the screen is a bar with icons that show stations that have been built, and if you click on them a bar pops out to show reaserch that has been completed.  Then you can double click it to go back to that station, it will pop up on the bottom bar (the normal one) and you can do your reaserch or ship building.

I like that, maybe there should be a way to queue up to 2-3 ships from that small bar without going back to the station.

but maybe the computer could flash the resource count if 1500 dil/tri is accumulated. so you will get a reminder that you need to build something. of course make the numbers higher for borg as they need to save money for cubes.

It would be great combined with this.

But just to be clear, a normal int is: 397 Di  128 Tri  18 Sup. 19 Off  20 Def  9 Sys.
Spam stats: 516 Di  166 Tri  18 Sup(+30%). 17 Off  18 Def  8 Sys(-10%)
{this is just to hold on to my doomed Idea, nothing else }

posted on August 8th, 2011, 5:36 am

I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that every ship has a build hotkey straight from the yard (meaning without going to the build menu)

I think we all need to learn to use hotkeys more often, I certainly do.  While I set my ships to group 1, 2, 3, I'm setting my yards to group 10, 9, 8. So my maintenance process becomes this:

Hit 0 to see if any ships have been built.  If they have, order them to join the fleet and move them to my fleet group.

Hit 0 again to select the factory.  If it needs ships, tap the appropriate keys a few times and they're added to the queue.

And you're done.  Without even needing to scroll back to your base.  It's a really easy process once you learn to use it.  I think we need to be more diligent in teaching new people how to do this though.

posted on August 11th, 2011, 8:04 pm

I always use the ship/station hotkeys

posted on August 13th, 2011, 9:35 pm

I always thought it would be cool if you had a thing pop up on your screen if your shipyard wasnt making anything.

posted on August 17th, 2011, 1:56 am

I could see this being useful in AI skrimishes where huge fleets are involved.

Something I'd really love would be a way to queue up construction ship commands.  In Total Annihilation, you could hold down the shift key and order up the construction of huge numbers of stations - the construction unit move on automatically to the next when the first was done.  If situations change, you can always cancel the build queue. 

Once again, probably more useful in single player where ship captains and station commanders don't need permission from home world to use the head 

posted on August 17th, 2011, 2:07 am

i think returning to your base to do building is part of micro. so it shouldnt be given to you.

This sums it up, if you dont keep building when you can, you have to deal with the consequences.