Commander UI
Locklear
[nexzil]kerrigan Join Date: 2012-05-01 Member: 151403Members, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Map Tester, WC 2013 - Shadow
[nexzil]kerrigan Join Date: 2012-05-01 Member: 151403Members, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Map Tester, WC 2013 - Shadow
<div class="IPBDescription">Suggestions Here!</div>So, the Commander UI needs some serious work in my opinion.
It's severely lacking in a few ways. Here's what I feel like needs work off the top of my head. Everyone should bring their ideas to the table here!
<b>1) Placing structures that have exit points</b>, like Phase Gates and Robotics Factories love to aim themselves at walls. They make a pain in the ass to aim in the correct direction but they love to exit into a wall, you can have marines phasing into the wall or ARCs coming out looking at the wall all day, but if you're trying to aim it in actual useful direction you're going to have a little bit of trouble angling and positioning your structure. Quite annoying.
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2) Hotkeys. </b>You need to be able to snap to your hotkeys. Whether it is a position on the map you have hotkeyed to F2 with Ctrl + F2. Or marine squad you have assigned to 1, 2 or 3. You need to be able to instantly snap between areas of the map and units/structures. This is just basic RTS function. I'm so tired of just having to use my mouse to navigate and micromanage. It's a huge pain as a Commander to not have this feature.
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3) Magazine counter display.</b> Why don't Marines have a mag counter with their name and health? This removes the need for calls for ammunition or health if the Commander constantly knows the status of their ammunition. This seemed like a really basic one to me. Why have the Commander rely on his Marines to complain before dropping them ammunition? The automatic call feature needs to go, and this needs to come in.
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4) Abilities costing energy/cooldown when used in empty space. </b>Sometimes when you click down an ability or whatever you lose it, you lose the resource, and the cooldown.
<b>5) Viewpoint and map borders need a change.</b> Too often are you at a "bad angle" so you can't drop a structure/ammunition/health correctly and it goes through the map, doesn't appear etc. The view needs to be more consistent and not allow for these weird angles that mess up your micromanagement. In addition to more defined borders.
Maybe add a solid white line around all of the map that isn't black, like a border. It's not very clean the way it is now.
It's severely lacking in a few ways. Here's what I feel like needs work off the top of my head. Everyone should bring their ideas to the table here!
<b>1) Placing structures that have exit points</b>, like Phase Gates and Robotics Factories love to aim themselves at walls. They make a pain in the ass to aim in the correct direction but they love to exit into a wall, you can have marines phasing into the wall or ARCs coming out looking at the wall all day, but if you're trying to aim it in actual useful direction you're going to have a little bit of trouble angling and positioning your structure. Quite annoying.
<b>
2) Hotkeys. </b>You need to be able to snap to your hotkeys. Whether it is a position on the map you have hotkeyed to F2 with Ctrl + F2. Or marine squad you have assigned to 1, 2 or 3. You need to be able to instantly snap between areas of the map and units/structures. This is just basic RTS function. I'm so tired of just having to use my mouse to navigate and micromanage. It's a huge pain as a Commander to not have this feature.
<b>
3) Magazine counter display.</b> Why don't Marines have a mag counter with their name and health? This removes the need for calls for ammunition or health if the Commander constantly knows the status of their ammunition. This seemed like a really basic one to me. Why have the Commander rely on his Marines to complain before dropping them ammunition? The automatic call feature needs to go, and this needs to come in.
<b>
4) Abilities costing energy/cooldown when used in empty space. </b>Sometimes when you click down an ability or whatever you lose it, you lose the resource, and the cooldown.
<b>5) Viewpoint and map borders need a change.</b> Too often are you at a "bad angle" so you can't drop a structure/ammunition/health correctly and it goes through the map, doesn't appear etc. The view needs to be more consistent and not allow for these weird angles that mess up your micromanagement. In addition to more defined borders.
Maybe add a solid white line around all of the map that isn't black, like a border. It's not very clean the way it is now.
Comments
1) Fix that binding voice on your mouse does not work in com interface [+ make everything rebindable]
2) Make it more responsive
3) Fix grouping units like macs, i.e. CTRL + number to assign them to a group (it kinda seems broken in the build, most of the time it is not working)
4) SHIFT-CLICK to select multiple units one by one,
Also for alien:
1) I'd like an option to unbind CRAG/SHADE/SHIFT Hive hotkeys, because of the unresponsiveness of the menu, you may upgrade a hive accidentally when you are trying to do something else
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This is a huge factor for comming. Coming from an SC2 background, my interest lies in being commander. And something as simple as the double tap hotkey to snap to the area makes a massive change to a commanders navigation.
as for point 3) they could easily implement this, they already have the code for the insight mod
If anything just make it the same as NS1. Squad assignment was important for public game organization.
<b>1)</b> Register action/command on CLICK, not CLICK RELEASE. This has been in for ages and the worst part is its inconsistent when you then look at med/ammo pack dropping etc. which works on CLICK.
<b>2)</b> Clear borders on UI elements denoting areas you can click through and areas you cannot (especially a problem with alien commander). If i am able to see something, i should be able to click it. Pretty transparency is just that.. pretty confusing.
<b>3)</b> Drag select box disables minimap moving
<b>4)</b> Fix the problems with placing RTs/Harvesters if your camera is at a steep angle.
<b>5)</b> Much faster loading of areas so that hotkey moving when implemented works smoothly instead of being an annoyance. (This is already a problem with minimap moving)
<b>6)</b> Allow dropping med/ammopacks by holding down A/S key and clicking for multiple drops.
You can already do this.
The problem is UWE has for some unknown reason made hotkey creation as CROUCH + # so if you have crouch binded to something other than cntrl, it won't work.
First, re-bindable hotkeys. As long as I have been playing FPS, my push-to-talk key has been V. You can guess how well that works if I forget to re-bind before hopping in the chair.
Second, I'd like more info when a marine is requesting something. Yes, I know I can hit space and go see that guy, but I would much rather see a name + location tied to that popup. A flashing icon on the corner minimap would be amazing, too.
I much rather prefer to manually adjust my view instead of having the camera pop all over the map, and it would help a TON with multiple marines requesting things at once.
for example, a key to cycle between crags or shades or evolution chambers (don't remember name atm), useful also when i dont' remember where they are.
Probably also a reminder of what is researched and what not (or not accessible anymore) would be useful, especially for alien comm.
Also something I think would be nice as an option would be the ability to see the name of the room where your mouse is, attached to the mouse. As a new commander, especially in a map I don't know well, it feels weird to have to move the camera and look at the top left to see the location name. Making this an option would allow better players to just remove it since they probably won't need it. (Edit: or maybe a hotkey to toggle it or something)
Even if it means scanning to find out :)
And a drifter for the alien khammander to know marine structures' hp.
a way to move the view like you can do in company of heroes.
- "Hero" Icons to the side (supcom2-style) for upgrades maybe or something. It's too hard to find shells/veils/shifts if you forgot where you placed them, especially when they're cloaked.
- Names of rooms / toggleable? If you haven't played this game long enough you don't know the room names, and they're not visible in com view.
- A way to check which upgrades have been completed. If you forgot which upgrades you're missing (cara for example) and the team doesn't tell you, you have to check all the upgrades. If they're cloaked also ... good luck.
MACs need to have an on/off switch for auto-weld. It can be incredibly annoying to have a MAC in your face when you're trying to shoot aliens.
Please no. It's annoying enough to micro them right now; more micro would be horrendous. If they're bothering you so much and "in your face" it takes a simple "com, get the MACs out of my face" on the mic, and problem solved. They'll come to weld you again though, but I'm not sure how to solve that really - maybe make them run AI to always stay behind you? That'd be a little ridiculous.
Speaking of automation, I would LOVE a "guard" option like in supcom2, where a unit follows another unit and "assists" him - i.e. assign a MAC a "guard" order to a soldier or an exo and it automatically follows that soldier or exo and repairs everything in the area nearby when needed.
P.S. Something I forgot above: Alien cloaking is great, but it also cloaks things from yourself in commander view. Especially cloaked drifters and upgrade structures in base are difficult to find and distinguish when it's mid-late game and there's a lot of other structures, eggs, etc. in there. A solution would be to decrease the cloaking effect further somehow, or implement distinct "strategic icons" for all units (like the strategic icons in supcom2 when you zoom out) and have them drawn in overlay over every unit.
I think a better solution would be to have a welding radius around the mac. If something needs to be welded in this zone, the mac moves there and welds automatically.
This is all implemented right now. But now comes the change:
If the target leaves the zone, the mac returns to its old position. The center-point of that welder-zone is the position of the mac, that the commander ordered. Not the actual position of the mac.
This way the mac will not follow a leaving welder-target. He will automatically weld everything in its range, but return to its old position when finished or the target leaves the radius. This should be easy to implement.
Edit: Re-read OP and this probably applies in point 4.
And no, this is not because one medpack isn't enough to save you from death if a skulk bites you. You can clearly see that he is already dead and even if the marine is nano shielded (where the medpack would be enough for him to survive one bite) it gets used up after the marine is dead.
Automatic ammunition call should definitely go, about 75% of calls for ammo tend to come from marines that have gone off rambo style to the hive and have no chance of surviving so it's just a waste to give them more ammo.
I would like to see the control group icons moved up slightly so that they stop obscuring the first line of chat, I always have to go into the console to read what someone just wrote (I just posted this in the ideas and suggestions forum which I guess was wrong, sorry).
Also, it seems to me that marines drop out of a control group when they die, this seems flawed as you might want to give someone who has proven to be a good worker a lasting control group or just have all your marines in one group at all times for general orders (squad 5 of course). A bindable hotkey for selecting all marines at once would also be awesome, I think this was in NS1, as clicking the button on the left of the screen can cost precious milliseconds.
1)Group marines into squads so that I could set waypoints that were squad specific.
Often times as a Marine Comm you will have the aliens attempt to flank the map in a an upside-down U shape, and you need your team to
simultaneously hold two positions. I cant get on the comm and be like "Joe, mark, jim, bobby you go to XYZ, and sally, michelle, Sarah, and Jane go to ABC"
mainly because I wont remember who I assigned where, not because its not feasible.
Lastly, because these are supposed to be marines, they are already GOING to be in squads. Its unnatural that 8 marines would all work independently. It
would be nice for team building if I could squad them as I see fit.
2)There needs to be an ability to assign macs to individual marines. Often times in pub servers (The only servers I have ever played on) someone will be sitting in the main base begging someone to weld for them in their exo suit. Being able to assign a mac, or a group of macs, to an exo-suit would make the exo suit FAR more valuable than it is. Maybe its set up this way to encourage teamwork, but as it is, macs are not nearly as useful as they should be.
3)It would be nice if you could queue up techs that you want to research so it was on auto-pilot.