Improving the Commander experience
Reubot
Join Date: 2012-10-15 Member: 162374Members
Join Date: 2012-10-15 Member: 162374Members
Here's a couple of suggestions. Please discuss and add your own if you have more ideas.
General:
- Pressing the hotkey of a selected structure shouldn't center the view on that structure, unless the hotkey was double tapped. The way it works in all other RTSes. Right now it causes the view to accidentally jump around, which is very frustrating.
Marines:
- Hotkey to select the nearest MAC. Same as alien comm has for drifters.
Aliens:
- There is a bug with the circular cyst proximity indicator. Sometimes the nearby cyst will explode even if you place the next one just outside the circle. Please fix this, and also maybe remove the timeout for replacing the exploded cyst, when it's not killed by a marine, as a simple misclick can delay infestation spread by a critical amount, especially in the early game.
- Shift shouldn't echo unbuilt structures, if there are built ones of the same type available.
- Remove movement waypoints from structures after they have been echoed. Sometimes you for example set a crag to move closer to a shift, so you can echo it to where it's needed. Some time later you see the same crag on a pilgrimage back to the shift from the other side of the map.
Now that the CDT is at the helm, we'll hopefully see at least some of this long-awaited stuff implemented.
General:
- Pressing the hotkey of a selected structure shouldn't center the view on that structure, unless the hotkey was double tapped. The way it works in all other RTSes. Right now it causes the view to accidentally jump around, which is very frustrating.
Marines:
- Hotkey to select the nearest MAC. Same as alien comm has for drifters.
Aliens:
- There is a bug with the circular cyst proximity indicator. Sometimes the nearby cyst will explode even if you place the next one just outside the circle. Please fix this, and also maybe remove the timeout for replacing the exploded cyst, when it's not killed by a marine, as a simple misclick can delay infestation spread by a critical amount, especially in the early game.
- Shift shouldn't echo unbuilt structures, if there are built ones of the same type available.
- Remove movement waypoints from structures after they have been echoed. Sometimes you for example set a crag to move closer to a shift, so you can echo it to where it's needed. Some time later you see the same crag on a pilgrimage back to the shift from the other side of the map.
Now that the CDT is at the helm, we'll hopefully see at least some of this long-awaited stuff implemented.
Comments
I assume you mean if you hotkey something with ctrl + 1, ctrl + 2 etc?
If so, this is already the case. Press once to have it selected, press it again while selected to centre it in your view.
I agree with all the other stuff though.
Here's an example why the current behaviour is bad:
Sometimes you for example have the arms lab selected while viewing another part of the map. You then forget that you have it selected, and start an upgrade by muscle memory (4+a for example). Suddenly the view jumps to your base, and at the same time your marines are engaged by a bunch of skulks and die due to lack of medpacks.
Already done
Already done
I think I would also remove the drifter's waypoint from an unbuilt structure that gets echoed, to avoid the usually fatal excursions to the enemy territory.
Oh and maybe make the "base power node under attack" warning a little more prominent?
That's all I can think of now. Thanks for paying attention to these issues.
Wow - I never realized it retained waypoints this way. That sure explains a "wtf?!" moment I once had after echo'ing
Thank you so much.
Even better, if you could queue stuff on structures that are currently building, say, ink cloud as soon as shade is up, mine research as soon as armory is built etc.
Also, stuff from my old thread that I created year ago:
- All the players should see 'commander view rectangle' that commander has on his minimap.
- Let commanders or players choose default IP, much like aliens can.
Oh... lots of stuff I posted there is in the game now actually. Wow. That was a long post and most of the features I wanted are here already, woot.
@Cannon_FodderAUS It wasn't due to lack of personnel.
All someone had to do was make this thread months and months ago and it would have been in. CDT doesn't have anything to do with people not reporting requests and bugs. I'd have been happy to do this the second someone reported it months ago
- Make the spacebar key only react to time-critical messages like "marine under attack / needs medpack / ammo" + maybe base power / structures under attack ( I think @Mendasp wanted to look into this)
- Differenciate "important" and "not so important" structure under attack warnings - RTs getting attacked (not so important) have the same notification as Base power being attacked
"Comm why did you send the drifter into marine start"
"GODDAMNIT DRIFTERS YOU LITTLE SHITS DO WHAT I SAY"
In my experience this usually happens due to the drifter's path being blocked by a structure. So maybe we could re-phrase your suggestion to:
- Make drifters ignore structures (let them fly over them)
The same thing happens to MACs, ARCs and alien movable structures (not sure about whips tho).
@_INTER_ Yes, I was only talking about the marine comm side on my earlier points
The only problem I see with that is, it can be abused by the commander to make the drifter warp up and down.
P.S. - learn to use your damn hotkeys and that Spacebar thing isn't a problem anymore xD
1. You can't expect everyone to learn medding with hotkeys
2. Do hotkeyed marines blink when med / ammo / order is requested? If not, that would be a big reason why using them isnt viable for me.
3. What about pubs, do you hotkey 10 marines?
Also hitting the spacebar + clicking older notifications still seems much faster for me: (I hear the sound, press space bar, I'm there) VS (I see hotkeyed marine blink / hear sound, need to look what number it is, need to find number key on keyboard, press it once (or twice to jump the viewport?, I'm there).
I think there was alot of requests made, but people got frustrated when nothing happened. Priority then was content and optimization, so many people felt they were not listened to. Now that the CDT has taken over, more priority has been given to quality of life improvements, and you guys are always on the forums, so everyone feels much better about getting responses to feedback. I only wish there was a way I can give you guys some money or support other than buying another copy of NS2.
Once again, Cheers CDT and thank you for everything so far (really appreciate it).
I, too, feel like quality of life improvements have generally been neglected by UWE, no matter how many months before. It's part of the reason why they got so much hate sometimes in the first place.