REQ: auto cancel producing unit

[aegis]

That's cheating, and that's why I will never allow this widget or ones like it to be used with AA, and I hope TFC does the same with BA.

but you can't really stop it.

[TheFatController]

That's cheating, and that's why I will never allow this widget or ones like it to be used with AA, and I hope TFC does the same with BA.

but you can't really stop it.

You could intercept the cancel order, destroy the unit with lua and only return the amount of metal scaled to the % health of the damaged buildframe or something.

[Niobium]

I don't get what the fuss is over this widget.

How often do people lose labs, that also have a near completed unit in them, and the unit also happens to be worth a lot, and the metal gained from canceling it will make a difference to their obvious predicament, which is that there are enemies in their base killing it.

A widget which automatically moved cloaking units out of the way of enemies on the other hand, would be one worth complaining about.

[Caydr]

... right. Err.. ok, I've been gone from Spring for 3 years. I was just assuming there's a way to prevent widgets from being used... since actual cheating widgets must be possible. Last I heard, you could include a set of widgets with a mod and disallow all others. Are you serious, there isn't?

If one of the major separators between BA and CA is just an asston of clever LUA, why can't BA players just copy CA's widgets?

[imbaczek]

they can and they do. do not confuse widgets with gadgets, which cannot be disabled and are used e.g. to give pyros a jump command, etc.

[SinbadEV]

Essentially the decision to include Widget support at all is that anything a player could do anyway should be allowed to be automated.

There should, by definition, no way to abuse this system seeing as it effectively rewards better selection of widgets and programming skills as part of your ability as a player. This should actually even the playing field in many circumstances... though it does GREATLY hinder noobs.

It should, however, be possible to disable ALL widgets, period, or block certain types of calls using a gadget if the game designer feels they do not wish to subscribe to this paradigm for their game. I'm not sure if it is but it should be.

Meanwhile, the suggested widget does sound quite useful.

[Caydr]

I agree, useful certainly, but as you also say, not necessarily in every context. I'm very surprised to hear that it is not put in the modder's control to inhibit certain types of widgets/gadgets/whatever-the-hell-ets.

Back when I was a frequent player, I wouldn't mind putting myself at a disadvantage by not using metal maker AI even if everyone else was. This is simply because I, as the avid TA fan that I am, have considered economy management to be an essential skill.

Does that mean I never have excess energy? No, I waste it all the time, no doubt severely, but unless I were to globally say, "from now on, metal maker AI will be on by default", I would consider it an unfair advantage since my enemy may not even know it exists.

I'm dead set against nonstandardized abilities. One player should have all the resources another player does.

I don't know if the metal maker AI is still in Spring, but if it is I'll probably be tweaking AA's metal makers to be unaffected by it from now on. If it means I have to enter an unwinnable war of escalation like DRM vs piracy, renaming or tweaking units with each version to make them break previous "cheating" widgets, or including my own widgets which conflict with the offending widgets, or crashing Spring when the offending widgets are activated, I'll do it. The line has to be drawn somewhere.

Seeing specific unit ranges? Great. Formations? Fine. Precision-timed construction cancellation to get back resources you poured something into and then failed to defend? No way in hell.

That's no different than setting a swarm of constructors to reclaim an expensive unit that was about to die in OTA. No different at all. AFAIK there's no disagreement that doing so was borderline cheating, in fact it is completely mitigated in Spring by giving you resources gradually from reclaiming rather than all at once.

If you realize that, then there can be no debate, this "widget" or "gadget" or whatever you want to call it, is a cheat script. Otherwise I'm wondering when the Spring developers will be reverting the change to gradual reclaiming, since it was done to correct the exact same issue.

I would not really have an issue with this widget if it was forced on for all players and it never unintentionally canceled construction, ie, it worked perfectly, as do other Spring core functions. As long as its fair, if people like it... fine, whatever. But absolutely no possibility of unfair advantage. Skill comes from experience and game knowledge, not from knowing where to download the hottest LUA tweaks that do all the tricky bits for you.

[Gnomre]

1) Gradual/lump sum reclaiming is a mod option now. It's in one of those gamedata files. There's a third option iirc but I don't remember what it is. Obviously users can't change things in gamedata and still sync

2) Gadgets are mod-side, not user-side. If you don't like a gadget, you simply don't include it in the mod. Users can't add gadgets to a game without breaking sync. There are, in theory, ways to stop users from loading external widgets, but last I heard they're all easy to circumvent. For what it's worth, blacklisting will never work because people can rename files/widgets faster than you can release mod updates.

I'm not touching the "cheating widgets" debate again.

[Peet]

I'm dead set against nonstandardized abilities. One player should have all the resources another player does.

[Jools]

Better players that pay attention are rewarded with a refund, newbies lose metal.

Agree. As also someone else said, economy management is also a skill, and should be rewarded.

I think almost everybody uses the metal maker AI, so I also use it. In principle I didn't like it at first, because it prevents some nasty tricks that you could do in OTA.

[NeonStorm]

hi,

could somebody make a widget that cancels the building of an unit within a lab, when the lab has just (e.g.) 5% HP and the building-process of the unit is (e.g.) under 95%?

that widget would be usefull if your lab is nearly destroy and you will get the metal back for the built unit (that isnt finished yet)

http://widgets.springrts.de/index.php#127 (NoWaste) exists but is not satisfying.

It should count the time needed, not the percentage.
* Time needed to get killed (respects: enemy units in range | recent attackers + reload/burst).
* Time needed to finish the unit (respects: metal/energy-stall).

The "Perfect NoWaste" would
* redistribute metal/energy to finish the built unit in time
* start reclaim the unit if a factory rapidly losing hp is expected to not finish the unit in time.

Perhaps there can be an exception for a factory the player pays special attention to.
* Helper-Widgets for this unit : on/off

[Anarchid]

Nice 6 year rez there :)

[raaar]

I wonder how many people use widgets like these.

Is there any easy way for game devs to prevent players from using external widgets?

[Jools]

Yes, you can forbid the use of all external widgets and only supply some approved ones with the game.

[Forboding Angel]

I wonder how many people use widgets like these.

Is there any easy way for game devs to prevent players from using external widgets?

Renaming the widget folder and editing your widget handler does a good job of this on it's own. But yes you can disable external widgets.