Rethinking and tweaking of BA's widgets

[Jazcash]

BA is a blessed in an area where CA is not, its widget selection. BA has a few of its own widgets, those of which I presume have been very carefully selected by NOiZE and most recently by Fatty.
I realise that most the widgets chosen for BA are primarily, the most essential ones. (Custom Formations, RedUI etc). However, I still have some questions and queries to put forward about some of them.

Before I start on the widget's themselves, I'd like to make my own widget selection clear. I've tweaked and retweaked it many many times over the years and I'm finally pretty stable about my widget choices:



Now I'm not saying this is the best choice for anybody, but for me, it's the exact balance between too many and not enough. Note the widgets I have disabled are either because I haven't deleted them or feel I might need them every now and then, but for the most part, all the enabled widgets are my constant widgets that I use all the time.

Now for BA's default widgets:

BlurApi: This is listed in its own category as "For Developers". Therefore, why do us normal players need it? If a developer needs to use it for whatever reason, can't they just have it in their own widget folder?

BA Waypoint Dragger: I've never actually known what this is and what it does. Is it necessary for any reason?

ComCounter: I believe this prints the remaining number of ally (or enemy?) Coms in the console. For me, such messages disappear very quickly and I never get a chance to read them therefore I don't need it. Perhaps a constant onscreen display would be better?

Moho Exploiter: The description says it fixes a bug with moho exploiters. What is this bug and is it still apparent? If not, might as well remove this widget.

Share Tracker: This used to crash my game whenever hundreds of units were shared at the same time, also, it's extremely annoying to have hundreds, even dozens of labels to be placed at one time.

BuildBar: Keep this by all means, but I never use it because there's little room for it on my GUI

Old BA Layout: I think I used to use this but something did it for me, might be Ice UI.

Pause Screen: I found this really annoying and although it helped me realise when a game was paused, it got kinda annoying if people spammed pause or if I wanted to see units behind it, its transparency was never enough. I would use this if it was smaller and I could choose where it popped up on the screen (wouldn't be in the centre).

RedUI: I've always preferred Ice UI. I understand a lot of people don't though so I guess that's fine. Although, the amount of widget space it takes up is very slightly annoying...

MexUpg Helper: This puzzles me a lot. I've wondered what this does for I think, a good two years. I initially thought it might place Adv Mexes wherever possible instead of giving up when something blocks an Adv mexes position. Does this actually work now or what?

That is all, I've left out a few widgets from the default BA list simply because I have nothing to say about them and think they should stay in BA. Feel free to question my own widget list

Amendments:

Co-op Mode Widgets/Gadgets: It would be awesome if Co-op mode was more supported. A few of my own suggestions would be to make some kind of system where if one player in the coop has a widget which controls all units, it should disable everybody else's versions of the same widget in the coop.

For example, Smartnanos. If more than one player has this in coop, it makes it just about impossible to reclaim units because the other player's Smartnanos conflicts and repairs the unit being reclaimed because it doesn't know it's being reclaimed.

Also, if each Com had the actual player's name above its head instead of the lead coop player's name above every Com that would be cool too.

Faction changing: I imagine this would be highly desired for a lot of people. Currently, only co-op'd players can change their faction ingame. Would be awesome if everybody could do this, co-op or not.

[HectorMeyer]

In one BA version (half a year ago or so) there was also Minimap Events, but then it was removed for no apparent reason in the next version. It's still available on Springfiles, but unfortunately it broke with the newest Spring release.

It's very useful, gives a great visual clue of how intense the battles are at all parts of the map, and looks great.

Would like to see it back :3

[TheFatController]

Just to chime in before everyone suggests that every widget be included:
1) It's deliberate that not everything is included so new players can discover the fact that there is an external widget making community and make their own choices.
2) It's by design that pretty much nothing that gives orders automatically is on by default and this won't change

Share Tracker doesn't place any map markers btw, Advanced Playerlist does this (and I took out this feature in the one included in BA).

[Hobo Joe]

Mexupgradehelper is the widget that automatically reclaims mexes and replaces them with mohos, when you have a t2 con selected and you right click on a mex.

[Yuri]

Mexupgradehelper is the widget that automatically reclaims mexes and replaces them with mohos, when you have a t2 con selected and you right click on a mex.

Plus T2 cons stops right after it reclaims a mex. It's acting like this in 50% of my tries.

[Hackfresser]

BA Waypoint Dragger: I've never actually known what this is and what it does. Is it necessary for any reason?

select a single unit, draw a line like you would with custom formations. your unit will walk along the line you've drawn. i use this, and i bet others use it as well

ComCounter: I believe this prints the remaining number of ally (or enemy?) Coms in the console. For me, such messages disappear very quickly and I never get a chance to read them therefore I don't need it. Perhaps a constant onscreen display would be better?

agreed. constant on-screen display would be better.

BuildBar: Keep this by all means, but I never use it because there's little room for it on my GUI

i cant use this since my spring slows down to a crawl when i do. is it only me?

i would also like a faster and easier way to manage the metalmaker widget. using that /energyhover command is pretty much awkward

[Jazcash]

BA Waypoint Dragger: I've never actually known what this is and what it does. Is it necessary for any reason?

select a single unit, draw a line like you would with custom formations. your unit will walk along the line you've drawn. i use this, and i bet others use it as well

I've always drawn paths for units, however, that's built into Custom Formations. I've never used Waypoint dragger for anything I don't think...

I just tested it, WayPoint dragger is off and I can still do what you mentioned using Custom Formations.

[TheFatController]

Way point dragger lets you move your waypoints around, make a move path then hold shift and click and drag one of the points

[very_bad_soldier]

Mexupgradehelper is the widget that automatically reclaims mexes and replaces them with mohos, when you have a t2 con selected and you right click on a mex.

Plus T2 cons stops right after it reclaims a mex. It's acting like this in 50% of my tries.

That happens if it is not able to find a proper placement for the T2 mex. Quite annoying

[Wombat]

it happens when there is anoter building near mex, just be aware of it when u surround mex with hlts i dunno, i find all mentioned widgets useful (ok, maybe not 1st one)