On/Off mex

[YokoZar]

What would the gain be of removing it?
If you dont bother in the first place to be able to turn it on or off, and 1 or two people might use it now and then, then leave it.
Sure, you will save some bytes of compiled COB, but that's all. So I really can't see any reason for taking it out

Little things like this make BA much more accessible for newbies as well as more enjoyable for experienced players.

Basically it feels really unfun when the game behaves in a stupid way by default. Shutting off metal extractors while still powering a metal maker-building conbot is as dumb as units auto-targetting the enemy they do the least damage to with the highest health.

[CarRepairer]

Shutting off metal extractors while still powering a metal maker-building conbot is as dumb as units auto-targetting the enemy they do the least damage to with the highest health.

There are people who want to play a game where you manually shut off the right things when you stall to get the edge on the enemy. There are people who want to play a game where you manually target the right units to gain an advantage. It's rude to say that their preferred game is dumb.

[YokoZar]

Clueless people are clueless.

Mex needing e means you have to actually watch out for e stalling as then you lose on metal income from mexes.

It's very logical, and adds depth to the game.

You don't have power = shit doesn't work.

This isn't depth, it's frustration. Yes, there's some skill in knowing the fine details about how dumb the game's built-in priorities are, and you can gain a small advantage by working around them (manually waiting a constructor or having an e-stall widget), but this is a huge distraction from what makes BA actually fun.

Different people like different things in the game, and are good at different things. If you like econ management, it is arguably more fun to try and handle more complex econ. If you dont like econ management, playing CA is an option.

I didn't mean to imply otherwise. The econ's my favorite part. It's just that, for an econ game, clicking on and off metal makers wasn't nearly as fun as assigning build orders and watching your economy grow. There was no decision involved, no strategy, you just had to learn a few clicks and do them by rote while you were making actual decisions about what to build next.

So now we have the metal maker management widget by default. Managing metal makers is no longer a worry in the game. And yet it's more fun, because that was always the annoying part of econ management.

We also now have the passive button for nano turrets, which does much the same thing. Now the only way to continually e-stall is by building too much at once. But we still don't have a passive option for constructors. The end result is that you have to manually wait/unwait for a few seconds with them to prevent your mexes turning off, exactly like you used to have to do with metal makers.

Also turning them off will make them not show on the metalmap, which can be useful

This is just an engine bug honestly. Metal map should respect line of sight.

It does...

So where's the advantage in turning it off again? Or were you talking about the cloaked metal extractor?

[YokoZar]

Shutting off metal extractors while still powering a metal maker-building conbot is as dumb as units auto-targetting the enemy they do the least damage to with the highest health.

There are people who want to play a game where you manually shut off the right things when you stall to get the edge on the enemy. There are people who want to play a game where you manually target the right units to gain an advantage. It's rude to say that their preferred game is dumb.

That wasn't what I said at all. I'm talking about assigning a default behavior to units. Dumb default behavior means the player has to take over, not that the player is dumb.


Units don't auto target the healthiest unit by default for a good reason - it would make playing feel very bad unless the game was entirely about selecting targets for units. Without manual control, they'd constantly be switching targets to try and kill the enemy in the least efficient way possible. But that game would involve clicking and assigning targets as well, you'd just have to do it frustratingly constantly.

[YokoZar]

Regardless this feels like exactly the wrong way to talk about this sort of thing. None of us here have played BA without mexes costing energy to compare it with.

I support the energy cost for mex's as it means you need to properly manage your energy economy early on and can lose all important starting metal by not doing so.

The on/off button is required to disable mex's when you stall so this can't be removed.

Players are free to write or download a widget to manage this or block off commands should they wish.

What do you think of a passive switch for mobile builders?

My main frustration with this is there's no good way to manage priorities. The closest thing is the wait command, but that behaves similarly weirdly when you start spilling resources.

[JohannesH]

Basically it feels really unfun when the game behaves in a stupid way by default. Shutting off metal extractors while still powering a metal maker-building conbot is as dumb as units auto-targetting the enemy they do the least damage to with the highest health.

The player shouldnt be penalised for doing stupid stuff? It was you who queued that mm after all. Yeah making mistakes can be unfun, but isnt that the case in any game?

Regardless this feels like exactly the wrong way to talk about this sort of thing. None of us here have played BA without mexes costing energy to compare it with.

Whats there to compare? You get bit more e, arent penalised for e stall... Econ becomes simpler to calculate and handle. Why would that be worth testing?

[Regret]

An extra button hurts the UI.

You might turn mexes off accidentally.

I lold.

Mex has 4 buttons to choose from. OH THE HORRIBLE CLUTTER ITS UNBEARABLE. I MIGHT ACCIDENTALLY PRESS IT BECAUSE I TOTALLY ORDER MY MEXES AROUND.

[==Troy==]

I agree on most parts with YokoZar.


There are MetalMaker Widgets which manage the priority of the metal makers, why not have a PROPER, ALL-UNIT management?

If you E-stall, but you need to shoot that HLT, the only realy way to do it is to press Ctrl+A and then S, and then you have to reassign AGAIN, ALL of the units to the task which they were doing before.

Saying that the game should penalise the player who is building metal maker but causes his mexes to stall is just silly. Having to put your cons on a long queue and go on with front managing, knowing that your eco will grow, WITHOUT being afraid that it will stall your HLTs or starve you on metal is not a bad thing.

I am not sure what BA is striving for. Either veterans who just know all of the quirks of the gameplay or got themselves appropriate widgets, or for players who are actually capable of thinking tactically and enjoying the game without having to worry about illogical mistakes of resource priority.


You could claim that microing your units is the same as putting your nanos to wait, but I would argue that microing your units does not give you direct, 100% advantage over the enemy. No matter how precise your are with timing, you still have all of the dimentions to move your units, whether with mexes, its just matter of your spinal reflex, which presses the button when yellow line is over 50%.

[Regret]

Troy, you are a bad player and as such you should realize that you have no idea what you are talking about. Same goes for YokoZar.

It's nice that you write long posts about what you think you understand, but it's useless, so save yourself the time.

If the eco management system was too smart then e-stalling wouldn't be a part of the gameplay anymore. Currently you can notice your enemy stalling and attack him at that moment since his defenses are practically down. That is depth the game provides. Either love it or hate it, it's here and it's not going away.

[JohannesH]

1 important thing that goes for having mexes use energy, and all those little things: it makes harder to make econ management widgets good.

Also you gotta realise that many good players dont know or care about the quirks of BA economy. But somehow they still do well cause they are, actually capable of thinking tactically :O

[Llamadeus]

Good players have a secret, non micro-intensive method of making sure their laser towers get to fire at all times: they build some extra energy buildings beforehand so they don't run out of energy at an unopportune moment!

It's not like BA energy economy is particularly unforgiving either since solars don't cost any energy so you can never actually be crippled by an e-stall if you plan well and enough of your infrastructure is intact. If you fall behind on energy in a mod where energy buildings take lots of energy to build it's a lot harder to catch up.

[Gertkane]

Like Regret said E stalling is a nice quirk of the game and sometimes the only way to turn a tide (by breaking through an E stalling enemy player or using just a few units to kill a com that can't dgun) for your team. It is also quite avoidable by just building E storage. With E storage you will notice your E levels going down even if you are intensively microing units or fpsing.

Troy, some people have widgets to manage shit for them which is all fine. Some people haven't yet been assed enough to get any non-mod supplied widgets (i.e. me) and thus use grouping (select shit, press CTRL plus number to group stuff) to help micro and avoid a retarded CTRL-A and the following micromanagement hell.

[==Troy==]

Regret, I kneel down before your 1337 combomb skills.


To be honest, the only reason I am still trying to say something here is that I would rather prefer this to be implemented in the mod/engine source (here, I could be very easily mistaken) so that priorities do not have "delays" as with widgets, and have a proper queue, since at the moment, passive nanotowers sometimes think that they are lower priority than metal makers.

Its like.. I dont know. New pathing that everyone complains about? You know the games where you have to press the same button 1k times to win the game? This is sort of the same series.


And just saying : build more E, use groups, etc is disadvantaging. Eco is always lower priority than defence/offence. This is an age of robots, why on earth would they not have a proper energy managing system?

[YokoZar]

Troy, you are a bad player and as such you should realize that you have no idea what you are talking about. Same goes for YokoZar.

By your standards 90% of the player base are bad players and not worth listening to.

It's nice that you write long posts about what you think you understand, but it's useless, so save yourself the time.

If the eco management system was too smart then e-stalling wouldn't be a part of the gameplay anymore. Currently you can notice your enemy stalling and attack him at that moment since his defenses are practically down. That is depth the game provides. Either love it or hate it, it's here and it's not going away.

We're talking about metal extractors, not laser turrets. I don't think it's a coincidence that when I make a good point and someone agrees with me you resort to attacking my skill and some unrelated strawman.

[Gertkane]

You know the games where you have to press the same button 1k times to win the game? This is sort of the same series.

Sorry, for not judging you on the same merits Revenge did, would have gotten the same results faster. If you think economy micromanagement in an environment where the situation and player decide how to balance and put emphasis on either eco or warfare micro and weigh risk vs reward accordingly is even remotely similar to pushing one button 1000 times then hope is not for you.

build more E, use groups, etc is disadvantaging. Eco is always lower priority than defence/offence. This is an age of robots, why on earth would they not have a proper energy managing system?

Why on earth would they use a human commander with sub-par reaction times and mostly slow and painful learning curve with usually sub-par results even after months of training?

While i would agree to an extent that having EN usage priorities settings and being able to change them would be nice, you guys seem to want full automation which is actually closer to the 1k button masher than the current system is.

[Regret]

By your standards 90% of the player base are bad players and not worth listening to.

Pretty much how it is.

We're talking about metal extractors, not laser turrets. I don't think it's a coincidence that when I make a good point and someone agrees with me you resort to attacking my skill and some unrelated strawman.

HLT

That post wasn't entirely about you. Try to read what others post before raging with accusations. You should be an example as a moderator.

Sorry, for not judging you on the same merits Revenge did, would have gotten the same results faster.

It's "Regret".

[Gertkane]

Sorry about that my fellow online game engine called spring RTS engine user with the real alias Regret and not Revenge. This aint the first time but lol i dunno why i mix your names up.

[AF]

More unique and obvious avatar needs to be more unique and obvious

[Gertkane]

A huge signature saying "I AM NOT REVENGE" would probably do it for me.

[NOiZE]

Troy, you are a bad player and as such you should realize that you have no idea what you are talking about. Same goes for YokoZar.

By your standards 90% of the player base are bad players and not worth listening to.

You optimist!