Spring RTS Engine

Two things we could I think use to add to gameplay are the following..

Self constructing buildings/units, essentially the constuctor would walk over and start the building once its placed, but then the building would build by itself without any required assistance from the builder, allowing said builder to move on to another project. Logically the builder could be configured to assist the building in its construction this is discretion and could be disabled with the assist tags and so forth.

Build Pausing, yes we can pause the construction of units in a factory, but you cannot currently set it up to pause building construction. This means that your either building a building, or your not, you cant leave it on hold and come back later depending on your economy setup. It would be nifty if there was some way to specify whether a building degrades if not being actively built or not, allowing you to pause building construction by simply having constructors not work on it anymore..

OMG stealing features from Starcraft and SupCom!

Sounds like a good idea and I'd say up the ante on SupCom and make build pausing apply to all assisting units as well.

Fanger wrote:Self constructing buildings/units, essentially the constuctor would walk over and start the building once its placed, but then the building would build by itself without any required assistance from the builder, allowing said builder to move on to another project. Logically the builder could be configured to assist the building in its construction this is discretion and could be disabled with the assist tags and so forth.

Hmm, yes, this could yield some nice mods..... Von Neumann machines, anyone? It could be exploitable, by using one builder to build a dozen buildings simultaneously, but then again if you do so you have a massive drain on your economy, and only one builder which is a weakness in and of itself. Overall, I don't know what to think of this.

Build Pausing, yes we can pause the construction of units in a factory, but you cannot currently set it up to pause building construction. This means that your either building a building, or your not, you cant leave it on hold and come back later depending on your economy setup. It would be nifty if there was some way to specify whether a building degrades if not being actively built or not, allowing you to pause building construction by simply having constructors not work on it anymore..

Yes, this would be handy. However, if you can spare the time to micro, you can do something like this already. In one game, I was trying to build a Metal and Energy Storage, but my metal was depleted. I didn't want to lose progress on the metal store though, so I set my comm to build the energy store and as soon as the metal store started to degrade, I let him build that for about a second before resuming work on the energy storage. It's a lot of microing, but it works :)

I don't think having a builder start dozens of constructions is an exploit there, it's the whole point of the idea.

Yes, that's why I later stated that A.) it'd be a massive drain on your economy and B.) it'd be a liability as you wouldn't need nearly as much construction units as you do now, and as such the loss of one would be a far bigger blow.

KDR_11k wrote:OMG stealing features from Starcraft and SupCom!

Its from Earth21x0 series. If fangs asking for a feature its probably from Earth21x0 series.

I think KDR_11k was refering to the Protoss. (buildings are warped in after a signal is placed)

All in all it sounds like a good idea.

Yes he may have been, but I wasnt, and the ability to have paused construction is in a lot of games..

I was in fact thinking of earth 2150 which used this self build extensively, and more creatively than starcraft..

I'd love that... so your builder orders the construction instead of taking part in it itself.

In addition to that I'd like a tag which defines the maximum range from friendly buildings a building can be built, also a tag to have this not apply to certain structures, i.e. you shouldn't be able to advance your base with a resource extractor but only with certain types of buildings.

Nice rattle, we'd need

- a tag to say a unit is exempt from this restriction
- a tag to say this allows other units within a radius to be built


And for fangs idea we'd need:

- a tag saying it self builds
- a tag saying what buildpower value it should use (buildpower=; wont do any good as it'll mess with other features)

- a tag saying this units consruction can be paused
- a tag saying for how long construction can be paused (can also be used for the OTA based mods to control the way buildings will stay the same for a few secs before they start loosing health.)(with a value of -1 for infinite)

I didnt say it would be an easy feat.. just said that it would be quite a useful addition and would allow us to also further break away from TA style stuffs.. although I dont think it would require months of work either..