View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0015636 | AI War 1 / Classic | Suggestion - Interface Ideas - Unit Selection, Management, and Orders | Aug 7, 2014 12:33 am | Aug 9, 2014 4:12 pm | |
| Reporter | AdamMil | Assigned To | |||
| Severity | minor | ||||
| Status | new | Resolution | open | ||
| Product Version | 7.055 | ||||
| Summary | 0015636: right-clicking enemy ships in the planet overview/summary should attack them | ||||
| Description | If I select my ships and right-click an enemy type in the planet overview, I expect my ships to attack it. For instance, if I'm getting sniped by a sniper guardian or ion cannon, I'd like to just be able to right-click on its icon and have my ships attack it, rather than having to click the icon, zoom in until I can see it, reselect my ships (see 0015637), right-click on it, zoom out, and scroll back to where I was. It's kind of a pain. Currently left-clicking and right-clicking both move the camera to the next enemy ship of the given type (without zooming in). I think right-clicking should be the same as right-clicking the next enemy ship of the given type (the one that the camera would be moved to if you left-click on it). I.e. it should set their preferred enemy type and give an attack order, and cycle internally to the next enemy of that type. That way the overview can be used for controlling your units. Click on your bombers in the overview, right-click their target. Click on your fighters, right-click enemy bombers. Etc. Another use: You want to do a quick raid of a tough system to extend scouting range. You jump in, see on the overview that there are three tachyon guardians and an ion cannon, so with your ships selected you shift-right-click the tachyon guardian three times and the ion cannon once (adding all four to the attack queue since it cycles through the enemies just like left-clicking does). Then you can shift-ctrl-right-click on the wormhole to have them retreat after the attack. The camera never moves. Since you can assign targets so quickly, your ships are exposed to the minimum fire because they rapidly fly from one target to the next and escape. Possible tweak: Right-clicking without shift might give an attack order for the nearest ship of that type to your selected units rather than cycling through like left-click does, but it's a bit inconsistent with how shift usually works and I'd still be happy either way. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
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One issue. What if the "closest ship" is not unique across the selected units? Should each go for their closest target of their type? If so, that could get very prohibitively expensive (as in, several seconds of delay expensive) due to 1000 vs 1000 unit fights, or more, being actually decently common circumstances in this game. Finding closest units to all the other units is actually an O(n^2) (or in this case, O(n*m)) problem IIRC unless some bookkeeping is done ahead of time, which IIRC, the game does not do because it isn't needed. (For non-computer scientists, this means the time it takes to find the best solution is proportional to the square of the number of things to look at, aka, doubling the number of things to look at does not double the expected time, but (roughly) quadruples it!) Maybe a compromise would be the closest unit to the average position of the selected units. That would indeed be an O(n) (well, O(n+m), but whatever) (again, for non-computer scientists, this means this problem behaves like you would expect. To find the best solution as defined by this technique, doubling the number of things to look at (roughly) doubles the expected time to find it.) |
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Closest to the average position of your selected units is what I was envisioning. (The full 1000x1000 comparisons should only take about ten milliseconds on a modern processor, but I'd agree that it would still be excessive.) But I've updated the description to suggest an even more useful default behavior. |
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I've implemented an experimental version of this in a mod: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,16085.0.html Hopefully the devs will eventually include it in the base game. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 7, 2014 12:33 am | AdamMil | New Issue | |
| Aug 7, 2014 12:59 am | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0038887 | |
| Aug 7, 2014 1:33 am | AdamMil | Relationship added | related to 0015637 |
| Aug 7, 2014 1:34 am | AdamMil | Note Added: 0038891 | |
| Aug 7, 2014 1:35 am | AdamMil | Description Updated | |
| Aug 7, 2014 1:43 am | AdamMil | Description Updated | |
| Aug 7, 2014 1:44 am | AdamMil | Note Edited: 0038891 | |
| Aug 7, 2014 1:45 am | AdamMil | Description Updated | |
| Aug 7, 2014 1:54 am | AdamMil | Description Updated | |
| Aug 7, 2014 1:57 am | AdamMil | Description Updated | |
| Aug 7, 2014 2:02 am | AdamMil | Note Edited: 0038891 | |
| Aug 7, 2014 2:03 am | AdamMil | Note Edited: 0038891 | |
| Aug 7, 2014 2:05 am | AdamMil | Note Edited: 0038891 | |
| Aug 7, 2014 6:05 am | AdamMil | Relationship added | related to 0015641 |
| Aug 9, 2014 4:12 pm | AdamMil | Note Added: 0038933 |
