Atrik

@Mentula, Firstly I'll want to thank you for this opportunity to clear this topic and maybe address common objections/misconceptions, that players who haven't tried it may have. I think a lot of things are missing from your analysis. Firstly, I'll summarize what the mod does since it's critical to understand why would any player benefit in skill level with it: ProGUI is a fork of BoonGUI with the right panel modified to display stats more focused on players rather then observers. It also has a trainer panel (probably the most criticized feature) that simply allow you to queue units instead of using the building panel. This panel can be used to plan army composition. Other then queuing units in barracks (through using another panel) it doesn't do eco. If you have no food for native auto-queue, it breaks. If you have no food with proGUI trainer, no units are trained. The only difference is that I have a lazy and more interesting way to plan army compo, and other productions. It looks like a "bot" because you don't see the queue, but really it's just smarter auto-queue with a dedicated panel to manage it. A good deal of clicks too: this is also maybe something you know if you don't play with it, but actually if you're not a noob, you'll want to manage actively the panel. It's fewer clicks still for sure, but the mod has no game plan ofc. It's a tool to achieve your plan. You can find satisfying to be able to think "I want 70% ranged units" and get 70% ranged, and have units training accordingly as some may die to maintain the ratio I can change at all time, if for instance I need to counter some cav with pikes. If I need wood for a building, I can simply plan it in the panel for it to not consume the desired amount. This is better then having native auto-queue consuming uncontrollably resources, but obviously, it requires some level of planing. => If you don't know how to eco, it's not going to do magic for you, so why is this mod so controversial? Because it calculate for you the batch sizes and queue it? Instead I have my own personal opinion that I'll develop below. Totally OP: So does it provide an edge? If the mod is just queuing brainlessly units how could it provide any significant advantage? Try to imagine: Imagine you'll have to micro every gatherer to return to drop-site every time they are full capacity, you can maybe queue a few dozens orders but it's still takes your attention. Attention you'll place elsewhere otherwise. Well you'll be noober, and the game would feel less rewarding. => Same is true when having to queue units while you are in critical fight. Not particularly rewarding, leading to poor fight management, can't progress in skill game if you're not clicking faster, can't even spend your time enjoying/managing the fight you prepared, half of the time, for 15min! So yes, if you're not liking this very situation, this trainer feature can have your back. You can also have it off while booming and enable it when you need to focus on something else, also without the worry that half of your barracks are being idles while one of them has 20 units funded and queued. Not useful to everyone: I don't think all players would be better using this mod feature, some players are just good in being in the flow of managing every single resource they consume, and calculating batch size on their own. They rarely use native auto-queue for this reason anyway. But they could still end up wanting the mod for instance for the idle units or building panel. By default the mod has everything off, you can activated the ones you think feel comfortable using trough your game. Game more enjoyable for me: before having this features, I tended to be bored at a point in game, where I would stop putting the necessary effort to repopulate. Now, I even tend to want to continue playing a lost game, just because late game is actually the fun part, and that things I was finding unrewarding aren't there no more. Just personal experience. Because of this simple fact, It would be very difficult to convince me that proGUI isn't doing good, as a humble nub mod as it is. Game more enjoyable for allies: having more attention to give to my allies and game situation, I can be more useful in team game. Things I do less if I'm busy calculating a batch size. I also like the tribute feature that would send any floating resource (I can define what's the threshold of "floating" ofc). A few simple rules to define sending resource and that makes your allies much more resilient. Game much worse for opponents? Still haven't heard any convincing argument for this one, beside that a user generally have better eco curve. By the way a common feedback I got by all users that truly tried it was : "I boom slower with it". The better eco also mostly comes once you use your new free time efficiently. Simpsons paradox of OPness / ProGUI for ProPlayers: I myself have more than a thousand games even if I've been here for less long then you @Mentula. Most players that I know that are using proGUI and use the most advanced feature like the trainer are very OP players already, and predictably, they didn't become unbeatable overnight, barely noticeable improvement if at all when they start using it. So once more, I'm not that convinced it provide any "Unfair advantage". Powerful users doing powerful things with a (call it powerful) UI is just cool.

Ok... I guess I'll accept that a re-balancing would kinda make disappear the justifications for a stance to be able to attack ranged units. Sounds reasonable.

True, the test I did with NoobDude WAS emulating the sniping of 1 unit attacking 1 unit automatically. I can show you if interested. I am not sure it's necessary to have a feature doing perfect sniping, If units would attack individually the closest enemy (matching the criteria) to themselves, this would already naturally spread the unit focus. I insisted this was a illustrative example, demonstrating that "sniping" wouldn't require any bots or scripts, but would look like a very basic amendment, if ever it was considered like a desirable feature.

I don't think this is a good approach btw, I'll rather prefer having it managed by a stance of something. Just using this to demonstrate that it would be so simple to do it.

I get your point. But I stand that it is very reasonable to think of a stance or hotkey that would save players from having to click 100 times, to achieve the same as this example of amendment to unit_action.js "attack-move" : else if (Engine.HotkeyIsPressed("session.attackWeakUnits")) targetClasses = { "attack": ["Ranged", "Support"] }; 2 Lines of code => Hotkey to do "Auto-sniping" available in vanilla 0ad to everyone. I guess the idea is setting some people uncomfortable because the current meta is sniping, and we all tend to be attached to our playing habits. But metas evolve as the game does, so I think this is worth talking about.

Why? I was recently having discussions with some smart community members. I shared with them my reasoning: Sniping is definitively not, following 0AD vision on Repetition - "If you find yourself doing the same action over and over without thought, then we need to either eliminate or automate such an action. Linear repetitious procedures are meaningless and boring." Manual sniping is as today, very clearly on the very repetitive end of the spectrum. Testing if this would be OP A mod in development from a very smart community member, gave me the opportunity to emulate some kind of "auto-sniping". I was surprise to find out it was indeed very effective, and beating by far a top player sniping skills: NoobDude (That I have 0 chances to beat normally). I was very surprise because my expectations was that it would make little difference compared to player manual sniping. So I though about just putting the idea into a hole forever... ... But since my initial reasoning was still holding true, and smart members were agreeing that it was, in theory, undesirable to have to have to spam so much clicks to control a very simple behavior, sniping still feels like a problem needing a solution. How could this be addressed unit_action.js, already have a kind of class filter for "attack-move". Another way I found to get a sens of what would such feature could feel like. "attack-move": { "execute": function(position, action, selection, queued, pushFront) { let targetClasses; if (Engine.HotkeyIsPressed("session.attackmoveUnit")) targetClasses = { "attack": ["Unit"] }; else targetClasses = { "attack": ["Unit", "Structure"] }; Implementing a stance, or hotkey, in main game that would help players "attack weakest unit in range" or another similar feature may change the meta. But this "sniping" meta of is arguably not most rewarding mechanics you can hope for a strategy game. TLDR: No script publicly exist for (practically) sniping in a multiplayer game. I think we should however seek to fix the compulsive clicking required for sniping. This won't end 0AD, but may give way to the implementation of more interesting mechanics, and game-play metas. Also the unfair advantage that this could provide may deter any moders to do it. The best approach could be to have it in native game.

Yes to all. Think this mod is on the wish-list of few people already at this point. I'll download it and probably will be popular mod to be able to play larger games. No ideas on the issues you may face other than that a mod would very probably require all participants to have ofc. If you get this on rails, I'm sure you'll get help if needed. Assuming this is would be a mod and that you have no experience with 0ad mods, this may be useful early in your journey: https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Modding_Guide https://github.com/0ad/0ad I still don't know if there are other important tools. 0ad is easy to mod, but haven't be able to learn if a process to explore the code, other then reading it, exist. I hope someone will explain to nubs how he do it like a pro.

You can always leave some units unassigned in QuickStart, for instance, you could want only cav to go to closest meat, and the rest to await your instructions. In version of QuickStart that's integrated in progui you can have the unassigned units stay in CC (Feature suggested and improved by behundar, where you can still make the placement of a building then the units will be selected upon manual unload). Of course, you won't have a big "edge" using QuickStart, and you could just don't see the point, that's a good thing. For me, I just tend to dislike the stress I go trough when a new game start and the first thing I need to do is to do a sequence of clicks as fast as possible (for me, always the same). I'm glad QuickStart does this for me while I can look around my CC and my allies to see how it looks like. (Still have less then 3secondes to do this before needing to manage, so It feels just right).

Wow just found out about this. I wonder what's the idea, you're not very specific in the thread. ProGUI is already a kind of attempt to allow players to customize some macros. I'll be so happy to see something more customizable/modular. The challenges I see is to have the gui adapted to be able to add/remove buttons for controlling the macros.

It's just default settings, this really depends on your build order as a player, sometimes you want to have a first small batch of females to build or gather, I personally like to make a first cav unit before any females.

If you have QuickStart enabled :tThe first batch trained may be defined by QuickStart instead of the Trainer when both are active. You can simply set the desired units to train and first batch size in QuickStart settings. The default settings when enabling QuickStart is a to produce a batch of 3 females while doing the starting sequence.

@Norse_Harold ok weird.

Any resurgence of @Yekaterina in any shape of smurf detected yet? Few players said they'll leave 0ad recently but of all, the biggest loss for the community is you Yeka.

The difference is that you have "barter panel" setting enabled and me not. But the menu for trainer is the same so I don't understand why you get confused by it. It was probably for another reason, maybe it started training this batch before you change the setting or because you had limited housing.

You should see a small menu/panel popping when right clicking the trainer button. https://youtu.be/ob87oBd57Is?t=150 @seeh

This icons appear if you activate "barter panel" setting, and will display the current market prices of each resources. So the number isn't a setting, but are displaying current resource worth on the market. (Price are always at 90 until you or another player start buying resources). => In short lower number just means this resource is worth less on the market. I did this because I find it useful to have a compact overview of the market on screen, at all time. Additionally, for an advanced use, if you press/toggle this icon, it can be used to buy this resource while some price conditions are met (and if you have a market ofc). The conditions can be explored/changed in the settings. It has a few edge cases, but doesn't replace the normal market panel by any means.

Also did this one for the trainer feature:

Thanks @seeh for your tutorial (or game-play walk-through ). By default, every features like the "trainer" are disabled, some players could be interested by just the overlay. So I though I could also make a short one to introduce the overlay. proGUI overlay overview:

So the idea is to have a new button in main menu "Find a multiplayer game" ? @Stan` is this a feature you for-see as a mod? Or thoughts on a implementation in later alpha? Maybe taking the matchmaking way have a lot of cons, but I believe too that the pros will overweight the cons, in the long run. A player probably don't want to join any kind of games anyway. Sometimes in lobby some games are just some peeps meeting up, chatting or testing sniping technics. There are multiple ways of addressing that last point, ofc. One could be (but is pushing the idea) further: If its possible to have some volunteers to host some games when not playing, we could just make rooms hosted by them, dedicated to "Team Games" and "Duels". So maybe it's possible to get in same time, the availability of hosted games 24/7. Hosts could then be "vetted" by the community somehow. It could help draw more players in 0ad, idk. We could have a lot of pieces to make this happens, @rossenburg has plenty of experiences with lobby with his bots. @seeh was working on some autocivs presets so he can maybe make a automatic/vote system in rooms to pick settings and map without host being here. A first mvp seems indeed very doable.

Neat stuff!

We love you @Yekaterina, unnecessary dramas.

It's funny I couldn't find anything about storage capacity for resource that would have been discussed. Not thinking it's a good idea thoughts.

Agree, housing is sound as it is now.

But should they?

Maybe displaying the sum of the ratings of a team would be good for this then. Not sure, though, that 1400 average out a 1000 and a 1800. For example we all know a 1800 can take off 4 or more 1000, so how you calculate team ratings?