proGUI, the day after

[Mentula]

It's now a few months proGUI has been around and we have had the time to form an opinion and evaluate the consequences on the gameplay and the game experience.

Although I have never used the mod myself, I played in several games and watched replays with players using it and here is my evaluation on the matter. Most of what I am writing here is personal opinion, so please take it with a grain of salt.

1. Non-negligible advantage

proGUI gives a non-negligible advantage to players. We can observe (in the sense of measure, more that just notice) that players using proGUI have a significantly better economy compared to other players of the same level, and even of higher levels. We regularly observe less experienced players having an economy aligned to that of experienced players. We also observe good players making the difference in games against players far beyond their reach. I don't want to dive into discussions on levels and skills, which can easily go out of track, I'm just appealing to the reader's experience, which might match mine.

See this post for an actual experiment supporting this claim.

2. Unfair advantage

This is 100% personal opinion, as the definition of what is fair and what is not depends on each individual's sensibility. From my point of view, the use of proGUI oversteps the threshold of what is fair. In a game like 0 A.D. the combination of economic growth and military strategy are skills that players value and seek. One of the two aspects is not fully, but greatly automatized by proGUI, making the whole game assuming a different flavor. Sure, there are configurations (f.e. deathmatch) and mods focusing exclusively on the military side, and I am not against all-proGUI-games. But I think it's unfair to mix proGUI players and non-proGUI players in the same game, due of the artificial advantage introduced by proGUI. It's a bit like mixing bikes and electric bikes in a race.

3. Against the game spirit

Again, personal opinion. The concept of 0 A.D. (and games alike) revolves around dominating the opponent on two main levels, intrinsically combined: economy and military. proGUI artificially forges one of the two. proGUI is not an eco-bot that plays for you, but it's not even far from that. The game vision expresses clear positions on certain pitfalls that should be avoided, and I don't see proGUI giving a contribute in that direction; rather the opposite, I would say.

So, what?

Well, I don't know! Personally, I would kindly invite those who use proGUI (or similar) to refrain from using it in regular games, but of course it's up to their sensibility to keep the game "fair". Far from me pushing towards enforcement of rules or other robocop solutions that, in my opinion, don't help making this community more cohesive. It would be nice to behave in accordance to common sense, but I can see that common sense varies a lot depending on who you ask.

That being said, I know the developer of proGUI is a good guy, with a genuine curiosity and the best intentions. As an open project as 0 A.D. is, it is desirable that satellite projects (such as mods) are likewise open. It's on us -as a community- to find the solution to this problem, if we evaluate it as such.

Edited June 20, 2023 by Mentula
added link to dataset supporting claim #1

[0 calories]

I share same mind as Mentula

I vote for integrating it to vanilla of 0ad to make it essentail part (currently there exist already queue management but is terribly written, so overwriting it with this proGUI implementation would be best) this would make issue resolved all have same starting line.

 

 

[sarcoma]

autociv had autotraining long before vanilla, let the devs add some progui features if they want to or let ppl use the mod without conditions

[real_tabasco_sauce]

I agree on points 1,2, and 3.

modders are free to do what they want, but if I was in a tournament and my opponent was using Progui, I would call it cheating.

I can tell you for sure that with all players using automated eco, and even more so for automated sniping, the game would simply be a lot less fun.

Edited June 16, 2023 by real_tabasco_sauce

[alre]

2 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

I can tell you for sure that with automated eco, and even more so for automated sniping, the game would simply be a lot less fun.

for you.

[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.

Spoiler

Powerfull UI, sound like some kind of grand-master software, It's actually so simple, and the integration in game feels pretty natural. I don't know how something so ridiculous/cute could make so many feel threatened... Or even that proGUI is a special mod in any sens.

 

Edited June 16, 2023 by Atrik

[rossenburg]

proGUI won't magically transform a novice into a professional player. Hand this tool to @borg-, for example, and you might find his gameplay significantly deteriorating in comparison to when he uses traditional methods. Ultimately, it's all about effective management. The minor edge that proGUI offers is the ability to precisely train the exact number of units, ensuring that it doesn't exceed your current population cap, provided that you have sufficient resources. This contrasts with the traditional auto-queue that handles this process one unit at a time. Beyond this, I don't perceive any extraordinary aspect in the mod that warrants labeling it as a cheat. In competitive environments, like tournaments, the use of proGUI could even be completely restricted and it somehow understandable. Would anyone call Quickstart and farm management a cheat cause it saves you 10 seconds of clicks?

[real_tabasco_sauce]

Yeah, obviously there will be 'growing pains' when trying some new mod, so it will not be immediately OP. For example, I have many features of autociv turned off because they are unfamiliar to me (and because I have a small screen).

@alre maybe I should elaborate: with all players using auto start, automated eco, and auto sniping like you suggested elsewhere, you begin to homogenize gameplay. Its inevitable. In contrast, the current 'manual' economy and military gameplay allows people to make mistakes, to learn, and to try fun and new approaches in order to get better at the game.

[alre]

31 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

alre maybe I should elaborate: with all players using auto start, automated eco, and auto sniping like you suggested elsewhere, you begin to homogenize gameplay. Its inevitable.

not quite. you can take radical economic choices with ProGUI activated, and feel more confident about them because of the mod; you can and you would very often turn off the auto-production, to then turn it on again. not every game is the same in any ways more than with vanilla.

it's a bit like when autociv's autoqueue was out (and now it's in the game), except ProGUI is more helpful.

Edited June 16, 2023 by alre

[Atrik]

@Mentula  I was thinking about this post I feel you made a little without that much proofs on your claims, so It does feel unfair to me.

On 15/06/2023 at 10:05 PM, Mentula said:

I played in several games and watched replays with players using it and here is my evaluation on the matter.

I'll assume one of the players you observed and concluded was kinda heavily boosted by eco with the mod would be me (there aren't hundreds of players using proGUI).
Firstly you probably noticed that I usually build few farms more then average (12-14), and very slightly go for more women's too. This is often part of a deliberate strategy to be able to relief any ally that will lose farms, or to have extra safety myself. This, when working, leads to higher eco score ofc, you send ~10 units less on front-line, but you can instantly contribute to any front. So maybe you didn't take this into account.
I'll still take myself as an example, also so I don't need to cite names in this topic since it's a (very unproven) accusation of unfairness.
But I don't feel like I have any tremendous boom advantage. I even often play in consequence of not being the fastest with a defensive strategy.
I don't play 1v1, but here I have one from  yesterday where I boomed slower then my duelist, but won at the end.
metadata.jsoncommands.txt

 

On 15/06/2023 at 10:05 PM, Mentula said:

Although I have never used the mod myself

I don't take anything you say like an personal attack, I hope you won't too if I underline that you made this post poorly informed on what you wanted to criticize. I'll agree on Non-negligible advantage but not because it lifts that much the eco of the player.

From my observations, players using the mod benefit more then Ɛ in eco from it, in late game, where other players training gets messy, while with proGUI queue stay mostly neat. Also not costing them unnecessary attention "finding the barrack with the auto-queue that' just broke when you get the warning message" .

Beside the mod also provide manual solutions to the problem cited above.

1. Displaying (for quick-select) groups of idles buildings.
2. Provide a shortcut to filter only idle buildings from current selection.

I would be curious to hear if anyone really enjoy "finding the barrack with the auto-queue that' just broke, when you get the warning message", this was frustrating me, and I'm glad I have 3 tools for it. Hotkey, Idle building icons, and auto-queue that don't break at all.

I'm not sure the trainer should be in vanilla game or anything (because of the added complexity of the GUI, not because it's unfair). But yet one of the two manual feature above couldn't hurt, I guess. Not sure what people want or if they know it themselves.

Edited June 17, 2023 by Atrik

[Mentula]

Before entering the merit. This post in not an accusation against the proGUI project: if someone moves critiques against the project or its developer, I will take the proGUI part. As I already said in my first post it is desirable that satellite projects (such as mods) are likewise open. Explicitly (if I haven't said it loudly) this means I support modders, mods and creativity.

This thread is about a problem we have. Somebody in the community do not consider this a problem, some others do. The sole fact that a part of the community (not just me) evaluates this as a problem, makes this discussion worth to exist.

Further, this thread is not a proposal of decommissioning the proGUI project. To summarize what I said is: 1. I don't have proposals 2. We all should behave according to common sense, which varies (as a consequence, I do not expect others to think like I do).

And although I didn't formulate any proposal, I am inviting the community members to find a solution that can accommodate the majority of us. Solutions can be: a) we all use proGUI b) some of us use it, some others don't c) the proGUI queuing system becomes part of 0 A.D. vanilla d) other... I am not supporting any solution in particular. My intent is to face a problem and find a solution, leveraging our rationality at best.

 

Entering the merit: one more time, when I say observe, I mean measure more than notice. Expectations and emotions affect the way we interpret results, so I waited and wrote this post after observing a concrete example of a player who reaches maxpop at minute >17 without proGUI, and reaches maxpop at minute ~14 with proGUI. Since data matter, we can all experiment: we play a number of games with and without proGUI under same conditions, and measure the effect.

About the (very unproven) accusation of unfairness @Atrik: please note that the section you quote starts with This is 100% personal opinion. Opinions are, by nature, very unproven.

 

Once again (I quote), I don't want to dive into discussions on levels and skills, which can easily go out of track. Arguments about transforming novices into professional players and the use that top 10 players can do of proGUI are, in my opinion, off-track (besides, nobody is supporting such claims, as far as I can read on the forum). The same I can say about individual strategies to boom. The problem we are discussing is not about natural skills and strategies. But, whatever you guys think it makes sense to give a constructive contribution to the topic, I'm open to hear.

[rossenburg]

17 minutes ago, Mentula said:

Once again (I quote), I don't want to dive into discussions on levels and skills, which can easily go out of track. Arguments about transforming novices into professional players and the use that top 10 players can do of proGUI are, in my opinion, off-track (besides, nobody is supporting such claims, as far as I can read on the forum). The same I can say about individual strategies to boom. The problem we are discussing is not about natural skills and strategies. But, whatever you guys think it makes sense to give a constructive contribution to the topic, I'm open to hear.

Your argument seems to suggest that the mod provides a certain competitive advantage that could be deemed unfair. Please clarify if my interpretation of your previous statement was inaccurate.

[seeh]

1 hour ago, rossenburg said:

Your argument seems to suggest that the mod provides a certain competitive advantage that could be deemed unfair. Please clarify if my interpretation of your previous statement was inaccurate.

In my case, every mod I use makes my work a little easier. also which monitors, mouse, which computer I use. everything matters. even a little on which chair I'm sitting.

yes this right. if you're trying to make a comparison to someone like me but playing without mods, it's misleading. but if you define for yourself: I play against these gamer including his equipments.

some players cant play without autociv (e.g. me). make a comparison? whats the strenge of players without autociv?

yes its still some kind of problem - not much for me. i understand. some mods have more impact than other mods.

Edited June 17, 2023 by seeh

[Atrik]

3 hours ago, Mentula said:

About the (very unproven) accusation of unfairness @Atrik: please note that the section you quote starts with This is 100% personal opinion. Opinions are, by nature, very unproven.

Yes sorry, however I picked up on this:

On 15/06/2023 at 10:05 PM, Mentula said:

We can observe (in the sense of measure, more that just notice)

I know you have a constructive spirit, so please don't think I'm too much on the defensive here.

3 hours ago, Mentula said:

after observing a concrete example of a player who reaches maxpop at minute >17 without proGUI, and reaches maxpop at minute ~14 with proGUI

Interesting, but maybe a player that reach full pop at min 17 already isn't working very well with batch size or managing idle building in general. A single example could also be biased. However I think nothing in the vanilla game helps to identify idle buildings easily. Thus my suggestion in previous post too, to at least have some visibility on idle buildings and/or hotkeys in vanilla game would be cool already.

 

...

I guess the goal is to express opinions..

3 hours ago, Mentula said:

Solutions can be: a) we all use proGUI b) some of us use it, some others don't c) the proGUI queuing system becomes part of 0 A.D. vanilla d) other... I am not supporting any solution in particular. My intent is to face a problem and find a solution, leveraging our rationality at best.

• "a) we all use proGUI"
  Some people can just not use it, I don't see why you added this one. As mentioned by @rossenburg and myself previously, we know it's not the best fit for every player.
   
• "b) some of us use it, some others don't"
  As now, I even made put up the effort for it to be in the mod downloader, so that everyone can try it, as some players may find value in it. It's probably cool like this, everybody is happy, if you want it you get it under 5 sec, if you don't want it, you don't do nothing.
   
• "c) the proGUI queuing system becomes part of 0 A.D. vanilla"
  Probably the dev team won't consider it and for good reasons, as I expressed you have a new layer of "concepts" to add, like resources that can't be consumed (reserves in proGUI) ....
   
• "My intent is to face a problem and find a solution, leveraging our rationality at best."
  I don't know... I still don't understand what problem, I'm hearing some push-backs since I posted a POC in here. I though this was because of my bad communication. I understand you will support the existence of the project, but you are still framing it's somehow threatening or at least causing troubles (definition of a problem).
  So what is the problem? @Mentula you know a player that would use FieldManager would have a superior food income per field. However you probably concluded that this wasn't a necessary feature that all must have, either by using the mod, nor by integrating it in vanilla. It's also cool to add some mods as you learn the game, you have new things to try out, understand, experiment with.

Edited June 17, 2023 by Atrik

[Feldfeld]

I agree with Mentula that ProGUI gives a serious advantage over a player of the same level, if used well. However he didn't say what is in my opinion the biggest reason why this is the case (at my level that is).

The biggest advantage is in the case of continuous fights or harrassments, preferably in p1 or p2, where there are 3 or 4 production buildings per player. In that case, the attacking player can focus near all his actions in microing the fights, making threats, forcing his opponent to react accordingly, and he will still have near perfect production at home. Meanwhile, the other player forced to micro his fights as well will not be able to queue units at the right time and will fall behind because of it. The population deficit will grow until the game is definitely over.

I think that it is quite a big advantage. For comparison if used correctly by a good player it would be kind of as if a player is with a game speed of 0.7 while his opponent is at 1.0, normal speed. While both players have the same skills and would make a good decision at a good time, having your game slow down allows you to make more actions that are valuable at a critical time of the game. However, if both players are booming, it makes almost no difference as both players will have the time to do all meaningful actions, and the boom will be the same. It may still boost some players' booming ability, so it may also be unfair for that reason, but i don't really know about that personally.

I am saying this based on (maybe a bit limited) experience. There's a certain player that has a similar skill level as me. If I recall correctly I have a slightly higher win ratio against him when he is not using ProGUI. However when he used ProGUI I had 0-3, and it was not even close. He simply made what I think is a perfect use of the mod, forcing fights mid-game and getting a pop advantage I could not recover from.

I will give a little more intuition on how this can affect competitive games by giving the example on how macros are viewed in Age of Empires 2. Basically, any kind of macro is banned, and you can see in this video how even the simplest macros are problematic: 

0 A.D. is not AoE2 of course but still that shows macros can escalate into a huge advantage. So if powerful macros are found with @Mentula's mod then that gives what i think could be an unfair competitive advantage as well.

The same can be said with autociv where building hotkeys give a huge advantage (when used properly, of course). The difference for me is that it is a feature that should so obviously be in the game, that it makes it fine. But anything further than that, I am not so sure. AoE2 also had some grey areas with the building range indicator, and some mods like small trees or age of cubes.

I hope you see my point. I personally wouldn't mind too much in team games which are less serious and where we try to balance it before game start, however if I expect the game to be competitive when I really want my level to clash with the opponent, that's gonna be a problem for me. Of course I know that neither @Atrik and @Mentula intend to do any wrong and I respect the openness of your programs, but still that can cause a problem when a powerful feature is released.

Personally I would like very much for the AI to have an enhanced training algorithm. Personally a long time ago I modified their queuing algorithm to grow population faster, however it is not worth much as I didn't touch the other parts of the AI to go with it. We can see that in the following screenshot where my AI (red) grew population much faster in the early game than Petra (green), where they both had the same gather rate at a medium difficulty each:

[real_tabasco_sauce]

Yeah I agree with @Feldfeld. Hotkeys and Gui rearrangements are fine, but macros such as auto-start economy should be considered cheating in a competitive setting.

[Atrik]

52 minutes ago, Feldfeld said:

The biggest advantage is in the case of continuous fights or harrassments, preferably in p1 or p2, where there are 3 or 4 production buildings per player. In that case, the attacking player can focus near all his actions in microing the fights, making threats, forcing his opponent to react accordingly, and he will still have near perfect production at home

6 hours ago, Atrik said:

From my observations, players using the mod benefit more then Ɛ in eco from it, in late game, where other players training gets messy, while with proGUI queue stay mostly neat. Also not costing them unnecessary attention "finding the barrack with the auto-queue that' just broke when you get the warning message" .

Was trying to make the same point, but then isn't that a desirable thing?
I understand the competitive thing, players can always say they don't play with a opponent with this mod. So nobody offense nobody. It would just be nearly as lame as banning autociv because one don't use the hotkeys and don't want to assume the relative deteriorated game-play. Of course there are pitfalls, but proGUI is kinda tested now and nobody has been worst off, I guess if you found a opponent that challenge your skills with his skills (even if it's with another GUI then yours) you probably yourself got less bored of your supremacy?

I agree that autociv hotkeys are more obvious then proGUI features, but it's hard to delimit categories. I would argue native auto-queue should at least put itself on hold instead of breaking, or ceil batch size accounting pop limit. Less, but still very obvious to me.
Even with theses features, I'll still want to use proGUI because the composition thing is cool. But it might make this mod look less fancy to players that built habits.

[Feldfeld]

6 hours ago, Atrik said:

It would just be nearly as lame as banning autociv because one don't use the hotkeys and don't want to assume the relative deteriorated game-play

Not quite close for me, hotkeys are a very important part of any RTS game, the ProGUI features may not be something 0 A.D. goes for in the future.

6 hours ago, Atrik said:

I guess if you found a opponent that challenge your skills with his skills (even if it's with another GUI then yours) you probably yourself got less bored of your supremacy?

The only thing i have observed is a player that was on par with me without ProGUI beat me quite convincingly with the mod. I didn't play a lot this alpha so I didn't notice anything else, and it's not like i played a lot of games with that player either, but still what I observed was kinda overwhelming.

[seeh]

2 hours ago, Feldfeld said:

Not quite close for me, hotkeys are a very important part of any RTS game, the ProGUI features may not be something 0 A.D. goes for in the future.

 

2 hours ago, Feldfeld said:

The only thing i have observed is a player that was on par with me without ProGUI beat me quite convincingly with the mod. I didn't play a lot this alpha so I didn't notice anything else, and it's not like i played a lot of games with that player either, but still what I observed was kinda overwhelming.

Yes. So this is a fact. In other words its now, some kind of, a different player. Same to me. I now use proGui all the time. I can't imagine not using it anymore. Same with autoCiv. For my decision its not most important that i play better, but i play much more relaxed with much more fun.

I would like to give a very rough spontaneous estimate (that differs much of the situations and the player (some need it more some less) as you already explained correctly):
- autoCiv maybe 100 rating
- proGui maybe 70 rating for me

I would like to give a very rough spontaneous estimate if pro Players us it:
- proGui maybe 20 rating

=>The old autoTrain nerved. So i did a autoCiv - fix to the solve autoTrain-forget-to-train-problem.

Easy:     "hotkey.session.queueunit.autoqueueon": "\"Z\", \"X\", \"C\", \"B\", \"Y\", \"N\", \"N\"",
Means: if you use mouse, you dont touch autoTrain with keys its always enabled.

=>I also love the autoBatch size. So i could focus more on the game.

In other words. The Population - Comunication is much better. They understand what i want, what the plan is. If we should boom then train. That very easy to understand. I assume the IQ of the Pops is proably not much under 100 So it feels correct for me.

But true. If you play vs me with proGui its like playing vs a different player. If its possibel to show others what mods i use when i play, that will be good.

BTW i have added a little command line in a mod that tells all what i use at the moment.

Edited June 18, 2023 by seeh

[sarcoma]

19 hours ago, Feldfeld said:

a player that was on par with me without ProGUI beat me quite convincingly with the mod

seeh, stop beating feldfeld

[Atrik]

(my) TLDR: you can choose to use or not use the mod. Anybody is also free to forbid using the mod from their game (very lame, but whatever).

In this topic, a few players and myself have expressed that this queuing system can improve their game experience, and objections seems to always come from players that observed but didn't gave any try to the mod. It's very reasonable to have playing habits, I myself can't get used to some mods. I always appreciated the availability of all  mods, including yours @Mentula and it felt good to be able to pick the ones working for me, dropping the ones that wasn't... Never felt any urge to forbid the ones I don't use even if they could provide an edge if used correctly. They are all reasonable because they are clearly not intended cheats, but expression of a players creativity to have a better game. I can only conclude that the availability of the mod to players, is positive.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

Here is my TLDR, sorry it is a mess. I pretty much agree with @Atrik here but add a couple thoughts.

I tried it to get a cleared picture. I can already tell that the level of automation (autostart, choosing a unit composition for autoqueue) is consistent with macros, if not doing even more tasks for the player.

I won't judge anyone for using it in casual games, and I have already played a few with @Atrik and others and it was fine. But in a competitive setting it should be considered cheating.

I think the reason to consider it cheating is what @Feldfeld described, where a p2 attack to distract the enemy while you flawlessly boom is pretty much a guaranteed win.

On top of that, it is bulky (4 options tabs, lots of screen space) and complicated on its own. It takes time to learn, just like the game underneath. So based on that I would say it is unwise to add to vanilla as some have suggested.

overall, I think its a great tool, especially for new players who might just want to have fun with the AI as well as casual players that don't like the number of clicks needed to manage eco. However, it shouldn't be allowed in competitive games.

[Mentula]

Agree on many arguments. In the attempt to find a compromise, I formulate a concrete proposal which, to make it clear, I am neither supporting nor opposing:

Proposal [codename: "automatic batch size"]

The batch size value can drop below 1 when scrolling with the mouse wheel. When it's 0, the batch count displays "A" instead. "A" stands for "Automatic". See picture below:

When the batch size is set to "A", that building produces the meaningful maximum amount of units that available resources allow. I'm not doing the math here to define what meaningful means. This is an attempt to formulate the concept, and details can be adjusted later.

The propose is, needless to say, to include the automatic batch size feature in vanilla.

Benefit #1: The feature is not exactly what the criticized queuing feature provided by proGUI does, but somehow similar, when combined with auto-queue. The main point of criticism would be addressed by making a similar feature available to all players. With the advantage that the player itself (and not an artificial intelligent trainer) chooses the type of units to train by clicking on icons (or associated hotkeys), which is consistent with the rest of the game design.

Benefit #2: (and I very much support this) Currently, to train the maximum amount of units, we set the batch size to 1 and repeatedly click on the icon (or the associated hotkey) of the unit to train. This is against Fastest click wins. With automatic batch size, one single click is enough.

Feel free to say it's a horrible idea.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

43 minutes ago, Mentula said:

This is against Fastest click wins. With automatic batch size, one single click is enough.

I like the sound of your idea a lot more than the progui solution.

However, you are free to use the mouse wheel to decide a batch size. Also, you can train a batch before the previous one is complete, so the fastest click does not necessarily win. Other decisions and clicks massively outweigh this.

I agree that the auto queue cancellation issue is problematic, but there should be a more elegant solution. I think freezing the queue would be ideal, no?

Maybe freezing vs cancelling the queue could then just be a settings option.

Edited June 19, 2023 by real_tabasco_sauce

[Atrik]

I'll support any proposals enhancing vanilla training or production management.


Already did a mod that resize auto-queue.

This tiny mod  face limitations and they would be same with your proposal. These limitations are addressed in proGUI to actually have MORE control, and is THE idea of proGUI.

 

4 hours ago, Mentula said:

With the advantage that the player itself (and not an artificial intelligent trainer) chooses the type of units to train by clicking on icons (or associated hotkeys)

You don't understand proGUI, what makes it fun is that you have production controllable by dedicated panel. Very obviously you indeed never run it once .
 

Spoiler

 

 

Edited June 19, 2023 by Atrik