Option "Evaluate resources just in time" removing the annoying need to click frequently in production queue (and allows you to enjoy strategic battles)

[SKAcz]

First of all I would like to thank you for the good work that was done in the creation of the game, we installed and tried the game over a local network for two and it worked smoothly :)

And now the fundamental question: for years we have been struggling with the fact that you have to constantly click too much economy in RTS games, and then the game is more simcity than a realtime strategy or realtime tactics game.
In doing so, here is one simple solution:

The option to (turn on/off) to check that enough resources to produce a unit are evaluated just before the unit production starts, not when player clicking 20 units into the (future) production queue.
Together with the option to turn on an infinite unit production plan (or large quantities) if I have sufficient resource extraction I don't have to deal with micro production and can enjoy strategic and tactical battles elsewhere on the map.
Please would it be possible to implement this in some simple way ?
(No need to even implement production priorities, it is quite sufficient to take the next unit in the order, evaluate if there are resources and start production or stop and do another check in the next second or 10 seconds).

Thanks a lot for answer.

SKAcz

[Gurken Khan]

Hi @SKAcz, welcome to the forums.

Have you tried autoque? (That button with the cog and ∞.)

Edited April 19 by Gurken Khan

[SKAcz]

I tested it now more and good news is its is half way working, it allows even mixed units, good, Thanks for tip much better than nothing

I will test later more in detail, looks like in some moment it will stop produce and never will start produce again even if resources are already again available.

[gui456wSERTDYF]

What I would like is that autoqueue is not stopped if I run out of resources, it would be nice if it were just paused until resources are available. Same as with population limit, it just pauses production until population cap is available.

[Baelish]

6 hours ago, gui456wSERTDYF said:

What I would like is that autoqueue is not stopped if I run out of resources, it would be nice if it were just paused until resources are available. Same as with population limit, it just pauses production until population cap is available.

Same. It's very annoying, especially for animals queue

[Gurken Khan]

8 hours ago, SKAcz said:

it allows even mixed units

It also allows batches (you can dial their size up and down with the mouse wheel), but people have done the numbers and I believe the time/work ratio is only beneficial when the batch size is >17 or something.

[Atrik]

2 hours ago, Gurken Khan said:

but people have done the numbers and I believe the time/work ratio is only beneficial when the batch size is >17 or something.

Probably that come from over-simplified calculations. There are enough variables in this game that no formula could define the optimal number of units to train at a given time. But what's for sure is that in a lot of cases, if your goal is to get fastest population grow, consuming a maximum of available resources into training units is extremely often the best. Because of this, you can assume that a better autoqueue would try to always train with the biggest batch possible. I use this assumption in ResizeQueue mod.

 

@Baelish @SKAcz If you want autoqueue to be able to adapt to resources and housing, well, I did a mod that do exactly that.
I've just added some default configuration to ResizeQueue, so you don't need to checks options to make it work. 

Resize Queue repo : https://gitlab.com/4trik/resizequeue
With this mod, autoqueue should:

1. Resize the training batchs. (will not consume last 100wood, this is a setting you can change)
2. Stop production when housed, or out of resources,  and resume it when possible.
3. Prevent autoqueue to consume resources for a building while player is placing it. (I hated when autoqueue made you fail to place a building, and sometimes you don't even realize it)

I'll summit this mod for review for mod.io today.

 

The mod progui also has a feature that does exactly the same with added graphical panels to:

1. Control production settings (change for example how much wood not to consume (for advanced players in some cases you want to change it briefly to 0, or 200..)
2. In addition of picking units to produce from a specific building panel, you have a global panel where you can select what units to train, it also make mixed production accurate so you can get the army composition you plan for.

Edited April 20 by Atrik

[real_tabasco_sauce]

@SKAcz

The opinion of myself and plenty of other players is that while economy management tasks can be repetitive, they are an important part of the game. Namely that a player must decide where to allocate their attention when they are under pressure or applying pressure. The autoqueue we currently have is simple so that you still have to manage economy.

Learning how to multitask well is a (probably the) key skillset in RTS games, and overly automating the economy would ruin that part.

Also just be aware that its widely considered cheating to use progui in multiplayer.

[chrstgtr]

2 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

@SKAcz

The opinion of myself and plenty of other players is that while economy management tasks can be repetitive, they are an important part of the game. Namely that a player must decide where to allocate their attention when they are under pressure or applying pressure. The autoqueue we currently have is simple so that you still have to manage economy.

Learning how to multitask well is a (probably the) key skillset in RTS games, and overly automating the economy would ruin that part.

Also just be aware that its widely considered cheating to use progui in multiplayer.

Agree.

@SKAcz: if you dislike eco constraints, you can also just play with higher resources (i.e., death match starting resources or the "gift from the gods" cheat). 

[Gurken Khan]

2 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

"gift from the gods"

Or you can watch a mobile game play itself.

I use gift from the gods if I just want to check something, but with instant advancement, building, production and ~unlimited resources there's not much left what makes an RTS match, no?

[chrstgtr]

11 minutes ago, Gurken Khan said:

Or you can watch a mobile game play itself.

I use gift from the gods if I just want to check something, but with instant advancement, building, production and ~unlimited resources there's not much left what makes an RTS match, no?

I agree. That is why I don't see any joy in mods that automate eco/production. But here we are. 

[Atrik]

5 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

if you dislike eco constraints you can also just play with higher resources (i.e., death match starting resources or the "gift from the gods" cheat). 

Just in case I would precise: constraints are the same with the features I described. @chrstgtr meant to do a metaphor.

Also, in my opinion, removing meaningless repetitive tasks doesn't take anything away from the game. @SKAcz started this thread expressing that vanilla production system could lead to frustrations. When I have to disable autotraining that's the only thing I feel different about the game. Just little more frustration about having to restart autoqueue when notified "Insufficient resources...".

Making production more beginner friendly (and user-friendly in general) is probably a good idea for this game if the goal is to get more players. Maybe having visibility over witch building is idle or not would be a good start to improve vanilla UI.

[chrstgtr]

36 minutes ago, Atrik said:

Just in case I would precise: constraints are the same with the features I described. @chrstgtr meant to do a metaphor.

If you are going to try to insult someone you should first use a dictionary to look up the words that you use in your insult. Your rebuttal should also be written intelligibly. 

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/metaphor

Edited April 21 by chrstgtr

[SKAcz]

I would just like to point out that unlimited resources model is bad for interesting game.

(but when somebody in some time/situation frame achieve fluent unlimited like income of set of resources, good, but to achieve it is a battle for )

A limited number of resources but randomly even asymmetrically placed on the map
(by combining several larger and more smaller occurrences of resources in combination with the terrain and obstacles, an unlimited number of variations can be achieved if we also include (at least at a greater distance from the starting positions) an asymmetric distribution.)
will create a plenty of development options and scenarios for controlling which parts of the map to fight over.
All the more interesting if it requires exploration to find out information about where what is,
which way to go, etc.
If certain types of units require more of this and that resource the number of possible scenarios and windows
of opportunity given the available resources grows exponentially ...

A hugely variable universe can be assembled from small, well-functioning elements.

PS. Fear for what will be left of the game if you don't have to click unnecessarily on trivial things that you just have to think once and next time they happen automatically. If someone finds a game so boring that they fall asleep to it like a train driver and therefore want a button to press to stay awake, they should ask themselves why they fall asleep and how to make the game more interesting, right? And here is plenty of possibilities which can easy be made to increase variability of game.  All of them are the opposite of symmetry, the opposite of the ease of substituting one resource for another.

Thanks for mods, we will try it, i hope it will be easy somehow.

Edited April 21 by SKAcz

[0 calories]

10 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

Agree.

@SKAcz: if you dislike eco constraints, you can also just play with higher resources (i.e., death match starting resources or the "gift from the gods" cheat). 

Also you can play with players who accept these features, so in other words you can ignore chrstgtr and not let him join your games or viceversa.  All issue resolved.

Uusally when soemone forward your focus to another way of playing like death-match is trying just to get rid of complicated communication .-) You are tottaly free to play any setup. Let him/them play dead matches or gifts from gods as they wish, honestly it is not what you want to really play in team games, most preffered is just basic 300 starting resources.

Edited April 21 by 0 calories

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

On 19/04/2024 at 6:32 PM, Gurken Khan said:

but people have done the numbers and I believe the time/work ratio is only beneficial when the batch size is >17 or something.

If I remember correctly this is true with some caveats. His conclusion was that 1 by 1 is most efficient by resources spent and earned by the units trained. However he didn't factor in that accumulating unspent resources is another cost of 1 by 1, at some point in real games (as opposed to a math scenario) it becomes considerably better to make batches of 2-10 so that you can spend resources faster. If you do this your bigger population will cause your eco score curve to be faster than someone doing 1 by 1 even if the 1 by 1 player is getting a better return on investment for each unit he makes. 

This is what makes progui so op because it makes sure all your resources are spent on the maximum AND most efficient production method (aside from the fact that you can completely avoid having idle time on your production buildings, which even the best players of 0ad can't eliminate).

[real_tabasco_sauce]

6 hours ago, Atrik said:

meaningless

4 hours ago, SKAcz said:

unnecessarily on trivial things

Ok, maybe you two consider these things trivial, but I would expect the majority of multiplayer users would consider them not trivial. Sure the game would be "easier" if many economy tasks are done for you, but I guarantee the game would be less fun. If you take away unit production from the user, like in atrik's mod, what is next? You could also automate deciding where your gatherers go to have perfectly balanced resources, and automatically build houses when needed. At some point, you may as well not simulate economy and just place buildings on resources to get a trickle of food, wood, metal and stone. That way there is no clicks needed for economy and you can focus on strategy.

For single player though, it doesn't really matter, you can mod it however you like. And like @0 calories said, multiplayer is fine as long as others are playing on the same level.

[Gurken Khan]

26 minutes ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

His conclusion was that 1 by 1 is most efficient by resources spent and earned by the units trained. However he didn't factor in that accumulating unspent resources is another cost of 1 by 1, at some point in real games (as opposed to a math scenario) it becomes considerably better to make batches of 2-10 so that you can spend resources faster. If you do this your bigger population will cause your eco score curve to be faster than someone doing 1 by 1 even if the 1 by 1 player is getting a better return on investment for each unit he makes.

I don't get it. Cost of unspent res? Steeper eco score curve (if it is the case) is better than a higher ROI of units?

But I won't lose any sleep if I go to bed dumb (without further explanation).

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

4 hours ago, SKAcz said:

Thanks for mods, we will try it, i hope it will be easy somehow

Some people actually try to master challenging skills instead of just making the game easier. There's a lot of fun and re-playability in games where you can build skills to beat other players.

I'm not against automated features, I just think that ANY automated feature should remain un-optimized so that direct management and application of skill can outperform the automated features. For example, people laugh at how inefficient autoscout is in aoe2. The devs would have an easy time making autoscout highly effective. The reason they don't is so that players can build multitasking and prioritization skills that come with manual scouting.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

15 minutes ago, Gurken Khan said:

I don't get it. Cost of unspent res? Steeper eco score curve (if it is the case) is better than a higher ROI of units?

But I won't lose any sleep if I go to bed dumb (without further explanation).

It wasn't factored into the original math that training a batch allows the next group of units to be trained sooner than 1x1.

[Gurken Khan]

8 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

training a batch allows the next group of units to be trained sooner than 1x1.

Ah, that makes sense.

[alre]

2 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Ok, maybe you two consider these things trivial, but I would expect the majority of multiplayer users would consider them not trivial. Sure the game would be "easier" if many economy tasks are done for you, but I guarantee the game would be less fun.

you cannot give that guarantee, you can only speak for your taste.

I can't see why you should try to change the mind of someone who clearly wants to try the game differently. You rightly warned that a lot of PvP players would consider it a cheat, but all this animosity towards Atrik - who just provided the OP with exactly what they asked - is unjustified.

[SKAcz]

On 20/04/2024 at 6:09 AM, Atrik said:

ResizeQueue mod

 

Sorry for stupid question, but how to install this extension exactly? I tried Download Mods in game but cannot see there any mod with similar name

[real_tabasco_sauce]

38 minutes ago, alre said:

I can't see why you should try to change the mind of someone

Well, I didn't mean that. I just wanted to set the record straight when I hear people call economy management "meaningless" and "unnecessary." There is absolutely a reason for it, even if some ppl don't like it.

38 minutes ago, alre said:

you cannot give that guarantee, you can only speak for your taste.

And sure, that is just my opinion, but it is a well informed one, since fully automating eco (including houses and tasking) would basically remove a solid percentage of the game's total content.

Edited April 21 by real_tabasco_sauce

[alre]

2 minutes ago, SKAcz said:

Sorry for stupid question, but how to install this extension exactly? I tried Download Mods in game but cannot see there any mod with similar name

first search result in the forum: