Distributing tech production across several buildings in group selection

[nixcoder]

Hey all, I'm a regular 0ad player. When I'm playing I usually build two blacksmiths and put them in a group select hotkey. It frustrates me a bit that when I queue up several techs in the blacksmiths (I generally have 2 or 3 which I select via a hotkey), the techs all get queued up in the same blacksmith. This irritated me to the point that I wanted to get into the code to understand if this is something I could 'fix'. After struggling to understand how it all works (was just barely able understand some isolated pieces) I made some changes to the selection panel code with the following 'enhancement':

• Whenever multiple buildings are selected that have the same tech, when researching these techs, the tech is researched in the structure with the lowest queue count. Thus distributing future tech research across the structures in the group that is currently selected. Using the above blacksmith example, if I have 2 blacksmiths in a group select, I would now be able to queue 'iron arrowheads' and 'wooden shield' and have them be produced each in a different blacksmith.

I wanted to run this by people in the forum before creating a ticket and submitting a patch since I'm unsure if this functionality is desired.

[hyperion]

I don't see why this shouldn't be desirable. An alternative and/or complement could be a hotkey to cycle through the buildings of the same type as the currently selected one.

[Freagarach]

If you feel it's useful, @nixcoder, there are probably plenty of others that feel it's useful So feel free to make a patch! (I find this feature necessary as well.)