Allow scheduling units without deactivating the queue when out of resources, only pause production instead

[MirceaKitsune]

This is a change I've been meaning to request for some time. I thought about it several times and as far as I can tell, there's no reason why it couldn't be considered, nor any disadvantage to the method I'm proposing which should be a lot more pleasant to the player. At very least it could be offered as an option so players can configure it to their preference.

Currently if you don't have enough resources to produce an unit, its button turns red and you can't schedule units or batches of that type till you do. This used to be less of a problem until auto-queue was implemented. Ever since you're put in the annoying situation where the production settings of a building are automatically cleared whenever you run out of resources to make units: Every time you have to wait until you have resources again, then go through the buttons and schedule unit batches on each building once more.

My proposal: Don't deactivate a building's schedule and also allow the player to queue units when they don't have the resources for them. The building instead waits until you have enough resources, the last building that's been waiting will produce an unit of that type the moment resources become available. This exact behavior already exists when you're reached the population cap: Unit production doesn't deactivate but waits until you build more houses, you can also schedule as many units as you want till then as the button isn't disabled only production is paused... couldn't the exact same be done for lack of resources?

[Stan`]

@Freagarach

[Freagarach]

https://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/6278

[Darkcity]

Context

This is a fair ask. There are multiple benefits to it and a lots of players feel like this should be there. Recently i promoted coral only game play in tgs and most people are started to like it, although the one of issue with that is one mentioned above.

The problem it will solve are follwoing.

1. New players are not used to fast paced game play and they are slow in how to handle pop boom, it will help them imporve fast, hence user retention.
2. This is an good to have feature. This will insure people will use this auto train feature more and more.
3. It will promote coral usages
4. It will impact user experience as whole. Like player are seeing that their batch in training progress.

 

There are 2 solutions to above problem.

First is mentioned by the @MirceaKitsune. I have some more inputs on top on how to pause the production

Example Scenario: Auto queue for 5 women from civic center , currently only 150 food availble.

1. Simply don't start training the que untill you have the required resources. Here training of 5 will be 0% and wil progress only after 250 food is available.

2. or, Start the que prodution and halt at the percentage of the resource availale. Here training will be continune,  as long as available resource > %training time completed * resource required. AOE like mechanism.

second solution is: (Taking same example as earlier)

Drop the que size to available resource. So, here the queue size will drop to 3 and that will continue, the least number it can drop to is 1. If resource available is not enough to train 1 unit then the queue will pause at 1. 

Why second? this is useful for continuous training of units given available resource. The player doesn't have to wait to reduce size or get resources to produce his next batch.

My pick will be go for first.

Extra suggestion: For new installation/new players, keep auto train by default. 

 

Edited June 16, 2022 by Darkcity

[MirceaKitsune]

I still run into this issue during my games and it's always a headache I'd be happy without. Whenever I'm out of resources my barracks forcefully disable auto-queue... if I don't see the little text announcing it or know which building it refers to, it can take minutes before I realize I'm no longer producing soldiers and remember that's why. It would be both more logical and pleasant if unit production just paused instead and you weren't limited in what you can schedule including upgrades, this already happens when the limit is not having enough houses so why not do the same for insufficient resources as the population cap?

[Atrik]

3 hours ago, MirceaKitsune said:

I still run into this issue during my games and it's always a headache I'd be happy without. Whenever I'm out of resources my barracks forcefully disable auto-queue... if I don't see the little text announcing it or know which building it refers to, it can take minutes before I realize I'm no longer producing soldiers and remember that's why. It would be both more logical and pleasant if unit production just paused instead and you weren't limited in what you can schedule including upgrades, this already happens when the limit is not having enough houses so why not do the same for insufficient resources as the population cap?

 

Hi! I was feeling the same as you a year ago. I created a mod that allow building production queues to be easy to manage.

ProGUI
It does stretch a bit the idea as it implements new panel(s) to control the production. It also allow for queuing blacksmith techs and basic economic techs.
You can get it here: https://gitlab.com/4trik/proGUI
This mod is based on boonGUI on top of witch I built appreciable features for players.

ResizeQueue
If you want to keep the vanilla UI, I made another mod that solve the problem more simply: It changes the auto-queue to adapt to resources availability and restart the queue if ever it had to stop for a while.
https://gitlab.com/4trik/resizequeue
With this last mod please make sure to enter values in all settings as it doesn't have any default values (and won't work if you don't set them). If you ever runned proGUI, the settings are common and therefore proGUI will provide set for you some reasonable defaults settings that works as nice for ResizeQueue.

It's much more fun to play without the annoyances, also, one may progress faster into the game then if his goal is to train himself to restart production every time the "Insufficient resources, de-activating auto-queue" message pops.

New Variables
However It also introduce a few new variables that you may wish to control. Example: You'll could want the production queue to never consume the last 100wood, because else you'll won't have enough wood to build an economic building, when you'll need to.
So new concepts like "Reserves" are introduced in those mods.
ProGUI has the advantage of allowing you to changes theses new variable on the dedicated panel.
ResizeQueue (mod where the UI has no graphical components added) allow you to set these reserves in the settings.

Controlling the production variables aren't mandatory for casual usage so If this is the usage you want to have, I'll recommend to set 'Wood Reserve' to 100 or 150, and enjoy.

Edited February 9 by Atrik