Feature Request: Tactical Zoning

[Revenantus]

The ability to define 1 or more persistent tactical zones on a per system basis.

Being able to drag a selection box around a given area to determine the number of ships in that area is extremely useful, however I often want that data to persist on the screen whilst I manage other issues.

I would like the ability to click and drag to create a persistent zone in which said data continues to be displayed until I manually remove the zone. These zones would only be visible whilst in Far Zoom.

For example, holding <key>+1 and dragging creates zone 1. <key>+1+Right-Click removes the created tactical zone. Similarly, further zones can be created by holding <key>+2,3,4, etc. <key>+A+Right-Click removes all current tactical zones in the system. <key>+H (Hold) temporarily hides all current tactical zones.

Placing these tactical zones around hostile wormholes would allow the player to monitor the number of turrets remaining around each, and enemy ships appearing. Additionally, they could increase tactical awareness in situations where multiple skirmishes are taking place in a system.

Similarly, although distinctly, the ability to designate certain systems as, 'Monitored Systems', would be useful. I'd like to receive text warnings when enemy ships enter those systems, rather than when they just attack the Command Station.

As a sort of serious-if-you-can and joking-if-you-can't request, what's the chance of multiple monitor support? e.g. Galaxy map on screen 1, clicking on a system causes the screen 2 to switch to that planet?

[Pandemic]

So you're saying have the box that comes up when selecting multiple units be persistant, if you want it to be? Just a place where you always know what amount of ships you have in that given area?


-Pandemic

[Revenantus]

So you're saying have the box that comes up when selecting multiple units be persistant, if you want it to be? Just a place where you always know what amount of ships you have in that given area?

Essentially, yes - I'd like to have the potential for persistent monitoring.

[Pandemic]

Isn't that feature already somewhat present, when you enter Galaxy view and mouseover a planet?

The second idea seems much better, if it's what I think it is. You're saying that for systems with dual moniters, one persistantly has Galaxy view, the other persistantly  specific planet view?


-Pandemic

[Revenantus]

Isn't that feature already somewhat present, when you enter Galaxy view and mouseover a planet?

Only as a overall view of the system in question - the point of the zoning is to provide the ability to monitor more specific regions of gravity wells.

If you were referring to AI ships entering the player's systems, it is true that it is possible to tab to the galaxy map to gain this information. I'd prefer however to be alerted as quickly as possible rather than at the next time I view the map, especially for systems that I consider particularly vulnerable.

The second idea seems much better, if it's what I think it is. You're saying that for systems with dual moniters, one persistantly has Galaxy view, the other persistantly  specific planet view?

Yes. I have a feeling we won't be seeing this anytime soon however.

[Pandemic]

I guess I just don't get it... what would be the purpose of tactical zoning?


-Pandemic

[Revenantus]

Take a look at the attached crude example;

Zone 1 is monitoring space dock production, Zone 2 is monitoring a battle around Yepu Wormhole, and Zone 3 is monitoring Haskilsi Wormhole.

I'm not having to keep boxes dragged around those areas, the zones are persistent so I can just watch.

EDIT: The ability to resize the zones by dragging the edges might be nice too, though simply recreating the box would hardly be an issue.

[Pandemic]

Oh... I get it.

Like, I understood before exactly what you were saying, but not how it would be worth the time, but when I saw it I was just like "Oh, I get it" .

Sorry, guess I just wan't thinking, or something XD.

Ya, that makes sense and would be a nifty little addition... I would find that useful for, like in that example, monitoring shipyards and wormholes. It would be even better if there was a little box in the corner of the screen, showing stuff like "Zone 1: My (10) Enemy (20)", so that if the zone is on planet X and you're on planet Y you can still have a good idea of the wormholes and stuff... Lemme edit the picture and upload it again, for a graphical presentation.

EDIT:
http://i495.photobucket.com/albums/rr317/pandemic21/TacticalZones.jpg

Of course, the zones would have to poof when all your units on the planet died /moved out, but it would be nice for informational purposes...


-Pandemic

[Revenantus]

Oh... I get it.

Like, I understood before exactly what you were saying, but not how it would be worth the time, but when I saw it I was just like "Oh, I get it" .

Sorry, guess I just wan't thinking, or something XD.

I apologize, it was as much my fault for not explaining adequately.

Ya, that makes sense and would be a nifty little addition... I would find that useful for, like in that example, monitoring shipyards and wormholes. It would be even better if there was a little box in the corner of the screen, showing stuff like "Zone 1: My (10) Enemy (20)", so that if the zone is on planet X and you're on planet Y you can still have a good idea of the wormholes and stuff... Lemme edit the picture and upload it again, for a graphical presentation.

EDIT:
http://i495.photobucket.com/albums/rr317/pandemic21/TacticalZones.jpg

Excellent addition, as this would allow the player to have access to that information even when zoomed in and the tactical zones are consequently hidden.

Of course, the zones would have to poof when all your units on the planet died /moved out, but it would be nice for informational purposes...

Not necessarily, as the player can only look at a system if they have ships present, so I don't see why it would be an issue to leave tactical zones in systems and come back to them at a later date.

The plan would be to have up to 9 tactical zones per system, the player can only see the tactical zone information for the system they're currently viewing anyway.

I've been thinking about what the tactical zones would look like if they included a square grid inside of them, allowing the player to quickly see relative distances between ships. While initially this may sound messy from a UI design point of view, remember that the tactical grids fade as soon as the player zooms in. Additionally, the tactical grids should obviously be some other colour than green to differentiate them from the unit selection boxes.

[Pandemic]

I dunno about that last thing... maybe have it optional? Radio buttons fix all .


-Pandemic

[Revenantus]

I dunno about that last thing... maybe have it optional? Radio buttons fix all .

It may well be of limited utility, and more trouble than it's worth. I'm just attempting to think of ways of maximizing the tactical zone's use.

[x4000]

Okay, whew, this thread grew up quickly, didn't it? 

So, my takeaways from this:

1. "Tactical Zoning" is a really cool idea, and wouldn't be hard to do.  I'd definitely show the borders in something other than green, and I agree that the grid on the inside of that might be of limited utility.  Let's do without the grid, first, and then see what we think later.  I've added this to my list. 

I also like Pandemic's addition of the persistent textual display of all the offscreen zone values for the current system.  I don't think I would show this just in far zoom (there doesn't seem to be a good reason for this), but rather would just show this all the time, if you happen to be at a place where you can see it.  I also don't think there's any reason to erase zones that are on planets you no longer have access to, since the persistent textual display would only work for planets that you are actively at (right?).  Or if not, then only at ones where you actually have ships would show data, anyway, but I think it would be too cluttered to show all of these from multiple planets.

2. Designating certain systems as "monitored systems" is also interesting.  I take it that this would show warnings on the top left, like the "command stations under attack" thing does now?  Technically you can always see what planets are being attacked via that button at the bottom right of the quick-buttons row, but it doesn't pop up the planet names unless you hover over them.  Perhaps I should make it so that the monitored planets show their text above that, simply for reasons of space -- I'll have to see how that works out when I'm coding it.

3. Actually, the dual monitor support is something that was on my original feature list, but it eventually fell by the wayside.  I really liked that feature in SupCom (I have two monitors), and that was originally something I wanted to do for AI War.  It's not actually that hard to do, at least not so much as you might think it would be, but mainly I had let it falter just because I was worried about the impact on the graphics card.  However, since I last considered this (way earlier in alpha), a lot of performance tuning has happened.  So, I think it will be fine, although it will cause a bit of a graphics performance hit -- probably not as much as SupCom did, though, and it was fine in SupCom so it will also probably be fine here.

Oh, yeah -- the other reason I didn't add this feature before?  I knew that if I added it, I would use it all the time.  And most players of the game won't have multiple monitors, so if I designed the game around that concept, it might hurt the core experience for other people.  Of course, that's very much no longer an issue, but it just reminded me that that was something also holding me back.  Anyway, so this is on my list now.

[x4000]

Oh -- by the way, with the multiple monitor support, I meant to clarify.  The way I would see that working is to always show the galaxy view on the second monitor.  Then you could click planets over there, and it would bring them up on the first monitor.  With that sort of setup, the first monitor would never show the galaxy view, and the second monitor would never show the planetary view.  Otherwise you get into "being on two planets at once," which is not something the engine will support easily (and the performance would likely be bad with that, too).

[Pandemic]

I also like Pandemic's addition of the persistent textual display of all the offscreen zone values for the current system.  I don't think I would show this just in far zoom (there doesn't seem to be a good reason for this), but rather would just show this all the time, if you happen to be at a place where you can see it.  I also don't think there's any reason to erase zones that are on planets you no longer have access to, since the persistent textual display would only work for planets that you are actively at (right?).  Or if not, then only at ones where you actually have ships would show data, anyway, but I think it would be too cluttered to show all of these from multiple planets.

That would make sense, and be better performance-wise, but I like the idea of having it show the stats on zones which are on other worlds. Say you're currently viewing planet X, and you have a Space Dock on planet Y. You put Zone 1 around the rally point for that dock. Now you can focus on the battle on planet X, while being aware of the exact point in time where the number of reinforcements on planet Y would be helpful for the take-over of planet X.

Dunno how much extra stress, if any, the idea of calculating how many ships are in a specific zone on another planet would put on the processor, though...


-Pandemic

[x4000]

Those are some good points, Pandemic.  The CPU stress will actually be quite minimal, I'm not worried about that at all.  Screen real estate is my concern -- with the incoming waves list, that can sometimes have 16 rows just all by itself (in eight player games).  Then you add in a few warnings for inta-killed ships, command stations under attack, monitored planets under attack, and now this tactical zoning stuff, and you wind up with more rows than can actually be shown in the vertical space of at 768px-high monitor, which is the lowest supported by the game and so the general benchmark.

I suppose I'll just have to implement some logic that puts this to a second column of text if need be, but that could start obstructing visibility for the players.  I guess the moral will be:  if you are playing with 8 players, either use a wide or tall monitor, or don't make too many tactical zones (four or five is probably fine, but all ten would push it into another column).

Of course, naturally most people are going to think about the standard use cases first, but I tend to jump right to the most extreme ones that I can think of, since it prevents people from having strange complaints and bugs later.  Or at least, prevents them from having as many as they otherwise would...

I think this will work, though, and from your notes I think it's worth pursuing.  I've adjusted my to-do list to make sure it's cross-planet.  If you've got a zone on a planet you can no longer see, then the zone will still be there but it will show something like "Unknown" for the value.