Multiple champions in singleplayer has unexpectedly clumsy UI

[Peter Ebbesen]

So I decided to start a game with the new expansion with extra champions enabled. The tooltip told me that these were shared between human players and could be accessed via individual UIs, which sounded rather unwieldy, but, well, shared resources is never easy to deal with.

It worked, but unwieldy doesn't begin to describe it.

Little had I expected this separate UI to carry fully over to singleplayer when playing normal+champion with extra champions added, but it is indeed the case. There is one player controlling everything, but:

• In singleplayer you also manually switch between UIs to issue orders, and most orders can only be issued with the primary UI selected - a frequent ground for confusion is having a champion UI active and the UI not responding to the normal orders when hitting a hotkey because the buildings that allow those orders, while present, belongs to the main player and are only accessed via the primary UI.
  
• The champions can only belong to control-groups belonging to their own individual UI, the first of which is the same as the player-UI, the others not. So you need to select them individually, via multi-selection, or via cycling through champions to issue them orders if their own individual UI is not active.
• The champions saved ship-designs are likewise on a per-UI basis, so if you make one design for e.g. your champion #1 and save it, you cannot use that saved design for champion #2, but must manually make the same design for champion #2 and save it, and so on and so forth. Each extra champion has its own list of saved designs.
• The main bar shows the champion stats for the UI that is currently selected, not the champion that is currently selected. (I.e. when the UI is your primary UI, it shows the champion UI when the primary champion is selected, the normal income UI otherwise, and when the UI is one of the extra champion UIs, it shows that champion's UI regardless of what is selected.)

Now, this is a poor way to control extra champions in singleplayer, as I am sure you'll agree, since there is no gameplay difference to the player between the various champions, the only difference is that their presence complicates the performance of standard actions that are already present in the game in singleplayer with one champion.

Since recent development has focused a bit on much needed UI improvements, I thought it proper to bring this up, since regardless of whether the game engine treats extra champions as separate players or not, there doesn't seem any good reason to let the interface do so in singleplayer, when playing normal+champion with extra champions: Ideally the singleplayer player deals with ONE UI at all times with no switching between instances of the same UI, all the units he can use can be in control-groups under that one UI, stored ship designs are shared by all his champions, and the UI in all ways treats one champion the same as another.

So that's my little wishlist for turning this feature from something that is cumbersome to use in singleplayer and feels like third-rate UI work into something that would be, at least in singleplayer, up to the UI standard of the rest of the game.


Disclaimer: As I have not tried this functionality in multiplayer, it is not obvious to which degree, if any, having extra champions use their own separate UIs is beneficial in that case.

[Lord Of Nothing]

Yeah, this is annoying, and is the single biggest reason I don't play with multiple champions much any more.
There is a work around for #3, but it's still quite clumsy: When you make a champion design, first make sure that the player control preferences for the UI you are using to do it is a fully up to date image of your preferred default from the disk (using copy from disk, if you have a set on the disk), then create the champion design, copy to disk, and for all the other champions, you can copy from disk to get all your champion designs from the other UI onto the others. You still have to unlock all the modules separately, but this saves placing them on each champ, at least.

I'm not making excuses, it's still a pain.

[keith.lamothe]

The difference is because the champ's special stats (xp, shadow capacitor, hull-type-to-respawn-as, etc) are stored on the _player_ objects, not on the champion ship objects.  The latter wouldn't work for those since the data would vanish when that ship was destroyed (respawns are actually totally different ships).  Ship designs and whatnot are also saved per-player, as they have different tech unlocks.

Basically, in the technical sense, there is no such thing as playing multiple champions on a single player (apart from cheats to spawn more champ ships, which won't behave properly), you're a single person playing as multiple players   Though I don't expect that information to assuage any UI rage

Iirc actually ordering them around isn't so bad, in that they can all be selected and given orders at once, but it's been a while since I tried.

But I'll bear this in mind when working on the UI.

[Cinth]

~mumbles something about this stuff again~

I'm sure some QoL adjustments could be made though.
Some ideas on the matter:

Make allied human controllable ships able to be placed in control groups.
Allow access through to the player's ui to the extra champs.  Something that makes it easier to access your other champs stuff.  Just remember that the champs are individuals and shouldn't be forced to mirror each other.

• In singleplayer you also manually switch between UIs to issue orders, and most orders can only be issued with the primary UI selected - a frequent ground for confusion is having a champion UI active and the UI not responding to the normal orders when hitting a hotkey because the buildings that allow those orders, while present, belongs to the main player and are only accessed via the primary UI.
  
• The champions can only belong to control-groups belonging to their own individual UI, the first of which is the same as the player-UI, the others not. So you need to select them individually, via multi-selection, or via cycling through champions to issue them orders if their own individual UI is not active.
• The champions saved ship-designs are likewise on a per-UI basis, so if you make one design for e.g. your champion #1 and save it, you cannot use that saved design for champion #2, but must manually make the same design for champion #2 and save it, and so on and so forth. Each extra champion has its own list of saved designs.
• The main bar shows the champion stats for the UI that is currently selected, not the champion that is currently selected. (I.e. when the UI is your primary UI, it shows the champion UI when the primary champion is selected, the normal income UI otherwise, and when the UI is one of the extra champion UIs, it shows that champion's UI regardless of what is selected.)

#1: What?  Kinda hard to see what you are getting at here. Champs respond like all other ships for move orders.  If you are talking about using the build menu to place modules on all champs at the same time, well, that was done during the beta because that was causing issues.  Specifically what it was, I can't recall.  Becomes irrelevant if you use the saved builds templates.
#2: Champs can be selected and moved with a blob of ships.  Aside from Xchamps not being able to go into your control groups, which could be a great QoL change.
#3: Keith said it first, Champs = Players.  You can save/load your settings to import ship design templates to each player though.
#4: Ctrl +H to cycle Champions and Ctrl + L to go back to your UI.

[Peter Ebbesen]

Basically, in the technical sense, there is no such thing as playing multiple champions on a single player (apart from cheats to spawn more champ ships, which won't behave properly), you're a single person playing as multiple players   Though I don't expect that information to assuage any UI rage

That technical information is not surprising to me, since my going assumption was that you designed an interface for one champion, released it, had players saying, "can we have MORE champions", and implemented a quick and dirty hack to make it possible. Regardless of whether my assumption holds true, it is, as you expect, completely irrelevant to the player's experience of using the functionality why it works that way. 

As I noted in my post, what matters to the player is not the game engine implementation of the objects he manipulates, it is the UI he has to manipulate them with. That's the way it has always always been.

Iirc actually ordering them around isn't so bad, in that they can all be selected and given orders at once, but it's been a while since I tried.

Absolutely, so long as you select them manually rather than trying to use the handy functionality of grouping units in control groups, which is what I assume most people do most of the time.

E.g. you might have some long range ships in control #1, short range brawlers in #2, special ships in yet a third control group, and so on and so forth, and, in battle give them orders by choosing whatever control group is needed with a single keypress and issuing an order, then swiftly choosing another. That is not possible for any of the extra champions - they can only be assigned to a group or accessed by a hotkey when their individual UI is selected, so you need to either manually select them (e.g. via drag-square selection) or cycle through their interfaces and order them individually.

But I'll bear this in mind when working on the UI.

Please do so. It is a minor issue for the game overall, but it is a clear case of the user interaction being way below standard, determined by by how the game engine treats objects rather than designed with the player's ease of use of the functionality in mind.

[keith.lamothe]

Some background on control groups and multiple-player (regardless of how many people are controlling them) situations:

1) this game has ram problems

2) each ship tracks which control groups it is part of

3) that "control group tracker" data on each ship just has 10 slots; all requests for more see point #1

4) having it be possible for a ship to be part of (for example) control group 6 for player 1 AND control group 4 for player 2 would require something like 80 slots to allow for all 10 groups from all 8 human players.


That said I think there's an alternate implementation of the control group tracking that will allow 60ish slots pretty easily for less memory (flags enum hacking here we come!).  Though it will be less flexible about what it tracks (being reduced to 1 bit per potential membership), so we'll see.


On the specific issue of champions, perhaps it would solve the main issue by having a keybind for "select all champions on this planet that you're allowed to give commands to"?

[Peter Ebbesen]

#1: What?  Kinda hard to see what you are getting at here. Champs respond like all other ships for move orders.  If you are talking about using the build menu to place modules on all champs at the same time, well, that was done during the beta because that was causing issues.  Specifically what it was, I can't recall.  Becomes irrelevant if you use the saved builds templates.

As an example, have one of the extra champion's UI active in a system where you (the PLAYER) have buildings, and hit the relevant key (docks, science, whatever)... and nothing will happen, because you (the game engine player-object that owns the champion) are currently using the UI of a player that doesn't own those. Or try to use a hotkey to access any of your battlegroups from the primary player, and nothing will happen. So you hit the button to return to the primary UI and hit the button you originally tried again, to get your order executed.

Yes, this requires the player to make mistakes and not always have the right interface activated, but few players are infallible.

By requiring the player to switch back and forth between different UIs that look alike except for a tiny notification, not only are the total number of interface actions required increased, the likelihood of player error in using the interface is also significantly increased.

All four issues I mentioned  are cases of game object implementation (each player-object has its own UI that must be switched to to issue some or most orders that that player-object owns) currently trumping good interface design big time where singleplayer gaming is concerned (there being one PLAYER, regardless of how many player-objects). (I expect it to be just as annoying in multiplayer, if anybody were to use extra champions in multiplayer, but at least in multiplayer there is a sliver of excuse in the extra champions being shared between the different human players.)

There are games where it would make sense, from the perspective of the user experience, to have these different player-objects using their own interface. With the limited functionality of extra champion players, AI Wars - Fleet command is definitely not one of them, as the current UI implementation has, in singleplayer, no strategic or tactic differences from one where all the champions where treated in the interface as belonging to the primary player. The only difference is how cumbersome it is for the player to do things.


Yes, I am a big believer in interfaces being designed to make things easier for the player rather than easier for the game engine. (Which is one of the reasons good interface design and implementation is hard!) So sue me.

[Draco18s]

3) that "control group tracker" data on each ship just has 10 slots; all requests for more see point #1

You know, we could have 20 control groups and not increase RAM costs at all:

Mobile units use the first set of 10, all the time, every time.
Stationary structures use the second set of 10, all the time, every time.

[Cinth]

I guess I don't have those problems since I don't really hotkey around that much.  I use hotkeys to cycle through champs and back to my UI and then the few hotkeys for fleet movement and waypoints. 

I guess its just part of how I do it since I've been doing this since champs were in beta.

Also, one way to think of it is that if you play 8 champs, in essence, you are playing a 9 player game.  Trying to bring that in to make it easier for just a single player while retaining it's functionality for multiplayer might not be such a simple task.

1) this game has ram problems

Yeah, the AI keeps complaining about Spire Mini Ram and Auto Bomb dock cannons.

[motai]

my 2 cents to pitch in is that i tend to control both champions during our multiplayer games. in this case i have noticed a few things.

1. it would be nice if there was either a color tint or some listed clue like a label for which interface you got switched to as you edited the champion.
2. when selecting groups with champions (or other ships with special abilities) it would be nice if their stuff added to the ui bar rather than being automatically disabled. i realize this is messy. but not being able to place a shield without pausing and hunt and pecking for the champion with points left is very frustrating. it would be nice if it added command bars and ignored illegal commmands instead of preventing illegal commands.  i realize this is back to our ui discussion but i might as well add it to the wishlist. this would also allow potential for pausing carriers/spawners/lightning torpedo firgates as that is occasional beneficial.
3. i have never gotten the saved templates to pass between games and so just dont use them since each game tends to be different. it would be nice if it was easier to save templates for the ships with the rest of the command choices. as it is now you would have to program a ship make a naming convention to prevent duplicates and seperate them by tech advantage and save them all individually and then force a recording save afterwords. and remember to do a forced load each game. this is very clunky  and could be much improved.
4. when command ships are selected it would be smoother if they had a ability bar to read their points left rather than having to switch interface or just guess how many points they have left. 2 ways i would like is either a color aura on the ship (green for able to place shield, blue for alternate ability?) or to actually put a number there floating above the ship/fleet though that often wouldnt be visible. or ideally to tooltip the ships with this info while selected. this would have 2 noticable effect both good. first you can identify easier the location of the ships. second you can see the number at a glance thru the fleet spam.

looking forward to the ui improvements and thought i should get my small wishlist on this stuff in.

[Lord Of Nothing]

I was thinking about this today, and one thing stood out: Would it be possible to have the shadow energy of a champion displayed above the hull, along with it's shields and hitpoints?

[Cinth]

3. i have never gotten the saved templates to pass between games and so just dont use them since each game tends to be different. it would be nice if it was easier to save templates for the ships with the rest of the command choices. as it is now you would have to program a ship make a naming convention to prevent duplicates and seperate them by tech advantage and save them all individually and then force a recording save afterwords. and remember to do a forced load each game. this is very clunky  and could be much improved.

This isn't as hard to do as it seems.  To make all the champ templates you may ever want all you need to do is this.

Make a 16 HW game vs 2 AI 1s.  Set Alt champ to 10/10.  Make sure you have player + champ set too.  Start game.  If you have any saved settings load them now.  Wait for all the K to be gathered at your HWs (you may need one or two more planets worth of K to get them all).  This will give you all the mods and hulls.  Go into ship design and make your templates with Lvl 1 mods (unlock missile 1 if you need to).  Once finished, hit [Save to disk].

The only thing you'll have to remember from now on is to load the settings from the start of a new game (and not hit copy and delete all that work).  The game will always use your highest level mod available to build the template ship.