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Feature Request: More Precision For Mass Selection

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I tend to organise my troops by grabbing all of a certain type on screen, then telling them to go somewhere. However, with pretty high frequency, this limits my logistical precision.

For example, when I make warriors, it's common that I'll send it to a particular place to guard. A warrior in my mind is just a stardust that can move at the expense of stats. Part of the value of that movement is updating its position as the game progresses. However, I often find that this movement is a problem because the warrior will be hotgrouped in when I go to select other warriors for combat. Then I've got a choke unguarded that in my mind is guarded, and things go poorly from there.

Another example is convicts in shieldball. They're part of my army so they're hotgrouped, but then without realising, suddenly all my workers at base will be along for the ride and I'm excessing.

One more example would be when I have a unit behind enemy lines for scouting/disruption purposes. I never want to select this unit other than manually, but often in the course of moving my army that glaive will be pulled back into turret range or w/e.

Basically, it comes up a lot, it's frustrating, and I don't know how to address the issue using options already in the game.

So this is a feature request, or if people have better ideas of how to maintain a constant fluid logistic without mass selection that would also do. Some people say they don't use these features, do they have comparable methods that don't take infinite attention?

Thoughts?

Edit: Oh god but that title is so bad can someone change "selectively" to "precision" okplzty<3<3
+1 / -0


6 years ago
You can use combinations of Ctrl, Shift, and the Left and Right Mouse Buttons on the selection panel icons to isolate or remove groups of units from your selection. You can also use Ctrl+X to select all units of the same type as your selected units that are visible, though I realize this is a bit limiting at times (which is why I'm not mentioning Ctrl+Z).
+1 / -0

6 years ago
Yeah, I used to be control+z dependent, then I removed the hotkey so I could get a bit more specific with control+x.

The issue isn't selecting all the stuff, or selecting between stuff, it's that I can't stop myself selecting all the stuff in the first place. I want to move a warrior to a choke, then disable non-manual selection for it so that I never have to think about it again unless I want to move that warrior specifically.

ATM, every unit I use that is intended to do something other than fight as a group increases the difficulty of my logistics. I can't leave isolated units without accidentally selecting them during stressful periods of unit movement (unconsciously). I'd be tempted to use different unit types to address this issue if it didn't mean switching fac and creating more work for myself (e.g. warrior as my army riot, scallop as my guard-riot).
+0 / -0
Warcraft 3 already addressed this problem through the use of subgroups. When you band-box select multiple units, you can select up to 12, but clicking each and every one just to use their many unique abilities or give them individual commands can get a little tedious that way. So, the game automatically separates all units in a selection into groups based on unit type, and then lets you quickly cycle through subgroups by pressing the Tab key. In this way, you can have your Paladin cast Holy Light, then immediately switch to Priests to cast Dispel Magic to destroy some Skeleton Warriors, and then switch to Sorceresses to cast Polymorph on the undead heavy units, all in about a second.

Can we do something similar in ZK? I know we have units separated into unit-type groups already, but perhaps... a new control group scheme of sorts, with units being assigned to "Prime" control groups (1 to 0) like we do now, but then you can also assign subgroups to units? So when you had multiple Warriors, AUrankSnuggleBass, you would first select your Warrior prime group, then switch between your "squads" that you set to different subgroups earlier. There could even be a keybindable command where you select a unit, issue a keyboard command and then select all units that belong to that subgroup.

And for the creation of these subgroups to begin with, all you would need to do is add another keybind command. Just bandbox-select the units you want, issue the keyboard command, and boom, all those units just got added to a subgroup; whether or not they were already in a "Prime" control group to begin with. In this way, you could fine-tune your control so you wouldn't have to play select/deselect with all the units you had in a control group. Using the keybind command multiple times could change the subgroup for you, too, so tapping it once is one subgroup, two is another, and so on.
+1 / -0

6 years ago
Not that I fully understood the request, but sounds like this may help:
https://github.com/lhog/ZK-Widgets/blob/master/graphic_unit_selector.lua
+1 / -0


6 years ago
quote:
I know we have units separated into unit-type groups already

As of about 3 weeks ago. Before that selected units would be displayed in any old order, not necessarily sorted by type. Only if there were too many units to fit in the selection box were they then grouped into a single icon with a number.
+0 / -0

6 years ago
quote:
subgroups

Subgroups are not relevant to the issue at hand because they concern units already selected. The request is not to select specific units in the first place.

Unless you make even universal orders (like move) only apply to the selected subgroup. This is a bad idea because of major confusion (this is not how selection and subgroups work).
+0 / -0
6 years ago
quote:
The issue isn't selecting all the stuff, or selecting between stuff, it's that I can't stop myself selecting all the stuff in the first place.

I use the original ctrl+x functionality for this (Not_InHotkeyGroup+): grouping units to prevent them from being regrouped and making it easier to add "spare" units to the group
+0 / -0
Create a "blue move state" in addition to green, yellow and red, which will make unit simply refuse to leave certain small radious around its last move order, and bind its disable to a hotkey for a quick access.
Similar to retreat zone when unit is damaged. It wont leave it unless its fixed
+3 / -0

6 years ago
One thing to consider implement in is that when you box select an area and any military units are in it, everything that isn't a military unit is not selected. Cons, solars, turrets, etc would not be selected. I know supreme Commander has this. Pressing shift while box selecting selects everything.
+3 / -0
In evo, when you have a group selected, there is a widget that shows what you have selected. Clicking on one of the unit type's picture will select only the units of that type within the larger selection.

It's been a while since I launched ZK, but doesn't integral menu already do this as well? Like it used to show every type you had selected and how many there were in the integral menu window, and from there you could click on a type to select only that type. I distinctly remember that being a thing. Is that not possible any more?
+0 / -0
quote:
It's been a while since I launched ZK, but doesn't integral menu already do this as well? Like it used to show every type you had selected and how many there were in the integral menu window, and from there you could click on a type to select only that type. I distinctly remember that being a thing. Is that not possible any more?


It's still a thing, and I mentioned it in my first reply, and it sounds like AUrankSnuggleBass's issue is more related to the nature of box-select and their own habits around using it than the absence of any way to control what units are selected. It sounds like what AUrankSnuggleBass specifically wants is a way to dynamically exclude specific units from box, control group, and autogroup selection.

Box select has no such provisions, but specific units can be removed from control groups with Ctrl+~, and all units of that type from any autogroups with Alt+~. Ctrl+~ works for units whose control groups are set by autogroup, even if new units of that type are created and added to the autogroup control group.
+0 / -0

6 years ago
For clarification, I don't want to remove units from selection. I want to exclude units from all future instances of being selected by grouping functions.

That way I make the decision once, and don't ever have to think about it again. I try to "dismiss" attention sinks so that I can maintain attention on more important things. With the proposed exclusion function, I will take one action when I place the unit, and will no longer need to spend any attention monitoring it.

I'm finding more and more as people improve together, that game outcomes often boil down to singular critical tactical or strategic victories that are decided by attention. It's not enough to have good macro any more, or to just make fewer mistakes. The person that spots the winning play first tends to smash the game wide open. Raider skirmishes, AA movement, general army movement artillery targetting, com/strider sitting, and optimising macro split your attention many ways - the attention ceiling for ZK isn't even close to being met by our top players.

I need to find ways to better distribute my attention to improve/keep up. This issue feels like a bit of a bottleneck.
+1 / -0

6 years ago
You might be able to hack together a solution for combat units by using the wait command. Units set on wait would still be selected, but shouldn't follow any orders until the wait key is hit again. This would be mostly useful for deep scouts, ambush units, and defensive unit garrisons. I don't think there's an easy way to do that with constructors though.
+0 / -0
Was wait a thing once? Because units on wait follow orders just as any other units, but I keep seeing peoplers suggesting wait to prevent units from taking orders. It does prevent factories from taking orders though.
+0 / -0


6 years ago
This isn't really a complete request. Come up with a good UI as this will be the main work required. Good UI is hard to come by, I had to make 3 or 4 spire terraform UIs before it was good.

Here is something to start you off:
  • Every selectable thing has a LuaUI-side state toggle.
  • When your selection changes, deselect all units with the state toggle enabled provided 1) the unit was not in your previous selection and 2) that your selection contains at least one unit without the state enabled.
  • State toggles are already bindable to either toggle them and possibly also to set a particular state.
  • State toggles are also presetable through initial states so things like Solars (and possibly even constructors?) could be generally unselectable.
+1 / -0


6 years ago
DErankTopkack and USrankFealthas wanted SupComm-style Military > Constructor > Structure unit selection filtering and I thought it sounded trivial to implement. This struck me as a fun challenge so I went off to implement it in 15 minutes, fixing a bit of UI flicker it causes in a further 10 minutes. The core was done but it wasn't usable due to some issues:
  • Players might disagree about whether commanders should be Military or Constructor, clearly some configuration is required.
  • Furthermore whether you treat your commander as Military or Constructor changes from game to game and throughout games. Other units have this issue as well such as Convict, Constable and Welder.
  • AUrankSnuggleBass said something related to selection rank a week or two ago.

To fix these issues I implemented a state toggle for selection rank with states 0 to 3. Structures have rank 1, constructors 2 and military units 3. I decided that commanders should be 3 by default. I made Shift ignore states and Ctrl ignore the difference between states above 0 (configurable). If you set a unit to rank 0 then it effectively implements the AUrankSnuggleBass Warrior/Tick/Flea thing.
+5 / -0

6 years ago
I just tested it and its great (flea scouts no longer get selected!). Also wait was a thing, until someday someone "fixed" it. I think it prevented all orders - unit was still waiting with the order queued.

Wait is nice to coordinate units like bombers (wyverns especially) not to attack the same unit and still all arrive at the same time.

Or roaches to rush to target from different angles.
+0 / -0
5 years ago
Hi Zenfur,

I just tested the usage you described.

Unfortunately it didn't work for me.

Scenario:
- Single Player skirmish game
- Build a bunch of different planes
- Selected same type (e.g. Swifts)
- Pressed CTRL+W
- Pressed my "Deselect Half" Hotkey
- Clicked somewhere on the map
- Selected the other half and clicked somewhere else on the map

Expected result:
- The Units wait for Pressing again CTRL+W to follow the given orders.

Actual result:
- The Units moved immideately after clicking on the Destination.

It would be great if the CTRL+W function would pause fighters.
It will help a lot for microing.

Regards,
Elgaron
+0 / -0

5 years ago
Use SHIFT if you don't want the wait order overridden.
+1 / -0
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