Auto-share (lend) idea

How about making a new special unitstate "auto-share", and a player whitelist to whom you may automaticly lend units should they request (select a unit and press hotkey/button, should you decide to take unit back you just repeat the process, since you were original owner you can do it regardless if player removes you from whitelist)?

Why?
Because if you play as a bro-clan, you may have only single player to check whether all mexes are working intact, grid is connected and so on, he may request (take) any con and get it to rebuild destroyed stuff, without spamming next key sequence:
[alt][enter] GIVE ME A CON PLS FAST
While all the other eyes will be constantly glued to battlefield.
Also in similar way we could have shared striderhubs (oh god why every player has to build one for himself!?) and maybe even factories in special cases.

How is it different from current share? Well, currently YOU give units, while this way you may allow ally or clan member to TAKE units (specific units or specific unit type).
I know we have /take command, but that doesn't work until team resigns.
Also this would help to play coop with AI, since you may not take entire AI base, but some of it's units, and then give them back... Or not.

edit: Just in case anyone wondering about selfd allies, you won't be able to, you damn traitor.

Well, if most of players agree with this... I might try to code it soon.

quote: I like the idea, but would it offer anything that commshare doesn't?

Not requiring pregame setup and/or modification to Springie code.

quote: That would require implimentation, and anything else, like autoshare, would be a complete half-measure.

However, i can name a dozen people who can do the widget/gadget part, and at most three who would not get swamped by having to deal with Springie.

The optimal approach might be workload-unfeasible.

Is it better to have a halfmeasure than to have a non-measure?

quote: Complete share is bad. I would never share my commander

Only if you don't trust the other guy(s): true bros can handle comsharing without conflict over who controls what.

Note that comsharing is a default Spring feature that ZK autohosts disable: Springie reassigns duplicate team IDs on !balance. Some gadgets might assume that a team can never have more than one player, but they should be trivial to modify should the Springie code be changed to allow comsharing.

In case you might be interested in different ways of implementing this, consider the context menu widget.

You know the context-menu widget as the one where you space click to see unit stats. However the functionality still exists where instead of stats, it brings up a menu, just like when you right click on a file in your OS. That menu contains several buttons, one of which is the unit stats, plus a few others like "make/break ceasefire with this unit's owner." The menu is still there but is currently commented out.

The purpose of the context menu widget is to allow you to click on any unit or feature and do something with/to it. The engine lets you select only your units and give them commands. With the context menu, you can create actions that you can do to/with an allied unit, an enemy unit, or even a feature.

One idea is you could add a simple button to the menu that sends a lua message to a gadget. If it's one of your units, you can say "allow this unit to be shared." If it's an ally unit, then it would send "take control of this unit." Add a "take back control" and you've got what you need. You'd have to code the gadget, but the widgetry is all but done for you, you just need to add a couple buttons that send the message.

Posting some of my progress:
I made a widget and a gadget pair.
Gadget knows which units are sharable (unitstate). And has a function for giving unit back to owner instantly (if owner selects unit) or to other player (if current player isn't controlling/selecting shared unit).
Widget sends selection info to gadget.
Whitelist is done via playerlist(crude/deluxe) and is in widget-space.
So basically I just need a cool small green/yellow/red teddy unit state icon, fix selection and to test my own code for a while and I'm gonna commit.
Also maybe I'll manage to pull of next few things too:
a) Whitelist retained between matches.
b) Start unit states so strider hub is instantly shared for all (not only whitelist).
c) Should player go afk his stuff is transferred to highest elo player AND is autoshared for entire team. (no need to spam "gimme X stuff will micro")
I'm currently figuring out how to make it compatible with normal selection, because somehow my widget stops normal selection from rendering (white rectangle stops appearing).

tl;dr can someone draw me cool small unit state-like icon? The blue/yellow/green teddy?