Random Thought: Builders beyond available metal should turn off

I've been playing and spectating in the lobpot this evening, to distract myself from postoperative pain, and noticed something:

New players very often don't seem to understand more buildpower != faster building.

So, what if builders beyond those that are not actually needed to contribute the current rate of metal just... turned off? Maybe with a "No metal" popup icon on them. No actual change to what is happening, just a purely visual indicator that these builders aren't doing anything.

(Also, can we limit the number of storage built to player elo/200 :s)

quote: So, what if builders beyond those that are not actually needed to contribute the current rate of metal just... turned off

I think you are on to something, but as far as I know each builder get a small share of the metal, so practically they do contribute but less and less the more they are for the same "income".

Still, any visual indication for how much a builder is used would help - something to transmit the idea of "builder has only 5% of metal needed to be function".

Additionally that would make priority easier to manage. Now if you forget a builder on high/low priority it is harder to notice...

EDIT: Kerr: hope your operation went well at least!

If it is just UI, then it depends entirely on the visual design. Such a thing could very easily become another icon in a whole sea of things to look at.

Groups of builders working on the same task with insufficient resources could redistribute work to allow as many of them as possible to turn their effects off. For example, if there are ten Convicts putting 17 metal per second into one Fusion Reactor wireframe, only four of them need to be actively building and the other six could be standing by with no visual effect.

A stronger version of this change would make the extra workers actually change what they are doing in certain commands when they have insufficient metal. For example, if three of those ten Convicts are on area repair commands and there is no energy stall, those three excess Convicts could automatically move on to other subtasks that will not require metal. Attack move and Patrol commands could act similarly. The risk here is that a brief interruption to the metal supply could result in splitting the available build power among different wireframes, but if you don't want that you could've just been using Guard or a single target Repair.

quote: If it is just UI, then it depends entirely on the visual design. Such a thing could very easily become another icon in a whole sea of things to look at.

Ok but that didn`t stop the other icons from being used either, am I right?

It is very difficult to suggest a change that isn't already in the game and that new players do not already undertand or pay attention to.

For instance I once requested a buildpower bar that shows the total BP of selected units and their current spending, thinking I could just point new players to it and they would understand immediately.

That was already in the game and I never noticed it, or it just got added at some point and it took me a really long time to notice.


If you already understand that 20 bp on 10 metal income can, no matter what, only spend 10m/s at most (assuming depleted storage) and also understand build priority, any more information in the UI is just clutter. All you need is to know how much BP you currently have selected, which build priority it's on and then quickly look a the top to check your metal income.



I think the real situation is that it's a mix of players don't understand economy, or they do understand to some degree but don't understand their build order is either bad or straight up dysfuctional.

If a player opens with 2+ plates or 1 fac and 6 caretakers, I simply don't know what to do other than to tell them you do not currently have 30+ metal per second to spend and, in lop pot, very likely never will during the entire match. All those players need is at some point, one match, to see one player spam cons and reclaim a bunch, then build a single krow on 4+ caretakers and then they endlessly try to replicate that without understanding how that worked that one time in that one unicorn of a match.

"It sometimes works" ... or so I've been told. Yah, right.



I thought of things like having the commander set to high priority by default and then having a tooltip for new players that states that everything builds slow unless your commander builds it, but that's training wheels and any experienced player will fight back stating that training wheels instill bad habits and are not leading to acquiring a deep understanding of the mechanics.

The same can be said of some level of automation. Some replaces things that are easy to understand but hard to execute (such as skirmishers dodging each other's shots), but some automation becomes a nuisance that the player fights against. What if I intentionally send a bunch of cons to assist something because I know I am capturing a reclaim field and am about to drastically increase my income? Or, what if the team is about to donate me a bunch of metal? I don't want to have to fight automation pulling my cons away when I understand what I am doing and intend on doing exactly what I am ordering.


Thinking out loud, the only thing I think that might work is if cons/cares are pooling more than they can spend, have the beam/fog flash different colors so that it draws attention. If they can spend their full BP, then it's steady green. But that won't stop people from executing 7 cons into 6 caretakers into having all that stall at spending 10m/s.

Some players just don't want to understand. There's that one thing they do and that's what they're going to do every match.

Instead of adding more information to the UI, it would be better to have some kind of economy tutorial.
"Team/Shared economy" seems to trip up a lot of new players (ref. storage spam).

Alternatively, auto-place a "Hi, I'm new!" label for them in lobpot :P

The information "My construction is going slow because I'm low on metal, and more builders won't help" is derived information with the interface as it is. The problem with derived information is that it requires understanding of the underlying system. Making the builders appear to stop working would make it immediately obvious that building more wouldn't change the situation.

If I have a bunch of builders (on the same priority) and their buildpower substantially exceeds my available resources, then all of my builders are going to slow down to the same reduced efficiency.

quote: builders beyond those that are not actually needed to contribute the current rate of metal just... turned off? Maybe with a "No metal" popup icon on them.

So I'm not sure that this idea makes sense in that context, since it is not possible to identify the "offending" builders.

quote: For example, if there are ten Convicts putting 17 metal per second into one Fusion Reactor wireframe, only four of them need to be actively building and the other six could be standing by with no visual effect.

This addresses that issue, but I am pretty leery of a solution that involves units not doing what they are told.

(Obviously the situation changes when one messes with priority. But I don't think this is terribly useful to somebody who understands the priority system, anyway.)

Here's another idea. If your build power applied to a single project exceeds your income by a certain margin (metal or energy, whichever is lower or/and at 0 storage), all the builders of that project have a "AFK" icon or some sort of visual effect (like disarm flashing) applied to them.

That way the player who doesn't understand eco yet can see that effect and pull one con at a time to reclaim/repair and see if the effect persists, then pull another one until the icon/effect disappears.