I played a bit of Alien Commander and one thing I noticed was, it's hard to keep track of the upgrades you have and where you placed them. Happened yesterday that we lost 2 upgrades from marine sniping, I never noticed until someone pointed it out way later in the game.
My suggestion is that you take that Hive overview you get when you play on the ground and press C, and place it commander view or similar. Preferably if it also could tell you the amount of upgrade structur, adding a 2x / 3x / 4x if you make backup structures. As well as have a floating images, like those of Alien Egg you can make for your teammates over the upgrade structur to indicate what upgrades you have chosen for it, making it easy to see where and what you have up already.
I took the plunge in playing marine comm for the first time and while it was pretty fun it was quite daunting as well.
My suggestions would be:
Have the Location Names on the minimap. I felt that when players were asking for something at so-and-so location I had no idea where it was. My map knowledge isn't that great since I just recently started playing. I know that there is the map overview when you press C, and the location name at the top left hand corner when you are viewing that particular location but having location names on the minimap will help out a bit.
Or when people are chatting on voice comm, maybe have them light up yellow on the minimap/map?
Oh thanks for remaking one of the funnest games ever.
First of all, the glow on the menu of the aliens is a bit annoying. It needs to be a little less intense, more in the background.
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Here we go; On both sides commanding has these general phases, I'll try to divide them correctly and explain afterwards what these phases are about and if that's good or bad.
Phase 1) Economy and map control You hop into your command position and direct your team to secure key positions so you can drop your resource towers. As a marine commander you get some basic structures like an observatory or armory. The focus is on power nodes/cysts and extractors/harvesters.
Phase 2) Tier 1 The initial battles took place and the map is divided for the most part. Usually each team secured 2 command positions and the potential thirds are contested. Each team has 3-4 resource towers up and resources are stacking up. You start your first initial upgrades (shotgun or weapon/armor upgrades, crag hive and carapace, etc.)
Phase 3) Securing Tier 2 Usually one team gets ahead now. That team got their upgrades a little faster and push into the third position to secure it, they probably have a slight economic advantage too then. The team that is ahead will start getting tier 2 upgrades, like getting a second hive and fades, or researching jetpacks and level 2 weapon/armor. While you are getting this technological lead, the team usually sits back, waiting for their advantages to get into play. The team that is 'behind' will usually try to backstab and secure different positions. Take out key structures.
Phase 4) Finishing up core stuff You have the exo's in play, or your fades are blinking around. Now you just start getting every single upgrade you get. You finish up all the types of hives and build all the evolutions. You research all levels of weapon/armor and get every type of weapon. You put phase gates and sentries on every key point. You put whips and crags in all key points. Your team will be trying to secure that third position. Aliens try to kill power nodes and phase gates, marines try to assault hives.
Phase 5) What's done is done You have the upgrades. All you do now is waste res on structures and equipment or lifeforms. Get mass drifers and macs.
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So is this fun? Well, in every RTS game you have these kind of stages. But in NS2 your options are a little limited. This is partly because of the nature of the game. You simply cannot make tons of different armorsuits with different weapons, or a great variety of aliens to morph into. Every player has his own role and each role has to be unique. If you make multiple kinds of machine guns, well.. they're still just machine guns. If you want to add variety to the game you could take a look at Starcraft 2.
In Starcraft 2, one of the races is 'Protoss'. The protoss techs by building a gateway and cybernetics core at the start. This is the start of their tech tree, once the cybernetics core is done you can choose three tech paths. 'Robotics Facility', 'Stargate', or 'Twilight Council'. In short; the robotics facility opens up some strong core units and a solid option to scout our your opponent. A pretty safe choice. The stargate opens up air units, you can use these to scout, harass or punish your opponent. The twilight council opens up upgrades for your basic units, and allows you to upgrade more (level 2 and 3).
If you look at the <b>marine side</b> of things they have a few tech structures: Observatory: scouting/mobility Arms Lab: upgrades Prototype lab: strong core suits Armory: weapon types Command Station: unlocks additional tech
Currently on one command station you have pretty much no options. You can get upgrades and shotguns/welders/mines. You build the structures you need, which is everything except the prototype lab and robotics facility. Now you're ready to get that second command station, and suddenly everything opened up. Now all you have to do is getting the tech you want one by one. Jet packs are viable, exo's are viable. It doesn't matter that much. You choose either one, get some level 3 upgrades going and then you get the rest. Now you're basically done.
Suggestion: Although it's quite a radical idea, you could consider introducing a protoss-like tech system to the marines. Allow them to research level 1 armor and weapons at any given time, all they need is an arms lab. If they want to open up additional levels of upgrades they will have to construct an observatory. This also opens up scanning and you could put weapon specific upgrades on it as well (I.e. dragon breath shotgun shells, which lights aliens on fire for a short duration when hit by a shotgun). Prototype lab, this unlocks jetpacks and allows you to research mines (which can then be made cheaper, but with a limit of 3 per marine). Robotics facility, which will unlock the exo suit. Armory will still be like the armory is now. Nothing wrong with that.
Basically I took the protoss idea of tech and applied it to the marines. Prototype Lab-> Stargate (flying, countering and harassing) Observatory -> Twilight Council (advanced upgrade levels, unit specific upgrades, don't forget phase gates :) ) Robotics Facility -> Robotics Facility (hehe, the names line up! Core units, safe option)
Of course the command stations will still be required to be able to get these tech paths operational.
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Now the <b>aliens</b>, they already have something similar with hives being able to grow to one of three types. Before you start yelling "It has to be assymetrical!!!11one", I would like to point out the differences. Although both sides will have to choose between three tech routes, the stuff they end up with is entirely different. The aliens will still be the same aliens but they will have different qualities of movement, stealth or defense. The marines end up with entirely different kinds of equipment and options to engage locations with. It actually opens up more assymetrical gameplay where you can choose to 'counter' each other. For instance, an observatory would counter the shade hive. The robotics would counter the crag hive, and the prototype will counter the shift hive. The shift hive counters the robotics, the crag hive counters the observatory and the shade hive counters the prototype.
The aliens have too little to do with the tech that they have. The type of hive makes little difference except for the upgrades that your players will have. If you go for a crag hive your players will a bit harder to kill, but all you really get is a defensive healing structure. It would be a lot more interesting if the alien commander got types of abilities with each type of hive that allow him to control environments differently. For instance, you could give the crag hive the ability to research that infestation grants +25% health regen for aliens on the infestation. The shade hive could give the commander an upgrade to cloak aliens within the area for 10 seconds, whether there is a shade nearby or not. The shift hive could give the commander the ability to increase the movement speed of the aliens in the area.
Currently, these upgrades and abilities are somewhat in the game. But they are on the structures. The problem is however that these structures can only be tucked into a corner in a safe, secure position where no battle is going on. This results in the alien commander not being able to help his players if they are not being attacked in a location where he happens to have one of these structures. The crag/shift/shade hive should change the way the commander commands the aliens, to spice up the commanding action. Currently it doesn't matter. You make a spur, instead of a shell. A shift, instead of a crag. There is no difference except for the upgrade your aliens will be able to get.
The alien commander usually has to choose between a fast second hive, or a slightly slower second hive but upgrading the first hive to unlock, for instance, carapace. Once the second hive is up, suddenly you can upgrade all these essential things like leap, blink and bilebomb. If you introduce some hive type specific form of playing the commander then it could actually be a little more viable to stay on one hive for a little while longer to use the special powers of the type of hive you have to secure an advantage. You could even go as far as unlocking certain unit abilities under certain hive types. Like allowing leap if you choose shift, or bilebomb if you choose crag. To clarify, I mean this: Leap (Requires second hive OR shift hive)
If the alien commander would get certain cyst/infestation bonusses or abilities with certain hive types, it would also spice up the lategame of the alien commander where you will have different ways of supporting your aliens. It's hard for me to try and explain what I mean, I will try to think of something that could be added as an example... For instance, your type of hive grants your cysts the possibility of being upgraded, or changed in mode. (Crag Cyst, Shift Cyst, Shade Cyst). Each cyst spreads an infestation with a different pheromone, granting aliens different bonusses. A shade cyst could increase the speed of cloaked aliens that walk on it or increase the duration of a feign death. You can either make the commander upgrade the cysts individually, or put a button on a hive that changes the infestation to a certain bonus. So when you're attacked you put your hive in 'crag mode' changing the infestation bonuses, but when the attack is fended off you change to shift mode. The shifts/crags and shades could then be applied for different roles. Active roles for the commander to be used, with abilities on them like they are currently. But since the flat bonus is gone you can speed up the build time and allow them to be used more offensively. This kind of change would always keep the commander busy choosing the right infestation for his players to fight on and using the abilities to grant them situational advantages.
<i> TL;DR 1. Each game follows certain phases, after playing many games in a row it gets a little boring following the same patterns. 2. Tier 2 opens up too much too abruptly for the commanders. 3. Commanders in late game don't have a fun job. You spam onos eggs or exo suits and structures with your excess of resources.</i>
First of all I have to mention the great progress of the NS2 development so far. This game gets better and better every week. The last time I played is about 1 year ago and there was much to be done in addition to make me feel like in the old NS1 times. But now this feeling comes back again :)
I'd like to give some suggestions after playing some rounds of NS2 in the past days - especially as commander on alien team.
As some Members already mentioned within the last posts in this topic I'd also like to see the names of the areas on the comm-minimap. It's a pain if u don't know a map or especially the area names yet and s.b. calls you to build here or assist there while using the area name. I was jumping my comm-screen from room to room to find that specific area ;)
Second I'd also like to see the overall upgrades I already researched as alien. Especially for the movement, sensory and def chambers (these aren't their correct names, but I know you'll get me). I always have to ask my teammates which upgrades we are missing, once we lost some of our chambers. Alternativly I would have to search the whole map and click every chamber one by one.
Third I think it would be very great if the alien and respectively marine players could get a little progress bar of upgrades currently in research-progress on their hud. Often people ask for special researches, while they are already being researched and nearly finished. Afaik you are able to see their progress while looking at the chambers, but this doesn't really fulfill the job imho.
The commander experience is defeinitely my favourite part on NS2. I have played about 10-15 games total and have a few things i'd like to have better...
Here is a mixed list with problems both from my newbie and from my more experienced days:
- My number one and most frustrating thing about comming is what i call the "Where the heck is Ventillation?" problem. Please give players a way to ping the minimap. Not just a voice command that you can focus to with Space, but a nice, hard to ignore PING on the minimap like on Starcraft2. Marine: "Build an extractor here, Comm." (Clicks in the mouse wheel.) *PING!*Flash!* Commander: "Coming right up!" :)
- I like the new effect from the power nodes. It'll be nice to get something like that from empty resource nodes as well.
- Right now the grenade launcher and flamethrower only show up in the Advanced Armory menu. I was asked to research GL and FT and got lost. Please put these two as greyed-out items in the basic armory menu. In the description it can say that it requires the Advanced Armory research first. Once it's upgraded, the two weapons will light up. That saves me the embarracement to ask where the GL/FT upgrades are.
- Build and Advanced tabs? I think the observatory should be moved to Basic and ARC+Weapon upgrades should go to Advanced tab. I had no idea i should consider Observatory as one of the first things i build. Basically, if it has a pre-requirite it should be in the Advanced buildings menu.
- Please give us three sets of buttons to cycle between MACs, soldiers and buildings. That will make things much easier to find. I keep losing my MACs because they went off-screen to repair something.
- Make MACs stay away from damage. If they get bile bombed, disable auto-repair and get away from the building!
- can we please have names of areas on the minimap that can be toggled on/off if they are in the way?
- I'd like to be able to select units and hot-key them. When players get groupped, give them a HUD notification who his teammates are. Something like raid icons in WoW?
- Delete comander move orders after 2-5 minutes. If they weren't followed by now they probably wont ever be. The move command is preventing the marine from seeing build orders though.
- Late game comm is basically a healer/siege tank operator. I have no problem with that. However, can we get something else to control? Aliens have whips to play with. Can marines get another tank, maybe? A single very expensive mobile machine gun? Mounted Sentry Turrets? Something fun to deal damage with? Something equal to the Whip?
- when giving out ammo/med packs i have to hit A or S each time i want to drop a single item. Please make it to where i can hit A once and start dropping ammo until i deselect it. Same with S for health.
- We need a better notification that something is being attacked.
<!--quoteo(post=1643348:date=Aug 11 2007, 08:42 PM:name=Scythe)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Scythe @ Aug 11 2007, 08:42 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1643348"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I've always found tine commander interface to be very difficult to use, vaguely dissatisfying. I realise that this kind of feedback is utterly useless for your purposes so I'll try to be more specific...
--Scythe--<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I can second that, it seems to have a mind of its own sometimes.
I didn't command a lot in NS1, but the commander's experience in NS2 seems very identical to how the actual person commanding experienced it in NS. The commander in NS2 needs an additional dimension of experience in order to feel complete, to me. The idea of a role as a commander commanding real people in an FPS&RTS game is awesome but might not offer the most extensive experience possible in this kind of situation, so you should definitely aim to bring this extended experience into NS2 as much as you possibly can! The following is just an idea of one kind of way towards that.
Currently, the commander has several implicit choices to make, like what should you focus on? Attacking/defending, gaining resources/preventing enemy resource gain, how you command your team and how you treat your team (important!). Most new people do not immediately categorize all of these decisions as important. This knowledge comes as the commander gains experience and learns how to command, and is what according to most people makes a good commander. That said, hopefully everyone agree when I say that eventually, when a commander gets very experienced (inevitable), he/she will ALWAYS make these implicit decisions actively.
So why not introduce another design feature to the commander's experience in NS2 which <i>forces</i> the commander to make these kind of decisions, <b>or at least become more aware of the importance of these kind of decisions</b>? Say, the commander is given the choice to upgrade his own experience with enhanced feedback(visual, audio, tools(be careful, not such a good idea), <b>whatever are <u>cool</u> and <u>useful</u> addition!</b>) etc., or maybe even spend resources to upgrade something that will <u>not directly</u>, but <u>indirectly</u> help the rest of the team, but only the commander directly. In other words, give the kha/commander a choice, use a part of your limited resource pool to unlock commander-only useful feedback experiences, which helps the commander to make better/maybe faster choices that aids the whole team <u>indirectly</u>, or make the choice to spend the resources directly on the team. This will force the commander to make the choice of either spending resources on himself(improving), or on the team. I think this is a very good idea to add!
I know NS2 is close to release(it's even in the release lockdown phase, yay!), but I really think this needs to be improved post-launch.
Lev SteelJoin Date: 2012-10-13Member: 162274Members, Reinforced - Shadow
As of Build 223:
a) Marine Commander 1. I get the same warnings for all buildings except a command station, when it's under attack. When aliens do their job well, they bite everything on the map, even unimportant power nodes. After some time as commander, my brain just starts ignoring those warnings and then... "oops, where did my obs go?!" or "oh, we just lost the power in mainbase, GG". I doubt, that there was no warning at all, but it still feels like that a lot :-/ There should be a difference between more and less important buildings and even between some entities like a power node far off somewhere, where i dont have any buildings and the one in mainbase or one wich has a phasegate "plugged in". Maybe a health-bar should pop up somewhere in the display, where u can see the status of damaged buildings. Also a better (scrollable?) Event Log would be neat!
2. Dropping meds and ammo on marines feels easier than in NS1, but they still dodge my packs a lot... not by intention, but its still pretty hard to drop them correctly. Especially when you have jetpacking marines in a hive attack. To not make it too easy, maybe the closest marine, who needs ammo or health should get a waypoint to the support package or another kind of notification.
3. I miss being able to trigger doors as i could in NS1. But thats a minor feature :-)
b) Alien Commander 1. Hard to keep track of upgrades you have, and those, the team lost. Right now you need to be told by your team... or get out of hive and check for yourself.
2. Hard to see my drifters, but thats a minor problem.
c) General 1. I want more "team shortcuts" 5 are not enough sometimes, especially when u use them to keep track of some buildings
1. When a Player requests health or Ammo it doesn't get a big ping as it does when a player is attacked, I find myself while building and researching that a player might need ammo but due to the fact I'm focusing on building and researching and moving robots around I don't notice what player is lacking ammo and may not have a effective means to communicate, making it a requirement you have a microphone to communicate is NOT a smart idea, as not everyone can use a microphone or even own one.
Bottom line is this:the issue is lack of communication methods between the commander and the players, If a player gets a big red ping when there under attack or complete an objective, why don't they get a big ping when there in need of ammo or health? MAG had a very simple system that could be implemented, when a player requests ammo/health/repairs an audio transmission is sent to every player, on top of that when a player looks in the direction that made the request an icon appears above there head and is clearly seen regardless of range if they need a medic or back-up ETC, in short, a more noticeable ping needs to be in place for requests and the commander and player need a better form of communication BESIDES voice and text.
2. Unit information, now as a newcomer (Lets ignore the whole "Play FPS first commander later" part) I have to go off other RTS games, in this case I based it off Starcraft 2 now I can build sentry's for stationary defense, OK good and small mechs to ether repair or attack, now I build a few sentry's and a attack mech (Name eludes me, its from the same building you build the repair bots from) and set my attack mech into firing mode, suddenly some aliens bust through the sentry guns and start hitting the power, I inform my teammates and wait for my battle mech to damage them, it doesn't attack, even when I manually click it and tell it to attack it doesn't do anything, my friend playing as the Aliens told me it never fired once, didn't even look like it was turned on, I look at the battle mech details and it tells me NOTHING, where as Starcraft 2 it gives me information for example:
Starcraft 2 a Mutalisk has the description: Air unit that bounces its shot to strike multiple targets. Can attack Air and Ground units, this tells me the unit attacks air and ground units AND its move attacks multiple targets
the battle mech in this says nothing
Can it only fire in a room in power? Can it only attack buildings? Does it automatically attack or does it need to be told by the commander?
It tells me NOTHING about what the unit does.
Solution: Give the commander more information, sure you need more experiance to play the commander good but even then a commander needs information on what there getting, it could just be something like: Battle Mech: Can only attack structures, can only attack in powered room.
3: Tutorials
I understand they were added recently and YES there is an explore mode but while explore works for those playing the FPS side because they get a feel for the map a commander needs to react to a situation by what they build
Solution: Enemy commander and AI bots to practice on
I will evangelize all that I can - it's probably one of my top-5 favorite games of all time.
That being said:
1)I wish that you could zoom out even farther in commander mode. Even at 2500x1600, it feels too claustrophobic. I'd like unlimited zoom out and zoom in
2)Are ARCs currently broken? They dont appear to fire at all, either while deployed or when trying to attack manually.
<!--quoteo(post=2007437:date=Nov 2 2012, 07:54 PM:name=SayHiToYourMom)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (SayHiToYourMom @ Nov 2 2012, 07:54 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2007437"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->2)Are ARCs currently broken? They dont appear to fire at all, either while deployed or when trying to attack manually.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I believe ARC's require the target to be spotted. So while direct line of sight is not required, a solider needs to be looking at the target or the command needs to drop a scan from the observatory.
Maby someone already brought this up. I think it would be cool if the alien comander had a similar animation when entering the hive, just as the marines have. Like, if the alien morphed into something, or if thay merge with the hive somhow in some biological way.
I think the empty (black) spaces around the map should be filled with something. It looks unfinished at the moment. Perhaps some kind of digital-screen look or something to go with the fact that the commander is looking at a screen.
I would really like the addition of camera repositioning whenever you double-tap the key assigned to one of your force groups. Almost every RTS I've ever played does this. This would really help when we force group MACs or Drifters that we'd like to jump to. Example: I set a Drifter to force group 1 and send it to a location. I go to expand on the other side of the map. I then realize that there is combat going on near where I spawned the drifter and now I want to use its Enzyme ability. Currently I would have to manually find the drifter on the map and make sure that I can get it to the fight. What I would like to be able to do is double tap the 1 key, repositioning my camera to the drifter's current location. I know this could be problematic since you can assign players to force groups too (and they will inevitably spread out), but even if the camera just jumps to the first player in the group this would still be very useful. Thanks for everything you've done with NS2!
yeah i can vouch for the issue with those battle mechs, first time as commander i thought they were "movable turrets" first time i wondered why they only shot fowards, so i placed them in front of corridors, took some time and luck to figure out that it only shot structures. (had about 6 of them in the game in wierd places and noone complained on a 16ppl server (we did win))
also i like the idea of a better background and zoomable map to the commander. and huge icons for requests!
I've posted this text in another thread, before I noticed this pinned thread. :S
Myself, it feels like the commander UI is quite spare (note I've only played as a commander 2 times, but these are my inital thoughts). What I'm missing: * A better overview of the map, i.e. the 3D-map is too awkard and big. A bigger and more detailed 2D-map would be nice, where you can add structures and select units. Pressing C all the time is awkard. Controlled sectors may be presented by a lightblue-gray color, powered down sectors maybe yellow, and enemy/uncontrolled sectors red. Possibilty to draw defence-lines and offence/push-lines for players to see. Maybe a 2D- and 3D-map should be options to choose from by commander? * A side list of selectable units and squads with a action menu to give orders, even while they are spawning. * Detailed key-bindings for commander.
Maybe some of features already exists, but anyway these are my thoughts as 2 times commander. :)
<b>Both races</b> 2. As we Designer know, images get quicker understand then words. In order to that I would like to have some little Icons besides the name of a/the *requirements*, when you cant build something. Further more, you can build it when you click on these little Icons. (quicker navigation).
<b>Mariens</b> 3. The information of "player needs ammo/health" stands to short in my opinion.
4. As already some said...the ARC. Guys I dropped them so hard, cause I didn´t know what to do with them.
<b>Aliens</b> 5. It sometimes happens that you miss to build upgrades. A hint of information "You can research more updates" would be nice.
So far I realy like what you´ve done there to the game!
change the commando view so it does not render it the same way it renders fps, i can only play smoothly with everythin on low at 600x400, but i need to be 800x600 or the GUI is messed up for clicking but that does not run smooth,
also i can run Boarderlands 2 on low smooth 1300x900, World of warcraft high graphic 1300x900 smooth and a bunch of other games engine really needs some work
Hello! Playing NS2 since a bit more than a week and it's my new favourite game :D About commanding:
Usually I try to avoid it, but that's just because I 1. prefer jumping into battle myself, and 2. am really, really bad at giving instructions, usually I'll stutter, or something like "They're in Logistics! Wait no, I meant Operations! ....Crossroads, dammit!" will happen.
However, since I prefer playing Alien, and apparently no one ever dares go Alien commander, I end up commanding aliens more often than not - And may I say, despite the flailing, failing and derping about, I think I make for a pretty decent comm. My teams always seem to like me. There is one big issue I've spotted though:
Can you possible make it so that the commander can tilt his camera, or even move around like a spectator? Because in CommView, I have a hard time telling where there's a wall and where it's just one of these bottomless pits you guys like so much. This has been a major issue in building defenses for me; I don't know all walls of all maps off the top of my head, and Whips I've built have ended up shot from a distance when I thought I'd placed them safely around a corner. Actually, this may even be related to the issue of the background just being black. Your thoughts?
i think first of all the comm menu should not be semi-trasparent but 100% opaque, and the colour of upgrades should differ from the backgound, especially for aliens.
You have a green-yellow palette with aliens, if upgrades are yellow and semi-trasparent i will miss them. Also cloacking, a big black with a thin line, I just know it is there as i kney it should, but it's too easy to miss it.
on the other side, as marines, blue is fancy, but as usual it can be difficult to see with white.
Last thing: when something is in research, you have plenty of room (once selected the structure) to see what you are researching. SO, make the icon big as all the space, not thiny at right of the bar. I should be helped to see if i'm researching the right thing immediately, not have to pixel-peep.
I think b221 or similar had a better commander ui.
As a new commander (only ~5 commands and new to NS series), I have a few thoughts.
Arrow keys don't scroll map.
Key binds can't be viewed/changed in the Options menu like other keys. This made for some extreme frustration for my first two commands when buildings seemed to randomly dissappear. Turned out my voice talk key coincided with the recycle building bind, so every time I talked I would recycle a selected building.
Clicking on an object (eg armory) automatically starts an action. I just wanted to look at my options, but instead kept spending resources doing something that I didn't even know if I wanted to do. The auto-place extractors near resource points makes sense, but the rest of it is aggravation.
Radio messages along right side of hud came and went too quickly to be acted upon. There should be a scroll-back history and the messages shouldn't disappear so quickly if at all. Also, the message should be labeled with the player name, and most importantly have a line connecting the message to the player. The messages should also age. When the message first appears, it should be bright red. Then over the next few seconds the color should fade to gray (the current color).
There should be a list of all players somewhere, so when you click on them you should be taken to them. You should also be able to drop health/ammo directly to them using right-click.
I haven't explored all the commander keys yet (a cursory look around the docs/forums hasn't turned up a comprehensive list of them yet), but there should be a way to go to a room by pressing a key. There should likewise be a way to go directly to the different command stations/hives.
There no way to deselect stuff, so you have nothing selected. Apparently I kept giving players waypoints while trying to stop from dropping a building.
Almost forgot - a way to organize players into squads and assign commanders to them.
When you select multiple players, you should be able to see their names in a selection list.
Long time NS1 comm, new NS2 comm. Also was a UI programmer on Singstar. Overall I've found the commander interface to require more micromanagement than necessary and hard to understand for a new user. Fixing these issues allows the commander to focus on more strategic play.
<b>There are a variety of issues with the commander UI</b>
<ul><li>Hard to understand what to do next if you haven't done it before (esp around tech tree)</li><li>It requires too much effort to understand your team's current upgrades.</li><li>Some tasks require too many clicks, for instance moving whips</li><li>Accidental clicks (single click upgrades)</li><li>Alerts at a variety of priorities conflict with each other (health vs ammo vs order please vs critical structure dying)</li><li>Very confusing to get in / out of the currently selected building's menu</li></ul>
<!--sizeo:3--><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo--><b>Simple fixes (focusing on aliens):</b><!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec-->
Yes, no fixes are simple, but these are tweaks rather than major new things.
<b>Auto-Rooting of whips</b> Whips require you to baby-sit them and remember to re-root them or they are useless. Further if you right click with a rooted whip selected, you are ignored. This requires too much micromanagement.
<ul><li>Right click when a whip is rooted should unroot, move and re-root the whip</li><li>Right click when a whip is already (manually) unrooted should not re-root when it reaches its destination</li><li>Unrooted whips should automatically root within 10 seconds of movement finished if not selected, 30 seconds of inactivity if selected by commander.</li><li>The root and unroot buttons should be in different locations so you cannot accidentally unroot when you meant to root. Even more useful when multiple roots selected.</li></ul>
Also, whips should show a range circle when building and also show a range circle when you hover over the bombard upgrade.
<b>Only selected buildings show upgrade overlay</b> When you click on a hive to select it, you often begin upgrading that hive by accident.
One possible solution to this is to hide the overlay buttons if the hive is not selected - that way the first click selects, the second click upgrades. You could make this an option in the menu so you can choose if the overlay appears on deselected buildings.
This is only required on buildings with complex menus such as the hive. Ability structures (spurs, shells, etc) should retain the non-selected overlay, as should RTs and so forth.
<b>The current building's upgrades replace the "support" tab</b> When you select a building, it currently replaces the 3rd tab in the building menu (top, 3rd from left, bound to 'e'). It replaces the support actions tab. I think that the current building should move one place to the right and leave the support tab in place. Pressing 'e' should leave the building selected but show you the support menu. Pressing 'r' could then return to the options for the current selection, as could re-selecting that selection.
Pressing 'q' or 'w' while anything is selected should leave the structure selected and show you the relevant build menu. Pressing 'r' or changing selection returns you to the selection's menu.
If nothing is selected, 'r' should select the most recently selected hive (or perhaps the most recently selected building / building with upgrades that was constructed).
<b>Infestation Management</b> It is hard to tell if there are cysts currently cut off from the infestation (as opposed to other reasons why structures might be under attack). It is also sometimes hard to see that structures are no longer on infested ground. There should be a different warning for cyst chain broken and buildings off the infestation.
I'd also like to see visual confirmation that you have managed to create a loop of cysts. Sometimes when closing a loop you think you've done it but you have not.
<b>Structure Management</b> I'd like an easy way to see a list of all structures of a given type, perhaps just the same type as the selection. In particular all whips or all drifters or of a given type of support structure (crag, shade, shift). Perhaps bindable buttons for each of these or an icon with a count would be helpful. In either case the button / icon would take you to the "next one" with each click moving to a subsequent instance. Each click on an icon always takes you back to the most recently selected instance of that building unless the most recent one is currently selected, in which case it takes you to the next one by construction sequence.
<b>Unit Management</b> The UI from the spectator interface showing players on your team and upgrades for your team should be integrated with the commander interface. Some of my suggestions later (i.e unit upgrades) solves this issue.
<b>Missing RT notification</b> Marine commander should be notified if there is a powered up room with no RT (could have a little extractor icon on the right, click to move between unbuilt RTs). They could have a similar icon for missing power nodes.
Alien commander should have an icon for missing RTs that are currently infested. They should also have an icon for un-connected cysts.
<b>Upgrade progress labels</b> When a structure is upgrading, the yellow bar should say what is upgrading. For instance Upgrading (Crag). The power off / cancel button should also show what upgrade you are cancelling. Often this problem is caused by accidentally upgrading a structure (see upgrade overlay comment) and then wondering which upgrade I purchased.
<b>Remember structures waiting for infestation</b> When you place a building on un-infested ground but very near a cyst, it should add a transparent building to that location - using no res. Once that ground is infested, the transparent structure auto-places. Such buildings time out after 30 seconds and can be canceled by selecting and clicking cancel. This would be most useful for res nodes.
Perhaps a similar mechanic where a building auto-places once a marine is near to the place location would also be useful.
<b>Scrolling the map</b> Putting the cursor on the edge of the screen takes far too long to move the screen as do the arrow keys. This leaves me using the minimap to scroll. Also, click dragging on the map could potentially move the map.
How fast these (edge of screen, arrows) move the screen should be customized in the options. At the highest setting you should be able to cover the map in 1/2 a second.
It would be ideal to have zoom or perspective but I understand that technical issues make this near impossible.
Quite often as alien commander I hide an upgrade structure somewhere "clever" only to get distracted and become unable to find it for the rest of the game. It would help to have a summary list of upgrade structures. For aliens this is 3 hives, with their upgrade types, usually up to 6 shells, veils and spurs.
Clicking the icon should select the structure but not center the screen on it. a second click should then center the screen. That way you can upgrade say lifeforms (click hive, click upgrade) without moving the screen from the current room.
The icon should show an overlay of the upgrade if applicable (celerity / adrenaline etc) The icon should show a progress circle if something is currently working The display could be hierarchical with the crag hive at the top, space for 2 shells, then the shade hive, space for two veils, etc.
A visualization of the full tech tree for your side with completed parts highlighted would make it easier to track your progress. Clicking on a given icon in the tree could tell you what to do next.
For instance for Exo suit <ul><li> I click on Exo suit, it could tell me that I still need to build an armory and a 2nd command station. Clicking on armory puts one on the cursor, as does clicking on 2nd Command station. </li><li> Once those are built, it prompts me to upgrade the armory, selecting the 1st armory built for me when I click "advanced armory" and flashing the upgrade button</li><li> Next click after advanced armory puts a prototype lab on the cursor</li><li> Next time it selects the prototype lab and highlights the upgrade button</li><li> Finally it might either do nothing or put an exo suit to place on the cursor and center on the first-built prototype lab.</li></ul>
<b>Shift-building</b> What would be quite useful would be to bring across the shift-build mechanic from other RTS games. If you are holding down shift, the next thing you do has a dependency on the previous thing and will not happen until the previous thing is complete.
For instance you should be able to click on a shell that is currently building and shift-click on an upgrade. When the shell is finished, the upgrade automatically starts (you do not pay until the upgrade begins, if you don't have the res at that moment the shift-click is cancelled).
You could also shift-click a room's construction. Hold down shift and click on the power node, the RT, then a phase gate, a turret battery and some turrets. The marines will only see the RT when the power node is built, the phase when the RT is built and so on.
Shift-click functionality will remove the requirement for the comm to hover over marines constantly and free them up to plan ahead.
<b>Shift-moving</b> I should be able to hold down shift and give waypoints to commander controlled units from both teams. Once a unit reaches a waypoint, it immediately is told to move to the next waypoint. This could include unit abilities like root (whip) or other unit abilities.
Overall I am a huge fan and I love where you've taken Natural Selection. Addicted again already!
I so don't have time to read alllll of this before i reply, so i'll apologise in advance if i cover something someone else has already said. As someone who's been a commander for 8+ years in NS1 i have to admit, NS2's is dissappointing.
= Placing meds and ammo directly on top of a marine is nearly impossible. After about 30-40 matches i'm nowhere closer to getting it right, it's bugged and i can clearly see the med/ammo drop right on top said marine and it doesn't credit them the health/ammo and disappear.
= Hotkeys are extraordinarily slow for a decent framerate (40-60 fps). For the faster/more experienced commanders, we want and NEED to be able to pump out the E > Z > Click > E > A > CLICK combo in 1 second, like we do in NS1.
= Chair doesn't always tell you when buildings are under attack and doesn't let you see what the health of enemy units is, regardless of wether or not the unit is visible by a friendly unit/marine or not.
= Alien side, cysts costing resources is an abomination. Already they have to spend res on selecting a hive type, building a chamber, choosing an upgrade. Adding cyst costs to that frequently means ti's 20-30 minutes before your team even has 1 upgrade. All it takes is for the marines to take out 1-2 res towers early game and that's extremely easy to do.
= Alien side, you don't get view of marines or of marine health from structures. This i beleive isn't balanced or accurate with lore, the Kharaa are a bacteria, they all can independantly detect.
WOW 21 pages, allready! I must apologise in advance if i cover something someone else has already said.
Basically there are few changes I would like to see for the marine commander:
1) I don't mind having a newbie as a commander but it would help to have some indication of how many times he's been commander, because sometimes players jump into the chair and I really would like to help them but I don't know that he needs help before it's too late and too many mistakes were made.
2) I noticed that where the marine comm is less enjoyable than the khammander is that you must have some marines too expand and to recover resource nozzles. Unless you have MAC's you can't simply build an extractor nor repair the powernode. On the other side the khammander can simply push with cysts and have some whips quickly clean a marine extractor and then plant his own which will grow with no help at all. I understand the assymetric idea but it makes the marine commander alot harder to play. Maybe we should think about something like orbitally droped extractors that would take some time to become functional but that wouldn't require someone to build it? And to cover powersproblems we could simply call a support battery that would keep structures in the vicinity working for a limited time as well as proportional to how many structures it's powering.
Hopefully you see my point and make this more fair. Either the above or at least make some of the alien structures require a gorge to build. Because right now aliens only objective is to harrass and attack (which by the way makes the khammander's expansion mark pretty useless) while marines have to enter fights and build stuff at the same time.
3) I know that both commanders need to click on structures to research/evolve but since the marine commander has so many of them it would help to have a tab where you could choose to research them without having to click on the specific building.
I hope these requests weren't posted before, if so I apologize again. But you're doing a great job anyway! Keep it up!
I'm unsure of whether this is actually an issue because now that I've figured it out it's no big deal, but I found playing alien commander really confusing compared to marine commander because the tooltips didn't really explain to me how to get upgrades. The description is something like "Get a new deception trait" and it was completely unclear to me as to what that actually meant.
The marine tech tree is really straightforward and easy to comprehend (especially when you play a few games) but I found that the interface/tooltips for alien commander did a poor job of really explaining what I needed to do to get upgrades, in comparison.
Wouldn't mind a slight zoom with the mouse wheel. Sometimes it would be nice to just zoom out to see a bigger view as comm. I avoid it because it is not exactly user friendly for a beginner. An explore mode where you start exactly the same as a normal match with the same resource constraints would be handy. Teach you the value of certain upgrades. Maybe even a duel option where you have some bot skulks and marines and you get to pick two upgrades for each round, just to see how they affect the outcome.
Oh and an upgrade for marines like Nanites that slowly build structures like alien buildings do, since if you get a game with only a couple of marines you can be at a major disadvantage till you get MACs. Just some loose ideas :) Apologies if they have already been suggested.
I mainly com when I play (10+ as both aliens and marines), and the suggestions I have stem from StarCraft:
1. Key Mapping - Allow for all hotkeys to be rebound. As intuitive as using a grid system is, it might not be natural for everyone.
2. Save Screen Locations - Similar to hotkeying players to control groups, if a commander saves a screen location (ex. looks at com chair, saves location, looks at contested location, saves location) he can shift his screen quickly while leaving his cursor at the center of the screen and give aid, or accurate intel quickly. It's very convenient mechanic to have in an RTS game.
3. Teammates Location - When someone talks through voice chat or typing, have the room they are in appear next to their name. Players request ammo, health, RT, etc. and it's frustrating to identify which group they are at times. Even if it's just an abbreviation can help a lot.
4. Control Groups (Selection Add) - When you have a preexisting control group, say 4 marines on hotkey 1, and a 5th marine is moving to join them. It would be nice to be able to select just that 5th marine and be able to add him to the group without the need to select the original 4 marines.
Comments
My suggestion is that you take that Hive overview you get when you play on the ground and press C, and place it commander view or similar. Preferably if it also could tell you the amount of upgrade structur, adding a 2x / 3x / 4x if you make backup structures. As well as have a floating images, like those of Alien Egg you can make for your teammates over the upgrade structur to indicate what upgrades you have chosen for it, making it easy to see where and what you have up already.
My suggestions would be:
Have the Location Names on the minimap. I felt that when players were asking for something at so-and-so location I had no idea where it was. My map knowledge isn't that great since I just recently started playing. I know that there is the map overview when you press C, and the location name at the top left hand corner when you are viewing that particular location but having location names on the minimap will help out a bit.
Or when people are chatting on voice comm, maybe have them light up yellow on the minimap/map?
Oh thanks for remaking one of the funnest games ever.
edit: made a new post instead of editing it into this post, so people can see it's a new post.
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Here we go;
On both sides commanding has these general phases, I'll try to divide them correctly and explain afterwards what these phases are about and if that's good or bad.
Phase 1) Economy and map control
You hop into your command position and direct your team to secure key positions so you can drop your resource towers. As a marine commander you get some basic structures like an observatory or armory. The focus is on power nodes/cysts and extractors/harvesters.
Phase 2) Tier 1
The initial battles took place and the map is divided for the most part. Usually each team secured 2 command positions and the potential thirds are contested. Each team has 3-4 resource towers up and resources are stacking up. You start your first initial upgrades (shotgun or weapon/armor upgrades, crag hive and carapace, etc.)
Phase 3) Securing Tier 2
Usually one team gets ahead now. That team got their upgrades a little faster and push into the third position to secure it, they probably have a slight economic advantage too then. The team that is ahead will start getting tier 2 upgrades, like getting a second hive and fades, or researching jetpacks and level 2 weapon/armor.
While you are getting this technological lead, the team usually sits back, waiting for their advantages to get into play. The team that is 'behind' will usually try to backstab and secure different positions. Take out key structures.
Phase 4) Finishing up core stuff
You have the exo's in play, or your fades are blinking around. Now you just start getting every single upgrade you get. You finish up all the types of hives and build all the evolutions. You research all levels of weapon/armor and get every type of weapon. You put phase gates and sentries on every key point. You put whips and crags in all key points. Your team will be trying to secure that third position. Aliens try to kill power nodes and phase gates, marines try to assault hives.
Phase 5) What's done is done
You have the upgrades. All you do now is waste res on structures and equipment or lifeforms. Get mass drifers and macs.
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So is this fun? Well, in every RTS game you have these kind of stages. But in NS2 your options are a little limited. This is partly because of the nature of the game. You simply cannot make tons of different armorsuits with different weapons, or a great variety of aliens to morph into. Every player has his own role and each role has to be unique. If you make multiple kinds of machine guns, well.. they're still just machine guns. If you want to add variety to the game you could take a look at Starcraft 2.
In Starcraft 2, one of the races is 'Protoss'. The protoss techs by building a gateway and cybernetics core at the start. This is the start of their tech tree, once the cybernetics core is done you can choose three tech paths. 'Robotics Facility', 'Stargate', or 'Twilight Council'. In short; the robotics facility opens up some strong core units and a solid option to scout our your opponent. A pretty safe choice. The stargate opens up air units, you can use these to scout, harass or punish your opponent. The twilight council opens up upgrades for your basic units, and allows you to upgrade more (level 2 and 3).
If you look at the <b>marine side</b> of things they have a few tech structures:
Observatory: scouting/mobility
Arms Lab: upgrades
Prototype lab: strong core suits
Armory: weapon types
Command Station: unlocks additional tech
Currently on one command station you have pretty much no options. You can get upgrades and shotguns/welders/mines. You build the structures you need, which is everything except the prototype lab and robotics facility. Now you're ready to get that second command station, and suddenly everything opened up. Now all you have to do is getting the tech you want one by one. Jet packs are viable, exo's are viable. It doesn't matter that much. You choose either one, get some level 3 upgrades going and then you get the rest. Now you're basically done.
Suggestion:
Although it's quite a radical idea, you could consider introducing a protoss-like tech system to the marines. Allow them to research level 1 armor and weapons at any given time, all they need is an arms lab. If they want to open up additional levels of upgrades they will have to construct an observatory. This also opens up scanning and you could put weapon specific upgrades on it as well (I.e. dragon breath shotgun shells, which lights aliens on fire for a short duration when hit by a shotgun).
Prototype lab, this unlocks jetpacks and allows you to research mines (which can then be made cheaper, but with a limit of 3 per marine).
Robotics facility, which will unlock the exo suit.
Armory will still be like the armory is now. Nothing wrong with that.
Basically I took the protoss idea of tech and applied it to the marines.
Prototype Lab-> Stargate (flying, countering and harassing)
Observatory -> Twilight Council (advanced upgrade levels, unit specific upgrades, don't forget phase gates :) )
Robotics Facility -> Robotics Facility (hehe, the names line up! Core units, safe option)
Of course the command stations will still be required to be able to get these tech paths operational.
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Now the <b>aliens</b>, they already have something similar with hives being able to grow to one of three types. Before you start yelling "It has to be assymetrical!!!11one", I would like to point out the differences. Although both sides will have to choose between three tech routes, the stuff they end up with is entirely different. The aliens will still be the same aliens but they will have different qualities of movement, stealth or defense. The marines end up with entirely different kinds of equipment and options to engage locations with. It actually opens up more assymetrical gameplay where you can choose to 'counter' each other. For instance, an observatory would counter the shade hive. The robotics would counter the crag hive, and the prototype will counter the shift hive. The shift hive counters the robotics, the crag hive counters the observatory and the shade hive counters the prototype.
The aliens have too little to do with the tech that they have. The type of hive makes little difference except for the upgrades that your players will have. If you go for a crag hive your players will a bit harder to kill, but all you really get is a defensive healing structure. It would be a lot more interesting if the alien commander got types of abilities with each type of hive that allow him to control environments differently. For instance, you could give the crag hive the ability to research that infestation grants +25% health regen for aliens on the infestation. The shade hive could give the commander an upgrade to cloak aliens within the area for 10 seconds, whether there is a shade nearby or not. The shift hive could give the commander the ability to increase the movement speed of the aliens in the area.
Currently, these upgrades and abilities are somewhat in the game. But they are on the structures. The problem is however that these structures can only be tucked into a corner in a safe, secure position where no battle is going on. This results in the alien commander not being able to help his players if they are not being attacked in a location where he happens to have one of these structures. The crag/shift/shade hive should change the way the commander commands the aliens, to spice up the commanding action. Currently it doesn't matter. You make a spur, instead of a shell. A shift, instead of a crag. There is no difference except for the upgrade your aliens will be able to get.
The alien commander usually has to choose between a fast second hive, or a slightly slower second hive but upgrading the first hive to unlock, for instance, carapace. Once the second hive is up, suddenly you can upgrade all these essential things like leap, blink and bilebomb. If you introduce some hive type specific form of playing the commander then it could actually be a little more viable to stay on one hive for a little while longer to use the special powers of the type of hive you have to secure an advantage. You could even go as far as unlocking certain unit abilities under certain hive types. Like allowing leap if you choose shift, or bilebomb if you choose crag.
To clarify, I mean this:
Leap (Requires second hive OR shift hive)
If the alien commander would get certain cyst/infestation bonusses or abilities with certain hive types, it would also spice up the lategame of the alien commander where you will have different ways of supporting your aliens.
It's hard for me to try and explain what I mean, I will try to think of something that could be added as an example...
For instance, your type of hive grants your cysts the possibility of being upgraded, or changed in mode. (Crag Cyst, Shift Cyst, Shade Cyst). Each cyst spreads an infestation with a different pheromone, granting aliens different bonusses. A shade cyst could increase the speed of cloaked aliens that walk on it or increase the duration of a feign death. You can either make the commander upgrade the cysts individually, or put a button on a hive that changes the infestation to a certain bonus. So when you're attacked you put your hive in 'crag mode' changing the infestation bonuses, but when the attack is fended off you change to shift mode.
The shifts/crags and shades could then be applied for different roles. Active roles for the commander to be used, with abilities on them like they are currently. But since the flat bonus is gone you can speed up the build time and allow them to be used more offensively.
This kind of change would always keep the commander busy choosing the right infestation for his players to fight on and using the abilities to grant them situational advantages.
<i>
TL;DR
1. Each game follows certain phases, after playing many games in a row it gets a little boring following the same patterns.
2. Tier 2 opens up too much too abruptly for the commanders.
3. Commanders in late game don't have a fun job. You spam onos eggs or exo suits and structures with your excess of resources.</i>
I hope I made some sense,
Darkomicron.
First of all I have to mention the great progress of the NS2 development so far. This game gets better and better every week. The last time I played is about 1 year ago and there was much to be done in addition to make me feel like in the old NS1 times. But now this feeling comes back again :)
I'd like to give some suggestions after playing some rounds of NS2 in the past days - especially as commander on alien team.
As some Members already mentioned within the last posts in this topic I'd also like to see the names of the areas on the comm-minimap.
It's a pain if u don't know a map or especially the area names yet and s.b. calls you to build here or assist there while using the area name. I was jumping my comm-screen from room to room to find that specific area ;)
Second I'd also like to see the overall upgrades I already researched as alien. Especially for the movement, sensory and def chambers (these aren't their correct names, but I know you'll get me).
I always have to ask my teammates which upgrades we are missing, once we lost some of our chambers. Alternativly I would have to search the whole map and click every chamber one by one.
Third I think it would be very great if the alien and respectively marine players could get a little progress bar of upgrades currently in research-progress on their hud. Often people ask for special researches, while they are already being researched and nearly finished.
Afaik you are able to see their progress while looking at the chambers, but this doesn't really fulfill the job imho.
Thanks so far and keep doing such a great job :)
I have played about 10-15 games total and have a few things i'd like to have better...
Here is a mixed list with problems both from my newbie and from my more experienced days:
- My number one and most frustrating thing about comming is what i call the "Where the heck is Ventillation?" problem. Please give players a way to ping the minimap. Not just a voice command that you can focus to with Space, but a nice, hard to ignore PING on the minimap like on Starcraft2.
Marine: "Build an extractor here, Comm." (Clicks in the mouse wheel.)
*PING!*Flash!*
Commander: "Coming right up!" :)
- I like the new effect from the power nodes. It'll be nice to get something like that from empty resource nodes as well.
- Right now the grenade launcher and flamethrower only show up in the Advanced Armory menu. I was asked to research GL and FT and got lost. Please put these two as greyed-out items in the basic armory menu. In the description it can say that it requires the Advanced Armory research first. Once it's upgraded, the two weapons will light up. That saves me the embarracement to ask where the GL/FT upgrades are.
- Build and Advanced tabs? I think the observatory should be moved to Basic and ARC+Weapon upgrades should go to Advanced tab. I had no idea i should consider Observatory as one of the first things i build. Basically, if it has a pre-requirite it should be in the Advanced buildings menu.
- Please give us three sets of buttons to cycle between MACs, soldiers and buildings. That will make things much easier to find. I keep losing my MACs because they went off-screen to repair something.
- Make MACs stay away from damage. If they get bile bombed, disable auto-repair and get away from the building!
- can we please have names of areas on the minimap that can be toggled on/off if they are in the way?
- I'd like to be able to select units and hot-key them. When players get groupped, give them a HUD notification who his teammates are. Something like raid icons in WoW?
- Delete comander move orders after 2-5 minutes. If they weren't followed by now they probably wont ever be. The move command is preventing the marine from seeing build orders though.
- Late game comm is basically a healer/siege tank operator. I have no problem with that. However, can we get something else to control? Aliens have whips to play with. Can marines get another tank, maybe? A single very expensive mobile machine gun? Mounted Sentry Turrets? Something fun to deal damage with? Something equal to the Whip?
- when giving out ammo/med packs i have to hit A or S each time i want to drop a single item. Please make it to where i can hit A once and start dropping ammo until i deselect it. Same with S for health.
- We need a better notification that something is being attacked.
That's all for now... :)
I hope it's useful.
--Scythe--<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I can second that, it seems to have a mind of its own sometimes.
Currently, the commander has several implicit choices to make, like what should you focus on? Attacking/defending, gaining resources/preventing enemy resource gain, how you command your team and how you treat your team (important!). Most new people do not immediately categorize all of these decisions as important. This knowledge comes as the commander gains experience and learns how to command, and is what according to most people makes a good commander. That said, hopefully everyone agree when I say that eventually, when a commander gets very experienced (inevitable), he/she will ALWAYS make these implicit decisions actively.
So why not introduce another design feature to the commander's experience in NS2 which <i>forces</i> the commander to make these kind of decisions, <b>or at least become more aware of the importance of these kind of decisions</b>? Say, the commander is given the choice to upgrade his own experience with enhanced feedback(visual, audio, tools(be careful, not such a good idea), <b>whatever are <u>cool</u> and <u>useful</u> addition!</b>) etc., or maybe even spend resources to upgrade something that will <u>not directly</u>, but <u>indirectly</u> help the rest of the team, but only the commander directly. In other words, give the kha/commander a choice, use a part of your limited resource pool to unlock commander-only useful feedback experiences, which helps the commander to make better/maybe faster choices that aids the whole team <u>indirectly</u>, or make the choice to spend the resources directly on the team. This will force the commander to make the choice of either spending resources on himself(improving), or on the team. I think this is a very good idea to add!
I know NS2 is close to release(it's even in the release lockdown phase, yay!), but I really think this needs to be improved post-launch.
a) Marine Commander
1. I get the same warnings for all buildings except a command station, when it's under attack. When aliens do their job well, they bite everything on the map, even unimportant power nodes. After some time as commander, my brain just starts ignoring those warnings and then... "oops, where did my obs go?!" or "oh, we just lost the power in mainbase, GG". I doubt, that there was no warning at all, but it still feels like that a lot :-/
There should be a difference between more and less important buildings and even between some entities like a power node far off somewhere, where i dont have any buildings and the one in mainbase or one wich has a phasegate "plugged in". Maybe a health-bar should pop up somewhere in the display, where u can see the status of damaged buildings.
Also a better (scrollable?) Event Log would be neat!
2. Dropping meds and ammo on marines feels easier than in NS1, but they still dodge my packs a lot... not by intention, but its still pretty hard to drop them correctly. Especially when you have jetpacking marines in a hive attack. To not make it too easy, maybe the closest marine, who needs ammo or health should get a waypoint to the support package or another kind of notification.
3. I miss being able to trigger doors as i could in NS1. But thats a minor feature :-)
b) Alien Commander
1. Hard to keep track of upgrades you have, and those, the team lost. Right now you need to be told by your team... or get out of hive and check for yourself.
2. Hard to see my drifters, but thats a minor problem.
c) General
1. I want more "team shortcuts" 5 are not enough sometimes, especially when u use them to keep track of some buildings
1. When a Player requests health or Ammo it doesn't get a big ping as it does when a player is attacked, I find myself while building and researching that a player might need ammo but due to the fact I'm focusing on building and researching and moving robots around I don't notice what player is lacking ammo and may not have a effective means to communicate, making it a requirement you have a microphone to communicate is NOT a smart idea, as not everyone can use a microphone or even own one.
Bottom line is this:the issue is lack of communication methods between the commander and the players, If a player gets a big red ping when there under attack or complete an objective, why don't they get a big ping when there in need of ammo or health? MAG had a very simple system that could be implemented, when a player requests ammo/health/repairs an audio transmission is sent to every player, on top of that when a player looks in the direction that made the request an icon appears above there head and is clearly seen regardless of range if they need a medic or back-up ETC, in short, a more noticeable ping needs to be in place for requests and the commander and player need a better form of communication BESIDES voice and text.
2. Unit information, now as a newcomer (Lets ignore the whole "Play FPS first commander later" part) I have to go off other RTS games, in this case I based it off Starcraft 2 now I can build sentry's for stationary defense, OK good and small mechs to ether repair or attack, now I build a few sentry's and a attack mech (Name eludes me, its from the same building you build the repair bots from) and set my attack mech into firing mode, suddenly some aliens bust through the sentry guns and start hitting the power, I inform my teammates and wait for my battle mech to damage them, it doesn't attack, even when I manually click it and tell it to attack it doesn't do anything, my friend playing as the Aliens told me it never fired once, didn't even look like it was turned on, I look at the battle mech details and it tells me NOTHING, where as Starcraft 2 it gives me information for example:
Starcraft 2 a Mutalisk has the description: Air unit that bounces its shot to strike multiple targets. Can attack Air and Ground units, this tells me the unit attacks air and ground units AND its move attacks multiple targets
the battle mech in this says nothing
Can it only fire in a room in power?
Can it only attack buildings?
Does it automatically attack or does it need to be told by the commander?
It tells me NOTHING about what the unit does.
Solution: Give the commander more information, sure you need more experiance to play the commander good but even then a commander needs information on what there getting, it could just be something like: Battle Mech: Can only attack structures, can only attack in powered room.
3: Tutorials
I understand they were added recently and YES there is an explore mode but while explore works for those playing the FPS side because they get a feel for the map a commander needs to react to a situation by what they build
Solution: Enemy commander and AI bots to practice on
I will evangelize all that I can - it's probably one of my top-5 favorite games of all time.
That being said:
1)I wish that you could zoom out even farther in commander mode. Even at 2500x1600, it feels too claustrophobic. I'd like unlimited zoom out and zoom in
2)Are ARCs currently broken? They dont appear to fire at all, either while deployed or when trying to attack manually.
I believe ARC's require the target to be spotted. So while direct line of sight is not required, a solider needs to be looking at the target or the command needs to drop a scan from the observatory.
Love the game!
Maby someone already brought this up. I think it would be cool if the alien comander had a similar animation when entering the hive, just as the marines have.
Like, if the alien morphed into something, or if thay merge with the hive somhow in some biological way.
also i like the idea of a better background and zoomable map to the commander. and huge icons for requests!
Myself, it feels like the commander UI is quite spare (note I've only played as a commander 2 times, but these are my inital thoughts). What I'm missing:
* A better overview of the map, i.e. the 3D-map is too awkard and big. A bigger and more detailed 2D-map would be nice, where you can add structures and select units. Pressing C all the time is awkard. Controlled sectors may be presented by a lightblue-gray color, powered down sectors maybe yellow, and enemy/uncontrolled sectors red. Possibilty to draw defence-lines and offence/push-lines for players to see. Maybe a 2D- and 3D-map should be options to choose from by commander?
* A side list of selectable units and squads with a action menu to give orders, even while they are spawning.
* Detailed key-bindings for commander.
Maybe some of features already exists, but anyway these are my thoughts as 2 times commander. :)
<b>Both races</b>
2. As we Designer know, images get quicker understand then words. In order to that I would like to have some little Icons besides the name of a/the *requirements*, when you cant build something. Further more, you can build it when you click on these little Icons. (quicker navigation).
<b>Mariens</b>
3. The information of "player needs ammo/health" stands to short in my opinion.
4. As already some said...the ARC. Guys I dropped them so hard, cause I didn´t know what to do with them.
<b>Aliens</b>
5. It sometimes happens that you miss to build upgrades. A hint of information "You can research more updates" would be nice.
So far I realy like what you´ve done there to the game!
Geez Twixit
also i can run Boarderlands 2 on low smooth 1300x900, World of warcraft high graphic 1300x900 smooth and a bunch of other games engine really needs some work
Playing NS2 since a bit more than a week and it's my new favourite game :D
About commanding:
Usually I try to avoid it, but that's just because I 1. prefer jumping into battle myself, and 2. am really, really bad at giving instructions, usually I'll stutter, or something like "They're in Logistics! Wait no, I meant Operations! ....Crossroads, dammit!" will happen.
However, since I prefer playing Alien, and apparently no one ever dares go Alien commander, I end up commanding aliens more often than not - And may I say, despite the flailing, failing and derping about, I think I make for a pretty decent comm. My teams always seem to like me.
There is one big issue I've spotted though:
Can you possible make it so that the commander can tilt his camera, or even move around like a spectator? Because in CommView, I have a hard time telling where there's a wall and where it's just one of these bottomless pits you guys like so much. This has been a major issue in building defenses for me; I don't know all walls of all maps off the top of my head, and Whips I've built have ended up shot from a distance when I thought I'd placed them safely around a corner.
Actually, this may even be related to the issue of the background just being black. Your thoughts?
You have a green-yellow palette with aliens, if upgrades are yellow and semi-trasparent i will miss them.
Also cloacking, a big black with a thin line, I just know it is there as i kney it should, but it's too easy to miss it.
on the other side, as marines, blue is fancy, but as usual it can be difficult to see with white.
Last thing: when something is in research, you have plenty of room (once selected the structure) to see what you are researching. SO, make the icon big as all the space, not thiny at right of the bar.
I should be helped to see if i'm researching the right thing immediately, not have to pixel-peep.
I think b221 or similar had a better commander ui.
Arrow keys don't scroll map.
Key binds can't be viewed/changed in the Options menu like other keys. This made for some extreme frustration for my first two commands when buildings seemed to randomly dissappear. Turned out my voice talk key coincided with the recycle building bind, so every time I talked I would recycle a selected building.
Clicking on an object (eg armory) automatically starts an action. I just wanted to look at my options, but instead kept spending resources doing something that I didn't even know if I wanted to do. The auto-place extractors near resource points makes sense, but the rest of it is aggravation.
Radio messages along right side of hud came and went too quickly to be acted upon. There should be a scroll-back history and the messages shouldn't disappear so quickly if at all. Also, the message should be labeled with the player name, and most importantly have a line connecting the message to the player. The messages should also age. When the message first appears, it should be bright red. Then over the next few seconds the color should fade to gray (the current color).
There should be a list of all players somewhere, so when you click on them you should be taken to them. You should also be able to drop health/ammo directly to them using right-click.
I haven't explored all the commander keys yet (a cursory look around the docs/forums hasn't turned up a comprehensive list of them yet), but there should be a way to go to a room by pressing a key. There should likewise be a way to go directly to the different command stations/hives.
There no way to deselect stuff, so you have nothing selected. Apparently I kept giving players waypoints while trying to stop from dropping a building.
Almost forgot - a way to organize players into squads and assign commanders to them.
When you select multiple players, you should be able to see their names in a selection list.
I've only one request:
Moving's controls (Z,Q,S,D) should turned into camera's controls in commander view.
Thx for reading.
Long time NS1 comm, new NS2 comm. Also was a UI programmer on Singstar. Overall I've found the commander interface to require more micromanagement than necessary and hard to understand for a new user. Fixing these issues allows the commander to focus on more strategic play.
<b>There are a variety of issues with the commander UI</b>
<ul><li>Hard to understand what to do next if you haven't done it before (esp around tech tree)</li><li>It requires too much effort to understand your team's current upgrades.</li><li>Some tasks require too many clicks, for instance moving whips</li><li>Accidental clicks (single click upgrades)</li><li>Alerts at a variety of priorities conflict with each other (health vs ammo vs order please vs critical structure dying)</li><li>Very confusing to get in / out of the currently selected building's menu</li></ul>
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Yes, no fixes are simple, but these are tweaks rather than major new things.
<b>Auto-Rooting of whips</b>
Whips require you to baby-sit them and remember to re-root them or they are useless. Further if you right click with a rooted whip selected, you are ignored. This requires too much micromanagement.
<ul><li>Right click when a whip is rooted should unroot, move and re-root the whip</li><li>Right click when a whip is already (manually) unrooted should not re-root when it reaches its destination</li><li>Unrooted whips should automatically root within 10 seconds of movement finished if not selected, 30 seconds of inactivity if selected by commander.</li><li>The root and unroot buttons should be in different locations so you cannot accidentally unroot when you meant to root. Even more useful when multiple roots selected.</li></ul>
Also, whips should show a range circle when building and also show a range circle when you hover over the bombard upgrade.
<b>Only selected buildings show upgrade overlay</b>
When you click on a hive to select it, you often begin upgrading that hive by accident.
One possible solution to this is to hide the overlay buttons if the hive is not selected - that way the first click selects, the second click upgrades. You could make this an option in the menu so you can choose if the overlay appears on deselected buildings.
This is only required on buildings with complex menus such as the hive. Ability structures (spurs, shells, etc) should retain the non-selected overlay, as should RTs and so forth.
<b>The current building's upgrades replace the "support" tab</b>
When you select a building, it currently replaces the 3rd tab in the building menu (top, 3rd from left, bound to 'e'). It replaces the support actions tab. I think that the current building should move one place to the right and leave the support tab in place. Pressing 'e' should leave the building selected but show you the support menu. Pressing 'r' could then return to the options for the current selection, as could re-selecting that selection.
Pressing 'q' or 'w' while anything is selected should leave the structure selected and show you the relevant build menu. Pressing 'r' or changing selection returns you to the selection's menu.
If nothing is selected, 'r' should select the most recently selected hive (or perhaps the most recently selected building / building with upgrades that was constructed).
<b>Infestation Management</b>
It is hard to tell if there are cysts currently cut off from the infestation (as opposed to other reasons why structures might be under attack). It is also sometimes hard to see that structures are no longer on infested ground. There should be a different warning for cyst chain broken and buildings off the infestation.
I'd also like to see visual confirmation that you have managed to create a loop of cysts. Sometimes when closing a loop you think you've done it but you have not.
<b>Structure Management</b>
I'd like an easy way to see a list of all structures of a given type, perhaps just the same type as the selection. In particular all whips or all drifters or of a given type of support structure (crag, shade, shift). Perhaps bindable buttons for each of these or an icon with a count would be helpful. In either case the button / icon would take you to the "next one" with each click moving to a subsequent instance. Each click on an icon always takes you back to the most recently selected instance of that building unless the most recent one is currently selected, in which case it takes you to the next one by construction sequence.
<b>Unit Management</b>
The UI from the spectator interface showing players on your team and upgrades for your team should be integrated with the commander interface. Some of my suggestions later (i.e unit upgrades) solves this issue.
<b>Missing RT notification</b>
Marine commander should be notified if there is a powered up room with no RT (could have a little extractor icon on the right, click to move between unbuilt RTs). They could have a similar icon for missing power nodes.
Alien commander should have an icon for missing RTs that are currently infested. They should also have an icon for un-connected cysts.
<b>Upgrade progress labels</b>
When a structure is upgrading, the yellow bar should say what is upgrading. For instance Upgrading (Crag). The power off / cancel button should also show what upgrade you are cancelling. Often this problem is caused by accidentally upgrading a structure (see upgrade overlay comment) and then wondering which upgrade I purchased.
<b>Remember structures waiting for infestation</b>
When you place a building on un-infested ground but very near a cyst, it should add a transparent building to that location - using no res. Once that ground is infested, the transparent structure auto-places. Such buildings time out after 30 seconds and can be canceled by selecting and clicking cancel. This would be most useful for res nodes.
Perhaps a similar mechanic where a building auto-places once a marine is near to the place location would also be useful.
<b>Scrolling the map</b>
Putting the cursor on the edge of the screen takes far too long to move the screen as do the arrow keys. This leaves me using the minimap to scroll. Also, click dragging on the map could potentially move the map.
How fast these (edge of screen, arrows) move the screen should be customized in the options. At the highest setting you should be able to cover the map in 1/2 a second.
It would be ideal to have zoom or perspective but I understand that technical issues make this near impossible.
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<b>Finding Upgrade Structures</b>
Quite often as alien commander I hide an upgrade structure somewhere "clever" only to get distracted and become unable to find it for the rest of the game. It would help to have a summary list of upgrade structures. For aliens this is 3 hives, with their upgrade types, usually up to 6 shells, veils and spurs.
Clicking the icon should select the structure but not center the screen on it. a second click should then center the screen. That way you can upgrade say lifeforms (click hive, click upgrade) without moving the screen from the current room.
The icon should show an overlay of the upgrade if applicable (celerity / adrenaline etc)
The icon should show a progress circle if something is currently working
The display could be hierarchical with the crag hive at the top, space for 2 shells, then the shade hive, space for two veils, etc.
<b>Tech Tree</b>
<img src="http://i45.tinypic.com/166tk6.png" border="0" class="linked-image" />
A visualization of the full tech tree for your side with completed parts highlighted would make it easier to track your progress. Clicking on a given icon in the tree could tell you what to do next.
For instance for Exo suit
<ul><li> I click on Exo suit, it could tell me that I still need to build an armory and a 2nd command station. Clicking on armory puts one on the cursor, as does clicking on 2nd Command station. </li><li> Once those are built, it prompts me to upgrade the armory, selecting the 1st armory built for me when I click "advanced armory" and flashing the upgrade button</li><li> Next click after advanced armory puts a prototype lab on the cursor</li><li> Next time it selects the prototype lab and highlights the upgrade button</li><li> Finally it might either do nothing or put an exo suit to place on the cursor and center on the first-built prototype lab.</li></ul>
<b>Shift-building</b>
What would be quite useful would be to bring across the shift-build mechanic from other RTS games. If you are holding down shift, the next thing you do has a dependency on the previous thing and will not happen until the previous thing is complete.
For instance you should be able to click on a shell that is currently building and shift-click on an upgrade. When the shell is finished, the upgrade automatically starts (you do not pay until the upgrade begins, if you don't have the res at that moment the shift-click is cancelled).
You could also shift-click a room's construction. Hold down shift and click on the power node, the RT, then a phase gate, a turret battery and some turrets. The marines will only see the RT when the power node is built, the phase when the RT is built and so on.
Shift-click functionality will remove the requirement for the comm to hover over marines constantly and free them up to plan ahead.
<b>Shift-moving</b>
I should be able to hold down shift and give waypoints to commander controlled units from both teams. Once a unit reaches a waypoint, it immediately is told to move to the next waypoint. This could include unit abilities like root (whip) or other unit abilities.
Overall I am a huge fan and I love where you've taken Natural Selection. Addicted again already!
-Parallax
As someone who's been a commander for 8+ years in NS1 i have to admit, NS2's is dissappointing.
= Placing meds and ammo directly on top of a marine is nearly impossible. After about 30-40 matches i'm nowhere closer to getting it right, it's bugged and i can clearly see the med/ammo drop right on top said marine and it doesn't credit them the health/ammo and disappear.
= Hotkeys are extraordinarily slow for a decent framerate (40-60 fps). For the faster/more experienced commanders, we want and NEED to be able to pump out the E > Z > Click > E > A > CLICK combo in 1 second, like we do in NS1.
= Chair doesn't always tell you when buildings are under attack and doesn't let you see what the health of enemy units is, regardless of wether or not the unit is visible by a friendly unit/marine or not.
= Alien side, cysts costing resources is an abomination. Already they have to spend res on selecting a hive type, building a chamber, choosing an upgrade. Adding cyst costs to that frequently means ti's 20-30 minutes before your team even has 1 upgrade. All it takes is for the marines to take out 1-2 res towers early game and that's extremely easy to do.
= Alien side, you don't get view of marines or of marine health from structures. This i beleive isn't balanced or accurate with lore, the Kharaa are a bacteria, they all can independantly detect.
Basically there are few changes I would like to see for the marine commander:
1) I don't mind having a newbie as a commander but it would help to have some indication of how many times he's been commander, because sometimes players jump into the chair and I really would like to help them but I don't know that he needs help before it's too late and too many mistakes were made.
2) I noticed that where the marine comm is less enjoyable than the khammander is that you must have some marines too expand and to recover resource nozzles. Unless you have MAC's you can't simply build an extractor nor repair the powernode. On the other side the khammander can simply push with cysts and have some whips quickly clean a marine extractor and then plant his own which will grow with no help at all. I understand the assymetric idea but it makes the marine commander alot harder to play. Maybe we should think about something like orbitally droped extractors that would take some time to become functional but that wouldn't require someone to build it? And to cover powersproblems we could simply call a support battery that would keep structures in the vicinity working for a limited time as well as proportional to how many structures it's powering.
Hopefully you see my point and make this more fair. Either the above or at least make some of the alien structures require a gorge to build. Because right now aliens only objective is to harrass and attack (which by the way makes the khammander's expansion mark pretty useless) while marines have to enter fights and build stuff at the same time.
3) I know that both commanders need to click on structures to research/evolve but since the marine commander has so many of them it would help to have a tab where you could choose to research them without having to click on the specific building.
I hope these requests weren't posted before, if so I apologize again. But you're doing a great job anyway! Keep it up!
The marine tech tree is really straightforward and easy to comprehend (especially when you play a few games) but I found that the interface/tooltips for alien commander did a poor job of really explaining what I needed to do to get upgrades, in comparison.
An explore mode where you start exactly the same as a normal match with the same resource constraints would be handy. Teach you the value of certain upgrades. Maybe even a duel option where you have some bot skulks and marines and you get to pick two upgrades for each round, just to see how they affect the outcome.
Oh and an upgrade for marines like Nanites that slowly build structures like alien buildings do, since if you get a game with only a couple of marines you can be at a major disadvantage till you get MACs.
Just some loose ideas :) Apologies if they have already been suggested.
Tureri
1. Key Mapping - Allow for all hotkeys to be rebound. As intuitive as using a grid system is, it might not be natural for everyone.
2. Save Screen Locations - Similar to hotkeying players to control groups, if a commander saves a screen location (ex. looks at com chair, saves location, looks at contested location, saves location) he can shift his screen quickly while leaving his cursor at the center of the screen and give aid, or accurate intel quickly. It's very convenient mechanic to have in an RTS game.
3. Teammates Location - When someone talks through voice chat or typing, have the room they are in appear next to their name. Players request ammo, health, RT, etc. and it's frustrating to identify which group they are at times. Even if it's just an abbreviation can help a lot.
4. Control Groups (Selection Add) - When you have a preexisting control group, say 4 marines on hotkey 1, and a 5th marine is moving to join them. It would be nice to be able to select just that 5th marine and be able to add him to the group without the need to select the original 4 marines.