Suggestion for redesigned unit menu

[Per]

Following up on the discussion in viewtopic.php?f=6&t=12197, I have started working on a redesigned unit menu, that incorporates both primary and secondary orders into a single menu.

It should clarify the orders available and make it easier to use. The first two rows contain primary orders. My biggest concern here is the lack of a build button - it is a primary order, but we already have a button for this in the reticule below, so I did not want to duplicate it. Also note that the 'Guard' and 'Hold position' here are not the 'Guard' and 'Hold position' that were previously removed and are discussed in the thread mentioned above - these are the primary orders with the same names, and slightly different functionality.

The last three rows contain secondary orders. Sort of. The 'return to X' orders are actually also primary orders in disguise - once they are set, the droid will be given a primary order which will cancel any other primary order you have - and if you give it a new primary order, that will cancel its 'return to X'. So I am unsure if those should really be moved up. Finally notice the 'attack level', which is now a binary on/off switch, which I think makes more sense than the old tri-state solution.

I would like this menu to instantly appear whenever a unit is selected. I have tested this out for a bit now, and I like this behaviour. It is much friendlier to new players. If necessary, I suppose an option can be made to not open it automatically, but I think people should try it out before condemning it. I think you will get used to it very fast. I have tried to make it as small as possible, to take up as little screen estate as possible - but it can perhaps still be shrunk a bit.

Hopefully this will both make the game easier to get into and solve some of the confusion concerning what orders are available. Feedback welcome.

PS Circle and patrol are currently hybrid secondary/primary orders, for no good reason. I intend to change this.
PPS Pursue is not here (yet). Please continue the debate about its usefulness in the other thread.

[cumandgetit]

* i think there is great potential in this line of development to enhance gameplay & warzones popularity. *

~ one thing i was wondering about. do you think it would be a worthwhile, positive, command addition (& in alignment with warzone's essence) if you could:

1.) set a unit's rally point ?

2.) so that it was triggered by its health decay setting ? ie. - @ med health it would go to the set rally point ?

[vexed]

Not really sure why anyone would always want that shown, it isn't that hard to right click on units to bring it up, and it isn't always needed.
For reference, here is the older one.

menu1.PNG (28.9 KiB) Viewed 5643 times

So, instead, we should remove the menu.

Instead, have a half-circle wheel scrollable dialog pop up at unit position, and then people can turn the 'dial' on the order they want, then we render a little pursue/hold/guard icon over the unit, or whatever order it is currently doing...

[Per]

I'm not going to redesign the whole GUI code - going to have to work with what we have for now. Also, much of the point of this is to present the primary orders that many players are unaware of because they are not shown in any user interface.

[cumandgetit]

let's look at the proposition from a different angle, for the sake of a thought experiment exchange that may be of value.

there are currently 3 "go to" command buttons: 1.)repair station, 2.) command center & 3.) transport, tied to the unit health decay trigger.

how about instead 1 button - go to set "rally point".

to rephrase the question from my first post -

would this be more useful to enhanceing gameplay, while taking up less gui real estate (& maybe overall more elegant)and also utilizing what is already extant in a different way ?

in this particular case of 'subtraction' i'm reminded of architect and designer Ludwig Mies Van De's principle of "less is more" (a phrase nicked from 19 th century poet robert browning).

[stiv]

I rather like the idea of Rally Points. One of my pet WZ peeves is when the geometry of an attack makes may damaged units retreat directly thru danger.
(and before anyone starts, you don't always have time to build a Repair Station in a safe spot)
It also would provide a rally point (duh!) for massing units before an attack.

I don't know if it has been removed, but I recall seeing some sort of SetRetreatPoint() function in wzscript. So the concept is/was there, at least for the AI.

there are currently 3 "go to" command buttons: 1.)repair station, 2.) command center & 3.) transport, tied to the unit health decay trigger.

To elaborate a bit, these are essentially
1) go to nearest repair station and wait (or go to headquarters if no repair station)
2) return to base (I think that is the Headquarters rather than the Command Center)
3) go to transport and board

From a development standpoint, one of our general problems with Warzone code is the difficult-to-work with GUI.
With that in mind, we can redo our 3 GUI buttons as:
1) go to nearest Repair Station (or Headquarters) - existing
2) go to assigned Rally Point (or Headquarters by default) - new
3) board Transport - existing

[stiv]

I would like this menu to instantly appear whenever a unit is selected. I have tested this out for
a bit now, and I like this behaviour. It is much friendlier to new players.

This sounds reasonable. A little easier to get to than right-click. I assume it would work for group (click & drag) selections?

[cumandgetit]

.....

From a development standpoint, one of our general problems with Warzone code is the difficult-to-work with GUI.
With that in mind, we can redo our 3 GUI buttons as:
1) go to nearest Repair Station (or Headquarters) - existing
2) go to assigned Rally Point (or Headquarters by default) - new
3) board Transport - existing

~ even better yet.

~ while i can envision in thought experiments this modest change facilitating what you brought up in your post, plus a bunch of other fresh & interesting multi vector tacitical possibilities in the heat of battle that are not so feasible under the current scheme (even for much more experienced players, let alone novices), the proof is in the pudding. which is to say, it would surely benefit from a thorough going stress-testing in competitive mp which i'm trying not to get overly excited about doing as this potent & ripe proposition could yet wither on the vine unplucked.