Return to base/rearm/repair/retreat

[WhoCares]

The devs are investigating to "maybe" change/improve behaviours regarding features such as :

-How and what should to repair function : https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA/pull/17477
-Retreat action button worth to implement and how : https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA/issues/6167

According to this it was broad to my attention that we have a feature that i always understood the wrong way and thought it was not working well. I talk about the "rearm" F key for aircraft. It has been kindly explained that it is not a "rearm" function but a "go to base and land". Re-arming being a side effect of landing and not the primary goal.

I would ask opinion here if players would prefer the current behaviour and see it extended to other land unit in sort of retreat action/button which would send all unit back and side effect send the wounded to repair. Keeping in mind all unit would retreat.

My vision is the following.

I'm not really in favour of a button that makes the unit retreating because the destination even if "known" can be "not-adequate". I still prefer to issue a retreat order by issuing a move command in the location my brain will assess as safe whatever the distance or vector. From that postulate, a retreat button and the current behaviour of F key for aircraft are not really useful to me. I still use the f key for its side effect "rearming".

My suggestion :

I would rather have the F key on aircraft to be use as "Rearming" as primary goal. Leading in : only "non full" aircraft would head to rearm, and "full-ammo" aircraft would discard the order. This way i could efficiently send units to rearm while keeping the offensive with the others

process : select a or several aircraft, press f

additionally i would be in favour of removing the "wrench on vehicle" to have a new function instead "go to repair". It could be a F key modifier such as ctrl + F or "free to bind". The behaviour would be : Any selected wounded vehicle heads to service depot (land and air alike). "Fully healthy vehicle or infantry discard the order". With that command i would be able to apply a global repair order on an entire army (air included) or just selected the unit i care and apply one by one or grouped.

process : select a or several units, press ctrl + f (or other key)

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Admitting we have those 2 behaviours, as we would have no need for the wrench anymore for vehicle, it could be considered the wrench selection box to repair several building at once. https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA/pull/17477

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All i described here, i thought most player would share the vision, but i might be very wrong, so i need you to give your thoughts on this.

Thank you for reading

[goat]

Regarding aircraft; I often want to send aircraft back even though they still have ammo remaining, so making the F button only send back the units with no ammo left but would be a bit annoying, as that would mean I'd have to move command the rest of the units back. But if it is possible to somehow get both (one command that only sends units with no ammo left + the current) then I wouldn't mind at all.

As for the repair I already mentioned this on discord, but I do not really see the point of it. It is unlikely I would want to send back units near full hp, so in that case I would have to select them all individually, in which case I prefer the current system. I do not personally think a box selection for repair would be an improvement, just an alternative way to do it I suppose

[eskimo]

Wrench clicking ties in with original game rather nicely imo, and therefore quite intuitive.

There are scenarios that support various command changes as a positive, and others that don't.

Personally i think the game is too simple and plays too quick to warrant excessive controls. I use 2x grouping teams for units, in RA2 i used to use 6x.

[dnqbob]

In fact,
https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA/pull/17477
is mainly made for mod/game based on most of game mechanic of RA2/TS on OpenRA. Powerdown box dragging function is for power consuming units if certain modder/dev wants.

And this branch won't hurt default mod, I will be glad to see if one of them applies my idea, though (like OpenRA TD or OpenRA TS in the future). In OpenRA RA, the tanks are just used as meat shield for infantry so there won't be many tanks like other cnc-like game, also in OpenRA RA the AOE is not as frequntly as other C&C alike, so it is seldom that a group of tanks or buildings all need repairing.

As for the repair global command can repair vehicle/aircraft, it is not very C&C but convenient, as well as it won't hurt the orignal C&C repair function (repair buildings) and somewhat sounds reasonable (the word of 'repair' in grammar can apply to buildings and machines noun). So it is unecessary to drop it. And it is also the point that I extend this repair function.

Besides, I think if someone apply a "Return to base/rearm/repair/retreat" feature on global command buttons, it is bettter to give not only vehicles and aircrafts a retreat behavior, but also Infantry a retreat behavior for fitting the function's own name (and I think it is better to make Barracks heal infantry units). Although in doing this the OpenRA won't look like a member of C&C series, but I think it is more reasonable not only for function's own integration but also in gameplay.

In fact I am not care about the OpenRA is not C&C (the OpenRA is not even RA for now). Since some people like to play it and some modder/game devs like it, it can be anything out of the box of so called C&C that is already R.I.P under EA's hand.

[Major Kusanagi Motoko]

The Deploy (F) key for OpenRA / CnC air units was a brilliant feature that allowed to keep up with the very fast paced air plays in the TD mod.

[Major Kusanagi Motoko]

Did some testing with the new Repair-wrench on TD Air units.

see post below.

[Major Kusanagi Motoko]

My suggestion :
Any selected wounded vehicle heads to service depot (land and air alike). "Fully healthy vehicle or infantry [edit: air] discard the order". With that command i would be able to apply a global repair order on an entire army (air included) or just selected the unit i care and apply one by one or grouped.

process : select a or several units, press ctrl + f (or other key)

+1

very good suggestions, WhoCares.
since the removed F key function in TD to issue repair orders on selected aircraft (which was working perfectly well back then), for now some longer time, we don't see that many air to air fights nor air being used much in general.

From my perspective that is not due to their balance, but simply due to the clumsiness and buggy repair mechanisms - as i elaborate in detail further below (including a testing replay).

I would prefere a command-hotkey for manually selected (damaged) units,
over a global command on the entire army (with auto-discard on the healthy units),
as damaged tanks or air are usually "closer" to enemy units and the healthy ones more behind, which then could cause clumsy blocking/ unintended move-arounds/ interfere with your micro.

Cheers,
Major Kusanagi

If you know any way to bring that to attention to the devs, that would be just awesome.

[Major Kusanagi Motoko]

Hello,
reporting with a short update and a debug replay,
to hopefully be looked at from the developers perspective:

Airplays:
select 2 or more damaged orca/apache, retreat them from the frontlines, and
1) order them manually to land on a pad.
2) use the repair wrench.

What currently happens is:
Only one orca/apache
1) will continue flying towards the pad, the others will stop right there when the right click on the pad was issued.
2) returns to closest pad. Others dont move, even if there are more free pads nearby.

As for RA, i got report, that there seem not to be any issues with reloading multiple aircraft on multiple pads (see in-replay chat).

Tankplays:
Repairing Tanks works optimal:
selecting a group of tanks and repair them via manual order on one repairpad/service depot, they all repair one by one automatically in sequence.

Using the repair wrench on them will send damaged tanks towards the closest pad,
including the scenario with multiple pads and multiple damaged tanks where the wrench was used in short succession.

Thank you for your attention !

[abcdefg30]

Sadly this is part of the mess that our aircraft code is, I'm not sure how fast we will have a solution for that. (At least there is https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA/issues/18313 so we don't lose track.)

[Major Kusanagi Motoko]

Hey abc, thank you for the reply.

Yeah, which wonders me, as it was working perfectly well with the application of the F Key (deploy command) on selected air units.
(Every selected air unit would directly fly towards the nearest helipad and repair in sequence automatically [EDIT: waiting nearby the pad for other air to finish repairs, and exit the pad according to waypoint vector], if a selected unit was @full health it would still retreat, and land, but immediately take of from pad)

I cant remember in which release this function was disabled for TD, but i have given pchote note about the problem at this point in time...

Im not a coder, but if you have backups from old code, maybe that might save some work ?

[abcdefg30]

Im not a coder, but if you have backups from old code, maybe that might save some work ?

Sadly I don't think that is going to work, the aircraft code just changed to much in the meantime, and adding old code in would make it even more messy.