With the past few patches taking away from its uses, the commander role is in desperate need of some love from our dev team. I believe that the best kind of love is that in added communication abilities for commanders. I hope that this suggestion is well considered and implemented soon as it does not disturb any existing balance and can only add to the ability of a commander to help their team execute more sophisticated strategies or to communicate to them more effectively certain information. What are captioned waypoints? Captioned waypoints are markers with an at least 16 character caption underneath/above it. Why should captioned waypoints be added? Captioned waypoints convey a textual message relative to the position marked. They do this perpetually so that players need never to be reminded of their significance and allow the commander to reference them appropriately in order to cut down chatter. With marked positions that have names, more sophisticated strategies and tactics can be executed with much less chatter and more ease. Competent commanders able to use these well will be able to guide the flow of combat more effectively and be able to more powerfully articulate their orders without prohibiting or throwing anything off balance. How could they be implemented? Captioned waypoints should be global so that all players on the team see them at all times. In the commander hud there is Units, Buildings, Factories, Research. I am proposing that a tab, Waypoints, be added. Under waypoints there would be 6-8 available slots for waypoints. Through this tab commanders could place new waypoints, edit the text of each waypoint or delete waypoints. I thank you for taking your time to read this and hope that you are in favor of this suggestion. It would not cause anything to fall off balance, it would not disrupt gameplay and could only enhance the now lacking commander role's ability to communicate arbitrary information to their team. Before you say that these are unnecessary, think about how much they could change empires gameplay in the hands of competent commanders.
ya... but, the interface doesn't match what I remember of tribes 2. I have it somewhere guess I should install it and look.
Hmm...at the least, I think something like "high priority", "critical", "low priority", "negliglible" kinda tags could be used - that is, if you don't want something that the comms write themselves. Both would be nice
This reminds me of my old suggestion (Commander messages): http://forums.empiresmod.com/showthread.php?t=12824 Response from the developers was that someone is currently working on "drawing on minimap". In general I totally agree that commanders without mic need better ways to communicate with their team. But it doesn't matter what will be added, it surely will be better then the current team chat messages.
propositions for new command communication features include: Commander Csay Minimap Drawing Board Captioned WaypointsBecause none of these affect balance or nullify any existing features they should be implemented on the basis of their effectiveness, ease of implementation and capacity to be abused. Drawing on the minimap is something forwarded with good intentions but is not as fitting for empires as are captioned waypoints. The reasons for this are that distortions of the minimap are more disruptive to players than singular points, words are more articulate and immediately associative than sets of symbols and that abusing the draw ability would be far more fun than to abuse waypoints. Commander Csay would have the tendency to be over-redundant as messages can be relayed to a team via microphone at varying intensities. Commanders without microphones can rely on close friends or teammates to act as their sergeant at arms if needed. Minimap drawing board would open up the map to be defaced over and over and over again. Just imagine all of the phallic and otherwise obscene images silly commanders would delight over sharing with their teams whether they liked it or not. The minimap would be easily cluttered and players may have difficulty relying on its clarity. Movement paths and regions are better articulated by voice or text as arbitrary 2 dimensional lines rarely have significance in the 3d environment players on the ground interact with. Captioned waypoints would not be as fun to abuse as either of the two aforementioned proposed features as they are relatively not disruptive. I know dynamic captions would be hard to code but i feel that having them so would make empires much more of a creative game. The capacity for strategic coordination would be increased significantly. Commanders would be able to throw down points of reference that they could refer to by certain names, or in more simpler cases create points with intuitive titles such as, (take back my 16 char comment, make it 32.) trap comm (here) build turrets (here) repair pad (so people know where one is if they're damaged and don't need to ask) main base (because people often don't know where it is at any given moment) enemy main (same as above) Commanders can also use less intuitive points for usage as map relevant references, main objective (so people know what the team's trying to take) secondary/tertiary objective arty base, c5 Out of the three proposed new features for commanders, captioned waypoints should be implemented before the others as they have the most capacity for effectiveness and the least capacity for abuse.
:eek: Very impressive! Calculating possible commentary....... Crunching numbers........ Nada. Only thing left do is compliment the creativity, usefulness and impressive thuroughness of this suggestion. Good job, FN198, I hope this makes it.
seeing as it's not very controversial I think this update should be able to gain the approval of the community fairly easily.
Yeah I liked captioned waypoints from tribes 2 a lot, and also the request menu thing that allowed you to select which waypoint you wanted to show up. I like this idea.
There are a million and 1 ideas that would gain the approval of the community, but the biggest problem is where it falls on the priority list in terms of coding. And right now, top priority is actually aircraft funnily enough.
I would lol, except I heard mootant talking about it in-game, which mostly makes me look like this :eek: and Even "default" waypoints would be good - little flags on the map/drawn on the hud that literally just denote areas the comm wants to highlight. Even if you do it without the caption, it's still a good idea.
@FN198, For waypoints: I like the implementation you suggested. I'd like to add that waypoints must no slower than placing a turret. Empires moves far too fast for commanders to type out a description for waypoints. For the minimap drawing board: I like it. Suppose the minimap had two layers, the base map, and the commander's drawing. Players could then toggle the drawing on and off, which would allow them to view the normal minimap at any time.
maybe even a third layer for squad leaders so they can show their squad the route they want to go. not as necessary and maybe even redundant, but it could be a nice addition.
Perhaps use the various other maps instead? I.E. the artillery map, the full size map, etc. That way your small minimap doesn't get soo cluttered, but you can see objectives/strategy on the fullmap. I would ofc want waypoints on the minimap.
I would easily settle for a compromise of static titles such as: Waypoint 1 Waypoint 2 Waypoint 3 ... Waypoint 8 Regarding the minimap drawing board, I do not think that it would have much significance if players had the ability to turn it off/on.
