RC/OM status indicator for all builders

[JOURNEYMAN]

I think it would be nice if all builders in the team has the status indicator on the HUD for the RC/OM. The indicator would show the current health, and if RC/OM is being built, their progress would also show on the HUD as well.

[seana11]

seconded

The number of built eggs would be nice too. (So you know if your team needs spawns)

[JOURNEYMAN]

Yes, also the indicator for the number of spawns.

[Viech]

A status indicator for the construction progress sounds good, but when it comes to showing its health or the number of spawns we are approach an area which is not just relevant to building comfort but also to the core gameplay, the awareness of base attacks.

I consider Tremulous' approach to just give a warning when the OM is hurt to be rather artificial. First of all it's unintuitive: The Overmind is supposed to be a clever thing that "supports" all the other structures. One might think it should be aware of its friends being killed. More importantly, the warning doesn't prevent sneak attacks that target the eggs and, at the same time, gives you false positives from time to time when the attacker has already been killed but a grenade scratches big mama. There is also no comparable warning for the humans who are even more dependent on a working RC. (I don't count the DC whose frequent warnings are ignored most of the time in a public game.)

The question is, what do we want in the big picture? Do we want to tell teams when their base is being attacked so they don't need to babysit it? Or do we want to require them to check back once in a while and allow successful sneak attacks to be game-ending?

Once we decided on this, we have the chance to come up with something that is more coherent than status quo. I personally am in favor of adding sensor-buildables that give the teams more precise information about intruders but can be circumvented by a careful attacker. Another approach would be giving warnings after a lot of damage has been done to a group of buildables in a short time. The overmind would just warn more intelligently and the reactor would detect the sudden change in power consumption.

[JOURNEYMAN]

I think the builders should get more information since they are the ones responsible for the maintenance of all the structures they build. The construction kit would be tied to the RC and it would monitor the status of the RC at all times, but the DCC would take care of the base attack warnings. The OM would communicate with the grangers on it's general health and base status, etc. The fighters in the team would get the generic warning as before when base/om is being attacked.

[ViruS]

For those who have seen 1.1's teamstatus, I think the statistics from there are enough. Although, it might be useful to give a number for the number of defences/resource structures for our new resource system.

Non-1.1 players:
In some 1.1 servers, you can type /teamstatus and something like this pops up:

EDIT: That's me doing a backflip with cheats on for thirdperson. It's not a glitch.

[Guy]

I think another question to be asked is what is the intended # of players in a match. I played several matches where the player count was at a max of 4 players, and sneak attacks completely changed the flow of the game with so few players. Low player count matches favor rushing offensives at the start in a gambit to gain momentum and prevent the enemy team from scouting the map too much, allowing for agressive forwards if you have enough control. Everyone knows that if Humans let their RC go down it's nearly impossible to relocate, or finish off the alien base/remaining aliens. However aliens are actually far mor susceptible to early rushes in low player count matches because dretch bots won't attack humans on certain raised surfaces such as the mouldings, missiles, and random 2nd floor raised ledges in the alien base on Sirius Complex.

With humans being mentally tortured by the severity of a successful sneak attack and aliens having significantly less cushoning in the form of competent AI defenders at the base to prevent one; both teams end up limiting their own mobility to go and re-check the base.

You cannot often justify keeping one player back at base in a 2v2 or 3v3 match because that one extra player makes a huge difference when fighting an enemy force of players and CPUs in, or just outside, the enemy base. Having a structure that would babysit for you and at least give you a display of spawns and RC/OM attack status would allow for greater agressive gameplay and less timid base checking.

This is a great wall of text for such a simple concept, but I would support a S2 or S3 structure that increases confidence loss in return for data about spawn/OM/RC provided to the entire team. I'd go with either show spawn/boost/medi/arm # and OM/RC HP, or just add a warning when either the spawns or OM/RC are getting attacked and give instant notification if the OM/RC dies. Buildpoints can be accessed too easily with current dev server mining rate for a flat subtraction of BP on construction to be an effective barrier/con to this nice structure. Players would make use of the structure to be more agressive and would need to keep going for agressive building, structure damage, or enemy kills in order to maintain it or risk getting pushed down a stage.

I haven't played even one match of Unvanquished where there were more than 20 players so I cannot say for sure how it'd play out there but I think the entire idea of a babysitting mechanic for 5v5, or bigger, matches is going to be rather useless because somone can be a stay-at-home builder or is likely to die and respawn. It would only really have a use if it detected whether spawns near it were being attacked; allowing it to be used to check forward spawns and only forward spawns.