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Author Topic: [QoL] Toggle to run NPC actions in parallel  (Read 1559 times)

Luminiferous

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[QoL] Toggle to run NPC actions in parallel
« on: September 15, 2024, 03:02:41 AM »

Hi,

one small QoL thing I would like to see is a toggle for running NPC actions in parallel. Specifically things like Warlords Research Attack or the W8 battle in Command take a lot of time for each turn, since we have to wait for every NPC to do its thing one after the other. I think it would be nice to have the option to do all the NPC actions at the same time (or massively speed them up), so that the player doesn't have to wait for 5 seconds each turn.

If this isn't too much effort to implement.. I feel like, depending on the architecture of the game engine, it might be really hard to implement that.
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Kyzrati

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Re: [QoL] Toggle to run NPC actions in parallel
« Reply #1 on: September 15, 2024, 06:36:18 AM »

Yeah it's been requested a number of times before (including discussed again recently on Discord), and was brought up as early as Cogmind's first alpha releases, but there are no plans to add such a feature as it has a lot of drawbacks for both stability and gameplay consistency, not to mention the tactical value.

Technically it's not impossible to implement to some degree, but also realize that you lose a lot of important and potentially useful information by doing that (it is also architecturally impossible to get identical results, because it ends up requiring some amount of simulation in order to maintain compatibility with existing systems).

Instead I've always made sure that only very rare and/or powerful things actually take much time to individually resolve, and any things that don't meet that standard have been adjusted over the years. Of course there are still a handful of instances where regardless of individual optimizations you can still end up taking longer during certain segments due to the sheer number of units involved, like those larger events, though speeding through these things (or really anything in a roguelike) can also theoretically be a recipe for disaster...

If this was a significant or even somewhat common part of the experience, then it would need to have been built differently from the start to take that into account, but fortunately it's not so I felt it was within the acceptable limits to build it this way, which ends up leading to fewer issues.
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Josh Ge, Developer - Dev Blog | @GridSageGames | Patreon

Luminiferous

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Re: [QoL] Toggle to run NPC actions in parallel
« Reply #2 on: September 15, 2024, 06:44:02 AM »

Well appearantly I am too incompetent to find the existing issues/request.. oh well..

But yeah okay. Its not a huge issue and it really only is annoying specifically during the warlord attack and W8, so I can live with that ^^
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N.W.L

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Re: [QoL] Toggle to run NPC actions in parallel
« Reply #3 on: September 17, 2024, 11:12:05 AM »

But yeah okay. Its not a huge issue and it really only is annoying specifically during the warlord attack and W8, so I can live with that ^^

I would be worried to use it in research WL attack, last time I was there the game crashed, reminds me to do the bug report, tho I'll have to test it first, I don't what more posts of mine in the "not bugs" category. (Wiz. mode, to my knowledge, would help but that will be one day, not too far off in the distant future... okay maybe a year or two, but you can't have it all)

I do think that in some situations it would be nice, but there is a few where it could be catastrophic, and trash you build, so giving a tool that could nuke you on accident seem a bit hard to justify in all scenarios, especially when high range enemies come into play

EDIT: probably won't be nuking a info-war combat build (unless a destroyer is there) but a flight build could be wiped with a couple of careless button presses
« Last Edit: September 17, 2024, 11:44:18 AM by N.W.L »
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Kyzrati

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Re: [QoL] Toggle to run NPC actions in parallel
« Reply #4 on: September 21, 2024, 09:34:08 AM »

Well appearantly I am too incompetent to find the existing issues/request.. oh well.
Not incompetence, the problem here is specifically Discord, which is where everyone decided to go instead of posting here on the forums, so it means that the vast majority of discussion about features and strategy happens there, and is as a result very hard to actually reference... I wanted to avoid it and tried to keep people posting here as well for as long as I could back in the day, but most people simply prefer that format despite its drawbacks. Does have advantages too, of course.

Anyway, I made the comment just as a way of saying it comes up occasionally in the community as a point of discussion, but I can't easily provide you with any references for the aforementioned reasons.

Anyway, it's certainly true that this sort of things ends up killing people and/or ruining builds in roguelikes when a lot is happening but you want to blast through it regardless. Sure you may think you know everything that's going to happen, but that is not always the case. RNG is a thing and it can and will surprise you no matter how familiar or seemingly predictable a situation might be :)

Gotta love that I still get surprised all the time playing my own game for over a decade.
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Josh Ge, Developer - Dev Blog | @GridSageGames | Patreon