FAForever
Allow automatically loading constructed units into constructed transports
Demo of two backend lua widgets for autoloading units in transports. Allows (for example) infinite construction of stingers carrying mech marines.
First widget: If a land factory is assisting an air factory, any non-engineer units from the land factory will be routed to assist the air factory instead of going to the land factories rally point.
Second widget: When an air factory finishes constructing a transport, it checks for the presence of any non-engineer land unit guards. This works independently of the first element; units can be manually ordered to assist a factory and will be loaded into transports in the same manner. Prototype only loads 1 unit per transport, but additional logic can check the size of the transport and load units as appropriate.
Stretch goals: give units assisting an air fac special formations, either a basic square or a more advanced arrangement where they group up with respect the air factory's build queue. Right now they play musical chairs as more units arrive/are loaded, which is workable but distracting and carries all the usual factory assist pathfinding issues.
https://github.com/FAForever/fa/assets/7411478/df2edc70-f0f5-42e0-b008-cca1eb489d9f
See discussion here: https://discord.com/channels/197033481883222026/1144605729911738439
About the feature: I like it, but I'm also feeling conflicted. I do certainly think it is interesting and novel and I also understand the value. While testing I noticed two problems:
- (1) At the moment only one unit attaches to the transport. That appears to be intentional though, given the Stinger example.
- (2) This only works when the land factory shares at least one blueprint that it can build with the air factory. When an Aeon land factory assists a UEF air factory then the assist order is cancelled. This is engine behavior and it makes sense from a code perspective but to the user it could be annoying.
Stretch goals: give units assisting an air fac special formations, either a basic square or a more advanced arrangement where they group up with respect the air factory's build queue. Right now they play musical chairs as more units arrive/are loaded, which is workable but distracting and carries all the usual factory assist pathfinding issues.
While working on https://github.com/FAForever/fa/pull/5908 I noticed that units can have unique guard formations. The property is called GuardFormationName and it is in the AI table section. I assume links to a function name in formations.lua. I think you can experiment with that to create a better, alternative formation.
Closing due to inactivity. Feel free to reopen it if you pick it up again.
