Editor Improvement Wishlist

[steep plover]

(This initial part is mostly copied from a Thread i made!)

#1: Ground clipping for buildings
I would like the option to lower certain buildings further into the ground than is permitted by the center of their collider. If accidental misplacement is an issue, it could perhaps be some sort of toggle-able option, to ignore ground collision for a time, just like with the camera.

#2: "Opportunist" Editor-Allegiance state for objects
Having to select between what boils down to "friendly/hostile/neutral" for each object, but especially buildings, is one of the largest practical limitations imposed on mission-making.
Especially when it comes to Infrastructure such as factories, the current system is a little silly and frustrating. Economically and logically, except for a late-game "total war" type scenario, there is little incentive, assuming a realistic backdrop, to destroy infrastructure which you could very realistically capture instead.
However, in the current implementation, players and AI alike are forced to destroy valuable infrastructure, not only to "deny it's use to the enemy", but due to the way Airbases and Facilities work, also frequently simply to progress the mission script.
Thus, i propose a new "faction": Opportunist.
Members of this faction would switch to Neutral immediately upon being contested by both factions, and switch allegiance immediately upon capture. They should be exempt from AI targeting, but still be open to attacks by the player.

#3: "Decorative" mode for buildings
Something i've encountered on larger missions is significant target pollution by buildings placed to enhance the realism, which had to have been set to neutral to avoid confusion about which buildings were of relevance to gameplay. This presents an especially insidious issue if the map also has neutral facilities which can be captured, a simple toggle to hide certain neutral buildings or perhaps even neutral vehicles on the UI would do wonders.

Continued below!

[steep plover]

#4: Additional, "generic" buildings
This point somewhat factors into point #3, but carries it's own implications and workload. Simply put, while some areas of the maps are simply begging to be turned into prime Lockheed-Martin-Town, there simply isn't enough variety in the available buildings to create realistic or interesting locations from scratch.

As a result, many fully-custom locations end up looking out-of-place and artificial. Some generic buildings could remedy this issue, by breaking up repetition in the "functional" buildings or by visually tying together a larger compound over uneven terrain.

Some great candidates to start with would be Barracks/Housing buildings. Everyone needs a place to sleep, and so inevitably, wherever people amass, there is housing. Some classic examples of visually flexible building types would be, in no particular order:
Thin, long, bungalow-style barracks
Medium-sized, 3-5 story apartment complex, concrete and glass
Wider, "Compound" style housing with a perimeter wall, one large and multiple smaller buildings

After that would probably be the addition of some commercial buildings, like offices, workshops, warehouses, and perhaps even a big, ugly department store or a megalomanic mall?

#5: Decorative items
This is less important to me than 4, but i think it would still add flair. Operating an Airbase or a FOB is busy work, people need food and water, fuel must be pumped, the runway maintained... all this needs facilities and machines which have become a frequent sight whenever we see a FOB depicted anywhere. Right now, most existing decorative objects like containers, ammo racks, fuel bladders and pumps are baked into the models. By giving these objects an identity of their own, they could be used to spruce up even unrelated locations to give the impression of hustle and bustle.

Another thing to add would be decorative vehicles, just generic personal and commercial vehicles. No driving, just "red barrels" to blow up.

[steep plover]

Addendum to #2:
"Decorative" buildings could be set up in such a way that asides from their positional data, collider, and LOD/Destruction data, no other information about them is polled at runtime, avoiding, for example, capture checks or AI considerations (aside from not crashing into the thing's collider)

[digital stratus]

(I too will copy my few cents, so they wont be lost somewhere)

Remove that weird rotation of ground units when they reached their waypoint, or a way to edit their rotation angle at least

Circle around HLT's trucks that is showing their resupply/refuel range

Toggle for waypoints to mark them as Air/Ground/Sea units only, so only respected units can pass them and complete

Escort feature, that you can select X unit to be escorted with N amount of AI units or select specific units (they would try to follow/fly in formation)

Probability of unit spawn, would be useful for some scenarios where certain unit should be spawned or not

A way to save certain info from previous mission to use in the next one into a "bank" like in Starcraft 2
For example if mission 1 can end in various ways, you can save that ending data and use it as you wish in mission 2

Improvements on text that is showing ingame, an ability to add image (like portraits) an audio file (if someone dubed it)

Ability to tie missions, so after for example completion of 1st mission and if player have next one downloaded, an option to start next mission right away when first one is finished, so you wont need to return in main menu and select mission again

Public variables. Allow making variables, which inherit from scenario start menu. The player just enters a number or selects "Yes"/"No" (for a boolean) before scenario start for each given public variable. Then in the game they are not predefined by author, but entered or selected by the player.
For example: author of the scenario creates a public variable in editor called "Enable enemy reinforcements?" as a boolean. Author sets up a trigger, which reads that variable, and then creates an enemy reinforcement if boolean is set to True ("Yes"). When player launches this scenario, he has a button which lets him decide to leave it on True ("Yes") or to turn it false ("No").
This way scenario creators can set their own difficulty measures and enable or disable specific mission details.

Feature that lets you select units and assign them to be a part of the "squad" so for example there will be a lead vehicle that will transfer its orders to its squamates and they would try to stick together, fly/drive in formation if needed

I would also like to see some "objectives" for individual unit/squads, that will work perfectly with what I wrote above, so for example you could select X unit to do objective Y, or engage something specific, instead of faction wide objective that we have, because of with scenarios where certain unit should attack only certain stuff is quite impossible to do

Feature that will let you mark places for AI to "idle" when they are out of targets or objectives, so being able to place "holo" model of unit/aircraft that is suppose to occupy those position
AI will try its best to park there and stay idle, instead of bailing out from the aircraft while airborne or stuck up infront of vehicle depot

Also, ability to limit how much units faction can have
like a unit cap, so if faction will reach it it wont pump up new units from depot/hangers, but those unit will instead stockpile

[charred raptor]

It would also be nice to take something from the more developed, now defunct era, which allowed fun in simulators

[woeful fern]

Duplicate
https://discord.com/channels/909034158205059082/1384447692238880768

[charred raptor]

No parachute option: a feature purely for the editor, removes the ability of pilots (whether player or AI) to leave the aircraft in the air, forcing them to fight for it to the end, and at least make an emergency landing

But it could be developed into a more interesting feature, a drone option

Drone option: a feature exclusive to AI, which replaces the exterior cockpit texture with a gray radio transparent material, and gives its own advantages and disadvantages. It removes g-loc from the AI (which it does not have now, but sooner or later it must appear) and removes the ability to disable flyt assist (in general makes the future, better AI, as it is now).
Also, drone aircraft loses any desire to avoid collision with enemy aircraft, or even on the contrary, gets the desire to fly into enemy aircrafts if they are more expensive and slower than him (imho, losing 10kk Cricket kamikazeing 30kk Chicane sounds like a pretty acceptable option, let alone losing 20kk Compass kamikazeing 110kk Tarantula, 65kk Revoker kamikazeing 220kk Darkreach etc.)

Actually, unlike the no parachute option, this sounds like something that could be incorporated into a normal game, especially with Patator's limited pilots

So that it would be possible to configure the use of pilots by AI in the same way that the use of nuclear weapons by AI is configured, with untouchable reserve, starting pilots count and etc

[polar pebble]

Note, if/when pilots become a limited and important resource, players and AI will both have to learn some basic self preservation.
AI should try to RTB if damaged, and crash land or eject if their aircraft can't fly.
There will be a slider for starting number of pilots in the customisation options, so that you could disable the feature or try to survive Escalation with 12 pilots.

[polar pebble]

With the warhead storage feature, there will also be options to restrict the use of nukes below a minimum level, for example min rank 2 for tactical and rank 5 for strategic.
This will limit some griefers joining and nuking their own airbase out of boredom.

[polar belfry]

would the pilot limits be per faction or per player? and would the number of copilots in the aircraft be taken into account?

[polar pebble]

In my current experimentation, the pilots are per faction, without limit per player, so even bad players can keep flying, even they burn resources and manpower.
Also, all dismounted pilots are considered pilots, so all crew are accounted for. I'm not sure how this would impact balance, I don't want to keep track of both pilots and copilots. Maybe the number of crew members could change depending on loadout : Medusa has 2 pilots on front seats, with 1 added when you select the radome and 1 when you select jammers.

[digital stratus]

I like it being simple, like all pilots are pilots

[polar pebble]

Keeping features simple sometimes allow more complex and engaging gameplay.
Nothing official yet, it needs to be thoroughly tested first. Only thing I'm sure is that it won't be included in 0.31

[meager crater]

Applying damage to specific parts in mission editor could be a neat thing from the storytelling perspective.

[meager crater]

Can we have the roads and city blocks texture on a flat platform that changes grass colour based on what kind of surface its standing on? I dont have the pic of the ingame surface so ill just leave this as reference:
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81a4bd6ot7L._UF894,1000_QL80_.jpg

[meager crater]

Can we have new, wider road paths (or the ability to set their width), to create areas the AI can navigate without getting into a thin line of units?

[meager crater]

Id love to have a special short range Mario Kart rocket that deploys the air brake, disables engines or attaches a chute to the back of the plane it hits for X seconds. As well as an animated gate that opens either periodically or by triggering an event or a countdown.

Would be fantastic for air races.

[meager crater]

Having letters and some other basic symbols would be nice as editor props, with high contrast and no collisions.

[woeful fern]

Could be awesome additions as part of sign for airstrips

[meager crater]

Thats what I originally had in mind, but then I also thought of arrows that could point towards the next chrckpoint in races. You could also number gates to avoid confusion.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/3rrnqTiGpAk/maxresdefault.jpg

[woeful fern]

Make in objective destroy targets multiple selection, when you don't need open context menu and find needed unit

[charred raptor]

Ability to "randomize" the plants of factories on the map with your own pool of different locations for them to spawn at the start of the mission

And a Competitive mode that completely turns off free camera for players (not spectators obv)

[meager crater]

I know the editor is constantly worked on and things will improve, but could we have objective combos we could connect with "ifs" and "ands" like in software coding? Basically, more or less like this:

if "X airfield captured" and "Y fleet destroyed" then "end mission".

As far as I understand, currently the game only allows for triggering events only once, so If there are two objectives (Cap Airfield and Destroy Fleet) and BDF captures the airfield first, then PALA recaptures it means that only BDF killing the PALA fleet will end the game.

Might be a bit of a stretch but Im thinking maybe even make it console based with some simple commands/objective templates you can string together? The UI is a bit unintuitive imo.

[woeful fern]

Need decorations with lights. (Not exactly lights). This decorations will be perfectly for airstrips and some another features.

Need some part of airstrips. Like small ground type and flat for crickets. Like 50 meters lenght asphalt airstrip (with lights and without them) with 13-15 meters width for one aircraft.

[digital stratus]

Be able to edit "frenzy" range of aircrafts
So, some aircrafts wont engage enemies that past 5km for example

ability for Helis and vtols to use hover properly at move waypoint, instead of dancing up and down
also collision avoidance pls

[placid timber]

The ability to turn off/customize AI radars.

[polar belfry]

Allow multiple .json files per mission, and a position/rotation offset definition for everything in that file.
This would allow for the creation of prop composition files, and self contained mission modules that can easily be shared and reused

the currently baked in default buildings and airbases could be a json file too

[wise glacier]

Ability to copypaste one or several objets in a scene, preserving rotation and relative position. It's an absolute foundational basic of any object based editor that enables one to make any complex structures without resorting to json editing, or self inflicted hair loss.

[digital stratus]

No height limit for object
so any number on Y cord can be correct and wont be limited ingame (so you can place stuff bellow terrain or above regular 10000 limit without json editing)

[placid timber]

A frameviewer that breaks down what all the frame time is spent on (like minecraft has)

[grizzled quiver]

Not sure if someone has already put this but total production rates

[wise glacier]

oh, speaking of production:
MAX ground vehicle setting, defaulting to 200 per team.

[wise glacier]

A "Reduce faction units" objective.
So that the game can automatically keep track of when a teams vehicle / building population drops below a certain level. Would be very useful, because right now, the only way to create a victory scenario around wiping out the enemy is to manually assign potentially enormous destroy unit objectives, and even this doesnt account for depot-spawned vehicles.

[digital stratus]

Ability to make certain buildings produce income, or certain "economy" type buildings that faction can benefit from

[meager crater]

Can we have the ability to remove map objects? Im talking about all the revetments and hangars. Or at least ability to somehow disable them. In general, more customization would be nice. I guess this kinda ties in with the blank maps suggestion, since you would have just terrain and could place and remove anything.

[digital stratus]

honestly would be useful to remove buildings that already present on the map

[woeful fern]

We can, but only which not existing on map as map object

[unkempt saddle]

I wish there was an aircraft spawn 'object' with no building associated with it. You would be able to do actual air spawns that way, or spawn from improvised objects/areas (hulldown with camo net as cricket spawn).
As properties it should have which planes can spawn from it, min and max spawn speed, and maybe what weapons are restricted from it. If placed in mid air, planes would spawn with a standard cruising speed for that airplane, limited by the max speed.

[meager crater]

Maybe also have an optional and adjustable timer/cooldown and ability to bind several of these spawn points to a single custom airfield so you could make multiplayer races that start every X minutes.

[unkempt saddle]

Yes, like all spawnplaces it would be tied to an airfield. And just like normal spawnplaces it checks if the previously spawned vehicle is at least a couple meter away. Would still allow for fast spawning in air if you spawn a couple jets moving at 1000km/h.

[unkempt saddle]

It would be nice if objectives were repeatable.
And the buildingless spawnplace could have an 'active' toggle, which could be set by objective.
This way an objective could easily toggle the spawn on and off

Then we only need the queing of spawns to work, instead of trying again and again with stupid popup if all spawns are in use. So people could be queued up for spawn until the spawns get toggled to active

[iron hemlock]

hoping this isn't redundant this but kind of surprised i can't find it (I'm bad at discord so forgive me if this has been beaten to death), I would forego pretty much every other update to this game for improved editor camera controls, ideally arma 3 eden style, Q and Z to move camera up and down (having to back up while looking down and then move the camera forward again to get a higher angle of a given location is kind of a nightmare), flip the left-right pan directions around (and maybe speed up the pan, right now I find myself having to pick up my mouse repeatedly if I need to turn more than 90 degrees or so), maybe mmb click on map to move the camera to a given location instead of having to click on a nearby object. especially with waypoints and initial placed object orientation being based on camera positions, just not having to fight the editor camera so much would be huge for me

[digital stratus]

Ability to spawn player aircraft in mission
when you trying to do it now, nothing really happens, but it works fine for the ai

[woeful fern]

Its works good. I dont understand what you mean

[digital stratus]

Option to chose road texture
So, when you are placing road path in editor, there would be an option to put texture of road, either dirt, asphalt road or none

[digital stratus]

nope
you cant spawn player aircrafts in mission
Like, if you for example want to wait some time and then spawn player aircraft - nothing happens
but it works good with AI

If you just place player without an objective to spawn it, it works fine yes

[woeful fern]

You cannot spawn player after some time yet.
But you still able to spawn player in aircraft when player connected

[digital stratus]

Thats why im asking of a feature that would let mission makers spawn players after some time has passed
and not necessary at the start of the mission

[woeful fern]

Another very useful cool ability - make for bots records what they must to do and will be in battles they do this record.
Extremely useful for single player missions with deep work with aircrafts.

For example how its done in satisfactory for tractors

[placid timber]

just stage units as if the game already started?

[digital stratus]

I dont get what you meant
but like, for example I had idea of making mission where the intro is semi-cinematic
and yet its all useless because I cant spawn player afterwards and relying on them to spawn afterwards is not a good option

[rugged umbra]

An objective outcome that allows you to change the default faction rank mid mission through objective clearing (to help people joining late game being stuck at low ranks)

This could do a few things:

reduce the need to race your teammates for kills to keep up

Allow more player actions to benefit the whole team

Give the option to reward players for taking on logistics/non combat roles that dont necessarily net you that many points

Also, add an optional setting for a communal rank stat. Turning this on means all players contribute to the rank pool and benefit from it.

[woeful fern]

Yep. Ability to give them higher start rank.
But in and case you can install more money on start👍 what slightly better

[woeful fern]

You mean rank for everyone?
Not so good. Because in this case high rank aircrafts will waste too fast because all will requesting them, but as modification for game not bad, for something coop missions or operations it will be awesome

[placid timber]

as a setting my guy...

[rugged umbra]

A setting that lets you change aircraft prices, and an objective outcome that lets you change them dynamically

for example

A mission based around mercenary work has an optional objective where you can destroy competitor factories for kramenka, and kramenka will sell you the ifrit for cheaper for the rest of the mission

[sterile onyx]

Meta suggestion, but I think Shockwave should have more community outreach regarding custom missions, having monthly mission contests, incorporating the best into the official mission list, etc. Also, "New" should be the default category in the workshop tab, with the option to comment/like posted items.

[proud bramble]

Make this an actual suggestion thread

[rugged umbra]

Separate restrictions list to ban ai aircraft from using certain munitions

For example, if you dont want ai darkreaches to spam HE piledrivers but want players to still be able to use them

[charred raptor]

ability to restrict and unrestrict AI from using certain aircrafts as an outcome of a objective, so you can, for example, restrict AI cargo aircrafts in the start of the mission, and then unrestrict them (and restrict every other aircraft) when the time is right

[rugged umbra]

Objective outcome that puts the game in slow motion for a specified amount of seconds

[unkempt saddle]

Ability to place munitions. This would also allow placement of the smaller munition crates which would give nearby vehicles unlimited ammo.
If weapon munitions are spawned in, the target could also be pre-selected.

[rugged umbra]

Objective outcome that spawns a type of explosion at your chosen coordinates

[digital stratus]

"Fast motion" basically a slow motion but reversed, would be useful for singleplayer mission testing

[meager crater]

Target priority setting. Basically, either a slider or a toggle that makes the AI ignore objects belonging to the enemy.

I want the AI to destroy hangars and helipads on an airfield but keep the ammo bunkers intact, so they can be captured.

[digital stratus]

Collision ignorance checkmark or something like that
Its quite tricky to make AI ground units drive on the road without trying to "avoid" building that is near but not on their way and they often manage to get stuck on straightforward road

Also, make it so camera can go through the water if camera clipping is off
I cant see what the issue will be here

[woeful fern]

Hm... Yeah. It significantly can improve gameplay experience, it will can make bots really smart when they are choose high valuable targets for destroy on bases one by one...

[digital stratus]

New outcomes, like "great or equal, less or equal, equal" would come in handy when you want to make some sort of "check" or to track for how much of targets destroyed so you can for example give a victory to one team even if not all objects were destroyed but majority of them

[sterile onyx]

Make base camera movement speed faster. Holding shift to go way fast. Hold ctrl to "walk"

[meager crater]

Some may consider this a bizarre addition, but: can we have the ability to store nukes (and maybe other things in the future) on neutral and enemy airfields?

Lets say you are gliding in a damaged plane full of nukes. You are above a neutral airfield and theres no other place you can go. Instead of ditching the plane and losing the nukes you could just land on the neutral airfield, store the nukes there and then come and capture them (the airfield) later.

Another use would be landing/crashing aircraft on neutral airfields and storing the nukes there for a CTF-like game mode. Unless the behaviour of neutral pilots changes and they actually eject out of damaged aircraft.

Also, I recently ditched my Tara prematurely while the airfield I landed on was being captured. If that fully intact aircraft was added to the neutral airfield's inventory instead of being destroyed I couldve accessed it 15 seconds later, when the base was already mine.

This also ties in with my other suggestion of being able to steal containers from the other team(s) and delivering them to your own base.

[digital stratus]

Would be cool if something like retrieving nukes from downed planes would get added as optional ingame setting

Also, had idea not related to this, but something like a "hard" limit to how much m12 can work on one building, like 3-5 and you can tweak how much in the menu

[meager crater]

Yeah, seems like the game keeps track of how many nukes from the airplane stay intact during crashes and landings. You could probably just spawn a small package of the remaining nukes by the crashed plane.

[woeful fern]

Ability to make objectives which depend from current amount of players in mission

[meager crater]

More spawnable effects in general would be nice, like these animated waves:

[woeful fern]

Any ideas what it could be?

[digital stratus]

well, you have an example on that picture
I wont mind some smoke or fire effects, those would be nice for making some sort of "aftermath" on battlefield and etc

[rugged umbra]

Being able to script explosions without having to rig it with a weird exploding munition truck system would be nice

[sterile onyx]

Did the camera movement speed get slower after the update? Being much faster by default or holding shift, and slowing down when holding ctrl would be good.

[placid timber]

I mentioned being able to turn off AI radars, but i will mention it again.

[woeful fern]

Aircrafts radars?

[sterile onyx]

"Escort Unit" and "Patrol Area" should be an objective. Waypoints should hace an option to be able to be tripped by AI.

Also, itd be nice if AI knew to throttle down to 80-90% when travelling or something instead of just afterburning everywhere

[placid timber]

aircraft radars, ship radars, ground radars.

all the radars, and be able to tune their strength. (namely so i can have big threat buff air defense that doesn't make the entire map hell to fly around, just one specific area, and to reduce the ungodly beeping)

[digital stratus]

Be able to make waypoints that would require specific unit, either type of unit or unit with unique name
and those waypoints would be ignored by other units without specific name or different type

[meager crater]

How about a "dice roll" event/outcome/trigger? Very similar to the "wait seconds" trigger, except you add possible outcomes and depending on the number of outcomes the game rolls a die. If there are 22 events in the outcomes the game rolls D22 and picks just one.

[rugged umbra]

PLEASE

[digital stratus]

Optional setting that would let AI ignore "destroy unit" objective and other such objectives, because currently even friendly AI will try to "destroy" units on its own team

[rugged umbra]

Editor toggle to disable purchasing aircraft you aren't high enough rank to requisition/disable purchasing airframes entirely

[grave pendant]

#1131013817011294249 message theres a workaround for rng right now but it would be amazing if we just had it a bit easier

[rugged umbra]

An objective outcome that adds a specific airframe in a selected amount to the given faction's inventory

Say you have an abandoned airfield full of neutral darkreaches, you can land there for a reach waypoint objective and for doing it you're rewarded that amount of darkreach airframes by the outcome

[meager crater]

Imo it would be better if airfields had their own inventories and you could store any aircraft on any airfield. For example, land on a neutral airfield and your plane gets added to that airfield. Similar to how nukes already work.

[rugged umbra]

I mean being able to add and remove specific airframes from the faction inventory with an objective outcome would be handy in general but yeah that too

[meager crater]

Would be the same thing, except local.

[digital stratus]

Any inventory manipulation would be welcomed
either for nukes or for airframes

[proud bramble]

If feldspar is about to get obliterated I should be able to take the nukes to another site.