Moving On ... The Troop Manager Tool ...

[DeletedUser]

I have created a support ticket which has had a number of responses. The latest of which I feel is very important.

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Under the new account manager tool, there is a "troop manager option".

This seems to be innogames attempt at recreating a mass recruit script which then has the benefit (for the added premium cost) of just looking after itself and the user not having to worry about it.

So taking a typical group setting,
I've input the values for
spears 2250
archers 2250
Scouts 2250
Cats 500
(its a church world shh!!)

I'm then submitting these under the earmark for building que (nb I'm not getting upset about the fact its building que rather than troop que)
Anyway, for the villas that already have some but not all troops built you would imagine that the program would be attempting to take the difference between 2250 spears and what its currently holding (1660) and therefore attempting to build 590 Spears at its earliest convenience. Not only that but you would assume if the villa only has 10000 Wood (but unlimited space) that it would start building 200 and thereby que the other 390 for a later date.

This tool does neither it populates the planned upgrade as 2250 spears so it will build 2250 spears for all villas ticked when the farm space and resources are both available.

There is no benefit whatsoever to the user as what your asking the user to do is go through each villa one at a time and work out what he still needs to build, or you can blanket create mini pockets of builds such as 100 Axes at a time or something ... but either way this is not a useful tool that we should be paying additional premium for.

Furthermore I find it quiet amusing that it reverts back to the "all" group when the recruit / earmark button is selected ... It feels like it is attempting to hid itself from its failure to comply.

I understand that this is a new feature but I'm massively disappointed in what I would have assumed to be quite a simple upgrade, after all scripters have been completing this task for many a year.
This Troop Management Tool could have been a real selling point rather than it being the pure negative feature that will no doubt cause many to not pay the extra premium.
I for one fall into that group.
Typhi
2011-01-20 07:48:30
Hello Reverend Revelry,

I agree that a tool in which you can fill in the total desired building levels of your troops would indeed be much more efficient. Failing that, it should indeed build as much as it can rather than wait for the resources to do a full run - the buffer is there for saving resources for other endeavours.

Do you have any proposals for the logistics of a recruitment tool that would work like the village manager does? Having it queue in groups (of 50?) when the resources become available strikes me as the best.

Sincerely,

Typhi
Tribalwars Support
Reverend Revelry
2011-01-20 11:06:17
Personally my view would be that this Troop Manager tool has (as a minimum) the full functionality of most Mass Recruitment scripts. In that rather than having to constantly retype your desired "group set-up" it is stored against the group.

You should then be able to earmark this entire setting against a village. So as and when resources / space become available against the said village it builds troops ... again there's a need for some thought into how the algorithm would work but thats why we'd be paying the additional premium points cost. I would assume that if it is unable to build the whole troop count it should build for 1 hr in each of barracks, stables and workshop, although I suppose cause you're paying the premium this should in theory be a manageable setting, ie build for 1 hr, build for 3 hrs, build forever sorta speak. Also you could have a setting for priorty ie speed build, if you've just picked up a barb and are intending to put 4000 Spears and 4000 Archers, well cause the barracks is not yet max'd the priorty should be the fastest available troop ... in this and always the case of spear. A more bums on seats sort of approach. But some-one elses priority could be something regarding the Stable first before barracks.

These items above I see as the luxury item that people would be happier to pay their additional premium for. Not this absurd item that's been labled Troop Manager ... It manages to do absolutely nothing.

As I've said. Priority nbr one would be to get the Tool Manager to do exactly that of a mass recruit script - with the storing of each group held against the group. After that you can certainly start to upgrade the product to something thats much more worthy of the title Troop Manager.

Hope this helps.
Typhi
2011-01-20 12:37:02
I'm drawing up a list of improvements for the Troop Manager to relay to the developers, which I'll run by you quickly.

- Scrap current system, use 'Desired Troop Level' system instead.
- "building" > "recruitment"
- Troop template storing


Sincerely,

Typhi
TribalWars Support
Reverend Revelry
2011-01-20 14:04:59
Hi Typhi,

Thanks for your quick response.

I'd appreciate if you would allow me the rest of the day to consider the options available before returning to you with a concrete answer.

By all means I believe the current system has major flaws but that aside is we're prepared to put some more development time into it then creating the requirements should be thought through carefully.

Hope this helps

Rev
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I would appreciate if we could have a reasonable discussion on what people would expect from the Troop Management tool so that we can then relay these ideas onto Typhi later this evening.

 

[DeletedUser]

I like typhi's ideas but I cannot believe that the troop manager made it past BETA in this state. Brilliant work Rev to find out for us, +1

 

[DeletedUser]

To suggest its anywhere near to the old mass recruit is the talkings of a deranged person.. Its useless in its current form, made only better by the fact the village manager is even worse!!!

 

[DeletedUser]

OK, a quick view point on what we currently have:

An area to input troop numbers.

Three buttons:
» Insert values
» Insert maximum values
» Earmark in the building queue

And a buffer area to make sure there's always resources population in the villa.

You then have each of your villa groups underneath.

My 1st suggestion would be that each villa group has the ability to store your desired Troop Numbers rather than having to enter them every time you log into this Troop Manager tool.

My 2nd suggestion is to remove one of the buttons.
We should only be concerned with Inserting Values to build now (just like a mass recruitment script) or earmarking the full build when we pick up a new villa.

On the earmarking front I personally would like features behind the scenes, basically when you view a group that already has its troop numbers associated you'd want to be able to edit the setting for that group rather than constantly view the troop input area.
These settings should as a minimum cover the options for minimum and maximum build time in each of barracks / stable / workshop.
They should also be able to prioritise barracks / stable / workshop ... in that it builds stable first before moving onto barracks before finally checking in with the workshop. I also think as this is a premium cost it should be calculating the build time not on the speed of the "generic builds - ie 25 Barracks / 20 Stable / 2 or 3 leveled Workshop" but that of the actual villa in question < ----- I see this as pretty difficult to write but there is a reason why we would want to pay for this tool and thats cause it should work properly, and not like the current mass recruit scripts which often mislead but get there in the end.

My 3rd suggestion is to correct the calculation to desired troops less current troops. Currently its only ever looking at desired which is why we all get confused and how stupid this current Tool really is.

I think by placing in the above we would then have a Troop Building tool that could be a reasonable starting point for developement. From here on I think its all about not required but additional features. It is afterall part of a paid product and must have something that Mass Recruit scripts don't.

It is this that I would like peoples opinions on.

My current views would be to include something along the lines of speed preference. IE you build the fastest available unit first for that building. ie spears before swords before archers.

Any other suggestions that you would like me to put forward / discuss I would be very grateful.

 

[DeletedUser]

To suggest its anywhere near to the old mass recruit is the talkings of a deranged person.. Its useless in its current form, made only better by the fact the village manager is even worse!!!

Timmy, think you'll find I was stating that this Tool should have ... AS A MINIMUM, THE CAPABILITY OF THE CURRENT MASS RECRUIT SCRIPTS ... Not that it currently actually fulfills that requirement.

 

[DeletedUser6951]

Cheers for that Rev, I spent 30mins trying to figure out the troop manager and got nowhere. Village manager isn't too bad but an option for a default build would have made it much better. As for the market manager, I can't really see me using it unless it has a 'balancer' option.

Personally for the troop balance I would prefer a balanced approach to the recruitment rather than one based on speed of build for individual units. A balanced defence is usually the strongest and I wouldn't want all my vills building spears first as this would give me a fairly week offence.
Maybe in packets of 500's?

 

[DeletedUser5175]

How about a balanced build - for resources - whilst spears do indeed build quicker they also very wood intensive, so if your building lots of spears you'll be going through a lot of wood. The option to 'spend resources evenly' could be useful? in this example it would build an amount of HC and SP in a way that spent iron and wood evenly. Adding cats to your required queue would also take care of the excess clay the SP / HC build consumes.

 

[DeletedUser]

A very concrete summary of the current problems faced with the troop manager part of the account manager tool with good ideas of additional functionality to add Reverend.

I believe however that the mass recruitment script in development by cheesasaurus would still trump any of the functions we have with the troop management and the suggested additional functionality. A fair few of the ideas put forward so far are very similar if not exactly the same as the ones in the development thread for the script.

The design and ideas from the thread of the mass recruitment script in development could be used for the troop management tool, that then leads to the argument well what exactly would we be paying for if that did happen - the ability for the queues to auto recruit when were off-line. The main benefit I can see there would only be for players with lower levels of activity, not in itself a bad thing (since I do see that there are many many more casual players than hardcore players around in the customer base) but something I personally wouldn't pay since I can have troop queues running for 3-4 days in most cases.

Helps if I provide the link.... http://forum.tribalwars.co.uk/showthread.php?t=14129

 

[DeletedUser]

Thats a brilliant idea.

So in theory the option of speed would actually be

speed / resources / evenly

Speed - where its attempting to build the fastest units first
Resources - where its trying to split the builds evenly amongst the resources available so they are all used
Evenly - where its based on numbers, ie 2250 Spears / Swords / Archers ... it'll try and build circa 30 of each at a time or whatever dependant on your pre selected minimum hour build.

Obviously everything is dependant on both your resource levels and farm space.

I like that. Its a three way option ... nice. Well done.

 

[DeletedUser]

No offence peoples but you where in uproar yesterday about this Troop Management Tool and now that we're being given the opportunity to possibly make an impact you all go quiet.

An update on proceedings.

Typhi is going to check back here in the morning and then try to build a spec for the Troop Management Tool.

If you want your say ... nows the time to say it.

 

[DeletedUser]

No offence peoples but you where in uproar yesterday about this Troop Management Tool and now that we're being given the opportunity to possibly make an impact you all go quiet.

An update on proceedings.

Typhi is going to check back here in the morning and then try to build a spec for the Troop Management Tool.

If you want your say ... nows the time to say it.

End of the day - scripts are free chap.. I still don't see people paying for it unless they're forced to..

I like your suggestions, and it is horrifically flawed, but be honest with yourself. They didn't consult you before they made the shambles that is the troop management tool, why would that change now?

 

[DeletedUser]

am i missing something here? is it not possible to create a script which you can basically set up the whole build and troop build yourself as a template (each individual player)?

for example i mean (2 points here 1st about village manager) i cant prioritise the building queue so using this isnt great for a newly taken villa if it is going to leave the wall until last and max out on the barracks??

2nd point on troop manager. again its about prioritisation, i would prefer to see some sort of my own input as to what builds when to maximise speed of build and balance of troops required 1st and last BUT keeping all production busy where ever possible, which will be down to the player making sure the ressies are there to produce...

 

[DeletedUser]

End of the day - scripts are free chap.. I still don't see people paying for it unless they're forced to..

I like your suggestions, and it is horrifically flawed, but be honest with yourself. They didn't consult you before they made the shambles that is the troop management tool, why would that change now?

Incorrect, they did. That's what beta is for. The whole beta world is a mass consultation.

The only bad thing is that they do not give free premium on .beta :|

 

[DeletedUser]

Actually, we totally do give out free premium on Beta - 14 days of free premium on a monthly basis. We also gave out free subscriptions to the account manager when we first launched it, but unfortunately it seems that everyone was a bit too busy raging about how it would ruin their lives instead of testing it.

 

[DeletedUser]

Spoiler: outdated

Yes doublepost
So guys, here's what I've got so far. The priority idea still needs to be worked in - suggestions on how to do so are welcome. What else? Am I overlooking problems in the proposals? Am I unclear?

Disclaimer:
This was written assuming the readers have some grasp of the current workings of the Troop Manager.
This was also written in just about a single go - there's a high probability some things in here don't make sense, and I should probably have proofread it a bit better before posting it here for you guys. Oh well.

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Troop Manager
I've heard players say that as it stands they prefer the functions of their current mass recruitment scripts.

Modified Functionality:
Identifying the issue:
This is a troop manager - the ideal outcome is for players to be able to easily fill in their troops numbers and know that their village is on its way to being "done".

> 1. A problem currently is that players know how many troops they want of a certain sort in the village total. As it stands, they're left to figure out how many more troops they need in order to reach that mark on their own. That frankly makes the Troop Manager marginally useless for the task most players will want to use it for, since villages will nearly always have a different number of troops already in them, rendering the ability to apply a blanket number of additional troops irrelevant.

> 2. Secondly, players really don't want to enter the same values again and again every time they add more villages to a certain group in order to bring it up to speed - it's a useless hassle. Sure, they'll make scripts to input predefined numbers of troops, but we don't want to encourage script reliance.

Proposed fixes:
> 1. Modify to make it possible to fill in a desired total troop numbers, much like in the Village manager you can fill in a desired total building level. Instead of the empty white boxes we currently have, we could have the number of troops currently in the village, including those currently being recruited (those would be coloured in green). Desired troop levels could be filled in the generic boxes along the top of the screen, with a button to apply those along all villages shown below.

A tricky part is how and when the Troop Manager is supposed to add the troops it is supposed to build to the queues. My initial proposal would be to do it in groups of 50 (?) or so, as that does not represent a large investment of either time or resources. When a particular building is scheduled to recruit multiple unit types, it'd vary the frequency with which it queues the groups of units in order to reach the desired levels at around the same time.
(Example: the Troop Manager is ordered to build a total of 6k spears and 2k swords while 0 of both are currently in the village. It'd queue 3 groups of spears to every 1 group of swords.) This applies to cross-building recruitment as well. The resources should be managed so that the order finishes the different unit types around the same time, rather than going for the cheapest group of 50 all the time.

One problem with 'desired troop level' building is of course the matter of Farm Space. There obviously isn't a concrete upper limit the way there is with buildings. What comes to mind is colouring the queues that have been paused due to not having enough farm space yellow or something similar. Hovering over the population stats of a village would show a tooltip of the relevant information: what troops are currently present in the village and what the desired amount is. In a column next to those, it'd show the farm space required by both those values. If players want to make changes to the village in order to accommodate the troop numbers they want, they can click into the village on the village name which is already available - if not, they can hit a 'cancel' icon off to the side, which would cancel the sets of troops the Troop Manager did not (and could not) queue.

A second problem is how powerful this would be if it would always keep trying to build to the desired troop level - think of villages being attacked, and then rebuilding themselves without any kind of player input. That'd be taking things a step too far, I think, so rather than a constant desired troop level per village, the 'desired troop level' info filled into the various boxes on the Troop Manager screen would have troop losses subtracted from them, meaning players would need to run another 'sweep' of the Troop Manager on any villages in order to fix the troops. This would still allow players to set up a queue of say 100,000,000 axes for example in order to get infinitely refilling queues, so the amount of troops submitted would need to be checked for compliance with the maximum population possibility (24,000). When totals are submitted, the troops that would bring the population above 24,000 should be shaved off in equal proportions.

> 2. Customizable troop-number-fill-in templates are definitely something to look into. I'm thinking that players would get a popup containing the input boxes for the various unit types and a name field. The names of the various templates would then be available along the side somewhere and clicking them would fill in their values (think of the admintool pre-set ban reasons).

Summary:
- Allow for filling in Desired Total Troop levels in order to make it an easier and more efficient tool.
- Add troop-number templates.


UI Improvement:
Identifying the issue:
Many players seem to be experiencing difficulty with understanding how to make the Troop Manager do what they want. This is easily mended by including instructions as done here, but that the instructions are necessary in the first place indicates that the current implementation simply isn't intuitive enough and overcomplicated.

Proposed fixes:
> 1. Move the main input boxes (currently all grouped together in the top left) into a row slightly above and in line with the village input boxes.

> 2. Assuming we make use of the 'desired troop levels' idea, we can scrap 2 of the 3 troop insertion options we currently have and instead replace them with a single "down arrow" icon that would open up all unit boxes for editing with the numbers in 'global' box filled in. (See Fix 1. above for more information on how that would work.)

Summary:
- Move input boxes down to a row parallel village input boxes.
- Scrap the unnecessary insertion options and replace with a single icon.

Concept Image 1.1 of everything combined:

Spoiler: image

 

[DeletedUser6951]

This would be a good move forward and would be far more useful than in it's current form

 

[DeletedUser8409]

well i´ll try to be simple.....

for this we need premium and to pay estra points to use it...

for what?

with mass recruit we can make the scripts for attack troops deff and all others we like.

if we make that 1 time a day or even 1 time eatch 2 days we have troops making for long time

we can alsoo put bildings ( 5 levels ) or more in eatch vill that give us planty of free time
( we can do that in overview bildings were we see what we can bild in all vill as well as rechearch )

so i do not realy see the need for this acc manager

that is ofcourse my opinion

greetings

Aley

 

[DeletedUser]

Actually, we totally do give out free premium on Beta - 14 days of free premium on a monthly basis. We also gave out free subscriptions to the account manager when we first launched it, but unfortunately it seems that everyone was a bit too busy raging about how it would ruin their lives instead of testing it.

yes but the old scripts were completely free. all i can see is a carrot being dangled to entice you further in to more costs. i'm not a computer whizz just a working class guy trying to play a browser game.

 

[DeletedUser]

well i´ll try to be simple.....

for this we need premium and to pay estra points to use it...

for what?

with mass recruit we can make the scripts for attack troops deff and all others we like.

if we make that 1 time a day or even 1 time eatch 2 days we have troops making for long time

we can alsoo put bildings ( 5 levels ) or more in eatch vill that give us planty of free time
( we can do that in overview bildings were we see what we can bild in all vill as well as rechearch )

so i do not realy see the need for this acc manager

that is ofcourse my opinion

greetings

Aley

HERE HERE!

 

[DeletedUser]

To everyone posting gripes about paying too much, no-one is forcing you to use this enhancement and at this present time scripts are permitted (head over to .net forums if your properly struggling - its already been posted you can use working scripts as long as they are not massively different and have no other functions that previous). I was very happy to see the world circ about contributing to this opportunity to actually be consulted by TW on what we feel works and doesn't. You all complained that no-one gave you the opportunity to comment on the v7 upgrade (myself included) but we have a chance to do that just here..

Jump on the band wagon and spend those seconds tapping buttons contributing instead of hating!!

I'd also like to add that I'm very much hoping there will be a similar discussion about the village manager..