Adjustable Auto Attack

[paulk]

I played CC for a number of years and obviously used the auto attack button many times.
And many times l have chose to use it out of laziness instead of clicking attack like a hundred times.

But there are situations where l REALLY wished there was two extra options available, perhaps in a dropdown or as radio buttons.

Option zero (CURRENT DEFAULT): Attack with all your troops.
Option one: Attack until Half your troops are spent (rounded up or down, don't really have a preference). Would be really useful and can be used several times in rapid succession.
Option two: Attack until only 1 or 2 of the enemy troops remain. Would be highly preferred in some situations where you don't want the troops in an adjacent territory to the one you attack to be able to retaliate. When you just want to cull the enemy troops.

I know it's a matter of space, especially on mobile so it would have to be sparsely texted, like AUTO ATTACK (0) ALL, (1) HALF, (2) SAVE with perhaps a (?) to explain it.

Edit - thought about this further down but l believe it's good to include it in the first post:

using CHECK BOXES as an ADDITION to the AUTO ATTACK button.

[X] HALF = if checked you attack until Half your troops are spent
[X] SAVE = if checked you will attack until only 1 or 2 of enemy troops remain

Why check boxes? They are easy to implement, their opinions can be combined, hard to misunderstand, and if you do, it doesn't matter much. The settings can also be saved for next attack.

[paulk]

No comments?

[LFAW]

I like this. But I think only the current auto attack and the reduce to 1 or 2 troops options are needed.

[Dukasaur]

No comments?

Not a lot of traffic in the Suggestions forum nowadays.

As for your suggestion, it would be a nice option to have.

[Razorvich]

I think this is a good idea

[paulk]

I like this. But I think only the current auto attack and the reduce to 1 or 2 troops options are needed.

Would you care to explain why (not)?

I think it's sometimes important to be able to stop midway and check that your dice haven't gone horribly bad so you don't end up with nothing against something. Especially in the lower amounts attacks where a series of bad dice really can have an impact.

I can also recall a recent situation where l would had preferred to only cull half of several hundred troops but ended up clicking "auto" because l didn't have the patience/time to attack maybe a couple hundred times the regular way. Because of this l also lost that game.

[paulk]

Soooo... from question to realize it, what are the steps?
Or is it just a waste of time to suggest things?
Maybe TPTB are satisfied with status quo and not really interested in sitting down in front of the computer and code this together in an hour.
I hope that's not the case.

[paulk]

Just thought about it a bit more. As an old coder l think check boxes as an ADDITION to the AUTO ATTACK button would be the best way to go.

As in two extra options:
[X] HALF = if checked you attack until Half your troops are spent
[X] SAVE = if checked you will attack until only 1 or 2 of enemy troops remain

Why check boxes? They are easy to implement, their opinions can be combined, hard to misunderstand, and if you do, it doesn't matter much. The settings can also be saved for next attack.

I know some people have suggested text boxes where you can write how many troops you want to commit, but l believe HALF is a good easy middle way, that requires less fiddling.

[2dimes]

I'd be fine with a "Half check box." It would at least give you another option. Unfortunately it seems the guys in charge of such things are not interested in improving game play anymore.

[paulk]

There there, l am sure they have a lot of other things to be concerned about but l admit speed isn't the greatest.
Still, digging a little this suggestion has been going on for at least a decade, so l would be interested in knowing what the holdup is.

[2dimes]

I'm not kidding, and to be honest I'm not really complaining. I have come to accept it for the most part.

When someone new takes over they implement some changes for a while.

The problem is when they improve something, some members complain because people don't like it when things change.

Then sometimes a small change will cause problems for a while. Maybe people need to log in too often or can't take a turn. Sometimes the site lags. Then everyone gets grouchy and after a while, the owner starts to be very selective about even the slightest changes.

I do like to mock, how the suggestion forum seems to have been abandoned by anyone that could actually change things.

[jusplay4fun]

I also like this idea, either with 2 or 3 options, as suggested above.

I see that 2dimes suggested this in 2020 and it apparently went nowhere.

[paulk]

I dug up a post from 2006...

[2dimes]

Plus that one has several more merged into it.

Mr Lack had mentioned he would probably implement it "further down the line." It just never made it to the top of the list of things to add or improve.

I would certainly like to be able to select a number of troops to stop auto attacking with,

Example, I have 28 troops. Don't want to click attack several times but also do not want to lose more than 13 guys. It would be great to be able to select auto attack using 13 armies.

Then if I have terrible dice and only defeat a couple of the enemy troops, 15 of mine will remain instead of 3.

[Dukasaur]

Soooo... from question to realize it, what are the steps?
Or is it just a waste of time to suggest things?
Maybe TPTB are satisfied with status quo and not really interested in sitting down in front of the computer and code this together in an hour.
I hope that's not the case.

I'm not kidding, and to be honest I'm not really complaining. I have come to accept it for the most part.

When someone new takes over they implement some changes for a while.

The problem is when they improve something, some members complain because people don't like it when things change.

Then sometimes a small change will cause problems for a while. Maybe people need to log in too often or can't take a turn. Sometimes the site lags. Then everyone gets grouchy and after a while, the owner starts to be very selective about even the slightest changes.

I do like to mock, how the suggestion forum seems to have been abandoned by anyone that could actually change things.

Yeah, it is somewhat funny and somewhat sad.

Paul, I think 2d has explained it fairly well.

Generally, the owners do want to improve the site. But they have to do it all themselves. The site doesn't make enough money to hire professional programmers. Both lackattack (the original owner) and bigWham (the current owner) are part time administrators. (Both worked on the site full-time for a period, but it didn't last, and each of them in turn had to go get a real job and leave CC as a part-time hobby.) The owner in between lackattack and BW was El Jefe, he's the only one who had real money to invest and hired professional programmers, but they couldn't find their way through the crazy-quilt patchwork of lack's code. They quit and El Jefe lost his investment.

BW has done a lot of things in his years. He sometimes doesn't get enough credit for how many major changes he has wrought -- polymorphic games, bots so you can practise playing without a real opponent, autotournaments, a lot of special events, live chat, autosnapshots, built-in Map Inspect and other features so you don't have to constantly download 3rd party utilities, Scenarios and Campaigns, and so much more. But he is a part-time programmer, so these things come months and sometimes years apart.

As 2d said, even when most of us like the improvements, there's always some people who hate them, and they fight back. Autotournaments have made it possible to have a vast array of tournaments that we could never run manually, but a lot of the people who used to run the manual tournaments felt insulted by them and quit. Panels made it possible to have built-in Map Inspect and other stuff for which we used to have to find 3rd party add-ons, but there were a lot of bugs with panels, and there was a big exodus the summer that those bugs were getting worked out.

So progress is slow, and sometimes comes with a significant amount of pain, but there is progress.

Are you wasting your time? No, but don't expect quick results. Autosnapshots were suggested for many years before they became a reality. Every improvement we've had came from somebody pushing for it, sometimes for months, often for many years. If you care about this idea, don't let it die.

[paulk]

Thank you for your informative answer. It gave me a lot to think about.

Basically you say the fundamental problem is that the site is a mess based on lackattack's spaghetti code hobby project. Current owner BW seems more interested in adding fun coding projects to the site than doing cosmetics.

Pity.

Considering all, an implementation of this small magnitude should in my opinion be something prioritized though, considering the massive benefit it would have for all players in every game.

To the Nay sayers, l can only say tough luck.

[paulk]

So progress is slow, and sometimes comes with a significant amount of pain, but there is progress.

Are you wasting your time? No, but don't expect quick results.

Quick side question here: is there any official site planned improvements to-do list of BW's, and a progress chart? Would be interesting to take part of.

[Addled Brain]

Most versatile would be a button next to the Auto-Attack button for "Auto-Attack with Limitations". When that button is activated, a drop-down would have two options. "Number of Attacker's troops to be left" and "Number of opponent's troops to be left", with the standard number option. If both are chosen, the result would be whatever comes first.

[paulk]

Most versatile would be a button next to the Auto-Attack button for "Auto-Attack with Limitations". When that button is activated, a drop-down would have two options. "Number of Attacker's troops to be left" and "Number of opponent's troops to be left", with the standard number option. If both are chosen, the result would be whatever comes first.

Most versatile perhaps, but probably taking too much space in mobile.
I also don't believe you usually need more than the two options l suggested, in the few cases you need to thread that carefully you can use manual attacks. Better simple and possibly implemented (before l die) than super advanced and kept under consideration...

[Addled Brain]

paulk, I wonder how you envision it taking up too much space compared to your idea. You suggest two extra buttons. I suggest one extra button with a follow-up of two options.

[paulk]

I suggested two CHECK BOXES in addition to the current design, with "HALF" & "SAVE" illustrating what they stand for.
As l mostly play on mobile l figured it will still fit.
Another button might fit yes, but my humble opinion is that it overcomplicates things with first an ADDITIONAL button that then disappears and instead loads two more dropdowns.

A) it seems overly complicated
B) buttons and dropdowns could be confused with current ones
C) it would likely be hard to fit in

[GoranZ]

The proposal will be a burden to the current UI, especially on mobile. I don't recommend it(although I like it).
Depending on the code implementation for Auto Attack it might not be easily implemented. Second and third option would require constant checks which can be CPU and Memory intensive and this would increase the cost for the site.

[paulk]

The proposal will be a burden to the current UI, especially on mobile. I don't recommend it(although I like it).
Depending on the code implementation for Auto Attack it might not be easily implemented. Second and third option would require constant checks which can be CPU and Memory intensive and this would increase the cost for the site.

Obviously that depends on the code , but l envision that right now the auto attack is written as a loop that ends when you have max 3 troops left of your own or the enemy troops are down to 0.
That said, changing one or two conditions in that loop shouldn't be a problem.
Let's say it now goes something like:

// DEFAULT:
maxLeft = 3;
enemyTroopsMaxLeft = 0;
while(yourTroops>maxLeft && enemyTroops>enemyTroopsMaxLeft){
throwDice()
}

then add something like:

// DEFAULT:
maxLeft = 3;
enemyTroopsMaxLeft = 0;
// HALF CHECKBOX CHECKED:
if(halfCheckbox==true){
maxLeft=round(yourTroops/2);
}
// SAVE CHECKBOX CHECKED:
if(saveCheckbox==true){
enemyTroopsMaxLeft=2;
}
while(yourTroops>maxLeft && enemyTroops>enemyTroopsMaxLeft){
throwDice()
}

About the proposal being a burden to the current user interface, l know that the space is VERY limited as l play mostly on mobile myself, but to the right of the AUTO button there is still space enough to add two check boxes with descriptions like:

[ AUTO ] [X]HALF [X]SAVE

And truly, it would be great to automate this part so that in the case l don't want to spend all my troops, or l want to just cull enemy troops l (and everyone else) don't have to sit clicking ATTACK maybe hundreds of times.

As an added benefit this will surely encourage people to attack more when it's easier to control, which will then make games less stagnate.