As you guys know, glest has a 16 unit selection limit, which is fine for normal magictech games. However it would be nice to have some sort of option to remove this limit for modding purposes. Here are a few reasons why:
-The Selection limit ( including the 4x4 section of unit icons that is displayed) serves no real purpose other than to just limit the selection as the 4x4 "window" is not interactive (cannot select individual units, see stats, ..etc).
-For devlopement, it would be nice to have an option to not have the limit instead of having to plan the mod around the limit.
-Removing the limit could create an environment where there could be large scale battles, commanding larger armies simultaneously.
-It gets difficult to control 4 or more control groups simultaneously in one single battle, and due to that gives the computer an unfair advantage.
I'm not asking to remove the limit completely, as I know that it is a part of Glest that many would not want to change, but I am sure that there are a few mods that could really benefit from not being limited. Some ideas for implementing this are:
- a switch in the configure.exe/options screen which will toggle between free selections or the 16 limit.
- an option in the techtree xml, such as <free_select_mode="true"/> (or something like that)
Of course removing this limit would also include removing the 4x4 icon section area.
Some concerns you may have:
-No selection limits = turtleing= massing large number of units = lag
* while this is true to some extent the modder themselves would try to limit those actions in order to make a presentable mod. If someone wants to make a mod with hundreds of units on screen simultaneously than it would be their fault when no one is able to play their game. Its still possible to create that many units even with the selection limits just more difficult to control. So selection limits are not a good of a counter to this tactic.
I would be happy to discuss any concerns, ideas, alternatives to this topic.
