Talk:Units

Unit summaries

I think a very brief summary of each factory could be very helpful, like:

• Cloakbots: High DPS, fragile, relatively shorter-ranged. Several units are cloaked or have area cloaking.
• Shieldbots: Tough, low DPS. Several units have shields and shield-related abilities such as turning shields into damage.

Etc. I would do it myself, but I know far too little of the different factories to be able to give good brief summaries.

In addition, it might be nice to automatically generate and show (similar to this script: https://github.com/ZeroK-RTS/SpringRTS-Tools/blob/master/unitguide/export_unit_templates.lua , which is some really nice functionality, kudos to Histidine91) a box plot for each of some different main statistics, such as "DPS/cost", "Hit Points/cost", "Movement Speed", "Range", "Weapon AOE". The units of each factory would then be depicted with one box in each box plot. That by itself could give an easy way to get a quick and superficial impression of how each factory compares to other factories. That said, lots of units have special abilities or special weapons, and even regular statistics can have major importance (which I think is a really nice part of Zero-K), so for at least some of those statistics, the plots might be both difficult and laboursome to automatically generate as well as possibly be very misleading, which might be worse than no impression. So this may not be a good idea and not at all worth the time or effort. — unsigned comment by 109.57.58.139

Reg. the latter part, I think statistics such as "log2(Hit Points)" (illustrating force concentration, which is relevant for striders and tanks) and "log2(cost)", and maybe "log2(Range)" instead of "Range", might be useful. — unsigned comment by 109.57.58.139

Too much html+css

Our players are already intimidated when it comes to editing the Wiki. This page has enough HTML and CSS now to scare off anyone who wants to edit it and doesn't know how to read HTML. I suggest that the page be converted to Wiki syntax and kept that way. —RandomX (talk) 02:49, 27 July 2020 (CEST)

That's a fair point that I didn't consider, I hoped to keep that amount down, but I didn't succeed without sacrificing the formatting I hoped for. I will cut down the amount of HTML and CSS. I think it would be OK to keep the image links that are also present in the different factory pages, since they should be decently simple, and I don't know whether those images can be included as is using only MediaWiki syntax (if anyone knows how to do that, please do mention it and I will use MediaWiki syntax for the images). --Someoneelsewhere (talk) 03:20, 27 July 2020 (CEST)

I have greatly decreased the usage of HTML and CSS. It looks "noisier" now, however. Does anyone have any proposals or suggestions for making it less "noisy" while keeping it to MediaWiki syntax? I must also apologize, for it seems that it is really simple to include images as is, having just the raw link works when you are just including the image, not using it as part of a link or similar. --Someoneelsewhere (talk) 04:33, 27 July 2020 (CEST)

Dear RandomX, I have partially reverted to using a bit of HTML and CSS again, and it is now not anywhere near as noisy before, however, it still does not seem quite as good as the original version. Given that you are definitely beyond any doubt much more experienced reg. this Wiki than me, would it be possible for you to improve and fix that, maybe such that the text is placed to the right of the image instead of below it, and thus increase visual coherence and decrease space wasted? I believe that could be very helpful to the section. Thank you very much in advance and best regards. --Someoneelsewhere (talk) 06:06, 27 July 2020 (CEST)

I don't pretend to know more than I do. ...But making things easier for others is always good. I think I achieved what you were trying to do, but at the cost of having to use {{clear}}, which is hardly optimal. While I'm not happy about the image tags (you did it right!), wiki software severely limits what you can do with images when they are linked the correct way. The html is here only because we really should have all the images uploaded here, but that's for someone with admin rights to do. Or someone very-VERY patient. These are all only suggestions anyway. If you feel that I really broke your layout, feel free to revert everything to the pre-me condition. —RandomX (talk) 01:00, 28 July 2020 (CEST)

Dear RandomX, thank you very, very much, it looks really good now, (much) better than my attempt, and it is very clear and concise. And I only did it right reg. images after you mentioned that such would be possible :) . I think you are right about the images, I believe there are some places here and there where the images can be converted as is, I will look at converting a few of those pages. Best regards and again, thank you very, very much :) . --Someoneelsewhere (talk) 01:28, 28 July 2020 (CEST)

Unit reference/comparison table?

Is there any interest in one big table of all the units in the game, with their factory, cost, designation, dps and so on? Wiki code permitting it could be sortable by column.

I'm new to the game, and this sort of thing would help enormously in getting to know the relative strengths of the different units.

I tend to make a similar spreadsheet for my own use whenever I start playing a new game, and I thought maybe other people might be interested as well.

I'm not sure a big table with all the units would be a good idea, but a table for each category (e.g. constructor, factory, combat unit (maybe split this into roles too?) etc.) might be a better idea. You'd probably rather compare like-to-like rather than have a bunch of unrelated units in there as well. --Mach56 (talk) 18:24, 8 July 2022 (PDT)

I could be mistaken, but I think the Semantic MediaWiki extension would let our wiki make such a table automagically, but we don't have it. So I don't see why not. Go ahead and create and post a table like that into a new page. Being a wiki page, if someone really doesn't like what it looks like, he can edit it. And yes, columns can be made sortable. —RandomX (talk) 20:34, 9 July 2022 (PDT)