Some UI/QoL Thoughts

Jeekaroose

So, a few things, largely unrelated to each other, which I haven't seen any other posts about in my admittedly not-that-comprehensive searching. I don't know how much attention is being paid to this kinda quality of life type stuff at this stage in development, but w/e here have some opinions:

A - Maybe it's just because of my uninspiring mouse accuracy, but managing to click on the gems to build collectors on them can feel kinda finicky sometimes. Would it be possible to increase the clickable radius on gems? Since there isn't really any ambiguity of what you're trying to interact with in t-key-mode (barring gems being literally inside expansion/tower spots, which I don't think can happen?).

B - Sitting around with your hero collecting gems on cooldown (i.e., when no one is around to contest them) feels like way more of a pain in the ass than it needs to be, because the 5s cooldown means you can't queue up gem-collecty orders and then just go do other stuff. I realize Sean is a fan of the brood war-esque disorganization simulation , but this feels pretty unnecessary for Atlas. Is there any chance we could get a way to queue up those orders, which your hero would just execute on cd? I know there's basically no precedent for cooldown-gated abilities being repeatedly queueable in games like this, but it (or some equivalent solution) would make gem collecting feel like a lot less of a chore.

C - The beginning-of-match time (the 40s period where you can build stuff but not spawn units) feels very much like it should be a time to chill slightly, organize with teammates, plan builds, make sure your computer hasn't exploded and has actually finished loading, etc. However, the fact that units and tier research take time, even in this initial period, means that often you have time-sensitive shit to get done even as soon as the game starts if you want things coming out as soon as possible. Related, but not entirely the same thing; the fact that gold income starts immediately is kinda off-putting, and results in goofy stuff like my usual Vela opener of 6 Raptors, wait like 25s for a little bit more money, start building a 7th Raptor before the game has even started.

I don't know if these are intended -- and I would be interested in why that period exists in the first place honestly, if they are -- but they definitely make that opening period feel kinda needlessly stressful, and some sort of solution (make things build instantly in pre-game? after 40s, treat everything queued up before then as having been ordered at the 0s mark? something else less hacky? dunno) would make me happy.

D - Vela's Deadeyes' Take Aim (and possibly other individually-cast abilities, although I've been playing far too much Vela so idk if any other units even have abilities with ranges that would make this relevant) have a pretty irritating interaction with the way Atlas handles multiple units being selected at once using abilities. If I go w-click-w-click (on enemy units) with 2+ deadeyes selected, I expect two deadeyes to take aim -- but what actually happens, if the first deadeye hasn't started its cast animation yet (e.g., isn't in range, or the buttons were just pressed too fast), is the first take aim order just gets overridden by the second. For some reason this actually only happens if they're in the middle of some other action beforehand, like moving; but given how much I (and I would assume most people) move units around basically all of the time, this ends up making it incredibly hard to cast take aim twice in a timely manner (i.e., without waiting for the first's cast animation to start). Very inconvenient for obvious reasons.

E - Some form of smartcasting (LoL terminology)/quickcasting (Dota) abilities (q to cast at cursor, not q + click somewhere to cast) would be real nice at some point, on both unit abilities and pinging (especially for radial pinging purposes). I'm allergic to clicking, please rescue me ;_;

tl;dr jeekaroose spends too much time thinking about minor stuff, hopefully wasn't too verbose

Metruzero

A - I definitely agree with this. I've had weird times where I miss gems randomly.

B - The cooldown definitely feels restricting, especially early game where there's not much to do so you just spend time just standing next to a node waiting for the cooldown.

C - I definitely agree with this, some games like HotS of League for example have warm up times but as you said they are mostly time to communicate and make sure everyone is connected and loaded in. I would like to see something like your recommendation where it will treat everything that was queued as if it started as 0 seconds. This will allow players plenty of time to discuss with team mates without having to worry about losing valuable upgrade time, and allowing them to start the game with a small army.

D - I have never played Vela so I've never experienced this for myself. But it's something I'll try later as I can imagine it's a frustrating thing to come across in the heat of battle

E - Oh dear god please!