Hero management UI: brainstorming

[Vorskl]

Hi fellows,
please share your ideas on how to improve the hero assignment and management UI in the game? I dont like the current interface, it's inconvenient. But to be fair to Kerensky, I dont know how to make it better except allow for filtering by the keyword OR dropdown of available types.
Why is it important: SCW + 7 war year DLCs * 15 scenarios / DLC = circa 120 heroes; we'll end up literally with a 'Company of Heroes' pretty fast

[George_Parr]

Mhm, how about adding some behind the scenes categories to the heroes?
They wouldn't have any impact on the gameplay, they just exist to group somewhat similar heroes together.

Would probably not be all that easy to come up with meaningful groups for all of them, but some can be linked in a decent way. E.g. an "attack" group for butcher, crippling blow, flag killer, bunker killer, exterminator, etc. or "support" for aiming assistance, recon, skilled and expert support, leadership, etc.

[adiekmann]

Hi fellows,
please share your ideas on how to improve the hero assignment and management UI in the game? I dont like the current interface, it's inconvenient. But to be fair to Kerensky, I dont know how to make it better except allow for filtering by the keyword OR dropdown of available types.
Why is it important: SCW + 7 war year DLCs * 15 scenarios / DLC = circa 120 heroes; we'll end up literally with a 'Company of Heroes' pretty fast

I'd take anything at this point. Even if it simply put them all in alphabetical order would be a big help. And/or a search option. I want to find the *hero and switch him to another unit but I don't remember who has him. Type in the name of the hero and all of them come up along with which unit they are currently assigned to, if any.

[Scrapulous]

Yeah, I'd like a search field and a sort dropdown, giving some options like:

• The current default order in the live build, showing unassigned heroes first and assigned heroes second
• Sort alphabetically by trait name
• Sort by time earned
• Sort by assigned unit (so that all heroes assigned to a given unit appear together)

And then maybe a checkbox to reverse whatever order was selected in the dropdown, and another checkbox to filter out all heroes already assigned to a unit.

[Kerensky]

I think more than 1 row wide when scrolling would help. One very long vertical list is definitely cumbersome to navigate.

[Vorskl]

I think more than 1 row wide when scrolling would help. One very long vertical list is definitely cumbersome to navigate.

A related issue - when I add a hero and then check the unit's statistics - are these stock values OR updated for hero's performance? Is it possible to highlight the values that have changed since I added the hero (i.e. show the range changed or ideally, show the range as 3/4, meaning stock is 3, current is 4?)

[VirgilInTheSKY]

I think more than 1 row wide when scrolling would help. One very long vertical list is definitely cumbersome to navigate.

I think it could be a similar one to the unit purchase window, scaled down to be held in the unit information panel. More than 1 row is absolutely needed.

[asuser]

To avoid the inflationary allocation of heroes, we could define a hard logic:

A hero can only be assigned to a unit if the unit has achieved an experience of 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 points. That would mean that you need an internal hero pool that allows a selection depending on the unit type.
At scenario start, the player has the possibility to choose a hero from the hero pool and put him to the appropriate unit. Maybe, you can choose always between randomly calculated hero traits.

[WalterTFD]

The fact that to see what heroes you have you have to click on a unit and check their status seems cumbersome to me. Maybe just a 'heroes' button on the screen, which would show you the list that shows up under a heroe's status?

I dunno, that's probably a big change for a game that's already released, but you guys did fix being unable to upgrade units in reserve, so there must still be a dev working on it.

[Resolute]

What I'd like to see:

- a filter option: alphabetically
- search function
- less scrolling
- better overview to spot current hero unit assignements

I also think the purchase UI could be recycled for that. The categories would allow some filtering about current hero assignements or use those categories for something else.