On the UI non-defensive structures show as the normal 100% build time. However the biggest issue to me is:
Defensive structures are shown as 133% of the normal build time.
Does this mean Chinese villagers just have a 100% faster build modifier for any building and that this is some way to fix the building time bug for defensive structures?
Few examples:
Normal Keep: 180s
Chinese Keep: 240s
240 / 180 * 100 = 133.33% build time
With a 100% faster building rate this means:
240 / 200 * 100 = 120s build time.
This is effectively the same as:
180 / 150 * 100 = 120s build time.
Normal Stone Wall Tower: 90s
Chinese Stone Wall Tower: 120s
120 / 90 * 100 = 133.33% build time
With a 100% faster building rate this means:
120 / 200 * 100 = 60s build time.
This is effectively the same as:
90 / 150 * 100 = 60s build time.
What do I understand from this?
Defensive Structures have their base build times increased by 33% so they can use one global 100% faster building speed modifier on their villager, possibly to prevent bugs I reckon? But this comes at the cost of having a misleading and inconvenient UI all over the place.
I think the build time on the UI should be relative to the actual build time. We’re all aware that a mill for example normally takes 20 seconds to build, 10 for the Chinese. Why doesn’t it show 10 seconds on the UI?
Then defensive structures suddenly show their build time as a value that’s 33% more than a normal defensive structure has, which is just confusing. Like if I’d see that and wouldn’t have come to this conclusion, would I be inclined to do 240s / 150 * 100 while the actual sum is 240s / 200 *100?
What do I think would be better solutions?
- Remove the 100% faster build rate as an always on ability or whatever it is right now and manually adjust all the values of the buildings to reflect their actual build time. If you can do this to defensive structures manually I don’t see why it can be done to all other structures. This should also be more bug proof as you’re directly adjusting the values rather than letting an ability do the work. This is a tiny bit of work at first but should be the same work in the long run while having correct information on the UI for the players.
- I can understand this might give some extra work if you want to adjust their building speed modifiers as you need to adjust every single building again to reflect their true building time etc. A fix for this could be to keep the ability, however… Have the UI show the build time value AFTER the modified calculation.
In the end on screen both options have the same result, but it’s just what you as a developer think is more effective to do. Both should be relatively bug-proof to do.