[SUGGESTION] Improve hatchery helpers' Pokémon selection

[Kays]

Current Behavior

Hatchery helpers picks the next Pokémon based on their sorting preference.

Improved Behavior

A toggleable option for hatchery helpers to either:

1. Have their own queue; and/or
2. Select a Pokémon that they haven't hatched.

Reason for change

All of the sorting options for Hatchery Helpers except "Attack" and "Times Hatched" restrict the helper to 2-3 Pokémon, simply because the Pokémon can level up to 100 way faster than the helper can hatch an egg. Due to this, only 2-3 Pokémon will get any breeding.

Detailed Description

Hatchery Helpers Queue
The helpers have their own queue which they will queue up a certain amount of Pokémon. This allows the helper to operate on more Pokémon than the same 2-3 Pokémon each time.

Hatchery Helpers Smart Filter
The aim is that the helpers will scan the list for any Pokémon that they have not worked with, and if none are available, they can start from scratch.

I mentioned that these should be toggleable because if a helper is sorting via "Attack" or "Times Hatched", it should be able to cycle the same few Pokémon until they are caught up with the rest of the gang.

A lot of the comments I've got (below) suggests that sorting by "Attack" or "Times Hatched" ascendingly will solve the issue of the helper only breeding 2-3 Pokémon. That's true; however, a few points to note:

1. Why have so many other sorting options that are seemingly counter-productive? All but 2 of the sorts will create an indefinite lock on 2-3 Pokémon at any given time.
2. It doesn't offer flexibility in how I want to setup my helpers. For example, when it comes to low egg steps Pokémon, it's more beneficial to use a helper like Carey for the attack boost, rather than step boost. For high egg step Pokémon, it's slightly more efficient to use a helper like Kris for the step boost rather than an attack boost. I'll show a chart of the efficiency calc I made for the helpers based on certain criteria. Yes; the impact is small in most cases, but overtime, the small boost will add up. With the current sorting, I cannot have Kris sort by Egg Cycles descending, to have him focus on high egg step Pokémon, unless I want Kris to only breed the same 2-3 Pokémon forever. While those 2-3 Pokémon can get very strong, it is not efficient on damage type distribution, especially with Gem abuse, and it's not efficient to lose 1/3 of their combined attack permanently because one of them will always be in egg form.
   

So it would be nice if the helpers can have some sort of queue or whatever mechanism that allows them to skip over the same Pokémon for a little while and work on a new Pokémon.

Another comment I got relates to using categories to limit the Pokémon I want the hatchers to use. I can see this working if I can have each helper pick the category to use, then I can sort by Attack descending for that specific listing. Although, this can be a management nightmare because there's no easy way to manage categories at the moment. Would be nice if this functionality is moved to somewhere like the Pokédex where the entire selection of Pokémon is available always. The Hatchery only shows Pokémon at Lv100, those that aren't in queue, and those that aren't in an egg form.

As a side note: I don't think reducing the exp curve for Pokémon to get to Lv100 will be sufficient. At most, it will only add some fixed amount of Pokémon to what I said above. Unless the reduction is so high that Pokémon takes forever to level up, which that in itself, would be a different problem.

Screenshots:

[Jaaslet]

1: It really just sounds like you want to use "Times Hatched"
2: I think what you really want is a "hide not fully proteined"-filter?
3: Your solution don't really solve that problem either?

[Kays]

1: It really just sounds like you want to use "Times Hatched"

That's a roundabout way to alleviate the "1-2 Pokémon lock" compared to other sorts. "Attack" also works in this regard. However, that's not what it "sounds like what I want". "Times Hatched" is not indicative of anything. It will still result in a large queue of mostly 4800 egg step Pokémon, or other high egg step Pokémon, because they take a long time to hatch, which naturally makes their "Times Hatched" much lower than other Pokémon. Unless I use a setup of 4 Helpers all set to "Times Hatched" ascending, those high-step-count Pokémon will still bottleneck any helper with this sort.

2: I think what you really want is a "hide not fully proteined"-filter?

Hiding them don't solve the issue. The list is smaller, sure; but I can do this with categories. The helpers will still be locked into 2-3 Pokémons out of a category with 150 Pokémon.

3: Your solution don't really solve that problem either?

I'm not sure what "problem" you're talking about. My reasoning for my suggestion is to increase damage type diversity with the sorting preference for helpers. I don't doubt there may be better ways to do it. Right now, the only way to get out of the lock is to sort by "Times Hatched" or "Attack" ascendingly. Let's say I hired Kris and I want Kris to focus on high-step-count Pokémon or base attack descending, because I would like him to hatch the high-egg-step Pokémon faster. He would be locked into a set of 2 Pokémon. That's not inherently a problem or a flaw in the system; however, being locked into only 2 Pokémon means those types would be inflated and the other types would tank because no helper can get to them, and it's not easy for me to manually queue up ones to offset this balance. I could get around this lock by changing his sort to "Times Hatched" or "Attack" ascendingly, but that doesn't do what I want him to focus on. I don't need, nor want, Kris to hatch a 320-step egg faster at the cost of 10 diamonds; I can have Carey do that and boost for more attack. In my category, I have both high-egg-step and low-egg-step Pokémon and I'd like helpers to go through the queue in some way and not get locked into only hatching the same 2 Pokémon. I can always have one helper sort by Attack ascendingly to pick up stragglers, so I don't think every sort option has to go through all the Pokémon I have in whatever filtered list I'm using, but more than 2 would be good.

[dragonkin550]

"The list is smaller, sure; but I can do this with categories."
So here you have proven that you know what categories are, but you don't realize that using categories is the answer to your problem here?
""Times Hatched" is not indicative of anything. It will still result in a large queue of mostly 4800 egg step Pokémon, or other high egg step Pokémon"

Just make a category of the non 4800 egg step Pokémon you want to breed and have the helpers breed those pokemon by times hatched, or attack, whichever you prefer. As for your wish list in 3., you can always switch out pokemon out of the category when they have been bred enough by your helpers

[Kays]

I can't have the hatchery helpers choose the category to use. I have to use the same category. Filtering out the 4800 egg-step Pokémon means I can't select them unless I change categories in the filter each time I go to manually queue up. Are you assuming I don't want 4800 egg step Pokémon? That's not it.

[Kays]

Maybe my original write up is not clear. I'm not sure, but judging off of these questions/comments I'm getting, I'm getting that impression. I will review this suggestion tomorrow, maybe with a fresh pair of eyes. I sincerely apologize for the any confusion in advance.

[Kays]

I've updated the suggestion. I hope it's clearer? Please feel free to comment/question on anything that's unclear or if I'm missing some tricks with the current system to solve my situation. I know it may not explain certain things, so I'll type these responses here:

1. Why not remove 4800 step Pokémon? Because I want to use them! 😕
2. How does my solution solve the problems outlined? It doesn't "solve" them, but it alleviates them. I don't know a good way to solve them. I'm open to suggestions on better solutions. My idea is to allow my helpers to sort based on their efficiency on Pokémon's egg steps, without locking them to only breeding 2-3 Pokémon, effectively making the sort useless. What's the point in having so many sorting options where the effective breeding is limited to 2-3 Pokémon? I may as well set up my category with only 10 Pokémon. Like the player's queue's max limit increasing per region unlocked kind of alleviates this problem because I can queue up a lot of Pokémon, so it can't be limited to a small number; thus, I can go through a variety of different Pokémon, which helps with spreading out my attack and increase damage type diversity.

[Aegyo]

I think the best way to do this is marking the pokemon with the time they were last handled by a hatchery helper, and provide a setting for people to limit how often a pokemon can be picked up by a helper.
Then you could have some control on how far your helpers get through the list before getting back to the top

[Farboo171]

Unless the Author feels their needs are not met by the recent upgrades in Hatchery Helper capabilities, I will close this issue in a few weeks.