Hot key for spreading troops

[Harm]

Brawlers tend to stack together, this is quite annoying if a flakgun is ravaging your airforce. So my suggestion is to make a key that automatically spreads troops.

[Delta]

Good Idea...

[AF]

Then i suggest that this be written as a GroupAI that kills itself off once its task si done. The change required would however mean that the GroupAI interface should be able to be invoked at the press of a buttond efiend by that AI or the engine. Thus solving the problem fo this and making other features possible without engine changes..

[GrOuNd_ZeRo]

A C&C style spread button would be useful, esspecially for troops under artillery fire, like MRPC's and LRPC's

[Warlord Zsinj]

Yeah, this would be quite useful as a hotkey.
It is important that units moving to a location maintain those move orders as they spread out, even if it means that they will slowly converge again.

Units moving to a location should spread out while continuing to move in that direction, instead of stopping and expanding, which defeats the purpose, as they will be under fire for even longer.

EDIT: I'm referring to implementing the idea on ground troops here, by the way

[Delta]

Mabye a interface buttom with choises:
"formation: tight/lose"
When set to loose units would try to at all times keep a distance (atleast 2-3x unit width).
Using this on goliaths (or other big and slow units) allows smaller supporting units (rockos etc) to move freely within the formation, easier put to use where needed to draw enemy fire from the goliaths.

[AF]

ok... watches as thread turns from possible ways of implementing the idea to, lets request features.

[Delta]

Just spawning ideas around the topic...

[b1ind]

This idea and a host of others could be implemented through 'autonomous steering behaviors'. For example, it would be trivial to adjust the avoidance coefficient in a flocking behavior (well suited for aircraft) to cause aircraft to separate themselves. But as easy as it is to say this, I'm not sure how computationally intensive it would be to implement such steering behaviors and how difficult it would be to do so effectively.

On a related topic, perhaps these behaviours could be less processor intensive substitutions for the A* pathing. They would give an ideal way to allow groups to use a common path or a common set of paths (depending on group members' movement abilities). Anyway, would it not be neat to have a groupai pull off a flocking behaviour with the ability to tweak the avoidance coefficient at run-time?

OT: Imagine the visual quality of a swarm, or 'flock', of crawling bombs.

[Warlord Zsinj]

As a GUI button, this idea does not deserve such a space.
This is not to say its a bad idea, but it is something which can easily be covered by a hotkey. GUI space is at a premium, and something as (comparatively) trivial as this shouldn't make the very exclusive GUI-cut.

And Delta, I do not see a "spread" hotkey in the same boat as formations.
Formations are very complicated, ranging from artillery-specific formations to line formations, and protective square formations, and so on. A spread hotkey just tells my units, irregardless of the formation they are currently in, the direction they are going, etc, to spread out in order to reduce the effectiveness of enemy splash damage.

[Delta]

You win...
Ignore the formation thing and focus on the "spread"- hotkey instead, would be very usefull.

[AF]

What the, I thought th density of a formation would be what this could have been about, you can still spread a group of units out and still keep the formation but the dynamics change in an important way as a result.

But I agree with the GUI comment.

[Min3mat]

well if there is a 'Scatter' Button please make sure to include it in the interface! and make the key something memorable like 'x' (from the olde C&C...good days :))

[Dragon45]

As stated before, Command and Conquer had a very simple way of scattering units: You select the units, pressed "x", and they would scatter, simple as that. It was one of my annoyances with TA.

As for implementation, I can see would use the GroupAI interface to implement it, but I don't think it necessarily needs to be anything too complicated.

[GrOuNd_ZeRo]

You could easilly remove more buttons as well in the GUI that we were acustomed to in OTA.

Who really uses the move button, attack button, etc, only the newbies use that IMO.

I use mainly hotkeys in OTA and Spring, the only thing I do in the GUI is building units.

[Warlord Zsinj]

Alantai, you would still be able to pick tight formations and loose formations as you need.

The scatter button would be an emergency command that can be applied to every unit, irregardless of their formation and order que. You would activate it when you are under fire from splash-damage weaponry such as artillery (or even nukes), and it tells units to spread out immediately.

[AF]

Yes I know but you have compeltely misunderstood me.

Also the move and attack buttons are useful for firing at the ground (terrain dformation) and area attacking (tho with bobmers atm only)

It also does a few things else such as forcable mvoement to air repair pads etc....

[Warlord Zsinj]

Yes I know but you have compeltely misunderstood me.

So explain further.

[AF]

I was responding to your formations comment saying they ARE related but then I see now that it wasnt needd and you'd pretty much said what I was saying.