Formation setting for units

[Crayfish]

One feature that might be nice if anyone could be bothered is...

Better formation setting for units, particularly aircraft. Maybe a window that appears when pressing a formation button that has dot iconographs showing a variation of formation styles (e.g. widely dispersed, closely packed, roughly circular, attempts to maintain a horizontal line of advance... or just the first two if the others are hard.)

[Lumpy]

I would like to see the ability to make your units advance in a group

Because some units move faster / slower than others..

I would be usefull to have units move in a group formation for anti air support etc..

[imbaczek]

try ctrl+move for speed limiting.

[Jazcash]

Definitely for Gunships. I mean, when ever you send Gunships to a specific location they usually tend to fly grouped and packed. Once one dies it chain reacts and kills all the others. This needs to be fixed but I think a formation panel would be great.

[MightySheep]

yup i once lost 10 brawlers to about 3 shots from a fighter. also when i drag my units into a line and then set them to go toward the enemy in a line they just act like retards, reminds me of nero training my robots to go towards the enemy.

[zwARREN69]

bump

[Gota]

I would suggest a lua for unit types.
Im talking about combining different unit types into a single "smart" group.
A lua that will allow you to give orders to a mixed group.for example if the group annitiates an attack and you have two types of units in it;artillery and assaut or heavy head to head units you can tell it to make the artillery roll in front and shoot but when an enemy approaches the heavy tanks role to the front and attack them while the artillery goes to the back.
such lua can begine an entire new strategic phase.
Group strategies.This will be perticularly good for big games with lots of units.
You could give ur group a direction towards which it is pointed that way you could allow much more deep strategies such as flanking a group which if not cared for ad is faced to the wrog directiot with its artillery exposed.

[Crayfish]

I should note I don't know how to code or do anything that would be involved in actually implementing this (although I admire those who can!). So, um, someone else would have to do it :$

[manored]

I would like to see a simplified way to make units move in the same speed AND in a formation where the direct combat units protected the others :) That would be really cool, cause right now you need tons of microing to make it happen. (Tough, thanks to the randomization of telling a lot of units to go to the same place and the randomization of targentting that occurs due to usage of move orders to attack weak units die in the same proportion that direct combat ones, what somehow solves the thing for now :) )

[Crayfish]

Maybe you could have a whole formation structuring menu, where you first specify how far apart units stay from each other and second where each selected unit type (or unit category e.g. assault, riot etc.) travels in the group e.g. 1st line, 2nd line, 3rd line and so on.

Bit elaborate but would allow micro to be prepared in advance rather than in the thick of things as at present.

[manored]

You mean like creating a formation plan that is automatically applied to groups of units? Sounds good :)

[KDR_11k]

Yep, sounds nice. Make it.

[Crayfish]

D'oh :)

I can envisage it.

I just have no idea how to put that vision on the screen. I haven't programmed anything ever in my life.

Not that learning to code would hurt. It might even be eventually slightly useful in career terms... what languages would I need to learn? Is it possible for a lazy but also overcommitted person to do this in a reasonable timescale?

[manored]

I already tried to learn programming, but was stoped by lazyness :) I can only say that it is much easier than people who never tried think but still very hard.

[Aether_0001]

I don't think that it would be very hard for the it to set it such that the minority of units, or the anti-air units in 2-unit groups would end up behind the rest, rather than on one side. I really hate it when that happens, as then if i have slashers on one side and levelers on the other, the brawlers can easily just flank it from the leveler side, and the gators would just as easily flank it from the slasher side.

[Felix the Cat]

D'oh :)

I can envisage it.

I just have no idea how to put that vision on the screen. I haven't programmed anything ever in my life.

Not that learning to code would hurt. It might even be eventually slightly useful in career terms... what languages would I need to learn? Is it possible for a lazy but also overcommitted person to do this in a reasonable timescale?

Be prepared for the long haul - I've been learning C++ for 2 1/2 years now, including 6 months and counting at school for specifically computer game programming, and I still can't contribute anything meaningful to the Spring code.

[zwARREN69]

So does anyone have some working code, yet?

[MightySheep]

Wow and I had plans to learn how to code over the easter holidays...

[Crayfish]

I don't have time to learn coding, too much on. Still, the idea is out there - if anyone wants to take advantage of it feel free.

[kiki]

lol, lua is not a good first "programming language" to learn, as it is only a scripting language. And then you will suck at anything else you try to program. And lua is just really strange. its fits its function well, but its still really aweful imo, with all that dynamic typing and table things. Not to mention all the random stuff i have no idea what it does.

I suggest learning c++ or java for some nice classic oop. Then learn python because it is pwnage and it pwns lua big time.