The pluggable widgets and the dito AIs in Spring made me think it could be used to finaly realise something that's been missing in RTS games so far - subcommanders.
The idea is simple in theory. Instead of personally controlling every unit like you do in Spring and pretty much every RTS out there, you turn them over to subcommanders and then command them instead, like in a real life military.
To implement this in Spring would be a matter of having a number of AI players that play on your team with your units, so to speak. You actively turn a unit over to an AI, and that unit and every unit produced by that unit (in the case of a factory or similar) is from then on controlled by the AI until you take it back.
The AIs are in turn controlled through some sort of interface, and are given objectives such as "build and maintain economy", "disrupt enemy economy", "air assault" etc. and then be given areas to operate in or vectors to operate on (where applicable).
The AIs already exist, so it would "merely" be a matter of having them concentrate on the one aspect you want them to concentrate on.
It would be extremely nice to be able to set up a lot of this in the pre-game, as well as setting up some variables such as whether the AI is allowed to build new factories, etc. as well as perhaps limiting the percentage of resources they are allowed to use as well as anything else one might like to control. Can't have them running amok on us, can we?
NCO widget
Moderator: Moderators
Re: NCO widget
Sounds like a great idea.
There used to be modular "Group AI" that could be assigned to a group of units and presumably LUA has extended this functionality further, so from that side it's doable... from the having the sub-commanders be useful and the game still being fun side of things there is an awful lot of work to do.
There used to be modular "Group AI" that could be assigned to a group of units and presumably LUA has extended this functionality further, so from that side it's doable... from the having the sub-commanders be useful and the game still being fun side of things there is an awful lot of work to do.
Re: NCO widget
Liking this idea, think I brought it up a longer while ago. I'm all for a more macro approach of gameplay.
There used to be a GroupAI that would allow a builder unit to construct buildings at a given point by a given radius but I think it was mod specific and not entirely automated.
There used to be a GroupAI that would allow a builder unit to construct buildings at a given point by a given radius but I think it was mod specific and not entirely automated.
Re: NCO widget
I actually think the NCO widget would be handy even without AI. Having a team with a Supreme Leader and 3 Regional Commanders, enforced by the game rather than merely roleplayed, would be handy.