Expand and Exterminate version 0.42

[Gota]

Customformations is quite good enough for making excellent formations. Making units take formation by themselves is taking control away from the player and i dont like that...

It's a different tool.
Custom formation is only good for a certain number of units.
It was made for TA mods.
I offered fang a new approach to his game that would suit a "strategic zoom" playing style.
to control big masses of units and make it fun you need to allow precise orders that can be elaborate yet simple to execute even with big amount of units.
Or do you prefer just huge blobs of units attacking each other and if your lucky you win with a huge randomness factor?
If fang wants to tailor everything to this type of scale he needs,IMO,to change the battle from a TA like unit amounts to supcomish scale and unit amounts.
If you no longer have the type of micro of small groups of units that you have in,say,BA,you need to supplement this with some other way of controlling units that is as deep and as intrusive and wholesome yet different and more suitable for large scale.

about the transportation systme i offered.
Again,i offered it as a result of shifting the gameplay to big groups of units in which case amassing the exact number of transports and making sure they all get to there you need them to go and than make sure the land units are in the transport circle...its a huge mess even with ta unit amount...
Obviously transportation needs a slicker handling if unit amounts rise.
ordrign transports that will just land from above and automaticly grab units will solve tons of issues and will be much less messy.
Costs of transports can be calculated as the average distance of the group form the air labs,for example.

Johan,if you do not create specialized tools to control units at EE's scale and instead try and use BA's tools you will get a less fun game that will feel clumsy and lost.

[Gota]

By the way,it might be a good idea to allow the player to see all projectiles when he zooms out to icon distance.traces of the projectile's path etc..

[JohannesH]

Customformations is quite good enough for making excellent formations. Making units take formation by themselves is taking control away from the player and i dont like that...

It's a different tool.
Custom formation is only good for a certain number of units.
It was made for TA mods.
I offered fang a new approach to his game that would suit a "strategic zoom" playing style.
to control big masses of units and make it fun you need to allow precise orders that can be elaborate yet simple to execute even with big amount of units.
Or do you prefer just huge blobs of units attacking each other and if your lucky you win with a huge randomness factor?
If fang wants to tailor everything to this type of scale he needs,IMO,to change the battle from a TA like unit amounts to supcomish scale and unit amounts.
If you no longer have the type of micro of small groups of units that you have in,say,BA,you need to supplement this with some other way of controlling units that is as deep and as intrusive and wholesome yet different and more suitable for large scale.

Customformations works well with bigger numbers too, why not? If its too hard to control your troops just slow the game down until you get to a point where you can do decent micro even with shitty mechanics.

Click 1, draw a line, click 2, draw a line, 3, draw, how is that so hard... And very precise.

Or explain to me whats so difficult in large unit numbers. It already happens in BA too late game, on ccr and other such maps.

I do agree that the default transport system is too slow to use though. Even for TA mods it could be better :/

[Gota]

When you have big amounts of units that are a mix of different types you need to be bale to select em all and have the widget order them nicely instead of just stretching all of them in 1 line.

If this comes with slow turning speeds and limited firing archs,the way you form you r attack can have a huge influence on the battle.
Maybe even verying ranges of units even more.

[JohannesH]

Noob, you dont need to select all your units at once.

[Das Bruce]

Customformations works well with bigger numbers too, why not? If its too hard to control your troops just slow the game down until you get to a point where you can do decent micro even with shitty mechanics.

Click 1, draw a line, click 2, draw a line, 3, draw, how is that so hard... And very precise.

Or explain to me whats so difficult in large unit numbers. It already happens in BA too late game, on ccr and other such maps.

You best be joking.

[JohannesH]

No. Depends how you define "decent micro" and "shitty mechanics", what kind of game speed is appropriate of course.

I do realise that RTS games should keep you busy all the time and more, but if next to nobody has time to do more than select all their units and click at the enemy, then yes slowing the game down might be appropriate. Keep in mind ~everybody here sucks.

[Das Bruce]

I'm dead certain fang does not want huge amounts of micro in EE, infact there's a 10 minute long recording of him nerd raging about micro in RTS games.

And being kept busy all the time doesn't mean you're kept busy clicking shit all the time.

[KDR_11k]

Customformations is quite good enough for making excellent formations. Making units take formation by themselves is taking control away from the player and i dont like that...

Custom formations only lets you use a variation of a line, it doesn't let you do things like keeping the artillery behind the direct combat units.

infact there's a 10 minute long recording of him nerd raging about mirco in RTS games.

Leave my cousin out of this!

[Das Bruce]

Fuck your cousin and everyone who looks like him!

[smoth]

Is kdr's cousin hot? I mght want in on that

[Forboding Angel]

Anyone here remember the "Fang vs j5mello" recording?

[JohannesH]

Custom formations only lets you use a variation of a line, it doesn't let you do things like keeping the artillery behind the direct combat units.

O_o Put the artillery in another control group maybe?

[smoth]

Sure but if you are using an automatic sort formation it removes unecessary micro that can be better used on other things. Spring already poorly arranges your shit when you do s line formation so a more intelligent formation would only stand to reason

[Pxtl]

I've always wanted two commands for formations - a "group follow/guard" where multiple units follow another group of units, and a "block orders" command, where a unit ignores all orders until they receive an "unblock" command, or a group of units exclusively under the "block orders" command is selected. Thus, you can create self-arranging armies of leaders and followers, and select them like normal units and give them orders without accidentally sending the followers to the front.

[AF]

That can be done with the Wait command, there are also thigns liek death wait etc, so you can order a group of brawlers into a formation, issue a deathwait command on a tonne fo enemy anti air, then an attack command on a fusion and a move roder back to base, and leave them. They'll automatically target adn attack the fusion once the antiair is destroyed.

Or if you use the wait command, all you have to do is issue a second wait command and they start following the next order.

[R-TEAM]

Hi,

he,he - a long list of new posts with basicaly ever the same ->
One fraction say "make the units bigger!"
the others that would be help to make it play on the actual scale split
up in different "i love this icon system/looking" groups ...
and the fraction i belong is happy with the actual scale (and i would be happy with a more realistic scale in another mood TO) and hope Fang
develop this fantastic mode again ...

The only solution i see for the player that unhappy with the actual scale and need still to play at full speed (remember - dont drive faster at you can control ) is to develop in spring a TRUELY dual monitor support with have on the one monitor a low zooming sight and on the other a high zooming sight on the battlefield.

I am coming from round based strategic games(real strategic and with partly thousands of units ..) , so i am happy to play the game with low speed and have time make many things and dont play an light tactical action game ..

Go one Fang and Thanks for this nice mod

Regards
R-TEAM

[AF]

Nobody has tackled any of the suggestions or problems raised and ahve focused either on exploring a limited subset of a flawed icon ideology, or complaining.

[Gota]

Nobody has tackled any of the suggestions or problems raised and ahve focused either on exploring a limited subset of a flawed icon ideology, or complaining.

Actually,you tackled every suggestion and suggested nothing.

[AF]

Gota your trolls are becoming too obvious the last 2 weeks, you need to step back a bit if you want to be effective, your approaching the self trolling mark