Spring RTS Engine

One thing I've always been frustrated by is how hard it is to get troops to spread out. Given how many weapons wield area-effect weapons, keeping a compact formation is suicidal - and yet, there's no convenient way to say "spread out". Even line-move seems to pack the units together, just in a line.

Is there any Lua widget or movement command to say "move to a random point within the target circle" or something similar? I suggest random, because it would also be useful for factories too, and factories don't really support formations like the "line" move (since, after all, units come out of a factory one-at-a-time, and you can't have a formation of one).

JKs line formation widget should do this. Rather than dragging a line, you draw one, so you could draw a squiggle formation, or an arc or a circle, or an arrowhead, the only limit is the RSI you get from none stop playing.

I was thinking of putting a scatter command in my mod...

AF wrote:JKs line formation widget should do this. Rather than dragging a line, you draw one, so you could draw a squiggle formation, or an arc or a circle, or an arrowhead, the only limit is the RSI you get from none stop playing.

Link? Does it work for factories? Do the units evenly spread along the line? Or clump in the middle, like a line-move?

they evenly spread out

look in the lua forum/ask JK

Pxtl wrote:

AF wrote:JKs line formation widget should do this. Rather than dragging a line, you draw one, so you could draw a squiggle formation, or an arc or a circle, or an arrowhead, the only limit is the RSI you get from none stop playing.

Link? Does it work for factories? Do the units evenly spread along the line? Or clump in the middle, like a line-move?

I believe it doesn't work for factories, as I have tried. Probably due to what you said about how factories only build one at a time. Your random scatter to a circular area idea would be great for factories. But otherwise yeah, use it to draw a random squiggle in an area and your units will be nice and scattered.

You can make units make a circle using lua, e.g. "bind ctrl+shift+c luaui circle" in uikeys.txt. I agree that a hardcoded scatter command would be nice though.

Why, a Lua command works good enough, no?

I notice that all permutations of ctrl + alt + move + drag result in the same "line move" functionality. Is Lua flexible enough to insert a command at "alt + move + drag"or somesuch trickery?

Pxtl wrote:I notice that all permutations of ctrl + alt + move + drag result in the same "line move" functionality. Is Lua flexible enough to insert a command at "alt + move + drag"or somesuch trickery?

Yea, Lua can add custom binds to key combinations to do exactly that.

For spreading with jK's custom formations widget, i find a zigzag works best.

Saktoth wrote:For spreading with jK's custom formations widget, i find a zigzag works best.

Or S shape formation.

It pooned your base twice on the same map, back to back games :D (I was at the otherside of the map both times (diagonally opposite 4v4 on comet)

;] I can't get over that...