Spring RTS Engine

Hello !
i just tried spring and it is really great :) Anyway i thought that an opensource version of TA was the right opportunity for a very old idea - a "Wait " - "go" unit order.
So idea n°1 ) the great thing in ta is that you can planify unit actions, but it is really difficult to synchronise them or have a good timing. the idea is that when you use the "wait" order, the units just stop their actions, but if you push "go" they will go back to work.

that would be extremely useful in some situation like : you want two groups of units to attack at the same time two different places, with queued orders for targets. But as soon as you start orderning one group, it will execute the action, and it can take times to set up the action queue. Currently one way to solve that is to make the first action of each group to guard one unit, then you self-destruct those units and both groups will start to move at the same time.

With a wait -go order, you could just press "wait" for each groups, set your orders, and when you're done, press "Go" and they will execute the orders :)

But those commands could have others uses like : you have a group of scouts and a group of artillery, You want the artillery to stay behind, but the scouts move too fast and gets quickly out of range of artillery, and when the artillery arrives to the fight, it is useless. with a "Wait" order you could make your scouts wait a little for the artillery, whithout having to reset your precious path orders :)

It could also be used for ambush or things like that :)

Another idea is to have different orders queue with a button to quickly switch between them. You could set up an "attack" orders queue and another "retreat" orders queue, if the fight starts to smell bad, you could just switch orders to the retreat queue and they will do what you had planned, like make them run to your minefileds. and when the opponent units are crushed by the mines, hop you just switch back to the attack orders. You could even set up for each unit a retreat order in a specific direction, so when you hit retreat all your units goes in different directions, confusing your opponent :)

This would only work against an IA, but i'm sure that tool could be used wiser :)

What do you think ?

There already exists a technique in TA known as Jeffy-bombing to make the wait-go order idea work (incidentally, it was helped popularized by some of the Yankspankers themselves, but that's another story).

Basically what you do is, you set up your list of unit orders normally- move, move, attack, move, etc etc. However, before you do all of that, you set the units you are commanding to guard something inexpensive- say, a Jeffy or something. You set the units to guard the Jeffy, *then* shift-click and tell them the actual order.When you're ready to go, you control-d self destruct the Jeffy or whatever you used, and since the units are guarding anything now, they'll move to the next command in their queue.

Works well with practice :)

This would be really useful!

I believe he mentioned that, DM.

It seems like a command which would be very situation specific, rather than a command which would have regular usage; so I think the current bypass (guarding an inexpensive unit) is a good option.

Very handy sounding.

Actually ... Red Alert 2 had something like this - if you activated the waypoint mode, you could give around move and attack orders to units, just as if it was normal, BUT none of the orders would be issued UNTIL you exited waypoint mode.

Quite handy.

Dragon45 wrote:There already exists a technique in TA known as Jeffy-bombing to make the wait-go order idea work (incidentally, it was helped popularized by some of the Yankspankers themselves, but that's another story).

Basically what you do is, you set up your list of unit orders normally- move, move, attack, move, etc etc. However, before you do all of that, you set the units you are commanding to guard something inexpensive- say, a Jeffy or something. You set the units to guard the Jeffy, *then* shift-click and tell them the actual order.When you're ready to go, you control-d self destruct the Jeffy or whatever you used, and since the units are guarding anything now, they'll move to the next command in their queue.

Works well with practice :)

I really love this idea.
Why we should use workaround if we have possibility to include a real solution ? This option is not really popular for now maybe because you need to take a workaround. And the idea will not be used only on specific situations. I can even find a way to use it in the first 3 min of game. Let's say you use your com to build mines. You setup a first Q called mines for example. Than you start it. At some point during the Q, the com is attacked. So you 'Wait' the Q, kill the bad guy, than resume the Q => no more Q lose.
Being able to have multiple Qs and possibility to stop/resume each Q is a must have.

Good idea Kickban. Maybe multiple queues would be a chore to manage, but at least an option to switch between two different ones (one for general tasks, and one for emergencies) would be very useful.

Also I'd like to point out that Empire Earth II has a coordinated attack button that does just what the original post describes: you click the button, give your orders, but they don't execute until you "unclick" the same button.

Make the menu showing the list of enqueued action that can be moved and deleted. Then, instead of "Wait" you'd put a patrol or a guard, and instead of "Go" you'd remove it.

I always thought the guard + a queue was very limited, because guard really makes a unit ignore the rest of the queue until the object guarded is destroyed. So in making queues it's not a real option because most of the times what you guard does not get destroyed or self-d and there is no real queue so to speak. When going a bit further on the subject, it would be really nice to have a pop up window with the queue where you can shuffle around with build and move orders so you don't have to redo the entire queue. I admit most of the times you will do it manually, but i think that when you are sending out cons to cover a large map it might be nice if a jeffy starts bothering your con you just move it somewhere and try to save it until the jeffy is destroyed after which you can just let the con continue on it's queue without doing it all over again. So definitely some possibilities there. The queues are already stored for every unit, the only thing we need is to show them to the player and make them adjustable.

Redfish wrote:I always thought the guard + a queue was very limited, because guard really makes a unit ignore the rest of the queue until the object guarded is destroyed. So in making queues it's not a real option because most of the times what you guard does not get destroyed or self-d and there is no real queue so to speak. When going a bit further on the subject, it would be really nice to have a pop up window with the queue where you can shuffle around with build and move orders so you don't have to redo the entire queue. I admit most of the times you will do it manually, but i think that when you are sending out cons to cover a large map it might be nice if a jeffy starts bothering your con you just move it somewhere and try to save it until the jeffy is destroyed after which you can just let the con continue on it's queue without doing it all over again. So definitely some possibilities there. The queues are already stored for every unit, the only thing we need is to show them to the player and make them adjustable.

I am 100% for this idea.

+1

LordMatt.

Well put redfish. Earth2150 had a good system for queuing orders.