Okay, here's my selfish feature request that i can imagine being very good for some of the mods out there (esp. for infantry units that are cheap individually).
I'm drawing inspiration from this mostly from the Close Combat RTS series (uber realistic WWII) and from real-life tactics and infantry maneavuers, but i realize that Dawn of War 40k may be closer to people's minds (i thought it looked like shit how all the units walked in constant formation, and the regeneration was kinda lame).
IDEA I:
At the factory would be , e.g, the "Infantry Squad." You click to build it, it builds in quick succession x amount of soldiers who are individual units. They are quickly spit out, and are now the Infantry squad. When you click on 1 of the guys, all the units in the squad are selected. Hence they move together, and are given the same orders. They are inseperable. Squads can also be creatively designed (by the mod) like in real-life: (taken from closecombat), The "Sturmgrenadiere heavy infantry" unit had 1 leader (MP40), 1 MG42, 1 sniper, 5 riflemen, 2 of which had anti-tank weaponry, and 2 of which had heavy demolitions.
My two cents.
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Squads (controlling multiple units as one).
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Er, no. And i've searched the forums, and I've looked at all the MTRs, this haven't been brought up before. Or if it was, the terminiology was completely different.
Argh-- pre-set factory build queues? Very close. But I want that taken one step further: That all units build under that Squad/Build-Queue are inseperable as far as giving commands to them. If you click on one, you select them all. Its akin to a platoon leader giving a command to the squad leader, who in turn gives the command to the individual soldiers. The platoon leader NEVER micros the soldiers, only the SQUADS.
Take Battletech for example. In the tabletop board game version, you control individual mechs and tanks. But you control an entire 27person platoon or a 5person "Point" of Elementals as a single board piece. Can you imagine playing a boardgame where you micro every individual soldier? Its yuckie and its not realistic or desiriable.
So I think the mod Battletech could also use this idea of Squads. Click "Build Infantry Platoon" and out pop X-guys. Its easy to click on a single unit once and then issue a command that they all repond to. I don't have to micro individual soldiers, and I can have one platoon circle left and another flank right, which is difficult to do currently since it involves zooming-out, drag-selecting, preset-group bindings, and other horrors.
Argh-- pre-set factory build queues? Very close. But I want that taken one step further: That all units build under that Squad/Build-Queue are inseperable as far as giving commands to them. If you click on one, you select them all. Its akin to a platoon leader giving a command to the squad leader, who in turn gives the command to the individual soldiers. The platoon leader NEVER micros the soldiers, only the SQUADS.
Take Battletech for example. In the tabletop board game version, you control individual mechs and tanks. But you control an entire 27person platoon or a 5person "Point" of Elementals as a single board piece. Can you imagine playing a boardgame where you micro every individual soldier? Its yuckie and its not realistic or desiriable.
So I think the mod Battletech could also use this idea of Squads. Click "Build Infantry Platoon" and out pop X-guys. Its easy to click on a single unit once and then issue a command that they all repond to. I don't have to micro individual soldiers, and I can have one platoon circle left and another flank right, which is difficult to do currently since it involves zooming-out, drag-selecting, preset-group bindings, and other horrors.
Sorry just noticed the second part of your response.Argh wrote:So, basically, you're asking for Factories to be given pre-assigned build queues?
That sounds like it would be very simple to program, compared to trying to get them to all actually act like a squad, which is something that none of the AI people have been able to manage(yet).
Technically, I'd be happy with something akin to control+num selecting a group, except that its a squad selection that comes out of the factory. So it may be very simple to program.
And isn't this kinda similiar to the Central Builder group Ai? where if you issue one command to any of the units, the others repond and guard that unit so they all help build?
Keeping the squad together would involve units desiring to be within a certain distance of the center of the group. otherwise, it will pathfind its way closer to its squadmates.
If one person in the squad responds to a enemy and attacks it, the others in the squad will attack the same unit also (or make this behavior a flag).
As far as making it much more "interesting" I would draw inspiration from Bungie's Myth series (download demo to check out how it treats unit formations, etc.). When you selecdt a group of units and click on the move command it should show on the ground a dot where each unit will move to. One can select a formation that a Squad (or group of regular units) should be in, so when one tells them to move the ground shows what formation they'll end their move in. Formations include line, double line, staggered line, wedge, circle, concave, box, etc..
My two cents.
So, basically, they'd be built as a group, and if you clicked on one of them, the entire group would get given orders? That would probably also be not too hard. What would be very hard is getting them to do anything more than move-in-line or move-in-blob.
So long as you could live with that, I'd imagine that what you want would be possible and not too difficult. Making them move in a way that was "logical"... much harder. We don't even have a way for group-movement in a "logical" way blocked out yet, let alone modder-configurable ways of defining that.
So long as you could live with that, I'd imagine that what you want would be possible and not too difficult. Making them move in a way that was "logical"... much harder. We don't even have a way for group-movement in a "logical" way blocked out yet, let alone modder-configurable ways of defining that.
for this to be possible, you only need one thing.
to map 2, consecutive actions, to one hotkey.
(is this possible from new keybinding system? i think its not).
how?
the first action, must select one unit, almost as a LMB click.
(from mouse 50, select one)
the second action, must select the aigroup, just like Q does.
(its not possible to recreate the "Q" key function from selection editor).
the result of this, will select the hole group with just one mouseclick or one keypress, just like in squad based games.
to map 2, consecutive actions, to one hotkey.
(is this possible from new keybinding system? i think its not).
how?
the first action, must select one unit, almost as a LMB click.
(from mouse 50, select one)
the second action, must select the aigroup, just like Q does.
(its not possible to recreate the "Q" key function from selection editor).
the result of this, will select the hole group with just one mouseclick or one keypress, just like in squad based games.
You can add members to a group by selecting the group and an extra unit and clicking 'Add Unit'.
How about, as well as building units into a group like Argh said, an FBI tag called AutoGroupSelect or something that makes Spring automatically select the units group if its clicked on? Shouldnt be to hard im guessing.
How about, as well as building units into a group like Argh said, an FBI tag called AutoGroupSelect or something that makes Spring automatically select the units group if its clicked on? Shouldnt be to hard im guessing.
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Warlord Zsinj
- Imperial Winter Developer
- Posts: 3742
- Joined: 24 Aug 2004, 08:59
We've asked for the earlier system that Argh mentioned in SWS a couple of times, basically where you click a buildpic once, and it builds a number of units, according to what we indicate.
This would allow interesting balancing, where players order squads rather then units, as well as allow us to include dropship animations at factories, where a dropship will come down and unload a squad, etc.
For our purposes, from then on units would be controlled individually.
I don't think Spring will ever evolve to a level where squads will be able to operate as a single 'unit' without having serious drawbacks and frustrations.
This would allow interesting balancing, where players order squads rather then units, as well as allow us to include dropship animations at factories, where a dropship will come down and unload a squad, etc.
For our purposes, from then on units would be controlled individually.
I don't think Spring will ever evolve to a level where squads will be able to operate as a single 'unit' without having serious drawbacks and frustrations.
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PauloMorfeo
- Posts: 2004
- Joined: 15 Dec 2004, 20:53
That can be made out of a hack, i think.
You make one single unit where it is composed of several footman. That unit will have several weapons, each corresponding to one footman.
It will need to have several colisions sferes seperated, but i think this is possible?
It would also need to have the ability to assign specific damage to specific parts of it (each fotman) so independent footman could be killed and it's weapons stop firing otherwise it would get destroid only as a single unit when the total HP got below zero. This one i don't know it is is possible.
Anyway, it would be one ugly hack.
You make one single unit where it is composed of several footman. That unit will have several weapons, each corresponding to one footman.
It will need to have several colisions sferes seperated, but i think this is possible?
It would also need to have the ability to assign specific damage to specific parts of it (each fotman) so independent footman could be killed and it's weapons stop firing otherwise it would get destroid only as a single unit when the total HP got below zero. This one i don't know it is is possible.
Anyway, it would be one ugly hack.
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Guessmyname
- Posts: 3301
- Joined: 28 Apr 2005, 21:07
Warlord Zsinj wrote: This would allow interesting balancing, where players order squads rather then units, as well as allow us to include dropship animations at factories, where a dropship will come down and unload a squad, etc.
For our purposes, from then on units would be controlled individually.
I don't think Spring will ever evolve to a level where squads will be able to operate as a single 'unit' without having serious drawbacks and frustrations.
My hope is that it would provide interesting balance, but i'm afraid this feature is something that the mod makers would have to see as useful and push for it themselves. Infantry combat really jumps out at me as the main inspiration. And like DoW (or Closecombat or real-life) the squad makeup can made fairly interesting so squads are much more useful than just a couple units of a single type.
And personally, I hated DoW's formations and how utterly fake it came across. I'm not sure how sophisticated the formation stuff is now (i 'm not skilled enough to remember to use formations in game), but a blob is really all that is needed atm.
I think to make it slightly beyond hackish two things would be needed. Some "desiredDistance" were no units of the squad would wander beyond DistanceX to keep the blob together, and a "yell" feature (ala Myth ), where if one unit attacks, is attacked, or sees an enemy and responds, ALL units in the squad respond (depedent on toggle states of course). *
*i also think "yell" should be added to the spring engine. i hate when one unit is attacked and responds with a suicide rush, and noone else around him notices. If one unit sees an enemy or rushes forward, it should "yell" and units within the yell radius should respond in turn. I'm sick of microing my guys too much......
I think virtually grouping units together would be cool.
Unit A and B are the two units you want to have in a group, unit C simply links together both units into one acting as a group (as if they were grouped).
That's fairly easy done, only annoying thing is pushing at the moment so some sort of basic formation is needed like a blob with spacing).
Now when building unit C the factory then builds unit A and B in the order they are listed.
Unit C could look like this:
Unit A and B are the two units you want to have in a group, unit C simply links together both units into one acting as a group (as if they were grouped).
That's fairly easy done, only annoying thing is pushing at the moment so some sort of basic formation is needed like a blob with spacing).
Now when building unit C the factory then builds unit A and B in the order they are listed.
Unit C could look like this:
Code: Select all
[UNITINFO]
{
UnitName = UnitC;
description = Bunch of random units;
isGroup=1; // determines if this unit is a virtual group
Unit0 = UnitA;
Unit1 = UnitB;
...
}-
Warlord Zsinj
- Imperial Winter Developer
- Posts: 3742
- Joined: 24 Aug 2004, 08:59