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Unit formations.

Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2013 9:22 am
by epice
A nice option would be to have units able to get themselves into a formation without a bunch of micromanagement. Such as longer ranged/weaker units staing behind short ranged/strong units? Artillery automatically spacing themselves 1 cell apart.

Select a group of varied units and tell them to move somewhere and a direction to face, then the tanks go to the front, artillery to the rear, or attack in the front, support to the rear! Another think you could do is damaged/weaker units should move back and let the lead go to a healthy one.

Too much work to implement? Think it would be bad for some people? Can always make it option like [BUTTON]+Click space for units to format themselves?

Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2013 9:55 am
by JOo
show me "one" command & conquers that has "auto-micromanegement" ... i mean ... wheres the fun if you just have to put your army on front without keep an eye on them ?

without micomanagement , it would be really boring ...

Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2013 6:34 pm
by epice
Show me one C&C that is being made by a guy for free and is already changed in a million ways from the original.

Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2013 8:39 pm
by Matt
Putting more AI into units is possible, but not easy: https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA/pull/2262 makes them avoid friendly fire. It also needs careful balance to not annoy the players because he loses control.

The new bots will automatically retreat their units on low health points https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA/pull/2600 I know that the http://springrts.com/ community has a controversial feature where players can add AI support while playing.

Re: Unit formations.

Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2013 8:26 pm
by DoMiNaNt_HuNtEr
epicelite wrote: A nice option would be to have units able to get themselves into a formation without a bunch of micromanagement. Such as longer ranged/weaker units staing behind short ranged/strong units? Artillery automatically spacing themselves 1 cell apart.

Select a group of varied units and tell them to move somewhere and a direction to face, then the tanks go to the front, artillery to the rear, or attack in the front, support to the rear! Another think you could do is damaged/weaker units should move back and let the lead go to a healthy one.

Too much work to implement? Think it would be bad for some people? Can always make it option like [BUTTON]+Click space for units to format themselves?
My god, do I ever want this!

Fucking tedious clicking. I wanna see epic armies blowing shit up.

To keep control to the player, there must be a way to override auto management.

Remember in RA2 there was a unit control bar at the bottom of the screen? Implement something like that but with formation buttons or something.

Posted: Fri Mar 01, 2013 10:18 pm
by Matt
The formations key in RA95 sounds like a sensible idea: http://ra.afraid.org/html/ra/hotkeys.html

Hitting F lets all selected units move at the speed of the slowest unit.

Posted: Sun Mar 03, 2013 11:08 am
by Iran
Cmd. Matt wrote: The formations key in RA95 sounds like a sensible idea: http://ra.afraid.org/html/ra/hotkeys.html

Hitting F lets all selected units move at the speed of the slowest unit.
That's what it's supposed to do, what it actual does it set the speed of units in a group to the speed of the last unit in the group, allowing you to make Mammoth Tanks and Cruisers as fast as Minelayers.

Posted: Wed May 15, 2013 7:37 am
by t2t
Hey guys,

I'm new here, and also kinda new to the OpenRA world.
Making formation, for me is a must. Not because I don't like micromanaging, but because I think it will help a lot on that.

I've been talking to chrisf (irc channel) about it, and doing some digging on the code to implement it.

First I though it could be made as a special "Stance cycle", but after some digging I saw that the stances are only methods in Attack (AutoTarget.cs).
Originally I though that, just by controlling the speed of all units (making them as slow as the slowest one) and the final adjustment (disabling the look for available spot, in move), it would do the trick. The problem is, on facing any obstacle on the way, the units would re-route, and by individually performing the "getPath" (move), they would loose the formation on curves and narrow paths.

What I'm trying to say is, the only way of implementing such a feature would be to establish a roll new way for units to behave as a formation (per se). And the rules would have to bend a little on both attacking and moving. Of course, this is all WAY beyond my comprehension and ability (at least at this point).

I guess I would like, if possible, to hear from you guys what you think, if would such a feature really be such a pain to implement, and would it even be interesting to do.

Thanks,

Take care.