Unit formations

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ermns
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Unit formations

Post by ermns »

I was wondering how difficult it could be to allow the ability to make formations for units.
Also give the ability to save formations.
It could have a lot of applications.

Right now if you want to eg. bring units to the front you can't do it with one command. Not unless you want cyborgs arriving earlier than your tanks. Or your hovercrafts earlier than your cyborgs and so on.

It would be really neat if you could create a unit formation where eg. you have on the frontlines the high armor tanks and in the back you had the archangel missiles hovercrafts. So when you choose the units you click on the pre-saved formation and you ask them to move into one place. They would move of course there but IN FORMATION while they are moving.

I do understand that path finding in this case might be a nightmare.
But it would be really awesome, and enable you to act and play with real life strategy where e.g. you hide humans(cyborgs) behind tanks.

What do you think guys?
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NoQ
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Re: Unit formations

Post by NoQ »

There is some formation code present, but it is currently disabled cause it's sort of buggy.
The F11 button used to toggle formations in some very old versions of the game, you can try and see what it does right now (:
ermns
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Re: Unit formations

Post by ermns »

Hmm.. didn't know that.. thanks :)
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Emdek
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Re: Unit formations

Post by Emdek »

Those would be nice to have but terrain is probably biggest issue, how units should move when obstacles would force them to change their formation. Other issues, what should happen if unit needs to retreat or dies, should "hole" remain or should be filled by other units etc.
And personally I think it would be nice to have formation code being done in form of script (unless performance would be too low...).
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Nameless
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Re: Unit formations

Post by Nameless »

Unit formations would be an awesome idea.. but I'd hafta concur with Emdek.
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aubergine
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Re: Unit formations

Post by aubergine »

I have a ponderance for sorting out pathfinding and formations, but with so many other projects on the go it's going to be a while before I can write up my ideas with examples somewhere :s
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