New Button Options under Commander Turret vehicle popup menu

[MarkC]

I've only recently had the chance to play Warzone2100. I'd say I've only been playing it off and on about a month now.

I've noticed a serious flaw with the Commander vehicles that could be easily fixed.

The flaw is that local vehicles/units attached to the commander will not DEFEND themselves in any way unless or until the commander targets the offending unit.

I see a rather easy fix for this, perhaps the code for doing so is more complicated than I envision however?

The Fix::

On the Commander's Unit actions popup menu, provide these additional functional buttons:

1. Commander Orders-Strictly
2. Defend (if Attacked locally or Arty Barrage CB Turret inclusive to Group)[This would be in addition to Commander orders]
3. Attack if in Unit Vision Range
4. Attack if in Commander's Group Sensor/Vision Range


2., 3., and 4., would help especially when units are in movement, traffic congestion or Commander unit is having 'trouble' as so often seems to happen to me. Defend could be 'cancelled' by having Selected Commander and manually Targeting which enemy unit one wants fire concentrated on. This would not 'erase' the Defend option setting, just would promote the Commander target to FIRST until it and any 'Shift-TargetingMenuOrders' had been depleted and the Commander Unit itself had no more direct in range/LoS targets to engage.

I think these additions would clear up the trouble that happens when the Commander has not 'targeted' offensive units due to becoming stuck in the ever 'enveloping' group surge of combined unit operations, IE. Repair units, tank units, direct fire units... getting in front of the Commander blocking the engagement range as so often happens with even small group sizes.


FireZones/DefendArea options::

The only other things I could suggest adding would be 'directive zones of fire' where you define from the Commander the Commander's direction facing and thus would have that target area the 'fire zone' and all other vehicles either A. Stay behind Commander until ANY vehicle enters the 'killzone' area of interest, at which point the units would at least move up to the Commander and begin engaging if the Commander's LoS is blocked or otherwise inactivated (IE. when the Commander himself is involved in unit 'bumping/clipping/juggling' struggles to determine when 'Commander unit' is allowed to stop to be in position...); or B. where there would be extra buttons that set a FORMATION that the units will stay in either during their movement or after movement and upon arriving into positions.

A. could be accomplished rather simply by clicking Commander unit, and RIGHT-Clicking (which brings up single left-click menu (since this would be a right-click off of the COMMANDER unit and not any other unit) to select 'Firezone Facing'/'Defend Area' options [FireZone Facing could mean do not move beyond Commander to engage wait for Commander to target offensive unit prior to engaging; Defend Area could mean 'engage ANY unit in Sensor or Group Visual Range in the area in front of this Commander Unit], OR instead or additionally TO the 'RIGHT-Click' one could simply CONTROL_Key+Left click any area on the map entirely and the Commander unit will perform the intended action [KillZone/DefendArea functions].


Sensor Functionality::
Something that would help is if the units under the Commander could be set to perform different functions under the Sensor units commanded by the Commander unit. IE. If you have a Rader/CB/Standard Sensor (all 3 that is, not noting the VTOL additions as well at the moment but those would be useful to have proper functionality also) then the Arty would respond appropriately to each Sensor type that is in the 'Umbrella' of the Commander's Group Operations if they HAVE been assigned to that Commander.

Repair Units DIS-Function::

Almost inerringly, Repair units set to a Commander simply stop repairing. They will even SHOW an animation at times that indicates they ARE repairing, but, they will NOT actually repair ANYTHING (even themselves) until they have been de-selected manually from the Commander group and either set to a local waypoint or targeting specific units in the Commander group itself that they should have already been acting on anyways.


Repair 'Gun'Trucks?::

Some self-defense? We have analogues to this in Vietnam, WWII, just about any conflict WE have been involved in. SEABEE's anyone? =)

Anyways, I've really enjoyed the game. Looking forward to many more game days.

Thanks for all the tireless effort and work in this quite unique game.


MarkC.

[ChrisPerson]

Did you press the Fire Support button? That helps - all my tanks were getting destroyed until I pressed it. Then that commander had a mind of it's own!