Formations on the Strat Map

[:1]Hiya,
Another suggestion, again with pics to help those with a fear of wall'o'texts.
Regarding formations in KnC, we may be getting a formation editor, but in all honesty I'm a bit worried about hwo this will all play out on the strat map, (the furthest extent of strat zoom away from the ground). People's lovingly crafted half-circles, boxes, wedges, phalluses, concentric spheres and stickmen (the first thing i'm gonna try) and going to look like a nightmarish Join the Dots. The following ideas are meant to go beyond supcom2's control groupings.

General
What if there were an easy way to see a formation, what units it had in it and their disposition, its heading, faction, controller and main function at a glance? Impossible you say, direct your eyes below.

And the key:
1) Function Icon: Displays the main function of the formation, generated from the units within said blob. In this case a Hammer symbolises heavy melee/assault. Right click on the icon to select from a list of formation types as mentioned above.
2) Controller/Player colour. Whose formation this is.
3) Faction Colour. In this case white for the empire (because the good faction is always white in fantasy).
4) Facing. In which direction the units face.
5) Unit list, aka the complex bit. Hovering over the formation brings up its unit list, displaying what units are in the formation. Furthermore, hovering over the unit in the list will flash up their positions as circles within the boundary of the units formation. In addition attack orders can be given through the unit list, so that you can prioritise targets within a formation. Or you can attack order within the formation boundary if you just wanna mosh.
Splitting/Joining formations.
Here are some tools for manipulating the formations. Colour coded key1 and key2.

-Hold key1 and left-click swipe across a large formation in split it into two formations.
-Hold key1 and left-click scribble (move rapidly back and forth) across a formation to disband it. (no pic yet)
-Hold key2 and left-click swipe between the function icons of two smaller formations to create a larger formation.
-Hold key2 and left-click draw-a-circle around a bunch of units (or double tap key2 with those units selected) to form up a formation. (no pic yet)

For refence that's red's ancient's predominantly archer formations heading south in a rectange, but the system's so awesome that you already figured that out inspite of my crappy paint skills. I wish I was better at paint.....|||Awesome! |||I like this a lot, but after the negative response to SupCom2's autogrouping among some fans, I can imagine that this would be too much fancy/confusing UI for some people.
Anyway, I think it's a really great idea, and GPG has a reputation for doing some clever things with unit management/UI/unit behavior in their games.. So this seems right up their alley.
Even without the fancy split, combine and disband functions, a more sophisticated (and useful) version of SupCom2's autogrouping could be nice. If it showed formation facing and gave some hint about unit composition, that could be great for managing multiple batallions of troops as they moved around in separate corners of a giant map.. They'll just need to include an 'off' button for the inevitable group of people that prefer a simpler, old-timey UI. |||Glad people like the idea. :)
I didn't intend for this to be the sole method of manipulating troops, sorry if it came of that way. You don't need to use the formations if you don't want to I simply wanted a way to easily identify and direct large bodies of troops. As far as I'm concerned there should be as many options as possible, both WRT the UI and the game types/ factions etc.|||Whilst I personally like UI like this, and plan to use this kind of thing if I ever get around to writing my own RTS, it seems that there's also a strong case for individual units being easily visible and selectable.
It's the reason why there's so much opposition to squad mechanics, etc. The style of SCom games is not quite large-scale enough to force players to treat units as groups - there's still a significant amount of individual selection going on.
I guess in my game I'm either going to allow for different UI "skins" with completely different mechanics of selection, hotkeys etc. Or have overlays that are easily toggled with a hotkey.|||I think this could be quite a powerful tool for larger maps, but I would like to be able to switch it off. I like the idea with the mouse gestures. To form formations you could use a system like the attack painter from supcom2. Double right click and you get a formation brush to add units to a formation.
Still, on smaller maps I prefer the good, old system we had in FA. I just feel more comfy when I can see all units. I like my game of dots... :)|||Things such as swiping and circling and stuff of that sort sound good on paper, but I'd be hard pressed to find a game where that is 100% responsive and detects exactly the action you're trying to do. The game could easily misinterprit you drawing a portion of your circle over the icon as a swipe and do the completely wrong action than you need it to do. There's also the problem of actually drawing things quickly; sure a quick swipe would be easy, but anything more complex like a circle will take time and it's very likely your circle will come out in odd shapes if you're in a hurry.
I'd rather it be something like "Hold first modifier key: left click for split, right click for disband" where the game doesn't have to do any fancy shape detection and will be responsive, right then, right there.|||There's a Formation editor, where you can draw and ave your formations in forehand and load them in battle.
So you don't have to draw in a hurry.|||Ohmega|||Oh c'mon, that wasn't nearly fast enough to count as a ninja edit Orange. |||Hey, you gotta take what you can get, I grab plenty of bots with my ninja skills, but only when people aren't looking ;p
Mike