1.Unit control zones:
Not a very good name I know, but its late
The idea is that each unit has a radius around it that if entered by an opponent it would slow both the defender and attacker down to a crawl.
Each unit would have a different sized radius, this would increase the unit diversity alot. This would help with dancing units in and out of range as well as chasing them down since it would alow you to catch them instead of just running forever.
For instance, a pikeman could have a very large radius compared to say a swordsman and he would also have an extended reach as well. However he would not have much armour or attack speed. This would mean that the swordsman to get into range would have to take some dammage and commit to the attack since to retreat they must continue to take dammage and crawl out of the radius slowly, making the pikeman a very good defensive unit. This would also help protect against hit and run attacks from mounted troops.
Another example of how this would help produce more interesting army. in many games a large portion or even most of your army must be used to protect the few ranged but weak units such as seige tanks, archers, catapults etc.. However if you had a few of these pikemen, then you could protect a large number of archers with very few pikemen, thus enabling the rest of your army to attack or flank.
Spells and special creatures could mess with this radius as well, a charge special ability from heavy mounted troops might be able to run straight through it with out slowing for instance.
2.
Drawing formations, very simple concept:
Basicaly you can draw your own formations when moving troops, you simply hold down some keys and click and drag to draw the units out whatever shape you want. For instance, you want to encircle your opponent with your horsearchers? then just hold down the key combo and left click where the first unit should go and hold down to draw a circle around the opponent. This could work with the control zone idea and use the control zone to figure out how spaced out your units should be when drawing the formation, would help get the most out of the units control zone quickly. Maybe a control like the hold fire control in supcom could be used to tell the formation if you want them to stick as close to eachother as possible or to spread out to take advantage of the control zones.
And there you have it, two simple ideas that I think would make this game much more interesting...|||1. Why would you slow down when attacking someone else or when retreating?
2. Awesome idea!|||The idea for the control zone thing came from two places, firstly it was an interesting idea that was used in some of the warhammer board games which alowed for some really interesting tactics using light fast units to tie up your opponents army or to control terrain which made skirmishing units much more effective in harassing and protecting.
The second was mount and blade, I was thinking how when you move in to attack someone you dont just run in there and hit them then run away, since you get an axe to the head really quickly, instead people tend to slow down and edge in trying to get a hit off while maintiaining good position with their weapon of choice. If you turn around and try to run away with out considering the opponents reach you also just get stabed and killed. So the slowing down of the units represents them moving carefuly and defending themselves instead of just running around like headless chickens.
Its mostly a gameplay thing though, and if you cant think of a reason for it? A wizard did it.|||Seagoon|||So Video 15's highlight seems to be concentrated on unit formations and some pathfinding, so here are some thoughts on that:
Seagoon has some ideas about "drawing" formations, and from the looks of these early builds, GPG does as well, but you have to think about formations from a very fundamental level before you start giving the player such detailed control.
What advantages do formations give the player? Lines give a wide but thin front, maximizing units in range, and columns give a shallow profile and deep front, protecting units in the back and keeping more units out of range (these are just some quick and dirty details). A wedge works great to break through a line, and surrounding a group sounds like a good strategy at times (The Total War games have some viable examples of realistic and well executed tactical real-time formations). However, I heard the mention of a "double column". What exactly does that mean and why would a player want that? Even, more, why would a player want to be able to create that? You can give the player ultimate freedoms up to a point, then the interface becomes cumbersome, and those hardcore strategy wargame features don't seem to fit with most of GPGs other RTSs (Best RTS to use a complex but extremely intuitive formation system is World in Conflict). In short, only use or allow formations that are familiar to most players and provide some tactical advantage.
What else do formations effect? Surely movement speed? Lines are slower than columns, and wedges are even faster, and they can give defensive trade-offs to balance. One thing that is looking amazing is the pathfinding. Looks like Flow Field from Sup Com 2? We'll get to that later. So, formations should NOT effect pathfinding. I don't want to charge a line through the gate of a castle to have them all look confused and smash into each other (Total War = BAD, this is an action RTS no?) . They should flow in, keep their formation the best they can and adjust with the terrain. Give the player the feeling of a fast, flowing pace like most GPG RTSs. The excellent pathfinding algorithms will be a huge factor in effective formations.
So how do we change/edit/customize formations. Like I said earlier, World in Conflict did it great with direction and density easily changed with the click and drag of a mouse, but I do like the idea of being about to draw a formation to a certain extent. Perhaps a "formation HUD"? Holding the "F" key brings it up for your selected units. Units show circles depending on size and you can move them about with the mouse, spread or compact them with the wheel, draw a custom line that they will form up behind, etc. Maybe some pre-made formation templates at the bottom to get them in position quick, and the ability to save you custom formations (maybe hit F+1 for formation 1, etc.)?
Other than that, and I realize that this is the earliest of early builds (but you have some tech you are coming from in Sup Com 2) Flow Field is so good, the units look unnatural. Give some random placement and movement speed to each unit. Make them jostle around a bit, bump into each other. Don't make the player put the archers in the back and put the footman up front themselves. If the tools we are seeing in blog 15 are the ones that the engineers are using to make the formations not look square, just make them random, close to square, natural, and do build them so units fall into place where they should, intuitively. Perhaps going even further than that, if you are going to incorporate some kind of rock-paper-scissors unit structure (unit A is good against B, but bad against C, etc) make the units attack who they should (A units go after B units if they are close B). Don't make the player do that.
For what it's worth...|||i like the idea of drawing your own form of formations but i dont think its neccesairy to have bonusses of a typpe of formation if oyu give bonusses the hitting an enemy in the side or back and huge bonuses attack guys running away it prevents enemies just walking true your lines and slaughtering your archers (really lame in world of battles)|||Seagoon|||It also adds a whole new depth to the units in the game, for instance certain units can have a very large radius and be used to trap or delay the opponent, and others might not be affected at all by it as a counter.
One example of this being used in an army might be a barbarian army where you have (forinstance) two units, one really strong ogre with a pole arm with lots of HP and a large control zone and another with almost no control zone and low moral but is very cheap and is fast (like a zergling). The larger units would hold the opponent in position while the smaller zergling like units get a suround on the opponent. if the zergling like units lose their moral and run, the tanks can still hold the ground and protect them while they fall back and regroup.
Just one more small example of how this system, maybe in combination with others can give alot of depth to even simple unit formations.|||The zone control seems like an interesting idea. Maybe they should just give bonus damage for a unit not attacking but just fleeing from the zone.
I like the idea of drawn formations. Maybe they should work like the custom build orders they did in FA. Also the different bonuses for fomations like speed, defence, and offence for formation types sounds like a sweet idea. I just think that the more intricate the formation mechanic becomes the micro will happen and I still think micro doesnt belong with the scale of the game.
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