I really like the game. Awesome job! But, of course, there are things I would still like to see (I mentioned several of these way back at alpha, but they still aren't here T_T). Ironically, many of them are features from supreme commander that got left out. It's possible that some of these are in and I just can't find them (See #1); if so, someone please tell me. 1. Full, interactive, in-game tutorial. I'm sorry, but the current tutorial explains almost nothing about how to actually play. For example, to work out how to move units from one planet to another took me over an hour of poking around the interface. 2. Persistent unit build orders. In other words, tell it to build 2 of 1, then 2 of the next, then another 2 of 1, then 1 of three, and then repeat the cycle till I tell it to stop. Having to micromanage factories with everything else going on when you just want them to keep doing the same thing over and over is stupid. SC had this, and it worked great. 3. Select idle fabrication units key and button. 4. Automated scouting buttons for the scout units. Tells the scouts to make a logical search pattern, in coordination (Can specify area). Makes more sense than having to individually set manual patrol patterns for each unit. I am a firm believer in some minimal levels of automation; it's strategy, not a clickfest. 5. Logical unit grouping, like SC1 had (NOT LIKE SC2). So you can move units around without having to micromanage them by type.
2, 3, 4, and 5, exist in some way. 2 is "infinite build". If you set a list of units for a factory to build, the moment you click infinite, it will repeat those. In fact, if you ctrl-click a different unit while it's set to a repeat selection, the ctrl-click unit is built first, then it goes back to repeat. Good for rebuilding lost fabbers. 3 is a key you can set in options > keyboard. One for idle fabricators, all fabricators, idle factories, and all factories. 4 is area patrol. If a factory is set on area patrol and builds a scout, the scout will patrol the area, even if it is the whole planet. If a unit is set to area patrol, it will also wander around patrolling, such as if a scout is set to patrol. 5 units have a specification as to "where they form". If walking in a direction, they reform, facing that direction, once they reach that destination, with fabbers in the back and "tanky" units in the front and longrange units farther back from closeup units. In order to use this, usually you must issue a move order a short distance to form them up, them move them in that direction you faced them in. There is a WIP feature turned off in-game but moddable hook to turn back on, where you hold the move key and drag it, and they form up to stretch across the drawn line.
Ok good to know most of these are there. Still have to figure out how they work, since there are no instructions. However from what I can see the formation setup is very incomplete. In SC1 the units would always arrange logically (and you had controls with the formation move options). So for example shield and AA units would evenly disperse in your formation for max coverage automatically, simply by having some in your selection group. SC2 for some reason lost this and has them grouped by type, so all your shields would be together in the back being useless, forcing you to move everything 1 unit type at a time. PA seems closer to SC2 in this regard, unfortunately. The ideal behavior would be to have options for how to arrange things, so for example you could have the bots automatically go to the flanks for cover.
If you can stomache it, almost all my GW videos in my youtube show most those things (they are pretty important to use). Area command, planetwide area commands to cover planet especially. It is the green circle with the white square, and you need to click-drag to shade green an area for it to work. You can issue it to the unit, or the factory which issues it to all built units. Infinite build, and when I select fabbers during infinite build they build next because I am holding ctrl when I click. To start infinite build, as you watch, all I do is click "tank tank aa flamer scout", then click the infinite button on the sidebar. To add a fabber to the front, while it's infinite, hold ctrl and click the fabber. I personally don't use all idle fabbers, usually because mine are grouped and I have good memory so I quickly scan the planet and find ones I had sent to do a task that was completed. I use line formations all the time, and tbh it made them work better, shielders always went in front, tanks behind, snipers in back, combat fabbers usually blend with snipers, and the line-formation always stretched it so a move command maximized dps across an area. As regular self-formed, I usually try to form up right outside an enemy base, they usually form up, but it is usually a perfect square, so shielders still in front but often times too thick a row of them for 100% effectiveness.
That's still not fully intelligent formations. Shield and AA units should automatically spread out for best coverage (unless you select an option like "guard the big units", and even then they can spread out some since they should know that having 20 shields on 1 unit is not useful). Again, this was in SC1, and worked brilliantly for allowing you to intelligently move multiple large army groups around with minimal unnecessary micromanagement. In 2014, going on 2015, there is no excuse for making the game hinge on who can sub in for a sub-par organizational AI by clicking quickly as the deciding factor in a STRATEGY game.
I agree with you on the feature, but the limitations is a new engine. Currently, the feature is primitive and they just form "row column" and they simply move "in the front" if they are "front prioritized". Given the new engine, that was the most straightforward way to add it, but the least detailed. It gets the units generally divided properly, but not specifically spaced. Line formations let you specifically space them quicker than "many quick clicks" and instead using a single click-drag (assuming you can guesstimate the correct ratio to space), but that is unhooked from vanilla game and must be modded to work. You do bring up a good point though. I am pretty sure it took 5 years to make supcom. Why did supcom2 which I believe used the same engine not have a large portion of very important features like intellegent unit formation? Either way, I hope PA has more intellegent formation patterning by 5 years in.
We also have the issue right now that if you have mixed air and land units selected, the air units will rush in at full speed and abandon the ground units. This makes it hard to set up a well coordinated attack. If you have a mixed group, they should stick together, moving with the slowest units, not rush ahead at full speed.
Rather than sticking together, maybe coordinated attack would be the solution, that way the aircraft would do a double back patrol and then speed forward again to catch up, or something like that. Although I don't know anything about the difficulties faced with implimenting a coordinated attack function.
