It would be cool, if we could select units and have like a guard option to select what you want to guard and also be able to do like that area patrol to specify how far away you want them to venture from who they are guarding. an example.. I'd like to guard my fabber.. so I select some units and click and drag on the fabber a small distance.. and then those units will attack any enemy units that come into their range while they "patrol" around the guarded unit the selected distance.
We don't have the distance part, but assist already works this way. Grab some bots, assist-click your fabber and off they go!
Ya I've done the assist thing, but it just looks like a bunch of units trying to push the others around. I'd really like the patrol part with distance.. Heck they could just allow patrol to be tied to other units and they would have it. Instead of patrolling around a certain point on a map you are patrolling around a moving unit. @jables
Patrol with distance? You mean formations? That would probably require an update to the flocking mechanic, to declare assisted units as being "authoritative" regardless of distance, rather than prioritizing the nearest neighbor. That should enforce the assisting units no longer to steer towards the targeted unit, but to actually mimic its movements instead once close enough. The area patrol feature isn't suited to be adapted to that scenario. It works already as described for guarding stationary targets, but for mobile targets, there's still behavior you want to avoid, such as crossing the path of the target unit in front of it, or in general moving orthogonal to the target as this means falling behind by far. Instead you want to move in parallel as much as possible. Partially even in front of the assisted unit, so the flocking logic should even reward units for slightly running ahead, rather than heading on target at all cost.
