Area Patrol Actively Seek Out Enemies

Right now the Area Patrol just has units randomly move about inside the area patrol area until hey happen to find something.

Why not use the same, or similar, system that the AI uses to determine threats, and have the units in an area patrol seek out enemies that move into the area patrol.

Easy example. Set units to area patrol across the moon you just colonized. If you get invaded, that area patrol doesn't mean that much. Sure it can be helpful, but all in all, if you get invaded, the area patrol just hopes your units happen to happen across an enemy.

But instead, why not have it so the units all rush towards the enemy that moves into the area patrol area?

It's not that much of a stretch. The units are told to guard that area. If an enemy comes into that area, well, go attack it!

It's kinda the same as the Area Attack Command, except it's a persistent area attack command.

Yeah, pretty much +1.

Although this wouldn't always be ideal, as with air scouts, you don't actually want them to attack anything. It's good that they just fly past an enemy base and get out before they get shut down, occasionally updating intel.

Although since they don't have guns now, I'm not sure if this would be a problem at all.

Since they don't have guns, it isn't an issue. When they had guns and you area patroled, they'd continuously attack the first building they found. Now that they don't have guns, they don't do that.

This... is utter genius. Why didn't I think of this

Send a few scouts on area patrol.

Send the rest of your force to area attack. They will remain in standby until there are enemies. Otherwise they will retreat back to the center of the area attack command. Place multiple "planet wide" area attack zones for shorter reaction times.

It already works if you do it like that.
Plus: Since the attack forces are not roaming, they don't get picked of one-by-one that easily.

Not when using this method.

I like the basic idea however this mechanic will also create holes in your patrol line.

Because if all the units will move toward the enemy then there will be some gaps created.

The alternative is they fly around doing nothing while your base gets destroyed.

Gotta pick the lesser of two evils.

i agree with this idea. I think it's the intended workings of patrol. at least it should be the inteded workings of patrol.

Actually, i think the ability to 'abuse' this mechanic would just make it even more interesting.

Case in point - if your opponent has a large air force covering his base and you want to break in, either for recon or for some bombing, just split your fighters into 2 forces. Send one half to attack from one direction and, once the enemy fighters are drawn away, charge through with your remaining fighters from another direction.

It could be really annoying as the defender, but nothing short of a massive T2 air blob could do serious damage before your fighters would turn back, so it would effectively be accepting an occasional minor inconvenience to add in some serious strategic depth.

So, rather then an unintended 'lesser of two evils', i'd consider this an all around improvement. Occasionally annoying? yes, but opening up a ton of new tactics for an otherwise out-gunned and out-numbered player to use? More then makes up for it.

Yupp. It opens up a bunch of new strategies and implications.

This new method doesn't need to be so intelligent that it functions like the AI so the game plays the game for you, but the units should have some form of intelligence rather than randomly walking around.

I told you to guard this area! If there's a unit in the area, go attack it!

I think people playing with area only commands is a cop out...

That is not what you ACTUALLY want. You want your scouts to keep scouting, and your offensive units to perform synchronized attack moves.

And that's something which already works right now. Just get rid of the idea of having full platoons patrolling as the AI does.

Why not have two different area commands?

Patrol and Guard?

Patrol works as it does already, and guard works as you've described, for the selected area.

I dno man. You can just use select all air combat unit hotkey and click once where you want them to go.

As much as i'm not a fan of this becoming a function because it automates things alot, i would totally understand the reasoning of making management easier if this ended up being implemented into PA.

I love the idea of two commands.

Does Guard actually work? Last time I tried, it didn't.

While I understand that many players (mostly the "better" players) are against too much automization, I feel like any kind of automization that doesn't remove too much direct control is a good thing in this game.

Right now I feel kind of overhwelmed when i am supposed to be fighting across multiple battles (actually it is kind of hard to keep track of everything that happens on a single, large planet because it is a sphere so I can never see everything that is going on at once), so I would like to have as many tools that make things easier for me, as possible.

Things like these area commands being smarter would only be a first step, if things were happening exactly the way I wished

Also, I don't feel that much strategy is lost if patrol (or preferably, a new area command that works the way brian proposed) was behaving that way...selecting all units and clicking on the enemy does not appear to involve too much strategy. It simply creates the need for more apm and is part of what makes PA annoying to play for people like me.

Also, if this was a new command, nothing would stop anyone from still doing it the way you are doing it now

I was under the impression that this is actually what area attack is supposed to do, when it's not horribly broken and area attack has been more or less broken since it's inception. Right now it kind of almost works, but it is more of a liability than a real tool.

I've been using the area attack more lately. It's great when I tell my army to attack the enemy base, and then go back to my base to do some stuff. This has them stay back and only stay at range of what they're attacking. This allows them to not move into range of defensive structures like they do with a general move command.

It's not the best way to attack, but it's better than just a general move command.

I actually want to show how this can work. Build an air factory. queue up a scout and a bomber. Once it completes building, toggle infinite build. Tell the air factory to attack the whole planet. Take the scout and give it the patrol planet command. If this is your opening build, laugh at the enemy who forgot to build anti air. It's amazingly automated though once you find the enemy you can always change the attack planet command to just the area around enemy base... or enemy commander assuming he's wide open.