One of the things that bugs me in SupCom is that you can tell your swarm of tanks to say, target the ACU, and they will focus fire on the ACU as they should. Give them a move order though after giving them that specific attack order, though, and they will forget what it was you wanted them to focus on. What I think would be a nice way to address this is a "target memory" system. That is, until the target dies, any unit that has been given a specific unit to attack another unit will continue to preferentially target that unit, as long as the targetted unit is in range. Target memory remains even if the attacking unit is given a different set of move orders, and target memory is only cleared when a) a new target is designated, b) the target dies, or c) the target memory is cleared by pressing some hotkey which clears target memory. In the case of a) a new target is designated, the previous target in the memory moves down one position of priority, so if the primary target in memory is killed, it then switches to the secondary target, then third target, and so forth. What this would enable is creating a queue of tanks in a swarm you wish to destroy, which your tanks would focus fire on one by one even though you may be given them a bunch of move orders. Another thing, the paint attack order from SupCom2 was a great innovation, I would implement that as well. You could easily paint a sawrm of tanks with your tanks, and be free to move them around, knowing that even though you are continuously giving new move orders to your tanks, they will still remember the fire orders you gave them and focus fire appropriately.
Did they change the way paint attack works? From what I remember it just gave out a string of attacking commanders, having your entire army focus on one target at a time.... Mike
Yes, there was a fundamental flaw with the target painting system. You had to start your painting on the targets you wanted to attack first, and then it just queues the attack orders, like Knight said above. However, if your opponent figures out that your tanks are doing a paint attack, and sees you start attacking the right side of his troops because you started your painting there, he could exploit this by moving the right side back to his base. If you are not paying attention to this, your tanks will follow those tanks, and he could lead them right into a bunch of point defenses. That was not the intention of your order. I read in another thread though, that there was talking about an "attack this area" command, which i guess would be an evolution of the target painting command. That said, i really liked the target painting command - it was a very good addition.
That's the idea. Except that in SupCom2, if you issued new move orders to your tanks after issuing the paint attack command, then your units essentially forget what units you told them to focus fire on one by one. What I am suggesting is to have each unit remember the order of units it is supposed to fire upon, so that they can still focus fire even though you are busily maneuvering them. So I have a blob of tanks, and they all are told to focus fire on enemy tank #3525, and then #3526, which is currently out of range. I then give my tank blob new move orders, and they happily fire on any valid target as long as tank #3525 and #3526 are out of range, but as soon as they do come in range, all guns fire on #3525 first, destroy it, then switch to #3526. They remember their target order despite being given all sorts of move orders after the attack order was given. That feature is missing in Supreme Commander. One more important point with what I am suggesting, is that simply because a unit is in the target memory, does not mean that the tanks will start chasing after it. It will only chase down the target if an attack is issued, but no intervening move orders are issued. As soon as a move order is issued, it will no longer automatically move towards the target, you will have to move it towards the target. But it will remember the priority you gave to attacking a specific unit, and if that unit comes in range, it will give first priority to killing that unit.
1x Right-click: Normal. 2x Right-click: Attack this type in future. 3x Right-click: That guy has to die.
Wait a sec, didn't Chris Taylor mention something like that for Supcom? And then they got rid of it because it didn't work out well in practice?
I'd love to have some ctrl/alt + click shortcuts to commands like that. Shift is obviously queue orders. Normal - Attack Shift - Queue attack Ctrl - Target until dead (allows movement) Alt - Attack around that location I find my pointer becomes inaccurate after the first click. Surely we'll have custom shortcuts though.
No, that was Coordinated Attack. Ctrl and Alt were used in SupCom for attack moves and Formation moves. Mike
I just blurted out what I'd implement if I were doing this part of the controls. That's partly inspired from the OKC mod from FA (which did the double-click part, but not the triple). And of course there should be key-shortcuts for those. More freedom to the player.
ZK has a simple implementation of this called Set Target. Also known as move-independent attack command. A unit with a set target command will have a yellow line going from it to the target unit/ground. If the target unit/ground can be hit from where the unit current is, it will always shoot that. Move commands do not reset this. If a unit is out of range of the set target, it does whatever it normally does. Set target is given automatically if units had an attack command and you replace the order queue with a move command. (so right click on enemy, (no shift) right click on ground = move to ground, set target enemy) You can also give a specific set target command. Set target can be cleared with a stop command (which also clears the order queue), giving an attack command or giving a specific cancel set target command.
No, he did mention this in an early video interview, though I am unable to find it currently. I never heard anything about why it wasn't implemented though. I like the idea of having attack commands and move commands separate, and not override eachother.
Yes, he did talk about it, back in the garage days. And later on, I made posts [1][2][3] and threads about it on the GPG forum as well, though the thread got deleted two or three times (by accident, seemingly ). He never talked about it later again, I don't think they got rid of it, it was simply never implemented. In any case, this Attack Priority system would be awesome, and I was planning on making a thread about it here as well, describing it in detail, hoping that this would finally be implemented in a TA-like game. (I was just too lazy to do it yet, since I want to include some illustrations etc.) It would be a dream come true. There is a mod for SupCom with which you can at least change the attack priority of certain types of units, not individual units though [4]. [1] http://forums.gaspowered.com/viewtopic. ... 418#p66418 [2] http://forums.gaspowered.com/viewtopic. ... 58#p829058 [3] http://forums.gaspowered.com/viewtopic. ... 95#p218495 [4] http://forums.gaspowered.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=10039
