Unit Formations

I have started playing TA again recently to hold me until this game comes out, and I noticed something that bugged me a little. when you select a bunch of units and give an order all the faster, weaker units get to the destination first and the stronger units get there slower. I would like to see a battle formation command(s) to help limit Peewee deaths.
I haven't played Super Monday Night Combat or any of the games by the individual developers so if this is somthing that is already in the game im sorry.

In Supreme Comander, you could have units automatically go into an nice, neat formation (eg arty in the back, tanks in front and AA spread around), so I'm sure that it will be in Planetary Annihilation.

Sweet

I think dynamic unit formations is actually really important form many perspectives! It allows you to make a force that is hard to flank, Hard to knock out with with Artillery due to dispersion etc. I also think it helps just increase the 'massive' feeling of the giant battles. I am SOOO looking forward to this.

I think you were meaning Supreme Commander 2. I LOVED the way Units were automatically grouped, and I pray that it is also in PA.

The lame and annoying autogrouping feature from SupCom2 had not do with the unit formations, which the thread is about, in SupCom/FA then moving normally they did form up into a formation at the destination waypoint, or when given a formation move order they formed that formation immediately and maintained it while moving to the destination waypoint.

Mike

I liked it, I don't get why that feature it was lame.

Annoying mabey, but not lame.


Mabey if you could replace it to only display Crtl+1 type groups, so that a player can visually see where his grouped forces are.

Actually, I was talking about Supcom 1. If you hold down right mouse while giving units a move order they will move in formation and assemble like how I said.

Ahh, that's cool.

Just wish SupCom didnt place my scouts at the back of formaions, it makes it really hard to use scouts to spot for artillery in a formation, you end up having to mave them out of it.

Actually....why was there no mobile radar in supcom? T2 and T3 could really have used a ground based radar unit, or even a large vision unit.

The T3 scout plane had a short range Omnisensor, but it flew way to fast to keep up with a land army. But a mobile radar scout would be nice to have.

Yep, I think the command is hold RMB and a shadow would appear of your formation. You could then rotate and I also believe you could change the formation between line and column. It was rudimentary at best.

What would I like to see? Maybe something between that and what they do in the total war series. This allowed you to alter the spacing between your units and also some other neat options. Going the full total war hog would be too much. Formations were a core part of that game and I'm not sure that PA needs that kind of control. I do think however, that line, column, square, wedge might be a nice touch and perhaps being able to control the spacing between units would be nice too.

The option would be nice, at least.

The problem with SupCom2's Auto-group feature is that it's great for low level control, but once you get to the point where you want finer control it only gets in the way, an example I ran into a lot was that I had a bunch of factories with a mutual waypoint, so all the units would end up as part of the 'auto-group' but if I needed to only pull a small portion of that group I was forced to zoom in until the Auto-group icon disappears because if you try to box select units and the box even touches the AG Icon it selects the entire Autogroup icon.

All that being said, I wouldn't mind if PA had such a feature, so long as there is an option to disable it because as I said, it's fine for low level control and I'm sure there are in-experienced or more casual RTS players that don't have an issue with it.

Mike

I agree with your points.

Or better, a button to enable/disable it in-game.

What abotu something like AOE where you have a button that opens up a menu of formations like box scattered etc?

The most useful formations are those that tend to be variants of lines, such as column, line, echelon, etc, as they maximize fire, maneuverability, and visibility. (Square/box formations aren't really used anymore, since they were originally meant to be beneficial when the front lines had to reload their rifles.)
As such the custom formation concept, where you can draw your own formation, as is implemented in Zero K and other Spring games, is probably the best implementation concept, especially since it's fast and simple to use. The challenge is ensuring unit positioning, but that's something for the devs to figure out as they test it.

Homeworld had a fairly good formation system. If I remember right there were a number of pre-sets and some customization. Some formations made more sense for certain types of units. Flying Xs or Claw formations for fighters and bombers. Walls and such for the bigger more massive ships. A few different options for unit formation would be nice, though I imagine more complex formation stuff will be modded in, or added later. I imagine getting formations that can move around obstacles is quite a trick.

Perhaps in the case that you are talking about. However, when in a full 360 degree battle you can protect your more fragile units like mobile arty or AA by surrounding them by tougher units such as tanks or damage soakers. This way they cannot be flanked. Kind of like some of the old Greek and Roman shield formations. I'm sure there are many more modern uses for old formations.

A sphere formation might be the best, giving the formation 360 coverage of artillery, AA and radar from the units in the middle, with combat units on the outside.

The problem with that is that it is very easy to brake the line of tanks and hit the stuff in the middle.

So directional formation would also be good when the enemy can be assured to be only in one direction.