Formations

I've played many different RTS games, but I think one of the coolest features I've seen was formations on AOE 2.

http://blog.ocad.ca/wordpress/vism2b15- ... ormations/

With all the talk in the last stream, it made me wonder if this was planned, or might be considered. First, I hate sending armys to attack, just to have the faster units get there 30 seconds before the slower ones do, making the attack less useful. Especially if there are air units involved. It would be awesome to get all units in a group to move together, at the same speed just like in AOE 2.

Also, it would be nice to have the units form up in ways that made sense. Units that are made to take a beating on the outside, units that aren't as armored, but have powerful range weapons on the inside, just like on AOE 2.

What are your thoughts, and do you think Uber could implement something like this?

+1 to this idea.

Formations are required for successful strategic relocation of assets. SupCom had the right idea but the implementation missed the mark.

Sunage also have a very nice formation feature.

Since both supreme commander 1 and 2 had unit formations, I'd be very surprised if PA wouldn't have that feature.

I didn't remember if it did or not. I really only played through the campaigns once, and never multiplayer. I hope they implement it really well.

It would be good if there were quite a few different formation types as well - in Sup Com, i think theres only 2? it would be good if there were say groups within a formation, i.e. you could have two blocks of units, rather than 1 big block to avoid area of effect weapons being quite so damaging?

I know someone is gonna say "use two formations" but that makes it more click heavy than selecting for formation "layout" before giving the move order.

I think it would be cool to have options like the build sets in SupCom.

If you take the time to manually arrange a group of units, you can form this into a 'formation' that you can have selected units form into in a single click.

I like to have a interface to make my own custom formation .so it not the same generic formation we see in all the games

Honestly, I'd like to be able to set up my own custom formations as well. The only thing I would ask for if it were possible would be to make it be something to set up OUTSIDE of battle. That will really give us a rotten time in where should something be in such and such quantity. Obviously, it should have a Default of everything, but allow us to customize positions, spread, and form. I just got a nostalgia attack from my first RTS ever, Dark Planet; had a lot of fun messing with the Formations, even though for the life of me they were absolutely useless (I think).

set it up outside of battle that be nice ..so you don't spend your time messing weth formations all the time

I think it's a neat idea & I'd love you to suggest to me a way to do it. Because as far as I can see it's going to be damn hard to create a custom formation for units that don't exist. Sure build templates are great offline or in sandbox but they're a completely different thing. Plus how many formations are you plannaing on making? One for every conceivable combination of units you intend to produce? It's just not practical.

What might be better is a drag formation command similar to the current total war system where you drag a ghost of your formation out on the battlefield. The further you drag, the more spaced out your formation becomes. You could then have buttons to cycle things like formation shape (box, line, column, wedge etc.) & another for positioning (tough units to the front, back, or all sides with soft targets in the middle etc.) This is quick & easy to do on the fly & you get to see how your formation will look before you confirm it.

There is actually a few topics on formations. Most of which are in general discussion. I would link but I'm using my phone right now.

How would this work with the flow fields? and will it cause the units to be less effective if they change from the default pathing to a new formation?

viewtopic.php?p=698315#p698315

Hmm, was really hoping we could get some kind of official response on even if this was possible...

SC’s formations were awkward and did not allwas work

I would love to see a move together command at least (so units don’t outpace each outher) but formations’ would be cool

SC had that. You have to ctr right click to get all units to move together

Line based creation. Doesn't matter how many of a unit type are or are not there, it just organizes what is on their respective line.

Similar to how a vector works with pixels. It can scale up or down at will.

Where exactly were the formations in SC2? If you mean that they all moved in a group that's true, but in my experience my mobile shields just bunched up at the beck of the group instead of spreading themselves about, which should have been pretty easy to implement =/

2 did not have formation move.

The problem with formations, is they never quite do what you want.