Suggestion: Formations and Area Patrol

Was watching some gameplay and orbital fighters patrolling and an enemy orbital fighter would enter orbit and then the defending and attacking fighters showdown one or two at a time.

So it'd be cool if formations had their own area patrol, so units would patrol around in groups rather than all by their lonesome.

Not exactly sure how the UI would accomplish this... but there's a number of ways. Maybe... Option click/drag or something.

Sounds like a good idea, perhaps if you had units grouped (as in formations or the current grouping command) and set them to area patrol they'd do it in their group/formation.

This would only take effect if you actually hit the group's hotkey, boxing/double clicking etc would just set an area patrol as we know it.
Seems like a fairly simple solution

This would be incredible to use, but I'm just smiling imagining how it would look. You would end up with squadrons of fighters flying around over your base. They'll be changing direction all at once to deal with an incoming threat. On the ground, bot platoons would wander around your base. If anyone gets close they will move into position to respond.

We know smarter squad AI is coming eventually through the use of neural networks to decide how to fight a battle. I really hope they can use those neural networks to determine optimum squad sizes for units on area patrol.

Didn't even think of that... Will be so EPIC to see squadrons of fighters flying around in formation over the planet.

I think it would be really cool to have formation patrols. I'm not sure if it can be as automatic as the area patrol around a planet with every unit going its own way.

I guess my suggestion would be that you have two selection circles, 1 circle with the right mouse click creates the patrol size, and the left mouse click gives you the unit patrol size. I think it can work with that where units grab onto each other until they are the size specified in the second circle.

I second this, formations would be swell and beautiful. (imagine planes or single use orbit to planet spacecraft)

I kind of like marauding bot hordes, but air is where I look forward to seeing formations - both for visual and balance reasons. I imagine it will also add a further directional element to air battles.

I thought this was a natural part of what formations would entail?

As far as I'm aware, formations was for units moving from point a to point b.

Area patrol has been about units moving around randomly in a certain area.

At the very least, there's been no indication from Uber that units would move around in groups on the area patrol.

Formations is army movement - telling groups of units to stick together, rather than ending up scattered all over the map because slow units move slowly and quick units move quickly.

As part of that, there's a natural implication that part of formations is making all the units part of the same group.

I was imagining that there would be some way to group units into formation, or not, based on whether speed was important.

Natural or not, at least its getting stated on the forums.

I for one didn't think formations would be part of an area patrol. I now think it would be a cool addition.

We need some form of formation stance toggle. Sometimes I really just want to cover as much ground as possible.