Command and control feature I always wished Supcom etc had

Just a thought, having played endless hours of Supcom, TA, etc, I have always wished that there was some way to que up orders for a large amount of units, but not have them execute said orders until a final command is given. An example would be nukes in Supcom, if you want to try and overwhelm the enemy anti-missile defences you have to cntrl-group your launchers, then madly click through them all giving each a launch order. IMO would be much better give each launcher a target(s) in advance, but have them only fire on these targets later when you click the BIG RED BUTTON (I really like the mutually-assured destruction feeling something like that adds also, wish DEFCON had had something similar). Obviously this would have uses beyond nukes, like synchronising air/land assaults.

Re: Command and control feature I always wished Supcom etc h

I may be wrong, but wouldn't use of the hold fire toggle work for this?

Re: Command and control feature I always wished Supcom etc h

It wouldn't work for mobile units: they'd start chasing the target, point guns, and get ready for the command.

AFAIK, it would work for structures.

Re: Command and control feature I always wished Supcom etc h

I think I've seen games with this kind of "planning" mode before. It can work, although you'll need an "OH CRAP" button for when your enemy decides to attack in the middle of your planning and you need to erase all orders and respond quickly.

But other than that, yeah this seems like a really useful thing to have for planning a multi-pronged attack, nuke surpression, or other complex plan.

Re: Command and control feature I always wished Supcom etc h

So what we essentially need is a real "HOLD" command. Place a set of commands, queue the "hold" command and queue the rest of the commands. Then go and release the hold whenever you like and have all units waiting at that command continue their path.

Should also work well for grouping units after leaving the factory, just place a hold command at the waiting point and release them in waves.

I would actually love to be able to attack from multiple vectors without the need to control several troups in real time, just place the paths with adequate waiting points and watch what happens.

Even in the old supcom, i rarely commanded the units, instead i dragged around their queued orders. It was only inefficient for paths straight from the factory because it lacked the possibility to make unit groups wait.



How would it work?
If you place a hold field, you basically create a new unit group and every unit who reaches the hold command is added to the group. The group is displayed just like any other unit group, but with a button to release any unit in that group. The group vanishes if every unit has passed the hold point and it isn't asigned to any type of static route or factory.

Re: Command and control feature I always wished Supcom etc h

The way I envision it is that the stored orders would be separate from normal orders, so you can give all your units orders for your D-Day attack you are planning and have them execute with the press of a specific button, but you can still give them normal orders to react to real-time events without wiping those stored orders.

Re: Command and control feature I always wished Supcom etc h

This mechanic was, in in a basic form, included in Battle for Middlearth 2. Not really useful since the scale of battles is rather small.
In PA on the other hand, it might be really useful. But with that i'd also like a better unit ai. For example, so you can set your bombers on attacking in a direction and concentrating fire on aa-units or energy reactors.
I had sometimes real problems in SC to bring my unit's to do the things they're supposed to do. Most of the time they'd just open fire at the nearest target, without any consideration to what would be the best target. Not to forget fighters without target landing directly besides enemie defense installations...

Re: Command and control feature I always wished Supcom etc h

Sounds like you want this I think I can explain it more clearly though.

The wait command can be given to units and queued in a command queue like a normal command. Giving a wait command without any key modifiers will insert the command at the start of the queue without removing the other commands. If the first command in a unit's queue is wait then the unit will keep the command and do nothing. If two wait commands are next to each other in an order queue then they cancel out and are both removed.

It is probably easier to just try it out for yourself and see if it is what you would want.

Re: Command and control feature I always wished Supcom etc h

I think about 40% of the threads on this forum could be boiled down to "I want to be able to do (Feature from Z-K/BA)"

I myself can't play TA-like games anymore without even a quarter of the features that Z-K has. I think the development team has at least a passing knowledge of that game. So I think it's safe to assume that we will see some of those very nice features.

Re: Command and control feature I always wished Supcom etc h

The way I have been making units wait before carrying out command queues is to first make them Assist Ground/any unit nearby. Then when you're ready, Ctrl-click to cancel the Assist command and off they go.

If you'd like to do it without having to change your view on the battle at hand, you can even Ctrl-K the sacrificial Scout on which your army is Assisting to release their command queues. I'd feel bad for the Scout though.

Re: Command and control feature I always wished Supcom etc h

Similar to the above, I always set units to guard a dragons tooth in TA, and then issued the queued orders. Set up 15-20 groups of aircraft that way, (with waypoints secondary targets, etc) then group select the dragons teeth, and suicide them. Made it a lot easier to get overlapping attack vectors etc for confusing / dragging the focus of air defense all over the shop