Instead of just the standard formation that most rts games give you it would be neat if there was a little button on the side of the interface that says "BUILD FORMATION" then when you click it it would bring up a screen that has a grid and different unit names. After you get done building your formation you could name it and save it. Makingyour own formations would a new strategic element to the game.
How do you make formations for different number of units? Do you have to save 1 formation for every number?
I'm not sure different numbers of units is the real problem here. I can imagine a system where you simply place the numbers 1...99 in a prearranged order. The units then fill out that arrangement as far as they can. However... How do you determine which unit sits in which position? You might have quite the mixture of units in your selection when you decided to put them in formation. The formation AI might put the fastest or slowest at the front. It might put the weakest or strongest there. Or it might have to decide based on range or type of attack. I'm not sure how any data we could give it would be enough to make correct decisions consistently. Ideas anyone.
At this point I think the answer to that question is always "yes". I don't know the one you're thinking of in this particular case. If you could reference it from here, I'd be interested to read it.
Well we discussed it randomly in this thread: Game-play suggestions Anyway. If connerj15 has a well thought out idea I'd be ready to hear it.
How about a Rome: Total War approach? You select the units you want in the formation and right click and drag a rectangle. This way for multiple types of unit in a single formation you just select the different units and drag the in the different places and no need for complicated auto positioning.
As I said in the other topic: Persistent formations. So if you make a line formation of tanks, then a box formation of bots then select both formations, the move together, but stay in their original formations. This would have be cancellable with a click of a button. T T T T T T T <- Formation 1, tanks in a line ___B B B___ ___B B B___ <- Formation 2, bots in a box ___B B B___ When the 2 formations are selected the stay in their original formation when moved. So the above example will move like that, that tanks will stay in a line in front of the bots, the bots will stay in a box behind the tanks. That's the basics of persistent formations. Drawing formations from Spring were also mentioned and I like that idea as well.
