I was thinking about the methods tried in the past to synchronise multiple movements for manoeuvres like pincer attacks etc where units arrive at a destination from different origins at the same time. SC/FA attempted this slightly with the attack-move which tried to maintain a formation however it failed in my opinion due to inefficient or buggy AI, often causing the movement to stall due to constantly trying to maintain formation. Anyway, to my idea; I thought it might be useful to have some sort of method to link separate commands so that units following that command would attempt to arrive at the destination at the same time. So for instance, imagine the enemy is to the north-west, you send a group of units north then west, and another group west the north. Using this link-command you would bind the north destination of group1 to the west destination of group2, and then any units who are heading towards this destination would slow their movement to arrive at the destination the same time as any other unit travelling towards any command on that same binding. You could then perform a similar binding on the final attack command so that all units arrived at the enemy based at a similar time. I'm not certain how this might function from a UI perspective. Either commands would be selectable and provide an option to link with other commands, or perhaps a keyboard modifier that when held will link all commands selected whilst the modifier is held down. Not confident I know what the control method should be.
This would be useful for joint attacks by bots and tanks, but it was always gimmicky in SupCom and I can't really think of a way to fix it. I've done plenty of pincer attacks in games though, it isn't that hard to do. Just get all your units at an equal distance from the enemy's base and then order them to the center, no synchronous movements needed.
We really struggled with this on SupCom. It sounds good on paper though. Synchronization points of some sort make sense and allow you to do this kind of stuff. BTW the UI isn't anywhere close to where I want it to be. We still have a ton of work to do there.
As good as this sounds from an attacking point of view, it would be a nightmare to defend against. All that micro to defend because your opponent pressed one button. Seems unfair to me.
