Touch Screen UI Mode

The usefulness of touch screen support would probably depend heavily on the type of hardware you use.

In Desktop situations I wouldn't really bother myself with a touch screen tft. With tft sizes of 27 inch and up I wouldn't want to sit that close to it that I could touch it with ease.

On notebooks and tablets its more intuitive with easy reach and an ergonomic design supporting this interaction method. But even there mixing standard interaction modi (keyboard + mouse) with touch screen is often enough awkward depending on the application. It works best in use cases where you can use touch interaction exclusively.

So in the end I guess the overall usefulness of touch screen support would depend on the expected percentage of half-way mobile clients and on the question if you can use the full range of the game interface via touch screen without the need of an additional keyboard.

From my view, that would probably make the most sense, but it has quite a few challenges and would require a notable amount of work.

Easiest method to test this out is making it as a webpage. Server is dedicated so you could let the pc and the touchinput device communicate seperate at first. If that works you still could figure out some ways to direct communicate pc/tab.

Well, I don't think that a touch screen would be a good idea, after all my fingers take up a lot of space, whereas a mouse pointer doesn't.

That being said, I am extremely interested in anything that incorporates 3d tracking hardware, such as the Leap Motion, into gaming in an intuitive way. However, without the visual feedback of where you are interacting with the game, I can imagine it being really awkward to control with.

But, going a bit off topic, the idea of combining 3d tracking with VR, like the Oculus Rift, intrigues me. I would love for my little army to be on my desk and me, seeing the tips of my fingers, dragging them around and issuing orders. There are a lot of combinations of hand gestures for hotkeys!

Can we have a control pad built that's basically a large map you put on your table... And issue everyone with magic motion-detected sticks to push units about with... Perhaps use little lego men to simulate units?

Bring back the WW1 Terrain mapping, as demonstrated in Blackadder!