I posted about this way at the beginning of development (Can't find the post now), but since I don't see much of it in the livestreams, I'll mention it again. If someone can find the original post that would be great; I don't want to retype the whole thing. EDIT: Found the posts http://forums.uberent.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=44309,http://forums.uberent.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=44290 Please have some kind of intelligent unit grouping. Right now it looks like everyone is just moving as a big blob, which is problematic since it seems like there is splash damage form the explosions, so having everyone bunch up is bad. Please include some kind of automatic unit grouping, so we don't have to move units one at a time to keep them from getting killed. It really annoys me that after 15+ years of RTS games we still have unit grouping at the level of "everyone get as close to the designated point as your bounding box allows. I really like the formation moving from SupCom 1, although it had issues, as it addressed this.
Alpha, alpha, alpha. You can be assured that formations will be in the game. EDIT: Oh, intelligently you say. I'm sorry. But my answer still stands; I believe that Uber will implement this. But ok, it's not a bad topic per se then.
There's plenty room for innovation in formations. Custom line formations like spring are nice i.e. units spread themselves equally across a drawn line. Custom-area-painted formations would be amazing, i.e. units spread themselves equally across a painted area. As well as the typical move in a rectangle stuff seen in SupCom.
I'm registering the concern so the devs know that it exists. I haven't been around lately so I am going by what I see in the demo builds.
Actually something supcom 1 did was have the units not only spread out logically but INTERMIX automatically. Was especially important for shield units and AA units, as they would always automatically spread out to provide maximum coverage. In supcom 2 they did what you suggest, with simple area spread, but units would group together by type, so shields had to be handled manually or they would just protect each other, AA would all be in the back, etc. We do not wan that again.
i liked FA formations, but they also had their problems. I found mobile shield would bunch themselves at the back and not spread "intelligently". ...also unsure of the logic when you are retreating. Do you want to break formation when retreating? else if you retreat in formation wouldn't your artil effectively be the new front line?
