Thinking about blobbing

[keith.lamothe]

Hmm, I've never played an RTS (or TBS for that matter) that used squad based combat.

Then stop whatever you're doing and go play Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns.  Right now

[Hearteater]

I've decided I'm not in the least interested in de-blobbing.  Selecting X blobs and giving them separate orders, most likely pausing every few seconds to update them, isn't my idea of fun.  In really tight fights, I can find myself doing that with one blob already and it doesn't feel very good.  I really don't want a lot of pausing in my fights.  It really breaks up the immersive feel of commanding a space battle.  And that's what I want to do, command the battle, not pilot each unit personally.

So what I'd much rather is better control of my units' targeting.  Right now I can set a "preferred target" but only one.  I'd much rather a priority list.  And I'd like to be able to exclude Marks.  If my Snipers are supposed to take out Raid Starships, I want them to take out any Raid Starships, not just Mark IIIs.  And being able to set these preferred targets when the enemy in question isn't in the system would be really nice.  The F1 planet view could be used to do this.  I also want to be able to exclude some ships.  In my current game I've got a Grav Drill system where waves with Younglings can't get to me before they die, so I don't want my Sniper Turrets wasting time on them.  Besides excluding targets entirely, I'd love to be able to set defensive fire, where units only fire once the enemy gets into range to fire on it.  Think Military CS.  I don't always want to Translocate ships from max range.  And what about the difference between "Target Infiltrators" and "Target these specific Infiltrators that are about to kill my Zenith Power Generator?"  There might be 1000 Inflitrators in the system, but only 100 might be the ones I care about at that moment.  So there are Preferred Targets and then their are Specific Targets.

And what about engagement zones?  I'd love to be able to block areas and have my ships FRD only enemies in those regions.  Then I could prioritize the regions.  Basically FRD could default to having one region that contained the whole system, but if I wanted I could break it up.

That's was just unit targeting, lets check out movement.  I'd love it if I could set my teleporting ships to fall back at low health to an MRS for healing without me manually moving each ship individually and then accidentally selecting and putting them back on FRD before they get healed.  Then we've got rally points.  I'd like multi-stage rally points so I can move to point A and then FRD to point B.  This would let me get my new ships out from under my Force Fields without manual intervention.  What about rally orders for reclaimed ships, so I can ship them all back to my home system if I want.

All of those things would be much more interesting and useful to me than controlling 2-4 blobs instead of 1.

[keith.lamothe]

If my Snipers are supposed to take out Raid Starships, I want them to take out any Raid Starships, not just Mark IIIs.

FWIW it already tracks both preferred "object type" (say, AIRaidStarshipII) and preferred "ship type" (say, RaidStarship, which all of the raids are part of).  It tries for the object type first and if it can't find that it goes for the ship type.  Only after that does it look further afield.

On the other points, well, sure, a lot of that would be cool.  Some of it is even possible, but target-list-building and movement decisions are already major CPU hogs without adding a ton more options to them

[Kahuna]

I've decided I'm not in the least interested in de-blobbing.  Selecting X blobs and giving them separate orders, most likely pausing every few seconds to update them, isn't my idea of fun.  In really tight fights, I can find myself doing that with one blob already and it doesn't feel very good.  I really don't want a lot of pausing in my fights.  It really breaks up the immersive feel of commanding a space battle.  And that's what I want to do, command the battle, not pilot each unit personally.

So what I'd much rather is better control of my units' targeting.  Right now I can set a "preferred target" but only one.  I'd much rather a priority list.  And I'd like to be able to exclude Marks.  If my Snipers are supposed to take out Raid Starships, I want them to take out any Raid Starships, not just Mark IIIs.  And being able to set these preferred targets when the enemy in question isn't in the system would be really nice.  The F1 planet view could be used to do this.  I also want to be able to exclude some ships.  In my current game I've got a Grav Drill system where waves with Younglings can't get to me before they die, so I don't want my Sniper Turrets wasting time on them.  Besides excluding targets entirely, I'd love to be able to set defensive fire, where units only fire once the enemy gets into range to fire on it.  Think Military CS.  I don't always want to Translocate ships from max range.  And what about the difference between "Target Infiltrators" and "Target these specific Infiltrators that are about to kill my Zenith Power Generator?"  There might be 1000 Inflitrators in the system, but only 100 might be the ones I care about at that moment.  So there are Preferred Targets and then their are Specific Targets.

And what about engagement zones?  I'd love to be able to block areas and have my ships FRD only enemies in those regions.  Then I could prioritize the regions.  Basically FRD could default to having one region that contained the whole system, but if I wanted I could break it up.

That's was just unit targeting, lets check out movement.  I'd love it if I could set my teleporting ships to fall back at low health to an MRS for healing without me manually moving each ship individually and then accidentally selecting and putting them back on FRD before they get healed.  Then we've got rally points.  I'd like multi-stage rally points so I can move to point A and then FRD to point B.  This would let me get my new ships out from under my Force Fields without manual intervention.  What about rally orders for reclaimed ships, so I can ship them all back to my home system if I want.

All of those things would be much more interesting and useful to me than controlling 2-4 blobs instead of 1.

Holy cr.. cow. That would be perfect. I'd definitely find those things useful. You should mantis that!

[Hearteater]

Yeah, I was pretty sure the entire thing would be a nightmare/impossible, which is why I didn't mantis it .  But I'd love it if I could set preferred targets off the F1 list so I could target Raid Starships (or whatever) before I actually have them screaming down on me.

[Draco18s]

And what about engagement zones?  I'd love to be able to block areas and have my ships FRD only enemies in those regions.  Then I could prioritize the regions.  Basically FRD could default to having one region that contained the whole system, but if I wanted I could break it up.

I did that in my space RTS.  Sort of.  Each ship has a "guard zone" when it's set into FRD mode.  It won't pursue an enemy outside of that zone.

It's not perfect, but it was the only way I could really have an FRD mode in a "single planet" type combat zone (unlike AI War which is multi-planet).

http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~mmj29/temp/interface.swf
(Wait for it to draw the background--takes about a minute--build some ships, then F-click)

[keith.lamothe]

Yeah, I was pretty sure the entire thing would be a nightmare/impossible, which is why I didn't mantis it .  But I'd love it if I could set preferred targets off the F1 list so I could target Raid Starships (or whatever) before I actually have them screaming down on me.

Yea, I've been meaning to make "right click planetary summary cell" do "set preferred target for selection", will add that to the list   Sometimes it feels like the list where ideas go to die, but things do eventually happen

[Draco18s]

Yeah, I was pretty sure the entire thing would be a nightmare/impossible, which is why I didn't mantis it .  But I'd love it if I could set preferred targets off the F1 list so I could target Raid Starships (or whatever) before I actually have them screaming down on me.

Yea, I've been meaning to make "right click planetary summary cell" do "set preferred target for selection", will add that to the list   Sometimes it feels like the list where ideas go to die, but things do eventually happen

You could get targetting zones set up pretty easily.  Could do it like rally posts, and then have a semi-FRD where ships would only select targets within a certain distance of those rally post objects.  No way to prioritize them at the current moment, but it would go a long way.

[TechSY730]

Yeah, I was pretty sure the entire thing would be a nightmare/impossible, which is why I didn't mantis it .  But I'd love it if I could set preferred targets off the F1 list so I could target Raid Starships (or whatever) before I actually have them screaming down on me.

Yea, I've been meaning to make "right click planetary summary cell" do "set preferred target for selection", will add that to the list   Sometimes it feels like the list where ideas go to die, but things do eventually happen

You could get targetting zones set up pretty easily.  Could do it like rally posts, and then have a semi-FRD where ships would only select targets within a certain distance of those rally post objects.  No way to prioritize them at the current moment, but it would go a long way.

There is already a control option that limits the "scan distance" of FRD.
Generalizing that somewhat and putting it into its own new type of order may be cool.

Or be able to hold down a key and attack move/FRD, and it would restrict its "scan ranges" (and seek ranges if the range given is < weapon range, in the case of attack move), and somehow be able to customize that distance. This way you could have some units be in "limited range" FRD, but others be in the traditional full planet FRD.

[Draco18s]

Or be able to hold down a key and attack move/FRD, and it would restrict its "scan ranges" (and seek ranges if the range given is < weapon range, in the case of attack move), and somehow be able to customize that distance. This way you could have some units be in "limited range" FRD, but others be in the traditional full planet FRD.

Right, that's what I mean.  Being able to have units in both full-planet and limited.

[TechSY730]

Or be able to hold down a key and attack move/FRD, and it would restrict its "scan ranges" (and seek ranges if the range given is < weapon range, in the case of attack move), and somehow be able to customize that distance. This way you could have some units be in "limited range" FRD, but others be in the traditional full planet FRD.

Right, that's what I mean.  Being able to have units in both full-planet and limited.

Yea, a new "command modifier" would be cool. The problem would be figuring out a good key to bind it to...

Also, how would you customize the range? Would a control option (one globally, defaulting to the range of the option that currently exists, but have one per planet, that if set, would use that range for that planet) work?

[Draco18s]

I was going to say a set range.  If it was done as a rally post type object, you could have different mark levels with different ranges...

[Hearteater]

For FRD regions, I was envisioning the ability to set the FRD (aka, sit here when nothing else is going on) in one place, but put several regions around the system that would cause those ships to sortie out and kill the intruders.  So FRD range doesn't quite work.

[TechSY730]

For FRD regions, I was envisioning the ability to set the FRD (aka, sit here when nothing else is going on) in one place, but put several regions around the system that would cause those ships to sortie out and kill the intruders.  So FRD range doesn't quite work.

In that case, the "FRD area" type post Draco18s seems nifty.

Also sounds like it would be tricky to implement in a fashion that doesn't destroy frame rate, but who knows.

[keith.lamothe]

A lot of this gets into the territory I'd like to cover by making "control groups" into "fleets" each with their own tab (conceptually) on the CTRLS window with auto-replenish thresholds, possibly targeting preferences (we already have separate target-sorting functions called by various special cases, so there's some room for that), fleet-specific auto-kiting distances (instead of the one experimental auto-kite setting), etc.

But whenever I get into thinking about that seriously, I realize most/all of it is "sounds really cool, but would be a tremendously complex UI for the player", not to mention the implementation cost.  I did a bunch of "sounds cool" commands as part of the pre-Unity context menu and many of them were barely used at all because what sounds good on paper is really not all that useful, etc.