Things are getting interesting on the modding front, and there's only one feature I can think of trying to add right now; escorts and group kiting. Like, "FRD your bombards, and they will roam as a pack, and your fighters and bombers will operate in a reduced FRD region that's set up to defend them". Seems a little OP in player hands, but absolutely terrifying if the AI uses it. Considering that I have more fun writing bots than playing games...kind of a perfect project. It's going to take forever and it's super unlikely that I'll finish (hell, or start, let's be honest here) but at least it's ambitious right?
Lemme get a sanity check here first. Is there anything already like this feature implemented?
In terms of interface, it could be a control group option (group 6: FRD as a single cluster and move to your targets until the shortest-range member can fire; group 7: escort group 6; when in FRD mode, don't stray farther than 10000 from the center of the escorted group). Ships with shared membership in the escorting and escorted groups behave as escorting only.
An easier control scheme would be nice (assign group 6, alt-V-rightclick; select other ships, ctrl-alt-V 6, mouse becomes a ray projected from center of group 6, right click to set roaming distance) but there's a billion problems with that and even more hell to implement.
Any input on how you'd like to see this work? Specifically I think that the escorts select targets exactly like FRD mode, except the only valid targets are those that they can hit from within their allowed bubble, and when there's no valid targets, they distribute themselves in a circle around the escorted blob and act as though group-moving. The escorted/group-FRD units ignore the escorts, and create a virtual unit with the speed of the naturally-slowest member of their group and the lowest range in the group; that virtual unit follows FRD logic, and all members of the group-FRD try to move to its location at their maximum speed; when the virtual unit is within its virtual firing range, all group-FRD units close to firing distance (so the back side of a fleetball isn't left out). If any unit in the group is closer to the target than X smallish range (5000?), the virtual unit is relocated to the closest one. The virtual unit is of course not displayed; the player has no idea it exists.
