aliens

Author Topic: group mobility  (Read 3530 times)

Offline shadics

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group mobility
« on: February 09, 2017, 07:11:54 am »
You know guys, it would be cool if you can select a group of soldiers and move them in group! :D
to make the troops move less tedious
https://youtu.be/SBqPlTP8xPc?t=15

Online Meridian

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Re: group mobility
« Reply #1 on: February 09, 2017, 10:47:52 am »
It would cause performance problems.

There's a LOT going on in the background when a soldier is moving.

Offline yrizoud

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Re: group mobility
« Reply #2 on: February 09, 2017, 11:21:42 am »
This is a clever system, because units still move one by one (and it should probably cancel further movement when new enemy is spotted or a reaction shot happens)
But I'm not sure players will be willing to leave the engine the decision of "formations", and lose control of individual movement points : 'This was sub-optimal move, and now I don't have enough TU to shoot'.

Online Meridian

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Re: group mobility
« Reply #3 on: February 09, 2017, 11:27:04 am »
Oh sorry, my bad, I didn't check the video.

Moving them one by one wouldn't affect performance, but I also don't see many advantages to it... only disadvantages actually.

Offline yrizoud

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Re: group mobility
« Reply #4 on: February 09, 2017, 05:34:52 pm »
It can save a lot of back-and-forth scrolling if you want to move several units from one "screenful" to another (especially if you're using vanilla small view, the move is across different levels, and the units are fast so you target a very far place)

I can also imagine someone wanting to advance a scattered group (firing squad) one tile at a time

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: group mobility
« Reply #5 on: February 09, 2017, 07:05:25 pm »
Not really my place to say anything, since I'm not a coder, but to me it seems like a function few people care about. So if someone codes it, then maybe it would be included if it doesn't make anything else worse (like cluttering GUI or damaging performance), but otherwise I can't see any of our regular coders picking it up and making it from scratch. There are plenty other features to be done, ones that are actually beneficial to the gameplay.

Offline ohartenstein23

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Re: group mobility
« Reply #6 on: February 09, 2017, 07:11:58 pm »
... but otherwise I can't see any of our regular coders picking it up and making it from scratch. There are plenty other features to be done, ones that are actually beneficial to the gameplay.

Actually, I have something like this in my queue, but it's way down near the bottom right now.  The envisioned implementation is that there would be a keyboard shortcut to "repeat the last movement," that is you'd press this key to select the next unit, bring up the movement arrows for the same relative movement the previous unit did, and center the cursor over the ending point of the movement, so that you could just click to confirm it.  There also might be a toggle between same (+x, +y, +z) movement of the previous unit, or having the next unit move into a ruleset-defined formation with respect to the last unit that moved.