Hey i was wondering: how do you control more than one unit?
I'm tired of raiding the enemy base with an one-man-army.
I normally just select an unit, select the "go-to" mode and set it to go-to a certain "leader" unit.
I then move the leader unit and his army follows but this method requires that you do it with every single unit. Let's say i have a raiding group of 10 soldiers and a leader.
It requires about 3 clicks to make 1 unit follow the leader. 30 clicks.

I don't have time for 30 clicks in the middle of a war.
Do you?

I've also been pondering about this. I was thinking of some sort of "draw a selection rectangle" like in many RTS games that allow you to select all units within the box and assign an AI mode to them at once. And perhaps as a bonus have access to controls of every unit at once. Like a simon says thing that you press the "fire" button and all selected units that can do something with the "fire" button will do it. Or jump or move forth. But the AI mode set would be a cool feature.

I'm gonna develop it on a paper a bit and then present the best solution I can think of to Data.

Yeah i thought about the rectangle thing too.
Then you could set them all to go to a certain unit or point at the same time.
Maybe it could be like if you pressed a button (like ALT or CTRL) you could draw/drag/whatever the rectangle with the mouse.

Hmm, this is more complex than I thought. I'll need to take in account the whole unit selection and control system. Data might have to rewrite some code for this to work.

But it is totally worth it so I think it will work out.

While you're at it nummy, could you nudge Data to approve weasel's pending devlogs? The devlog kiddies are getting restless. That is, if you yourself can contact him when weasel can't

Alright, I'll mention it. I'm intending to try catch Data tonight to talk about some cool stuff for CC, so I'll do that too.

I too have wondered about the efficiency of creating groups...
Particularly when I played the game a good lot with a friend of mine where he got to use the keyboard, and I had to use the game pad.

You think 30 clicks is bad when you can move around with the mouse.
Just try it with the gamepad.

I really doubt that Data's going to make such a drastic change in gameplay at this point in the process.

Also, and I've said this literally more times than I care to count, Data's said more than once that he is not interested in making this game an RTS. It has RTS elements, yes, but it's meant to be an action game before anything else.

Lizard sent me a PM with suggestion for the brain to carry out this feature and I then I remembered that the brains are supposed to get a unit management system where you can see their stats and status. Possible through either this or the minimap feature that also comes with the brain unit might be able to do this.

Data wasn't online yesterday so I couldn't reach him, I'll try again today.

@Grif: This doesnt make the game more RTS than that it already is, it just helps the player to make big moves faster like issuing a group of units to move to a GoTo point or have a group of miners in a wide area to start digging by giving them the GoldDig AI mode. The action part will always remain the same. I'd say its like issuing a command to your team mates in UT2004 for them to defend, attack and such while you do something else.

An example is having a small army assault a base entrance, providing a distraction for your infiltration unit that you use while the army keeps most of the enemy force busy.

sounds like textbook real time strategy to me

I'm not saying I disagree with it (though selecting an area with key controls or a gamepad is going to be a dirty dirty ladylike) but I really doubt Data's going to make a change that fundamental at this point in development.

If the AI can order troops around so easily, why can't human players? Group-selecting would be especially useful it a player want's to attack with lots of cheap units (like zombies), rather then with a few expensive units.

Can you mention ONE army in the history of Earth that always attacks with a single unit?

The united army of rambovinia?

Spies. Convert Ops.

can you name one army in the history of earth that relies on a single organism to control an entire army

OH YEAH, OOPS, I JUST DID THAT

stupid arguments go both ways broseph



man that sure does sound like the feature that is already implemented with the current pie menu