Hello everyone,
This message to inform you that I have merged in SVN the 'default formation' patch, which is a rather substantial behaviour change, though it can be de-activated.
In Alpha 23 you have to put units explicitly in formation. In SVN and A24, units will now go into the 'default formation' when walking, and will act as individual when given orders like 'gather' or 'repair'.
This is intended to leverage formations for movement, but to avoid issues with specific orders where formations make less sense.
The "box" formation is the default. You can change this in your config file, and by right-clicking on a formation icon in-game.
If you want, you can deactivate this entirely and go back to A23-like behaviour by choosing the 'no formation' as a default.
Modders, you can easily chance which orders get which formation by changing the calls to g_AutoFormation. Since this is all GUI-only, you can mod it locally and still play games with unmodded players, too.
Hope you enjoy playing,
Wraitii