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I think this will depend on the role you want ranks to play. Currently they don't play any significant role apart from being cool in themselves. So at this stage "double click -> all units of the same type" would make much more sense. However, if you plan on introducing any features that make ranks more important than unit types, then "double click -> all units of the same rank" would be the right way. So it depends on what you're having in mind with ranks.

Well you could reveal a bit more about how the whole idea of fundraising started, who decided who would get the job and how it was decided, how many hours 3000$ correspond to, anything like that. I'm more than happy with the outcomes you delivered (and that Philip was chosen!) it'd just be interesting to make the processes that led to these outcomes as transparent as possible. As I said though, I don't have any major concerns, I just thought it'd serve the cause as it might make people more confident about where their money goes and thus more willing to give. Maybe for future Pledgies.

Thumbs up . As I said please do something about the ultra-slugs that have 6 speed or less because units that are slower than that really kill it. Sorry for being so harsh haha.

Seconded. Play any successful RTS game, then play 0AD: Unit movement feels like they'd be moving underwater. I don't think this is a good idea as typically that results in one 'standard speed' with the other speed settings not being optimized and awkward. Different speed settings could also cause dispute in the MP community. You'd better focus on one speed and polish that out from my point of view. This sounds nice on paper but you forget that without these advancements units are still slow. Overall sluggishness will thus continue to be an issue with every unit that does not benefit from at least one of these bonuses. That in turn might cause additional frustration: "Why the heck is this unit so slow compared to my other units that are in a formation or charging?" In this vein, consider as well that running/charging are only temporary bonuses. Solution: Radically increase movement speed for every unit in the game for one of the next alphas (absolutely NO unit under a speed of 6!!! And it's not only that you have to beef up faster units accordingly; it's much more those super-slugs with a movement speed under 6 that make things so tedious). Then see what people think and start balancing. But this overall sluggishness really has to end if you want people to immerse in your alphas. EDIT: Wow I do sound very negative here. Please keep in mind that I still love the game .

Great job Philip, keep it going. (Just out of curiosity: What PhD programme did you do? ) Also I'm pleased to see that this time the Pledgie thing seems to be organized in a better and more transparent way. Last time it was more like "we need 3000 bucks to hire someone" and it took you quite some time to announce publicly who that would be in the first place. At least that was my impression; I'm sure though there was no major announcement that gave us the exact details. This time we have a good announcement on the main page and Philip's excellent progress reports. Although I think that transparency could probably still be improved that makes for a much better incentive. (Which is why I donated as well .)

I've just had a chance to play Alpha 7! It's marvellous, guys! Keep up the extraordinary work! Edit: When it comes to playability the best improvement certainly was the greatly enhanced naval combat. Dock placement and the spawning and ungarrisoning of ships now work like a charm. Kudos for that!

Haha okay. Anyway this is an interesting point that will certainly come up again when you will look into advanced formations.

This is not true in my opinion. Just have a look at the rudimentary formations that 0AD has now: It's individual units that perform collective action when selected/commanded together. There is no theoretical reason why this wouldn't work with more advanced formations as well. Units could move even closer, take position in predefined rows, take a special stance, get a special bonus or act in any other special way. I'm not a programmer but in theory the fact that there are many selection circles instead of one big one for a whole squad doesn't make collective actions impossible. Your 'squad' is nothing more than cemented box-selecting or control groups. I'm just saying that access to individual units and precise control are precious features that I wouldn't want to miss. Power to the players!

Sure. It's obvious that we can learn a lot from it though. And there's better stuff around to distinguish 0ad from the Age series right? Think territories, citizen soldiers, ship combat (/propping)...

Where is Alpha 7? You are one day late according to your own roadmap

While I appreciate the creativity going into this idea, I do have some concerns that make me strongly oppose the notion of 'squad combat'. In my opinion, NOT having squad combat was one of the most remarkable features of the Age series and one thing that greatly contributed to the Age feeling. Not having squad combat is an advantage because what this feature mainly does is to take away control from the player: You lose the ability to command your units individually. It seems that in your indeas here it would even make you lose the idea to address (/attack) your enemy's units individually. I think all that would greatly take away from the experience, which is why in games that do have squad combat one always has the impression that the feature was implement to increase computing performance. At the same time, you get nothing out of it. Everything that 'combat squads' can do can also be done by groups of individual units. That's what box-selecting and control groups are for. There is nothing that would keep us from making groups of individual units use advanced formations, for example. And they'd always have the advantage to let individuals be commanded somewhere else, targeted by the enemy, or singled out otherwise. In short: 'Squad combat' = less of the Age feeling, less control, and nothing that can't be done without

Word. I strongly agree with JuliusColtranePille as well.

wow nice pics mythos! well the model is excellent now, i'd only suggest a slightly darker colour for the wood maybe (as on mythos' pics). the eye is nice as well but make it bigger!!! it's hardly visible from standard rts view. take theShadow's reference and notice how the eye takes up about 1/3 of the bow! apart from that it's superb, keep it up

notice how the masts are thicker on that model as well

happens to me too from time to time. i once managed to regain control, unfortunately i forgot how i did this. i might have done it by some fierce alt+tabbing or so.

thanks guys. well if i understand that correctly then there hasn't actually been worked on the feature yet right?

it does look very good. as i said though, the masts are matches. they should be comparable in strength to those of the old trireme. oh and when it comes to the texture you should make the eye on the fuselage bow (sorry for my english haha) stick out more, bigger and with brighter colours like on the old ship, as it's a signature feature of a greek trireme apart from that it's excellent imo.

So there's a nice ticket and a nice article on 'propping' - i.e. having independently acting units placed on ships, buildings, elephants etc. The ticket rightfully has a high priority as this seems to be one of the major innovations of this game (especially when compared to the Age series), but the ticket has not been modified for about a year and everything else I could find is an old post by Mythos and a nice old screenie. Well, considering the importance of this feature, could anybody fill us in on the state-of-the-art? Thank you!

i do very much like it, the only complaint being that the masts seem way too fragile to hold these huge sails oh and if it's true that the ship is as big as the quinquireme you should scale it down... the 'fivers' should continue to be the juggernauts of the sea

no i think he wasn't - he made several posts and all of which were related to 0ad and made sense haha. weird.

hehe. i really like the spirit of you guys here. makes me wish i could contribute, now if i only knew c/javascript . maybe i'll try to get into it once i have time.

well yeah the gameplay as such is pretty much like that of AoM without myth units and god powers, and with stone as a new resource instead. i do agree with you on the levelling and balance issues as well. (one of the few games i played was vs. an egypt player when i was greek, and he was lvl 10 while i was lvl 8, which meant he could age up to age 3 and build elephants. the result was ridiculous: although my economy was way better than his and i could crank out 200+ spearmen amongst other units, he would beat me with a total of 30 elephants, of which i killed about 10. it was so preposterous i actually had to smile haha.) but then again, is this the RTS market of the future?? refurbishing 10 year old games and adding some 'facebook generation' widgets (while cutting all support for user made content)? i think 0ad is a good way to show where rts games could have gone instead: less dumbification, more user-made content! (that's what all this '2.0' stuff is about right? ('web 2.0' etc.) so why shouldn't it work for games too?)

haha well said. by the way apart from the lack of gameplay innovation i think there has been a clear and significant decrease in the quality of the scenarios and campaigns since aom, with aoeo being the end of the line... the missions are ridiculous. i'm surprised by this because there are probably some guys left with them who made the aom campaign and so they should know a scenario does not always have to follow a standard you-start-off-with-a-TC-now-go-and-kill-things pattern.

shift plus left or right click? it's not about ctrl or shift but about the clicks

shouldn't be a big deal to remap the keys for the next alpha right and then we'll see as you said