Gameplay Feature: Battalions and Formations

[DarcReaver]

I much like the idea of battalions, but you can always accommodate single units, like what Empire Earth II: Art of Supremacy did, wherein you can select a group of units and have them form an army, as long as an officer/ hero unit is included in that group.

Isn't a micro if is automatic. In Rise of Fall the units when we're to much formed battalion automatic.

How do you want to make the "micro automatic" ? Units form battalions by themselves on their behalf? So in the middle of a fight your army suddenly moves back from the enemy and starts forming a phalanx because 2 additional soldiers arrived into the battle?

What's the point anyways.... single soldiers can't use formations, die faster, can't get included in the "experience" gain process from fighting, deal less damage and are more tedious to micro. Either use battalion combat or don't. But don't mix it because it's stupid.

Right and if that the case (I have play that game so you are right they are trained like 1 soldier at a time but then they gather into battalions on their own), then why not just train them as 1 battalion from the beginning instead of make the soldiers auto-form the battalion after they are trained? Makes unnecessary step your way. Just skip that step and make them battalion friom the beginning.

Because that would be too easy to implement, to design and to balance. Tt's definately important to water down the concept so it won't work at all anymore. The only units that ever should be single units are expensive key units like elephants, siege or chariots or something like that.

Edited October 16, 2015 by DarcReaver

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Anger aside Darc's comment about "watering down" the concept is the main thing for me. If the concept is solid then don't water it down and add unnecessary step.

[DarcReaver]

Anger aside Darc's comment about "watering down" the concept is the main thing for me. If the concept is solid then don't water it down and add unnecessary step.

I'm not exactly angered, I'm more like ... annoyed. The thing is that game makers have to make decisions. You cannot please everybody. Every dev needs a certain vision on how HE/SHE wants the game to be. The player base will adjust to that. People who like the game will play it, people who don't will not. However, if you try to please everyone and include everything, all player sections eventually will abandon the game and there will be no players at all. Everyone will be like "meh it's kinda nice, BUT..." and at that point you've already lost as a developer. Because "BUT" means : not good enough, or even worse "it sucks".

If you start arguing about integral parts and water down core concepts all you get is a strange mess of stuff with missing integrity. Better choose one way, go all the way until the end and have something proper finished instead of trying half-assed solutions which will not work properly in the long run.

Which is something I sort of admire in your version of delenda est. You picked certain gameplay traits, put them together in a fitting way and continue to finetune them. Just like it should be done.

Sure, there might be some details which could be changed or have potencial to be better, but the overall route of continuation is great. After playing like 2 games I noticed that there is a certain type of flow in the game, which makes playing enjoyable without becoming too repetitive.

Edited October 16, 2015 by DarcReaver

[Lion.Kanzen]

Automatic battalion exist in other RTS , called Rise and Fall Cilization at War. That why I have the hope we can imitate that way.

The game is freeware because Midway fall into a bankruptcy, but have a trickle to start to play.

Edited October 16, 2015 by Lion.Kanzen

[DarcReaver]

That's an FPS mixed with RTS. I don't see how this would create a relevant gameplay mechanism for a game like 0 AD, especially multiplayer.

don't get me wrong. This is completely fine for a fun game mode, but in no way useful for a "real" RTS.

Edited October 16, 2015 by DarcReaver

[Lion.Kanzen]

The real RTS don't use Battalion formation yet.

[DarcReaver]

The real RTS don't use Battalion formation yet.

Then why should this be taken into consideration right now if it's not implemented at all?

[Lion.Kanzen]

All classes will be use Battalion?

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

All classes will be use Battalion?

All class of soldier, yeah

[DarcReaver]

Question to myself is: who is gonna work on that feature? I believe the game would benefit alot from that one..

[Stan`]

Question to myself is: who is gonna work on that feature? I believe the game would benefit alot from that one..

Well If I had the skills I would, else, if no coder gets around... nobody ?

[Lion.Kanzen]

Soldiers means biological entities?

Edited October 27, 2015 by Lion.Kanzen

[Giotto]

Anyone been working on this?

[Stan`]

Not that I know of.

[DarcReaver]

What a pity.. Should be done with a high priority as it helps the game in many areas that it's currently lacking.

[Stan`]

What a pity.. Should be done with a high priority as it helps the game in many areas that it's currently lacking.

This is not how things work here. It's mostly based on motivation. After all we are mere volunteers.

[Lion.Kanzen]

What a pity.. Should be done with a high priority as it helps the game in many areas that it's currently lacking.

If you have a complaint you should talk to Feneur

[DarcReaver]

This is not how things work here. It's mostly based on motivation. After all we are mere volunteers.

I know how stuff works, I've been in a volunteer modding team for almost 5 years now, too. Ofc everything is based upon motivation. However, one must ask himself whether his/her freetime is worth spending on something that will ultimatively suck just because he/she wants it to be in a certain way instead of forcing something different to improve the game objectively.

If you have a complaint you should talk to Feneur

Well I don't really complain, I just think that this would make the game very different from AoE type of games, give it a very unique flair and add many tactical options that otherwise wouldn't exist in that way.

[Stan`]

I know how stuff works, I've been in a volunteer modding team for almost 5 years now, too. Ofc everything is based upon motivation. However, one must ask himself whether his/her freetime is worth spending on something that will ultimatively suck just because he/she wants it to be in a certain way instead of forcing something different to improve the game objectively.

Then this is where those two projects differs, here we work on the features we want not the ones that are necessarily best for the game. Which is why we don't have building damage yet for instance. So maybe the ask themselves that question, but in the end it's just doing things, not THE things. Which is fair as long as things are getting done.

[DarcReaver]

Then this is where those two projects differs, here we work on the features we want not the ones that are necessarily best for the game. Which is why we don't have building damage yet for instance. So maybe the ask themselves that question, but in the end it's just doing things, not THE things. Which is fair as long as things are getting done.

Sure, that's the point. One thinig people have to keep in mind:

A game consists of "must-have" parts, and "nice-to-have" parts. You cannot make a game consisting with only "nice to have" content. The difference between these two things are determined by the game design sheet that was the original vision.

[Stan`]

I'd like to have a side to side comparison between "The Vision" and the current game. I think the whole game would benefit from it. I mean not just seeing the text,

but like a list of features we are missing.

[shieldwolf23]

Agree on Stan. That would really help envisioning as well as taking a look on what we still need to do with the game. People like me who are really on and off with the game and its development would also benefit in that we could track visually the progress of the things made and where we stand now.

[Stan`]

There is a planned features page on the wiki, I try to keep it updated. But it doesn't really state if this follow the vision or not.

[DarcReaver]

From what I've read in the vision 0 ad sounds a bit like an RTS version of a total war game, not really an AoE clone. Less focus on economy (yet still you need to manage several resources which is a good thing) and more focus on armies and unit compositions. That's why I think 0 ad should use a battalion system instead of individual units. Right now the individual unit management is very tedious and keeps you away from fighting. Also, because all gatherers work as combat units its very hard to apply pressure on the enemy as I've stated numerous times already.

I'd really advise to have a look at this.

[Palaxin]

On ‎10‎/‎15‎/‎2015 at 5:50 PM, wackyserious said:

There was a BFME2 mod, I forgot what the name of the mod was, but what they did was, they added the ability to divide/rejoin the vanilla game battalions (in vanilla BFME2, you cannot divide a batallion)

 

On ‎10‎/‎16‎/‎2015 at 6:30 PM, DarcReaver said:

single soldiers can't use formations, die faster, can't get included in the "experience" gain process from fighting, deal less damage and are more tedious to micro. Either use battalion combat or don't. But don't mix it because it's stupid.

What about unlocking battalions either in a tech or with a phase upgrade? E.g. you start in village phase with few units where micro work grants significant benefits and is still not too annoying. When you hit town phase or city phase at the latest, your population has grown to a point where single units really do not matter any more. Thus battalions make sense here... I would still advocate battalion dissolution as in some cases it wouldn't make that much sense to send a troop of soldiers e.g. scouting

Edit: what about this three-step model:
village phase - no battalions
town phase - simple battalions without musicians, officers, ... and only some standard formations available
city phase - battalions can be upgraded with musicians, officers, heroes... and special formations like Testudo become available

Edited February 3, 2016 by Palaxin