Tactical Formation

[Swahap]

Hello, I am a new comer here. I started playing 0 a.d. for 2 weeks now and one thing caught my attention, the battle formation. 

I really like the mechanics right now where you can actually work on your formation pretty well, however, I think it might be easier to handle if there is an option to lock the formation. 

With the mechanics we have right now, all we need to do is for the army themselves to stick into their formation with a lock button(I guess).

I love the game, just some suggestion I have since I was struggling a little bit to keep the army in their formation with the auto attack in place and if you put it in passive or defensive mode the auto attack still doesn't really help when they make contact with their enemy. So, I suggest having a "Lock Formation" button in the formation tab just to make the strategy more realistic and easier to handle as well.

I am happy for any comment on this idea.

[sphyrth]

Formations are broken. But I DO like the idea of "Locking in Formation".

[Lion.Kanzen]

14 minutes ago, sphyrth said:

Formations are broken. But I DO like the idea of "Locking in Formation".

Basically battalions.

[av93]

Already suggested a lot of times

[LordGood]

I have a bit of a love/ hate relationship with formations in American Conquest (I would assume the same for Cossacks but ive never played cossacks) The only real difference between formations and loose troops is that there's a defense, melee and morale bonus for troops in moving formation and a higher one for troops standing their ground

they're initiated by 'officer' units which are exceptional fighters but horrendously cost-inefficient to fight with. Initiating formations pulls like troops from their immediate surroundings along with a drummer and standard bearer. Formations can be 'healed' by way of a +button pulling more like troops into the lines.

my only gripe with the cossacks/ac system is the micro involved to initiate the thing, its worse with the thousands of troops those games handle, so it might just be perfect here

[Feldfeld]

As the game currently is, when you micro an army against another, for melee units (i'll only speak about melee units here), you will always want to micro it so that you have more units that deal hit, and that your opponent has less units that deal hits.

With current formations, it is not worth it to fight in formation because while you limit your units by imposing them a specific place to stay in, ennemy army is free, and especially, ennemy can micro it so he enters a bigger mass of unit in a specific place of your formation and, that way, he'll have more units fighting than yours so the fight will be better for him. That way, locked formations is no good.

If however, locked formations can be in a way that ennemy units can go in your formation due to pathfinding (i mean that they can't get past your first line of units), and that the distance between your units in formation is minimal, then thereotically (it's the way i see it), the fight should be better for you. Few units will be fighting against few at a time but you'll have more than you opponent. But formations that can't be broken is not realistic, and this is where charging could be interesting. I'm not sure that it is possible to make locked formations like the way i described however.