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Guard-move 🛡️

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USrankTHAddeusIII
20 days ago
Attack-move is good, but I think a new Guard-move command would be great for Zero-K.

A lot of the time you have some riots that you want to hang around skirms or artillery. You want the skirms to dance and advance as needed (attack-move), and the riots to move along with them so to ward off raiders.

The current options are a little bit awkward: You could give your army a ctrl-move, but then the skirms would not be able to dance. You could just station your riots nearby but then you would have to keep an eye on them to move them forward when the skirms advance. You could give a guard command (normal, alt, or circle), but the issue with that is you would probably do it on one skirm, and if that skirm dies then all the riots are free.

So I think a guard-move command would be useful. How it would work could be the units move to a place and if they find allied units that are not themselves, they guard.

Or maybe an area-guard command where the selected units spread themselves to allied units in the area? Probably a better idea tbh.
+4 / -0

USrankAdminSteel_Blue
20 days ago
I have spent a lot of time in some games building guard and move contingencies. Multiple squads, different skirmishers on the line. To then issue a direct move order.
+1 / -0
USrankTHAddeusIII
19 days ago
Thinking about it a little more, "guard-move" was a somewhat vague idea ngl.

An area-guard command would definitely be better. It would basically work the same as a ctrl area-attack, where selected units spread themselves evenly to targeted units.
+0 / -0

USrankAdminSteel_Blue
19 days ago
If I didn't have to start worrying about having too many hotkeys, an alternative fight command where units move forward but a) get no further than their unit attack range and b) keep 150 elmo out of enemy attack range, could be very useful. This fails when units are hidden in the fog of war though. Also I don't want to have to bind fight move 2 on my keyboard much too complicated.
+0 / -0
ZArankBoetvaardig
19 days ago
quote:
I have spent a lot of time in some games building guard and move contingencies. Multiple squads, different skirmishers on the line. To then issue a direct move order.


Man, I feel this so hard. And that's actually why IMO a smooth-operating "guard this line aggressively but don't get baited outside it" command would be very nice.

I think this is where Globulation has a generally superior big brain idea: flags and special areas. But shifting the UI entirely to flags would be very un-ZK because in ZK, like most RTS, superior attention concentration seems generally designed to be superior than sophisticated inattention in terms of attrition. AKA: micro matters, and that's OK.

But man, I would dig some later-movable guard-area flags / freehand zones. Or heck, even reclaim-area-but-kite-a-little flags which constructors can be assigned to.

Flags or no, it is quite hard to come up with an exact design specification for this guard area / guard move idea I've also wished for quietly. Precise and simple design spec is the most important part, as Lua implementation couldn't be too hard from that. Precise claims about what it would and wouldn't do. And avoid trying to make it too clever, just sophisticated enough to be significantly less annoying for conservative advances than mass attack-move.

I keep returning to this thought though: this just seems really hard to do nicely without some later-moveable virtual command / formation / flag concept, which is it own can of worms. And that keeps begging the question wouldn't it be better to come up with a simple-to-use command instead? Ponder abounds.
+2 / -0
BErankSparkezelPL
19 days ago
(edited 19 days ago)
What ZArankBoetvaardig explained reminds me of how `Majesty` and `Gold Gold Adventure Gold` do in order to give players indirect control over their units. In regards to that we kinda do have a prototype in game for this already, it's called Global Build Order, and it affects most of the engineers. Unfortunately it feels quite unresponsive for the game.

In regards to the guard order, here's my crack at it. The tether command.

Instead of altguarding your riots around each skirmisher, and then repeating it for every other skirmisher in the group in queue, so that if a skirm dies then riot guards another skirm... Which would have issues in that it doesn't go to the nearest skrimisher and guard it instead... and that maybe it could try to guard a skirmisher in the back while one close to it is about to get raided.

Instead, you'd have your group of riots and then with the guard command you would select a group of units, after that you'd select the direction they should guard them in. Main difference between it and the altguard being, that it tries to stand in front of the middle of a group, not a single unit. If multiple riot units were selected, they should spread themselves in front of the skirmishers. Contracting and expanding as number of units in guarded group changes (really it's shape).

Honestly if it's portrayed like that, it makes me think that it would just be about beefing up our formation code, and making it possible for unit groups to exist as entities, or armies. So that you could have group Skirm, and group Riot follows it as it's vanguard, few elmos ahead as they are more brave.

Coming back to tether. Tethered units would follow eachother roughly, no matter which one you'd select (kind of a super unit). If one strays too far, it gets an order to move back in it's place.

Lastly, a thing that would have to come with this is directionality of those tethered formations. I suppose that player could draw a linemove to tell how spread the formation is meant to be, and then maybe drag some arrows that appear... Who knows, maybe `Total War` has a solution for that. Best that comes to mind is how `Cosmoteer` does it but I feel like it introduces extra fighting with UI.
+0 / -0

SErankJenbak
18 days ago
quote:
I have spent a lot of time in some games building guard and move contingencies. Multiple squads, different skirmishers on the line. To then issue a direct move order.

Do I read this as a "Damn I ruined the guard commands with this (accidental?) move order"

A workaround would be to lower the selection level of the guards so that they are not included in a box-selection. That's another hotkey though and not a perfect solution as it makes them, for one, clunkier to manage when relieved of guard duties.

For keeping armies somewhat organized with move commands there is also formation rank. But that is something that needs to be configured per-unit in the behavior settings, not easily tweaked during a match, as well as requiring learning the "stroke order" for move lines. Probably useful for artillery and some skirmishers if nothing else.

+0 / -0

USrankStuart98
18 days ago
There's already a setting to automatically lower the selection rank of guards, no need to do it manually. It can mess you up when you accidentally put units guarding a building so they don't get moved with the rest of your army though.
+1 / -0