Formations

Zero-K is a great game, my favorite RTS game I have played, and I have played quite a few. I have been thinking a lot about how to make it better, and I came up with something, something that would probably add a whole extra level of strategy to the game.

Formations.

I was thinking about my units, thinking that it would be way more useful if my recluse's were in the back, and my other guys in front. I could spend some time rearranging them, but it is just time consuming, and it gives my enemy more time to attack. But if you had a button that rearranged your units so that your tough riot guys are in the front (like redbacks), your venoms are right behind them so that they don't take all of the damage, but can jump out and stun the enemy when it nears, and the are hermits behind them, with the recluses at the back, it would make a lot more sense, look a lot cooler, and be way more strategic.

I was also thinking that a couple formation buttons (one for a wedge, one for a circle (it would be even cooler if it told the units on the outside to rotate around so they all take equal damage), or just a strait line formation) would not suit everyone in every situation, So, what if you made a certain page in your home page that allowed you to customize your formation buttons, sort of like the commander customization thing. If you did this, then those that didn't know how to customize would still get some basic formation commands that would work, but if someone was picky about it, then they could go and just customize theirs to be what they wanted it to be.

I realize that this is probably extremely hard to implement, considering things like having them rearrange themselves while at the same time moving to a specified point like you told them to. But I think that if this was done, it would be more than worth it. Not only would it make strategies more effective, it would make the game way cooler, and it would add an entire new level of strategy to the game, wedges, rotating circles, boxes, line formations, and more!

Not exactly what you are after, but if you combine it with selection ranks you can probably get the behavior you want. Also you can hold control and issue orders and the units maintain there position relative to the other units receiving that order.

I have proposed this more than a year ago, AoE2-like system. Short answer is - no one well-versed in coding can't be arsed to do it, and its pretty tricky in Spring conditions, or so I've been told.

It would be useful if there was a dedicated circle guard button when using factory. Like if you have a pala and want some fleas around. When I try to use circle guard on units that are being built in a fac, I have to press "G", it starts building some random unit which is associated with that key, and I have to try again (a few more times).

Theoretically any rectangular formation can be converted to a series of very specific arc guard formations.

Write a widget that does that, and you can have the actual position-holding formation walking for free.