Suggestion for unit movement

[Rafzoola]

I was playing with units in existing build and had an idea for an enhancement but decided to pose it as a question. Would it be possible, practical, smart, to be able to assign units to dictator or collect them in groups? The way I see it working would be click and drag unit to dictator, direction of units travel dictates where they are in the group, then even if you group a bunch of different types they stop when they interact with each other and form a group, then the dictator or center unit would control the movement of the whole group and using any one unit that isn't the center would break them off. Speed of the slowest unit in the group dictates the speed of the group. What do you think? Also did I post in the right place?

[BRyeGmoney]

As discussed earlier, i like this idea. However, we need to iron out at least two problems that i see with it at the moment:

1. How does the player discern the leader of the group from the followers? like if he/she wants to move the entire group but thinks that the tank at the front is the leader of the group? Because I assume any time a unit touches another friendly they group together/to the rest of the group, which would allow us to make really cool formations but would make it difficult to figure out who is the leader.
2. What happens if you want to move one of the jet pieces and you move it on top of the other jet? Do they merge as one or does the jet simply not move? I would assume they would merge.

[Rafzoola]

The way I see it:

2. Like units continue to group on one square if they are guided to that square specifically. However if the path is drawn to the group leader they stop on the fringe of the group regardless if the next square over is a like unit or not. This gives a variety to group planing without limiting the option of expanding specific unit sizes within a square. That's about as clear a description of the function I can think of but am not sure it's all that clear. If an Air unit is on the fringe of the group and the player draws a line to the air unit it joins the group by increasing the amount of air units on the square. If however the Air unit is directed by the player to the group leader it stops and occupies a new square along its path once it hits the group even if the next move would place it inside another group.

I imagine this to be a useful in creating infinite groups of single units for best intelligence results.

1. I agree there needs to be a visual cue to the leader of a group to allow arrowhead formations with rear admirals to maintain the integrity of the group even with front end losses ;). As the simplest solution I suggest creating an image for each unit where the lineweight is significantly increased (current weight 5pi, increased weight 8pi maybe), this would be subtle alone but in a group of units would undoubtedly stick out. Once the group dynamics are implemented when a player groups two or more units the single unit you are grouping around has it's image swapped for the fatter group leader image and sticks out a bit. Not sure if this is practical but it seems minimally difficult. As always that's from a dumb colonial perspective. Tell me if it won't work or will be two slow and I'll pitch two more solutions.

[BRyeGmoney]

2 sounds good, i figured that would be the case.

1 might be problematic. unless the line weight is significantly different it may be a visual cue that'll be easy to miss. We'll have to see it in action though so when i get around to this implementation i'll give this idea a shot anyways.

[BRyeGmoney]

This functionality is included and working fairly well. There's still bugs associated with how the group works and various things like that but actually being able to move a bunch of guys in wacky formations works.