Squad Heirarchy

[Thalslaw]

Hey. I'm a part-time Viking with 400+hrs combat experience. I tend to do the shouting and barking orders in the shield-wall.

I recognise that the squad has to be controlled by the player, but as the game is doing so well at depicting combat I wondered if the developers would like to take it a step further.

I would like the option to construct a group heirarchy via a convenient, probably drag-and-drop interface that emulates the rank-system in armies. It would also help form and develop interaction between NPC "leaders" and their subjects (possibly the player's squad if they have joined a faction).

This would have the effect of calculating the delay/morale/effectiveness of combatants, and possibly open the way for tactics to be implemented in the game.

Such tactics would evolve with accordance to the player's wishes. I'm thinking about keeping it simple and letting the AI do most of the finicky details, so one 'leader' would make blocks or shield walls, and the other (The 'extraordinary force' from Sun Tzu) would flank or pierce them with a Boar-snout while the third is in reserve/healing.

[kringtheking]

I like this idea. For lack of a better idea id use military ranks for leadership positions. Initially a squad would have one 2nd Lt. Also add a leadership skill that would determine the number of followers that your faction could have. Once your leadership gets high enough then the 2nd Lt becomes a 1st Lt and you can promote another to the 2nd Lt. This would continue up the ranks. It would also be cool if different formations or tactics could be learned by the leaders possibly similar to the blueprints idea that has been proposed for research and production.

[Decu]

Yes i would really like to see some ranking in this game.. Military style..
Formations would be very cool. Especialy when traveling, i always have them running.
And the fastest always outrun the slowest (witch is natural). But some sort of formation to keep the squad together and organised would be very cool indeed...

[Clawdius Talonious]

I imagine these sorts of things are already planned, but they're not likely to be implemented until several other features are in place.

[TheHappyPyro]

I like this. Perhaps the player can use pre-made rank systems, or make his own, eh? What if I give an order to the cap'n of the squad, "Roam this set area: -mark some places on the map- and alert me if something happens" -a annoying sound appears and the map shows up with a red ping showing the squad under attack-

[Express]

I like this idea. For lack of a better idea id use military ranks for leadership positions. Initially a squad would have one 2nd Lt. Also add a leadership skill that would determine the number of followers that your faction could have. Once your leadership gets high enough then the 2nd Lt becomes a 1st Lt and you can promote another to the 2nd Lt. This would continue up the ranks. It would also be cool if different formations or tactics could be learned by the leaders possibly similar to the blueprints idea that has been proposed for research and production.

Well maybe instead of simply just having military ranks, you could have the option of assigning the ranks your own names to help with RP.

[Imposter]

Not a bad idea at all. Does not sound very complicated either. GUI could look something like a regular window with a drop down that shows the character names DB and a text box for the player to type rank names to the right of that drop down. Rinse, repeat, and ranked.

[Tolwrath]

Yes i would really like to see some ranking in this game.. Military style..
Formations would be very cool. Especialy when traveling, i always have them running.
And the fastest always outrun the slowest (witch is natural). But some sort of formation to keep the squad together and organised would be very cool indeed...

Not sure how well it works in the current release, (because I've been too lazy to bother with the micro) but to prevent the squad from separating, you can set all your fastest characters to bodyguard/follow your slowest character. It messes with auto combat a bit though, so remember to tell them to manually attack when you get in a fight, otherwise some of them will just sit around doing nothing.

Also: fairly certain this is planned due to the way we used to have a grayed out "squads" button.

[LordD]

Maybe if there is a fear or moral stat later on, where your people can run away when they get hurt or scared, and ranking officers could help with that (like x-com <_< ) but im not really sure if it would be worth it, as the game is now, all of our people will happily fight to the death. Leadership is what officers are about anyway, not like they make anyone fight harder (in most cases) they just calm the soldiers down and tell them where and when to keep fighting.

[ZanathKariashi]

It's doable....as long as the captain is up and fighting, his squad lose less morale, based on his leadership stat (grows when designated as a captain and in battle) when damaged, but if a squad leader is KO'd his squad takes a big morale hit and starts losing it faster (with a small chance of individuals going berserk instead and attacking more ferociously, but with no defense, for a time). Characters that morale break are more likely to fall down and pretend to be defeated before their stats would force it, surrender, or flee.

Just have a little flag that you can click in the squad command to designate the leader, which can't be changed while any member of the squad is in combat).

You could even translate it to the production aspects as well, a production squad gets an efficiency boost based on it's manager's leadership skill, which slowly grows for as long as his squad is working (up to a certain maximum over the normal efficiency, since no amount of streamlining is going to pull of miracles if the tools aren't up to par).

[iicecube]

This is still my best idea after-all for sandbox game which we can form squad ranking system which gain from fighting experience..
Since it quite difficulty to plan a whole units which just name without looking on their profile which indicate the role for that player and this rank marking can list out them as easy..