Lo-Fi Games

Controlling a large group of people in this game is mob like at best, there is very little control on quickly selecting set people for a task or order.

A solution to this problem would be the introduction of Tabs and Squads. Below is a quick mock up on what would look like a good setup for squad control. (Please excuse the poor photoshopping)
Each Tab represents a Squad. Each squad is made of up to 10 people. You can drag a image of the person in question to a tab to place them into that squad. When recruiting a new member, they are defaulted into the first free space available. Ultimately, the amount of squads a person can have depends on how many people the developer wants the player to have in the game.

Below the squads mug shots we have some addition squad control features that will be useful in ordering and controlling each squad. The options slide upwards when selected, revealing each choice available to you. The following options are:

Move together (No, Yes) – This causes your squad to move together at the lowest speed of the squad. This prevents part of the squad from running way ahead of the others.

Formation (None, Block, Box, Delta, Line) – This lets you set how your troops move, useful for setting up different attacks. This option only is available when "Move together" is selected. Block puts melee at the front, ranged at the back. Box puts the least armoured squad members in the middle and the most armoured at the front. Delta puts everybody in a V shaped line, good for breaking other formations. Line formation is useful for a pure ranged squad, akin to a firing line.

Aggression (Ordered, Defend, Chase down) – This sets how the squad reacts to enemies if they try to flee. If set to ordered, they will only chase if you tell them to. With defend, they will chase only to make sure that others are safe. Chase down causes the squad to follow fleeing enemies until they are dead or engaged by a greater threat.

Stance (Balanced, Defensive, Offensive, Shoot, Aim, Volley) – These set how your sqaud acts in combat. The first three only effect melee, while the last three only effect ranged attacks.

With a balanced stance, you act as normal. Defensive stance is the current “block's only” feature in game, and Offensive disables blocks, but gives you +20 to Melee Attack.

Shoot is your standard firing of ranged weapons. With aim, you get a bonus to hit, but a penalty to firing speed, while Volley is the reverse, giving a bonus to firing speed but a penalty to aim.

Medical (None, Self, Squad, Faction, All) – This sets how the squad attempts to recover itself via the use of medical items (first aid kits, bla, bla, bla). None makes it so that nobody in the party will recover themselves after battle. Self means that each person relies on himself for recovery. Squad means everybody fixes anyone else in the squad as a combined effort. Faction will attempt to patch up anyone who works for you, and All is self explanatory.

I've left the rest of the mock UI blank, for any new upcoming features (food / drink management for example)

What do people think of the idea? Feel free to input your own opinion and what not.

I like it, might be more tricky with more people/squads, but is a good base in my opinion.

I guess this might be add too much but, after the squad could be formed a sort of, i do nt even know waht to call, lets say company (i know is wrong name but i don t rememebr proper name now) from the grouping of squads, despite 2 squads be able to issue orders together, guess simple not sure if doing my point here tho.

hbrown wrote:I like it, might be more tricky with more people/squads.

The squad tabs should be scaled depending on how many squads you have. Personally, i would have a cap of 100 troops (which to most people is rather over the top) so 10 squad tabs. If they are just simply numbered instead of named then more can fit easily on the UI.

Also, to make it easier when dragging troops into a new squad, the tab would light up green to show which squad he's about to be placed into.

hbrown wrote: I guess this might be add too much but, after the squad could be formed a sort of, i do not even know what to call, lets say company (i know is wrong name but i don t remember proper name now) from the grouping of squads, despite 2 squads be able to issue orders together, guess simple not sure if doing my point here tho.

Well... that would require additional tabs somewhere, most likely placed on top of the squad tabs, and we don't want to choke the screen with cluttered UI if possible.

I was thinking originally that holding shift you can select multiple squad tabs and then do your army orders from there, so that gives you the control you want.

Yeah that would be enough, no need to make ir more complex.

Fat Pokemon wrote:Personally, i would have a cap of 100 troops (which to most people is rather over the top) so 10 squad tabs.

That's not even enough to make an army of all the touhou characters. Or all 151 pokemon.

lawl. gotta catch em all :3

Tolwrath wrote:

Fat Pokemon wrote:Personally, i would have a cap of 100 troops (which to most people is rather over the top) so 10 squad tabs.

That's not even enough to make an army of all the touhou characters. Or all 151 pokemon.

While I have a healthy love for both touhou (Yakumo Family ftw) and pokemon, in kenshi why have more than 100 people? At this current time having such a large clan would murder your PC (Unless you have a PC the size of a server). Perhaps the limit could be raised once multi-threading is used to full effect, that way we can see 100's fight it out for glory! ;p

wont be a problem when he tackles Multi threading. even though its a big task.

i hear ya.

In my honest option, Multi-threading is harder to implement into a game engine once the engine itself is already built (Take the X series for example, a set of space sim games. They can't implement multi-threading because the engine they are using is too old).

But anyhow, back on topic. What do others think of those squad controls?