(minor) z-axis grouping / auto-formation on z-axis / stackin

posted on September 30th, 2010, 5:32 am

Just a thought...

Problem: ships next to each other vi for space on the 2-d plane, resulting in some ships (like the assimilator) being annoyingly difficult to position. Or... some ships just waste a lot of time jokeying for position.

Suggested solution: Give about a borg cube's hieght back to the z-axis. Players still only can select the 0 heigth of the z-axis, but ships will utilize the z-axis to stack. Cubes would only stack to 1 (no stacking). Sabers would stack to ~5, etc. Assims would stack to 2.

posted on September 30th, 2010, 6:03 am

Problem: ships next to each other vie for space

Fixed that for you.  You had me confused for a moment.

As for the idea... don't like this one.  Down with the Z-axis! 

posted on September 30th, 2010, 6:09 am

In SC2, my units DO what I tell them to.

In FO, they fight with each other.

I vant it better, somehow...

posted on September 30th, 2010, 2:14 pm

Even that small of a Z axis would really hurt in terms of range. Now your short range ships will have to be literally on top of a Cube ... and all bunched up merrily, so that other ships have no problem hitting them . I find Borg pathing ok in general - because you have large ships you can control each one on an individual basis more readily.

posted on September 30th, 2010, 2:16 pm

actually, I think he was saying that everything would stack, up to the hight of a cube.  That way, they aren't flying over it, just stacked to its hight.

I think it would be cool.

posted on September 30th, 2010, 2:20 pm

Yup, I know he meant that - it causes problems

posted on September 30th, 2010, 2:23 pm

it would be kinda cool though, if you selected your fleet and the ships of the same kind would stack themselves.  it would look a lot like SW:EaW though...

posted on September 30th, 2010, 4:48 pm

I would just see it bringing back the Assault Wall formation.  That's not such a great thing, since in stock, that one formation is basically all you need.  Set every fleet to assault wall, because it maximizes dps for focus-fire.  Short range automatically stacks in front, medium behind them, etc.  The stock AI can handle doing it, too.

As cool as it is, I'm not sure I really want to see Assault Wall in any form come back.

However, I wouldn't mind about half a saber's height on the 'ceiling'.  Gets annoying when a constructor decides that it just HAS to go over something, and gets itself hung up.

posted on September 30th, 2010, 5:34 pm

Maybe the bounding boxes of problematic units could be scaled down a bit?