I have to agree with Yanlin here, but coming from playing Men of war its fairly horrific micromanaging thats involved with these thing. A single unit of soliders is alot easier, and probably better in the long term, to use.
I'm saying you should NOT micromanage it. The COMPUTER should. The unit can still be abstracted as such that it does specific amounts of damage to different stuff like we already have. Except that now that basic riflemen unit has more combat abilities. Basically it means the unit can do more without any further input from you. In fact, the only input you should have to do is tell the unit where to go, how to get there and standing orders. Given modern scenarios, we can assume that our commands are transferred to them by radio from their commanding officers. Thus, they should be able to receive orders after told to move. Modify the orders.
Tell the unit to attack, how to attack and where to attack from. That's all you should have to do. You should not need to toggle various abilities. They should toggle THEMSELVES.
In CoH, basic riflemen have the ability to pickup anti tank weaponry, light machineguns, etc. This is how it should be FROM THE BEGINNING. That unit should have those capabilities already and if that special unit is killed, well another one combatant drops their weapon and takes theirs. Continue on. Of course, with each combatant dying, that's less offensive power to apply. I do not want critical existence failures.
Basically, the units need free will. They need to THINK for themselves. If you give them a stupid command, they should be able to see that. If you tell one rifleman unit to attack an army... Well they should say no! Unless they have fanatic loyalty of course. Of course it has to factor in other points where retreat is impossible, where they are going to die anyway so they might as well do something, where they have a chance if they get lucky...
But if you tell that tiny little squad over there to attack that massive fortified base... They are going to say, hell no.
The only flaw, as pointed out by Richochet, is the AI itself is incapable of that kind of thought. It has to be given to the player.
But what I want, is each soldier thinking for himself. At least choosing his own target if you don't give him one.
You know what I REALLY hate? When you have a bunch of units that are supposed to defend a base and only part of them actually do that because the units on the right side got attacked and the units on the left side DO NOTHING. They are not even that far away! I'm looking at you, C&C 3.
Also, in CoH, you have WONDERFUL examples of these special abilities being used automatically. The cover system. The unit upgrades. Etc. But you have HORRENDOUS examples of micromanagement in the fact that YOU decide where to throw the grenade and when to throw it. Justified by the fact it costs resources to use it, but for fucks sake! You should be able to given standing orders! Only the the grenade if X! Etc.
Plus another thing that bugged me is that the grenade throwing animation only had a standing position. So you'd see a crouching or crawling soldier, suddenly spring up in a humanly impossible way, somehow make bullets pass right through him without harming him and manages to throw a grenade, then equally inhumanly hit the deck and return to normal. But that's just a graphical pet peeve.
Basically, I want standing orders. Lots of them.
I recall Sins of a solar empire or whatever that game was called, had exactly that. Total command or whatever, (Sorry. I REALLY forgot the name) from same company, had the same abilities. The units decide when to use and how to use the abilities by standing orders you configure.
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Topic: C&C 4, yes, its true (Read 3837 times)