I'm thinking of a menu that would come up showing all the squads. You could drag your name into the squad you want, and if allowed, you would join that squad. The Comm could also drag and drop people's names into squads, though they would require the permission of the squad leader and the person being moved before they would switch. The Comm has a pretty big field of view, so they can make sure you join squads on the right side of the map and all. I know this could be a good way for a comm to piss people off, but there is so much else they could do to cause grief, I don't think they would bother with this tiny thing. I thought a large menu would help so that you could get a grasp of all your teammates, who is where and what is going on. You wouldn't want to use it in battle, cause it would take up your screen. Is this understandable?
Yes! I would definitly want a new squad system, Knight yours sounds cool . Right now it seems like I can never send invites to people, no matter how many times I aim at them and hit send invite. Yet other times I can. And also sometimes people can't send ME invites. Maybe it's the shitboxes, but it would still be fixed without needing LOS on a guy you want to invite... because, come on, don't they have RADIOS!?
Forced squad joining would be okay, as long as the players can choose. And squads should actually stick together, like squads should.
...I don't think I've had an idea go over this well before. You're right slith, the next step is finding a way to keeps squads together. If rubber bands doesn't work, better communication or proximetry bonus might help.
I don't see squads being split in two or three parts a problem. Sometimes squads are needed to split up in terms of efficiency in field(flanking manouver, I've guided people as a commander to make these at times, usually they use their brains and do it themselves though). You could encourage people to stay together by giving rank for certain time spent at certain proximity, but I'm against any type of forcing. Thus a proximity bonus that knighttemplar suggested seems like a good idea. And I'm all for making squad operations easier to handle.
That is, after they implement a better squad system, so you don't randomly not get to invite someone to your squad....
I always stick by my squad, untill they are all over the place, then I stick whith the biggest group of them, or whith any member I cam find. But I agree a bonus for squad partisipation, is needed.
I really like the idea of a proximity bonus. A good way to do this might be to have the squad leaders first upgrade effect everyone around him in a small way(except rev and upgrade). Like 1-25% of the skill will effect those around him depending on how far away they are from him. This would promote ppl to be closer to him but, will not force ppl to be near him. (I originally thought 50% but that would be insane... imagine a squad of eng with rapid repair [50%] repair +[50%] repair from leader? WOW! uber turret spam!) PS. after writing this I realize this might increase lag as more packets or server time will be needed to find out how close someone is to the squad leader. The more squads the more resources.
What about the mini map having a visable fog of war. Like most RTSs each unit has a field of view. lets say everyone's view is 7 units. Everyone transmits 7 units of view to the minimap, except for scouts and camera/radar, which see 10 or 11 units. If you are in a squad though, all your units have 10 units FOV, exclusive to the squad. This means you can see farther and are more effective when near your squad. I know this sounds complicated, so if I haven't explained it well, let me know so I can flush it out. ACSII Awesomeness! Scout............................---------> Camera........................---------> Rifleman.......................------> Rifleman (in your squad).---------> (The only problem, what about scouts in your squad, and what does the commander see?) maybe this: Scout............................---------> Scout (in your squad).....-----------> Commander...................---------> I hope this is viewable. I'll draw a bmp i guess. (Edit) K, here's a picture. I drew some circles. So, let's say I'm in squad A. Me and my buddy are in the bottom left corner. We're both rifleman, so we can both see 10 units on our minimap, the rest would ideally be grayed a bit (i'm not a graphic designer). There's a tank supporting us, but he's not in our squad, so we can both only see a 7 unit radius around him on our minimap. He would only be able to see a 7 unit radius around us as well. There's a scout at the top right. He's the only one in squad B. He's got a large FOV, but if he was in squad A, he'd have the FOV featured to the right. Some Emp_Recruit at bottom right is an engi and not in a squad. He only gives us 7 unit sof FOV, and only sees 7 units of FOV from us. I put a big circle around a turret at top right, and a smaller circle around a barracks. I figured buildings should contribute to FOV, but they don't need to. I think that the commander should be able to see a 10 unit radius around each soldier, regardless of what squad he's in. I hope this demonstration was helpful. Thank you.
noooo, please no fog of war. If spotting was made easier and lasted longer, this would be completely redundant anyway.
