Missions Assignments

[LemonYourAid]

My suggestion here is Mission Assignments.

Similar to how you can send a unit to mine, or process stones. You would be able to give a unit and objective and have them carry out a list of orders.

Basically, you'd select a unit, or a group of units and use a button called "Mission Assignments". In this menu you can Add orders such as:

• Goto COORDINATES/Destination Name.
  Ignore Enemies.
  Assassinate "Outpost Boss"
  Goto <1213,1330> (Or perhaps Goto OUR_BASE_NAME)
  Complete Mission

The unit(s) would then follow out the objectives in order they are given. Possible fails would be losing a fight and being knocked unconscious where they would then classify the mission as fail and return to the location they were given. Maybe even another command such as "On Mission Fail: Goto HOME_BASE"

Below are a list of orders that I think would be useful.

• Goto [<x/y> or Town Name] - Unit moves to a location.
  Ignore [Enemies/Allies/Faction Name] - Unit will ignore enemies and continue following out their objects.
  Assassinate - Unit will attempt to kill a specific target and on completion move on to next order. (Ex: Assasinate Holy Paladin)
  Auto-Loot - Unit will attempt to loot any corpse and will drop lower valued items in order to replace higher valued priced items that they find.
  Recruit [All/Medics/Swordsman/Laborer] - Unit will attempt to recruit any nearby units that are willing to be recruited and fit the description.
  Hold Position [<x/y> or Town Name] - Unit will go to and stand near this position and will not leave this position unless ordered to move to another location.
  Guard [UNIT_NAME] - Unit will guard a specific unit named UNIT_NAME

While a unit is attempting to complete a mission, an icon where their image/name is displayed will appear to show that they are currently on a mission. (Could also implement icons to show units are mining/building/crafting/researching as well, but that can be saved for another topic)

Anyways, that's pretty much the idea I had. Basically spanned from me usually sending one unit half way across the map while at the same time trying to check on my other guys to make sure they're not being attacked. It's a little annoying because I have to switch between characters and wait for loading each time, also puts the unit I'm using to travel with at risk for a few seconds while I'm checking on my town.

[Clawdius Talonious]

That route seems a bit complex for some end users, but I am fairly certain we'll see some amount of this in the future. We should be able to assign squads on patrols without having to micromanage them, other members on guard duty, etc. These features will be incorporated once we first have the ability to assign jobs to faction members, and then have the ability to control several squads. At that point, while I am unsure of the specifics we'll see far more complex assignments, likely starting with the ability to send out a basic automated trading party.

[LemonYourAid]

That route seems a bit complex for some end users

Right, but I'm not saying you'd have to write the commands in via text. I was thinking along the lines of a menu where you'd have an "Add" button, and that button would give you a short list of commands you could drag into your mission assignment. Some commands would be followed by a drop-down menu and such. Then when you're finished adding commands, you could click finish and the unit then follows them in order.

The challenge for the programmer and designers would be to make it as easy to use as possible. If the players are liking the game to begin with, I don't see why they wouldn't want to learn this slightly complex system to make gameplay a bit easier for them.

Personally I mostly just want an auto-move feature that sends them to towns to recruit people, but as you said for the possibility of an auto-trader as well, that's something I'd be able to make use of in a similar fashion if such feature wasn't added. I could settle for an auto-trader and just try to time it for when they get into the city and control them from there.

[islesofurth]

doing that for 100 members plus could become very tedious, they would be returning from their "misions" before i could finish giving them out.

I think what Clawdius was saying is that, you will more than likely be able to do all those things in the future, but they will be more like "jobs".
(hes probably just covering his ass so people cant say he said this or that)

Chris doesnt want alot of Micromanagement, so alot of things will likely be automated.
For your assinations it would likely be that you designated a target that you can either see or have seen previously. After the mision, if your assasin is still alive they will go back to the location where the job was first given to them.
This give tha mission feel and lets you automate assasins, Plus there is very little micromangement invulved.


The best thing with this IMO is to just have 1 objective, creating to many objctives and conditions would greatly increase min req of the game.
I dont know if you ever played w3 custom maps, but they make for a great example.
People use to think that a large map loaded slow, but really its all the trigers amap has that makes it take along time to load everything. If you put those trigers in for every unit in the game, it would become very slugish very fast and you wouldnt be able to have an empire of more than 50 and still play unless you had a great computer.