Party formations. Ideas for customising.

[KKAtan]

In update #3, we had some info about formation and party management.

Something I think is worth discussing. Maybe we can give the developers some more ideas to play with.

 

Say, if the player character is focusing on Summoner play style. Wouldn't it be cool to be able to customize formation for your summoned creatures?

This was something older games like lacked. I remember in BG1 when I walked into a greater basilisk with petrifying gaze and my animated skeletons with stone immunity was walking behind my party due to the way the default formation was hardcoded. So I had to manually manage the skeletons as a separate party (which could disappear into the fog of war if I told them to walk too far).

Something like this proposal would improve a summoner centric play style greatly, wouldn't you think?

 

 

Maybe there could be slot(s) for summoned familiar(s) as well?

 

 

Then there's formation for the main party. Let's say that we have run out of invisibility spells and only the rogue managed to stealth.

We could have his scouting position customized into the formation:

Here's a couple of additional ideas I had. What if we could customize a random field for the forward position? Every time you move the party, #3's position gets shuffled within the green field.

(I'm actually not sure what kind of use case this could be useful in. Just trowing out some random ideas to get the creativity rolling)

Or how about this alternative. We've given #3 three fixed positions, but every time we move the party his position is randomized among those three positions.

I imagine something like this is much easier to program than that green field above.

Again, not to sure how this randomization gimmick could become useful. Perhaps for summoned creatures? We typically don't care about when a summoned creature dies, or when their spell duration simply run out.

So maybe the randomization could be useful as a redundancy mechanism?

In this situation the formation could become vulnerable if Summon 1 and Summon 2 dies. Very critical positions. But luckily Summon 5 and Summon 6 could take their place.

 

What do you guys think about all these ideas?

Please do suggest something better if you think of something. Or maybe think up some more interesting use cases.

[rjshae]

In update #3, we had some info about formation and party management.

Say, if the player character is focusing on Summoner play style. Wouldn't it be cool to be able to customize formation for your summoned creatures?

It depends in part on whether they will allow multiple creatures to be summoned. That went away in NWN2, for example; you could only have one summoned creature and one companion per party member. But yeah, that would be a nice addition. Control of summoned creatures was a bit of a nuisance in the IE games.

 

Then again, animal companions should probably a bit undisciplined and not quite as subject to formation control.

Edited October 20, 2012 by rjshae

[KKAtan]

Then again, animal companions should probably a bit undisciplined and not quite as subject to formation control.

We can play with that idea too. While normal party members have small fixed points, summoned animals might have larger random space.

Perhaps like this?

This would be expanding on the idea of that green field. Since animals aren't so orderly they might be anywhere in their big circle.

[rjshae]

Or perhaps they get hover points that they tend to return to, when there isn't an interesting bush to sniff or rabbit to chase?

[PsychoBlonde]

I do like the ability of having a "scout" formation of some kind with one party member decently in advance of the rest of the party. If they allow multiple summons, I'd just like it to be that you get a little icon next to your character portrait that selects all the summons at once, that'd be a lot easier and probably more convenient than trying to work them into the party formation in some kind of logical way.

[HangedMan]

A 5x5 square, where I can place anyone where I want, (1,2,3,4,5,6,Summon, Companion) would be awesome. So you'd have something like this (Just something very poorly done in MSpaint):

 

 

Which would allow, for instance:

[Hormalakh]

I think the old IE games need to learn a few tricks from the strategy wargames like Starcraft II and add a few extra options like follow, patrol, etc.

 

If you had a rogue in the front scouting the area, it would be great to have a "follow" command where the rest of the party would follow behind the rogue (maybe 10 feet behind) without you having to click them along.

 

The other idea I had was to have a sort of "lock formation" command, where let's say you had some sort of strange formation that the developers didn't think of, then what you could do is lock your formation and whenever you clickd that formation woulod be maintained. I believe Age of Empires had something similar to this.

 

What do you guys think?

[rjshae]

Yes, good ideas. Some combination of these would make a nice addition.

[Tamerlane]

Age of Empires-style locked formations are one of the New Thangs I want to see most in PE, actually. That fancy wedge turns in to a conga line pretty damn easily in BG2...

[KKAtan]

Just as a reference point to see what we're up against.

This is the old BG2 formation behavior for party+summons. As we can see the summoned creatures are in a straight line behind the party.

This is neither a useful formation (why should the meatshield be behind the party...?), nor is it realistic as per rjshae's disciplined/undisciplined argument. (although skeletons might be the exception here).

 

I think we can all agree that this needs massive improvement one way or another if there is any sort of summoner play style in PE.

 

 

Or perhaps they get hover points that they tend to return to, when there isn't an interesting bush to sniff or rabbit to chase?

I love this idea. It's even better than my suggestion when it comes to realism. Allows the summoned monsters to stray away temporarily but ultimately return to its hover point.

[Sensuki]

I always used the one like this _ - _ - _ - , because it fit best in corridors

Edited October 21, 2012 by Sensuki

[rjshae]

Yes, I pretty much used the 2x3 for corridors, the T-formation for outdoors, and the pentagon (with the Wizard in the middle) for resting. The remainder just seemed tactically impractical.