droid individual units

[Alduin]

Hi.

It would be nice to be able to droid individual units, as opposed to a whole side.

A few ideas on how to implement this:
(interface)
1. There could be a console command to droid the unit under mouse-rollover
2. A unit could be droided via a right-click menu option, that could be enabled in advanced preferences.

Functionally, maybe this feature could work by adding to Wesnoth the capacity to (1) create player sides in-game (whereas now we can only do this during game initialization); to (2) allow there to be invisible sides (i.e. not viewable through through the status table); to (3) create allied sides controlled by ai that only get units that you give them (unless of course one of the ai units is a leader).

This feature would allow you to either droid individual units or to control a smaller group of units within a larger ai army.

If the ai is expanded, it would also be nice to give ai units specific missions (e.g. scout, but don't fight unless some exception(s)).

[psychic]

What exactly would be the use of this feature? This is TBS not RTS.

[Alduin]

The suggested feature allows players to automate units they control. There are numerous reasons why someone would want to do this.

If the feature becomes advanced enough being able to coordinate with AI would be good too.

[psychic]

Again what may those numerous reasons be?

[Alduin]

Gameplay could be speeded up. Unit management could be simplified. Any number of game circumstances could make a player desire to speed up gameplay or simplify unit management.

[Dixie]

IMO, AI is not the be thrusted, I would never droid a unit. An when there is a lot of units, plus a bunch of conditions, AI can be damn slow too. Anyway, in MP matches, I don,t think you usually get that much units that the gameplay is that much slower and droiding them would be endvisageable. In campaigns... maybe that can happen, but then again, nobody's waiting after you to play their turn, so why want to save time when you could plan and lay your forces around strategically?

[psychic]

Gameplay could be speeded up. Unit management could be simplified. Any number of game circumstances could make a player desire to speed up gameplay or simplify unit management.

So in the end you came up with 2 reasons.

As far as unit management is concerned it is just point and click, majority of the process happens in your head.

And in case of speeding up, I am pretty sure your idea is to droid only about 10-15% of your army, anything more than that is pretty much same as droiding your whole side with the current ai behaviour. AI actions are one of the hardest to code is what I have inferred from reading a few posts. The point I am making is that the usefullness of the feature is not worth the effort spent in improving AI functionality a lot.

Another way to look at this is that, you can improve your skill to a level where about 50% of the moves are obvious moves which do not require prior thinking(if rng does not screw up XD) making this feature even more pointless because you would only droid units that do not require thinking in the first place.

[Hulavuta]

AI would be kind of useful, and would add an army feel, but the AI would have to be improved a LOT for someone to trust that the AI would do a good job.

[Eleazar]

Having the computer play the game for you (in whole or in part) is seldom a good way to make a game more fun.

If it's too boring moving all your units, try a different, smaller map/campaign.

This proposal would only exchange boredom for frustration, because even if the AI was as good as you, it has no way to communicate with you. No AI can read a human's mind, so it would be trying to implement a different strategy, failing to support your units when you might expect it, stealing your kills, sacrificing units you wanted to keep, etc.

In other words it would be like playing with an AI ally is now, except worse, since the AI is spending/wasting your money, and getting your units killed.

[hhyloc]

Having the computer play the game for you (in whole or in part) is seldom a good way to make a game more fun.

If it's too boring moving all your units, try a different, smaller map/campaign.

This proposal would only exchange boredom for frustration, because even if the AI was as good as you, it has no way to communicate with you. No AI can read a human's mind, so it would be trying to implement a different strategy, failing to support your units when you might expect it, stealing your kills, sacrificing units you wanted to keep, etc.

In other words it would be like playing with an AI ally is now, except worse, since the AI is spending/wasting your money, and getting your units killed.

+1

[Dixie]

Hahaha, this is in no way meant to be a taunt, offensive or anything, but Eleazar's last comment reminded me this game, which maybe you would like if you actually like automated stuff: http://progressquest.com/

[johndh]

If you don't want to command your units, then why do you play a game that revolves entirely around... uh... commanding your units? I must be missing something here.

[PeterPorty]

Well, I also think it is a bad idea, but I don't think you guys are getting him. As far as I can tell, he wants to give the game an army feel, where you are a leader, and you command your troops, you tell them 'attack', 'retreat', 'scout', or old position, but you don't acutally tell them 'seccond spearman attack the heavy infantry from the south'. Also, he is suggesting you could still have as much units as you want under your direct controll, that would be maybe like the main army, that doesn't have common tasks like 'defend point A', but have to run past the river, wait untill daylight, attack in the morning, retreat afternoon, protect the leader and aim for the enemy leader'. These could be like an 'elite' or 'commando' group. As I said, I don't like the idea for regular Wesnoth, but maybe for the experimental corner? I've heard they are missing ideas... I will show the topic to Gambit tomorrow, maybe he likes the idea.

[ancestral]

This could work in single player possibly, but for multiplayer it would be absolutely disastrous and likely be exploited. Plus it would not reflect the skill level represented by the human player, which is generally why people play competitive multiplayer games, to compare skill and best your opponent.

I don't think there's a good way to make this in GUI. It could possibly be a debug command. Possible this could see the light of day in Experimental.

[PeterPorty]

No... That isn't true, as far as I know, people play multiplayer to have fun, if they wanted to prove they are the best player they would play ladder games.