Idea: Multiple unit selections

[C'Rogers]

Alright, I actually think this is an idea that has never been mentioned before (though it may be getting somewhat close to how Steve plans to do QB unit selection in the future without points).

One of the complaints about the game from some crowds is the lack of unit control and variability. For those who rarely played anything but CMx1 QBs this does seem to be a dramatic change to someone else choosing you units. Here is what I see as a new option without getting into a QB discussion over points.

For scenarios at the moment we have a variety of AI plans. Well why not a variety of unit selection plans. A scenario designer could create multiple unit selections that could emphasize different tactics and matchup possibilities. It would be especially nice if the player was given the ability to choose which group of units he wanted to use. It also has the value of just making the AI in scenarios even more unpredictable and give good scenarios much more playability.

The main problem with this is that it would be more difficult to use the 'unit victory condition'. Not necessarily impossible, but it would require juggling.

I also have no real programming knowledge so don't know how hard it would be, but seems an easier solution than some of overhauls proposed.

[C'Rogers]

Going to bump my own thread with some more ideas, again things I don't think have come up much. And again, no programming knowledge, so not sure on how difficult they would be.

Baked Scenarios

Allow the deploying of smoke. Creating an already going on battle would be helped by the ability to put down some potential cover.

Also, and this may make the file sizes to big, would it possible that a scenario could be played hotseat by its creator and then made a bake at some point. This would allow bullets to actually be flying when the player takes over.

Scenario Victory Conditions

Casualty Parameters - There are a few different ways I think this could be done that would make some more improvement to an already good system (the thresholds).

1) Allow the creation of multiple threshold. 10% a certain number of points, 30% another, 70% another or whatever. This way a player could be penalized for low causalities and then hit with higher and higher amounts. At the moment in creating scenarios I run into situations where I want to say "command is willing to accept a 10% loss rate, 25% is bearable, 45% will be very bad, and 60% will mean that the battle is almost guarnteed to be considerd a loss.

2) A more simple approach that could also be useful would be to allow points to be awarded/subtracted multiple points a threshold is hit. For example 100 points are awarded for every 5% of the enemy force as casualty. This would be useful for scenarios were wiping out any portion of the enemy force is considered useful, or for even fight scenarios (red v red).

This could be used for ammo as well (every five percent of your ammo you extend takes 25 points)

Ammo

The ability to specify certain types of ammo as more valuable than others (ie javelins) when calculating ammo totals for points.

Destroy/Preserve

For destroy and preserve objectives allow some way to specify how much/how little damage needs to be done. If a US is attacking a city there might be reasons they can't shoot up a mosque and an empty school. Well if the school is left standing then that probably meets the objective, but one stray bullet into a mosque might be enough to consider the battle a loss

Withdraw

The old withdraw option could be useful. In some scenarios the red players main objective is to inflict casualties. If they succeed they may just wish to withdraw.

Purchasing

Being able to purchase a selected unit out of a larger option in the purchase screen would be nice. Because most purchases are done by battalion there is often a lot of deleting. So instead of buying the battalion, opening it up, and deleting every thing but one company, it would be nice to open it up in the purchase screen and just buy the company there. Not a game issue but a time saver.

Just some ideas. Not necessarily the most critical and all scenario related, but things that I believe haven't come up and could be nice improvements over an already nice system.