Editor requests: Lock Unit Placement, Random setup

[benpark]

I thrive on great editors. This one is the best of the best. That said, a few wants:

I've noticed a few others are having some trouble with placing units in the fantastic editor and having them not show up where they expect them in game testing. For example, placing a squad in a 3rd story building and finding them on the ground near the building. I'd like the ability to specify where the units are placed in a precise manner, like the good old "lock" of CM past.

Taking into consideration how great multiple AI plans are, I would also like to have 2-3 multiple AI setup zones that would be randomly chosen so that the player would in effect be facing not only a new AI plan, but an entirely unknown battlefield situation from the start. Or am I just not aware this is in yet...

[Hukka]

Random setup would be very nice indeed.

[rune]

They do stay where you put them. What could be happening is the AI plan. If you place them in the first floor, then give them an AI plan of staying low, it will move them down. You have to match the AI plan with where you want the troops.

Rune

[SlowMotion]

I think there may be some special cases where a unit may start in different place.

I once placed a Syrian medium bunker near marsh/mud tiles in Deploy. When I started playing, it always was in a totally different place - corner of the map hundreds of meters away. Then I went back to editing the map and tried a little bit different places to the bunker. After some tinkering it no longer started in map corner, but in the deployed place.

Not quite sure what caused this. Since this was a bunker there was no AI plan's movement order that should have caused change of place. Could it be that deploy allows you to put units to places where they shouldn't be? In setup phase the game notices such invalid placement and puts it to some safe place? Just guessing.

[Roter Stern]

Originally posted by benpark:

Taking into consideration how great multiple AI plans are, I would also like to have 2-3 multiple AI setup zones that would be randomly chosen so that the player would in effect be facing not only a new AI plan, but an entirely unknown battlefield situation from the start. Or am I just not aware this is in yet...

Unless I’m missing something, that’s already in… the very first order for an AI plan is the Setup zone, hence a group can have as many different and unique setup combinations as there are AI plans.

I’ve personally tired it out and it works like a charm – I had two AI groups assault a center position from the edges of the map. The AI was given 6 plans for each of the 2 groups, with unique starting locations for each. So while the AI might attack from East and South one time, North and West the next, and then SW and E after.