A partial solution to ground unit movement issues?

[Mgellis]

I was playing around with ideas and something occurred to me.

There are sometimes issues if one creates a scenario where ground units are moving through terrain. They get stuck, or they go off in some weird direction because the game thinks it's the easiest way to navigate the territory, etc.

In some scenarios, perhaps the solution is to use a technique from turn-based games. Rather than let Command try to figure out how to navigate units, which may result in delays, units going way off course, etc., just have the units move all the way to their next location at the end of their "turn." The scenario designer has to...

Figure out in advance where the ground units should be at certain time intervals
Set up Teleport actions to move those units

In other words, the ground units are at one location when the scenario starts; after six hours (or whatever the time interval is), they are teleported to another location--the place they are supposed to have moved to; after twelve hours, they are teleported to a third location, and so on.

Assuming that these are mobile ground units, and not automatically detectable, and assuming the units are not friendly, the player will not see the actual teleport take place, so it does not interfere with immersion in the game. Another trick would be to make the trigger a slightly random time range, so you don't know exactly when the units will jump from one "hex" to the next. The issues with ground navigation are avoided because the ground units are not actually moving.

Obviously, setting up the teleport events is more work for the scenario designer, but unless you're talking about huge numbers of units, it's probably feasible. In addition, it really only works with non-player sides, but that still opens up some interesting options for scenario design.

Any thoughts on this?

[Nikel]

I reported this as a bug.

https://forums.matrixgames.com/viewtopi ... 9#p5251139


Indeed “Direct” works better, should be the default option.

[Mark352]

That is a really interesting idea. I haven't done much with ground units but, I have noticed the weird paths ground units can take after I have plotted a course to a specific location. Teleporting units on the computer-side could create a challenging scenario for the player-side. A designer might even consider, if appropriate to the scenario, using a LUA action to move ground units to one of several variable locations rather than using the teleport action.