Ability To Split Groups Into Subgroups

[Emmy]

In my head, I see a four ship departing for say, a SEAD mission and en route, they're in a nice Finger Four formation traveling along in a cohesive gaggle.

 

40 miles from the target zone, 1 and 2 turn 30 degrees right (as Group 1A) while 3 and 4 turn 30 degrees left (as Group 1B) and each pair follow divergent -> convergent routes to attack the target across a 45 degree arc.

 

Or maybe four Hogs split up out of an Echelon formation as 1A, 1B, 1C and 1D and take paths / speeds that put all four across a target from four different points within 10 seconds of each other totally overwhelming the enemy.

 

Each group then gets a "Rejoin" action and cruise home victorious for a beer at the O Club.

 

Have the development gurus ever considered something like this?

[Northstar98]

+1 I like the idea of being able to split groups up and merge them together again.

 

Here I'm really talking about ground vehicles and infantry and the like and not so much aircraft and ships, but this should still apply regardless.

 

What I would like is the ability to control waypoints for individual units of a group, this can be useful for making custom formations on the go regardless of terrain without the more time consuming process of having to reconfigure a formation using the process we have now which is kind of akin to making a template and seeing as we can't physically see even an accurate top-down silhouette of the object we're placing, making accurate and precise templates for formations can be tricky, especially when the formation might not work right for varying terrain.

 

Ideally there would be the system we have now ('master' waypoint for the entire group, units work out what formation to take) then maybe a disperse or break formation advanced waypoint action where individual units of a group now get their own waypoints and list of advanced waypoints for the individual unit (a good feature here would be apply to all/apply to selected meaning if an advanced waypoint action is the same for all units in the group whilst 'dispersed' we can quickly make it apply to all or selected units in the group). Then maybe a rejoin action like you said to resume following the 'master' waypoints. Another alternative is just to have a 'show individual unit waypoints' checkbox which displays all the waypoints of all the units of the group (I'd imagine there would be anyway for say, tank formations where each unit follows a slightly different path to other units in the group, but I could be wrong).

 

This way we can have much more control (as well as easier control) over formations of groups irrespective of terrain, we can even make some units fire at point - but not all units, we can even have control of where exactly units go to find cover if under fire - at the moment they sort of do a primitive branching effect if on the road, it would be good to be able to define where they go along their route.

 

It would also be nice if it were possible to merge/unmerge different groups on the go in the mission editor.

Edited December 20, 2017 by Northstar98