Problem with current squad command/control interface

[4 IN 1 0]

Squad command and control interface is about the oldest part in the series, and it haven't been much change much since the very beginning, apart from allowing many more units within a squad, and that context sensitive menu.

And right now, TBH, it is a real big fucking mess.

Allow me to explain:

One of the problem happening is that having units more then 2 pages is starting to become a pain in the ass:

If you are going to have 4 full fire team assigned into 4 colour team plus a core command squad(team white, thats you) you will have a squad size of 4+4+4+4+4=20 units at minimum,

and if you want to have a enhanced fire team setup you will add another 5 soldier into the list, not to mention that if you want to do other set up and the pages will start building up very fast,

not nice at all because once you have spend a long time managing the team, assigning them into fire team, you will still have to spend equal amount of time crawling through all the pages to find the unit you want,

that is the exact opposite of having to setup fire team in the first place.

One of the idea to correct this problem is to take concept from high command interface from ARMA 2 and bring that sort of control down into standard command interface,

by sorting team assigned units into 1 single icon, highlighting individual unit ability(like AT/AA/machine gun/medic) with small icon or letters besides the team icon, and control it like a single unit,

while develop some kind of mechanism(like double tap F-keys) to "unfold" the team icon to allow selecting individual unit inside.

The second problem is, for some reason, developers seems to think that having context sensitive menu completely cover over the old menu to be a good idea,

while someone seems to think that it is the be-all-end-all solution, in reality the only thing it did is to confuse players, old and new,

either by not allowing them to know that it is there in the first place, or ignore the fact that sometimes you will forgot which key to push to do certain things, counter intuitive at it best.

This is also a much harder problem to solve given most of the old commands are tie into AI mechanic, and the fact that some people just don't like things get change, even if it is a bad things that NEEDS to be change.

P.S: I am on my way to get a FAA A&P mechanic licenses next year and therefore do not have too much time to further explore more ideas, so please, THINK before saying anything like "OH there is no problem you sucks",

there is problem, and that is why many people prefer not to use AI at all, its just not enjoyable for many people.

[metalcraze 290]

What would stop you from assigning every fireteam into a separate High Command unit if you want to control every bit of a platoon so much in the mission creation?

Why would you want to control 20+ people from the squad interface anyway?

The only thing BIS needs to do to improve this is to add said assignment of squad members into HC units within the game itself. Although accessing 5 coloured teams with shift F1-F5 isn't hard.

They also need to make HC units keep formations just like IRL so you won't have to babysit every single team in HC whenever you want to move somewhere. Squad line and Squad column will be more than enough.

I completely agree with you that HC functionality needs to be expanded in a way like that but putting 20 people into a single squad - that's you creating problems for yourself if anything

Edited June 3, 2013 by metalcraze

[kremator 1064]

I agree that it is not perfect by any means. I've been trying to think about the games that do this command correctly - but noone that are as complex as Arma.

However, with enough persuasion, BIS can do something useful with commanding. In time we shall have 'all teh thingz'.

[4 IN 1 0]

Why would you want to control 20+ people from the squad interface anyway?

Reason A: BECAUSE YOU CAN

Reason B: You have that much assets at your disposal, yet instead of further exploit its functionality by creating a system that allows you to managing all these assets, you want to limit your assets down to a level where changes is not needed, then I will have to ask you a question: Why bother to remove the units limits in the first place? If you want to go back to OFP era where you can only control 12 unit, thats your thing, but having making progress only to step back because of something that you can actually fix given enough effort, time and resource, is something that being a human shouldn't do.

[doveman 7]

I agree it's a bit of a mess and hard to use at the moment. Pressing the number keys to select/deselect individual soldiers works OK but after that it all gets a bit messy trying to tell one team to go to the left, get behind some cover and suppress whilst the other team flanks right quietly for example.

Certainly I think voice control can make things a lot easier than having to try and remember which number keys to press but even then I'm not sure that ArmA sophisticated enough to give us adequate control of the AI to carry out complicated maneuvers like that.

Maybe one simple visual change that might make things less cluttered is to have the teams displayed vertically above each other rather than all on one line. Obviously this would obscure a bit more of the bottom-left corner of the screen but that's probably not a majorly important area in terms of scanning/targetting anyway. There's also a mod that changes the role icons to text, like GL for grenadier, which makes it a lot easier as you don't have to interpret the quite hard to read icons to identify the soldier you're looking for.

In terms of targeting, I think it would make a lot more sense if, when pulling up the target list, the target numbers were displayed in your view above the targets. Whilst this is obviously unrealistic, so is having a list of targets to scroll through to tell your AI which target to focus on. In real-life, once you'd identified targets you'd have a general situational awareness of who was were and would just quickly point out targets to your soldiers for them to attack but in ArmA you have a list of targets which give their clock direction but you don't have any sense of where they are or their distance as you haven't actually had eyes on. I don't think you should have to personally put your view directly on every target before you're considered to have seen it, as IRL your soldiers would spot targets as well and direct your attention to them, with a combination of clock and compass bearings, landmark descriptions (to the left of the blue barn, under those trees by the hill) or just pointing, which they can't do in ArmA so I think some allowance has to be made for targets to be added to the target list, with bearings and distance, without you personally having spotted them. However, in ArmA it's a lot easier to lose your bearings and sense of where targets are than IRL, which is why I think it would be a reasonable adjustment to make up for the lack of real life senses to show the target number above the targets on the battlefield (not permanently, so that it's not too intrusive but at least when giving target orders to the AI).

[Smurf 12]

Can you pick one new feature/task/concept you’re working on now and tell a bit more about it?

Well, I’m working on a new squad concept. In the past our squads consisted of 10 soldiers, but now we are moving to a more concentrated squad concept with 8 men. We felt that it’s too difficult to micro-manage 10 soldiers when you're the leader. A squad of 8, where each soldier has been assigned a specific role, gives you more leeway for leading and micro-managing. The roles are not fully decided yet, but it's coming along pretty well.

http://www.arma3.com/news/report-in-lukas-haladik-sandox-design#.UaypSZynf7s

May change things?

[dmarkwick 261]

The main problem as I see it is very simply - there is no initial 1-0 list of command options. You select unit(s) and are then presented with a list of contextual commands, but there is no hint of the others. How are new (and some old) players supposed to know of these ingame? Finding the info is one thing (I guess it will be in the manual somewhere) but having the info at hand in game is what's needed.

(I'm of the opinion that an ingame GUI could also be implemented, augmenting (not replacing) the current 1-0 method. Simple hold down a hotkey to use, final selection executes the command, releasing the hotkey cancels it.)

[4 IN 1 0]

The main problem as I see it is very simply - there is no initial 1-0 list of command options. You select unit(s) and are then presented with a list of contextual commands, but there is no hint of the others. How are new (and some old) players supposed to know of these ingame? Finding the info is one thing (I guess it will be in the manual somewhere) but having the info at hand in game is what's needed.

(I'm of the opinion that an ingame GUI could also be implemented, augmenting (not replacing) the current 1-0 method. Simple hold down a hotkey to use, final selection executes the command, releasing the hotkey cancels it.)

That exactly what the menu problem lies, thanks for further explaining it .

http://www.arma3.com/news/report-in-lukas-haladik-sandox-design#.UaypSZynf7s

May change things?

They actually thinking about cutting back didn't they

Oh well, things just turn from bad into shit. FPDR

Edited June 4, 2013 by 4 IN 1

[Mirudes 1]

Squad command and control interface is about the oldest part in the series, and it haven't been much change much since the very beginning, apart from allowing many more units within a squad, and that context sensitive menu.

And right now, TBH, it is a real big fucking mess.

Proposal:

Use the mouse and a modifier key. Hide or show the AIs when you need. Icons for every unit. Mark and split multiply units when you want to create teams. Assign colors to the teams in this way. Rearrange the numbers of the units (or the teams) with drag and drop. Show empty slots (never more tank-crews with numbers like 2|9|12). Buttonbars with the width of the screen. Multiple Buttonbars in several rows underneath the other.

[doveman 7]

Regarding my idea about having created teams split into individual lines above the main AI bar, perhaps another idea that would complement this is to have the soldier numbers automatically rearrange when creating teams, regardless of what numbers the soldiers originally had. So for example, the top-most line might be for green team and contain four soldiers and they would now be 1,2,3,4, the next line containing red team with four soldiers would be 5,6,7,8.

I think this would make life somewhat simpler so that if you want to select the last two soldiers in green team to send off to flank or whatever, you only need to press 3 and 4, not look at them and work out what numbers they are and then have to press maybe 5 and 9. Likewise, the first two soldiers in the next team/line would always be 5 and 6 and so on, assuming each team comprises of four soldiers of course. Regardless of how many soldiers are assigned to each team, the numbers would always be consecutive though.

Edited June 11, 2013 by doveman