Group management / recycling

[Bagel 0]

I am using dynamically created groups and using the dynamically assigned group names to issue commands to the groups.

As I understand it once a group is created it is never removed and as a result I run into a problem after I reach the 63 group limit, although I will never have that many active groups in game, these are small squads and they get wiped out often.

My question is how do I recycle the empty groups, I can't get their ID because their is not unit in it, using the group command. Is there a way to manage these groups without units in them, or even simpler is there a way to remove empty groups from the game and thus free up the 63 limit.

Thanks

Bagel

[Chill 0]

Theres a great system already that reinforces groups it is the best. http://www.main.thechainofcommand.net/

Its called the enemy stack.

[Bagel 0]

Thanks Chill, went ovet to COC ( I am a big fan) and had a look. It looks fantastic, I will try it out tonite.

Itis, however not quite what I want, the enemystack is large scale confrontation management and very elaborate and I will certainly use it, especially in a WWII setting.

For my purposes, I have small squads of VC infiltrating an area and all i require is a simple method to manage groups i.e. ideally to remove created groups that are now empty or second prize a simple method to recycle.

Enemy stack looks good, will delve into it asap.

Bagel

[KTottE 0]

Couldn't you keep the names of the groups?

I assume they're all named after the same convention, vcGroup1, vcGroup2 or something similar. Then you could have some scripts that keeps track of the groups.

One script which holds empty groups which you can use again, one script that holds the active groups, which are unusable for the moment, and one script that counts the members of the active groups, and if there are 0 people in a group, it gets moved to the empty group list.

Would something like that work?

_numGuys = count vcGroup1

?(_numGuys <= 0) do fancy stuff here

[Bagel 0]

Right now that's the only option I can see

i.e. create an array with all the names of groups , count their contents and if zero use them as the next assigned group and recycle them that way. Kinda tedious and long , I am hoping to find a simple way of deleting group names from the active list of 63 max.

Thanks

Bagel

[hoz 0]

I use a (holddude) which I move into the grp once its empty and then I move the unit out of the group once I start to populate the group. Its annoying as hell. It was the only way I could come up with to keep the group alive.

Hoz

[bn880 5]

BTW: Anyone wanting to use WWII or VC units with EnemyStack will have to change the DB soldier/vehicle names to the appropriate WWII or VC names. Simply overwrite the names in the quotes.

I assume users will not be using 1985 and VC soldiers at the same time, if you did you could simply add to the DB and each Enemy Side configuration, but that is more work.

[bn880 5]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Bagel @ Jan. 07 2003,05:26)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Right now that's the only option I can see

i.e. create an array with all the names of groups , count their contents and if zero use them as the next assigned group and recycle them that way. Kinda tedious and long , I am hoping to find a simple way of deleting group names from the active list of 63 max.

Thanks

Bagel<span id='postcolor'>

I think that is a good way to do it, a better way (CPU wise) is to add event handlers to all AI units. Only when one of them dies you check the size of the group he was in, move the group to other array if needed. That could be more difficult to implement though.