Some ideas for the mission builder:

[Helmut_AUT 0]

1) When you copy a group, for example a truck with soldiers that have "this moveincargo truck1" in their init - make the copied group automatically apply "this moveincargo truck2" or whatever the name of the copied truck is. The game should be able to understand such relations when copying groups.

2) Add a drop down to assign an unit to a color-coded fireteam.

3) Currently an unit can have a placement radius, which adds some randomness to edited missions. It would be nice if we could define placement area not only as circle with radius, but also as box or ellipse with given X,y and rotation, for example to make sure the unit is spawned somewhere to the left or right in front of a village, but not too far away or too much back.

4) Same for waypoint placement circles.

5) I know the scripts are easily available to create such things, but it would be nice if a randomized patrol/guard waypoint could be included (akin to Urban Patrol script, but without the need for any scripting). Meaning, you can define an area and the group will randomly move inside that area - if waypoint placement can also be square or eliptical (see above) this would be a very streamlined interface.

Could also be a module or a trigger with a certain user-defined shape, right now the "Guard" trigger only defines it's center.

6) List of weapons, ammo and special items to pick from, it gets tiresome to alt-tab into the online COMREF all the time.

All these additions would allow for quick, easily made and somewhat random small missions without the need to memorize a lot of scripting code.

[frederf 0]

Mass editing of units would be great. It's so irritating that you can't drag select 10 units and set them all to playable at once, you have to do. each. one. bloody. individually.

I think with better ease of use in the editor (especially 3D placement), you would not tire out the mission makers so much doing simple tasks so they'd have enough time and energy to do the extra things that are possible, just often omitted because it's so much effort.

[Tajin 349]

Some of these issues can be avoided, you know ?

1) When you copy a group, for example a truck with soldiers that have "this moveincargo truck1" in their init - make the copied group automatically apply "this moveincargo truck2" or whatever the name of the copied truck is. The game should be able to understand such relations when copying groups.

Maybe an "setplayable this" would also work. Haven't tested it. Could be that a unit with that command would not show up as playable in the beginning.

Try using this instead:

this moveInCargo nearestObject [this, "Car"]

Now you only have to place the soldiers close to the truck they should enter and you can copy them too.

Anyway, if you're making missions the "nearestObject" command can be your best friend. An simple script with that can also be used for example to put soldiers in buildingpositions by simply placing them next to the building and defining the number of the position.

Edited June 9, 2009 by Tajin

[Helmut_AUT 0]

"NearestObject" would require to know the class or identifier of that object (is it just car, armored...?), and if you are mounting a whole convoy on a road, units might get swapped around. It's a good workaround, but having the feature in the editor would still be cool.

Frederf, +1 on the mass editing. Same with "In Cargo" or removing "In Formation" from a squad, it's endless mouseclicking. Might be cool if even the init field can be filled for multiple units at once.

And I agree - the more basic stuff can be moved to "drag & drop", the more scripting brains people can use on actually doing DIFFERENT stuff, that makes a mission special and interesting. This seems in fact the intend behind the game logic modules, in A1 I often spent more time getting some little funky side thing done than shaping the flow of the mission.