Exactly what it says on the tin. Post your thoughts, questions and preferences for how you will be able to command your Imperial Redcoats. Me personally, I have my fingers crossed for a system where a General type noble comes to the colony and will issue orders to your troops on his own, but you always have the decision to override his decisions.
Could you give a quick rundown of how it works compared to, say, Age of Empires? I'm not familiar with that title.
You assigned bounties in gold to motivate your units to go and deal with whatever was it that you assigned the bounty on (most of the time you didn't even need high bounties for that, though), but had no direct control over the combat units. They roamed the perimeters of your kingdom, scouting areas as they saw fit, if there was no bounty on anything. It's pretty much a "your units are RPG player characters" thing, with you being the one who gave them quests.
Personally I would prefer if you could organise your military, but not controll it directly. What I mean: You build squads and and assaign a squad leader. Then you mark certain areas on the map, for example an area you want scouted, one you want defended (your city) and so on. Then you give the squad captain the order to man those areas. Everything else is up to the squad commander. And his desicions should be affected by his character. A carefull character would send a scout ahead and then the rest, or a brave / dumb one would never retreat. And a coward would flee, even if told to defend. So you have to be carefull who you make the squad leader. So all in all I want to feel like the supreme commander who gives orders to his generals who then do the rest. Of course this would require quite some advanced AI to not be frustrating. And some good feedback so you know why your squad leaders aren´t doing their job (a coward should tell you he´s afraid for example).
^^^ That's more or less how I feel. However, you could explain bad/sub-par AI by creating a Major General-style noble who is depicted as an imbecile. Gaslamp doesn't have to kill themselves making the perfect set military strategists is all. Plus, the ability to direct the troops yourself own is also a vital part of keeping things from becoming hairpulling.
i think Dwarf Fortress has a pretty good system for military. Quite complicated, but allows a lot of control - and it doesn't have to be used to its full extent to work. You assign dwarves to squads, and assign them uniforms and a place to train. You can set it so a few dwarves will patrol for a couple of months, or station themselves at the gates. You can activate squads, and somewhat control therm manually - assign kill and move orders, though they still use their own brain.
In Soviet Russia, You work for the military! I would prefer Dwarf Fortress's military setup most, to be honest.
Yeah, now that I think about it it might be a better one. Though it's likely to bring less "fun" than the one I mentioned, but whatever.
That method is still funny too all you have to do is make it optional for the truly insane, and make it mandatory on the hardest setting. [/troll face]
Yeah, DF had a good system in general, but it lacked feedback. For example sometimes your dwarfes would refuse to train and you didn´t know why.
The Majesty system is going to be really hard to balance though. Like generally the goal in there was to slowly accrue money until you have enough heros and equipment (and/or grinding at the fairgrounds until they're level 60 ) that your heros can defeat whatever boss monster there is. The two main threats in that game were either failing to get your town up fast enough, and accidentally triggering the endgame event too early (or like, running out of time and having your city earthquaked to death but you know) Which isn't as effective for open ended stuff, really. Too hard to effectively point your units at the right targets when you do get attacked. I'd probably aim for a DF thing more. Your military will do what you say when ON DUTY but you have to balance that with off duty time and uhhhh if they run out of booze during a long patrol you will have problems.
How about a mix? A steady militia like in DF and some mercenaries/bountyhunters that you can controll through bounties. Would make the world more intense. And maybe your enemies should be able to put bounties on your people, too. And then there could be assasination-attempts... The possibilities are endless. ANd if they go in the same direction as DF, then balance is secondary anyway.
So it seems we agree on something a little more indirect that the typical RTS. What kind of units would you want to have? I've seen/heard/assume Musketeers, Grenadiers, Steam Knights, Zeppelins, Steamships, and Field Cannons. I've got my fingers crossed for cavalry, tanks, spider tanks, and other mechanized monstrosities. Oh man, really hoping for an experimental ironclad that can wade out of the water and walk on land a la Supreme Commander.
In general I'd favor a military approach that was as hands-off as possible, where the computer could generally be relied upon to make up squads and to train them. But you the player would be assigning their patrols and stations, as well as putting together your own task-specific squads. As much as DF had a comprehensive military, the game still had a serious problem in that its system is very flowbreaking. In general I feel like a game like this is best if players aren't spending a lot of time pausing and organizing stuff for five minutes anytime something interesting happens within a two minute timeframe.
I like DF's system, but it is too complex. I think the player should hold a majority of the control, being able to build barracks, set schedules, uniforms, equipment, garrisons, and patrols, with a simple interface and menu system. I'm not sure how things like scouting and expeditions will be handled, whether being Scout/Send Expedition > Boondalborg Forest, then they run off map, or having this hopefully large world right in front of us, and sending them in a more hands-manner. I don't know enough about this game or how its going to work to really get into what I'd like to think to see, but I'm hoping for alot of customization options and largeish scale combat (you know, dozens of soldiers defending against an onslaught of zombie-clockwork-mermen-cultists with walls and towers and great fun orphan-powered mechs wearing fancy iron hats shooting magma streams from an orphan-powered zeppelin, or whatever the devs are planning with this hopefully orphan-powered game).
Ewww, the less said about Majesty's control of military units the better, IMHO. I'd love to see control of units similar to Age of Empires (maybe with a squad/platoon mechanic) but wouldn't mind seeing a Majesty system for controlling/influencing individual hero units. And, agreed, Dwarf Fortress system is a bit too complex. I don't mind being able to assign weapons and uniforms (actually, I'd encourage it) but getting down to assigning ammunition and having unarmed and naked soldiers is a bit too much for me.
