Concept 5

After building an experiemental combat engine and momentarily noticing that most of these style games occupy 1-7 lanes I realised I need to tone 21 lane scope down at least during testing.

For the present, there are 3 lanes like warfare 1944 where units are actually grouped in 1 MC. As for the World Map: Improved OOP and classed most stuff up so the fla is neater.

Ideas:

Formations/Fleets (Group Control/AI)
A player can choose a formation set up (maybe manually do so). This will mean a player can advance a group of units with scouts, machinegun type units on flanks, do pepper pot 2:2 cover formation type stuff. Maybe have it that more well trained units can do that automatically but not cheap units. This will also ease AI capability / construction.

Players may also group individual units into fleets to ease micro and enable reinforcement type stuff.

MovetoCover (breaking up the warzone in to easy chunks)
I like the idea of having a massive battlefield but it would be over the top both to code and to play. So much like 1944 I will break the map into sections where cover is, then units can move to the next cover, not just move forward like warlords. Maybe have it so units can lay down cover, or indeed if large units get disabled they can then act as cover.

Rally Points
User can define rally points so units will automatically move up if wanted.

CombatEngine
I'm working off infantry concept at the moment. Basically most main weapons can fire upto 8squares but are progressively less effective. (Stuff like Missles, grenade launches, grenades, mortars will have longer ranges.) I'm thinking of stealing an rpg engine ideas to ease things. Have just 4 arcs, and restricting reactions. IE units have to focus on thier lane first and foremost. So unless a unit has another unit infront of them, that unit can't effectively fire onto another lane.

Changing lanes is not available although may be added.

2 of the arcs will be sides, in other games if you get past a unit, thats it you just continue, in this game hopefully the units can attack sideways again based on restrictions. ie maybe some sort of "suprise attack"

Sneakiness/stealth/ fog of war I have to think about.