cRPG Tactical Formations

By formational movement and positioning in cRPGs, I mean squads or parties (of combat units or characters) moving together and positioning themselves in tactical formations such as lines, files and wedges; that is, in engine-automated or as player-assignable squad party formations. I do not mean self-tailoring formations manually on the playing field, on the fly.

Players employ marquee selection group bandboxing to capture multiple combat units on the playing field. Then, they assign them a formation, such as line, file or wedge. The combat units then assume that formation and move to the chosen destination in formation, but subject to their individual movement rates, the engine's pathfinding routine and height-mapped terrain that includes obstacles such as placeables and enemies, which can impact or break the formation.

In cRPG Design, the object of tactical formations is to reduce independent combat unit micromanagement, assist in the nagivation of zones (e.g., single file formation is preferable in narrow, maze-like zones) and facilitate tactical approaches to combat encounters.

What I mean is, the approach to the aggro. To give an example of that: assuming the supertanker [cite, cite] is in the first rank, the wedge formation (third from the right in the Baldur's Gate array shown below) ensures that the enemy targets (or at least catches sight of) the combat unit that is most able to withstand their assault -- first.

Formations should be switchable and rotatable on the playing field. For example, aggro suddenly flanks the party so we rotate the wedge such that aggro comes up against our supertanker first, instead of our archer, mage and bard. The supertanker takes the brunt of the aggro while the archer fires her bow, the mage casts her spell and the bard sings her ballad.

Ideally, not only the combat unit's position in the formation but also its distancing or spacing out within that position would be tailorable. For example, usually the mage is positioned behind the supertanker, but in this case we would be able to choose how far behind the supertanker the mage is positioned.

Formations can be set via the UI (as screencapped above) or on the playing field itself (which is rarer). Both the UI and playing field can allow for exact tailoring of the formation, though that is rarely implemented (if set on the playing field, we need a "store" button to hold the formation in memory). In fact, I've only seen such tailoring in ToEE and PoR: RoMD.

Most party-based cRPGs (isometric cRPGs or not) can benefit from formations, though realtime and RTwP combat systems are more reliant on them. As a rule, turn-based cRPGs do not need them in-combat because each combat unit acts in strict order (e.g., initiative), and individually (though coordinated with each other), rather than altogether and simultaneously. 

In tactical turn-based cRPGs as exemplified by Jagged Alliance 2 and Silent Storm, formations are all but useless even outside of combat not only because players usually desire exacting control of the combat unit's movement and position down to the individual square of occupation that they have carefully allocated to them (which can mean the difference between relative safety or instant death), but also because superior pathfinding routines make manual micromangement dead-easy. Indeed, during complex and fluid or ever-changing combat states, formations would be detrimental. As well, the concept of "supertanker" does not exist in JA2 and SS outside of the latter's panzerklein (i.e., a wedge would be of limited utility).

By supertanker, I mean an Armor Class Lord or a Mirror Imaged Mage. And by that I mean a combat unit whose defense is such that it is almost impossible to land a single blow upon it, even if it gets mobbed by aggro. I'm talking about a single combatant that can stand against an entire army and yet come out on top, largely unscathed. REAL tactics games don't have supertankers because supertankers usually ruins tactics.

Of all cRPGs, Neverwinter Nights 2 (which features Full Party Control) suffers most from not having formations. As a result, movement and positioning feels awful. Moreover, movement and positioning is inaccurate in general; a mess.

Below: Formation and no formation:

And of all cRPGs, it is probably the Infinity Engine games that benefit most from formational movement and positioning; not only because the pathfinding routine is third-rate, but also because of its round-based, realtime with pause combat system. Moreover, its movement and positional tactics are relatively simple.

***

This is not a tactical formation sceencapped below. What it shows is pixel-precise positioning (literally) that is possible in Jagged Alliance 2's squaregrids. Fallout 1 and Fallout 2 also feature pixel-precise positioning in their hexgrids, but they are not FPC-based (companions are AI-based).

I mentioned engine-automated formations in my opener. Well, Jagged Alliance 2 features such. It is rare that marquee-selected combat units fail to move to a destination in a sensible manner.

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