groups of units with different abilities

wooo. I didn't know how to give a title for what I am about to talk about.

When you select a lot of marines, the maximum average is 12, you can use the stimpack
When you select a group of marines and that, by mistake, you select 3 firebats by accidents too (so 9 marines and 3 firebats) you can use the stimpack too.

But if you select a group of marines and that there was a ghost (for instance) inside the selection, you are penalized. The stimpack logo disappears. So you can't use it.
Of course the solution according to you is to hold on CTRL and left click on marines, and then make the same thing for the firebats, etc ....

But remember the last mission of the Terran campaign of Brood War, where there was a powerful Torrasque hunting you inside your own base. There is always a melting pot of marines, firebats, medics, tanks etc... inside my base, so when I see the Torrasque and that I want to use the marines and firebats' stimpacks I must be carreful to select them without including a tank by accident. Or when I hold on CTRL I don't use all the marines because just 12 are selected.

So my suggestions : When I make a huge rectangle around every units they must be all selected. That's what we can see now for tarcraft 2. That's a good news. There is no more limit at 12 units.
But what I want furthermore is that when I select a lot of different units, for instance marines, firebats and tanks we can see the logos of the stimpack AND the siege mode. Now there will be more places for more icons on the right size of the panel in Starcraft 2.

There will be thanks to this suggestion less problems to use the abilities.


PS : one question please, if I select three ghosts for instance, how do I do to lock one mechanical unit down in using just one ghost, and not the three ones who will use their lock down against the same mechanical unit. Thank you for the answer. Please don't tell me just to reselect ONE ghost than the three ones.

 

Well seems to me that you've noticed one of the basic problems in broodwar... anyway im gonna list it according to what ive noticed...

* A group of different units with different skill will focus the panel to give the player the skill list of only the unit with the highest rank or position...

* The solution of the CTRL managing was solved when WC3 was released, enabling us to make use of multi skills in a mixed unit group by simply pressing TAB to switch with other class types so Im assuming that this mechanic will be implemented in SC2.

* The torrasque indeed is also the toughest unit in the game, so I really was puzzled if you finished that mission by using infantry units.. if so congratulations, for me ive only been able to get through that mission by turtling first with my tanks and barricade of depot + bunkers, then later optimized for BC as they make easy of the torrasque...

* I can see a possibility of your suggestion to incorporate various skills in the panel when mixing up unit groups but I believe that the downside of that is it lessens efforts of players and quite disregards the aspect of perfecting micro-ability which really defined SC from other rts games where most of their units are very expendable... and that is also the reason why blizzard didnt do it in the first place with various patches..

* The problem I can see btw of the WC3 TAB mechanic is still the lack of control on which of your unit do you want to cast the skill... is it the one closest to the enemy? the most energy? the most healthy??.... and so forth.. but it really isnt a big deal coz as i have said before that a player is distingquished by his ability to cope up with situations like those to improve your macro-micro-and economic management functions in a game like SC "A player is made not Pre-made" so an automatic function with skill execution will definitely not be implemented...

* The WC3 mechanic also fixed the problem of multi units casting at the same time in SC broodwar, they made the WC3 user friendly to automatically only choose one unit to cast a skill even if you have many selected units in your control.. but then again the downside is still the same, it will also make the game too friendly and too easy to handle if they do something like that... so the only mechanic i'd like to consider is the function of TAB and nothing more...

* TRIVIA: Lockdown is not anymore included in terran lore or possibly it might be there but perhaps on campaign missions or custom games... the editor can provide that ^_^

 

I coulda swore, on one of the Terran videos released, it showed three ghosts selected, and he clicked snipe, selected unit1, hit snipe, unit 2, snipe, unit 3...then all three targeted their own. Same thing with the drop pod in the same video.

 

I think it will be the system as WC 3 to solve that issue, I'm not sure.

 

Yeah, they're going to use the WC3 system. As for smart casting, I would imagine some of the spells to be cast individually, some as a group. For example snipe would be cast individually, but the Reaper's mines are used as a whole. Watch the Terran announcement video and you'll see what I mean. What I propose is that they have a hotkey that allows you to toggle between group and individual casting.

 

now thats a better idea... for community friendly basis and for hardcore experts outhere