by Chazar » Wed Mar 07, 2012 4:36 pm
I think it would be nice if "next unit" would cycle the list based on proximity to the current map position. If I fight at severel corners of the map, I would like to deal with each war theatre completely, while the details of that area are fresh in my mind.
Of course, this would require an extra list of all non-defending, non-sentry units having move left to be kept, in order to remember which units had been selected by "next unit" thus far, to ensure that all units were shown before coming back to a previously selected unit (so the list is filled with all non-defending, non-sentry units having move left whenever it becomes empty only). Of course, each time "next unit" is activated, the metric distance to the current screen position need to be computed for all "next unit"-candidates remaining on that list, and then re-sorting that list by distance (though one might expect the list to be largely pre-sorted on average).
I can't judge whether this is too expensive to compute, if it is compute on the client (why not - just selecting a unit should not alter the game state) it might be fast enough - or at least fast enough for some computers, so that the distance calculation and sorting can be deactivated by an option setting.