Summoned Unit Control

[Garem]

The new "Control Creature" player tool is amazing, but can it be modified?

If so, I'd love to see it expanded to be more useful. Controlling more than 3 minions is damned hard. Two ideas come to mind.

Unit grouping. Via talking to the summon or the /c system you could assign pets a number. Then, use a combo of /c group # and clicking on a location to have them move towards their assignment.

That may be a pipe dream. But what about a command to select ALL your units. Maybe if you use the Player Tool on your PC or using a /c command to control all units to do whatever you tell them.

[Nightshadow]

It would be very, very useful to be able to immediately have say... three of my fire elementals assist the paladin holding off the gnolls to the left while the other six get the ones off of a dieing companion on the right while I heal him.

As someone who constantly has a half dozen or more summons out at once, being able to control more than one at a time (without the use of those crappy voice commands) would be very much appreciated.

The structure of this, I think, should be:
-In the crafting menu, you can set up a second control companion tool, named Group Control or something of that nature.
-If left at its default settings, without setting up any subgroups among your summons, the use of it will work exactly as Control Companion, only instead of just one monster, all summons, animal companions, henchmen, dominated creatures and familiars will take the order.
-Chat commands to quickly set up groups:
-- Type /c gcom fam 1 (this will put your familiar in group 1, switch out fam for com, hen or dom to put an animal companion, henchmen or dominated creatures in the desired group instead)
-- Type /c gcom sum 1-3 1 (this will put the first three summons in group 1, or if you were to put 4-6, the second three, so on and so forth)
-- Type /c gcom sel 1 (this will switch the group command tool to command the 1st group
-- The reason for using chat commands and not clicking on a member of the group is so that one can quickly give orders and switch between by means of setting up macros.

Anyway, just my thoughts, might add more to this later.

[putrid_plum]

It would be cool, though I have never had an army out yet I have seen a few players control a large amount of summons well.  Infact I would also point out after you summon something from another realm it should be hard to control like 10 of them at once, as in you need to concentrate to keep control of them all.

[Caster13]

New?

[Meldread]

Yes, please!  It's crazy hard to get those summons to do what you want.  I tend to hold back summoning until they're needed and thus generally do it in battle.  This means we're fighting a lot of things at once and I don't have time to give individual commands to my summons.

Something as simple as being able to command them all at once, "ATTACK THE BIG ONE WITH THE GIANT WEAPON!" would be awesome. >_>

[Garem]

Yea, I don't know why I called it new. Regardless...

I definitely understand the need to have a challenge when using many units, but bear in mind that using hordes of summons comes as a great cost. The summoner is using a whole lot of spellpower to make it happen. Plus, its not like the commands could POSSIBLY be any more advanced that "You three, go there and fight the nearest enemy. You two, stand by me and don't leave. And lonely little elemental, go fight that seagull, it's bothering me."

This comes after having tried to delicately use 5 summons a week or so ago. Two clicks to select and move each one. Right click-left click to make them not stand there picking their nose and actually fight back, times five because they were never in the right position all at the same time. Oh, look, one hit a trap because the AI for pets blows, now it's frozen. /c recall was my only friend. =(

[Relinquish]

Voice commands don't work? They work on animal companions.

[Garem]

They do, but voice commands are not terribly useful. What this suggestion is about is using the companion movement capabilities of the Player Tool for commanding multiple animals, summons, or undead minions.

[Nightshadow]

The voice commands do work, but are buggy:
Attack Nearest: Will not attack for between 3-6 seconds, other than that it's fine (better to use Control Companion if you want to have your summons attack immediately after being summoned)
Defend Me: Will attack anyone who is attacking you, usually whoever is closest to them, can be useful if attack nearest isn't working but you're under attack from archers
Follow Me: Remember to use attack nearest when the next batch of enemies come.
Heal Me: Useless unless you have summons who can heal you, I don't think there are any now that the Underdark familiars have been replaced.
Hold Position: Good at making them stop what they're doing, but they don't attack anyone who comes near them and sometimes they won't even defend themselves, this is useless if you want a particular summon to stop and guard an area.

[Garem]

last bumpity

[scrappayeti]

What makes the summons so difficult to use, is that they will not take a direct order to attack something. If there is a single red mob or player between the target you click and the position they start in, they will attack that instead. You can fix this, by clicking the "Stand your ground" off the rotating menu on the creature.

That means every one you want to attack has to use the following order: Click Special Command Button. Click Summon. Right Click Summon and choose Stand Ground. Click Special Command Button again. Click target.

As you can see this is unwieldy to the extreme. I am playing a stealth wizard who often sits there and does nothing but direct minions, and I still usually fail with three or four up. They run out of line of sight so you have to click their picture, or they run so far away even that isn't sufficient, or they have a brain meltdown and do nothing, or they are attacking that subdued person, and cannot be persuaded to stop (so you have to find that persons name in the character list and non-hostile them for a moment so it picks a new target). Managing summons is a full time job.

At the moment you can just acknowledge they are mostly there for chaos factor, and actually do things in PvP, like pew pew and debuff etc etc. Or you can drive summons. You cannot do both.

[GoblinSapper]

Isn't part of the point of summons that it requires the complete concentration of the conjurer and is unwieldy at best? In a 'real' situation you wouldn't have total control of your summons, you would direct them generally and their insticts would drive them.

[Drakill Tannan]

The problem is that even with full attention, summons still act retarded. And never do what you ask-

[Garem]

It doesn't matter how good you are, GS. You cannot feasibly control more than 5 or so summons in PvE. For PvP, it's a joke.

This isn't a complicated command. This is just a way to give the simple commands:

"All of you, kill that."

"All of you, stand there."

etc.

[Random_White_Guy]

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say: Good.

The marshal and control of every single summon in a militaristic fashion of groups and otherwise would make the already intimidating Conjurer spells that EFU has strengthened to high hell even stronger.

I've always viewed it as kind of a tidal wave. You can make it a big wave, or a -really big wave- but ultimately it's still a massive force of chaotic action.

From an IC perspective it would take incredible focus and concentration to command so many forces in various sub-forces when in combat.

Still though there's concern that they'd become even -MORE- overpowered, when EFU has seen summons bolstered more than any other spell really on the entire server. Summoned from the "Summon" spells or the "Animate" spells. These things are already beefy as hell.

This would make them moreso. If any efforts were taken to make this possible then I'd say add regular concentration check based on how many summoned and see the summon break free and become hostile to all as a "Loss of focus"