Whenever they are commanded as a groupd to move they decide to use the current formation as their destination formation. This means that every time any slight positional change affects them those differences are saved in their new destination and the formation drifts apart randomly. This means frequent commands (such as follow mode) and/or different move speeds will quickly alter the formation enough that I need to take frequent breaks and reposition them into formation so that they say within range of the ones with roboports that repair.

When they have different move speeds the drift is so extreme that almost any time you order a new position before they arrive at the previous one the formation gets completely broken and they might drift several chunks per click.

Suggested fix: Save formation when they are selected instead of when they are ordered to move. This way you can reorder as many times as you want with completely different amounts of exoskeletons (or battery charge difference) and no drift will occur.

Edit: Bonus bug: If you enter a spidertron and use follow mode, your spidertron will try to follow the spidertrons that are following you and keep danceing back and forth. This happens regardless of the fact that your spidertron is part of the group that is following you or not. But it should never try to follow you when you are in it...

sounds like a plan, i'll implement it in the next release
the second bug should be fixed if I implement the first feature. originally I thought it was a bug but considered it a feature as it returned the player's spidertron to the median of the group, which shielded it. If I implement the first feature I would need to solve this one as it could lead to infinite walking if the player's spidertron position and the median are not the same

idk. for me it sounds easier to disable follow for all spidertrons with players in them. (follow up thought: what happens in multiplayer? :D)

I can see cases where players want to travel in their personal spidertron (for extra protection) or on foot (for weapons variation etc). should be fine in multiplayer, there's a unique array containing the spidertron squad for each player

I can see cases where players want to travel in their personal spidertron (for extra protection) or on foot (for weapons variation etc).

Yes. But disable it for the spidertron with THE PLAYER in it for FOLLOW PLAYER. There's never a reason for the spidertron that has THE player in it to follow THE same player. Obviusly if you command the squad to move then the spidertron with a player in it should go through with the command.

Would it also be possible for you to try and just arrange the selected spidertrons in a given formation? Like a per-player mod option?

https://imgur.com/Cl6BB9b

The 'drift'. has been resolved and formations should be static (you'll need to reselect your formations as I had to restructure some stuff in the global table). having options to use a preset formation could work but the logic needs to be implemented and to be honest its more creative if the player makes their own formations, but I can see the benefits in a battle where time is scarce.

Thanks :)

oh forgot to mention one thing: when the player is in a spidertron the spidertron they are in won't be offset from the mean of the group in its formation (they will become the mean position of the formation) but this effect is only as long as the player is in the spidertron - after leaving it returns to formation. I was going to maintain the offset but then I would have to calculate the mean every time it updates which would have UPS impacts on large squads. new implementation should remove the dancing though

Did you forget to upload it?

adding in the other request for switching between selecting and commanding mode
EDIT: 0.3.0 released

having options to use a preset formation could work but the logic needs to be implemented and to be honest its more creative if the player makes their own formations, but I can see the benefits in a battle where time is scarce.

Yeah thats why I was thinking it would be a per-player mod option. Defaults to none, but could select from 2 or 3 presets.

Thanks for the hard work, this mod is awesome :)

Thanks, it's amazing! Now that they don't drift apart it's much more useful!

Except for a bug:
Spidertron you sit in can't be commanded to move with a regular remote when you have commanded other spidertrons to follow you.
I want to just click on the map and go there automatically if I have followers too.

Also:
Spidertrons in formation can't be commanded to move to new positions while in follow mode with a regular remote. I would expect doing so would update their formation position if they are currently in follow mode.
If follow mode is not active and I use a regular remote to move them then they move as expected, and they return to their former relative position as expected when I activate follow mode again.

Yeah anti drift works great. Good work

With the first bug - I've made it so that it basically acts as a macro for the regular squad command. should achieve the equivalent effect, or am I misinterpreting the report?

I've added some code that alters dy and dx stored in the array, so that you can alter the position of a spidertron relative to the mean of the squad with a regular spidertron remote. (the code has some ups impacts because i'm using a few loops, but its only a problem with large squads and during a battle)