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Thoughts? Current State: There are two pools of Group Ids. Sometimes scenarios are large enough that Pool #1 of Ids is exhausted and new groups cannot be created. Pool #1 - 676 groups Group Ids are two upper-case characters AA -> ZZ. Blue groups start from AA and work toward ZZ Red groups start from ZZ and work toward AA So with a large, long scenario you could have a Blue air group ZZA if the original Red group ZZ was destroyed. Pool #2 Group Ids are a digit followed by an upper-case character Green/Neutral groups start from 0A and work toward 9Z (Near) Future State: This is where your input is needed. In the short term we have two characters to work with. How should they be assigned? Some options: 1. Similar model to current state but add in lower-case and force separate Blue and Red pools. Blue AA->Mz (so both upper and lowercase). Red ZZ -> NA. This gives 1352 groups per major Blue and Red sides. That up from a current 26*26=676 groups spread unevenly between Red and Blue 2. Pool all 2704 Ids and assign them on a first in, first out method. So the first group created no matter the side/color would be AA?, second would be AB?, ... One would have to look at the color/side of the group to know which side it is on rather than relying on the Group Id itself. 3. Pool all 2704 Ids and assign them randomly 4. Expand the pool further with non-numeric characters like [, ], (, ), ... Far Future State: Years back I expanded the group structure with an 8 character Id which would allow 6 characters for the Id, one for the group type, and one for the trailing null. It hasn't been promulgated to all of the places where a group id is used so we can't quickly go here.

2017.012 and newer obviously have serious issues with formation-keeping. I'm finally getting a better picture of what is happening code-wise. In these builds I've tightened up how often various functons check and change paths (path following, station-keeping, close to attack, etc. That exposed the lack of a formal state machine telling units when to turn, when not to turn, etc. Now they just sit and fight each other. Ships trying to close to attack other ships have their intercept course set each second and over-ridden every 60 seconds when they try to follow their plotted path. It goes on and on like that. This is all without even broaching the topic of staying in your formation zone. I'd like to explore what these state machines might look like, comments appreciated.