Rally to Transport / Rally to Ram & Rally into TC... / Ferry?

If this is not a bug, then it is a QoL request please. I presume it is a bug because of the deer ability.
(1) Rally to Transport / Rally to Ram:
The game is dynamic enough that if I set the TC Gather/Rally Point on top of a deer, it will snap onto the deer. Furthermore, that rally point even moves with the deer such that a villager (or scout) exiting the TC will go and kill the deer. Secondly, units can rally into buildings, such as garrisoning into an outpost.

But if I set the rally point on the following, sadly, it fails to garrison in the following useful “containers”:

  • (a) Rams
  • (b) Transport Ships
  • (c) Siege Towers (I assume)
  • (d) Ottoman Siege Crew enabled Siegecraft.
  • (e) Ottoman Grand Galleys

You can see in my screenshots an example. They just move the object out of the way and end up standing next to it.



These related observations maybe not bugs, but QoL requests, which I would like to include here if that is okay:

(2) Rally ability for Grand Galley: Note that just as I cannot rally units into the grand galley, players cannot rally new units out of the Grand Galley onto the shore automatically like they could with a Military School. This would be useful occasionally if it is not too difficult to program.

(3) Rally to TC or Auto-Garrison Toggle:
Next, I believe in previous versions of AoE you could put the rally point from the TC right onto the same TC and the units would immediately garrison in that building? That would be great. Note that you can rally right next to the TC and then shift-queue it into the TC. However, I noticed the default action for this is to repair the TC if damaged, which kind of makes sense. But this is problematic often as you are under attack and would like to continue making villagers but have them garrison until the killing dies down since they will merely die if on the outside. The only way to deal with this is the exact second they come out you select them and hit G to garrison them immediately.

Perhaps we could have it such that rallying on top of the same building keeps the unit inside of it. Or, alternatively, have a Garrison Toggle like the Delhi toggle for the scholars to auto-garrison until full. This would be great because you could keep your rally point. The “Return Villagers to Work” or Ungarrison would automatically turn this toggle off. This toggle could also be combined with a bell like in AoE2 perhaps.

(4) Ferry Feature:
This idea is awesome and I think is programmable with not too much work.

  • Step (a): Either enable Transport ships to garrison in docks (which they should be able to do anyway IMO and preferably have a Pop of 1) or alternatively the transport ship would be touching the dock or within a very small radius of the docks influence.
  • Step (b): You have military buildings rally onto docks.
  • Step (c): The units garrison inside the dock just like scholars for the Delhi can garrison inside the dock. However, in this case, the dock could hold up to 16 units temporarily.
  • Step (d): Create a rally point on the foreign shore you would want to land on.
  • Step (e): When the dock reaches a capacity of 16 the transport ship automatically exits with the units garrisoned inside and travels to the other shore and ungarrisons the units at the rally point.
  • …You could imagine future features such as an even more awesome “Ferry” move ability similar to patrol that traverses from a shore to a dock, back and forth. If units are rallied onto the dock, they either are inside the dock or gathered next to it such that when the “Ferry” returns, they automatically enter it and travel with it on its “patrol-like” pathing to reach the other shore. (This is also how people would want the Siege Tower to work, with it merely becoming a staircase or a “ferry” to the wall.)

Well, I suppose that is asking too much. So if you can’t do that, rallying into the transport ship would be nice at least, if it is not too much programming.

Thanks for reading.

Thank you for the awesome feedback @JohnDresty! I can confirm that the current behavior with ships is indeed by design, though I have no insight as to why that is. However, I’ll get all this feedback over to the team for discussion. Much appreciated!

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