Title says it all. Am I really expected to micromanage resources, building, and repair so much that idle workers won't help build and repair without being explicitly directed to? Played a lot of AoE - AoM back in the day, that's the standard I compare RTS's to, so I was frustrated when I tried the beta for the first time yesterday. Thanks.
Yes this is expected behavior, you need set them to patrol then they'll do that. Such feature won't work by same way in game with streaming economy. Engineers which build/repair without command might kill your economy very fast.
You can set fabbers to assist other units/structures and they will automatically repair/add their build power to it. That is the closest thing to it.
Yeah, you can't just have them "auto" do things. I don't want my money being spent without me specifically telling my units to do so. I am the commander. I'm the one in charge.
Patrol has been broken since TA. It shouldn't assist under construction buildings and units because all that leaves is your repair patrol gets hung up on a factory repeat building fighters forever. If you want assist building you should order it. Repair patrol should be for all the things you can't be bothered to do individually, namely repair and reclaim of hundreds of tiny wrecks/damaged units. I suppose you want to have to manually direct all of your TMLs, bombers and artillery then. If you're full-barring on mass and energy there's no reason idle units shouldn't assist something nearby.
Patrol for construction units shouldn't necessarily assist factories? I can agree with that My primary usage was always one to eliminate micro for repairing and reclaiming within a selected area. Actually, yes, depending on how my econ is going I will micro TML missile construction and artillery fire. In TA, I would shut off my Annihilator laser units or stop my artillery. However, it is still a wargame, so my aggressive units would naturally be on "fire at will" by default. And the effect of arty is rather minimal compared to a fleet of units suddenly power-stalling my entire eco. I would call that rather unexpected behavior. I think we can find a happy middle ground here... If fabbers had a "stance" for repair/assist all, then we could toggle it to our heart's content and everybody wins
I agree. I see repair and reclaim as combat behaviours. So there's no reason for them not to have an option of doing so automatically. What could be really cool is Unit AI behavior scripts.
TA just had a 3 tier toggle for unit behaviour, and that seemed fine. (Although other then for high energy units, why you would ever hold fire on a peewee is beyond me.)
I think the only conceivable reasons to "hold fire" is if you have bad targeting AI such that you are better off microing, or you have a stealth unit which loses stealth if it fires upon the enemy.
An option is a great idea. I mean, worse case scenario, is it gets used as much as the "conserve power" and "hold fire" options.
I hotkeyed conserve power. I use it a lot to pause factories and preserve build queue. Thanks for the support XD
Well you could set it as an option in the power settings. Conserve, perform orders, or use any energy necessary to assist and repair.
The real thing engineers should be doing is reclaiming enemy units within their build radius if they come under fire and aren't currently constructing a defensive unit, because the whole offensive engineer micro thing needs to die.
