Its Just Too Massive!

Its Just Too Massive!
Why Planetary annihilation is pure micro

When you play a game of PA, do you feel like there are simply to many things to do at once? Not enough time to think about expanding this base, dealing with the doxen raiding my mass, dumping more fabbers on my antinukes, etc?

At least I do, and its seems a fairly common sentiment that playing a game of PA is fast and furious. With all the talk that's been about 'eliminating micro', why is this the case, though? Why does playing PA still require more attention that I could ever give it? People say 'macro hard', but that's just another way of saying 'micro your economy faster'.

The reason is...*drumroll*... there are is simply too many mass points too much mass available. From the streams that I see and games I play myself, mass is very rarely the limiting factor in a players gameplay, unless they are loosing very badly. Maybe in the beginning it is, but once you start to expand, it becomes increasingly difficult to effectively spend it all.

Attention: The third resource
This is because you are running out of the hidden, third resource, which is really the most important- attention. With how PA is balanced right now, you can literally trade attention for mass and energy, without any meaningful limit. If you spend more attention on your econ, you can have more masspoints, and more pgens. So inevitably, the player runs out of attention.

What happens when you run out of attention? Whatever you are doing, it all becomes micro- because that's what micro IS. Its when your performance is primarily determined by the speed at which you can make decisions, not the quality of the decisions themselves. These rapid fire decisions are all simple and obvious; anyone would arrive at the same conclusion if they could think about it for more than a split second.

When Macro becomes Micro
Startcraft II, being rather famous, makes a good example. And punching bag. Common Starcraft parlance considers micro the quick decisions you make as you control your army, or individual units. Macro roughly translates to 'economy stuff'. This wrong. Economy may generally be a macro decision, but thats not what makes it macro. A better example of a macro decision would be when to take my first expansion, or what third. The reason is that I have time to think about that- I need to integrate information that I have gathered over time to decide. Im not rushed to do so, simply because I cannot expand before some time has passed. The quality of my decision matters far more than the how quickly I need to make it.

PA doesnt really have this yet, and we have fallen for a fallacious macro/micro distinction. We look at starcraft and say "Economy is macro there, so it is here too!" No. Not when you are like, 15 basing. Eco stopped being macro when I could devote all my attention to it and STILL be able to build faster. (And my economy I mean gathering and spending resources).
Economy becomes an infinite, exponential APM/attention sink, where more actions per second == better performance in every case. You necessarily run out of attention, and everything becomes micro.

How to fix it
Simple. Less mass. Waaay less mass. We need to give the player a limiting resource that isnt attention. If the player can spend all his mass and still have attention left over, he can use that to get into the meat of the game, like sending his army of tanks through this narrow pass to maximize their range advantage over the bots, or think about how to cleverly position these pelters to stagger-fire as units come into range, instead of blasting the first AA bot into atoms and leaving the rest.

Just have mass points give less mass. Thats uh, a bit easier. Though I still think that having a bit scarcer mass points might make territorial control more dynamic and less homogenous as it seems now. Testing needed!

Imagine if a planet had say, 15 mass points. Most are solitary, with two or three clusters of two or three. Make mex's extract a bit more per second, and give the commander a much larger passive mass generation. Make factories cost more mass, but build significantly faster so there is some incentive to limit the number we have.

NOW we have a game. Choosing which mass points to go after becomes critical- these two one over here are closer, but exposed. The one in the mountains is farther away, but I could defend it better. Would the mass I spend in losses defending the two outway the gains I get in a more efficient defense?
Bots vs tanks matters more, as well. Should I invest in the energy infrastructure to churn out bots for less mass, or should I risk tossing mass-rich tank wrecks at my enemy?
Having a solid backbone of tanks would become an investment, while bots would raid, patrol, screen, and flank. If I can control half a planet, with all its masspoints, and manage it well, then we can go orbital for more than just a 'oh crap nukes run' move.

All of these things become possible when we have to time to think about doing them, instead of furiously grabbing more masspoints while laying down lines of factories.

TL;DR
1. There are too many masspoints Is too much mass
2. This turns macro into into mirco by expanding as fast as possible
3. We don't have enough attention left to actually play the game
4. We need to focus on the quality of decisions instead of how quickly we make them.

mass point numbers is not the reason there is too much micro in PA.

I obviously am a firm believer that PA is a micro oriented game. In fact to be good at it would require better APM than the best starcraft players. This has been my experience and I want to change that since I believe I and Neutrino alike want to turn this into "the ultimate macro game".

Now... mass points are not the issue. that is a terrible analysis. Reduce mass points and sure you'd have less points to defend but that's only part of the problem. It may help. but as an answer to your post the devs could simply chime : "well later down the road you'll just change you mass slider on the planet generator, then push up the mass per tick multiplier in the host, so what you're asking for is already in"

But that does not solve our problem because as we know playing PA would continue to be a microfest then still.

So what I believe is missing are macro tools: a better read on your selected units and their status, a rear-view of the planet that you can pan if you wish, scroll wheel camera control (which was in PA at one point but needs to make a return), sphere minimap, assist command, orders as first class entities and future orders, a default to "under attack" camera mode or a key to go to last "under attack", ect ect ect. there are many missing tools that can help the thinker become the winner over the click spammer.

Less mass points is a bad idea, because it would remove fighting for area as well.
I have not yet played a serious game in the new patch, but if we have "too much too fast" now it is probably better to increase the price of stuff again. Even before the patch it was already a quite spammy game that asked full attention of the player. I like that though. A good 1v1 provides me with an adrenaline rush that's quite awesome.

I mostly agree with what you said - I always thought there are too many metal points right now, ever after they changed the distribution and reduced them. However, in the future we will be able to adjust the metal densitiy per planet in the editor.

Yup sounds about right. Havnt tried the new patch properly but looks like economy and expansions are going to take a lot more attention being it much easier to access other planets.

Still looking forward to trying it. Maybe less mass points is the way to go but let's wait for the improved ui to see what we get.

First of all- I love the new patch. I really don't think its much faster, atleast not in a bad way.

I do, however, disagree with you somewhat. I think reducing the total number of masspoints would MASSIVELY increase the competition for land. If something is very scarce, we are far more likely to fight over it. As it stands, its easier to just... go take some of the other 60 masspoints on the other side of the planet.

Why do you think so? I see managing expansion as an unlimited attention sink- there is no way that PA can be anything other than micro while we can freely exchange attention for mass/energy/robots. Going to another planet would be so much more fun if I really needed the mass, and could easily spend it if I had it.

That is plain wrong. Nobody fights over empty space. There need to be mass point there. If you have 60 unused spots on the other side of the planet that is just a mistake of the players involved. The fight for mass points does matter in the games I played at least.
I think the current number of mex is pretty ok for it. Maybe we could even have twice the amount of mex spots but have them only give +3.5 metal/sec

I disagree, multiple mass points provides more benefits
Discourages turtling as you need to expand.
Say there are 15 mass points and 2 players like you suggest, so 7 or 8 points each by late game. Rather than introducing strategy, you have reduced the tactical options. I now have only 7 points to defend, and only 8 points to attack. In the current version with plentiful mass there are far more points to attack and defend, so which makes it more of a macro game – you concentrate on the bigger picture, ‘this sector of the planet is secure’ vs ‘this mass point is secure’ as you would get with minimal mass points. – 15 mass points makes most of the planet pointless, you fly over it, teleport past it, orbit over it, but never interact with some areas. Wheras having mass everywhere makes you interact with the world.
Relying on terrain to dictate where you attack and defend is more micro – its ‘I’ll defend this choke point with these units’, rather than ‘I’ll defend this island with these sets of units’
‘Too massive’ is a good thing, or at least the option to be too massive is - the players will scale back the planets to allow for regular games if benefits gameplay, no need to restrict it just yet.

@stevenrs11 Please use the standard letter size for the OP.

I think there is to much micro because there are too many different battlefronts. In a "normal" RTS you only need to defend from 1 or 2 sides and usually the maps have choke points that you can easly defend. In PA you have to defend all directions and build factories for fronts in all directions. Uber has also noticed that the maps are to flat and are working on it, so this should become less of a problem.

Its just too massive; it sounds like the game is to massive, there are to many things to do at the same time and a player can't handle it. There are 2 obvious solutions; 1 a better GUI, 2 more players.

thefluffybunny ninja'ed me with the terrein part.

I agree that in PA right now, high APM is a considerable advantage. Whether that is actually a problem, or inevitable, is up for debate I suppose.

I completely disagree about the metal spots. The metal spots are not the reason why players' economies grow so quickly. And even if that were the case, that would be desirable because it makes mex spots easy to capture and easy to replace if they are destroyed. In the early game when the map is wide open metal is not a limitation because, as you point out, you can simply take another metal spot if you need one. Having lots of metal spots spread across more space makes more land valuable. Having only a few mex spots would mean only a few areas of the map would actually matter. If you want a large map where territory matters, you are committed to having a lot of mexes spread over the large map.


The reason why players' economies grow so quickly is because energy is so cheap. Metal creates territory control. Energy requires metal investment in order to increase the scale of your economy. More energy means you can do more at once, and the cost of the energy generator determines the rate at which you can increase that rate. It is important to note that this can be done while also making energy generators cheaper by reducing the yield of each generator.

So, instead of doing anything with the mex spots, the cost to build energy should be increased. This means it will take more time and investment to build up an energy economy, slowing down the early game, giving constructors and combat units more time to do interesting things on the map.


There is something in your claim that there is too much "micro" in PA, particularly in its macro. Infinite queues have been added, which helps enormously, but a lot more can be done to make base management, economy management, and production less APM-intensive.

Despite the huge strategic importance of economy and production in PA, let's face it that high APM economy micromanagement is not terribly stimulating. I would rather have each battle be a tactical speed chess match than blobs of units mutually annihilating each other. And I would rather spend most of my time and APM controlling combat units instead of building mexes, energy, factories, finding idle constructors and telling them to be productive, and so on. Economy and production have lots of strategic implications, so player decisions about them are enormously important, but I don't want to spend the entire game implementing every detail one at a time.

My contention is that base management costs too much APM, and that tactical maneuvers cost so little. Currently in PA, economy and production are a virtually bottomless APM sink of building economy, structures, constructors, and rinse and repeat. By contrast, battles are very A-movey with disorganized, tightly-packed mobs of units.

@cola_colin and @thefluffybunny-

First of all, reducing the number of mass points would not reduce the number of places you need to defend, nor would it reduce vast swaths of planets into 'empty space'.

Look right now at a map in PA- its covered in mass points. Take each blob of 4-6, and make it one mass point. Maybe spread them out a tad further. If I want all the mass points on half the planet, I still have to control all that area. The total surface area that I have to defend is the same in both cases- I just have to stretch my resources much thinner to do it, and that takes strategy. I am NOT saying do this in a way that each player has 3-4 little bases. Maybe 15 was too small of an estimate. There is a balance, I think, between having so few masspoints that its beneficial to just build bases on top of them, and where there are so many that controlling area isnt as critical.
I just think we are too far to the latter at the moment.

And besides, you still would have to move units over the space between masspoints, and its definitely valid to defend along the routes to get places instead of the places themselves. (See: most wars)

YES. This is the whole point. You can disagree that having too many masspoints is/is not the cause, but this is the problem for sure.


I also disagree that having fewer masspoints would cause turtling. In fact, it would make it impossible- in that limited area, you couldn't possibly have enough mass. Right now, a player can turtle pretty well(ish, its still very hard to really turtle in TA) because even if the opponent has the entire planet under control, they cant spend it all fast enough to actually use it all.

People keep saying that this would make land less valuable, but I just dont see that happening. You need the land more, because your limiting resource is what that land provides. It forces you to expand even more, while simultaneously making it harder to do.

Limiting energy might work, but then again, the solution to that is still MOAR pgens, and you end up in the same place. Increasing the cost of the units is essentially equivalent, though I think reducing the mass points has the same effect and requires less clicking.

What the OP is trying to say is not that there are too many metal points, but that there is too much metal.

I concur that the game pace at the moment is inconsistently frenetic. It has a tendency to stall for periods, then explode suddenly into rapid fire life. The key limiting resource in the early game is energy. It tends to slow and stall production more than metal or build-power shortages. However as soon as the player can make solar and adv Pgens, their economy becomes unfettered by power considerations.

In the later game, adv pgens and extractors make energy and metal extremely easy to get hold of. Build-power becomes the limiting resource, especially if someone claims an uncontested world. The action that a player must take in order to remedy build power as their bottleneck is to endlessly build more fabbers and factories, leading to the egregious factory spam, and the necessary micro to marshal such a continuous expansion curve.

However, I disagree that making less metal-points would fix this. The nice thing about lots of metal points is that it makes expansion more analogue and less binary. If there are only a couple of metal rich spots on a planet, then they become more valuable, and loosing them becomes far more serious. This means that they will tend to be fortified more, leading to more static lines. We know this is true because it is exactly what happened in Supcom: Small heavily defended bases around expensive mass points.

What is more desirable is to have lots of points, but have them more metal poor. Furthermore, adv econ structures need a fairly sizeable balance pass in order to make the late game spam a little less egregious. Now that balance changes are being done, I think it may be a good time to start looking at such considerations.

Part of my conceived issue with too much micro is that you really do have to baby sit your units most of the time.

• You need to give your attack units orders to form up in formation for them to attack effectively, and control what that formation is.
• You need to keep an eye on any fabber with a queue because they will happily walk right through an enemy mex field and then stand there idle, or walk into pelter fire still happily building stuff.

I do think that there could be some kind of conditional orders and some kind of formations/battlegroup . Especially conditional orders more sophisticated than the current attack move.

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. Seriously energy is damn expensive to build. At least in the early to mid game it is a limiting factory most of the time. I would vote for making t1 pgens a bit better any time. Or introduce reduced energy usage on workers if they are stalled on metal again.

Single mass point that are spread are actually horrible. We had those a few patches ago and it yields you games where defending is completely unreasonable and people just build bots to blindly attack all the time.
Not to mention that I do not need to secure the whole area. I could just build a bit of defense (or parts of my base) next to those few mex points and never care again about mex points. That would entirely remove the most interesting part of the game: Fighting for mex points.

There is definitely too much APM on base management. Nothing to add to the existing arguments.
How about taking a play out of Dawn of War 1 – the ‘mass’ points there would at first have an output rate of 6, then it would gradually reduce down to 3 the longer you had it for. Encourages expansion, and doesn’t lead to an exponential increase in mass production, you have to expand merely to maintain production.

I have nothing to add right now, just wanted to say that this a great thread, thanks everyone posting and thanks op.

Cola_Colin, I agree with you here. Energy is not the way to fix this. I think other, interesting mechanics should apply to energy like artillery, portals, etc. But thats a different topic.

And I definitely dont want to eliminate the fight over mass points- I agree that is the best part. My intent was to make it more important.

Yes! I see now, how having fewer mass points might not be the best solution to reducing total amount of mass available. I still think that the issue is too much mass, but maybe not how its distributed.

I really, really wish I could just *test* it. No sense in debating then, right?

I just want less "Lemme queue up 30 more factories, and then queue up infinite levelers on them" and more "I finally got a few levelers out, lets see how I can use them best".

Then I might care about wreckage! Which needs to have way more health imo. The ad-hoc battlelines they formed in TA where one of the best things ever.

I would say that there is too much metal once the advanced mexes hit the field, but if there were no advanced mex, the amount of metal on the map works perfectly well. But this isn't a function of there being too many mex spots so much as there being too much metal that can be generated from a single spot.

It is true that energy is very limiting in the early game, but think about why that is- you have to pay for the whole price (450 metal) of each energy generator in order to increase it at all. But each generator produces 600 energy, almost enough to run a factory by itself.

Suppose instead that a power generator was 100 metal, and produced only 100 energy. Now it is necessary to spend 600 metal in order to obtain an increase of 600 energy, a metal cost increase of 33%. This means you have to wait more time before you can have acquired those resources, and reduces the rate at which your metal expenditure rate can increase. It costs more metal to start spending more metal faster.

Effectively, the rate of economic expansion of the game would be slowed by 33% because the amount of resources required to build energy has increased by that percent. However, the movement rate of constructors and combat units is unaffected, which means more time to do things in the early game. Such as claim territory, build combat units, and fight. The part that has slowed down is the rate at which your economy grows, buying more time for stuff to happen with constructors and combat units.

Energy should be limiting in the early game, because you have a lot of open space on the map to capture if you need more metal. A larger investment should be required in order to grow your energy economy; resources which could also be put into constructors and military forces.

Im not sure I have a problem with a frantic expansion, its just that it never settles down at all. Its a never ending exponential economy. I am fine if in the beginning I am clicking a fast as possible to expand and grab mass, balancing energy with buildpower, its just that the amount of clicking grows, and grows, and grows! I want to do other stuff, too.

Though currently, I think the beginning of the game is pretty good in terms of speed to expand and stuff. Like Im trying to say, energy is the limiting resource, not APM/attention.

You can always build more energy, though, so it cannot be relied on later to limit. Instead, you have to rely on finite mass. Smaller exponents always reach the same slope as larger ones, it just takes a bit longer :/

Just want to chime in and say that OP makes a very convincing argument regarding the 'third resource' and I do feel that the avenue of balancing this against conventional in-game resources is one that could do with being explored to see what impact it has on gameplay.

Anecdotally, most maps in TA had only a few metal points each - certainly far fewer than PA.