Complexity learning curve too steep?

After playing for the last year, I am aware that games quickly become very complex, and I am having trouble finding a way to practice in a gradual manner. For example, when I play a 1v1 with the AI at normal level, they are simply able to expand their base and manage resource much more efficiently than I can, attacking with either orbital lasers or nukes before I can get defenses up for just one of those.If there is in fact a 'zen' that can be achieved in game play, then I imagine it would surely come from slow and patient practice. But is this even possible? Are there specialized techniques for dealing with large armies? Is the increased complexity of the game going to be backed up by an increased complexity in balance and systemic equanimity? Have we (and Uber) generally not thought beyond the obviously cool ideas of "insane large armies" and "smashing planets," and into what it would mean to truly practice and master the play of the game?

Thanks!

It sure needs practice, but it can be learned + a lot of UI improvements can and will be made, thanks to how moddable it is.

Personally at the moment I feel that I do have a certain control, but there is still a lot I could do better. Practice helps though, and knowing the the skill ceiling is still far far far above is fun.

I don't find it too complex I'm more concerned with how we can manage really large armies and multiple battlefields easily. It's a UI issue really but I don't imagine it's too easy to solve.

I'd say it isn't too steep.

The UI and gameplay is simple and straightforward.

It has a low entry and a high skill cap – great for games, particularly strategy games.

If you have played supcom or any other games like that then I see no problem. The problem I had to get used to was the fact that you had to defend 360 degrees.

For players who were around since alpha and were gradually introduced to new features, the game ofcourse does not feel like having a steep curve

Players that come from SupCom/TA who are used to a streaming ecomomy and assisting it is also easy to adapt.
(Took me a while too before I know mex could be upgraded in SupCom I learned that game playing the 1vs1 matchmaker and watch the replays to see what the opponent did)

But for other players the ecomomic balance that has to be maintained and the concept of assisting can be overwhelming and make even the AI look unbeatable

A good tutorial for these concepts are important for new players.

I voted sure and other.

reason why, is this game isn't the most complex I've seen. Fundamentally its simple but macro. Has specialist tricks, but no game is without those.

what makes the curve steep, is how relatively different this game is played. The game and management of UI tools and gameplay, is new so you have no prior experience with it. Were modern warfare released without any other cod game before, it would have been the same, too different for anyone to effectively play for a long time. As different as it was, it was still initially intimidating, but three games later its mechanics are boring and simple to go through first try.

so basically, we get used to playing one map with cookie cutter small base and terrain layers, then we get tossed a game played with sprawling built bases, multiple maps at once, and multiple layers of layers and multiple layers of transport between transport. Everyone used to the old, plays this entirely wrong. Everyone never played an rts, they have enough trouble learning the actual rts part.

I think its primary complexity is the scale. Peoples' instinct is to expand across a manageable space and then dig in. Then they wonder why they lost because they don't grasp how massively they were being out-produced. A huge tooltip coming up every time you loaded the game saying "Never stop expanding or you will lose" would be a huge boon.

What the game really needs is a tutorial tab AND a strategies tab. Move the guidance on how to play into strategies, because a lot of people are put off tutorials after nightmares of being stuck in tedious "move the camera using WSAD" sessions.

I don't think it's a community solvable problem though, because the kind of person who needs this is the kind of person who generally won't seek it out. It needs to be in the base game.

Nah I disagree. Rise of Nations set me up pretty well to come into PA, with its territory victory type. And also I think there was one resource that was based on percentage of map controlled.


Multiple maps at once were just playing the larger RoN maps on Arpeggio. Biggest pain in the neck to get used to is orbital layer and the difficulty to actually view the second map, because of the 3d maps rotating in 3d space.

A good tutorial and a more modifiable AI should help with complexity.

The bigger problem is (what Zaphod said), managing everything. I'm not exactly a noob, but it takes all my time to manage a base and a fight at a time. Any more than that and it's just too much.
That's also why the AI is so good; it can micro manage everything.

There are ofc. some features that are already planned to deal with this like editing your build orders and templates, but I think more needs to be done.(pls no "a mod will add it" excuses). Something like:
- better templates - I want to take my commander, send it to another planet and have it build a base there on its own (from a template I have set beforehand). This includes building units and setting up patrol routes.
- better notifications - I want to set a notification for when one of my units encounters an enemy in a certain area. (works together with the previous point).

Here is something to consider: Macro is nothing but lots of micro in disguise. And micro introduces complexity without depth or even tedium if it can not be automated.
This is not a normative statement, mind you!

A few practice sessions with one of the better players + watch a few of the various tutorial videos and you'd improve your play very quickly.

Games like this are difficult to master at the highest level- however you can reach a competent level very quickly when you know how. The main issue is that the way to be competent isn't intuitively how people used to other types of RTS games tend to play (which focus on smaller armies, micro of a few units and base building).

The key things I think you need to get used to (and something I had to with this genre of game coming from playing the early Warcraft games to TA back in the day...) is that:

1: Expand, as far and as quickly as possible. This used to require uncomfortably high click speed however since Uber have added in area commands you can queue up a builder to build a whole field of metal extractors in a few clicks, nice!

2: Energy- in TA, Spring, Sup Com and now PA, you can usually determine the skill of a player by how healthy their energy economy is. Without energy you can't put all that metal you've secured to use and you loose. In PA I recommend starting a builder making constant energy plants at the beginning of the game, and *never* stop making them. Thankfully Uber have added in line dragging for making lots of energy plants so keep building them. Once you get Tech 2 up, switch to making the advanced energy plants as they are much more efficient but don't stop expanding your energy (solar arrays aren't too bad either if you have orbital)!

3: Don't worry about loosing stuff. In smaller scale games you end up having 'critical' structures you protect at all costs (e.g. the Town Hall / Castle / Keep in Warcraft games). In PA- you have lots of everything, if the enemy kills some stuff, you rebuild it and carry on. Worrying too much about protecting outlying metal extractors and so on distracts you from focusing on attacking. You will get raided- make sure to dot defences around to stop your opponent doing to much damage and keep attacking them, the key to winning is to be the player in control- making your opponent react to YOU rather than the other way around.

4: Keep your factories producing. When PA started out you had to queue up lots of units by using shift + click, however now Uber have added in repeat queues. All you need to do now is set the mix of units you want, and click the 'repeat' option for the factory and it will constantly produce units. Once you have T2- keep your T1 factories going as it makes useful fodder to keep your opponents defences busy whilst you get the heavy hitters in close to actually deal the damage. The only time I'd suggest not doing this is once you own the planet. At that point you need to stop producing land units and put all your resources into making orbital and nukes (and possibly keep a t2 air factory going to help prevent anyone landing on your planet).

5: Assist things: PA, like other games in the genre allows you to use multiple builders on a project to help produce anything from a resource building, to help factories making units, to building nukes or even assisting orbital fabbers from the ground (note sure if it's a bug that one but it works...). If you have spare resources not being used, and you have fabbers doing nothing, select them and hit 'assist' and put them working on something. To find idle fabbers just press the 'f' key. I'd do that periodically, and make sure they're all doing *something* useful. Another tip is to have at least one factory *only* make fabbers on repeat. This makes sure as your economy expands you have the units available to spend it all.

If you follow the above, you'll quite quickly find you have more resources than you know what to do with, as well as loads of units. Then it changes from constantly fighting your economy to testing out different units and attacks to find what works. The thing is, even the hard AI is quite beatable once you've got to grips with the basics and I think you'll find the normal AI pretty easy to beat.

Absolutely excellent. I got my question answered in this thread (and poll), and also feel like I got some concrete strategy hints to help fill out the middle of my learning curve.

I think customizable templates are the way to go, and I totally agree on sending a commander to a planet and having it build a template including sub-fabber commands.

As a developer myself, I use emacs which is a wonderfully extensible text editor which shows its true strength through extensible command macros using the lisp language. I haven't looked into modding with PA yet, but is it possible to write personal mods like command macros (aka templates), and then use them in multiplayer games? It would of course be a danger to end up with script kiddies like the old days in IRC.

WHAT?!? omg omg omg I can't wait to get home today...

You never knew!???

Compared to SupCom it's not very complex at all. Perhaps (and I'm not being sarcastic here) OP should go and play a bit of SupCom FA online, and then when he comes back to PA he will find it much easier.

never occurred to me to try, never thought I could give an "area" command to build mex'es, only thought "area" would be to attack & patrol! duhhhhhhh

you can cover an asteroid in mexes by area command-ing them to build and dragging the circle to cover the whole planet. It even gets the back side!

resist...dirty...joke..........can't...get...banned...from...another...forum....

Interestingly we had a meeting about new player experience today. Of course the learning curve is hard right now, there basically isn't any way to ease people into the game. The plan is to change that...