Unit skirmish button!

Err...actually I would like such a command in case I simply want to overrun some weakly defended moon or something so I can focus on the real battles....

But I guess a smarter attack move (e.g. anti air and combat fabbers not walking straight into infernos and Bombers trying to take out energy storage instead of AA) would do the trick

Btw., these problems are all because of stupid unit ai...you are not annoyed by those ?

Also, you make the mistake of equalling a single PA unit to a single chesspiece. PA is not and should not be a game about single units (except for the commander).
A chesspiece is equal to a whole army. And if you attack my army and your army is superior in numbers, composition or formation, then no level of unit ai will help me if I am not paying attention. But if you attack my army of (in theory, properly balanced dox) with Infernos, that's a stupid strategic move of you. And that should not be awarded simply because I was distracted with microing some Tanks to destroy some of your mexes for a few seconds, ignoring that alarming sound that's constantly audible, because I thought it was just another firefly being shot down by your fighters.

PS: Listen to @GoogleFrog, he has made a game that proves how smart unit ai does not create a game that plays itself..

How is Zero-K on Steam coming along, btw ?

There seems to be a pattern emerging in this discussion, and the thing is it seems players with high APM seem to think the less automation the better. Why shouldn't they? That is a great advantage over "average players" in a game full of micro. The thing is this game is supposed to be about macro strategy, multiple things over multiple planets. In the end I believe it to be about strategy not how fast can you click. There s a place for micro, there will always be, it will always be an advantage.

But it is stupid for your tanks to hold their ground against an advancing inferno or vanguard, it's stupid for your t2 bombers to enter range of anti-air vehicles, while I'm fixing this stupidity i lose the sense of the big picture. It's bad micro.

A good micro is you seeing my units retreating using the skirmish button, and decide use a pincer movement to engage the scattered units using local superior and concentrated firepower. That is true strategy, and excellent micro.

Automation can be bad or good, but in this case i believe it creates emergent gameplay, and intensifies strategic depth.

In the end for me is more about where, when and how you organize and send your units, and not how fast can u click during a battle.

Someone made chess comparison, and the thing is chess is not a game about how many times you can move a piece in a minute or how fast you can react, in fact is the opposite of that , is about anticipating your enemies moves, is about luring him into ambushes, and most of all it is a game about always keeping the eye on the big picture. And those things to me are what make a great strategy game.

I agree with this entirely.

And something I still haven't seem many people address with their concerns about such a feature:
We already have this level of automated reaction with the 'roam' behaviour.
'roam' gives units with less range a much better chance in an unmicroed altercation than in one where both players are microing, because units can automatically move to put enemies in range but cannot automatically move to keep out of range of enemies.
It automates the 'attack' half of the micro, and units that would benefit from automating the 'retreat' half are left with the short end of the stick. Why should we only be automating behaviour that benefits certain units far more than others?

The amount of clicks isn't the thing, it more about getting the most out of your forces.

Some players are good with their micro, so their forces go further, and can do more by being micromanaged beyond their default AI, that also shouldn't get in the way of the ability to do micro.

Some players are good with their macro, they can get more troops and better balanced army's out of fewer resources and in less time, allowing a army to do more by being bigger and having better strategy.

The best players are masters of both.

By automating all of that micro into a single command, you effectively cut out all of the tactics based gameplay and make it so that the game becomes all about the macro stage, at which point it's all about how you do your logistics and unit composition, because the battle fights it's self.

Knowing how to manage your limited time between micro and macro is what makes these games, and create a a diverse player base with people who are better at one or the other.

Being simply able to turn this automation off is irrelevant, because it creates a tool for players who can't micro to have the computer to do it for them, where as there would obviously be lacking in the automation of the macro side to compensate.

Any amount of automation on the micro side punishes the micro based players by giving macro based players a way of doing the same without any devotion of time, effort or skill in order to do so.

In the end, it gives macro players more time to do what they can do best, whilst giving no aid or help to a micro player who would be mostly doing the same actions.

And even if we did introduce a automation for the macro side for micro based players, would we even be playing any-more?

I am for one, agreeing with a skirmish button, while early game it may not seem the best option, on large scale/multiple planets it would be better since you are elsewhere, and this game seems to be Macro over Micro

Hmm, I think many people overestimate the influence such systems have on the actual combat.
Giving units at least a little sense of self preservation should not prevent anyone with actually superior combat tactics skills from completely annihilating his opponent (especially since we should be talking about equally skilled opponents...even if someone is better at macro, he would probably do some microing anyways).
Such features are not about removing options, they are about removing the need for doing unnecessary actions that you would do anyways. Like kiting, like telling your bombers to destroy the anti air units first, like telling your aa to not charge headfirst into the tower the units it is supposed to protect are attacking, like telling your ants to attack that combat fabber instead of the inferno it his healing, etc..
Yes, this reduces the skill ceiling a bit, but I think the gains are larger than the losses. Aevs is right...
You can still tell your units to focus on that vanguard, you can still try to find the optimal path for your infernos, you can still do this and that. It's not like you are not supposed to control anything anymore. But your units do the most basic things by themselves.
I would even go as far as to claim that having such features might even enable more options when it comes to commanding a battle that were not feasible before. If players don't need to babysit every single unit anymore, they can instead start to think about how to use certain types of units more effectively, send certain groups of units to attack weakspots, retreat others, etc.
Because people would be able to do things that can give them an edge over their opponent that are more interesting but would be less effective (or wouldn't even work) right now, because the units are stupid and traditional microing is much more important to surviving the battle (that's what you are actually doing..you are trying to prevent your units from walking to their deaths like lemmings). Instead of trying to keep more of your troops from killing themselves, you could focus more on winning the battle.

Also, I always die a little bit inside when I watch a stream and see an army being killed because it's owner was distracted for a second and the units didn't even "try" to defend themselves.
Such events should not decide games...because it was not the attackers "skill" that defeated that army. The attacker cannot know whether the enemy looks at that army right now. He simply was lucky.

By that logic I could say that we shouldn't have the roam feature either, or the patrol command, or any area commands at all.
And have you ignored the fact that we already have automation of this level? The problem is that only one kind is available, and it benefits certain units types more than others, like the inferno and the vanguard.

I'm sorry, but none of your arguments come anywhere near convincing me that adding an 'evade' movement type alongside 'roam' and 'hold position' is a bad idea. It's not removing micro, it's just giving you a different strategic option with its own advantages and pitfalls.

I'd say it lowers the skill floor, not that it reduces the skill ceiling. There's a big difference between the two.

Man i understand your concern there are 2 levels of play involved, the thing is micro game should not be about stopping your units from doing stupid things, it should be about maneuvers like encirclement, a good micro player will always have an advantage . He will always make more with less units, but he should be awarded for doing smart things, not depending only in his reaction time, or be awarded cause the enemy was not looking at that engagement at that time.

Exactly. A Skirmish mode wouldn't take anything away from players who are good at microing. But it would allow everyone to better handle thousands of units on different battlefields. Uber told often how they plan to improve the UI and commands in-game. I wouldn't be surprised to see the Skirmish mode being added at some point.

Apart for that, if a unit is OP in Skirmish mode, it is OP also under microing, 'cos the unit can *skirmish* under direct control of the player. So, the OP argument is neatly invalidated. Sorry folk.

Well that's my reasoning, im not trying to convince you people, because that is usually a futile effort in any case.

That's why I won't be supporting this in any case, UI tools too remove excess clicking is nice, but having my unit's command themselves isn't what I support.


It's not what I want.

Some of the arguements in this thread are so un-thought out i wouldn't know where to begin without writing a huge wall of text explaining every single tiny fundamental building point and appearing overly hostile. I only hope uber are rational enough to realise skirmish automation is bad for their game, and bad for server performance.

*Also love how people fail to realise that effective macro management also requires 'micro'. Every ingame action you make requires a player input action of some kind to commence. This discrimination against interesting combat related control as the only source of dirty micro is kinda ironic. Infact if uber wanted to really get rid of pointless micro and 'excessive click fest', they should instead look at the macro management side of things. There are alot of pointless and excessive clicks in the non-combat arena.

I completely agree. I think every RTS game should be as complicated as possible, allowing even more skill to be learned and practiced, separating the best from the better.

I've been watching replays and thinking about this idea... wow it would be so plain and boring with a skirmish button. There would be not depth to combat, just the SAME thing over again.

Ug, skirmish should be one of many automated behaviors, there is no good reason at all to have what is supposed to be a general of an army bothering with tactical maneuvers. Additionally, the makers of PA are shooting for battles with 10's of thousands of units participating on the high end. How are you supposed to micro units at that scale? It is impossible. At that scale, PA will break down more like a massive wargame like Total War than Starcraft. I see this only as a positive thing. PA is a game of logistics, and micro detracts from this core strategic play. I don't want to have to supervise every minor skirmish in every game just so some Starcraft fans can get their APM-boner on. Honestly, if you like that sort of gameplay, Starcraft 2 is more up your alley. Trying to turn PA into that mess would be a mistake. I support the OP wholeheartedly.

I'm not sure if everyone is on the same page here about the subject matter.
I'm certainly not advocating 'automated micro' in the same sense as in the video elodea posted. I'm advocating an order type that just tells units to keep away from the range of enemy units within their guard radius, plain and simple. I believe I should be able to tell my bots to keep away from flame tanks, without having to micro them at every altercation.

I cannot see how this would be any harder on server performance, or any less warranted than the automated roam/maneuver behaviour methods already in-game:

Which reminds me; is there any real difference between roam and maneuver? They appear to behave identically (one of these groups is set to roam, the other to maneuver).

It's about the distance that they'll move to pursue an enemy. The distance is restricted on maneuver.

Its also an option to have a unit(s) that is labeled as a skirmisher in its tooltip, that has the ability to go into a skirmisher mode and kite.

Having the skirmish mode be exclusive to this unit would make the unit have high utility capabilities. For example; send out scouts and see a vanguard army moving to your base the skirmishers could successfully kite the vanguard and significantly dwindle down the impending army (of course vanguards need re-balancing any ways). The skirmishers could transition out of skirmish mode too hold a line or something, not necessarily the perfect unit for the job but its ability too transition is what makes it a strong utility force.

I imagine the unit too have good range and decent health, a good middle ground between a sniper and a bruiser. Another unit that could do well with the skirmisher ability could be ground based AA-units, have the mode enabled so they run from ground forces on the field and have the mode disabled when inside a base/holding a tactical position/defending an idle army... lots of applications for a simple addition.

Having the mode be toggle-able to the unit would add minor micro, but hopefully add depth by allowing people too make intuitive decisions. Hopefully pleasing both people that favor micro and those that don't want too spend their Apm manually clicking and moving there units back.

Half way threw writing I realized that making the mode be unit specific too a handful of units might not work as a player could just set his/her entire army too assist the skirmisher units and have them defeat the purpose of the unit specific mode, it'd need to be tested :/

While not necessarily to that extent, wasn't that more or less what PA was advertised to become? In any large scale conflict, show me one general that succeeds by directing all units on an individual level. There will always be a place and importance for micro, but pure APM should not be the be-all end-all deciding factor for a game of PA's scale.

There is no reason not to introduce a similar degree of automation on the macro side. The game is already moving in that direction with factory commands, area commands and line/area build. Features like metal extractor overdrive or a priority system could help a user run his or her economy more easily as well.

You would still be in charge of how you play the game and at sufficient skill levels you would still perform better than the automation. To draw another flawed comparison to chess, you would still be playing it even if you had another player move the pieces for you according to your decisions.

Automation should never take important decisions away from you, all it should do is alleviate the tedium of execution. I know some people appreciate exactly that manual part of the game but personally I don't think a strategy game should be decided by superior reflexes, hand-eye coordination and execution speed. Strategy games are about gauging the situation and adapting to it, and automation should serve to help you implement your decisions more efficiently. Obviously, you cannot remove the necessity of being faster in a real-time game, the question is where being fast counts more. If there is a particular choice everyone would opt for in a given situation, you should rather automate that option instead of having the player succeed that manages to click through the necessary steps a fraction of a second faster.

I wouldn't go as far as adding explicit unit types to support basic features like that. With all those unit stats those transitions are rather fluid and depending on the enemy units at hand the roles in a battle could easily be reversed at a moment's notice. You certainly shouldn't be forced to use any kind of unit AI as it can just as well be detrimental in certain situations. Being able to toggle and manually override that behaviour is essential for that kind of automation to become a tool rather than a nuisance.

That said, I wouldn't necessarily mind adding some heavily specialized units with individual unit stances/modes. Imagine mobile artillery that can anchor itself to the ground for better accuracy at the cost of mobility.

________________________________

Let me ask the heavy-micro proponents a rather skewed question: Should units really lead their shots when aiming for moving targets? With superior micro skills players should be able to do exactly that manually by having their units attack the ground in front of enemy units. Imagine how this would set apart the best from the better. What justifies this kind of automation when compared to those opposing units trying to dodge incoming projectiles?

No.





On a more serious note, I'd say that that is so problematic more because of flawed game mechanics than anything else.

Tell me, elodea, have you ever played Zero-K?

right, because you dont have to press stop while microing with dox. Coz dox certainly dont move faster than infernos right? Units could shoot while moving in sc2 and you would still need to marine split and micro against banelings. You don't have a point.

I don't think you understand the fundamental relationships here just like most other people in this thread unfortunately. It's no good just pointing out where examples arn't 1 for 1 perfect on the surface. Isn't it obvious that having a scalar between no micro and perfect micro is a good thing, compared to boring binary 0/1 'did you press skirmish button'

No i dont play zero k nor have i heard of it, nor has hardly anyone else. And it stops at that. Forgive me if i am always skeptical when a developer of his own game which is hardly known claims it to be the holy grail of mechanics design.