Unit skirmish button!

Huh? But it actually does. It actually only fully kicks in ONCE the game scales up.
Like I said much earlier: You can still micro if you think that you can handle your units better than the AI. But once the game scales up, neither you nor any other player has enough time to manage them by hand.

So in order for the balancing to scale up, a certain baseline in unit "intelligence" is required in order to maintain the balancing. Otherwise certain unit roles become useless in late game - not because their role is inadequate, but because they are requiring an unproportional amount of attention.

It's actually the same thing as with factory automation: As long as you have time to do it manually, you wouldn't need it. You could possibly even gain more flexibility by doing it by hand for the moment. But as the game advances, there is more and more stuff requiring your attention, so managing multiple factories would become troublesome.

Same as a fight on multiple fronts without skirmish behavior is troublesome. Even more so due to the imbalance in the required time investment between attacker and defender.

Last time I checked area control was king. The evading defensive player relinquishes that control. I do not care if I did not kill that army of his as long as I get all his mexes.

I dont like the tone some people are bringing into this thread
There is no need for accusations
Or posts bordering to personal attacks
Even if people disagree or have different views
I like to ask people to calm down and discuss things in a more civil manner ..

Think about that situation once again.

But this time ask yourself a simple question:
Why was the enemy capable of escaping in the first place?

The answer is quite simple:
Because you failed on the tactical level.

Not because the unit AI outsmarted you, but because you focused into micromanaging your units instead of pulling of a simple flanking maneuver. And why didn't you do that? Because you were not able to extend your micro skills to multiple frontlines at the same time. Even though flanking would have brought the same result in less time and with far less effort from either side. Invade at two locations at once. Flank the center position from both sides to quickly secure a beach head. The unit AI is even gently enough to leave the area on choice when flanked.

Turtling also almost always results in the turtler having less land area-control than the non-turtler (since its hard to have a complete turtled base everywhere. Unless you're bad at not-turtling you will have more resources than they will. If all you can mount for your planetary invasion is some ground units, without support of tons of orbital units/a dozen or so nukes/a moon or two while your opponent has been able to completely turtle a planet you've done something wrong on a much larger tactical scale.

Indeed. A situation where flanking becomes impossible is a rare occasion. And even when it is: Nukes can always clear the path for a second beach had, especially when you have resources.

There is no reason to fear auto-retreating units. It just means that you actually have to outsmart your enemy instead of just out-clicking him.

It's not even about clicking, it's about time management.

This thread seems to have strayed into a ditch. Nobody seems to have the same set of base information and everyone is imagining different situations.

In the game files there is something called "aggressive_distance". Units try to move away when something gets within this "aggressive_distance" value. A good example of this is the fighter with "aggressive_distance":50. When the fighter gets within 50m of its target, it will realise that its too close and will try and escape.

Now Uber currently doesn't use this for anything other then air and orbital. However lets think what would happen if you gave it to something like the sniper bot. The sniper bot wouldn't become a super powerful killing machine. It still has all its weaknesses. You could attack it with air, you could rush it with speed, or you could simply overwhelm it with numbers. The only real difference is that the owner of the sniper bots won't have to carefully keep an eye on them for them to be useful.

Interesting. Do we know if it works for land units? If so, this should really be applied to combat fabbers and the likes too,

So I didn't really think about it until I can across this thread. I assume it would work for ground units, but it would probably look a little odd. I plan to experiment tonight.

As for combat fabbers, I am not sure how that would work. From what I can tell, "aggressive_distance" means "if you're less then a set distance from the unit you are aiming at you should move away". I would imagine your combat fabbers will aim to keep a set distance from the unit its repairing blissfully unaware that they may be walking into the enemy.

Something confused me in your post. You're saying that while invading a planet, an attacker is also the defendant and that he has the advantage of choke points?

Mind to describe how it would actually happen on the battle field?

ok take shellers, have them on AOE planet patrol but retreating too. They'd decimate any teleporter invasion due to the AOE - retreating along the way so you'd end up with an even stronger concentration of units in a circle around the teleporter. Yes a hole would appear in the defenses but any invading units would get smashed and then the units would repatrol to cover the area they vacated once the attack petered out. This would happen without any intervention at all on the defending players part - yet the attacker would be frantically moving units trying to establish supremacy.

That could easily be balanced out by reducing sheller speed.

same applies to any defending unit on an area patrol though. its easy auto-kiting defense

Ok, thanks. Now I understand.

But, could it be an issue related to how Shellers are balanced in game?

I say that because the player who controls the planet could micro his Shellers by hands, and the net result would be the same.

Shellers were just the OP example, other units would still defend ok although not to the same extreme. Your point about doing it with micro is the point, it feels fairer if both attackers and defenders have to micro in my eyes.

Yes. But that's exactly the point.

I can give an attack order to my Vanguards and they walk to the target. If the target moves, my units adjust their path automatically. It's like an *aim and forget* kind of weapon/mechanic.

Same with every other units. In attack, units go with the auto-pilot.

So, what's the equivalent for the defendant? Manually micro his units?

In my opinion it's more an issue related to balance, and automation (beside being necessary by the scale of PA) simply magnifies the issue.

So you want a defensive version of the attack move?

That's just the attack move, attack is the best form of defence.

I get the other arguments for this stuff, but not this, you defend yourself by attacking, not by some defensive-move thing.

Too simplistic. It could be true if all units were made equal. But there are not.

In case of tanks for instance the best defense against Vanguards is to keep them at distance. And while the attacker has to give one order and watch, the defendant has to micro in order to have the slightest chance.

And why can I tell my units to attack to death, and I cannot tell my units to retreat if in danger? That's so a basic feature I barely see the need of discussing it.

Still we reached page #9

ps. The Commander, for one, unless is given a precise order (attack, build, assist...) should be in Skirmish mode by default.

It just seems so, wrong to me.