[Feature Request] Factory/Fabber resource use sliders

I was thinking, that an awesome feature to have, would be the option to set how many resources your factories/fabricators are using, In terms of a percentage of their total. This could be useful for adjusting the speed at which a factory builds units, or helping balancing your economy while still keeping things functional. The interface would simply be a "resource orders" icon, when you click on it, you would get a slider that goes from 0% (off) to 100% (normal usage).

Another option would be to include radar in this, as you decrease the power use of the radar structure, it's radar range decreases.

Thoughts?

Hum it's a good idea,sure, but you know with these possibilities it will be very difficult to have the perfect build order. To have perfect build order the eco must be good or not good.

That's a good thing as far as I can tell.

WAY too much micro there Em.

You can currently just "pause" a factory to balance your eco, but this represents a huge increase in micro. You'll have people wasting time trying to find the perfect "resource usage amount".

Right now, on and off are fine. I've never heard a single player say, "If only I could cut my factories X and Y usage to Z percent."

If your eco is tanking, build more eco, expand. Don't waste your time turning all your factories to 75%.

In basic, the underlying problem isn't "not enough choice" but "not actually playing well"(aka not expanding to gain the resources you need).

Also, how useful would a Basic Radar actually be at 30% or even 50%?

exactly what i was meaning.

who cares about too much micro, it's an optional feature which means only the best players would be able to use it and macro at the same time.

Again, a feature that adds more depth but people don't seem to like depth.

I'd argue that it doesn't add depth, but complexity.

All it does is add another level of control that will either be used(which will add lots of micro) or be ignored.

If it's something that isn't very good than people will ignore it(why waste time adding it then?). Conversely if it's helpful, people will spend time tweaking it(adding a lot of eco micro to the game).

When you are fighting on multiple planets with hundreds of factories pumping out thousands of units you won't really care about trying to tweak your Eco use % on each factory.

All that this would really help is early game when you don't have much, but in late game it'll be almost useless(unless you have a lot of free time on your hands, which one would wonder why).

Also, I doubt that people like Matiz or Godde, would take the time to micro their economy while fighting one another on multiple fronts. Battles in PA are usually decided because either there was poor planning or poor exectution. Both of those things require a persons attention especially when you're attack/defending a position.

I think it's something to consider alongside automated factory production and other macro-eliminating features.

i still think

i think complexity is a good thing.

If you can micro economy AND armies at the same time, you should have the edge in the battle.

Now i'm not saying i like the idea, i just believe with more complexity comes a higher skill ceiling.

Just like the unit skirmish button thread, anything that automates gameplay also lowers the skill ceiling.

Short answer: There should be a choice of automatic and manual eco management.

Well the problem i have with this isn't so much the micro, but that it will make macro management way too simple.

If you are managing your eco badly, which is resulting in your expansion fabbers building very slowly, then you should be punished for it. You shouldn't be allowed to factory spam and expansion fabber spam without regard of any timing consequences such as expansions growing at a slower rate. You should have to be forced to balance between the two.

If you built too many fabbers/factories, then you put up with the macro bottlenecks, or manually make them inactive

I am perfectly aware of the power toggle, and I know how to expand. I am just offering an interesting feature that would allow me to control the speed at which certain things are built, and give me more control over my overall economy, if I need it. Also, this tool can easily fall under macro as well, since I can just select a whole bunch of factories and set them down to 50%, thus keeping them active and keeping my economy in check at the same time (in the case that it is necessary).

And that bit about the radar was more of an idea rather than a request.

I agree that a high skill cap is important. But I disagree that the game's complexity should come from micro management of units.

I think the player that should get the edge in the battles ought to be the one that makes smart unit construction choices and tactical expansion choices, ex. taking in consideration if they can capture and hold 'that' mex field or if they can hold it long enough too get an eco boost too keep pressure on the enemies other resources.

Basically I think the game should favor players that make smart choices with there units and the types of units they build rather than favoring those who can control there units better.

Instead of giving sliders to individual units, how about making one global slider which will look like this:
Prioritize factories--------Normal--------Prioritize fabbers.
So if your eco is stalling, you can move slider right and this will let fabbers build eco structures faster, while slowing factory production, and if you need more units asap, you move slider left. If your efficiency is 100%, slider will not affect anything, as you have enough resources for both.

That'd be awesome.

The punishment for building a lot of factories and fabbers is that you spent resources on things that you are unable to use. The player with 10 factories at 100% speed is better off than the player with 20 factories at 50% speed because they have the cost of those 10 factories in units which do useful things.

How is the request in the OP significantly different from messing around with pause to make your factories produce slower?

This is like saying the consequences of having unprotected sex is the surprise baby, not the STD. Or is it the STD, not the baby? Having one negative effect does not exempt a mechanic from having another. The one you mentioned is pretty minor as well btw - you built 5 too many fabbers and seriously tanked your eco? 5 tanks is a drop in the pond.

Can you pause both factories and fabbers with a slider? Do your units keep building when paused? Do your fabbers keep expanding while paused? Is the effort to pause micro so annoying that you're encouraged to balance your macro in the first place? You know... like actual resource management? This is an RTS afterall.

Sure, a choice can have many negative effects. You seemed to ignore this fact in your original post. My comprehension of that post is that you think bad macro needs to be punished somehow (which I agree with). The suggestion in the OP would reduce the effect of one type of punishment and in your argument against it you were speaking as if this were the only type of punishment. Or at least if it is not the only type then it is a somehow very important type.

I pointed out that there are other ways to punish bad macro. If pause micro were removed from the equation then the other punishments could be harshened to reach the same incentive level for balancing your economy properly. The ingame resources punishment may indeed be minor at the moment but that does not mean it is minor under all possible balances.

So if you real reason for not liking economy sliders is that nobody will have incentive to balance their economy then you need not worry. The other punishments can be increased to make balancing economy an important part of the game. You can argue against that if you like but I think it would be pointless as I doubt that is your real reason.

I think your real reason for objecting to the OP is that you like partially mitigating this particular punishment for poor economy balance. In addition to balancing your economy you can also become skilled at the pause micro type actions that make economy balancing a little less important. If this is the case I don't see an argument, different people like different things.

What about having a global slider controlling all fabbers? Or fabbers automatically reacting to your metal use! Damn, so many possibilities.

The idea of sliders it too fiddly. I think I understand what you want, but you are going about it the wrong way.

How about you have resource priorities instead. You can swap between high, normal and low. Units with high priority take all the resources they can. Then normal priority unit get there turn. And then low priority units get any leftovers.