Mods in ranked games.

I think every factory should be controlled to produce whatever by yourself. I do understand that it takes some micro, but so does sending armys around the planet or put engineers to work.

But why should you? when you can have it all automated? No more clicking thats soo 1997, automation is where its at now. You give people the oppertunity to really dedicate to base building to look like a awesome city straight from simcity.

In the end the game should be about making decisions, not when you make them. I think it is perfectly fine to i.e. have an extended version of autofactory that detects a new factory that was build and even sets a waypoint on it for you, that you defined before.
Maybe I should enhance autofactory, at least for 1vs1 I can abuse ping commands to get the target position for the waypoints :>

Hell, YES! And I guess we could as well use an UI which allows us to modify the queue ingame with the option of insertig "priority commands" which are then distributed regulary to the individual factories. Because let's face it: The stock queues somewhat ... suck. The UI is bad as it doesn't tell you which units are going to be manufactured in which order and in the end you actually don't care which factory is producing something as long as the factories share a waypoint. So in the end you are probably better off bypassing the stock queue / looped factoring in whole, as it is not exactly doing what you INTEND to do.

I think people make it a way bigger issue then it is. Someone who has better hardware / network connection / screen resolution then me, has probably a bigger advantage then most stuff ui mods can do.
Ban gaming mouse

The problem I see if too much is automated it becomes a strategy game, and loses some of the real time charm. Maybe I'm just an old romantic, but I see time managing units, building, build orders and economy as the key aspects that makes a game a true rts.

I view RTS like that as well. However I think that if you can offer a UI that makes giving some orders 200% more efficient, so you save 5 seconds of activity per minute you play you have 5 seconds per minute to use on more stuff. So the game just gets bigger to compensate for the better UI.

Obviously this means balance needs to be compatible with that.
Expansions

You're becoming the Mered of Expansions ,

An odd sentiment, given that this is a real-time strategy game.

ymmd

I don't see why we need to be locked into the 90's view of what an RTS game should be.

Or rather, this game should not be restricted by the 90s' technology.

There is a reason why most of the world drives manual cars and not automatic. It's more fun to do stuff on your own.

Also, if you lose a game and watch the replay, its not really fun if your reaction will be ''oh i see, i had to write an automatic dox wiggle macro for my gaming mouse and then i could have won''.

You are changing the subject; since fun is wholly subjective I will leave it at that.

So I did a quick Google search and this doesn't seem to be the case at all. I couldn't find specific numbers on usage of manual vs automatic cars, but I did find one reference to car sales: "Seven percent of new cars sold this year have manual transmission"

Source: http://www.edmunds.com/about/press/stick-shifts-make-temporary-comeback-in-2012-says-edmundscom.html

It even says that 20 years ago it was only 1 in 4 cars sold were manual. So it sounds like you're way off.

USA is not the whole world.

I don't think there's anything wrong or outdated with time management being an integral part of an rts. You get higher level gameplay depth where you're playing the player as well as playing the game.

For example attacking in two places at the same time splits player attention. I don't see why this is a valid tactic, but splitting player attention away from managing macro isn't. It's like "do i want to 100% make sure i trade this small fight as well as possible, or make sure i am producing units for the long run". You get priority decision making, which makes the game more interesting when you get played who micro so much that they have weak macro.

Auto factory definitely gives advantage to the player using it, allowing them to micro dox forever and ever without trading off any macro efficiency and unit build uptime. Not using auto factory is a handicap, but one that many players are willing to take on because they find auto factory slightly dodgy. I understand PA is just that kind of game where micro is generally frowned upon (even if it is microing the macro), so if people wanna use auto factory whatever i guess *shrugs*.

You could indeed say freeing up player time allows them to do more things. But at the same time taking away actions removes tradeoffs and that feeling of 'never being quick enough to do everything you need to do', which imo is a drug when it comes to pvp games. You could argue whether the time management tradeoffs are meaningful though i guess that would be a subjective area.

I don't see autofactory or similar tiny helpers to take away that feeling at all and I really am addicted to that drug.

As far as I see automatic transmission is super rare weird stuff and if you have it your special or really old. Normal cars have manual transmission. Guess that is not the case in the USA.

Nope, in the US practically everyone uses automatic. Many people don't even know how to drive manual actually.