Mods in ranked games.

The only mods I use are aimbot/wallhacks/maphack/godmode/noclip and up up down down left right left right B A start for extra lives, but really just hotbuild and pastats

but yes, yes mods should be allowed like hotbuild (this is just hotkeys), but not mods that autobuild and ****.... why not let a bot play the game for yahs at that point.

By itself it may or may not. I havn't played with auto factory for a long time to tell.

But i guess i was just pointing out where that general trend leads to

I think we should talk about people with extra mouse buttons those guys have a real unfair advantage !

Are you afraid of playing against AI opponents? I guess not. So why would you be afraid of playing against AI-assisted opponents?

Are you really asking that? no.. I'm just not going to answer that.

I don't think foerest is afraid of anything.

This right here ^^^. The AI is just as likely to screw something up as a human player is anyways (if not more likely). I'd go even further and say it'd be nice for everybody to have an optional AI assist that could be configured to handle mundane tasks so that the player can focus on more important decisions (or toggled off entirely for players who are confident in their abilities).

Even if you know your AI assistant isn't as good as you are, sometimes its nice to not have to focus so hard just to keep your economy afloat or keeping watch over multiple bases on multiple planets all at once. Delegating tasks to specific players when playing shared army games allows each player to focus on a specific component of the battle (econ/scouting/production/fighting/etc). It'd be nice to be able to do something similar even in 1v1s, like turning on a scouting assist AI or an econ assist AI so that you don't have to worry as much about that aspect and you can focus more on the parts of the game you enjoy. The AI wouldn't do as good a job scouting as a player would, but it'd be better than just entirely forgetting to scout at all.

I see the auto-factory mod as the first step towards a kind of production-assist AI.

You aren't the first person to say this and that is what concerns me about mods in ranked games. If the game is that unplayable without these mods, then don't you think the mod gives you an advantage over someone else playing the game who isn't aware of the mod? And yes, some people argue that everyone can download and use the Hotbuild mod and if they don't know about the mod, then thats their problem, but what about mods that aren't publicly available?

"but not mods that autobuild" - so yes at least some people agree with me. But the question remains, how do you allow some mods and not others? That's why I say ban all mods in competitive ladder play.

On the internet you will always find people that agree with you, no matter how stupid your claims are. Like these. Not trying to say anything about your or mine specific arguments with this

It isn't unplayable in the sense of "you can't play at all". More in the sense of "I am used to this kind of setup and if you take it away I am screwed".
Change the keylayout of your keyboard and try to type in a foreign one. You'll have a hard time. Same when you take away all the tiny little helpers that mods offer to players, they will suddenly by in trouble, even though the advantage gained from the helpers are not gonna make you a much better player. In fact you need to learn to use them, but once you learned them you'll be depending on them as well.

yes plz :>

I suspect it's because they cheaper

This is silly. Queueing units from factories isn't the only element that exists in a macro game, surely you sometimes, say, drop another factory down or a MEX? We may as well remove infinite builds and queues and return to C&C one-at-a-time because everything since then has been a step backwards from the ultimate goal of time management chores.

We should be encouraging design that gives me too many decisions to make for me to make them all, not simply too many chores for me to carry out. Which direction to expand in is a decision, ensuring that my factory is building is not.

Because I play it better.

why do i find conspiracy theory forums so entertaining

I am actually really curious where Uber stand in this duscussion? How do you envision the competitive scene?

What? Is my simple statement that I can't play the game without hotbuild somehow a conspiracy now? All i'm saying is that mouse control is not effective for this game and the vanilla 'hotbuild' is poorly designed. When I'm not using hotbuild my APM and meta both suffer horribly because I simply can't rely on my twitch reactions anymore. I'm not sure what Colin is on about but what I meant was A) I'm reliant on hotbuild and B) the game plays poorly without it.

He was talking about the flat earth society forum that Cola linked to.

Now this is unfair

Lucky me that it wasn't you I asked. But since you are so eager to answer let me ask you some things, too: Would you feel uncomfortable playing against an army shared by two players? If yes, why? If not, why are you against players receiving AI assistance, i.e. a weak form of shared army control?

Well, I don't think i denied it was a chore. You and I will probably disagree about the degrree and place of pure mechanical requirement of pulling levers in an RTS, which is why i said that is probably a subjective area. For example, clicking move, moving camera, clicking to set building chains, patrol chains etc. are all mechanical chores. And if you wanted to go to the extreme in the year 2100 or whatever when computers can read our minds, you would have to say using mouse and keyboard is outdated and bad design. Which isn't necessarily true.

The issue as brought up by clopse is more the idea of automation and player time management and like i mentioned, that's where the decision is. Whether you spend all your time microing your units, or attack move them to their fate while you spend a second or two setting up your factories every now and then. It's not a decision in and of itself like which direction do i want to expand.

You also certainly don't need to be all automatic or all manual either . Neither of those is really very healthy. I think the point i was trying to get at is that manual has merits as well, and that it's about putting on a subjective design cap and mixing them in whatever proportions you wanted out of your game. People will have different mixes they want and it's totally legitimate.

Again, if you or anyone plays with autofactory, I wouldn't like it, but i understand the context enough not to care enough. My original point was just that having mechanical skills in a game shouldn't be an outdated idea.