Individual / Group unit AI, and a helpful UI.=

Yeah, I agree too, there comes a point in a game, I want to be able to grab a bunch of engineers and say "Go get me some mass!"....or grab a bunch of smaller units and say "Go make a nuisance of yourselves"
Spending a minute queuing up build orders to go build mass extractors all over the place then having that engineer killed at the second one so I have to queue up those orders again is just painful, when "go get me some mass in this area" would do the same job in a fraction of the time, and recasting that order would not be a massive pain, or if you could have them coming out of the factory with the go get me some mass in this area order that'd be good too!
I don't want too much automation, as long as I'm making the decisions about what they're doing, not their every move, but the general idea of what they're doing, I don't see the harm in making it less effort to achieve the same result. I certainly don't think I'd be bored not having to specify every single move my army makes.
There was talk of area commands in one of the videos or something so hopefully they'll come up with something helpful

I honestly hope there will NOT be any AI to help you control your units. Sending out units to build mass while also managing a dense battle and also harassing the enemy with smaller groups is something that is difficult, requiring skill. This is what makes people better at these kinds of games. If you start automating these things, the skill required to be very good at this game this game will be greatly reduced.

A lot of similar stuff is in this thread. By the sound of it frostiken you played Spring a while ago, when it was called TA Spring and people weren't directed to download games instead of an engine. Since then Lua replaced those unit AI extensions and a lot of lua has gone into removing the tedious micro from the game I work on.

As a result my unit AI threshold seems to be around the level of what I think I could write in lua and use without being annoyed at it. I have noticed that the worth of most unit AI is somewhat dependant on how easy it is to control. I'm a pretty big proponent of unit AI but a whole battle microer sounds infeasible because there are too many decisions to be made. Break the battle down into a list of decisions to make and then try to make the UI able to implement each of them in as few clicks as possible.

When designing a game you can also approach the stupid unit problem from the other direction. Make the game mechanics simple enough for unit AI to deal with for those cases where simple mechanics doesn't reduce the meaningful decisions that a player is required to make.

except that it's frustrating to many people who will never get that much better at it. Skill will still be required simply to think of all those aspects at once- especially when talking about managing an entire planet (or 3) and thousands of units. At that point, if you have, say, 10 armies of 400 units each- there's simply no way to control them all effectively.

A AI/UI wouldn't remove skill at all- it would refine it, as it would allow you to concentrate on strategy, not tactics constantly. You'd still need some tactics (especially early on)- but once you get a huge army, it would be really frustrating to have to click 3x a second to keep everything going smoothly- especially after a 5 hour session leading to that climactic battle. Give us time to enjoy the awesome sight of thousands of units battling without being screwed over by doing so

(on that note, whenever an asteroid crashes into a planet- time should slow down to let everyone see it, maybe write a little in chat- and enjoy the sight)

I actually see both sides of the discussion here. I guess It really boils down to what the individual player is expecting out of their RTS experience.

To be honest I think the best solution is to actually have two different game modes.

One mode would be a more "Casual" heavily automated game where the AI will handle a lot of combat micro, and majority of the resource management for you.

Then have a "Elite Commander" game mode where a lot of the AI management is stripped off so players can flex their micro skill vs other players who enjoy this style of RTS gameplay.

This would allow the game to cater towards both types of RTS gamers and keep everyone happy.

It wouldn't really be that much additional work either because a lot of the automation features some players want are going to be written for the game AI regardless. It's simply a matter of how much AI do you disable for the player in each mode.

My POV is that Total Annihilation, Supreme Commander, and Planetary Annihilation all heavily focus on the S in Real Time Strategy. Games like Starcraft are more RTT games where the micro aspect is almost more important than strategic management of a battlefield.

I don't think PA should try to be Starcraft, any more than Battlefield should try to be Counter-Strike. If you want a high skill-ceiling micro game, you go play the games that were designed from the ground up to have high skill-ceiling micro elements. PA is a strategic game, and it should be built to focus on that, instead of getting bogged down in the fighting with non-existent AI. I think that's what most people would expect, and honestly the number of people who really 'get' the micro aspect and are good at it is almost mathematically insignificant.

Point being, PA is just another in a long history of games that have been reaching higher and higher in terms of scope and size, and that's what we should expect from it. Not to try to copy-paste Starcraft yet-again hoping to cash in on the "e-sports" (lol) bracket under the assumption that Starcraft somehow invented RTS and that we should all march to its beat.

So instead of having the game be better for a larger audience you would rather force feed everyone your vision of what the game should be? From a development point of view, while it's good for UberEnt to follow along with a core design of how the game should be played, including additional features based off of work that is already done is really just a win-win for them.

Also try to keep in mind that TA had many aspects of a micro oriented game included but they were not forced upon the user to be successful. So in essence the original game already did much of what I am suggesting to a lesser degree.

Not every game with some semblance of Micro automatically turns into a StarCraft E-Sports game either. Micro to some level is just inherently part of the RTS genre.

Okay, first of all, don't be a ****. We're all sharing our ideas here. Everyone's idea is of what they want to see, and as long as there's people who disagree you can accuse them all of 'force feeding their vision'. So drop the hyperbole.

And what core design is that? The last RTS game we had that involved multiple planets was not a micro-intense game, and had fleets and unit AI designed to try to automate the process as much as possible so you could focus on running your solar empire, not so you could make sure your flak frigates were all shooting at the bombers first instead of the fighters (spoilers - they prioritized automatically).

And interestingly, even the most robust AI handling of unit groups is going to have its limits. If the player is easily able to shut it off and intervene without it getting in the way any longer, you allow people who are into that kind of thing to manage their units with 100% efficiency via micro, and you allow players who aren't into micro to manage their units with 80% efficiency. The human aspect is always going to be better, so the point is moot anyway.

I'm going to take a stab based on the success of the DOW franchise - which probably had less micro than even TA - means that a lot of RTS customers aren't that interested in 'uber-micro', any more than the FPS crowd is interested in bunnyhopping and pixel-perfect instagib railguns.

Well that was directed at the guy who was spouting on and on about l33t skillz and his uber-micro. Honestly whenever I hear people frothing at the mouth going on about "TEH SKILLZ" I just roll my eyes.

And saying that this game - the largest in scope and size of anything we've seen before - should suddenly have more micro than SupCom and TA is just a flat-out ignorant thing to say. It tells me you don't really comprehend gameplay.

I haven't read all posts, but I agree with frostriken.

If I tell my combined army to attack, I should expect that tanks go in front, shield units behind them, and artillery even further behind. Units who can normally fire on the move should do so, but if they first need to deploy, they shouldn't, unless I order them to do so (that could be a toggleable option though).

In fact, if I tell such a combined army to attack an enemy defence structure, I'd like it if my tanks and shields were to stop and guard my artillery, while they take the defence structure out safely, instead of my tanks and shields also rushing in and taking damage in the process.

This isn't casual vs elite at all. Would you say that grandmasters of chess are casual compared to highly skilled snap players?

I'm not being a **** here, your reply to my "idea", a thing you say everyone is welcome to share here, was to instantly shut it down because it did not conform to what your vision of what PA should be. Please note that my idea allows a compromise for both ends of the community to appeased not just one or another.

The core design is going to be whatever they dictate it to be, which I'm sure we will learn more about and even have a hand in helping develop over the next year while the game is being made. From the video we know that they want a larger focus on galactic scale strategy but that does not inherently mean that they can not also design some level of micro for those who wish for it or add additional automation for the others who want even less tedium.

Assuming you are referencing SoaSE here, While you did not "Have" to micro mange your frigates to shoot bombers instead of fighters, using micro to focus fire specific targets was a largely used by the community. Which is part of my point. The game should be designed with both portions of the RTS community in mind.

I am not sure how this nullifies the point that having separate game modes to allow users to enjoy the game in different ways but ok. /shrug

Without hard statistical data proving that these are the same rts gamers it's really hard to say one way or another. However I do think you are belittling a community that is much larger than you think. Again, the idea is for UberEnt to promote their game to as many members of the RTS community as possible while following with their core design. Meaning that if they can make a great game and appeal to both ends of the RTS gamer spectrum many more people will enjoy(and buy) it.

So you continue to trash a subsection of the community because they are proud of being somewhat good at it? Who's being a **** now..?

Oh now this comment is a masterpiece of absolute bull. First, I never once said that this game should have more micro than TA. I mean please, if I said it in some derp fueled rant in my post please point it out, but I fail to see where I said that... Second, we have only seen a concept video (zero gameplay, all CG) and been told what to expect out of the game. We really need to keep in mind that while we will be fighting on planets and in solar systems instead of small regions of a single planet, the game still boils down to moving units around a map. That map is now just portrayed as being far larger than it was before but it's still the same concept. So now instead of micromanaging a square kilometer of a map you may be micromanaging an entire planet but the concept of micro still exists. If this perhaps is something that you can't comprehend then it tells me you really don't understand anything about Game Design.

--

The names are put in " 's to hopefully suggest that these are just placeholder names for different game modes. It's not that it's defining the player who prefers automation over micro to be a casual or elite player it's simple to identify that one mode requires more focus in micro than the other. You can call them Cupcakes vs Brownies mode for all I care. The point still remains that, while many in the community (myself included) would love to see a bunch of additional helpful automation, the micro user should not be alienated in the process.

I quoted exactly two sentences out of your entire post and immediately addressed what I needed to address in the first paragraph of my post. I then moved on to a completely different paragraph which - to anyone with an understanding of the written word - would mean I'm now moving on to a separate idea.

Case in point. Not everything is about you. Quit with the narcissism and quit with the drama. Unless I specifically quote a section or address you directly, quit assuming - and this is the second time you've done it - that every post immediately following anything you wrote is entirely about you.

So no, you didn't say that. But someone else did. And I wrote that immediately after I explained that I was talking to someone else. And you *STILL* had the ego to assume I was talking about you. Honestly I just want to call you a dip*** and ignore everything you wrote, seeing as how you're going to interpret anything I say completely out of context and twist it into imaginary faults for you to get upset over.



PS: Just noticed your sig. Your behavior now makes complete sense.

It is impossible to design a game that fit everyone's taste, so the developers have to make some people discontented.

/Popcorn. This is comedy gold right here.

I'll be sure to note in the future that when a user posts not one, not two or even three, but four direct quotes to my reply, they are in fact, not replying to me. So who exactly was this nugget of "Don't understand gameplay" wisdom directed at, because I am sure the rest of the people posting here would like to know as well...

Let me know when you mature enough to have a discussion with someone having conflicting(or in this case not-so-conflicting) views with you without calling them names and then turning to continued personal attacks rather than addressing the logically exposed flaws in their way of thinking...

You're right, it's clear now how much of an intolerant jerk you are! Seriously, someone has an interest in something that is sufficiently well designed to appeal to a broad audience beyond the target audience, and this causes serious concern for you? What does it actually matter?

Well I love Samurai Jack, and still regularly watch it, what pet name do I get?

Mike

Nothing. It's a commentary on brony culture and the kind of people that gravitate towards it, not about the show itself. I don't care if you like watching midget snuff films.

Some Bronys made a documentary at PonyCon or something, and look into the lives of the people who are there. It completely explains why the Brony internet culture took off like it did and is so pervasive amongst the more 'core' internet groups.

Oh excuse me for being tolerant of all RTS play styles and bringing logic to an argument. Clearly this makes me and the other members of the brony culture such terrible people...

[Ignore Logic, Ban Ponies]

[Edit]P.S: (look i can do these too) I updated my avatar just for you. <3

Funny how I comment on what a huge ego you have and without any trace of sarcasm or sense of irony you've made an effort to point out how sophisticated, smart, mature, logical, and nice you are. Twice.

Quit threadumping if you have nothing else to add.

Oh and to answer your question, here's the full quote.

Surely a logical person like you, who is so much more intelligent than I am, would've noticed that the first sentence there was: Well that was directed at the guy who was spouting on and on about l33t skillz and his uber-micro.

Think we're done here.