micromanagement reduction, large scale games: the effects

Gentlemen, good afternoon. I lurk on the forum by a while now, even though i never wrote something.

i decided to write this "something" because i wasn' t able to find a similar discussion, ( and if i am in error, please don' t kill me) and because it's in my opinion a delicate topic that needs some talk.

ok, some prologue:

we talked( well...you talked xD) about a huge number of units during a single game ( 1 milion, from the interwiev of Neutrino if i remember correctly), and a great number of players , even in succession during a single game istance. also, the maps for the greater games will be (opportunally scaled ) solar systems with a considerable number of planets.

it' s also speculated that said games could run for tens of hours. also, some developer said that you would not need to be on the game for the entire duration, since you could switch the control of the army to other players.

finally ( i don' t remember if this was from the developers or the community, but i will believe that it will be something that uber will do, considering the size of the game),
there will be some sort of micromanagement reduction.


Now, my concerns.

-of what kind of micromanagement reduction are we talking about? of what level? how much different will be the gameplay of PA in confront of other RTS like TA (duh), supreme commander, starcraft, etc... in regard of micromanagement? how much will the player have a word on the game and how much the AI will do for the player?

-what' s the pace of the game? having an entire stellar system at disposition is something i love ( as mostly everything of this game ), but what are the consequences? how much time will a scout, a ploton, an army spend to go to the other side of the planet, to a moon, or from the nearest to the fartest celestial body of a huge system? are we talking of minutes? hours? how much time would i spend to make the asteroid "littleLostJimmy" reunite with the planet "dadInSearchOfHisSon"?

if we take a portion of a planet great like a regular map of TA, and put 2/4 commanders on that area, how much different the gameplay will be from TA? what aspects of a non MMORTS game will be sacrificed in PA?

see, a thing that comes to my mind when i think to the worse case scenario where this game could go, "oGame in 3d" comes to mind... "shudders".

But then i think "hey, we are talking about Uber here, dude!" and i calm down.

So, what i would like to discuss would be: how should micromanagement reduction and large scale games be approached? and maybe know what are the ideas of Uber on regard.

Obviously i take every number/comment/concept said by community and/or Uber at this poiny as something of indicative of the goals of this game producion, and because of that prone to change for the sake of a better game

And i benefit of this time to express my gratitude to the dudes in charge of TA ( you gifted me with hours of fun and concatenated explosions) and to the entire Uber for keeping the dream alive and kicking strong ( no pun intended).

Re: micromanagement reduction, large scale games: the effect

I think this is interesting, and wondered about this myself.
For example if ur commander starts on a planet and the enemy on another planet there will be no micro.. Which i assume will be the case for most of the time.

In larger group games when 4 commanders start on one planet you will have all the micro back..

Is strange, because you would think for one vs one games the micro is very important but in this case its out the window.
And in a group game when micro is generally not important now it will be :s

Assuming i have understood everything here lol, most probably not.

Re: micromanagement reduction, large scale games: the effect

It's interesting that you bring up oGame, which requires huge amounts of micromanaging and is the exact opposite of "micromanagement reduction". Unless they've changed it a lot since I played, you had to constantly log in to activate factories, spend resources, launch raids, steal resources, etc. And any form of automating that was a ban-worthy offense.

Re: micromanagement reduction, large scale games: the effect

That's fun because I assumed that player would begin on the same planet, trying to reach outer one while having a fair fight.

I think that people often forget than scalability is something that work both way.
Game should be playable with 1 millions units. But it also mean that it should be playable ( and fun ) with less than 100 units.*

With that in mind, I really hope that the developpers remove micro were it's not necessary. But they should not make it a goal. Making it a goal would lead to bad gameplay decision.


*TA was fun with only one unit and with more than 1'000. For me it's a great example of scalability. If PA is only fun with 1'000 to 1'000'000 units it would not have a better scalability.

Re: micromanagement reduction, large scale games: the effect

You can micro an experimental in SupCom.
Anyway. Micromanagement is typically low level actions. If you are able to perform many low level actions with a single command, click or keypress then it can still be micro but it is performed on a higher level of management.
Kiting with lines of units in Spring is micro while it is unfeasible to perform the same kind of micromanagent in Starcraft because it takes so many more clicks and commands. Doing the same in Starcraft would be considered ubermicro while given the widget "Custom formations" makes it easy in Spring games.

Re: micromanagement reduction, large scale games: the effect

i am sorry if i was misleading. what i meant was a kind of game not focused on how to do a certain action in detail, but just doing it. sure, ogame got a lot of apm in a certain context, but it' s in a higher level in respect to an rts. in oGame you can assault a planet,build mexes, construct a death star, but you don' t decide "how". that' s decided by numbers and statistics.

To make it simple, what would you think if on PA you could move your army in a certain area of the planet, to attack the enemy army, but without the ability to decide "how" to use it?

Of course, i will never think that PA will be that kind of game, but the need of taking the controls to a higher levels probably still remains.

Re: micromanagement reduction, large scale games: the effect

I can understand not wanting that kind of thing, but I don't we have to fear for that. The approach seems to be to make micro unneccesary, not impossible.

Simply said; there would be nothing to gain in microing your unit, but you'll still be able to give it any kind of command you want.

Re: micromanagement reduction, large scale games: the effect

Doesn't make sense. As long as a unit can be moved in real time and gets shot at, or shoots, then it can and WILL be micro'd. SupCom and SupCom 2, if you study the pros, became a game of micro as much as macro. The fast-mouse-click players were better, period, all else being equal. Micro is part of macro and vice versa; clicking furiously through menus and static buildings and tech/resource options is just as much part of micro as macro.

IMO what people really mean most of the time they use the fairly vague word "macro" is high-level decision-making at key junctures, not managing economy. Critical military decisions at crucial times based upon real-time observations of enemy forces, gained through intel or whatever.

Macro is to poker as micro is to snap. Macro is like chess, micro is like pinball. They are both ultimately time dependent, but at opposite ends of the scale. Micro is reaction, impulse. Macro is consideration, cerebral judgements. What distinguishes them is time.