Planetary Annihilation's Economy System

Can you see it on the map? Does it encourage player interaction? Does it force players into a rote "setup" routine at the beginning of every game? How does it impact key game strategies (e.g. it's a core game feature that attacking energy should be effective)?

Of course, that's going to happen all the time.

I'm with ya there. I draw the line somewhere between them.

Generally speaking implementing something multiple ways usually means you are making a mistake. If the system is good and makes the game more fun it should be in. If not, it should be out. Having the system available generally forces it's use on everyone if it's effective.

I so extremely like your view on this.
You are writing what I feel about most of the automation-ideas.
Makes me smile.

I want to make a more general post here about what I call the "texture" of the game. The texture is made up of the aesthetics but it's really mostly about the interface between you and the game.

A good example here is having one type of fabber that fills a lot of roles vs a bunch of different types that have different pluses and minuses. Technically there is no need to have more than one type! Adding more types effectively forces you to play the game in a different manner because you need to min/max their capabilities (at least if you want to be competitive). This kind of simple change dramatically changes your surface of interaction (what I'm calling the "texture") with the game. Every decision to make the UI more complicated, more automated or more powerful has large influence on this texture.

I also think it's very important to keep as much game information in the world itself as possible. Overlay UI's that aren't part of the actual game take you away from the game experience and also change the texture of the game. There is a particular feel that I'm looking for with this game and it's not purely about just making the most powerful interface possible.

Sometimes when certain things are mentioned my spidey sense goes crazy because it's warning me that doing certain things is going to radically alter the texture of the game in a way that seems like a net negative to me.

Anyway, I hope this discussion has lets you guys get more insight into the way I think about this stuff.

i have to agree, i hate when i get showered with information that makes no sense on the fly, also i hate when someone holds me in the hand though the whole game

Seconded, Neutrino, stick to your guns! You got this!

Mike

you can't be everywhere all the time, it's a restriction on how much you can expand into the universe?

The preset unit behaviours exist in the game's world, but they are hidden when they are not activated by proper situation, just like the rule "pelicans can go through water" is hidden in TA's world when you don't actually command them to go through water, but you might be able know that fact from the unit description on UI overlay.
The hidden part (or the metaphysical part) is the core part of any RTS game, I don't see any necessity to restrict it other than making the UI easier to learn, and when the UI become easier to learn, it become less powerful.

It is a restriction based on the player ability. Such restrictions are needed in one way or another so players can expand their ability over time and increase their level of play.

hmmm, true

Something to keep in mind here is that the automation in Zero-K partially works because it is a much smaller scale. I know, this sounds counter-intuitive.

Basically, in Zero-K (at least in 1v1), because you are only dealing with 2-3 dozen units at a given time, and because production is from only 1-2 factories, they don't get replenished that fast. Therefore, a lot of player interaction comes in the unit micromanagement, generally in terms of positioning and careful maneouvring during battles, since the survival of individual units are important. Also, because the maps are fairly small, and units and mexes die so quickly, attention has to be paid to all this stuff because within 10-15 seconds your metal economy could be halved, if you're not careful. However, energy harassment doesn't have that big of an effect on that game, unless the player stuck a bunch of wind generators together.

In a larger scale game like PA, unit counts are likely going to be higher, mex counts are probably going to be higher, and factory counts are almost certainly going to be higher. This would mean that unit micromanagement would be mostly a waste of time except at the group level, so there need to be other avenues of player interaction to make it interesting. Making the UI do half the work for you here leaves just the unit micromanagement, which probably won't give nearly as much payoff as it does in ZK.

If the defense task is so monotonous that a simple widget can do it, then it is boring anyway, and boring tasks better be automated.
Personally, I think the need of fast reactions should come from the unpredictability of the enemy, not the powerless of UI, if a player predicted something, he should be able to prepare for it metaphysically. That is some kind of more fun interaction.

Just because something can easily be done by an AI does not mean it is boring to do.
There are tons of games that are based around actions that are very simple and still people like to play them.

Looking at the radar-energy priority i.e.:
Quickly disabling unimportant in FA to get radar/shields back online after my pgens have been killed is definitely a simple task, but it is fun to me nevertheless. I don't want that automated, it is a part of the game.

The general mechanic of reacting asap to something happening on the battlefield is fun. In fact at least to me it is way more fun to react in real time than it is to configure some AI and let it do the work for me. So automations that reduce the need to react quickly to changes on the battlefield are bad. The feeling to be under heavy load to quickly control all my armies and buildings all around the battlefield to negate damages and damage my opponent is what defines TA/FA-style-RTS to me. Automating a lot basically reduces this workload the game puts on me and therefore is bad.

This is where we differ in a very fundamental way. To me it is fun to react asap as soon as something happens. Even if I know that it will happen I don't see fun in configuring an AI to react for me when it happens. It is more fun to prepare mentally for the actions and plan out my strategy so I can quickly react, but the reaction itself should be done by my hands with no automation involved. I like this because it is a matter of skill that needs to be practiced and it creates the workload I was talking about a few lines above.

You seem to view this the opposite way: You want to predict a change and set the game up to react in a predefined way for you.

Hello, another (modestly pro skillllz) ZK player here just registered to drop my 2cents. My opinion summarized:

In PA terms - if I would always, ALWAYS want to perform an action when X happens, I want X to trigger that action without my intervention. I do not want an occourance of X to force me to click around the interface like a man at a power station who must flip seven switches every time he hears a bell. I want to be the designer who sets up that bell/7 switch routine and then never thinks about it again.

If my power goes down, I do not want the ability of my war machine to recover to rest on the speed of which I can return the screen to my economic center then spam click on/off structures. I want my economy to manage itself so things power down in a logical (perhaps even pre-defined by myself) order, so I can focus on adjusting my strategy to cater for the loss - my unit tactics to keep the enemy distanced so my mobiles can keep enemy mobiles away from my disactivated statics.

In TL;DR terms, if PA design is championing the idea that the interface and a player's ability to navigate it should be a restriction on said players ability to play completely, 100% optimally... then PA has ceased to be an exciting project for anyone who shares this mindset. The mindset that thinks Starcraft 2 was a huge, agonizing step backwards for the genre.

Normally, I agree with this sentiment, but with the condition that it's a task that is repeated frequently. That's why I tend to lean towards the concept of AI that handles unit kiting/scrambling for you. It's a task you would end up doing repeatedly in every battle you encounter, and would be better handled by a script. (However, this depends on the implementation of combat in the game itself. In Supcom it was less necessary with the exception of early game battles, for example.)

Now when it comes to economy, I think Neutrino has the right idea. Sure the task of economy management can be handled better by a prioritization system, but attacks that would impact it come a lot less frequently, so it wouldn't become anywhere as tedious as certain other tasks. In fact, the system is much more flexible if the player is the one that decides how to recover from an attack, as their priorities most definitely change over time. Sure in the early game, prioritizing mexes and radar would tend to be the focus when the enemy attacks energy production, but at later points in the game, the player may have enough energy that low-draw systems like mexes and radar would be mostly unaffected. Or perhaps they would have enough of a buffer in their metal production that they decide that they can live with unpowered mexes in the short time it takes to rebuild their infrastructure. In cases such as these, the player would end up reshuffling the prioritization system anyway, which takes up more work than it would to manually adjust things.

The key to this is how the information is presented and how easy it is to toggle these systems. If it were TA, managing it would certainly be a challenge. But with a powerful UI, the act of balancing these systems is no longer as tedious or wasteful. Really, you aren't struggling against the UI, you're just using a better one.

Lol, I can't believe I'm getting compared to starcraft and for the very reasons that I dislike blizzard rts games. We are very committed to having a comprehensive command and control system that works well for the game.

I think your 100% optimal thing is something not even you could design in a way that would please all people in your camp. It's a very extreme position you are taking.

I would also argue that this is not a UI issue, it's an AI / Gameplay issue. At a minimum you are asking for an extra unit ability, characterizing this solely as a UI issue is not defensible.

Neutrino assume that having the recovery from an attack automated will decrease the need of management, I'm not really sure about that, that's why I use "if".

Apologies, I did not mean for that to read as a comparison. I meant to identify that my mindset regards the blizzard 'no/minimal automation' stance as archaic, not that PA was comparable to SC2.

I think these issues are entwined to a degree. User Interface is something I think of in literal terms - the interface for translating the actions I want to perform from thoughts to in-game actions. In a complicated RTS, the number of actions that need to be performed for optimal play is very, very high and the means for allowing most players to reach this dont exist. The only means I can see of giving the player complete control (without the need for extensive muscle memory training like that required for hotkey control ala Starcraft) is either simplify or automate, as covered earlier in the thread.

I would argue this makes unit AI a UI matter as well as gameplay. It certainly has a strong effect on the commands a player needs to input in the game - in ZK I command skirmishers to skirmish by lasoo-ing the group, hitting F, and dragging a line. This makes the skirmishers advance in a line, engage any opponents that enter LOS at maximum range, and attempt to keep the distance between themselves and their target equal to their range. Because all of this is automated I dont need to manage them further, but I can choose to do so and get much better results than the unit AI. Alternately, in a large battle I effectively delegate the command of this group to a sub-commander and can direct my attention elsewhere. This is fantastic, it gives me a dizzying sense of control I have not experienced elsewhere.

As you say however, perhaps my views are a little polarized, and that last para is not strictly discussing economy

I am sure there will be some things that the game will control that you do not have to. one of them being like the TA solar generators. when they got hit the closed as to protect them. and opened when it was safe. I dd like that.

That is exactly it, in my opinion the issue is not being forced to click. It is about being forced to think of taking action and having to make quick decisions on what action that is going to be. By not automating "eco recovery" players are forced to think of taking action and are forced to think on where they cut in their spending. This to me seems like a essential part of RTS games.

Also from what I have read from Uber so far they want to keep the game intuitive, direct and transparent. Power is destroyed that means I have to cut spending. It is a logical cause and effect. That is transparent. Having to set up so prioritization somewhere in the start up of the game is quite less transparent.