Micro and macro at pro/high level play

I will give the game a try, no matter what.I just find building stuff on an whole solarsystem and destruction on an global scale, just too intriguing.

Apm is not the limiting factor. its a limiting factor , beside others.
Why should i get rid of it, if i am good at it, compared to other players.
Yes a game total without micro is less fun, than micro would be included beside many other components, like strategy and anticipating enemy movment,..

But you cant avoid apm in an real time strategy game. Its not civilisation or heros of migth and magic. How fast you can build up your economy, does matter.Managing the resourche "time", does matter.

I said before, that i played starcraft 1 and 2, beside of all the c&c games and supremecomander 1 and 2. I came to an point, where starcrat 2 became very boring for me, because i saw the same unitcompositions over and over again. So no im not playing anymore Starcraft.

I hope that this one or Hardware:Shipbreakers or the new c&c will deliver.

and now it comes out. how fast you process information should matter in an RTS, not how fast your hands are

+ 1 with all of the responses

Im good in both. So im asking again, why should i get ride of one of them.
I would only get rid of it, when i am bad in one of those and would say to my self:
"Ok they beat me , but only because there is micro involved in this game. If there where no micro, but rather pure strategic-thinking, than i would beat them all.Because in the picture that i have from my self im the best strategic thinker". Maybe you are maybe you just try to compensate for your lose and try to force it on the apm.

But as i said. How will you prevent, that an player with high apm, is better in an
real time strategy game. The whole basebuilding-concept, which is important for your economy, favors high apm. If you can build your buildings, which collect resourches, faster, than you can build faster units and that is scaling up in an bigger army compared to your enemy ... So if you are clicking faster, you play better if you are equal skilled in strategic thinking.

The economic management should hopefully not require much apm either.
Just because you are clicking faster it shouldn't make your economy grow faster.

Clicking is the virtual equivalent to executing your strategy. Of couse excecution shoud matter. If your execution is sloppy than you can have the best plan it doesnt matter, you will fail. The mouse is the medium you execute your plans. Do you want a game where you tell the A.I inside the computer per voice recognition your plan and he executes it for you.
That would take so much away from the fun.And it would made it more easy.ITs not only about your idea, but also about how well you execute it. Theoretical plans without practical execution, have no affect at all.


So enough replies.Im out, have fun.

Such voice recognition would be awesome (if it was practical). You can be like an actual commander, shouting orders.

'Course, I suppose a mouse would be more practical, but I'd like to play an RTS without mouse support but with excellent voice recognition - more like mind reading really.

It comes down to want you want. In a war a general isn't in charge of individual battles. In a battle a commander isn't in charge of individual engagements. In an engagement soldiers are in charge of themselves. Maybe you want to handle soldiers, I don't. I want to command battles and general operations. I want to play Real-Time Strategy. And since that's what Total Annihilation is about and this game was pitched as a spiritual successor that's what I expect.

I'm not sure what you expect, if you want to manage troops there's already plenty of games for that. Yes, this is an RTS but it doesn't have to be exactly what you're used to and it especially doesn't need engagement micro just because you're "good" at it.

If you want an idea of what to expect I suggest you go play Total Annihilation, Supreme Commander or Spring RTS.

Such a tease. Yeah that would be cool to be able to act like a real general.

Execution should matter. But execution is only doing what you need to do in order to execute strategies or deploy tactics. However I don't see the need for gamemechanics that force the player to click constantly. That should be avoided.

I want to do both. I want to make the strategys and i want to execute my own strategys, by controling my troopformations. Its not that i prefer one over the other.
I would miss something, if i cant do both.Because this is a game and not real life i can be both the soldier and general. But i can understand that other people have a different taste. So its ok if the game is not exactly what i want , i will give it a try as i said. So see you on the battlefield, or in this forum.

As I said earlier, clicks will of course matter. And if you want to compare it to a General, then the clicks you make are the orders you give. If you want a game where you say "Win the game" and then sit back while you watch it all unfold before you, you might as well watch a film.

If you want to step in and direct a battle on a more personal level, that extra touch is most likely going to make a difference.

If you make up sound strategies and are fast in executing them (clicks) you are most likely going to make a difference.

Now, those are the things I feel are inevitable. PA might to remove as much of possible of the micromanagement, in all areas to level the playing field, but I don't see how they can take it away altogether.

So yes, OP, if you're so good at it all, you're more than likely going to have an edge over someone that doesn't. It's kind of a question you could have worked out the answer to yourself.

they won´t ... simple as that ... there will always be some micro involved be it army movement or assigning targets to attack ...

If you're not interested in there being actual SKILL in controlling units/structures, why don't you play a turn based game where there is absolutely none of this?

your chess analogy is complete trash. Speed chess is far more entertaining.

It's impossible to accurately guess just how important APM will be until the game is out. But I think it's safe to say that a player will be rewarded for his decisions much more than his "skill". A tactical genius will always win a game of TA against a micro king IMO. Yes, having fast fingers will be an advantage. But I think what will separate the good from the bad will be good strategy and clever use of the map.

From a games design perspective, I really like being rewarded for clever choices. Not fast fingers. I'm pretty good at Starcraft, too (pardon the pun) so don't get me wrong, it's a great game and I like it. But I want games that reward cunning and clever plays without having to train my fingers just to execute a build.

And there no skill ceiling when it comes to strategy, provided there is a lot options.

Of course there will be some micro. It just wont be the focus of play.

In SCII you have to be fairly good for the game to be a stratergy game at all. Before this point you can make just about anything you want as long as you have much better micro than your opponent (both unit and economy micro (which is often called macro) such that you spend resources efficiently). This forces players to put in a lot of time practicing repetitive task to train their muscle memory.

I think this is bad for a few reasons:

• There are people good at strategy, people good at micro and people who are good at both. Reducing micro increases the pool of players who can be playing at a high strategic level. I think more players equates to more diversity and fun.
• It is easier to innovate strategically when the UI freely allows you to do so. In the end micro training sets you up to accomplish a set number of tasks, to try something new in a competitive way you will have to train that new management skill.
• Personally, I think training muscle memory to perform tasks which are easy to encode in algorithms is a waste of time.

Micro also limits the scope of the game. The unit balance in SCII relies heavily on good micro, a High Templar does no damage at all unless microed. How often do you see more than one engagement at a time in a game of SCII? Yes, there could be an attack on a worker line during a larger battle so how many times are there more than two battles? Many units in SCII are massively more effective if the player is focusing on them during battle. This focus requirement adds to the power of deathballing and prevents large scale movements of many armies.

You can't make blanket statements about things either being mindless micro or important decisions. For example the choice to retreat an army from battle is often a large scale strategic choice which could not be automated. But a player might want their units to retreat individually in some simple situations which are very easy to codify. For example blink Stalkers could micro themselves, once a player decides at the start of the battle that they want their Stalkers to favour survival over damage output there is no strategic thought involved in blinking each one to the back when they receive too much damage.

I think Starcraft or DotA are very good high APM / dexterity tactics games that require intelligence, good memory and quick reactions. But if you remove most of the micro from them, you still won't get a strategy game - in fact I think both would be quite boring then.

Further reducing micro (both regarding unit control and building your base / economy) even more than TA or SupCom did would be great in PA. But the freed up time for the player has to be filled with more strategy (not just with beeing able to control more units due to a smarter interface / ai) - with thinking and making decisions that determine the outcome of a match in the long-term (that's what I think strategy is).

"RTS FOR THE NEXT GENERATION" - is what Uber promised for PA. And I hope they can to some extent reinvent the genre and bring more strategy / less klicking to Real-Time-"Strategy" games.

Considering all the talk about strategies that ppl do in SC2 this is wrong.

When going shopping next time I hope I can come up with some excellent tactics for that purpose, I just wouldn't call it a big strategy (maybe some female? shoppers might disagree).

You can't really talk about that "excellent tactic" a lot, though.