So I had an idea about how to take some of the second by second 'decision load' off of the player. By this I mean routine actions like selecting the 50 bots that just built and sending them off to die in one of the thousands of battles, sending recently build scouts on a vector over the enemies base when I have enough to penetrate air defenses, things like that. Let me introduce you to the AI Node. What is it? Imagine a structure that 'holds' a command and a condition, and applies this command to units within a radius. For example, I build a Node in front of my factories, rally the factories to a spot near the node. Then I select the Node, and in the Node's GUI, I tell it to wait until there are 50 bots in its 'radius', and when that condition is met, issue an attack command for all those bots into the enemies base. It could have this command be a once-only command, or repeating, or que up strings of commands. Why should this be in the game? The reason for this is simple- When I decide to attack their base with 50 bots, I already made the important strategic decision. Everything after that is just me going through wrote motions that have no strategic impact, and honestly, probably not much tactical impact either. When I have 7 bases spread across 3 planets, micromanaging the execution of my strategic decisions that I already made is just a hassle. How should it be implemented? I think it makes sense to attach this functionality to a building for a few reasons. One, it reduces UI clutter and makes it so that if you are not using the Node functionality, it wont bother you. Two, it lets the devs assign an in-game cost for off-loading micro pressure on the player. The building could cost a relatively small amount, but executing orders could cost energy, something like that. The important part is it introduces another dimension of high-level decision making. Three, it adds a target of opportunity that needs to be defended. If a defending player is under pressure from wave after wave of units coming from a cluster of factories on planet X, he could snipe the Node and stop the pressure. Now the attacking player has to devote attention to either repairing the node or manually keeping up the pressure, opening him up for sneaky plays/invasions on planet Y. Imagine how far you could take this, and how much amazing emergent gameplay you could produce. If the devs decide the Node has a 'sensor' component and could register if enemy engineers are in its area, it could issue a self destruct command to surrounding buildings or something like that. You could automatically keep your front defensive line repaired, and even rebuild destroyed towers. I know people are going to say, "But this is just making decisions for the player, and is dumbing down the game!!". If you think about it though, this is doing the opposite! The player has already made any decisions the AI Node will make for them, it just prevents the player from having to make them over and over again. Of course, these are just my ideas. I am sure other people can refine them or tell me why they are terrible, but that's why I posted it here! Tell me what you think, and maybe we can make Uber's game even more amazing and revolutionary.
This sounds cool but very complicated both for uber to implement (I suppose) and for the user to understand. You would be pretty much programming and linking actions with conditions. I think it could work though if the action/condition palette is decently put together. The building should also be easily destructible imo, making it a valuable target for snipes, as its destruction temporarily stops the execution of your plans and you might not even notice it.
if the UI isn't awful it should be easy to select 50 units exactly and send them to attack. Also, if you're actually getting results from this type of repetitive wave assault then something is severely wrong with the tactics in the game (or your opponent). If you're talking about raiding parties, like flying in a drop of bots - then you'll likely need to adjust the path each time anyway.
I don't quite understand - why can't you just put the factory rallypoint into enemybase/follow your army?
The reason you generally can't rally a build structure into combat is because the units trickle in one at a time, and get picked off. And it wouldn't need to be limited to wave attacks, either. (Though I do think those type of stationary front line battles are fun, especially when raging across multiple planets) You could automatically trigger counterattacks, or things like that. And for UI, I don't think it would be that complicated necessarily, but it would take some clever design and thought to make it intuitive. I'm just worried that the potential scale of multi planet battles will start overwelming the ability of any player to attend to so many actions simultaneously, even if the player has some brilliant strategy.
