The solution to the minimap/battle awareness problem?

So I've been watching this minimap debate and thinking about the problems that the round planets - let alone multiple planets - are causing for standard RTS gameplay. There seems to be no easy way to fix it: unwrapped minimaps are hard to use, spherical minimaps are hard to use, reliance on picture-in-picture takes away from the clean minimalism of the interface, and alert spam is just useless noise.

And honestly... I think the best solution is to stop trying to fix the problem of situational awareness on multiple spherical battlefields and find ways to make it part of the game.

If you assume that a player can only be focusing on ~1/4 of a planet at a time, it should be a strategic decision as to which part of the solar system demands the most attention. Which means there should be mechanics that allow players to take their eyes off of certain places, and mechanics to encourage the player to focus on one area at a time instead of darting around the entire solar system*.

One way to do this is to design the game such that the player is always focusing on their attack and not their defense, because in a game of PA, you have to defend all your bases, but even in a standard RTS, a human can only focus on one or two offensive maneuvers at once. (Note: for the purposes of this rambling train of thought, I'm considering base building to also be an offense maneuver that demands the player's attention)

So you have to take the cognitive load of defense off of the player. How? Turrets should be powerful and sturdy. Engineers should automatically repair and replace buildings. Patrolling units should automatically intercept incoming attacks. Units should be automatically produced and, if its base is part of an offensive push, should automatically reinforce the main army. And finally, you should be alerted when a base comes under attack, but only (or at least primarily) when it's too big of an attack for your automated defenses to repel.

When a base is destroyed, it should feel like it's because you didn't set it up properly, not because you weren't watching it. So maybe an automatic picture-in-picture window pops up during the panic alerts to let you at least watch your base get destroyed?

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this idea or similar alternate solutions. I'm not an alpha player so I can't speak to the current state of the game - only that it looks very, very difficult at the moment. Planetary Annihilation is experimenting with very new design elements, and the mechanics of previous strategy games are not going to map very cleanly to it.

*This point requires a short sidebar: jumping around planets to manually maintain awareness will be extremely difficult and a cognitive burden. However, if it's a tactic that provides any sort of advantage, pro players will learn it and leave everyone else in the dust. Which is unfortunate: in a game like this, you want to be competing against your opponent, not your own human limitations. So global micro-awareness should not rewarded such that it becomes worth the hassle

I'm not talking about zooming out for an overview, of course - that's a sliding scale of difficulty that can be learned over time. I'm talking about jumping around like a madman trying to keep an eye on every single base lest anything important happen while you're not watching. Imagine what a pro Starcraft player would do if they were told to play three games at once and not use the minimap (besides laugh in your face and say no); that's what must be avoided.

Some type of assisting A.I. will likely be part of the game. The macro focus of the game was already mentioned by the devs and there has to be some mechanic to allow this gameplay direction.

I mostly agree with your ideas, some details may be different, but building units should never be done by A.I. As it falls clearly into the offensive category.
Anything that moves is in some kind offensive and should be controlled by the player. As you said building the base is also offensive (expansion). What could be done by A.I. is the maintenance of an established base so you('re commander) can move on, build another base, fly to another planet or strike you enemy with some tanks.

Even the restocking of destroyed units should not be done automatically imho. Because:
- I may want to change my tactics and want over units if my current wave of attack fails.
- This would encourage a one-click attack on enemy base until its destroyed. You could simply set the rally point to the enemy base to produce a never ending steam of tanks. (Yes it would be stupid and easy countered by circumventing the unit-steam.)
- Unit productions in general is part of offensive planning.

How much and what exactly a base maintenance A.I. should do is up to debate for sure.
I think auto repair of units and buildings by constructors and even reconstruction of destroyed buildings is fine. Any more features would depend of how it will be implemented and how much control the players have over that A.I.

I think a warning of some kind would be great:warning base A on planet E-46.7 is under attack

Another thing, this is just a thought for battle awareness. Something like a small side screen area like in sins of a solar empire. You could select you base (a group of buildings) and select make base on your sidebar, and now its on the side of you screen with a functional and/or safe under it. Maybe as a given as you make landfall on a planetary body then it could come up as safe/under attack on your side screen
thoughts?

Ideally Uber will have something like this.

viewtopic.php?f=64&t=43193&hilit=PA+fan+engine

The scroll in/scroll out is ideal.

Thats all i could think about starting this thread was your planatary tab in SoSE, a side bar consisting the orbital bodies you have units or buildings on could automatically add themselves or remove themselves based on population of your forces on the planet. (Little side note adding number of buildings and army "power" or count to the planetary tab could be interesting, also adding a enemy unit count *only visible* could be an advantage to the tab) Having the planets flash colors like red indicating an attack is taking place and yellow indicating a retreat or safe, then the planets could have a solid ring of green around them indicating all is well. :twisted: for now...

Thoughts? :ugeek:

Awesome idea, I agree :mrgreen:

Hey All,

So the mini map... Honestly, I dont need one, however in a similiar post someone suggested having indicators in the planet view that would vary in size based on the unit count or power of the assaulting enemy and also direction similiar to the way hit notifiers operate in call of duty. But in my honest opinion there honestly is no plausable application to have one when the zooming out from the planet offers you varying levels of zoom. An idea for those you absolutley need one, why not take a lesson from history and unfold the circular planet into a flat one similar to the ones you see of our planet
Similiar to this: just a tad less choppy and clean it up alittle

I would propose the following solution:

The current T2 radar(Or maybe even a T3 radar) gets an additional functionality, for every T2 radar you would get some sort of small UI menu, that you can minimise. Like this:



It would show you in green if your base is safe, or if enemies are in the vicinity. The icon would flash as soon as the enemy attacks your buildings there. Clicking the icon or name would instantly pan your camera to that point.

Thats essentially what we are talking about but there is no need to have it as an ability on a Radar installation and a smaller scale of the planet instead of the name is more esthetically pleasing than names and blinking lights, the name can acompany the planet but we are on the right track here nice model btw

I actually disagree with this - Supreme Commander's factory loop is, imo, the best feature to ever hit the RTS genre. Reading your arguments, I have to question whether you've ever used that feature in SupCom...

1: AI should definitely not be changing your unit mix, I should have to go back to my factories and tweak it myself like in SupCom
2: Sending one unit at a time to a even moderately defended base is suicide. You usually want to set your rally point close to, but not in, your enemy's base, and attack in waves. Again, these waves are controlled by the player.
3: See #1 - factory loops are fire and forget. Setting up a loop is offensive planning; letting it run is something a player shouldn't have to worry about.

This, of course, doesn't apply if Uber doesn't like the factory loop concept, which would be unfortunate. Right now they seem much closer to the TA interface.

I've never played Sins (beyond the demo), but I like this idea. However, I would argue that it should be grouped by planet rather than by base; bases aren't necessarily atomic and it would be extremely error-prone if the game tried to automatically determine which building belonged to which base. The idea of a special radar building is interesting, but I think it could also be done differently.

For bases on the same planet... what if the interface just showed flashing red arrows pointing to things under attack that aren't onscreen? Simple and effective. I'll draw a mockup when I get a chance, but imagine the damage direction indicators in Battlefield 3.

Maybe I misunderstood. I 've no problem with looping construction of units because I don't consider it A.I.
What I thought you mean was for example if I build an army of 200 tanks and send them to battle the factories in my base would start to build lost units by themselves, without player interaction, to maintain the 200 unit count. That's what I don't want. I'm the only one that tells the factories to build 50 of this unit and 80 of that unit and loop through the third unit until a cancel it. But self activation is a no go.

Is that what you meant or am I missing you by some miles?

Yes, you're right, it doesn't make sense that it would maintain populations of units automatically. I mean, that's a cool feature, but it doesn't fit the minimalist design that Uber has and I respect that more than having lots of cool features.

However... I do like the idea of replacing lost engineers because you usually only want a few of them around; you don't want them in your normal queues, but a base won't hold up long if your engis who are automatically repairing it are getting destroyed. It would obviously have to be an opt-in feature. I wonder what that interface would look like...

I have to agree with Dalonf for looping factories, it was one of my favorite things about Supcom2 and it be nice to see it implimented, and ya thats what we were going for dalonf concerning the markers, however I would have to disagree with the planets tab indication from your point of view, maybe i didnt explain it correctly but ill try once more:

Planets Tab:
Have a tab that can be minimized when needed containing only the orbital bodies you have a presence as multiple planets with moons would obviously make the tab very messy and confusing. Making the tab with smaller scale versions of the planet or moon or even just a generic model of a ice planet/lava/tropical/desert ect would suffice. Now the indicators of the planets activity would be simply put as a color code ring around the planets edge which indicates (Flashing) Red: Unit or buildings under attack (Flashing) Yellow: Receeding attack incase you are battling on multiple planets 8 second delay or so from red to yellow then add Green: A solid color meaning its all good holmes. Clicking the planet as stated earlier would instantly pan your camera to the location which is under attack, if more than one location on a single planet is being attacked it should always pan to the first engagment.

Now someone stated that the games planet tab would have a difficult time deciphering who belongs to what when I dont see that be a relevant or an existing problem as there has to be mechanisms in place that coordinate the difference between units, building, terrain, projectiles anyways. Granted there may have to be a few things added to allow the tab to knowingly include a new planet you've expanded to or when all your units/buildings have been wiped out from a planet aswell, ofcourse there is nothing stopping them from adding a key that would allow you to staple the planet to the planets tab. Just some Ideas


Thoughts? :ugeek:

Well, auto rebuilding engineers is ok. They are not used offensive (A.I. should not expand the base by itself) but to rebuild and repair damaged buildings and units in that base. If you allow auto rebuild of buildings you have to allow this too because engineers will also likely be destroyed if nearby buildings are.
So that's part of the maintenance.

But what's about allowing the A.I. to build its own buildings in base. For example building AA or PD if there are far to less for effective protection? What's about building power generators of the player is constantly draining energy supplies. Where is the limit for what the A.I. can do?

For my part its "keep the current state of the base" only. I place a "assistant commander" in the base, toggle the switch to "on" and if I come back to the base in 30 minutes I wan't to see it in exactly the condition it is now.

Seeing as this game is both epic large and is trying to be optimized for team play why not make battle awareness a team effort. You can't adequately watch a huge map like this as a single person and still have an effective micro. Playing in a large solar system may need the forty man team that the developers are trying to implement. There may even be a macro above current rts macro, say planet macro and then solar system macro. It may be a requirement that someone remains above the system directing units from planet to planet, someone directing the flow of units on the planet and then possibly someone directing the flow of the battle. a planet, a moon and a few asteroids may be something that a single person is able to handle, but in light of large scale that this rts aims to bring and is certainly capable of delivering, it may be a better idea to shy away from a single player rts mindset and look more into a team play situation. The ten man team might not be a liability as rather a necessity in order to cope with the massive scale that this game will bring. Instead of base pings, a team mate might say lava planet's forward base is under attack and the player over the solar system has him sent units from a near by metal planet. mini maps are impossible in such a system, and AI might work for a bit, but humans make for the best intelligent play. The simplest solution may just be to find more friends and assign them planets to watch over. Even if you can't form a team a one planet system is still revolutionary, and as alpha has shown, fun to play in its own right. For a solar system battle however, it may just be more feasible to simple to gather friends and a team speak server to conquer the galaxy.

Yeah, this all sounds about right to me - not sure what we're disagreeing about. What's going to be tricky though is differentiating between "your base is overwhelmed", which needs your attention, and "your base is under attack", which is going to be pretty much constant; the TA family is famous for its perpetual state of conflict, rather than the build-attack-build pattern of other strategy games. That's the crucial part of the planets panel; if it can't tell you when you truly need to pay attention, it'll just be noise.

Yep, I think we're totally on the same page here. The core gameplay loop of PA should look something like this: Build a base, destroy the closest opponent's base, build a new base in its rubble, repeat. Building a base is a key part of the gameplay and AI should not do it for you; it should only babysit the base so you don't have to. If a base's defenses are inadequate, then that's the player's own fault, because they had the opportunity to build it up earlier.

Haha, yes, team play is going to be amazing here. In my opinion, the more an RTS forces players to shout at each other over VoIP or across the room, the better it is. SupCom2 is a lousy 1v1 game (which is probably why it's so hated by the SC1/FA community), but when you start getting more players in the mix (which is why its accessibility and dumbed-down nature is actually an advantage; it's easy to convince non-hardcore friends to play), it's not just fun - it's hilariously crazy. But strategies in SupCom2 rarely go deeper than "I'll go land, you go air, you build artillery in the back". I can't even imagine the types of strategy and coordination that a good game of PA might encourage.

@woodcastle:
Yes, that's all fine. But please don't rule out single player game or anything that is not "team army", like 1vs1 or FFA, all together or limit the scale for that type of gameplay. All what you need for what you are talking about is some friends and a way to coordinate (voice chat). But anything with lower team member count will need some kind of assistance from the game.

"quote" I've never played Sins (beyond the demo), but I like this idea. However, I would argue that it should be grouped by planet rather than by base; bases aren't necessarily atomic and it would be extremely error-prone if the game tried to automatically determine which building belonged to which base. The idea of a special radar building is interesting, but I think it could also be done differently. "quote"

For bases on the same planet... what if the interface just showed flashing red arrows pointing to things under attack that aren't onscreen? Simple and effective. I'll draw a mockup when I get a chance, but imagine the damage direction indicators in Battlefield 3.[/quote]

Maybe you could draw a square around your base and click a button and, BAM. Its on the side screen

what if t2 radar functions as a watch tower? make the t2 radar namable, so you can remember what base it is in and have it give notification if units come into its radar ring, give a line of sight smaller than its radar that is unjammable so it will give notification when units pass into line of sight, notification when units and buildings within its radar circle come under fire and notification if it is destroyed, then tie the towers to a key that simply centers the camera on the last notification of most importance and will cycle through all the towers you own based on presence of enemy units. this should allow for defense of bases as well as counter attacks. t2 radar would be built in permanent bases and all the player would have to do is make sure it is sufficiently automated to defend itself till he can pull his attention to the area.

Seems like plenty of people already want to see this type of implementation. The earlier replies in this thread already offer this idea.