Part of the difficulty of the continuous economy, especially for new players, is the even distribution of resources between build power. Players who are spending more than they should can become "stuck." I am not talking about stalling, but about excessive expenses causing most production to go slowly, which can only be fixed by slowing or discontinuing production. This feature exists in Zero-K, and is very useful (especially if you configure a hotkey to toggle it), but I think it can be expanded upon while still remaining simple to use and highly functional. Build Priority I propose creating a UI mechanic which allows players to designate units and structures with different resource priorities. The primary purpose of this system is to give players control over which projects should get preferential access to that player's resources. For example, designating a factory as "High" priority will cause that factory's production to get preferential access to the player's resources over other factories and builders with lower priority. All resource needs at a higher level of priority must be met before a lower priority resource need will receive resources. This means every single factory and fabber operating at High priority must be spending the maximum allowed amount of resources before a Normal priority factory or fabber will receive any resources. And likewise for Low priority; only if the player has enough resources to meet all Normal priority needs are satisfied will Low priority builders get any resources. A factory, fabber, or other unit which can consume resources can be designated with a priority to cause that factory or fabber to build with increased priority. Or, alternatively, specific units or structures under construction can be designated with a different priority, causing all builders assisting its construction to use that priority. Builder priority causes that specific builder to use its own priority always, and it will ignore the priority of whatever it is constructing. I propose creating three standard levels of build priority- Low, Normal, and High priority. By default, all production will be Normal priority. Players can designate something as Low priority to prevent it from receiving resources unless the player has sufficient resources to cover all Normal priority needs. And players can designate something as High priority to ensure it builds at the maximum possible rate with the build power assigned to it, even if that means slowing down Normal priority construction. Priority Categories Zero-K already implements three levels of priority, and that feature has been suggested before. However, because of the large number of entities in PA, quite often the player is creating a new structure or unit and must give orders to each as it is constructed. As a result, the player needs more than manually assigning a priority to each factory, fabber, or construction project. Ideally the game would assign a suitable priority automatically when construction is initiated. I propose that the primary method of assigning priority to construction is not the player manually selecting and changing the build priority. Instead, a universal build priority is applied to all construction and unit production of the same type of unit, and this priority can be toggled through by right-clicking on the buildpic of the structure or unit. This allows the player to assign build priorities to projects which have not actually begun yet. Such as by assigning a superweapon a Low priority, even if one of those structures has not been queued for construction. Factories could potentially switch priorities as they alternate between different unit types, such as giving High priority to some units in the queue, and Low priority to other units in the queue. This can be changed globally by toggling the priority of a unit from any suitable factory, and affects all factories. Note that the category only applies to the unit being constructed. If a factory or builder has had its build priority changed manually, that builder will use its priority and ignore the priority of the unit or structure it is constructing. Rush Production Giving the order to "rush" a specific unit or structure's creation lets the player succinctly arrange for something to be built as quickly as possible, without always needing to issue stop and reassignment orders to every single worker the player owns. The order to "rush" could be implemented as a hotkey or button which can be used before giving a structure build order, or adding a unit to a factory's queue. First, the order to "Rush Production" gives a single specific structure or unit to build the maximum possible priority; a special Rush priority which is treated as the next level above High which cannot be invoked in any other way. In addition, when a player issues an order to "Rush Production" the build order is inserted at the beginning of the order queue of the factory or fabber and will be executed as soon as possible, instead of being enqueued at the end of the order queue. This also allows a builder or factory with standing orders (such as repeat production forever) to temporarily help a special rushed project before resuming its normal work. Application Suppose you are playing a map on a large planet with a lot of metal spots. Your economy is growing rapidly as you expand to more metal spots, and as a result your ability to tailor your production rate to your metal income rate requires a lot of mechanical effort. However you do know that, following your strategy, it is imperative that you maintain a certain amount of production of combat units. Other expenses, perhaps advanced factories or energy or superweapons, are less important to you. So you designate your core factories as High priority, ensuring that they are constantly supplied with resources, regardless of how many builders you assign to the factories or to other resource-hungry production. You also want to make sure you are constantly building energy, but don't want to sacrifice military production or mex production to do so. So you assign energy generators a Low priority (at any constructor- global priority assignment), and throw down a huge field of them. Because of their priority, your production of energy generators will not detract from your other production, but will occur gradually as you have spare resources not used by other production. Later in the game, you decide that you should build nukes, and that it would be advantageous to do so as quickly as possible. Giving the order for a group of fabbers to construct a nuke silo using the "Rush Production" option will cause those fabbers to get priority over your factories and all other production, spending as many resources as possible to finish the nuke silo as quickly as your build power will allow. Integrating with "Base" Organization Hopefully, at some point in the future we will get high-level command and control features such as the ability to organize structures into bases which can be assigned orders as an entity. Such as a group of factories which collectively share a single build queue. Or a local garrison of forces which intelligently defend the base by automatically moving around within the base to destroy nearby enemies. Build priority categories need not be global, and could be restricted to a smaller scope, such as a particular base. And bases themselves could potentially receive resource priority over other bases. Essentially treating the "base" as if it were a constructor, overriding the priority of what the base is constructing. As each base builds factories, they would be automatically incorporated into the base's organization of other factories. Fabbers as well would begin assisting base construction when created, automatically, and with the priority assigned to construction of that type of unit or structure. This would allow the player to decide that more important bases should receive preferential access to the economy over bases the player deems less important, without having to manually un-assign and re-assign every individual constructor. Conclusion Command and control is a critical area in order to have a game as massive as PA be about the player's strategy instead of the player's mechanical ability to quickly and efficiently grow an economy and produce units. Control of the economy is a critical area, especially because of the large number of clicks required to do many economic tasks in PA. Enabling players to designate categories of production priority improves players' ability to automate economy management. More tools to control the economy as a whole, and not just assign individual move and build orders to individual factories and fabbers, are definitely welcome.
I have to disagree with you. Building and managing an economy is part of the strategy. Otherwise we might as well take it out altogether. I don't have to click a ton of times to complete an economic task, I'm not sure what processes you are counting to reach this "large number". Most economic tasks take 1-3 clicks, you seem to be advocating for 1-2 clicks. Macro and Automation are two vastly different things. Automation goes beyond macro to a place where management is VERY required until the Automation takes over then no management is required. So why not just make a subcommander AI to do your economy for you? While I'd like to see more control over build options and economic flow, you seem to be arguing for Micromanagement of Automation instead of Macromanagement of the economy. Anyways, your suggestions pretty much remove all economic management(save for a few things) in favor of Automation Management(Sim City/Civ!). With such a basic economy(2 Resources, 5 Eco Income Buildings, 2 Storage Buildings) I see no reason to add Automation to the mix. Otherwise PA will become a "who can tweak their automation settings the best to automate victory while sending units into the fray". Automation adds complexity and takes away from the depth. PA is not a management game and what you are proposing ultimately leads in that direction. So, I will respectfully have to disagree with this proposition.
While constructing an individual energy generator or metal extractor only takes about 3 clicks, that adds up quickly when you build a large number of structures. Likewise, even though assigning a factory to build a unit type on infinite queue only takes 2 clicks, you must do this every time a factory is constructed. There really is no need to require the player to perform such a large number of meaningless clicks many times repetitively, since it is a fairly simple task to just copy. I disagree with your statement that removing a large number of repetitive clicking from the game would decrease the game's strategic depth. Obviously the player must be given the executive decision about what to build, but the act of implementing that decision should be automated to the greatest extent possible and require as little manual input as possible. Specifically regarding build priorities, the implementation of build priorities reduces the number of clicks required to direct your resources to flow to some constructors and not others. Primarily by enabling the player to control an individual constructor's resource access without needing to retask every other constructor the player owns. Furthermore, the creation of build priority categories reduces the need for the player to manually assign build order priority to every constructor or project indivdually, and enables the player to designate such a priority once, and have it be copied globally.
I do think this has some potential and as easy as others can shoot it down, I like the idea and would like to see more speculation in it. Of course another way to shoot this idea down is that games usually only last 25 to 50 minutes depending on skill levels and number of players which doesn't seem substantial enough to make building priorities necessary. But then again, it could shorten battles even more which could be a good or bad thing depending on how you look at it. But anyway, great idea - oh and always remember that it's easier to shoot down an idea than it is to support it.
Automation help free time for focusing on global strategic choices instead of micromanaging the eco. Automation IS macromanagement. An eco managing subcom still need orders, because it doesn't know your strategy, what you want and how to achieve it. It's not "full manual control" or "full automation without human intervention", but the ability to automate greatly things help at a macro level. Successful examples of ingame working automation: area command, shift-order queue and repair unit. -You don't need anymore to make patrol/build/attack queues, only zoning. -You don't need anymore to wait until something is finished to order the next structure/unit to be built, you can make queues, and even infinite loop the factories. -You don't need to send damaged units for repair, only mix a few repair units on battle groups. I'd like to dispatch resources without having to cancel low priority projects or send more fabbers assist the high priority ones to increase resource allocation on them. A dedicated menu showing all the current and queued projected buildings on a tree from priority orders can be set on the fly for entire categories regarding the place on the queue would be VERY interesting, it would greatly help reducing the micro and prevent losing time searching and clicking on the physical fabbers on the field to increase or reduce resource allocation. Completely removing the old fabber-bound order queues for a global "macro queue" is also interesting, for example when a fabber is destroyed and cancel it's order queue, instead of building/manually selecting and rebuilding the queue by memory (heavy time consuming micro and useless strategically), the dead fabber would be automatically replaced. Example: build mex on this zone, some pgens here, flak here and there and an array of factory here; and let the available fabbers automatically dispatch the tasks between them given the previously setup priority (on the fly, but there could be some preselected default programmed priorities given the time and game context, like priority to the defenses if there is many attacks recorded on this zone, or priority on eco/production if the zone has not been attacked for x time...Or even a cursor to drag between safe and hazardous behavior). It would add lisibility to the game by removing the need to physically locate (idle fabbers) and order each fabber individually on the field while checking it's personal queue. (Currently the queue lisibility is awful, i can't see what building is supposed to be build by what fabber...) Making all the nearby fabbers assist the high priority tasks from global order regarding their personnal order queue is very macro and interesting. There could be some simplified efficiency indicator like the resource one but for the fabbers, showing a % efficiency from optimal fabbers number given the available resources income and the projected build queue, lowered if there's not enough fabbers for too many building, or too much wasted resources, or too many idle fabbers... (Off cources with real detailed numbers of working/idle/minimum needed fabbers) Making use of the AI for the player is very macro. It IS still managing the economy, only at a higher level. And remember, PA is meant to scale on entire star systems and multiple, round planets. You simply can't manage such a game using the same good old tools used on older gen RTS like C&C or even TA.
