What if micro pigs... are just shaved guinea pigs?

Slightly higher quality version 6v1 Dox fight. End result: I lost this confrontation, but took out 5 of Scifi's, even though mine had started at half HP.

PA Stats page with replay ID and stuff.

Should this kind of micro be in the game? I think yes. It was crazy fun.

There have been a few changes recently, like the bombers bombs being fired towards units underneath it, which have seemingly been to try to reduce the "amount of micro" in the game. Often these changes don't actually make a micro'd unit any less powerful, they just severely increase the amount of skill needed to pull off such shenanigans.

Ehh, if your able to put your attention to a few dox here and there anyways without losing something on the macro level, you deserve to win the fight.

Micro is a great way of getting a little more out of a unit, if you can spare the time.

So I'll put maybe, because getting a little more is fine, but getting like, way more, is in my mind a little too far for the average user.

I don't have a problem with micromanagment of small numbers of units. Sometimes it can be quite fun and satisfying. It's just that if I want that kind of experience, there are other games that will do it better than PA ever could because they are built around it. Starcraft and the Company of Heroes games are prime examples. If I want micro, I will play those games. If I want something that requires more emphasis on the plan than the execution, then I would come to PA. Or at least, what I hope PA will one day become.

I actually disagree with this in part. It's too effective due to dox projectile speed being reduced because people whined about dox anti air.

Micro is important, but it should never let you take 1 v 5 fights. The micro isn't even very hard to do mechanically. Just click left and right. When you get two players doing this against each other, it just comes down to luck and who needs to do something else first.

So i'd like the mechanic to stay in place, but it should not be this effective.

I dont mind this micro being in there as it is time consuming to do and there is almost always something else you should be doing.

That dox:

I don't see why not having that sort of thing would be good.

TA, Spring (and thankfully now PA) have always had a very different type of micro to other games though. Starcraft *forces* micro though a rock paper scissors mechanic. THIS type of micro is a natural result of *simulated projectiles* and is exactly the sort of thing that gives a game a lot of subtle depth.

It's pretty easy to learn a build order and spam masses of units. Learning the intricate detail of how units interact with each other to this level though- that takes time. That is what separates an inexperienced player from a pro. Ta had this in spades and I'm very encouraged to see this level of interaction in PA. This is *essential* in my opinion- as it was in earlier variants of the genre (and was sorely lacking in SupCom). Other things that result from projectile simulation- advantages to holding the high ground, the requirement for LOS on direct fire weapons (so you can hide your units behind a large structure to avoid tank fire, but high ark artillery shells can fire over the top), the ability for ground units to actually hit air units and such.

Many people look at TA, Spring or PA and think "you just win by spamming", however when you actually get to grips with these games there are many many subtle things that make the difference between a win or a loss in a given situation and that is what makes these games great. Please don't tell me that Starcraft is the epitome of micro (I do play it btw), the system used in Starcarft is very black and white, A counters B and most Starcaft players can't see the subtlety in games like this.

An example from Spring of what can be done with *godlike* micro.



The unit attacking in the video is a 'jeffy' (like a skitter with a really weak gun, and it only takes 2 hits to kill).

The guy playing is PRO_rANDY who happens to be one of the UKs top Starcarft players (he's won quite a few major tournaments with prizes in the thousands) and this is what can be done with that level of micro ability. Note the guy he is playing in the video was at the time the #1 player on spring ([WARC]_Daywalker) who could beat rANDY on larger maps due to his excellent macro game but up close like this...

That looked more like using a speedy unit to outrun attackers for minutes. Not quite the same to dancing doxs.

Anyway in generel I think a little micro stuff like this can't even really be prevented in an RTS. Just don't make it toooo powerful. 1v6 is still somewhat *okay* though.

Yeah true, although there are other cases in Spring (e.g. against the powerful 'Storm' rocket bots) where projectiles are slow enough to dodge with fast units. In the case of the video above it wasn't *just* speed, he was also using the structures to block LOS as most of the time when attacking the base he was *in range* of the commander

I agree that it shouldn't invalidate everything, but it's good that there are opportunities to get a bit more out of a unit. I personally want the ability to 'attack ground' as that way I will be able to manually lead targets with bombers for example.

That would just **** me right the **** off.

Idk, dox seemed to become the biggest problem because you can wad them up and quickly hit any side of an enemy's base with them. Back when their speed only slightly beat tanks, tanks could strafe a perimeter. Now, if dox attack, tanks might as well be standing still, wherever they at is their effective defence. That is the problem with tanks, they are much stronger but can't be everywhere at once.

Really, the dox we have are no jiffy. That harassment pretty much single handedly won the game with just the simplest reactionary and/or sweeping motion macro assault on the mainfront. That looked like a PA game, except for a jiffy its a few wad of dox, and the dox can at least counter themselves and the dox at least can't have complete impunity to base raiding with at least some standing units in place. In that video tanks were useless, in PA tanks can still kill number per number of dox but battles are so in and out that you spend an acceptable amount of dox to "raid mex".

All in all, micro shouldn't just be added to the game, but if it can't be removed then keep it at an acceptable level. I always liked the concept of adding something that can reliably defeat micro too, besides turrets. Maybe dox-per-dox, make their weapons more hitscan like gil-e, so dox bullets hit dox but tank shells dont. If the skitter had a weapon, make it more like dox so it could kill dox.

Actually in that video, the 'jeffy' is a light vehicle, and the other units were bots (pewee's to be precise). Bot's are a poor choice on that map imo as in TA:Spring they have superb gradient tolerance (much better than tanks) which makes them perfect for hilly terrain, but are slower than tanks so get out classed on a flat map like that. Still the level of micro showed there would not have been possible for most people as those scouts can be stopped so easily (Spring includes some cheap medium range laser towers that would have prevented it). Daywalker was being a bit dumb in that particular instance- it was very much counterable. My point is though that good micro should be rewarded. Also in my last few 1 v 1 games I've been favouring tanks more, a couple of bot factories for raiding and preventing my opponent from expanding and then heavy tanks. A blob of bots gets creamed by a similar blob of tanks now (even with this style of micro which can reduce the tanks effective fire rate against dox due to turret turn rate).

Thats what I mean about PA though, the micro doesn't let a dox solo junk, it's never a 1v1 instance, or even a 5v1. It is always a 30 on 30 and if 30 things are moved at once then stray bullets are hitting something in the crowd. If it isn't 30 on 30, the 1 unit won't accomplish anything on his own even if it were to survive.

All it does, is let you avoid tanks for the most part, flank them outright to attack something out of range of responders. THAT is quite powerful a trait of dox, not micro. Then again, it is fine because turrets, and because tanks smash them if only dox even if the dox don't confront the tanks the commander does have to.

To anyone arguing that huge possible gains from micro wouldn't be an issue since there are far more units involved in PA:

You are forgetting about one, extremely important fact. Sorian isn't the only one who is capable of writing AIs. Whenever there are such huge gains from (on an algorithmic level) trivial movement patterns, then someone will automate it. It's easy to do, even as a client side mod. And for larger numbers of units as well. It's not efficient, but it's effective to manage even "squads" of 30-50 units individually, dodging every single incoming projectile individually.

Most of you have seen how well micro bots perform in Starcraft 2, and how Blizzard chose to ban bot users on a regular base. Do you really want the same to happen in PA? A toxic environment for usability enhancing client mods?

Very few players are going to suffer when their field of expertise is stripped from the game, but all other players are going to profit from the absence of bots which will be on par with cheating - except that it isn't a cheat. It's just the macro approach on automating micro.

If you install mods that do your microing, your a cheater and you deserve to be banned.

It's not cheating. All players have access to the same informations and control interfaces. It's just making good use of the tools made available to you.

Automation of such tasks was one of the premises when the client API was depicted.

Id totes be up for a non-spammable unit for micro players.

Some thing that gets better and better with micro, but can't be easily massed up.

It's simple, just make PA report what mods are in use so it's transparent. I don't think that 'modders could abuse it' is a good reason to remove any complexity from the game. The only reason this works is that the game simulates projectile and movement. Now that leads to the ability to do things like this which is good. When it comes to competitive play, I think some mods shouldn't be allowed (e.g. like auto 'micro' tools) so as long as the game reports what mods are in use then no issue. For the ladder and tournaments just ensure these mods aren't allowed.

For casual games, well sure why not?