Competitive player

what's unfortunate about FA isn't that there are a variety of build orders - a dubious claim at best - but that you use build orders.

That's called "experience" and it is what makes competition possible. Without it you end up with some casual game were a noob can beat a veteran.

that's a very subjective statement

When I sat build order, I simoly mean where you send your engies, and what structures you build, I did not mean to imply they were memorised.


Im not sure what you mean? There will always be build orders if structures are to be built? You cant build them all at once!

i specifically meant memorized openings, to be fair FA is better than most RTS in this regard.

what i was trying to say was that in PA you could very well spawn or choose to spawn in an area that would necessitate an experientially different build order. if balanced properly this would result in a far greater variety of openings than a typical RTS e.g. beach opening, mountain opening, forest opening. indeed the initial learning curve might be higher but ultimately less as learning individual maps would be unnecessary.

I don't understand why people are freaking out about build orders. They are a natural outcome of the fact that RTS games generally include some sort of recource allocation. If there is a recource allocation, that means there are more effective and less effective means of spending those resources. Since as we all know first impressions are important, similarly what you do early game in a RTS is also pivotal. Those actions you perform to optimally allocate your starting resouces will of course be memorized and reproduced in following games, because why would you reinvent wheel every time.

I don't think there is a "classic", as in basebuilding and such, RTS game where there are no build orders. Even something like Dawn of War 2 has build orders, and it lacks basebuilding in a traditional way.

In my opinion for a game to not develop build orders one of the following conditions should be met:
1. Every game is so different, that it forces a different resourece allocation every time. This is very unlikely, random maps or not. Unless assortment of buldings and units at you disposal changes every game it is higly probable that you will run into similar situations over time and develop more or less organized openings for those occasions.
2. Every possible resource alloctaion results in an equal reward. I don't think it is possible to design a game to work like that, and even if it was possible, the merit is very questionable. If it doesn't matter how you open the game, we might as well get rid of base building and just let the players pick their armies.
3. Players just don't care about gaining an edge over each other and as a result build orders are not developed. It is an indication that "competitive" scene of the game is not well developed. Indeed, one can think of quality of build orders and speed at which they are discovered as a function of strength of competition.

Sorry for a slight derailment, but I felt the need to express my views on this matter.

This reads like now you want LOTS of BOs. Reminds me of FA. Each map there needs an entirely different build. FA is far harder than SC2 in this regard. SC2 needs one build vs P, Z and T to play at a halfway decent level. That's 3 builds instead of the 8 or 16 that FA needs. So I'd say FA is far "worse" than most other RTS in the regard of memorizing openings. If PA competition really should end up on totally random maps it will probably be more about memorizing other things. I.e. good players would know lots of different constellations that often occur and how to use them best from a build-order standpoint. People will always need to memorize some eco-stuff like this. It's just impossible to do the necessary planning (and it's calculation) in your head on the fly. I doubt this can be changed.

So would it be better to have 1 or 2 or 3 common builds? With having mostly every other be a little variation of them?

Having maybe 3 is definitely noob friendlier then 15.

Build orders are never noob friendly. They require someone to seek them out, memorize them, and then practice them rigorously.

Ideally, for this game, you'd want the added bonus from a strict build order to be very small, and the added bonus from understanding to what is happening and what your opponent is planning to be really big.

Then build orders will quickly fade to the background in favor of keeping tabs on your opponent and responding to what he does.

Build orders only work if you can either perfectly factor in what your opponent is doing before the game starts, or if what your opponent is doing is irrelevant. As soon as those two factors don't apply anymore, strict build orders cease to be useful.

So the earlier you can make that happen, the less focus on build orders there'll be.

well said pluisjen

tying back into my previous post, if a player opens moutains and another player opens in the forest, they will have to adjust accordingly. the mountain player might build more raiders while the forest player might build more spiderbots.

I think it's been confirmed?

I don't see the connection to BOs. Apart from the fact that both players now need at least 2 builds: a forest build and a mountain build.

no it would be the antithesis of a build order, you would be responding to where your opponent is and what your opponent is doing.

a strict linear progression in what you build is unavoidable but by encouraging an active response to your opponent from the very beginning this can be mitigated. FA is better than most RTS in that beyond the initial 3 minutes what your opponent is doing shapes what you do. starcraft is particularly rigid in that the metagame is very shallow. in both cases you have a necessarily rigid opening, the necessity of these openings will hopefully be addressed in PA via the egg and the variety of environment - where your opponent starts and where you start will immediately play into your strategy.

Ummm.... so if you use a build order you can't respond to what opponent is doing? Build orders are about optimizing resource allocation, not about deciding before the game that you will only make tanks no matter what. Sure you open up with a specific strategy in mind, but you adjust it to current state of the game. Unless you cheese or rush, what your opponent is doing always influences what you do.

I don't understand those ill conceptions that are harbored towards starcraft. Metagame in Starcraft is anything but shallow. For some reason people disdain it for having the most developed competiton. The fact that it features openings optimized to perfection, that is often played in a nearly automated, "machine-like" way is just a testament to how cutthroat the competition was at this game. Every other RTS played to this extent would develop similar patterns, AoE2 is quite similar in this regard(as in it has rock solid BOs).

In other words build orders are not a feature of RTS game. It is a way these games are played.

This argument has also nothing to do with the topic so it should be either moved to separate one or ceased.

I'm going to ask this question right here, and I don't care if it's been asked before, but:

Why should anyone give two damns if a noob can beat a vetran???
Oh no, a new player to the game could possibly be good at it???
Sounds like GOOD game design to me, to be honest....

I mean experience should be important, but if it's everything, then it's not strategy anymore.

Then you've made a luck based system matter more than the skill of the player.

I know it sounds like a good idea on paper; anyone has the chance to win. But really what you WANT is a system that favours the player with the greater amount of skill, be they new or veteran.

I don't want to lose to a "noob" when his skill level is waaaaaay below mine if I am playing to my own skill level competently.

If it doesn't matter how WELL I play and a "noob" still has just as much a chance of beating me even if I'm putting in much more effort than he is, then what's the point of getting more skilled if it doesn't increase my chances?

You're allowed a game where new players aren't baffled by the difficulty or complexity of it all. You should NOT have a game where someone with less skill is equally able to beat a player who is more skilled than them... otherwise what's the point?

No no no, I'm not talking about luck based. I mean, I almost was for a second there but then I realized that and caught myself. I'm not talking about a new player beating a veteran on accident, just a new player using strategies that survive against experience because the system is easier to learn.

Yeah, I agree experience should matter, but if you just come up and throw his ultimatum in my face, then I really don't give a damn. Between a newb and a veteran, if the veteran is only better from memorizing tedium, then I would want the newb to win.

Though now I feel as if I have egg on my face. I was responding to his comment as if it were based in the whole build order argument, and it was a little short sighted like that.

What a horrible strategy game. Any game that promotes the a win/loss state based purely on memory isn't a strategy game, it's a memory game... or at best a puzzle game.

Woah... Tedium =/= strategy, you missed my edit, and yes, it would be a horrid strategy game if tedium were the only strategy, hence my revulsion to build orders. (Yes, they don't represent the whole game, they just represent a poor, overly elitist beginning that is a stop block for those who want to learn strategy.)

Then we agree.

How to eliminate build orders is a different conversation altogether though...
One I do not have an answer to...

I think they are already gone. I think that this game will be balanced for all even without planets that are mirrored or hand designed to be balanced. And I think that both of those options will be readily available to us when the game comes out (maybe not mirrored planets, but I know those sliders on the planet editor as it is now in NO way represent the final form of the planet editor). So I don't even see what the purpose of this thread is.

I think this entire thread is already solved by the scale of the game.