Its Just Too Massive!

I don't agree with that, the reason being we have small scale planets. Mex would take up double the room, but more importantly the scattershot nature of mex points means the spaces in between would be even harder to utilise. The way it is now is good imo.

In my experience, some games have had too much metal available. But really, it's because we've had too few players on a big planet with lots of metal points. Playing on starting planets suitable for the number of players is the way to go.

Just spitballing (no idea how metal point generation is done), but my ideal implementation of metal points:

• Planet has x metal points, x is determined when the planet is generated (slider in system editor)
• Each new player adds y metal points to x (only on the planet they start on), y is determined when creating a game
• Metal points are distributed as they are now

In this way the number of metal points scales with the number of players. It's then easier to create the style of gameplay you want when creating the system.

I think the game's new mechanics fit well here. Factory lines, cheap armies, teleporters and area commands all work great to use up this enormous excess of metal production you'll swiftly acquire and quickly put it to use.

What doesn't work is the orbital layer, the small speed-bump you need to go through before you can build advanced metal extractors, and trying to fit all of this production on small starting planets that still have a lot of metal. Regarding metal deposit placement, I find that large planets have a good number, but small planets have too many. At the same time, cola_colin is right about one thing: Single mex spots are horrible.

How would one reconcile small planets having a certain minimum cluster size, reduce the amount of metal a small planet outputs, and not reduce the amount of metal a large planet outputs?

Isn't the integration of area commands removing some of the micro needed?

I thought that being able to spam build in lines and patches and having fabbers auto build on mex in area commands was removing some of the micro and making it macro.

Example,
Instead of using 30-40 clicks to build 10 factory's have them build fabbers and then have those fabbers build on the 15-20 mex in the nearby area it now only takes, 8-10 clicks.

Very true - since wreckage HP is dependend on the killed unit, this is one more point for an overall HP buff to units.

Well, instead of 30-40 clicks for 10 factories on 20 mex, its 30-40 clicks for 100 factories on 200 mex!

The thing is, if you add more tools like area commands and stuff, it just lets you build more faster, because there is always more to build. And you can always build it a little faster, if I clicked even faster.

But the area command for build on all mex in the area is removing micro.
It uses AI to go from mex to mex building up my resources, i don't need to do any of the old shift build here then here then here anymore.
That feature is helping reduce micro, same with attack area and thing's.
They need tuning but do reduce the need for me to go from unit to unit using the attack command to wipe out an area.

A lot of people do play PA that they expand so far and then stop.

It works, assuming you can go for an epic snipe

If the game pace was slowed by upping unit health or lowering weapon damage it could also help.

I think there are many factor's involved in removing micro from the game.

But really the only way to fully make the game Macro is to have the AI play most of the game for you and all you do is change AI routines to better suit the battle situation,whilst only having the need to occasionally redirect armies to different locations or pick whether you want army production or resources production built here in this area.

That mostly comes down to people getting overwhelmed with stuff and worn out from the overly frantic game play. That is why I am in favor of slowing the pace in some way.

Nothing to add except my general agreement that the issue generated in this topic is a serious problem and needs to be addressed.

That's true, but its also a strategic choice. Keep themselves condensed instead of spreading themselves too thin.


My objection to the strategy is that if you spread yourself thin it matters not when you lose your outlying mex.

In many ways, the game playing "too fast" is a high-quality problem as long as the reason is good (as opposed to, say, splitting marines vs banelings in SC2). It means the economy and gameplay is smooth and players know what to do and can execute everything, it just takes a lot of clicks.

The vast majority of the APM is building stuff, especially mexes, energy, and factories. Even if you could arrange an optimal area-mex and massed-build plan of energy generators simultaneously, you still have to build a lot of factories and assign them build orders and move rally points individually. The system is fundamentally well-designed, it just needs some UI sauce.


Still, I do think slowing down the exponential growth of the economy would help. Reduced metal yield per mex would effectively make everything in the game more expensive, and slow the entire game down in that way. It could work but I don't think that is the optimal solution.

If you specifically want to slow down only the rate of change of economic growth, the place to do that is the cost of energy. Suppose (for the sake of argument) that 1 energy were to cost 10 metal, regardless of the size of energy generators (could be 500 metal to make +50 energy or any other values with the same ratio). The effect this would have is to drastically reduce the rate at which the player can increase their economic strength. In order to run a second factory (675 energy), you would need 675*10 = 6750 metal in energy infrastructure first. And nearly 7000 metal would take a long time to acquire.

The first factory would be the only factory that player could support for quite some time. And that factory would stand for a long time, making constructors and combat units, before a second factory could be constantly maintained. The units produced by that factory would have a very long time to move around the map, build other structures, and fight, before the rate of production of units increased. Units move and fight at the same speed, structures build at the same speed, even factories build units at the same speed. The speed of the rest of the game is unaffected when only the cost of energy increases, but economies grow in size more slowly, and therefore players' production rates increase more slowly.

I strongly suspect that 10 metal per energy would be too expensive, making economic expansion too slow. But I also think that 0.75 metal per energy (450 metal for +600 energy) is too cheap, making economic expansion too fast. And as a result players are frantically spamming energy and factories at an increasing rate.

Energy expansion decisions should be significant strategic choices, not an APM sink. And slowing down economic expansion would give players more time to give orders and for other things to happen, including unit production, movement, and combat.

going to keep this short as these posts are all so long:

Yes micro is pretty intense at times. I've found the following to be pretty helpful

1. The continuous build helps a lot. You can switch production so much faster and set up really good unit compositions. Eg I use 3:1 Dux to AA factories
2. Use the Shift and alt 1-9. You can set focus points for the camera. Always have a focus point on every planet so you can move rapidly between battles.
3. Over-do it on Energy & resources. Remeber that you consumption is basically exponential. Don't be afraid to get 10 T2 aircraft and have them area build mex on the entire planet if you own it

I haven't tried the new patch yet, but in my opinion it's still so that you must have hotbuild or a high sensitive mouse to win. No really, if you are the best player, but have no hotkeys and you play against someone worse with hotkeys it's way more difficult.
So at the moment everything depends on hotkeys and how fast you can click ( and yes, the skill to play to) and I don't like that...
Edit: like Starcraft- only for fast pros.

I don't think that we need less mex spots. But I can see the problem the OP sees:
When the game gets interplanetary, like if you have one or two planets under your control already, expanded all over them, and try to fight your enemy on two other planets, you probably have something like 300-400% metal income. It's lagging already, I have more units than I would ever want to micro, getting lazy because the game took so long already, so what am I supposed to build? More factories? How much more? I'd need like a hundred more factories in most cases, to be even using all my metal.

So maybe what's missing, are really really expensive units? *cough*
That would be one solution.

All constructive comments, no pun intended.

How about this for a semi-solution. similar to others who have said 'let the AI help you' or words to that affect, but Im trying to not go down that route as out of principle I want to play the game myself, rather than let the AI play and me act as a backseat driver.

Have an ability to set macro commands - being commands that are not aimed at any specific unit, but at fabbers as a whole. So in the same way as area commands, you set a standing order to build mex everywhere - but no unit has been given the order, it just exists in 'third space', and when a fabber later becomes idle for 60 seconds the AI will assign that fabber to the task. this will prevent you having to find an idle fabber, or even a fabber of a specific type - you just list what you want built and the AI finds an appropriate, idle, nearby fabber and sets to it. No hunting down of units, no auto-building of units, just your planning. - this would be in addition to all that exists currently.

I think the main problem now is the interplanetary eco.
It should be limited to each planet, moons (because we have teleporters now), and that would be avoid the massive income of resource.

But with that, it comes to a problem.
The fabbs what coming from a avenger or through a teleporter, have no resource to build a little thing.
But if we were able to build an support ACU (with own eco income) like in supcom FA, would be solve that problem.
And for the Orbital fab, it becomes a storage with that it can build 1-2 teleportes.
When it run down it can fly back to the home planet and refill his storage.

What do you think about that idea?

I thought about that too, once. But I have to say, that local planet eco creates more problems than it solves imo.
I think that more expensive end-game units would solve the problem in a much easier, and enjoyable fashion.

But that's just me.

You are right.

But if we can build a building (with great costs maybe), with that it's possible to share the eco with the planets.
It would be inducement to fight for planets. (with the no interplanetary eco system.)

I don't think metal spots is the problem, but OP is right about the 3rd resource, and it is the most valuable! I agree with Max (nice name btw, it's mine IRL) that more automation and better unit behavior is the key. If my base is under attack and my units aren't on hold position orders they should engage an enemy. I might not be looking at that base and it doesn't make sense for them to sit on the west side doing nothing while the east gets obliterated. Idol fabbers should automatically assist nearby projects. Factories should make units in a mixture (% wise) that I determine before hand (like 20% AA, 40% ground, 40% utility or something) instead of me having to spam shift click on Doxs and just get 100% of that unit. Etc. Basically with smarter unit behavior and general policies in place bases can be more autonomous and players don't have to baby sit everything as much.

P.S. Build Templates!!!