Keeping PA from Becoming a Clickfest that Doesn't Rely on Strategy

Well, seeing as there is no point microing a bot that isn't being shot at, and there is no point microing a blob of bots... you'd think the code would figure that stuff out

Good point.

It would need to be an attack mode like the other ones... what are they... defensive... follow... and... those others.

Then... micro?

You can't hold up an edge case as a reason to do a certain thing with the default behavior. Because most of the time you will want your units to keep moving and maneuvering to dodge shots while staying in range, that should happen most of the time. If you want to override that behavior, such as to chase a commander in a straight line as quickly as possible, then do so.

The rule for this would be very simple- when the player issues a primitive order such as "move" or "fire" it would override all UI automation.

UI is a issue at the moment but will resolve itself hopefully when the new UI is really.

Player's scriptable like in SpringRTS with widgets?

Zaphod has a video on Novus Aeterno that deals with unit AI. I think that PA could do well to adopt a similar system.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=CLcL8pwnVe8#t=3143

what!?? youre saying good micro isnt strategy??? thats just silly imo
then moving beyond your target isnt strategy either, just limit it to attack moves. sorry i strongly disagree, if someone is foolish enough to micro like that then let them. you want to fix it increaase accuracy slightly. serious;y tho not strategy??? sounds like someone is just being a sore loser

fix: bots manuevering that fast should lose accuracy. problem solved

Can you please distinguish between rts and strategy? Rts to me is all about crisis management, and on the spot decisions. Not long thought out or pre determined moves.

Of course that swaying a bot takes time, however you decide whether you want it to move accordingly or not. You decide wether you want to spend the 5 seconds or whatever controlling this single unit. This to me is rts gameplay: will this extra apm pay off or is not worth the time. Similar to going air first or not on the current build.

TLDR; this is rts not s.

Clopse - wat?

RTS refers to a game genre. Could you try to clarify?

Are you referring to tactics and micro?

Micro is clicking really rapidly to win an engagement rather than making strategic decisions like where and when to attack and with what.

If a match is decided because someone clicked really quickly back and forth, then PA fails as an RTS game.

It is a game component that I strongly dislike, and am simply making my opinion known to the devs and opening it up for discussion amongst the community. And I'm not the only one who has this opinion.

I like their maneuverability as well but I agree that click dodging detracts from PA. Though, flanking is different from click dodging, which has to be acknowledged. What if fire rate was increased and build times reduced for all units so that shots would miss less, and the reduced build time would balance that change.

I agree that units should automatically attempt to maintain maximum effective range and be evasive when it is prudent.

In one of the early live streams the flow field tech was being demonstrated. During that demonstration it was discussed that the flow field could be used to help units automatically avoid areas of concentrated fire. I suspect this is still in the works it just has not moved far enough up the priority list yet.

While the clicking back and forth to dodge incoming fire is not in spirit with how I expect the game to end up, I also do not think it will remain necessary for very much longer.

No slowdown please, bots are supposed to have this fast turn rate in order to differentiate them from vehicules.
I think the best way to make fast APM players to be defeated again slow APM players who are using a better strategy is to make good strategic decisions giving a large advantage to players applying them.
I can see 3 complementary solutions :
1) Have sorian coding a very smart micro management system (with ability to customize it for general behaviour). Theoritically, any fast APM should be defeated against exact same army of bots controlled by AI. Of course crazy fast APM players should have the option to switch off army micro management.

Now that was allready the ambition of Supreme commander and the justification for strategic zoom. But we did not have such smart Ai micro management

2) Make PA more strategic by improving Biomes topology to give more diversity and ability to recognize points of interest in The Map : There should be places on the planet where it's obvious that if you take control of these places you have a high strategical advantage.

3) Improve Strategical vision of the planetary system. Good decisions can only be made if you quickly have a clear picture of what's going on the battlefield. Fast APM does not only give advantage to unit micro managements. It also provides advantage to planet rotation actions, zooming in/out actions.

You're picking and choosing what micro means to better suit your argument. Lets use an example from starcraft - marines vs speedling/baneling mass. If you just attack move the marines they will lose but properly microing them to stim, attack, run, attack, run you will instead win or at least kill a lot more of them then you would have if you just stood still. That is both choosing where and when to engage to come out with a win instead of just attacking and losing. Otherwise known as a strategic decision to focus all of your attention on that battle to do your best to win. It most certainly is not "just" clicking rapidly.

This whole thread only applies to the early part of the game anyways as later on any large ground army headed your way isn't actually a threat since you just nuke it and laugh.

I don't think any of the suggested "fixes" in this thread are very good either. If all these bots are automatically set to zig zag and dodge shots a bot vs bot match will be laughable as barely any of them will be dying. Then a bot vs vehicle match up will be totally broken in favor of the bots because vehicles are far too slow to dodge anything. A change like this would make vehicles totally and completely useless.

For those that want to not have any micro at all the obvious fix is to make it so shots fired from bots / vehicles / turrets can no longer miss except when obstructed. This still allows bots to make use of their faster movement speed inside a base or near wreckage etc. But it also means the one that has a well balanced force will win over the bot spammer. As it should be.

Strategy and tactics are different but complimentary. Tactics is what you do to achieve your strategy. So if you micro'd to dodge incoming fire, that's tactical, not strategic. However, just because it is an inherent ability in the game as it is right now, doesn't mean that when someone takes advantage of it that it makes PA any less of a "strategy" game. But, I will say that most RTS, to include PA, are much more tactically focused than strategic because the overall strategy for anyone who plays these type of games is to defeat the other player by force; how you do it on the other hand is all tactical.

My argument stands whether I used the word micro or not. And lots of people have differing definitions of micro here on the forums.

My definition of micro in an RTS game has that making sense. If you have a different definition of micro, then take out the word micro and my argument still stands.

Also, what you're describing is not at all what I'm talking about.

Moving units in and out to use their proper ranges, avoid certain units or towers, etc, is what's called strategy. It's making a specific choice on when, where, and how to engage your enemy.

The easy example of clicking back and forth so your bots zig and zag is not a strategic choice but a click fest to gain the upper hand on your opponent.

Strategic choices on when, where, and how to engage your enemy is good for an RTS game.

Clicking rapidly back and forth and winning an engagement is bad for an RTS game.

Not true. For tanks the most favorable tactic is to maintain their range advantage against the bots. If tanks are automatically set to maintain maximum effective range, they will match up against the bots that sacrifice their ability to quickly advance, by being evasive in their approach. Now you are seeing a balanced match up between tanks and bots with no micro management on the part of the player. And as a bonus it automatically scales to larger engagements.

This micro stops being effective once you have enough units and therefore won't be used later in the game, so what's the problem?

????? really????? your definition of micro is misconstrued. micro=micromanagement amount of clicks has nothing to do with with it. yes you can click more to issue more orders, but telling my units to move from a to b and then c is micro. clicking rapidly falls under intense micro. micro isnt always about winning engagements it could be moving units to a new patrol route, separating certain units individually from a group, or bob and weave like you have described. micro is overseeing every order of certain things in game. in all actuality youre microing the whole game.

ive seen the zig zag b4, its really not that effective by any means. nothing like TA where i could run one, yes ONE weasel around your whole base while you chased it for 10 minutes just trying to catch and kill it. ppl doing the zag as described are really really wasting their time.

you keep throwing apm out like its the all inclusive decider it's not. my PA stats constantly show my opponents apm is higher than mine yet i defeat them. the game is about sound tactical decisions incorporated into a good strategy depending on each map and situation. apm is in no way the decider, is it a factor yes, obviously someone with an average apm of 1 is going to lose, players on the defensive usually carry a much higher apm as they frantically try to defend all their crap

Amount of clicks is actually a very good indicator of whether something is management or micromanagement. The greater the benefit clicking more has, the more it can be said to be micromanaging. Because at that point your are no longer being an officer overseeing a battle (managing), but are instead trying to control your individual troops as much as possible (micromanaging).

Telling units to move from a to b and then c is not micro. Giving them 100's of move orders in order to perform a zig-zag is. A simple way to sum up: Are you telling units what to do, or how to do it? The former is management. The later is generally micro.

With regards to the question of this thread, two things which influence this are:

1. Weapons don't lead their targets
2. Weapons do so much damage that avoiding individual shots becomes a worthwhile investment of time.

It remains to be seen how much 1) will affect the situation. It probably wont solve it entirely. As for 2), the more fragile units are the greater benefit micro will have. Unlike other issues to do with DPS, this problem is specific to the burst damage - how much a single shot does, not the overall DPS. When avoiding a single mobile artillery shell can save you a dozen units, people are going to micro those units to save them. If it took multiple such hits to do so, the micro becomes less useful.

When I first started playing I thought this technique was really bad and pushed micro too much. But it's important to realize that there will always be a way to do this unless you make shots 100% accurate, which would obviously be very boring if everything behaved like a missile. Plus, it's not that this is just 100% boring clicking, it actually really matters that you watch the pattern of the enemy and juke in a rhythm opposed to theirs if you want it to work. It's pretty obvious now that this only dictates the very early (first 5 minutes of the game) when you don't really have much to do besides micro those raiders anyway. In the late game there is very little point to doing this with large groups of units, except maybe fighters. All micro isn't bad if it actually adds some level of strategic detail (which I think bot and fighter micro does, it makes you feel in control of engagements and responds to skill levels). PA is going in a good direction with a mostly macro focused gameplay, but I don't think we need to be so extreme as to turn this into a game where you just issue 'attack' commands and sit back and watch everything happen for you. Any good RTS is a reasonable blend of macro and micro and I think a bit of manual bot control SHOULD give you an advantage.