Love your product, but only one race is a total dealbreaker

Re: Love your product, but only one race is a total dealbrea

I know what that would be, i played supreme comander. In this game they had the same design philosophie. Even if i liked the giant battles and the huge zoomfactor and the abiltiy to use atilery, the battles in this game became boring for me very fast, because every unit felt kind of the same, except of a few exceptions. That was the reason why supremecommander was not very spectatorfriendly as an esport. Because spectators saw only the zoomed out version with all the icons the most time. And that was the reason why it could not establish it self as an esport and get the attention it would have deserfed with all its good ideas.

Even if they dont whant this kind of "to activate your special ability press key x" thing.It does not mean that units cant have special abilitys. The special ability coud be its primary-/normalattack.

I tell you what i mean on a few examples.

-selfexploding units which try to drive in the enemy and kill him with that (kamikazelike)

-laserthanks:units which collect the sunligth and convert it to an very strong laserbeam.
They would only work on the sunside of the planet, so the player must take care to not let them get into the dark, if the planet rotates and with him the shadows . On the upside the beam is very powerfull and you can carge from the sunside the beam onto an second Laserthank which is in the shadow and the second one would be able to shoot.

-units which can jump on an mountain if you klick on that mountain and so can traverse different heigths.

-amphibic units which can move on the ground and in the water at the same time.

-units which can burrow caves and underground (to take your vital buildings under ground) tunnels or build bridges.

I mean things like that so that you must not remember any keys , you just must klick on the unit and the obstical and the unit uses its "special" ability contextsensitiv.


etc.....

If the developer planing to do such things than i say sorry.
But even in this huge scale battles i want to zoom in and press nummber 0-9 on my keyboard where i have saved a group of 50 units of the same type and want to let them perform special tactics and movements, in the battle. If you take it away entirely and only consentrate on surrounding and focusfire big units like the comander, it would dev. feel blend to me.

Re: Love your product, but only one race is a total dealbrea

I wouldn't call it special abilities then. If that is how the unit functions normally then it isn't a special ability. Lets' just agree to not call it special ability.

Yeah. Some of these will surely make it into the game.

Re: Love your product, but only one race is a total dealbrea

In no way had I worked out a system of traits and balance in my head, but I was thinking perhaps along the line of cheaper, faster faction(ARM) slower, more expensive and durable(Core), keeping in mind that these differences are relatively subtle. I dunno if you'd necessarily have to pay a "cost" for choosing a trait(unless you were absolutely forced to take some kind of straight up engagement with a roughly equal unit group/composition).

Eh, you might be right anyway, I'm already too deep into the hypotheticals to really speak on the matter with much confidence.

Re: Love your product, but only one race is a total dealbrea

Good. I like watching icons colliding across huge battlefields, and, while I dislike this 'esports' concept, what you're describing is perhaps the caster's fault, not the game's. I'd actually argue that Supreme Commander was 'spectator friendly', it's just that you didn't like it like that. But oh well, I don't care one iota for replays and all that, so I'm probably biased.

However, kamikaze units could be fun, perhaps... Gimmicky and rather useless, probably, but if Uber decides to implement them - if - I trust them to do it properly.

I dislike the sunlight idea, but I do like the idea behind it; making terrain more important in a strategic sense (hilly landscape for more range, forests for more cover, something like that).

Amphibious units will probably exist. Jumpjets, I'm unsure, depends on how. Could work with good AI, but comes a bit closer to micro-territory which it seems wise to me to avoid. The same goes for burrowing, but I highly doubt that'd work well.

But all of these aren't really special abilities ('press button to make unit launch a fireball') but more like simply how the units work.

Re: Love your product, but only one race is a total dealbrea

viewtopic.php?f=61&t=46658

Diversity and playstyle will come in how you utilize the environment against your enemy. That's an infinite repository of factions/units.

Also: One flat map where you micro units to get veterancy, upgrades, faction abilitites is complex. multiple planets with same features would be ridiculous and pointless.

You're the commander, youre not the brain of every one of your units. You tell them where to go, let them micro themselves. You're the macro and the gamechanger

Re: Love your product, but only one race is a total dealbrea

Formally known as Tagster (TA Lobby on Mplayer)

Ha! Mplayer, god i remember that, i played my first battles of TA on there, lava highground, i only liked it because it had a choke point and i was a turtle...

God damn, i hate flashes.

Re: Love your product, but only one race is a total dealbrea

I think there's a bit of confusion about what is mean by "special ability". If I'm mistaken about this I apologise, but here's the clarification if it's needed:

It seems to me that there are two kinds of abilities: Active and Passive.
Passive is: Amphibious, can jump up cliffs, invisible to radar, etc.
Active is: heal unit, capture enemy unit, self destruct, etc.

Basically anything that must be manually triggered by the player is Active. Anything that is always in use, or is used automatically, is Passive.

I don't think that it encourages micro to have special abilities like "heal friendly units in small radius" that are active all the time. Let's say we do have a unit like this in our army. In this case any micro we have to do would be ensuring it's not in harms way and is near friendly units. And the micro there should be mitigated by formations which should automatically keep these sorts of units in the centre of the army.

On the other side of the problem, the some Active abilities are still useful and don't encourage micro. For instance, Nukes. I mean, it's not exactly micro to fire nukes. Yet it still requires the same things as any other special ability: select the unit, select the ability, select the target. The same situation applies to any slow, expensive or powerful ability.

As was said right at the beginning of this thread, there isn't a problem with micro here. It's just cumbersome to rely on it when there are many 3D theatres of war to manage.

Imo, the only type of ability PA is not inclined to support are micro encouraging abilities. so therefore, no weak Active abilities that are used solely by weak or common units. Just big, powerful ones that are mostly fire and forget, so to speak.

That's my opinion at any rate.

Re: Love your product, but only one race is a total dealbrea

if a skill can realistically be passive, always the better. Starcraft medics are fantastic because they will automatically heal anyone immediately close to them. technically you could use construction bots in TA to medic, but the amount of manual intervention required made it unfeasible as at that time i was probably busier blowing things up

Re: Love your product, but only one race is a total dealbrea

I think there is no exact definition, what an special ability is. Games are entertainment and not science.To get an exact definition, all the rts developers and players must come to an agreement, of the definition. It changes from game to game.

In my opinion, special abilitys must enable the unit to do some things which all other units cant do. This abillity could be passiv and or contextsensitiv or activ.

What i totally dont understand on this:" Eliminate as much micro as possible"-designphilosophy is , what will you do with all this freetime which you have than.

It cant be a goal on its own to eliminate micro.
You want to eliminate micro , so that you have more time of doing X.

What is X for you.
I have some suggestions for you:

You want to get rid of micro so that you have more time to micro your Base/Economy.
You want to get rid of micro so that you have more time to micro/sourround your ememy.
You want to get rid of micro so that you have more time to chill,because rts´s are exhausting.

Seriously what are you doing with all this time.Sitting there and waiting for something to happen , like you do it now with the upcomming alpha release?

Most people say that they can use the time than to actually think about tactics, instead of remembering fingermovements.But what are the components of tactics on the battlefield?

They are:
-anticipateing the next step/s of the enemy(therefore you need scouting micro)
-Positioning your units on the map (micro!) ,dependent on the enemys next step.
-Maybe you have an build/strat at the begining of the game. This one is thinking before
the game beginns , so no need to takeaway microtime for that.But the execution of
this build/strat by building buildings and army and positioning them is micro.
-Building your base and adjusting your buildorder by scouting(micro) the strength of the
enemys armycomposition.

You are talking about, making adjustments, when your buildorder fails, or something unexpected happens .Gues what: You dont have the time to think about the adjustments you want to make long because its an real time strategy game and your oponent istn waiting for you. The more time you wait and think , the longer he capitalizes from your fail.You could press pause (if the developers implement an feature like that)and than think , but than he will unpause.

You cant eliminate micro in an rts because micro is not only managing units , its all above.

Re: Love your product, but only one race is a total dealbrea

X for me is mostly management. When you move away from low level micromanagement and makes higher levels of management possible it means that the player can manage much more units on a wider and larger scale.

Sending scouts to the enemy base doesn't necessarily demand much micro. You can even have factory waypoints above the enemy so that your scouts automatically goes to the enemy once they are built.
With ChronoCam you don't even need to watch the scouts in real time as they scout the enemy. You can roll back time and check it out later with ChronoCam.

Watching the enemy movements and positioning your units accordingly is something you get more time for when you eliminate micro. Flanking with 2 groups of units might take the same amount of orders regardless if you control 2 units or 100 units.

If base management and economy management takes less time and micro then you have more time to watch your opponent and adjust your buildorder and strategy accordingly.

Knowing how to make adjustments is part knowing the game and part strategic skill. You are right that if the player doesn't know how to counter an enemy rush, for example, it might not matter how easy or hard it is to counter but by reducing the need for micromanagement the player can adjust his strategies with less clicks and make his decisions with less strain on his concentration.

I say eliminate the need for micro so that players can manage their units on a higher level. Try to avoid low level micromanagement by design and automate trivial low level micromanagement.

Re: Love your product, but only one race is a total dealbrea

1 Race, a balance of unit tactics.
Straight.
To the Point.
Chess has two teams, identical except in colour.
SupCom SORT OF had only one race, the units did not differ all too much, and the rock paper scissors mechanic of certain race unit type vs certain other race unit type is tiring to see over and over.

I did like stealing other engineers to make an experimental super friends league of doom though.

Re: Love your product, but only one race is a total dealbrea

Imagine having Starcraft units combined with the scale of supreme commander FA. Now imagine that on a sphere, with more spheres floating around. Do you honestly think you'll be capable of micromanaging multiple battles on multiple spheres while expanding your base and keeping in mind the higher levels of management that I assume this game will require?

Re: Love your product, but only one race is a total dealbrea

Can i play on multiple maps at the same time as good as on one?
No i totally can not.

Do I want therefore to take away micromanagment?
No i totally want not.

I love challenging games where you can become better and better when time goes on.
And i totally do not want to be taken away 1/2 or the gameplaymechanic, the micromanagment. I want to spend some time zooming in and microing 100 units, which does not mean that i want to micro each single unit at the same time, but i want to micro them in controllgroups. I dont want to spend 100 % of the time zoomed out.
I want to see the units moving and figthing sometimes. But having the ability to zoom out is also nice.

Re: Love your product, but only one race is a total dealbrea

And why is micromanagement important in this case? Can't you improve other aspects of your play?

Saying you want a lot of micro heavy mechanics is just your subjective opinion. There are many people that want to be able to compete not based on apm but on strategic and tactical skills.

Re: Love your product, but only one race is a total dealbrea

Assuming the game is actually strategically deep and not strategically shallow like starcraft you will be able to improve in other ways than improving execution and APM.

Re: Love your product, but only one race is a total dealbrea

I can.Im improving every aspect of my play.
As this is just your subject opinion.
People have opinions, thats just the way they are.
And by the way, i dont say that you should get rid of macro, but you say that i should get rid of micro.

And now this was the last post from me reguarding to this topic.Because im not a:

Re: Love your product, but only one race is a total dealbrea

No one is gonna restrict how fast you click. You can click how fast you want.
The devs have stated they are gonna move away from Starcraft'esque micro. If you are going to make them change their minds you need to support your argument.
PA doesn't try to appeal to Starcraft players in that regard.

Re: Love your product, but only one race is a total dealbrea

First off I pretend everything you say is in a Chekkoff accent.

Secondly, I really like what you have to say about minimizing micro. I totally agree that Uber has more than enough capability to create really cool automated units that have many really cool abilities.

Also, I need to point out that one faction is legitly awesome. It's not a draw back. It's a feature.

Re: Love your product, but only one race is a total dealbrea

Hold on. What makes you think that micromanagement is going to be an important part of the game and/or the deciding factor in skill?

However, you seem to be missing something with these posts about micromanagment- the game is not specifically designed to take micromanagement away. That wasn't the goal. The goal was to make a TA- inspired RTS with planets. This goal, unfortunately, makes micromanagement impossible to focus on as a winning tactic. Why, exactly?

Firstly, TA was a macro-centered game. This meant that you had to think about the bigger picture when fighting, forcing micromanagment to become a less-efficient tactic than macromanagment. If you centered your command on a few units, you wasted the metal and energy you where pulling in, not to mention the fact that you could lose your commander without noticing.

Secondly, the addition of multiple planets as a gameplay mechanic you are expected to deal with in game (unless you play single planet maps forever) means that focusing on 100 units on one battlefront while conquest occurs across multiple battlefronts will lead to your downfall.

Therefore, no one is forcefully taking away your micromanagement- its just something you will have to adapt around if you want to win in this game.

Re: Love your product, but only one race is a total dealbrea

Have you ever actually played TA/SupCom Garibaldi5? Microing small groups of units can be a very effective tactic in these games due to the fact that they possess something that Starcraft does not have: Real-time projectile simulation. You can literally dodge shots in these games by befuddling the the ability of units to track a unit's position in advance. I remember I once saw a light assault bot take out 2 MA12 Strikers, and boy was it something to watch.

If you want to micro, take your units and make them dance. It'll be much more fulfilling than calling up the artificial 'special abilities' you're fond of.

And really, there are already games that are ALL micro, especially the dota-esque games. Leave us our macro based games and we'll leave you to your... Starcraft.