Micro and macro at pro/high level play

And that's a good thing I'd say

Distancing themselves as far away as possible (at least in terms of priciple aspects of play) from Starcraft is definitely a good thing.

Appeal to your own niche of gamers. Do not try to win a war you will always lose. Courting "Starcraft Players", those that already claim there is nothing wrong with Starcraft and that it is their #1 game of all time, on the basis of making a game to better appeal to them, is wasted effort.

Uber has Total Annihilation fans to appeal to... and we're no small number; we raised 2.1 million dollars in 30 days after all.

Exactly that. I couldn't be more happier about it.

Come to think of it, how awesome is that...

I dont' recall any real life leaders to be famous for amount of orders they gave per minute. And real life gave us quite a lot of brilliant generals.
Also, I think that lack of micro (and overall design of this game) can solve some problems, described in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ldfuf2FRTw
So, chill, guys. Everything is going to be fine.

10000 (just an example) klicks in Starcraft in the right time may win you a battle ...
10000 klicks in the right time in TA, SupCom FA and PA will win you an entire war or 2 ...
and it shouldn´t realy need another 10- or 20 thousand to do so ...
this won´t mean that a match in this game, be it competitive or against AI, will be easier then in other RTS just that the difficulties and challenges for the players will lie on different tasks ...

*fixed*

If your apm is getting higher and higher, as you practice, than there must be some improvement that you have from it, at all apm levels.And for me and many others, it would be very boring if we can not affect the outcome from a battle through our unitcontroll. And had to put all this apm only in macromanagment.

Also the argument that you have not the time, to controll 3+ planets and at the same time and do micro, is odd. If you have low apm, than you are also not able at all to controll the macromanagment on 3+ planets (without micro), at the same time. If you get more apm over time, you can do it. And if you get even more apm, than you have free apm to spend at micromanagment. It would be very boring, if the only thing to spend you apm on, is to macro at 4 planets at the same time, instead to macro 3 planets. That would feel very repetitiv after a short amount of time. It would be much more interesting, if there where, with micromanagment , a second gameplaymechanic which i can spend my apm on. I want diversity.

I think its just a matter of taste . At least 50 % of the rts player want to have micro in there game, that you can see in every discussion in nearly every forum, except of this one. And that was also the reason why supreme commander get never as famous as other rts, even if its ideas where far more interesting than the stale ideas of the other rts´s.

Its like having in Sim City RCI without I . So only commercial and residential but no industrial. That is what it will be like.

This is the response I gave your (identical) post in the other thread:

You may be pleasantly surprised, diminishing engagement micro (focus firing, dodging, strafing, kiting, using abilities, etc.) can actually emphasize battle management (feigns, retreats, formations, delay tactics, skirmishing, flanking, pitching, etc.).

I know you did. I want to be able to do feigns, retreats, formations, delay tactics, skirmishing, flanking, pitching, etc. and focus firing, dodging, strafing, kiting, using abilities, etc. at the same time.

Why should i limit only to one, if i can have both.
Its like i said. If someone would say to me :
"We make a Simcity game with RC but no I" and we call it simcity 2013 than i would say
why no industrial gameplay . Why only residential and commercial but no industrial ????

What is the actual benefit of having no micro at an game.
It can only be that you have more time to think about your strats while your brain must not do "repetitiv" fingercalculations . But what you call repetitiv is fun for many people.


If you play an sport (and esport is a sport) like soccer, than there are many repetitiv legmovments, which you must repeat each time, but its fun to see that you can master them and combine them to fluid motions. Its part of the game.

When you are driving a car does your brain really think of all the movements you have to do. Of cause not!! You have intuitiv learned to do this motions without to much thinking about it. Same counts for fingermovement on your keyboard.

I can understand that people which are not good in this particular part of intuitiv learning , im not saying that you are one of those, are not happy about micro and see it only as an negativ aspect.Because they see that they cant compet in this aspect with others and therefore want to get rid of it.

Its the old "i make everything bad in my mind which im not good in, to protect the picture of, i am better than most others and so i can feel powerfull" , which i have in my self .

I'm not sure this will even be possible with the amount of units we are talking about. This isn't going to be like starcraft, where 50 units can win the entire war. If I have any idea about what's going on, 50 units may be anywhere from a fairly large skirmish to a small battle.

We certainly can't kill micro. I think I'm with the idea that you can't just artificially limit it. But at the same time, games like starcraft artificially increase it, and that's not what we want here. Macro is king for PA, and I think during alpha through release, we're all going to be exploring how to accomplish this.

Starcraft excels because many people like to prove themselves by showing how good their APM is, but strategy is actually somewhat limited in my opinion. It's especially difficult to pioneer new strategies. I think this is largely because of how units are designed around being especially specific, way more specific than Supcom. This isn't going to be so in PA, as far as I know...there won't be "+10 vs armor" and all that. The goal with bringing many units to the table, each with some unique aspect, is to increase the possible strategies that one can execute.

We've had many discussions on this board as to how to decrease micro...emphasis on economy, some sort of unit AI to handle some rudimentary micro decisions (let's face it, units in starcraft are dumb). They all revolve around mechanics that are unlike starcraft, with the idea that the goal is to open up some of that micro for macro intensive duties. Instead of your APM helping you with unit maneuvers, it's going to be more useful for building more bases to drive the war machine.

I get the feeling that expert starcraft players are going to be disappointed in this game. It's not what they're going to be looking for. There won't be apm sinks for units. There isn't going to be a huge bonus to micro'ing an army, simply because of the sheer amount of units in play. What I foresee is going to be significant is base macro, unit composition, and strategy execution. And of course, KEWs.

At how many places can you keep up that micro?
2? 3? 10?
At some point you will be unable to perform heavy micro duties. If the enemy can outperform you and it has a major impact on the outcome of the battle. He is not winning because he has superior strategy. He is winning because he clicks faster than you.

Strategy is about outwitting your opponent, expecting their moves and reacting accordingly.

If you win because you are clicking faster than your opponent then you don't win because of strategy. You win because of execution skills.

If players have to practice several hours a day just to learn and maintain their muscle memory to perform the heavy micromanagement you have a very steep learning curve and players are unlikely to enjoy the strategy of the game.

The strategy needs to be accessible to the player and not hidden behind a huge learning curve.

I don't want to be forced to practice hours upon hours just to improve my micro and perfect my BOs. I want to play against my opponent, watch his moves, foil his strategy and win.
If you want micro to very be important go play Starcraft.
PA is trying to put less incentive on micro.

If anyone wishes to qualify nanolathe's opinion -- he thinks hotkeying and manually overlooking the on/off state of metal makers is a strategic decision.

Average of pretty much exactly 50 USD per backer.

explain to me how do you want to micro for instance a multi front war?
mirco may have an impact early in the game when your troops are easily managable and your enemy has just a few factories and resources but as time and scale progress, the actual field of battle becomming bigger aswell as armies even with occasional harrasment from both sides and your enemy decides to attack multiple places with multiple platoons
with you beeing at a disadvantage in numbers or in composition on each field ... how do you want to micro multiple hotspots at the same time in which each hotspot itself became the size of what you see in endgamescenario of a starcraft match ... and then some ... ok you may win one spot cause you focused on it for a period of time and managed your troops to their best but at the same time lost the 2 other spots that were equaly important to the point that you lost any possibility to survive the next major attack and believe me such situations happened in SupCom FA quiet often depending on the map ...
what i want to say with this is sure micro (and actualy there will always be some micro) may give you an advantage but depending on the scale at a time micro like this microing will be a nightmare if not rightout impossible unless you are "theoneaboveall"-lymadskills but more often then not you get steamrolled against a superior macroplayer ...
on the flipside if you are in the possition were you managed to outproduce and outgun your enemy ... what do you need micro for other then sending them into a general direction causing damage, fall back if a good chunk of units have been lost and come back with more?

so in a nutshell ... micro becomes less important with the scale rising ... be it one side outnumbering the other or both throwing numbers in the high hundreds were it simply becomes unmicromanageable ...

There is one thing I don't understand about this whole discussion:

Why should PA even aim to become a highly competitive Esports game?
Does it really matter for the average gamer?

Just look at Starcraft: If the numbers I found online are correct there are more people WATCHING Starcraft than actually playing. I don't really see why that should be something worth aiming for.
In fact personally I had some of the most fun gaming experiences while playing rather obscure games with a small dedicated community.

for the average gamer esports in general doesn´t matter AT ALL

... it does however matter for those that WOULD LIKE such a game beeing competive taking part in tournaments and such playing against the best the comunity may have to offer ... simply of the wish to be either the best and show it or just for the fun in challange and having a propper competition ...
besides for a game to be esports would mean that other people gamer or not have interest watching matches of this game ... and again the average gamer/person won´t have any interest in that what so ever ... the competitive player and/or interested viewer does ...

Combat management should still remain highly important.
I think you would agree.
We need tools to control combat on a higher level.
Low level micromanagement where the player is forced to constantly micromanage individual units should be avoided.

If he attacks me from multiple sides, than i micro on multiple sides switching between the battles.And if he does only a-move than he loses on all sides. If its not earlygame but rather mid-or lategame and the armys get bigger, so what. Than i have 100 thanks in controllgroup 1 instead of 10 , its only the scale which is getting bigger, but it would work for 10 or for 100 units. Its only a quantitiv change no quallity change in complexity.

It more likley comes down to the question. How do we satisfy the microlovers without frustrating the macrolovers 2much. If the benefit you get from micro would be to big than the people who dont like to micro would be forced to micro in order to win the game. And thats also not good. So there must be find a sweetspot. But the sweetspot can defenatly not be to get rid of micro at all and exclude 50 % of the rts playerbase from the game on the other side, the ones which like to micro.


There are many people which want to have leagues in their rts game. And which want to compete with the oter players. Sure you can say : "I play this sport only for fun" . But is it really fun when you lose all the time. You feel good if you win and you feel bad if you lose. And you want to have an league-system, because you are interested in how good you are, compared to others. Its as simple as that.

I don't think this is the game you are looking for. I really hate saying that, but seriously, micro is not what this game is about.

I'll ask this question: why does apm have to be the limiting factor, when there are other limiting factors that can replace it?

Those "50%" have Starcraft to play.

You won't succeed with trying to appeal to two very different audiences. Its better to make a good game for one crowd and disappoint the others instead of trying to make something that appeals to everybody and mess it up for all in the end.

exactly, SupCom2 is what happens when you try to please everyone. it's not a bad game but it was doomed from the start to not have the longevity of starcraft or ta