Planet Macromanagement - Auto building/colonization

What if we could macromanage entire planets?

We already know that engineers, asteroids, etc. ARE coming, but for true expansion & annihilation, you're going to have to do a lot of planet management - already I find myself bouncing back and forth between the various worlds that I've conquered just so I can keep my factories going and structures building.

What if we automated that process? Assuming the asteroid/planet you're conquering/expanding into has no enemy forces, what if you could just send in your fabber/engineer (hopefully!) in and have it do everything? Maybe this should be limited to the engineer - you send it in, give it specific goals (like to build a certain number of factories/collectors, etc) and it'll just do it, and it'll make it self-sustaining, so it can have all factories going full tilt without denting the rest of your economy (this does NOT require a localized economy per planet).

Later on, you could just select the planet as a whole (somehow...) and give it orders, such as "SMASH!", which is already implemented, or orders to build a certain number of units, and treat the entire planet almost as if it was one structure. If there's an issue, such as the enemy landing on it, then it should alert you to that and stop automation if you so choose.

I personally feel this would be a great addition to the game - PA is about massive battles without the micromanagement, so managing your territories on a planetary scale seems fitting, as nobody enjoys bouncing the camera view back and forth from planet to planet.

This already has been suggested and discussed. Discussed rather extensively actually, but it has been a while.

The general consensus is, if we have that, then why not just have the game play for me?

I don't really see the need. Thanks to area build commands and build queues, we can already pretty much automate it. I can have an entire planet covered in eco in... 10 seconds top. Another few seconds for an Umbrella net, a bunch of factories, and anti-nuke net and we're good to go.

There's a fine line between tools for macro management and the game playing itself for you.

I can understand the 'game playing itself for you' issue completely. But if we want to play truly large-scale games, we need something to manage the planets we conquer, especially if said planets are peaceful. I'm not suggesting it take over combat, just some of the simpler tasks. It gets annoying to have to bounce back and forth between loads of planets just to get some units building. In a game about macromanagement over micromanagement, it seems a bit ridiculous to suggest that I have to manage each individual factory on each of my planets if I want to get something done, or to have to manually set up an entire planet when I could just press some buttons.

Let me give and example of something similar: an RTS game called Sins of a Solar Empire. It has a structure autoplace feature, so if the planet I'm conquering isn't on the front lines (or I'm feeling lazy), I could just press a few buttons and it'll automatically place and build the things I want for me. I just have to tell it how many of them I want. Later, if I build factories there, which can be done automatically, I can simply select the planet and queue units from any factory in orbit (it's a space-based game). It's not playing itself, it just provides a means of easing the pain of managing logistics.

There are two big dangers with the computer managing other planets for you: APM and Strategy.

The Computer can do hundreds or thousands of actions per second, while the top players can maybe hit one hundred actions per minute. So how do we adjust the difficulty of this AI that is managing the planet for us? Do we make it really good? Really bad? Dynamic? Whatever the case is, it won't really work out.

The other is strategy. Every player has different strategies. Do I want the other planets to build units to send through a teleporter? Just economy? Nukes? Orbital? A combination? I can't have the AI follow my strategies.

It just isn't really feasible to have the AI play the game for me.

There are tools yet to be added that will help with multi planet management. Multi window support being a big one. PiP is a great step forward, but not the end all. There's also additional improvements to area commands that will be made.

Your suggestion of choosing what to build from a UI from orbit is nifty, but doesn't *quite* work. Do I want the buildings all clumped near the teleporter? All spread out? What side of the planet? etc. And I think the area commands are more efficient than typing out numbers and choosing buildings from a list.

The area commands are extremely powerful. I never have any issues managing a peaceful planet. Getting my infrastructure setup takes seconds.

That's why I'm not suggesting that the 'colonization AI' should be overly complicated to the degree that it sets it all up for you. There is some common sense stuff here about the placement of factories that the real AI follows anyways - why would the AI build factories spread out all over the planet unless it needs to? Generally speaking, the real AI is pretty good at keeping bases in one location.

I'm not suggesting the game play itself, and I'm not suggesting that it take over all aspects of planet management. I'm only suggesting that it should set up the basics. When I watch the kickstarter trailer video (which is so far pretty accurate, but we can expect inaccuracies from it) of the player sending 3 engineers to 3 asteroids, I wonder Wait, what? Did the player seriously take the time to do all that while managing military production on a moon, keeping track of the active battle on the main planet, AND while building three massive asteroid bases simultaneously?

For the APM thing, that's something that's already taken care of and, for peaceful planets, it's not exactly much of an issue. Again, I'm not suggesting that it do everything for you, but I do think it should set up the basics. As for the player-preference things, when it comes to building more advanced structures such as teleporters, nukes, etc. the player should have to do that, as that IS a crucial part of strategy. There's a fine line here between having the A.I. 'play the game for you' and having the A.I. set up basic stuff for you and allow for whole-planet control.