Planetary Annihilation's Economy System

Sorry, edited my post a little.

If the primary issue is automation, specifically then why not simply have energy profiles that you can switch between?
ie. Your fusion reactor blows up, so you switch to the energy profile which turns off your metal makers, it still requires user input, but having to do more than a single mouse click is, IMO, busywork, you shouldn't have to micromanage your economy (Note that some people seem to believe that without 'micro' management, there is no management at all, where did that come from?)

The critical point in this discussion is: You are either arguing for micromanagement or you are arguing for strategy. In a pure strategy game, execution is entirely an issue of knowing what you want, and just doing it (With as little requirement for actual input as possible). There shouldn't be an APM requirement for responding to something you have already prepared for, any given single issue should, at best, require a single click in response. At worst, you didn't think of it, and have to scramble a response up before they ruin your face.

Let me emphasize my position: There should absolutely be every way possible to pre-plan for an event, such that responding to that event is easy (Even automated, such as putting down AA turrets to counter air, nobody argues to micro those).
If your argument is that responding to an event should absolutely require APM, then I'm sorry to say that you're just claiming that strategy is not the pinnacle skill of a strategy game, I'm not sure what else to say about that.

I honestly believe there is no such strategic scenario.

There are Tactical Scenarios that are able to be assisted by an AI, like holding onto the High-Yield missile and firing it at High Priority Bombers, spreading fire against multiple units in a cluster, placement of Engineers to allow the maximum amount to assist the construction of a building, etc.

Strategic Command cannot be AI assisted, nor should it. This game is about your implementation of strategic orders the AI should not be holding your hand. If you are devoting an excessive amount of build capacity to a very expensive project... that is your CHOICE. You may have a very good reason to do so... I may have a good reason to let my Economy crash for a few moments and I don't want some "AI" second-guessing my intent.

I don't mind a button to shut down all Metal-Extractors. I don't mind a button to Stop all current Factory Production. I don't mind a button to set an automatic rally-point to the nearest Transport. I don't mind a button that Pauses all current Construction. I don't mind a button that forms a template build order. I don't mind a button that halts every unit under my command and orders them to hold fire.

What I DO mind is an AI that does all that FOR me.

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If I play chess on-line I don't mind an AI showing my my current threatened squares when I mouse over a piece. I don't mind the AI giving me a recommendation based on likely outcomes. What I don't want is the AI to start making moves FOR me.

I suppose it's a cross between: is it a dissension that the player should be making with trade-offs on either end, or if the dissension is always the same why not automate it?



Like: Turn off my factory's to keep power to my defences, or let my defences turn off occasionally to allow my army to continue to grow as a steady pace.

Is what I would leave in the hands of the player rather then always defaulting to either choice.

The "reacting fast enough" part is where we disagree. IMO, reacting in advance is clearly superior.

You realize that Energy priority is just a pre-programmed response. There is no AI doing it for you, you just did it before it happened.

You can change the order any time you want, including in the middle of an E stall if you decide the radar isn't that useful and you'll rather have a few more planes.


As for the bomber vs high-alpha turrets:
The point is that there ARE no bombers in range. It is a very common tactic in ZK to send in a few gnats or cheap fighters to make all the AA blow their load on them (no overkill-prevention makes this even worse). Followed shortly by bombers which were hanging just out of reach into the AA "gap" where the high-alpha towers all can't fire as they're reloading.
Heck, I've done it myself and had it done to me. It is even worse when there is a tower that depends on stockpiling ammunition and is HIGHLY vulnerable to being baited as it has huge range and is often built to control enemy airspace. (this one is often manually controlled onto targets for precisely this reason, it has a 20s stockpile time and getting baited is a major waste)

AA micro (the name of the gadget) makes the entire maneuver not work except in the case of the lone high-alpha tower in which case there are no good solutions anyway. Not only will the towers not overkill the chaff, the high alpha ones won't even fire. Not even if you hover the chaff gunships out of range of the rapid-fire AA but in range of the alpha-based towers.


Your examples of what to power down can be controlled by production priority (turn your bot/interceptors/unit cannon to low or high priority depending on what you want to focus on/power down). A more appropriate comparison would be an expensive but stealth-piercing radar vs production. And there is no reason (to me) why this shouldn't be decided in advance and be changeable as and when you feel like it.

If I made the wrong choice (say, powering radar down) and FORGOT or otherwise didn't change the priorities when it was clear turning off the radar was the wrong move, then I deserve to die just as much as you mentioned.


EDIT:

This is just one such case. Drill to make multiple commands to power down things quickly as well as memorizing the impact of each such command so that you can instantly glance at a decreasing E bar, know how many MMs and factories you need to power down to keep the radars, then toggling the groups and pressing hotkeys. All within a few seconds at most or you start eating penalties in lost information or defense tower fire.

This is just pure drill and some mental arithmetic. A calculator could do that, given an established priority order.

I do not believe that is the only way out of that scenario. I do not want it automated for this reason.

Exactly ^

Decisions, decisions.

What about the option to automate it? If the system was optional and some people chose to use it but you could choose not to? The system could easily be flexible.

If you could predict what you wanted in advance, I see no reason why you should be restricted to not committing yourself before the event happened.

I will be very surprised if you can build anything more than the most simplistic and basic AI supplementation.

I guess I have not real leg to stand on when the slippery slope starts. Allow this... oppose that...

feh.

Optional and takes up NO time for the Devs at Uber, can we compromise to that point?

I abosultely think we need new options for dealing with strategy on a scale like this. Nothing like this has ever been done before and I guess I'll wait for Alpha before completely condemning the idea to Oblivion.

Though if I'm totally honest I'd prefer everything to be easy for the player to tune on the fly... but NOT able to create reactive scripts ahead of time. That just feels like an unfair advantage...
I don't want this to turn into a weird meta-game depending on the scripts you have installed vs. the scripts your opponent has installed.

If scripting support is in, I could make that, easy. So eh, sure!
So it's time to sleep I guess. =D


Simplistic but uniform rules that you tweak exceptions for are generally the most useful automation devices. Despite what I said about the AA micro, do remember it turned into an unmanageably complex buggy mess.

Conditional orders that are the most used are the first targets of scripts. Easy to write, used often, usually high impact.

Also ZK has the ability to make reactive scripts ahead of time and not even required to publish them. Also that the Devs tend to the among the best players so the top players tend to be at least able to code these things.
Despite this, it hasn't turned into a metagame of who has what script. I couldn't tell you exactly why, but I strongly suspect it is due to the above effect. Complex scripts aren't as useful as you think, for the reasons you give: Pre-programmed specific strategies with fixed variables are not useful; the variables must be tweakable and changing them should cost less actions than performing the underlying orders directly. Too many variables and you can't control it anymore.

if it's so easy, why not just have the community mod it in?

If scripting support in a similar form as Spring is in (ie. client side scripting), you can be very sure the MM-control widget is going to be coded.

Assuming we have metal makers at all of course. =)


This is, of course, functionally the same as allowing it.

@nanolathe: My opinion is, if you lose to somebody's scripts, that just means he is better at strategy than you and you would have lost anyways.

@thread: That said, I am against pre-game actions in general, but that is entirely different from being able to set priorities (or profiles) and modify large swathes of your structures/units easily, without all the tedious micromanagement, control groups, clicking, and general busy work.

When it comes down to it, the general argument seems to be about whether or not control and user interaction should converge on the same point in time.
A common opinion seems to be 'automated reactions' (aka: strategies decided upon preemptively) 'require no skill', why are thinking and planning not valid skills in a strategy game? Seriously, I would rather the dominating skill be how smart you and your strategies are, not how quickly and efficiently you can execute them.

I'm of the opinion that if you know, exactly, down to the last level of detail, how you will respond to a certain event, why should you have to micromanage it? (I'm not arguing for it to be entirely automatic, but if you have already preemptively decided upon your strategy, you shouldn't have to click more than two or three times to execute that strategy). So I'm not misconstrued, there is a distinct difference between strategy and tactics, tactics being actual battles and how you control your army, strategy being more along the lines of what units you're fielding, how many armies you have, where they are attacking, etc.

Sure, reaction speed is a valid skill in many games, but universally implemented, you would target each individual turret, there would be no build queues, there would be no control groups, where do you draw the line, and why?

For the most part, it is best to assume that the player is using his resources in the way he wants them to be used. If you look to my posts way back towards the beginning of the thread, I point a handful of edge cases where the best way to give the player what he wants is to prioritize what he's actually demanding. The areas of contention, roughly in order of importance, are:
1) Prioritizing commander abilities over everything, because it's clearly the most important unit in the game.
2) Prioritizing metal extraction over almost everything, because metal ultimately limits construction rate.
3) Prioritizing intel demand over most things, to keep radar and counter intel facilities online. (A moment of shutdown can ruin the utility of many things, and Supcom showed intel that completely malfunctioned from the slightest stall)
4) Prioritizing defensive structures, by default over factories and construction projects. (Not artillery. This would be things like laser towers and AA.)
5) Everything else, including any previous options that are turned off.
Not listed: Metal makers and similar devices, which by design only consume excess energy and require no guidance.

All of these priorities are restricted entirely to problems with managing energy and only energy. Metal priority basically takes care of itself. You put engineers where you want metal to be used, and no further input is required. EZPZ. The Zero-K priority system was focused entirely around metal, which wasn't necessary or really useful for anyone.

That's basically the sort of thing you need to get the major decisions across. If you look above there are basically 4 buttons that control everything that really matters about energy. They are not scripts, and they are not the AI playing for you. They are simply choices to manage your most critical facilities quickly and efficiently.

Make the buttons a "prorate this" button. I don't want to shut off ALL my factories/metalmakers, I just want them to restrict energy use to hit +-0.

An all MM on/off button does not help at all. Balancing E income to MM usage is an exercise in futility (it also depends on if you are M limited, and how E-heavy your construction is, all of which are subject to spikes and change over time)
I'll be hitting the toggle every few seconds as my E bar wanders up and down.


Construction priority is both M and E, if you are Estalling, high priority construction projects get their E first.

Which words now?

Your words were that the need to remember things and think under pressure would be removed. This is false.

What you argue for better be consistent -or at least explain why your set of arbitrary rules are better than others- otherwise you can't expect sympathy.

I think many automation detractors are overestimating the effectiveness of automation in complicated situations and massively underestimating how much flexibility it will need to work. A base could not be fully automated, you would still have to react to situations. Players would not be making any fewer decisions with automation tools. They would be likely to have to make more decisions because they will be able to implement more of them.

There are so many misconceptions of the suggestion that could be fixed with a bit of fiddling around with the ZK system.

Of course, this is assuming that synthetic metal is even included. MMs have a strange issue where they reward players who have extreme amounts of energy production. Energy stalls will be much more difficult to get as a result. IMO, high tier energy is going to find plenty of uses such as for artillery and teles.

The energy management of a metal maker is pretty straight forward. It gets ignored until the very end, only being used as a last ditch effort to dispose of excess E. In TA, an energy storage cost 250 metal to store enough energy for 60 units of metal. There was pretty much no point in using a MM at anything less than max energy, as energy was worth far more in storage than as a single peewee's worth of metal.

Something like this really doesn't matter. A project is "high priority" based on where your workers are. Don't like it? Then move your workers. No other system is required to make the system handle construction the way you want it.

It does matter. If I am currently stalling on resources or if added production would cause me to stall then a priority system is an easy way for the player to prioritize their production without manually shutting down other production.

Say I got some workers on the front line and I want to build some defenses as fast possible. If I want my workers on the front-line to make that turret as fast as possible then I need to pause other production somewhere else. If your economy is spread on several planets this could be a mind boggling task to achieve by pausing construction manually and turning it on again after your turret is done.
With a priority system it is just 1 click to set the production of that turret on the frontline to high priority without having to pause other construction manually.

This again?

The notion of there existing a 'requirement' to move your builders during overspending is a complete fabrication. It will have no bearing on practical games. Anyone can quickly shut off all other factory and construction projects to completely negate it. It's the same effect as having a priority toggle. So we might as well have priority toggles, which only need to be switched once, and save me the trouble of clicking and unit hunting.