Too much micro management....my rough idea to improve

So far, I think one problem being the need to do micro management.
I think for a big scale game like this, build building should be pretty much automatic process and leave the metal/energy control the progress.

So instead of building builder vehicle/bot/aircraft to build related advanced buildings, why not just treat each building like a pylon in StarCraft where coverage depends on building type? This way you just place buildings with in range, and only Commander can spawn buildings in a remote area not covered by your building?( Thus no super early expand if you can't protect your commander. )

I know builder type is a way to commit how much resource to expand, and how fast you can expand. If your builder bot get killed, your recovery will be slowed down. But in the same time, this can be displaced as, you spend more resource to get more concurrent building in progress. ex. spend x energy and y metal to be able to simultaneously build one more building, or just attach building capability to building itself. ie. if you build a vehicle pad, you can get equivalent of 1 builder vehicle. Then you can spend more money on building to upgrade to more builder vehicle ability. That way player have to choose to just upgrade more with less buildings or build more buildings to expand their building power( obviously a trade off since upgrade only cost a builder vehicle, additional vehicle pad will cost more but you can also build more tanks at the same time.)

So simultaneous building only available to connected building network, say you have 5 vehicle pad but with upgrade to build 8 buildings at the same time, you can choose to build 8 metal extractors at the same time, or build 2 more vehicle with 4x speed(since 4 building power committed to each building.)

As of building queue, it can be treat roughly the same as vehicle/bot, so if you place 8 metal extractor, and then place 2 vehicle pad, it will do those 8 first and build 2 later. You can shuffle in sort of management UI if there will be one.(Say like a queue interface with building tasks left to be done, and just hit postpone it will be push to next in queue and building network will just start new batch of buildings, of course those half built ones will continue from where they left and not from scratch.)

Another suggestion is there a possibility to drag a rectangle and just build as compact array of buildings?
Say you select the building you want to build, instead of shift click on surface, just drag and an array of xray building showed up with hud display how many buildings are going to build. This and you will be concentrating on resource management and battle, instead of babysitting buildings.( if exceed network building power, xray representation will not show more buildings even if rectangle is dragged too big. )

This way player was given more time to think and place their building strategically and more time freed up to plot their mass destruction, instead of, oh **** I need more metal extractor, where are my building vehicles/bots.

I think this will be more engaging instead of old school builder type unit just to do some really basic things. If I remember right, builder unit can also collect scrapes, just leave this ability to all type of units to walk over and collect what ever is on the ground.

I don't know if this approach is gonna dumb down the game too much? But I think t will make the game more quick pace and more enjoyable to really bring mass destruction in a macro scope. Imagine do current things while on multiple planets in a single system, I think a unit/structure building queue management UI is needed so it's just one hotkey away to oversee productions in many places at the same time.

The current system helps limit players. You can't feasibly develop too many planets efficiently without a block on player ability, as well as the ingame restrictions like economy management. Dumbing down the building stages would be detrimental, the best and most practiced players would be building entire galaxies up with too much ease. Games have to end at some point :shock:

You have some interesting suggestions but keep in mind this isn't sim city, you will need to actually play every part of the game to win.

Base building will probably be automated in a way but the TA feeling needs to stay and that will be a challenge. Currently it is way too early to be making such changes, we will need to wait until multi-planetary combat is available. Only then can we discuss how building bases works.
On one planet it is rather simple even without any notifications or special hud indications(at least for me)

I agree with you that currently the game has too much micro management, I also think you have some good ideas. However I think a lot of people here are not going to be enthusiastic because they have been playing RTSs since the 90s, and usually the same very similar ones at that. The genre has evolved little... In fact the single biggest leap I can recall seeing in the last 20 years is what this game has already achieved by just making a spherical map (Its probably been done before, everything always has, but defiantly not as well... Thought of one, Spore did it). I for one hope they continue pushing the genre in new ways so that by the time release comes along it is its own thing which is more accessible and exciting then ever, even if that means tasks like base building are "dumbed-down" in some peoples opinions. So don't be discouraged, and keep pressing for evolution.

Here are my thoughts on the removal of micromanagement in base building:
. Remove building tech trees (All structures should be available immediately but due to economic, build time, and power limitations simpler buildings should be the most appealing early in the game)
. Remove the need to assign units to build structures (rather select the desired structure from a always accessible list and select where you want it, the nearest available unit will then automatically move to its site and begin construction, build priority should be able to be retrospectively changed)
. Allow buildings to do things like automatic self repair or even reconstruction (to avoid this disadvantaging the player this should be done using only metal resources that are collected without available storage)
. Rather then causing a general slow down when power need out weighs capacity automatically induce a rolling blackout so there is less urgency to manage power use (this way when you have 90% of the power you need you still have 100% efficiency for 90% of your power needs)
. Remove dedicated storage buildings for power and metal and rather have these built into the structures that require them (this way storage should scale with the size of your base and thus keep up with your need, and when they don't its time to build more generation)
. Make a new unit called Planetary Commander which independently can act as a caretaker and even improve a primary base on the planet it is assigned to (this would be a AI controlled Commander unit that uses a budget of unallocated metal to build any required power the base may need and then stationary defences to use it. Maybe this unit could also act as a alternate/backup commander if you download from your primary commander to it to allow quick travel or reincarnation)

I think some of these ideas are too much of a game mechanics change to be accepted. But some of these ideas can be implemented without actually changing the mechanics of the game, they could be implemented as a rather high level UI. (There are also ideas like structure regeneration which is sort of a minor balance thing).

For example "Remove the need to assign units to build structures" can be a UI feature which lets you place buildings and let the UI figure out how to assign workers to it. This doesn't do anything that you could not do normally, it is just a UI feature.

Supreme commander was and still is one of my favorite RTS's of all time - and hopefully PA will take this place too.

I like things like PA, Supcom, due to micro management.

Yes, you can have too much. But to do what your suggesting would be to basically "sit around, point units to go forward, repeat" - it would be utterly boring.

Supreme commander 2 went down the less micro management route, mainly due to being developed for consoles - and guess what? It sucked. It doesn't compare to Supcom 1 in any way, so I really hope they don't ruin PA the same way.

Anything that involves automated bases gets an automatic "no way" for me.

Play civilization or sim city or something but dont play an RTS if you don't want to do any real time strategy.

Iff we got same micro here then on FA or SC well nothing moore to worry.
Its just put the same ideas , i really think its the only way we can grab all planets with that micro, or else iff keep this way will be an epic confusion.

Thanks for the feedback, but I disagree with this. At this stage there is not a thing that is too much of a game mechanics change except Planets and Annihilation, as that's what has been promised. Keep in mind that for most games at the beginning of alpha there is only one playable "race" and that the others are progressively made by coping the first and then tweaking them until they are very different from each other. In this game the armies are symmetrical, so there will be no copying, but there could be just as much tweaking for this one as there is between the two most different races in any other game you have played. What we have now might be Prothean, but by release we could get Zerg (to be clear, just a metaphor). Try not to get attached.

I hate to sound like a Microsoft representative here, but if you love the old game more then the new game I highly recommend you keep playing the old game. In the mean time this will be a new game, a new franchise even, so if there was anything about those old games you want changed now is the time to say it... As for micro-management specificity, it has already been stated by the developers that they want to reduce it so that the focus can be on macro-management. It's strategy over tactical, an there is a good reason for it... The maps have the potential to be huge, the armies huger, and the scale hugerific. You are a Galactic Commander, you will mostly be kept busy fighting the enemy. You are not a Galactic Urban Planner, someone else can take care of that.

Also some console games just suck because they are console games. Sorry to sound like a PC elitist, they just do.

[Sarcasm] Yeah, automation sucks. Say no to unit path finding. And I refuse to play if I don't manually input the firing vectors myself, all I need is my trusty abacus! [/Sarcasm]
I think I've made my point, but thanks for backing up my other point about continuing to playing older games if they're what you like. I think its funny though that you think Real Time "Strategy" is building bases. I guess it would be if your Strategy is to build bases and not to kill the enemy.

I'm a big advocate of having simple programmable AI routines running on units - something more advanced than 'if unit = in range (fire);'

Sometimes we have to ask ourselves what kind of micro is acceptable to the game, and what kind is detrimental.

For example, one form of micro could be to ensure your aircraft don't fly into enemy air defenses. Wrangling your jets could be thought of as 'skill'. On the other hand, what if we had an ability to draw offensive and defensive 'no fly zones' on the map? A defensive no-fly-zone would make an area off-limits to aircraft unless you specifically ordered them in there - they would deliberately fly around it. An offensive no-fly-zone would allow you to do the opposite - you can fill the zone with fighters and they will fly sorties in the area - similar to a patrol, but rather than flying point-to-point in a loop, they would disperse and fly around the zone randomly.

The general intellectual effort is the same - you've recognized where to concentrate your forces and where to avoid conflict. The difference is that one allows you to easily communicate an order, while the other simply requires tedious effort to make sure your bombers don't attack a target and then continue to fly straight on into thick defenses and all get shredded. And anyone who's played previous TA / SC games knows how frustrating aircraft can be.

Regarding constructors, it would be nice to bring over some features from TA Spring - being able to modify queued orders, pause them and repeat them... allow dragging zones around areas to issue a general area order - from something as simple as 'build extractors on every spot' to 'build evenly spaced defenses along this line I just drew'.

Land units could be given group dynamics, an enhancement over Supreme Commander - allow players to actively modify a formation setup, chosing to put chaff units in front, or maybe having the extremely strong but expensive units in front instead. Rather than marching single-file into defenses, you could tell the formation 'when under fire, disperse automatically'.

Other examples would be in combat - anti-aircraft units (if they don't already) could be told to prioritize aircraft when they come in range and quit shooting ground units. You could select an entire area of units to attack and all your selected units would engage ALL units in the area at once, instead of focusing on just the first one to come in range. Artillery could be given 'area bombardment' orders to carpet a selected area with random bombardment fire, allowing you to set up a defensive artillery screen.

The point isn't to have the game play itself, but to allow the player to tell the game how to play, moving the player from a tactical AND strategic commander to mostly a strategic commander. Having robust 'complex order' setups to allow unit AIs to behave dynamically based on player preference would still keep the burden of creating orders on the player, but eliminate the need for tedious micro (which will get overwhelming when we have multiple planets) as well as give the impression that you really are commanding a war, not trying to play the role of a company, field, and general officer all at once.

The lack of such features in RTS games are why I have little interest in the genre. Creating a system to allow you to control *AI* rather than units would be a refreshing take on a genre that has had almost no innovation in over a decade.

hi frostiken, you may find this thread interesting viewtopic.php?f=61&t=46037

Way to take what I said and take it to an extreme. There is a HUGE difference between wanting good unit pathfinding and targeting and essentially telling your units "go make a good base, I'll come back later and tell you where to attack, then you go figure out what to do after that".

Building bases is one of the things I like about these types of games. It's why I don't like games like End of Nations, or C&C4, or to a lesser extent company of heroes. You just either have little freedom with the bases you build you can't build bases at all. If you don't want to base build then why are you supporting a game that has some of the best base building mechanics in RTS history?

Luckily Uber understands this and doesn't bow to the whim of the minority.

This is a useless discussion the game is way to far in Dev to change course on this issue.

Of course I took what you said to the extreme, welcome to the internet... But in actual fact you too are making some exaggerations to what I was suggesting. I'll explain further...

First its not really units (plural) its a unit (singular) on a per planet basis, meaning it has to be a late game unit and it will only protect one base per world. This is actually a critical point for it not to be overpowered in its other function of being an alternate commander that can be swapped into.

Secondly I said nothing about the base building ability of this friendly AI being "good". It just needs to work well enough that it could be ignored, at least for some time.

Thirdly, and I'll admit I didn't make this clear, as an AI you would not be able to tell it to do anything (although it might react to general build requests). At best you can swap into it, but this comes at the cost of then not being able to control your previous commander unit. AI units would always retreat to the nearest base on their world (thus it becomes the designated prime base) and would only act defensively, thus only one could be taken into combat at a time.

And lastly, As a late game unit it would probably be extremely expensive... As in the most expensive single unit in the game. Therefore people who excel at micro may still choose to not use them because they have a natural advantage.

This is a Alpha build. It's here to be changed. And whatever you may think, it has not got "some of the best base building mechanics in RTS history", unless you mean ancient history.

I'll leave you with a quote: "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." Henry Ford

LOL!
Look up what a Alpha is and do some research into the history of game development... Here are some examples off the top of my head, Halo was originally a 3rd person shooter, Lara Croft was originally a dude, Strangers Wrath was originally Munch's Exoddus, and the entire development of Minecraft.

Wait... are you suggesting that we will have to build some unit to get access to this unit AI? I disagree with that, the UI should be that powerful from the start of the game.

No, the Planetary Commander (just my working title to distinguish it from the players Galactic Commander) would just add power generation and then additional defences to use it, to a point. The rest of my thoughts were for an automatic response.

The way I see it, if the game provides a stimulus that has only one reasonable response from the player which is time sensitive then the the whole cycle is no better then a quick time event, and thus on some level slightly evil. For example if you were over resourced when would you not repair a structure that's being damaged? Or when would you not rebuild a destroyed one if you had the spare metal? You would always repair and rebuild, but it's critical that it is done ASAP, so make it automatic.

This isn't going to make bases invulnerable, maybe you won't catch others unaware when they're AFKing to take a leak so much, but if you dish out more damage then the repair/rebuild speed you will still destroy them and maybe deplete the enemies resources enough that the automatic features turn off.

EDIT: someone has already made a pole...
viewtopic.php?f=64&t=47525&start=0
... It seems a slightly limited but helpful AI is the most popular with some level of assisting AI a majority preference, so I guess mine is not a minority view.

I imagine a teamplay mode where two or more people manage the same faction, one for micro, the other one for macro.

Glad that this become a discussion, I thought it's gonna tank in all the bug/issue threads.

Firs of all, the solution I offered is not just simply sit and watch, not like you say "build me a best base" and then AI go off and build it like in simcity after you laid the roads. But essentailly like what people suggested, to take the burden off spending time click builder unit to go someplace and build one or queued more buildings, and spend more time on actual strategic elements( building placement/amount&type/upgrade ).

A human can only do so much APM, even if you are top 1%.
Just imagine that you only have to consider resource management( the root of all RTS), place buildings still the way you like it, but no need to build or pick a unit to do it manually through out the entire game.

I even think about a unit dial as if in actual war, an commander would just say, "get me 50 tanks asap here" so other corresponding part would try to get 50 tanks there under order. Instead of such automatic process, you can just assign that say, I want to keep building tanks(be it one or 50 vehicle pads), until it reaches 50(given that resource is available), and unless I change the settings, it will only try to refill and stopped at 50 tanks.

So what you would do is essentially more strategic decision. You build the buildings you want in the order you want, still capped by the resource acquired. Only slightly automatic in get rid of using a builder unit, so early game it will be like SC Protoss without worker, build order and placement still matters, just you don't micro manage pulling worker from mining and place the building and then go back.

Later you build as many units you can, but slightly automatic that your decision in choosing build up to 50 tanks and keep total 50, or in traditional way that you can decide to build 5 more/10 more but not in a single building, but AI help you get the units across your vehicle pads. So you are free to decide to transition now or later, do you still want to keep that 50 tanks order? If you rally too far would it be intercepted and keep wasting resources, rally too close then you have to travel further.( essentially a supply route concept.)

With those freed up micro management time, you have more time to focus on the war itself. Do I have big enough army, do I pull my commander and expand to a important localtion, should I commit my army and eliminate this base(or planet) as fast as I can?

Like in SOP search and destroy, you lay a line of 5~10 meters separated soldiers and sweep across an area, in PA term it's like commanding 50( or 500!!) tanks to sweep a base, you want to have them in sort of line formation and move attack an area. Right now there doesn't seem to have a formation movement, so it's just like SC you still have to select and make them move instead of single click and funnel into a death trap. Say you have 15 scout aircraft, what you would do it real situation? Do they fly and patrol an area like a snake game's growing snake, or you line them up and sweep across an area? If the line breaks, you know where have more air defense/anti-air unit, even in zoomed out icon view gives you rough idea of the battlefield and situation, you just don't need to point and click really fast to achieve that. Formation unit movement did that for you.( you still have to command that your unit first to form formation, and just tell them to move and keep formation. )

Just remember that in later stage of development, you and your opponent might start from different planet. If you want to do early infiltration, and build remote base(proxy buildings), just imagine game as it is now, you have hot key location/hot key builder group( right now I don't think there are any auto focus to your group function like in SC.) To hop back and forth 2 planets, what if you are expanding to a metal moon close to you? 3 location, and epic asteroid? more locations. And I seriously doubt that builder unit are good enough to travel through space to another planet needed buildings. Maybe a portal pad?

Anyway, the point being you want to make base grow/management streamlined so your focus is what and where to build, how many of them and spend resource properly. I think builder are redundant in PA, in traditional RTS like SC, it has significance in which it dictates how fast your based can grow out of limited mine patch. Late game most player might even suicide them to get more unit supply back.

But what's the main purpose of builder unit in PA? You got essentially unlimited resource no matter where you build a metal extractor(maybe metal planet give you a boost). It limits how fast/many buildings you can build(which can be displaced as in my first post). Do people actually do or can repair their units?( We can make them that to fly near by pads will slowly repairs them and stop currently building units ) In a large scale meta game, I just can't imagine that this mechanism will help, like what another poster said, builder unit itself limits how many bases you can possibly manage, and I hope PA really are aiming to get as grand scale battle as it can, and let strategic and timely decision prevail, not who can micro manage most units win.

Penguintd, I agree with your way of thinking, though I think that engineering units should still exist to at least initiate new construction and to then buff what would otherwise be a slower auto-assembly or auto-repair (units should also slowly auto-repair). They should also act in a highly motivated automatic way by appropriately assigning themselves to higher level tasks you set (so you input I want this building here, and they figure out which of them is best placed to make it happen). This way everybody wins, micro people can micro, macro people can macro, both need to do at least some of the other but you can concentrate on what you need to. Happy faces all around.

I'm also of the opinion that deploying units should be closer to like it would be for a real commander. Sure you could say "I want 50 tanks here, ASAP", or you could say "I want this factory to make 50 tanks", or you could even say "I want 50 tanks at a time of these types to rally here and then attack this base here until I say to stop or until the enemy is dead".

I know what an Alpha is. However I have also read some of the major discussions that have been here since day 1 on the forums.

Based on that I think that if the Devs would have wanted to go with another option for this functionality they would have considered it earlier.

Hence Useless. And I do not mean that nasty way.