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

Pretty much this. There has been SO much discussion about different automation schemes "to remove micro". None of them have really been approved by the community or the devs.

There is no such thing as too much micro management.

I also subscribe to this idea somewhat. Units should obvious be smart about movements and targeting, but CAPABILITY needs to be exposed to the player to do whatever he wants. The key is no matter what "niceties" you introduce as far as "automation" you never take away any functionality.

[Sarcasm]Oh I see, the Devs have a plan, and that plan is perfection, do not mess with the plan... I suppose then that this forum is totally useless then. After all why involve us when they have a plan?...[/Sarcasm]

... Oh yeah, now I remember why, its because everybody here paid at least 90 bucks for a $40 game at up to a year before release specificity so that they could get involved in the games development! It's great that you have been around from the start (Apparently I've actually been around a whole 12 hours and 50 minutes longer, so am I a day 0.5er?), but I think you'll find that in a forum called PA Alpha Discussion there was not actually much call for discussion until there was actually a Alpha.

As for my expectations for the final product, they are totally inline with the Kickstarter announcement video. Micro was not a game feature, and though some level of it may always be a technical necessity, there is no reason it should not be minimised.

Automation should come down to what makes the game better. If automating repair diminishes tedium and shifts the focus onto more engaging gameplay then it should be automated. Minimizing tedium to maximize engagement is good. If automation shifts the focus onto non-engaging gameplay or boring gameplay, then it's probably going too far.

This.

Seriously Veta everytime you speak I cannot help but think: exactly what I want to say, but with a better english than mine.

Sometimes I feel that the devs want to be left alone to make TA on multiple planets without all this extra stuff.

I will say that a lot of people don't like it when manual player control of units can give them an advantage.

The problem is once you learn how to have time for both macro and micro, the loss of micro like that kinda gives an empty feeling, especially with bad unit AI.

And that's the problem I have with the anti-micro posts....I just got good at micro with my macro, knowing when to do one or the other, and now we want to remove it altogether? It just leaves empty time when I play games like that, just sitting there as the game plays out being unable to use micro to patch in the mistakes in my macro.

It's like getting good at kicking field goals or punting, then they come out with a machine to do that part for you. sure you could still do it yourself but its like, why?

That's a somewhat myopic approach. Sure, invalidating a skill may suck for the guys who got good at it but if the overall game is improved (and I use that word loosely) why wouldn't you get rid of field goals? Keeping with the sports theme this is what happened with American Football and kick passing.

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with any of your opinions monkey, I just wish you explained why you think what you think.

thanks, man.

My example wasn't directly related to this argument, rather the feeling some would have if a skill they perfected was removed for some reason.

I honestly think strategy games should have virtually no ceiling when it comes to what you can do, in an ideal world. Supreme commander comes really close to that in my opinion, barring some technical problems like poor target choice, poor pathfinding, or UI limitations. The philosophy of "if you're good enough, you can do anything" is one I really like, and when posts that argue "I don't want to have to learn micro, I want the game to take care of it for me" it just kind of rustles me.

I'm not worried about this games philosophy because I think Mavor and the team have a similar philosophy (it showed in TA and SC/FA).

O... I mixed your post up with igncom's. Disregard that

I think that often people forget that scaling goes both way.
If you change the gameplay to be able to play with 10'0000 units, but the game don't really start before you have 100 units, then the game do not really scale better than a game that is fun from 1 to 100 units.
That's why I think it really important to really think of the implication before removing micro, especially in combat.

Right now it feels more like total annihilation than rise of nations lol. Please do not mess around the macro. TA was all about macro, once you play a 7 hour game against modified 8 AIs, you know this game is easy on macro/micro. I think macro and micro is pretty easy in this game and shouldn't change. Instead more units/buildings should be added. And as the scale of the war increases(more planets, etc) i'm pretty sure a nice challenge will pop.

I'm not saying to remove "micro" entirely, but to aim for a bigger goal.
SC have 200 supply limit, micro is the backbone of macro, people practice build order and perfect it so they are still in the game.

PA has essentially no unit cap as far as I know, even in this alpha you can easily have over hundreds of building and units just on you, and then there are AI and other player.
With the pitch video, you know you are going to have a system and even a galaxy to start doing the battle, they even have a server/client based engine so that server took over all the update/damage calculation so your client can have as much unit on display as possible.

Even in SC2, in late game when the resource competition is over( like almost all mined out.), there is little to micro with, unless it's really close resource wise on both side, then unit of choice and some critical cast(where you need micro) matters, 90% of time it was gg when the resource competition is obvious, and SC2 is a closed system.

PA would be different, fighting in a system, if you decide to destroy a planet, that essentially means both you and other players can't take resources from this planet anymore, it will be a tough choice, if you have sizable buildings on it for invasion purpose. At the same time, player who choose to early expand will definitely face problem to take care of 2 locations at the same time. And it will be more than this in mid game in the final product.

Now, be able to manage micro in 3~4 location is sort of common "if" the build time is well planned, let's assume that PA gets perfect response to go between bases. And you can bind from ctrl 1~0 and F1~F12, double tap will bring you right to the location of units/buildings just like in sc. I'm not korean and 2 base is okay for me, 3~4 is okay when things goes smoothly. If you have 4 bases, you would at least have 4 binding groups for building new units( assume that PA can also do tab between groups of buildings). And for workers at each location, you need another 4 bindings. for scout units you might need 2~3 at least in a planetary system. So as of now, you are left with roughly 10~12 group to bind with. and that's it. Any additional base you take, you lose another 2, practically, 5~6 bases will be de facto upper limit of bases you can have. Otherwise you are left with either rally to point of interest and move unit like a big glob, or you have to abandon established based and move workers to another location to keep enough group keys for actual fighting units.

Is this the kind of scale you like? Or since micro is important, people who are better can win the game before they run out of binding keys? Like I can win before the need to use those asteroids and moons, who cares? If that's the case, even competitive game could ended quite early, then why build all the buzz and a planetary system to begin with?

What I am aiming for, is to make those 22 keys available to just buildings and fighting units. Or if UI allows, all for units since buildings can be accessed through a simplified representation, via tabs per planet. Just bring up the bases window and you can do all the production in one place. That and you can suddenly jump from 5~6 bases max, all the way up to 15 bases at least( while leave some for scouting units to check if enemies sneak out of their current bases. ) This is not taking away micro entirely, but trying to bring the scale up and turbo charge the pace for epic battles. You don't need gentleman rules to not engage in first 30 mins, just to build up sizable army for better battle, you get it by streamline production and bottom end of what essentially once regards as must have building units, and by giving that up you can easily have way more bases to manage with.

You can still micro in build buildings and produce units, it's just that you are up to something bigger. And by big, I mean 'AWESOME' battle that awaits us between 2 good players. SC2 gets a bit boring because roughly 60% of game ends around 2nd or 3rd engagement, like around 20~30 mins. You rarely get to see close games that gets all the way to tier 3 with 5 bases on each side. Imagine that if SC gets some improvement in worker AI, so that initial engagement and scouting was done roughly in 5 mins, and 2nd engagement both side would have 3 bases and already on tier 2 halfway to tier 3. Wouldn't it be more exciting to watch how the players using types of units and strategic decision than just watch roughly similar build order over and over again since pretty much everyone nail the initial part of the game( first 12 mins of SC matches are pretty boring now, even replay casters likes to speed through these parts. )

See, before SC, RTS like AoE/Warcraft have like 3~4 resource types, roughly derived from turn based strategy games(With C&C being exception of only using gold from Tiberium). And C&C later series be not popular later in RTS is because their balance usually suck and tons of bugs after Westwood gone. After SC's success, even Warcraft 3 gives up oil for faster paced game play, and that with intentional focus on micro, why? Because of simple reason, hardware capability, and flat map design can only fit that many units for engagement to be meaningful. Back and check PA, sphere map with many planets available? That's why people back it in first place, because they can imagine doing battles so epic that none of other RTS will be able to do it. And exactly the reason why I propose to get rid of worker type unit, it's not anti-micro, but to shift focus of micro to other aspect for better and more engaging outcomes.

But, that's just my opinion, and like SC2, when people figure stuff out, micro heavy doesn't always create good matches. Hope PA can be more original and risk taking.




TL;DR, removing worker units shifts micro work load to create more epic battle that was not previously possible with limited binding keys and hardware/flat map system limitation.

Firstly, you can't do anything. Take SCII for example, there is a theoretical limit on how fast you can build to any particular unit composition. Pro players are quite close to this limit.

My main and important question is this; why do you think that micro is the only thing which can raise the skill ceiling? Do you imply that simpler micro in FA would result in many people hitting some sort of skill ceiling?

Here's an idea I had posted in http://forums.uberent.com/forums/posting.php?mode=quote&f=64&p=749159: (sorry for the lack of context)

Starcraft 2 has a lower skill ceiling just as a result of a different economy style and fewer units.

I don't think micro is the ONLY thing that can raise the ceiling. Never said that. I do think that if FA had simpler or no micro and everything else held constant then the skill ceiling would be lower, definitely.

However talking about "micro" as a vague concept is a little silly, to really argue this we would need to be specific about mechanics.

Why is micro such a hated idea?

Micro isn't bad itself but I don't think emphasizing it compliments the macro focused gameplay of TA-style games. As you noted, it also depends on what type of micro we're talking about. If you mean APM/focus heavy stuff like manual kiting and spell casting I would draw a distinction between that and managing large groups of units. Launching a missile is micro but it's not APM or focus heavy.

Why is it that RTS games - and seemingly only RTS games - always degrade into comparisons to Starcraft and talking about e-sports?

One, I can probably safely say that none of you scrubs are even remotely close to the level of worrying about e-sports.

B) This game isn't ever going to be an e-sport.

3) Just because competition has been done a certain way for ages doesn't mean it's the best way or that following in its footsteps is what has to be done. The XFL was created to reduce all the downtime in NFL football and get rid of some of the more absurd rules. The result was a much faster-paced and more exciting game. It failed, and why? "Because it's not like the NFL". That's a shitty attitude to have.

If you're going to insist that every game have tons of micro and compare it to Starcraft, then I suggest you go join the Battlefield forums and start whining that the game doesn't have enough bunnyhopping and railgun instagib headshots or powerups.

The RTS genre has stagnated and almost all but died in recent years, and it's in no small part because the RTS core group of players are a bunch of malcontent whiners who only want to play the last game they got good at over and over. Relic was the only development studio that made any money under THQ, and look at the RTS games they made - they were dynamic, interesting, unique, and most importantly: fun. You didn't need tons of micro to play Dawn of War 2, and the game was great.

But why make unique games when you can listen to the crotchety old men who are never going to be content with anything that isn't just a copy-paste of [Insert RTS game they are good at here]?