Making life easier for a commander

from AshesoftheSingularity Forums

I've played a couple games now, time for some gameplay feedback. The lastest was a 1v1v1v1 vs. the Easy AI (I know easy is easy, but I'm still learning).

With four large regions I had three factories, placed in different forward locations, which could spit out full 1x T2+5x T1 battle groups units constantly without dipping into my reserve resources. I suppose I could have made more factories. I didn't want to because I was having enough trouble managing those three. Below are some issues. If they are already addressed in the game and I missed them, sorry I missed them. If you already plan to address them, great I look forward to it.

Issue #1: I don't want to babysit my factory queues. Please let me queue up a bunch of units of different types, then put that queue on repeat. Auto-pausing (or something more intelligent) when I run low on resources would be good.

Issue #2: I don't want to babysit newly spawned units. Is there a way to intelligently and automatically put them into battle groups and control groups? Part of the issue is that I'm having to assign these new units an action. Toward the end of my game I was spending the majority of my time grouping and giving orders to new units. Maybe this won't be so much of an issue when battle groups can request reinforcements.

Issue #3: Speaking of requesting reinforcements, I think most times I'm going to want my battle groups to have the same make-up in order to perform particular tasks. Going through the empire tree to each battle group and requesting the missing reinforcements seems like it will prove to be tedious. Have you considered battle group templates with automated requesting of reinforcements, or something like that?

Issue #4: I don't want to babysit my engineers. You mentioned an option to make extractors auto-spawned to deal with the tedium of making such structures. Now I get why. I'd rather you do something similar to survey ships in GalCiv, where you tell an engineer to automatically go to and build extractors whenever an extractor can be built. Perhaps some logic to not do that as long as there are enemy units in the region. Also, if I interrupt that engineer by asking it to build a different nearby structure such as a turret or a factory, it should automatically go back to extractor building when those structures are done, or perhaps I add such a command to the end of the engineer's queue.

Issue #5: I think we may need a full map strategic view, not for controlling units, more for just getting map awareness. On this four-player map I found myself getting lost, not knowing where my units really were in relation to distant objectives, my bases, and my other units. The mini-map helped, but it was so small. I'd be happy with a hotkey to toggle the minimap taking the full screen.

I hope it doesn't seem like I'm requesting to make the computer control my base. I just want to bypass some of the tedium so I am able to strategize, scout better, and watch some battles.

Last note, I won the game with Turinium after controlling about half the regions. I was still positioning my units to take the enemy seeds when I got the victory popup. Felt anti-climactic.

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Reply #1 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

#1 couldn't agree more.

#2 I have had this same feeling and when I have more than three factories it becomes the only thing I do.

#3 I don't even bother, I literally just send a fresh new battle group

#4 This issue isn't one I share. although it's slightly annoying I feel like it's part of my micro responsibilities to order the construction on nodes similar to SupComFa engineers, however I wouldn't mind having building templates like place building here and thus place these two adjacent.

 The victory by Turinium always catches me off guard because it feels anti-climatic, I hope to hear just a horn music effect soon. 

Reply #2 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Agreed.

 

Very much agreed on #5.  I have actually felt rather sick sometimes scrolling through the large maps constantly looking for armies and factories.  I just feel so claustrophobic, and I just don't know.. the rapid scrolling is just hard on my eyes or brain or something and it doesn't make my feel so good hahah xD

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Reply #3 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

#2 As an alternative another idea could be to give factories additional options of unit creation (have these units deploy to this meta, have these units defend the seed, have these units capture a command post, etc). I agree that allowing groups to request reinforcements would be good, but having the option of allowing the factory to just mass produce units and decide which group they should join based on the composition of the groups nearby and how far away they are would be awesome.

#3 I like that idea. Just as a thought though, if you just build a group once would having the option to just have the group request the necessary units that were lost fix this issue (two tier 1 squadrons die and the nearest factory ques them up as soon as they've exploded). Having a hotkey menu for the predetermined groups would make this really convenient (just tab down to the groups and select the one you want).

#4 Agreed. I personally like the idea of having the command posts build things for you (defense structures, resources, maybe even factories) or have an engineer spawn once the command post is captured to take care of it for you.

#5 Agreed. The map I was on was intended for 6 players from the setup and the minimap was pretty useless at telling me anything about my unit locations. Every now and then I'd notice some color movement, but I think that the extreme zoom out that the devs are working on will fix a lot of this problem. We'll have to wait for 0.50 to come out to see for sure. I think that changing the effect of a captured post to just outlining the zone in your color would make unit movement easier to see on the minimap.

Good comments!

Reply #4 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Combine #1, #2, and maybe #3.  Befitting the game's scale where you move battle groups rather than individual units, you should build battle groups rather than individual units.  The main factory build items would be groups, with additional controls to edit/add/delete battle group templates.

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Reply #5 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

 

Great Idea! -- Having replacements build out group templates custom or otherwise) is a great way to reduce time waste. (I found managing replacements one of the worst aspects of my play) Adding group priority scheme would also help automate this type of design. 

Also maybe some kind of mobile "HQ" unit for each factory as a target for replacements...to get them moving.  The current static approach is weak since nothing shows on the map.

Reminds me a little of the Kohan approach to rts supply. I kind of liked Kohan more tactics (facing, terrain etc.) less micro...

Reply #6 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

What we plan to do is have a button hat repeats the current build queue indefinitely.

Reply #8 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Yes a reinforce/replace losses button or queue for each group/meta-unit would be awesome. Otherwise I have just been doing what jawa105 mentioned in this thread, and adding the leftovers from the old to the completely new. Sometimes that can actually work out to because I will have more resources at that time, to make my meta's stronger with different units.