Yup.  Exactly.  PLus to never group up your units to avoid the same.

PLus the AI seems to ignore or defeat this and have runs run past you anyway (including capital ships)

 

Sorry, this is just plain not true.  The AI uses the EXACT same rules for movement as the human players do.

I've read this from a few different forum posters now. I haven't seen it myself nor have I seen any video evidence. So it's hard to get on board with this claim. I'd really like to see it in action because it would be a pretty big deal if true.

If not, then even when you click your units to attack, they don't (speed or attacking something else?) and the AI goes running past...happens in almost every game...will try to capture video

And I say again, the movement code isn't aware if the owner of units is human or AI.

Same.  This seems to be an oft-repeated argument against the battle slow down effect; but I have never experienced it during battle, and I do not feel like my units are sluggish during engagements.  I usually feel like they are pretty nimble given how large the units would be in real life and the fact that they do a good job holding formation.

As for people not grouping units to avoid the slowdown and using cheap units to "stab" meta-units, I guess it make sense if you're ultra-competitive, but you're missing out on one of the coolest features this game has to offer in the process.  Seems to me any slowdown from this tactic would be pretty temporary too since the meta-unit would chew through the cheap units pretty fast.  So, while it may help a little, I wonder if it's all that effective.  

A video of someone doing it effectively would be interesting to see.

Thank you for your response and this recent change.  I will test it soon.  I'm going to try to keep this response as succinct as I reasonably can, and I'm going to split it up and try to use formatting for readability, so the critical points are visible at-a-glance.  You guys are developing a game and that's a lot of work, and I don't want you to have to sift through a wall of text to find the exact feedback you might be interested in.

First: Competitive Analysis - your clarification about the attack range triggering the slowdown makes it possible of me to precisely address ways the current mechanic will shape "effective" play, especially in multiplayer. Will address a couple of the first things that come to mind.

Second: Suggestions - your stated design goal in implementing the mechanic allows me to put forward a few suggestions for achieving that goal without affecting unit control in a way that some players don't like.  Don't get me wrong - plenty of players probably won't mind it, but for the ones who do, it will be a "Deal breaker."


--

Analysis.

In light of battlegroup combat speed triggering upon detection of valid targets in firing range, here are the first things that come to mind about how this changes balance and strategy:

1.  Combined arms battlegroups are severely disadvantaged.

- Units with low range become far, far less effective when grouped with units that have very high range.  The high-range units will cause slowdown and the short range units will die before they deal damage.

- Fast units lose almost all of their advantage if grouped with any units slower than themselves.

- The only way to use the lowest range units effectively will be in separate battlegroups comprised entirely of that unit.

2.  Radar, vision, and intel will be detrimental in many situations.

- Any time your units are in range of something but cannot shoot it, being able to see it will cause them to slow down.  Things that can cause this would be terrain like mountains, hills, or elevated areas.

- In an army with multiple unit types, radar will cause the short-range units to slow down when the medium-range units are in firing range, reducing efficiency.  With no radar, you are more likely to start a battle with short-range units in firing range.

3.  The radar tech upgrade is actively detrimental.

- Mostly because of #2, in most situations you don't want your radar coverage extending to the max range of your artillery - any army with a Cronus and Hermes will just never get anywhere!

--

Suggestions

I think there are a few different approaches that could be taken in order to fix the Drive-By-Battlegroup issue, without resorting to something that might have unpleasant balance consequences or turn a lot of people off to the game.

The Problem: 

1. Armies can run past each other to hit vital infrastructure instead of being forced to fight.  This is undesirable and bad for the game.

2. Current combat speed reduction mechanic solves problem, but may create new ones - such as perceived sluggish unit response and control and balance issues.


Possible solutions:

Anything that fixes #1 above, without resulting in the downsides listed in #2 would be a huge improvement.  There's probably a lot of ways to do that, from tweaking the current system to replacing it with something different.  I came up with a couple ideas off the top of my head.

-> Define a new unit state: "tactical mode"

- Tactical mode will behave exactly like the current system, engaging automatically when an enemy is visible in range of the unit and causing the unit to slow down.

- However, allow players to manually disengage or engage tactical mode and indicate to players in some way whether a unit is currently in tactical mode.

- Make any unit not in tactical mode take some significant multiplier to incoming damage.  If you want, you can still *try* to run by a larger army, but you will probably just explode.

-> Unit exemptions for battlegroups: 

- The combat movement speed reduction disproportionately impacts combined arms strategies, very fast units in armies, and very low-range units in armies.

- Exempt certain units from this disadvantage, either by making them not cause the slowdown to their battlegroup, or by not letting them be affected by the slowdown.

- Exempt Cronus and Artemis from causing slowdown to their battlegroups.

- Exempt Brutes, and *maaybe* the Zeus from being slowed.

-> Alter conditions of the slowing effect

- This may be the simplest to implement.

- Trigger slowdown on firing weapon, and from being within a fairly short, static distance to enemies instead of triggering it at max-range.  This will prevent massive battlegroups from getting locked down by a single bomber/artemis and keep radar from being detrimental.

- Trigger slowdown individually for units, and not entire battlegroups the units are in.  This way, things like Brutes will at least be able to close the gap and start taking shots.

-> Eliminate the mechanic entirely and either repurpose a unit or create a new one to prevent Problem #1

- This is probably the hardest to implement.

- Create or repurpose some form of area denial unit  -- extremely powerful if you try to run past it and ignore it, but relatively un-threatening in a direct confrontation.

- Mine fields?  Units with an area-of-effect slow?  Heck - a drone carrier, like the drone bay structure, except slow, very fragile, can't target structures or focus fire, but kills t1's and t2's quickly if they get too close.  With no primary attack or ability to issue attack orders to this unit, you could have its AI set to keep it in the backs of battlegroups or evenly distributed in the midst and rear, so anything trying to path past it just gets demolished.

---

  I've taken the time to write this post because I want to see Ashes to be the best game it possibly can, so if any devs read/consider my points, thank you for giving me the opportunity to do that!

Ling, isn't the solution to most (if not all) of your "analysis" just not to use combined-arms meta-units/control groups?  

BOOM -- Problems 1 - 3 solved :: drops mic ::

But more seriously, this post (and all your others really) raise a much more fundamental point that any "solution" here really hinges on.  What is the intended battle dynamic for AoS?  Are players intended to use massive control group armies with a mix of long and short range weapons, or are we intended to use more specialized meta-units and armies?

Based on what I've read in the forums from day 1, meta-units are intended to be built around a particular dreadnought class, and each class specializes in one of three things -- front line attack, arty, or support.  So, right off the bat, this seems to favor the use of more specialized meta-units and control groups (e.g., front line assault, arty, fast rear defense, etc.).  I recognized this dynamic pretty early on, and so I've always tailored my meta-units and control groups to specific roles. 

To me, most of your "solutions" argue for dismantling much of what makes AoS unique.  For example, Ashes is designed around the idea that once you form a meta-unit it is just that -- a single unit and the sum of its individual parts.  The ability to select and place individual units within a meta-unit "in" and "out" of a tactical mode mode or w/e eviscerates the entire meta-unit concept, and reduces meta-units to standard control groups.  If you really hate the meta-unit dynamic so much, just don't use it I guess.

Again, I've never really been bothered by the slow down dynamic.  I tend to build static defenses on hills/ridges and along major routes to my hive to slow advancing armies and give my rear guard time to intercept. Perhaps that's why the slow down dynamic doesn't bother me as much and seems to actually work in my favor.  I also find radar upgrades to be incredibly useful, because they enable my arty units to wreck things well out of their visual range that my front line more durable units have eyes/radar on.

Some of your ideas I think are interesting and they play off other ideas expressed in the forums.  For example, it would be nice to put meta-units into certain tactical postures -- defensive, assault, etc.; that impact the formations they use going into and during battle.  I think making certain units less impacted by the battle slow down (temporarily or permanently) makes a lot of sense too; particularly for units like the Zeus that really need to close distance to be effective against arty.

I also like the minefields concept, although the devs seem to be against it for some reason.

I think your analysis is very good Ling.

I think we all feel the same. A lot of people on here and on the Steam forum have expressed a lot of frustration with the slowdown mechanic. I do hope they continue to iterate on alternative or less punishing methods.

Firstly, guy, I wrote my post specifically for the devs to consider - as neutrally as possible.  I say, "This mechanic punishes combined arms battlegroups," not "This mechanic is bad," or "Combined arms battlegroups are bad."  I said what I found to be true about how this impacts the game's direction as a long-time competitive player of RTS titles, and hence if that is the direction the Devs actually want, they will not change a thing.  This post was not written to you.  It was not written for you.  It was directed at the developers.  Which makes this especially obnoxious:



Do you want a game that requires micromanagement of individual engagements?  Because that is how you get a game that requires micromanagement of individual engagements.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is not a game about micromanaging individual engagements.  This is a game about having fights going on everywhere, checking on them, making critical decisions, and moving on.

What we see here is "design clash" - this is when individual mechanics within a game conflict in their design goals.

Example - imagine saying "I'm going to design a huge-scale RTS where the player only pays attention to the big picture and less on individual engagements," - but then I add a powerful unit that only fires when the player selects it, and issues a direct targeting order at a location.  Essentially, a skillshot.

So then you have this architecture for giant battles, huge scope, massive maps with fights going on everywhere - and a unit that requires the player to babysit it to make it function at all.  That's design clash.  The skillshot mechanic as a design element clashes with the scope of the game as a design element.  They both combine to worsen the overall experience, as each design element cannot achieve their mechanical goals in each other's presence.

So why have battlegroups at all, if using them to group multiple unit types together actually harms the player?  Battlegroups and combat-slowdown clash entirely as mechanics.  The combat-slowdown makes combined arms battlegroups a "trap" for unsuspecting players - and forces players to micromanage their units and their armies to win in multiplayer in a game that is supposed to be more about scale than about micromanagement.




Except, the range and low speed of Dreadnaughts will eliminate most of the advantages of any of the smaller units grouped with them.  Dreadnaughts and t2s and t1s in a group *is* combined arms.  Put 10 squads of Brutes in a group.  Then make another 10 squads of brutes, and put them in a group with a dreadnaught.  Tell both groups to go somewhere, watch what happens.  Give each group a radar unit, tell them to fight, watch what happens to the brutes in the unit with the dreadnaught.




I don't hate meta units at all.  I've never argued against meta units.  Infact, I think the idea of having a group micro-manage itself based on its individual unit composition fascinating and really cool for freeing up a player to make lots of higher level decisions.

I don't think you actually read my posts carefully enough to say what you're saying about them.

I want to be able to put Artillery, Radar, Brawlers, and Snipers all in a group and watch them do their individual things - supporting each other and filling individual roles within the group.  The combat slowdown mechanic doesn't allow for that.

And if you cannot combine arms to make an ai-controlled meta-unit that's actually functional because of combat slowdown, why advertise a game where ostensibly allowing the player to do this is one of the selling points?

If you honestly think this makes for a better game, then I'm done conversing with you.  I'm getting to the point of hair-pulling - "Drops mic"?  What are you, 14?  That's obnoxious, and you've put words into my mouth.

Sheesh, the drop mic thing was a joke, Ling.  The serious part of my post kicks of at.... wait for it.... "But more seriously..."  I'm sorry my humor angered you so.

Also, I will continue providing a counterweight to ideas of yours that I disagree with.  You are free to engage/not engage with my thoughts.  The bottom line is that we are all part of the Founders program, so all of our opinions matter.  My opinion diverges with yours on some key aspects of the game.  I suspect that we will have to agree to disagree on those, while finding common ground on others (see the end of my post for examples).  

I don't think that I really put anything into your mouth, either.  I just played out the ramifications of some of your proposals and identified the more fundamental issue at play.

Anyway, you might try playing around a bit with the file in this thread to get your meta-unit cohesion closer to how you want it:

https://forums.ashesofthesingularity.com/473249/page/1/#3601781

I'm in favor of fixes like this -- not so much in opting specific units in/out of meta-units (creates even more micro than the current design; unless I am misunderstanding your point), or eliminating the slow-down mechanic altogether (takes us back to the early days of NOT FUN, and I do not think your proposed solutions would work as well as the current dynamic).

By they way, I find your use of "unit", "battle group", etc. confusing.  Maybe that's leading us to more disagreement than necessary.  I've seen the devs using the following terminology throughout the forums:

• "Unit" -- an individual unit within the game (e.g., 1 Zeus).
• "Meta-Unit" -- a combination of individual units organized around a single Dread that is the sum of the units that make it up.  Caps out at 128 units.  Anything with more than 1 Dread in it is a.....
• "Control Group" -- a combination of multiple units and/or Meta-Units tasked to a number on your keyboard.