Feedback and Micromanagement ideas

One thing i should clarify is that i didn't mean you couldn't build multiple factories, just that one type of factory building would eliminate a lot of micro management and chasing of engineers.

It's not a bad idea, many games do not have an engineer For you to move around and build

but by not having an engineer means you can do things very OP in the game, so I do not recommend taking out the engineer

Autobuild extractors and amplifiers is not fun at all. Do you want the Dev's to make an RTS game or an arcade game?

Anyway what Tat said, maybe a Mod. But I will not play it.

In your opinion not having an engineer would let you do things OP in the game?  I'm not sure how, could you please elaborate on that line of thought?

An RTS, obviously, but not the same one that has been made 50 times already.  I don't feel that eliminating some of the base building micromanagement aspects of chasing engineers all over the place and spending 50% of your time managing resource gathering/base building/and building upgrading. 

When 50% of your time is spent on base management, it turns into more a game of who can manipulate the interface the best and less about who knows what troops to build, scouting properly, and countering your enemies moves/attacks with proper strategic decisions.

I understand that the RTS genre has been all about base building, management and resource gathering focus for many years now, and it is difficult for people to envision anything but that stereotypical gameplay.  In the end, most RTSes from the past decade are unforgiving on early game base building requirements, and so aren't really about who is the best strategist or tactician, but merely about who can build the best base in the most efficient manner early game, and the late game is just about utilizing the early game economic victory to pound home a military victory.

Take Supcom as an example.  Early economic victory almost guarantees the military victory.  But play supcom with the 8x resource mod and it becomes less about resource management and base building than it does about who scouts, what strategy they implement, how well they counter the enemy strategy, and map control.

Again, just my opinion, but i don't think removing some of the micromanagement or interface mastery requirements would turn this into an arcade game.

There are many RTS games that use the engineer model, and others which do not. Either way there is still base management in both situations, which does require time spent managing it.

Early economic victory improved the odds, however it did not guarantee military victory in Supreme Commander.

You could play AotS with a resource mod if that is your cup of tea. It is a simple process tweaking a couple of csv files.

I would suggest simply to automate the engineer - like the construction frigates in Sins of a Solar Empire:

When you conquer a region, 1 or 2 engineers would spawn. You just plop build orders from the building menu, and the engineers would automatically go and construct the buildings you plopped. If you wated to, you could click an enguineer and tell him to build something else - again, just like the construction frigates n Sins of a Solar Empire. If an engineer gets killed, a new one would spawn after like a minute or something. That way you solve both the micromanagement of engineers, and still keep it for those times you need it.

Keep in mind  this is a RTS.

Large scale war means tatic decisions not prebuild orders.

Hmmm, I think engineers should be in this style of game, as they make an important target.  Without them, you have basically no way to stop your opponent from building things unless you destroy building being built.  Sins of a Solar Empire, like egelon suggested, is a good mix of both having engineers and less micromanagement buildings.  They would auto build whatever you placed around a planet, but they still have to build and made perfect targets for slowing down construction by a great deal.  That's the important point here, engineers are ALWAYS targets if they are nearby, since they can push the offensive closer by building factories and such.  Without them, it is a bit overpowered as mentioned by ASADDF.

Yep, just Think about it silkfire1972. What i am trying to say here is that just imagine that you can build anywhere in the map without a Engineer, it means that you can send a scout to the enemy base and Build Smarty's, not fair, no one can stop you, while with an Engineer it means that you need to send it all the way to the other side, and that will take a lot of time.

I can partially concede the point on the smarty scenario ASADDF.  If it was close to the enemy base though, it probably wouldn't live long if the enemy was in the process of building a military, but i do see the "rush attack" OP issue, so that does make sense and make it less appealing. 

A couple people mentioned autobuild with engineers as sins does it, and that might be something to consider as well, giving general build orders and available engineers automatically move to carry them out without having to micro your engineers. Being able to set an engineer autoreplace function might be nice as well.  Along the lines of that, I start by building 5 engineers, and if an engineer dies, then autobuild a replacement.

Being able to set general orders for engineers to follow might be good as well. 

1. Build engineer

2. Set engineer instructionset to autobuild/autoassist/autorepair, which it would follow and limit mandatory commands to the engineer.

Just some thoughts.  I was originally trying to open up discussion and get some people to brainstorming different ideas to limit micromanagement and actions per minute requirements.

Slight off topic commentary, then back to the discussion at hand:

Wow, I'm actually a little surprised and happy that people with opposing opinions can voice them in a way that doesn't insult everyone else, and that other people are willing to concede their own points in light of opposing evidence.  It's fantastic.  Usually, by now this would have turned into a flame war.  :)

Anyways, as far as engineers go, I think the last post by silkfire1972 was a good one.  The best of both world really.  I would be very happy with enginners that atuo-build buildings you place, and your nexus auto-builds a set number of engineers.  

On a different micromanagement subject, I like the army idea, but would it be possible to set "Build x units, form them those units into an army at Y location"?  That would make selecting a certain number of units for a specific army, such as long range seige Vs short range "run-n-gun" Vs air a million times easier.  Also, we need air units to like...actually behave well.  I've not once been able to set them into an army with ground units in a general selection with my mouse.  I've been able to link them into them manually, but that's annoying, and air units are hard to single out well.  I've also never been able to assign hotkeys to air units (by hotkeys I mean the CTRL+1-0).

Qanta buildings I think should be built, but perhaps have to be a certain distance apart.  That would make sure that players can't bunch them up in a corner near the nexus (like I do), yet they can still build as many as they want.  Plus, as the same with engineers, they make good tactical targets.  Having them linked to zones of control means a player that gets pushed back has little chance to come back from losing since his/her qanta generation is null.  With physical buildings you can still generate it regardless of your zones, and the orbital strikes, if timed well, can help you regain lost ground.

Factories, as mentioned by the topic post, I'm not sure about.  I could take it or leave it.  The tech tree is a little difficult to figure out without having played a few times anyways, and I think it needs changing.

That's my two cents.

I agree with you somewhat.  At this time, the micro in this Beta is a step backwards from SoaSE.  I spend as much, if not more time with extractor and engineer micro, and hunting down destroyed extractors, and then even MORE micro to rebuild them, than I do with strategy. 

http://steamcommunity.com/app/228880/discussions/0/412446292753267630/