Macro battle vs game mechanics: A Disconnect

from AshesoftheSingularity Forums

The devs talk about epic battles with large macro units on huge maps, where the player is strategically managing vs micro managing units.

The problem?  90% of my time is spent micro managing; especially engineers.  Built resources nodes, amplifiers, buildings, defenses, units.

I am not sure the solution since beyond having engineers auto build resource collectors, it would be tough since you need to manage resource allocation etc.

I many play AI on small/med maps and it is already an issue.  On larger maps, it would be worse.  The AI can skirmish attack anywhere (infitite micro management) but you can't.  This forces you to turtle to build up defenses at every node to protect.  This forces you to maintain a static front.  If you run skirmishes, your economy will suffer (or you end of "fire and forget" on some units off to some black space hoping something will happen).

Macro-units do not work well; you end up having units path find problems with units trying to get in the right order wasting time and movement speed.  You end up with units staying in the middle and back or sides not shooting.  It is still better to leave them ungrouped and select entire region and send that army off to battle and then macro the T4 units.

I am short on solutions but the issue for me is that current game design and interface causes you to have to click, zoom, scroll and manage engineers leaving no time for macro battles or effective play on larger maps.

Yes, PvP will be better since everyone will be stuck with same constraints but there the player who micros best wins.  It becomes a scroll, click quest to win.

Against AI, good luck on large maps as you will find yourself trying to defend too many fronts.

We need less engineer management time.

 

(Before you say L2P newb, I can beat AI on tough most times so must be getting something right)

33,331 views 12 replies
Reply #1 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

I so disagree here. At some point the game plays itself then.

Reply #2 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 1

I so disagree here. At some point the game plays itself then.

I dont want it to play itself but you need to find a way to allow the player to fight a macro battle vs micro the whole time

 

So you disagree with what you think I asked for (auto play) (even though I did not ask for this).... but you also did not dispute that too much time is spent on micro; or that there is not enough time spent on macro?

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Reply #3 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

tatsujb, I agree with you.  I find the immediate, and incorrect summary of what I was saying and dismissing it in its entirety disappointing coming from a developer,

As you point out, it is something any RTS has to deal with and my comments were I thought the balance between the time spent on the two (economy and military) was wrong.  The fix is to reduce the amount of time micro'ing your economy (including the mechanics of how you direct engineers and select their tasks).  The bigger the map, the more you have to zoom out, move to the new location, zoom back in (so you can see where to place the things you are building) and then tasking the engineer to do said task.

Reply #4 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

I'm writing from an iPhone so my responses are brief. but I will not support automating engineers. The current level of micro vs. macro is what we were going for.

Reply #5 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 5

I'm writing from an iPhone so my responses are brief. but I will not support automating engineers. The current level of micro vs. macro is what we were going for.

Then I respectively suggest you will not achieve the desired goal of large macro military engagements on huge maps (and if they occur the player won;t see it because he is zoomed into somewhere else managing his engineers).

 

Also, I did not say the solution was automating engineers.  I do not want the AI to play my game.  The auto resource node was just a suggestion.  You could go back to having the game option of resource nodes being pre-built if you want zero automation)  I think there are many other ways to fix the issue.  As I said above, on large maps you burn a ton of time moving around, changing zoom, and selecting the icons for the engineers and placing on the map.  Each of those actions can take 5-10 seconds.  It adds up and consumes most of your time.

Reply #6 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Things will be a little better for sure when engineers work together properly.

It would be nice to be able to click and drag for capping a node's resources, similar to PA, but that has been raised many times so its not a new suggestion.

Based on what Tatsu said it has been discussed in great length elsewhere and it comes down 50/50. It seems Chemie and the Dev are in opposite 50s. The split down the middle suggests there is no clear right or wrong and that it comes down to personal preferences so...yeah, c'est la vie I guess.

 

More important for me getting this done quickly or keeping track of things is:

- to be able to hold down a button, drag a mouse over an army with air units above it and when releasing the mouse button only the land units are selected, or only the air units are selected. It is a pain to try and separate them out and it takes too long.

- Have a few more voice warnings. If a node is under attack I want to be able to hear about it, hit a button and for the camera to jump to that point. Many RTSs games have this on the space bar but that is currently occupied. When you fighting on a large map on multiple fronts it is too easy to miss a force taking out your base.

- Another warning for when some of the orbital abilities are launched by an opposing player, with the same ability to jump to it. If you are not watching and someone drops a plasma storm or drone storm or what have you on your army then you can completely miss its utter destruction, not great.

 

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Reply #7 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

select engineer, click on captured node, have engineer build resource collectors.

+1 on air/ground select

Reply #8 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Well the game do have some Automation, units queue and with Reinforcements, those two will give you a lot of time to do other things.

I am still with you guys, AOTS needs to get better when Managing the Engineer/Constructor, like what they said in a different post.


Replace all resource building buttons with one.
While a minor thing, it prevents clicking the wrong type. It would even only use one hotkey.
Keep the in-game models the same; If it's placed on a metal spot, it builds a Metal extractor, Radioactives extractor for radioactives, Amplifier on a power generator and a Quantum relay if built on empty ground.

And

Building by click and drag.
Placing a building, if you click and drag, it would construct 2x2, 3x2, 3x3 etc evenly spaced.

Those can save us a lot of time too.

I thinks all that can be called Optimizations that can be made in AOTS really easy and fast.

 

However I will not Support any kind of automatic building per region, just think about it, if the Dev;s add what you guys ask then the game will get not interesting at all in the long term,

RTS games are not about managing a army or a few Meta Units, RTS games are made to manage the whole map with Structures and UNITS at the same time.

If you want to just play with an Army and units then there are hundreds of tactical games out there. :p

Reply #9 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

by autobuild, I meant that select engineer and task to resource node and he builds the right resource collector on all the open spots.  That would save a ton of clicks

Reply #10 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Quoting chemie99, reply 11

by autobuild, I meant that select engineer and task to resource node and he builds the right resource collector on all the open spots.  That would save a ton of clicks

You mean like area mex? where you drag a circle over an area and it builds all extractors in said area maybe.

But only if the map size increases like 10x would i even begin to support such a feature. Currently the maps are too small in scope to justify investment into such a feature.

Currently i agree with Draginol, it gets to a point where the game plays itself, and macro is where most of the skill lies with this game.