From Steam: Too LITTLE micromanagement?

[x4000]

From here: http://steamcommunity.com/app/40400/discussions/0/828935673164432603/?ctp=4#c224446432327926263

This is a different point of view, and one I think that is worth discussing since we're back at a design doc stage where making sure not to isolate the core hardcore strategy fans is a good idea.

I'm a micromanagement fan and I'm worried that the related game aspects are going to be reduced in the sequel.
For example, engineers are gone in the AI War II spec, resource management reduced, recon capabilities are severely hampered (new anti-cloaking measures),

Relevant part of my response:

Well, things are changing on that front to some extent in the re-launch anyway, but in general it's more a matter of things moving and changing form rather than outright being removed (per se).

The planet management screen in the original spec was designed to have a lot of different sliders and options on it where you could do the equivalent work of engineers and rebuilders and then some -- giving more power to turrets instead of repairs, for instance. Basically letting you choose from some templates or micromanage it as much as you wanted -- simply from one screen.

In general I'm not opposed to micromanagement being something that is POSSIBLE, but I'm opposed to it being something that is either required or inconvenient. I like that in the later Civ games it will automatically apply my workers to various things if I don't care about the makeup for that particular city. Little outlier cities can be set to work in a kinda generic fashion, because I don't feel a need to min/max them. Meanwhile I can focus on the important cities and micro them the way I want.

And so on. Same thing with the lobby design I had in mind: make it super simple and a lot fewer options... on the main screen. Then have subscreens with far more options for tweaking and twiddling than were there before. Best of both worlds: at the basic level you can just hop in and not sweat the details... but for advanced play you can get to well-organized options to do exactly what you want.

With resource management, that wasn't really reduced, per se. Things like the need to build metal harvesters (and rebuild them) were just busywork. It was something you always do, so why make you do it? Automating that lets you then think about other things, such as: if that's in an exposed position and keeps getting destroyed and having to be rebuilt back up, then how do you plan to deal with that? Do you just let it happen, and you lose the benefits of that derelict, largely? Or do you expend some of your resources in fortifying it?

The goal with streamlining, for us, is not to reduce options, but to reduce busywork and to reduce the number of "yes of course" options that are not really choices. And then on the flip side, give you new options for doing deeper things IF you're the sort who enjoys that, but which can be safely ignored for lower-difficulty more casual play. And even "casual" is a misnomer, because that's basically like saying "people who play Paradox games, but can't quite get into Dwarf Fortress are the 'casuals'" in this case.

The logistical challenge (moving engineers around) and the tactical advantage (concentrating all my engineering power exactly where I want it) will be gone.
The game may become similar to Star Ruler where all resources are magically stored in one place (Galactic Bank) and distributed from there directly to each planet.

hmm, i love abit of micro here and there. bzut am open to venues you are suggesting, we shall see.

Me again:

Got it, that makes sense. I will raise that issue on our forum, and I encourage you to come join us to discuss. I definitely want to have a variety of opinions on this. The engineers thing in particular is something that to me is not a crisis if we separate that out back into having them being discrete units.

Possibly the mothership/ark/command stations still do MOST of the repairs at a baseline, but you use engineers for concentrations of power. Because I do know what you mean on the concentration of power.

Originally in my designs I had things to account for that, such as being able to have multiple construction queues at one constructor, and different allocations of speed to various of them, and power distributions to different activities, etc. That was all per-planet, not across the entire galaxy, to be clear.

[keith.lamothe]

My general goal on micro is this:

1) Once you make a decision, it's quick and easy for you to communicate that decision to the game.
2) You shouldn't have to repeat yourself, if it's obviously a "keep doing this" sort of decision.

There are actually more resources in AIW 2 than 1, with the split of Energy into Fuel and Power. Fuel is still a magical-global-bank resource, but Power is per-planet. And which structures you support with that finite per-planet power largely defines what you want from that planet. 100% turrets, for maximum firepower? Lots of turrets with a few covering shield generators? Mostly shield generators to delay the enemy and protect your fleet when it arrives? Large amounts of tachyon emission to reveal large swarms of raiding cloaking units? Large numbers of tractor beams to catch big waves of fleet ships?

Anyway, sure, it's possible that rolling so many civilian-ship functions into the Ark is paring away at gameplay. But in general most of those functions were largely already massively more automated in AIW 1 8.0 than they were in 1.0. Metal extractors auto-building by default, energy reactors optionally auto-building, science labs with the auto-gather order, etc.

So we'll see how it feels in actual play. If players don't think they have enough to do, I'm sure the AI can be modified to oblige

[Draco18s]

I'm on the edge about engineers.
In one sense, yes, you could micromanage your production facilities (or whatever you had them doing).  The problem I had with them is you ended up using them in swarms for most projects.  Yeah, outlying world where you only need two engineers to keep the turrets repaired worked, but at your ship constructors you'd have four of them each assisted by four to eight engineers (depending on how many you had, what you were trying to optimize, and to what degree).

It boiled down to "how quickly do you want this?" which is a different question than "can I afford this?" as for large projects the answer was often "no I can't" except when the answer was "yes I can, give it to me now *engineer swarm.*"

Having any constructable object/shipyard have a toggle between "slow, standard rate" and "build as fast as possible" would solve the issue. If that toggle is "there is an engineer present" then it needs to be "an engineer."

[Cinth]

I'm just going to say I'm not a fan of micro on any level.  I don't even play micro based (apm based) RTS in that manor. 

In AI War, it's wholly not needed.  If you think about it, you need one production planet, and a small set of defensive planets that ever need the attention of an engineer.  At that point everything is really on a macro level, balancing resource flows.  Combat is largely max fleet, big blob on attack move.  Some players can micro in that environment and it works well enough for them.

If micro is interesting anywhere, it's combat, and with smaller battlefields, the opportunity for micro is actually going to grow a bit.  And to cool thing about that is that is where the game takes place.  The player is actually doing something and interacting with the AI.  Planetary management and resource flows really aren't and should, imo, be macro level interactions.

[Misery]

I'm gonna sorta echo what Cinth said, to an extent.

Micro, to me, is interesting when it's in combat, in this game.  I tend to do a ton of it in that case, particularly since I use the Champions a lot.  The game lets me pause at any time to make decisions, or slow down time, so it's not like the sort of berserk micro in StarCraft (which I hate).   Very, very different to me.  I actually rather prefer situations that use a bit of micro instead of the whole "crash fleet blob into other fleet blob" idea, which has never felt very tactical to me.

However, outside of wherever my "active" zone is, the micro becomes a lot less interesting.  Engineers, for example... I don't want to have to give them orders.  As a rule, I never do.  My biggest interaction with engineers is to just drop more of the things in a system that I think is going to need them.  Other than that, I don't do anything with them directly.   I leave them be and assume they'll do their job.  I just tell the game where to build a few more when I see the need.  To do any more is dull; there's nothing exciting or challenging happening, and the AI isn't involved.  I don't want any StarCraft-ish elements where you have to spend huge amounts of time just puttering around your own base worlds giving a million little orders that have nothing to do with the big picture.  For the most part, the game doesn't do that too much; usually the worst bit for me is having to set up new turrets and such every freaking time; but at least once that's done, it's just plain DONE.

[NichG]

The main interesting micro I've seen with the engineers is when really skilled players use them to rebuild turrets and shields during an attack wave. From what people say, doing that well can really be a huge multiplier on the efficacy of a set of defenses. But that seems like something you could do by having a vulnerable but very potent repair ship, and decouple that from changing production speed and stuff of that sort.

[kasnavada]

The main interesting micro I've seen with the engineers is when really skilled players use them to rebuild turrets and shields during an attack wave. From what people say, doing that well can really be a huge multiplier on the efficacy of a set of defenses. But that seems like something you could do by having a vulnerable but very potent repair ship, and decouple that from changing production speed and stuff of that sort.

Doesn't exactly require skill, just to be OCDed enough to pause every 2 seconds and rework each order because you don't trust the FRD AI.

It also is a balance issue, because micro-ing that kind of stuff IS more efficient. So basically, there's an obligation, for optimal play, to PAUSE all the time, which breaks the game flow, make the game even longer than needed, and is boring as hell, because "decisions" there dont actually require much skill.

Engineers shouldn't have orders.

[Glyoxim]

It's similar for me, I don't want to micro economics/engineers and I think it's boring in a game where I don't want to optimize every single workflow but focus on the grand strategy. I don't even like combat micro, for me the decisions are more: where to have my fleet, which planets to attack, what technologies to unlock etc... Of course people have different opinions but I always appreciated the fact that AI War minimized microing because there are so many RTS games that more or less require microing without the possibility to pause. And I'm more of a patient player who takes his time to think and plan and not just rush some build order and click my mouse as fast as possible.

[Cyborg]

I am of the opinion that we don't need the level of micro required by APM RTS clones. Busywork should be able to be automated. Combat should be as you prefer.

[Tridus]

Moving engineers around was not particularly a challenge as much as it was just work. Figuring out where they were so you could redeploy them was annoying.

Actually having a limited number and having to figure out how to use them *could* be interesting, except you had too many. If the number of them is drastically cut but each one is made more effective it would be more interesting.

[Draco18s]

Actually having a limited number and having to figure out how to use them *could* be interesting, except you had too many. If the number of them is drastically cut but each one is made more effective it would be more interesting.

That's kind of what I was getting at.

[x4000]

Actually having a limited number and having to figure out how to use them *could* be interesting, except you had too many. If the number of them is drastically cut but each one is made more effective it would be more interesting.

That's kind of what I was getting at.

I was thinking along these lines, too.  Although you do get into situations with anything that is construction-speed-based where it's easy to just wonder "well why not just have a slider on the constructor as to how fast it constructs."  Easier to manage, etc.

For combat repair... a lot of folks in this thread are thinking along the lines of what I was.  Basically if you're encouraged to pause and micro in order to win in an optimal way, something is wrong.

[Tridus]

Actually having a limited number and having to figure out how to use them *could* be interesting, except you had too many. If the number of them is drastically cut but each one is made more effective it would be more interesting.

That's kind of what I was getting at.

I was thinking along these lines, too.  Although you do get into situations with anything that is construction-speed-based where it's easy to just wonder "well why not just have a slider on the constructor as to how fast it constructs."  Easier to manage, etc.

If you only have say 10 engineers and they can be used between combat repair, helping your Ark build in enemy territory, or speed up building, then you've got to decide what to prioritise and it's different than just having a slider (since they can't be everywhere). If the only thing they do is speed up build times, then yes, a slider makes more sense.

For combat repair... a lot of folks in this thread are thinking along the lines of what I was.  Basically if you're encouraged to pause and micro in order to win in an optimal way, something is wrong.

An option to fix that is to change the combat repair behavior so that micro doesn't help you. If one engineer is capable of repairing everything within a radius at the same time so long as that thing is destroyed or not being fired on, then the only micro is where to place it, which isn't nearly as frequent a change as specific targetting (since it'll take time to work in any location before you'd want to move it again).

You'd need a very limited pool of engineers to warrant giving it that kind of a power boost, but it would make it significantly less micro heavy while still leaving a bit there (placement matters).

[x4000]

Right, this all makes sense.  But the micro that can come is having to delete and replace your engineers if they are in one place versus another.  The hassle of shuffling them around your galaxy a lot if they are limited in number in particular.  People would likely start scrapping them, then rebuilding them all quickly where an attack is incoming.  Then scrap and redistribute, etc.

With some sort of slider or similar, there could be a global allocation of "Scotty points" or whatever, and in a quick couple of clicks you specify where you want your Scotties at the moment.  When you need a Scotty, you need him NOW, and there shouldn't be a hassle of having had to plan for needing him too much in advance I don't feel; requiring that sort of planning heavily favors very small empires.

[Tridus]

Right, this all makes sense.  But the micro that can come is having to delete and replace your engineers if they are in one place versus another.  The hassle of shuffling them around your galaxy a lot if they are limited in number in particular.  People would likely start scrapping them, then rebuilding them all quickly where an attack is incoming.  Then scrap and redistribute, etc.

Make them slow to build. Only your Ark can do it. Lots of options to solve that.

With some sort of slider or similar, there could be a global allocation of "Scotty points" or whatever, and in a quick couple of clicks you specify where you want your Scotties at the moment.  When you need a Scotty, you need him NOW, and there shouldn't be a hassle of having had to plan for needing him too much in advance I don't feel; requiring that sort of planning heavily favors very small empires.

Except it's not a slider to move them around from one system to another when you have 20 systems, because you can't use one slider to say "put 3 here, 1 here, 2 here, and 4 here." It's actually N sliders.