Author Topic: From Steam: Too LITTLE micromanagement?  (Read 8668 times)

Offline Draco18s

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Re: From Steam: Too LITTLE micromanagement?
« Reply #15 on: November 14, 2016, 02:07:10 pm »
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.

Honestly I'd make engineers a "1 per system" type constructable.  You always have 1 on each planet and it can aid 1 thing, but whatever it's aiding constructs at maximum speed.
Something like that.

Offline x4000

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Re: From Steam: Too LITTLE micromanagement?
« Reply #16 on: November 14, 2016, 02:31:48 pm »
Making it inconvenient is something that then becomes annoying for a whole host of other reasons.  Your side takes a beating and you lose an engineer, and suddenly it's a huge blow to you realtime-waiting-wise.  Or you always need to keep an engineer with your ark so you can make more engineers.  Etc.

I'm not trying to be difficult, but it's the sort of thing that players start doing immediately.  :P

Having N sliders is clearly a problem, though.  But then potentially that means we need a "Scotty screen," and we have a single screen that shows available scotties, planets that you have that are able to construct something, and you click them to assign up to N scotties to a given system.  You can't stack more than 3 scotties per system, perhaps, as a neat twist.  So if you have a pool of 20, you're actually best encouraged to spread out at least a little.

I'm just speaking off the top of my head here.  But basically in the past we often made things extra difficult for players because we were reluctant to add new interfaces.  I'd rather have a ton of interfaces that are small and simple and directly to the point (ala Cities: Skylines, as one example), rather than trying to go so interface-anemic that things become difficult for the player in other ways.

The fact that we can create interfaces much quicker and easier now is one thing that helps with that, but either way the data under the hood is the same.
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Offline kasnavada

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Re: From Steam: Too LITTLE micromanagement?
« Reply #17 on: November 14, 2016, 05:42:09 pm »
Make them slow to build. Only your Ark can do it. Lots of options to solve that.

Not a good idea, that could lead to having to reparse ALL your worlds with your ark to build / set engineers after attacks on multiple places.
I'm firmly in the remove engineer camp here.

Also, sliders by planet... ok if you've got a few planets. Annoying if you've got a lot. Super annoying if they need to be switched at each attack.

I'm just speaking off the top of my head here.  But basically in the past we often made things extra difficult for players because we were reluctant to add new interfaces.  I'd rather have a ton of interfaces that are small and simple and directly to the point (ala Cities: Skylines, as one example), rather than trying to go so interface-anemic that things become difficult for the player in other ways.

I disagree with the "adding subscreen part", and I firmly believe good designs call for having as much information as "humanely" readable on screen. I think those reasons are why the Firaxis team, when working on the Civ series, removed the city screen and removed as much screen as possible. AI War by design is already hampered in this because it has the galaxy view and a view per planet, adding subscreens on top of it is overkill. It also adds a lot to the "intimidation factor" when the guys explaining the game go to 15 screens to get it. IMO, AI War needs "Jump in the game, start to raze an AI planet" in the first 30 seconds of the game.

Cities skyline is a good example too, most is on the main screen.
« Last Edit: November 14, 2016, 05:49:28 pm by kasnavada »

Offline Tridus

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Re: From Steam: Too LITTLE micromanagement?
« Reply #18 on: November 14, 2016, 05:48:51 pm »
Making it inconvenient is something that then becomes annoying for a whole host of other reasons.  Your side takes a beating and you lose an engineer, and suddenly it's a huge blow to you realtime-waiting-wise.  Or you always need to keep an engineer with your ark so you can make more engineers.  Etc.

I'm not trying to be difficult, but it's the sort of thing that players start doing immediately.  :P

Having N sliders is clearly a problem, though.  But then potentially that means we need a "Scotty screen," and we have a single screen that shows available scotties, planets that you have that are able to construct something, and you click them to assign up to N scotties to a given system.  You can't stack more than 3 scotties per system, perhaps, as a neat twist.  So if you have a pool of 20, you're actually best encouraged to spread out at least a little.

I'm just speaking off the top of my head here.  But basically in the past we often made things extra difficult for players because we were reluctant to add new interfaces.  I'd rather have a ton of interfaces that are small and simple and directly to the point (ala Cities: Skylines, as one example), rather than trying to go so interface-anemic that things become difficult for the player in other ways.

The fact that we can create interfaces much quicker and easier now is one thing that helps with that, but either way the data under the hood is the same.

Yep, that's all fair. But I do understand where the person on Steam is coming from. It's a hard balance to get right.

Offline x4000

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Re: From Steam: Too LITTLE micromanagement?
« Reply #19 on: November 15, 2016, 10:33:18 am »
There's a difference between having everything on the main screen and having sensible subscreens -- I think embracing either approach too extremely leads bad places, at any rate.
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Offline NichG

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Re: From Steam: Too LITTLE micromanagement?
« Reply #20 on: November 15, 2016, 08:03:40 pm »
For basic building stuff I'd just have a slider controlling 'maximum metal consumption rate' and maybe a priority list for turrets vs star ships vs fleet ships vs special projects (buildings, superweapons, etc).

For repair, I'd make it a starship with a cap of 1 per Mark (going up to Mark IV) but at a relatively lower build time (so the player isn't waiting to refleet if it gets destroyed any more than if something else got destroyed) but with a fairly high Fuel cost, which has the ability to rapidly repair destroyed structures in the same system as it. Players who don't want to micro can have the four of them follow the Ark wherever it goes for protection. Players who want to micro can split them off and have them positioned at bottleneck defensive planets, cleaning up after AI raids, etc, as they need.

Though it does suggest that having a command to ships to 'follow the Ark' would be good, so players don't have to micro which ships they select every time they have the Ark move.

 

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