Better unit controlling especially airplanes

[ghostpast]

no newbs? you know BO?

[Borreh]

veterancy has its own benefits already (hp/dmg/autoheal etc)... dont add auto overkill management to it

auto overkill management is honestly not needed in any form - its one of the biggest areas for micro skill depth in rts

If RTS games would come with a pedal which you should keep on pressing and releasing with your leg in order to generate power for your power plants, then you would also keep on saying it's one of the most important aspects of strategy in those games.

[CrazyGDIfan123`]

youre making out micro (and actually pretty basic micro) to be a chore... except its totally not.
stuff like overkill management is in the end what differentiates two equally skilled players, and its a pretty fun way to do so too

but i suppose this is a very subjective issue... your example of pedalling is something id use to describe the laborious macro (constantly queueing up units on all production queues, spamming workers etc) involved in sc/sc2 - something i find to be an absolute chore and not really a fun skill differentiator

its infact why i like cnc - far easier macro and more emphasis on units and tactics (which imo are 100x more fun than just pure eco building/queueing ****)

but if managing your 10 scorps vs his 10 scorps such that your units are more efficient doesnt sound appealing to you, im not really sure what you find fun about cnc gameplay...

then again, EVEN if you dont find that fun, the wonderful thing about cnc is that stuff ONLY matters most at the highest levels of play... at lower/casual skill levels its usually more macro-level tasks and decision making that decides matches...

in the 10 v 10 scorps battle for example, you could get away with mixing a few rocketmen for added DPS-per-cost if you dont want to go that pure micro route

so really... why remove options?

[hellodean]

If RTS games would come with a pedal which you should keep on pressing and releasing with your leg in order to generate power for your power plants, then you would also keep on saying it's one of the most important aspects of strategy in those games.

The all new EA Fitness!
work on your leg muscles with the awesome power generator!
add depth to your strategy game!

[Borreh]

so really... why remove options?

No one here is willing to remove any options, we just want to add *more* options for the player to do all the pro stuff a lot easier.

And I also find the tactical stuff way more fun than the queing/building. I suggestes a lot of options which would increase the amount and importance of tactical actions, and I was barraged by 1337 pros stating that I will destroy the game by making the tactical stuff easier to do.

I think that it's important to play tacticaly, but for me tactics is knowing what to do with each unit in order to gain advantage over the enemy. The fact that I have to click 10 times for 2 minutes to order my airplane take out 10 trucks because I can't tell him to take out all of them at once is not part of the tactics for me, it's just poor interface design obstructing my gameplay experience.

----------

Supreme Commander series solved this issue by allowing player to queue unit order by holding shift during clicking.

That way you could order your airplane once to take out the set group of hostiles and he would continue to do so with rearming at the air pads in between airstrikes.

It could be impleneted here that you would hold shift and order the plane to take out a few enemies, then he would unload just enough missles to take his current target out and then fire the rest of missles on the next targets.

If you would order a group of airplanes to take out a group of enemies, then they should automaticaly select their targets from the whole targeted group to optimilise their ammo/damage ratio.

[CrazyGDIfan123`]

Supreme Commander series solved this issue by allowing player to queue unit order by holding shift during clicking.

That way you could order your airplane once to take out the set group of hostiles and he would continue to do so with rearming at the air pads in between airstrikes.

hmm k? i actually wouldnt be opposed to such basic command-queueing... infact afaik it already exists in cnc3/ra3; although it may need refining

that said this feature would never really see any use in a 'proper' match of cnc.

never have i -ever- felt the need for such a feature on my aircraft because the situation in a typical game changes incredibly quickly... your target priorities with aircraft change with every attack run.

but sure, i see no harm in having such a feature anyway - if its merely for making your skirmish/sp experience an even more relaxed/enjoyable affair

It could be impleneted here that you would hold shift and order the plane to take out a few enemies, then he would unload just enough missles to take his current target out and then fire the rest of missles on the next targets.

If you would order a group of airplanes to take out a group of enemies, then they should automaticaly select their targets from the whole targeted group to optimilise their ammo/damage ratio.

actually, it could also be implemented such that if you select 'AI' instead of yourself in the match screen and then click 'play', the AI plays the whole damn game for you so you dont have to worry about boring micro/macro etc ever again

w0000t!


in all seriousness... lol

perhaps you could provide a -specific- example of your situation in a cnc game?
do mention the game name, aircraft/unit type, target type etc


fact is:
what you described sounds like a 100% decision-making error on part of the player; not 'flawed interface design'

fast-strike return-to-base type aircraft in cnc games are seldom required to do what you just described -- sure, they might use up eg 4 missiles instead of just 3 to kill a tank... but in 90% scenarios that doesnt even frigging matter because the game allows PLENTY of ALTERNATIVE ways you can prove your mettle to achieve victory

eg want to take out 10 tanks? ok, use your ground forces or use gunships like commanches - these are units specifically DESIGNED to work great vs masses of enemies

noone is asking you to use stuff like raptors and consequently whine that it requires 1337 APM

raptors/firehawks etc are fast striking units which are designed to deal damage surgically... what matters when using these aircraft is
1) choice of targets - you select the optimum targets which will yield the maximum benefit... this could be a warfactory, or a single ranked-up/fully-upgraded overlord tank thats giving your ground forces some trouble etc
2) how you control and carefully time these aircraft to reach their target and back home safely

now, your idea here is to make these fast striker aircraft use their missiles optimally per target... again, why the heck is that needed?

skilled players being to manually achieve this optimisation is something that benefits THEM - fact is this kind of advanced micromanagement ONLY really matters at the top 1% of the playerbase... for lower skill levels its other factors such as strategy, basic micro, eco etc that matters more

so by making this overkill management automated, youre just REMOVING an option for those top players, whilst hardly changing anything for lower skill players

[Borreh]

You are just completely unable to think outside the box on an abstract level, are you?

The thing is, many things work in a cetain way not only because the game was balanced in such way, but because also you have no other way of effectively using them because of interface limitations. You see, the very basic design of the interface may move the player towards one playstyle or another. Games are not only numbers behind units and balancing issues as you see them, the very gameplay depends on some very, very basic design decisions, even (or especialy) things like the speed at which you can move your cursor, or the avaible array of commands you can issue to your units with the said cursor. Many things work how they work not because they were balanced so, but because the game, due to design choices, was not allowing you to effectively do certain things. Sure, you *could* order 10 planes one after another to attack 10 different targets, but no one would do that because doing so is inneficient. Same like you would use a huge amount of hotkeys in a situation where your cursor moves very, very slowly (I can see that happening when I play RTS games via OnLive and I get a lag for my own mouse movement) - No one tells you to use the hotkeys and you can still fight with the cursor, but you just won't because there is a different way to achieve the same things. This will result in using bigger amount of different tactics than you would usualy not do, not because they are better, but because you need to play with a slow, unresponsive mouse, and a large number of hotkeys. You will play with the units differently, move them in ways you normaly wouldn't, because you need to optimise the amount of work needed to issue commands and their efficency.

This is not only the matter of individual stats the units have themselves, and the way there were balanced to counter eachother, but also of limitations in your gameplay abilities. If you would have a responsive mouse, then you would move the units all around the map and do different sorts of stuff, you would play them differently in short, because you can. Whatever you do on the battlefield is not only the issue of what the units themselves can do, but what the player can do.

You posses the ability to see the game through numbers and balancing issues, and I admit, that is an awesome skill, especialy when balancing a predesigned game, or modding. But we are not talking about game balance, but the very basic game design choices - And this is something more abstract than numbers showing units statistics. While keeping in mind all that stuff is important, the inability to see outside the already existing design is a real bummer. You always drag each and single discussion towards a chat about unit statistics and numbers, even the most abstract ones like this. While we were discussing something theoreticaly, you gave the example of very specific units (firehawks, overlords tanks and so forth) interacting with each other in an already existing game with already exisitng balance mechanics.

Now, what is the difference? We are talking about a nonexistant game with no predeterminated game mechanics. Actualy the game may be designed for one-hit kills of everything on everything, we do not know that. And basing most of your arguments (not only this one) on already existing games and stating that won't work because the already existing game is balanced differently is pointless since we are not talking about already existing games. Of course unit from Dawn of War put into C&C would not work - But that is not a valid argument to prove that either C&C or DoW are bad game ideas. You constantly discuss the design of hipothetical games in the context of already existing ones, and not by comparing, but by taking a hypothetical mechanic created with a completely different game in mind, taking it out of context and putting it in an already existing title (where it does not fit at all) and stating this won't work. This is not productive at all.

[CrazyGDIfan123`]

im quite well aware of the distinction between balance and design issues, ty

my intent here is not to bring up balance or specific gameplay issues - it is to point out how various aspects of current cnc design come together to produce a rich, enjoyable rts experience

im tired of hearing rants from people about how cnc should be made more 'tactical' etc when they have little clue of actually how 'tactical' or deep current cnc games even are...

so reason i use specific examples from existing titles is
1) because i strongly SUPPORT the way they were designed, and also ASSUME future cnc's to be based on them (a fair assumption isnt it? its called a 'cnc' game afterall)
2) to point out the nuances in the design of current cnc games, and that your 'solutions' would most likely just water down the games rather than enhance them

ofcourse, i can get that youre saying that your ideas may not necessarily result in the game being watered down overall, because presumably you want to add some depth in other ways. thats all well and good except...
a) i havent seen any ideas from you on how to compensate that loss of skill differentation by removing overkill management etc
b) from my impressions of your posts lead me to believe that even if you do come up with an appropriate design, youd want to turn the game into something very different from what cnc actually is

essentially, im not convinced by your ideas or arguments to 'improve' the game at all - but this may be because im just looking at a very -specific- aspect (ie removal of overkill management) of your proposed game design, and as you said, probably placing them in the incorrect context

but assumptions are usually made in the absence of facts -- so its only natural that i judge your ideas by placing them within the context of current games, because i have no frigging clue of what the 'rest' of your proposed design is (specifically, how do you intend to solve issues (a) and (b)?)...

[Golan2781]

€dit
Ninja'd by CGF. D:

@Borreh
Command queuing is possible since Generals. It works very similar to SupCom's version, the main problem is that the interface for it is crap.

Anyways, shifting the issue from a framework similar to the existing games to a hypothetical nonexistant game with no predeterminated game mechanics doesn't address CGF's points at all. Said shift is only possible when one does already accept the deficits he's complaining about. Unless you actually specify said hypothetical game in regards to the issues he's mentioning, its hypothetically possible hypothetical nature is meaningless. I could just as well suggest removing the tires from your car as hypothetically it could use another form of propulsion.
It is very likely that Generals2, being a sequel to both Gen1 and the C&C series as a whole, will play akin to pre-existing games. Micromanaging airplanes and similar low quantity high quality units is a game component that has worked extremely well, as illustrated also by some of CGF's examples. They scale properly with skill level, integrate into balance rather well, and generally work as one would expect. You could at least make the effort of offering an alternative.

[ArcticGator]

I would rather them just shoot the number of missiles needed automatically.