Getting rid of the last of the micromanagement
Supreme Commander has done very well in eliminating micromanagement. Tasks that used to be torture in other RTSs, like transporting units, are now a breeze. But Supreme Commander isn’t perfect just yet. There are still some significant areas that require micromanagement that I’d like to see remedied.
Naval aircraft staging needs some work. Simply put, carriers don’t work like they should. They can only be used manually, which requires micromanaging which planes to put in them, and when. And there isn’t even a good indication of how far along in the refueling process your planes inside the carrier are, so I’ve frequently launched all of my planes out again only to discover that they still needed to go right back in. And nevermind the huge vulnerability of putting all of your planes inside a carrier at once. But micromanaging putting them inside in shifts is even worse. Carriers need real aircraft staging ability. Planes that are running low on fuel or are damaged, should automatically go dock temporarily in a nearby aircraft carrier, just like with the land-based aircraft staging pads. Until this is fixed, aircraft carriers will continue to be mostly unused.
Another area requiring undue micromanagement is the Cybran shields. There should be a way to queue up the upgrades, and to make them across multiple shield generators at once. Nobody enjoys having to keep coming back to each individual shield generator four times and clicking buttons just to get the advanced shields.
But the worst micromanagement disaster is definitely the support commanders. There’s no way to upgrade more than one of them at once, nor is there a way to queue upgrades. When you’ve got several dozen SCUs going, which is pretty much a given in a large-scale game with expert players, you end up spending a large amount of your time shepherding your SCUs. This simply isn’t enjoyable, and the time could be spent much better directing battles. We should be able to upgrade SCUs in groups and to queue SCU upgrades. Not only that, we should get assignable upgrade archetypes. Even once queuing is possible, who wants to repeatedly select new SCUs and hit the same buttons all over again for builder SCUs (resource allocation system then engineering suite) or combat SCUs (enhanced weapon, enhanced fire rate, shield generator, and/or integrity compensator, depending on faction)? Just let us define some archetypes that we commonly use to get our SCUs upgraded and ready for action without all of the fuss.
What would be even niftier is if the quantum gateway had the ability to build upgraded archetypes directly (at the appropriate resource cost, of course). Then you could just queue up what you wanted without having to micromanage any SCU upgrading. Even with improved SCU upgrading, but without the modified gateway, you’d still have to send around a bunch of other SCUs to help assist the ones that are upgrading (if you want them done in any reasonable amount of time). This is just annoying. If you could just have all of them assist the gateway and pump out fully-ready SCUs, that’d be much better.
April 18th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
I agree especially those damn SCU’s I have basically stopped useing them for everything but RAS(Mainly because it is necessary in large FFA games). Also, why can’t I select a bunch of interceptors, right click on an air stageing pad and have them refule/repair?
April 18th, 2007 at 12:49 pm
Carriers should work like carriers in Homeworld where you can toggle Stay Inside or Automatically Relaunch for the aircraft you send to them. That way if you’re just sending them to repair refuel and rearm they will relaunch automatically, or if you’re putting them inside to stay for transport they will do that. It just depends on how you set it. And then if they’re set to Stay Inside, toggling to Auto Relaunch will automatically Launch any that are inside.
For SCUs and the ACU, you should definitely be able to queue upgrades or as you said make the upgrades a part of the Gateway which is an interesting idea… almost like mini tech levels just for SCUs. Then again it would be difficult to distinguish which of your SCUs have which upgrades (as it is already) without (micromanaging) touching each one to see its upgrades (aside from the few that are visually obvious like a shield).
“Permanent” waypoints as discussed here would also go a LONG way toward cutting down the micromanagement of units: http://forums.gaspowered.com/viewtopic.php?t=5723
Basically waypoints that are set without any units selected, sort of like a ferry system that you simply tell units to go to one end of and they will make the trek to the other end automatically. This way the waypoints stay for subsequent units to follow instead of having to be redone every time. Tying this in with factory waypoints could provide pretty powerful movement management options.
As noted in the thread, this could also be extended to all commands including build queues such that you select your T2 build menu (somehow) and plan out one structure build queue and then assign engineers to that build queue and you can make other build queues and assign other folks to that. Either way, the queues don’t get erased if you pull the units off that queue which would save time and hassle.
April 18th, 2007 at 12:51 pm
oh btw, i never noticed Cybran shield gens could upgrade!! holy crap I’m going to have to check that tonight :D
no wonder they seemed so crappy and cover such a pathetic area…. hahahah
April 18th, 2007 at 12:51 pm
I really like the idea of queues that exist independent of units. I’m wondering if the engine is capable of doing it without modification? Do all build queues necessarily have to be tied to units, or can they exist separately? If the latter is true, we might see some very nice 3rd-party mods.
April 18th, 2007 at 12:58 pm
Another useful improvement to eliminate micro-management would be a more sensible support system, especially while upgrading SCUs. As of now, you just can’t use support and queues in tandem. There is absolutely no way to tell your engineers “Support this, and when it’s done support that”. They just keep supporting one structure or unit forever, which is absolutely annoying.
April 18th, 2007 at 1:04 pm
There’s alot of micro involved in moving large groups of units around too. They all get stuck on each other and trickle to their destination and get massacred. You really have to baby sit your tanks as things stand.
April 18th, 2007 at 1:25 pm
Alarion: Good point, it’s annoying to have to keep shepherding SCU hordes by telling them to support each new SCU’s upgrade when the previous one is done.
April 18th, 2007 at 2:19 pm
Another bonus of independent waypointing:
The most frustrating thing about resetting a group of spread out units’ destination is how the units closer to the destination turn around and meet up with the further behind units instead of waiting to meet up at the destination point.
If the paths and queues existed independently of units you could simply adjust the points (as you can with paths now) without the units jerking around.
April 18th, 2007 at 4:07 pm
“Planes that are running low on fuel or are damaged, should automatically go dock temporarily in a nearby aircraft carrier, just like with the land-based aircraft staging pads. Until this is fixed, aircraft carriers will continue to be mostly unused.”
They already do automatically dock, refuel and repair, and relaunch. The problem is that carrier refueling and repairing is so slow it seems like the aircraft are staying within the carrier to be transported.
April 18th, 2007 at 4:25 pm
I think that is supposed to be compensated for by the fact that a carrier can hold ~50 planes at a time. I realize that you rarely need even 10 planes refueling at once on normal pads, but that would kind of make sense.
April 18th, 2007 at 5:08 pm
“I think that is supposed to be compensated for by the fact that a carrier can hold ~50 planes at a time.” 150 T1 I believe.
April 18th, 2007 at 8:31 pm
Honestly, I don’t mind a little micromanagement. I mean everyone has to deal with it, so it is not a disadvantage. Are you guys finding it hard to keep up with everything, having to micromanage the things listed? Because I am not, I think I would find myself with nothing to do if I didn’t have shields and SCU’s to upgrade. The time restrictions give an urgency to the game that I like, it puts me in a rush, on a high. Not everything is automatic in life, and I like that. That’s just my opinion though, as always I am sure the majority will win and you will all get your micromanagement fixes.
April 18th, 2007 at 8:32 pm
@Alarion: I thought you could cue them, the help with one build and then move on to the next in your list. Or am I wrong? Maybe it’s just Cybran?
April 18th, 2007 at 8:44 pm
Rhysin: It’s not that I’m finding it hard to keep up with everything, it’s just that I really and truly do not find the micromanagement fun, in any sense of the word. I play the game solely to have fun. Most of the parts of the game, like expanding your base, and especially, the combat, are very fun. But I do not find unnecessary micromanagement like upgrading shields or SCUs fun whatsoever. Let those be handled in a much better way so I can go spend my time on the parts of the game that I do find more fun, like micromanaging battles. If you have to micromanage your SCUs all the time, you’re cutting away from battle-commanding time :-(
April 18th, 2007 at 9:34 pm
I don’t know, I’ve only tried to put the T2 torpedo bombers in ‘em, and they don’t hold 150 of *those*.
April 18th, 2007 at 9:50 pm
What about the SCU’s ability to rebuild your base if it gets destroyed? The only time I’ve seen an SCU rebuild is when I told it to assist a specific structure. But in that case, I have to tell it to assist everything. And as has been said, queued assists don’t work very well.
April 18th, 2007 at 9:51 pm
Although apparently if you tell engineers to assist the ground, they’ll all swarm around an upgrading SCU. So you can put SCUs through a three stage assembly line of engineers, if you arrange it right.
April 18th, 2007 at 9:51 pm
“What about the SCU’s ability to rebuild your base if it gets destroyed? The only time I’ve seen an SCU rebuild is when I told it to assist a specific structure. But in that case, I have to tell it to assist everything. And as has been said, queued assists don’t work very well.”
While queued assists don’t work very well in general, the SCU rebuild function is an exception. While it is annoying that you have to queue an assist on all buildings, they will keep all the assists in the queue and rebuild each building if its destroyed.
April 19th, 2007 at 12:01 am
i belive with the shields you can select multiple ones and upgrade them at once but you cant queue them up which is a pity.(to upgrade them all at the same time double click on one of them to slect a few and click on the updrade.
April 19th, 2007 at 12:02 am
Kykem: That works with UEF shields, not with Cybran shields. Cybran shields are really … uh, selfish?
April 19th, 2007 at 10:25 am
The obvious reason why Cybran shields can’t be upgraded like UEF’s is that Cybran shields don’t level up on tier level. That’s the problem. Mexes, radars, UEF shield.. they all go up tier levels when you upgrade them. I think it’s deep in the code. Cybran shield however would level up to tier 6 if it worked the same way and apparantly there are max tiers 4 and addition to that a new tier would also appear in build menu so they got a problem there.
I wish they solved this micromanagin hell in next patch in some clever way..
April 19th, 2007 at 10:32 am
“What about the SCU’s ability to rebuild your base if it gets destroyed? The only time I’ve seen an SCU rebuild is when I told it to assist a specific structure. But in that case, I have to tell it to assist everything. And as has been said, queued assists don’t work very well.”
I thought that if you put the SCUs on patrol in a particular area, then any buildings in that area will be re-built if destroyed (in order of which is closest to the SCU) I seem to remember this working for me in the last of the UEF missions… but I could be wrong…
Paul
April 19th, 2007 at 12:11 pm
Paul: Nope, SCU rebuilding doesn’t work on patrol. It’s only on assist, and I believe it’s only when the particular buildings themselves are assisted (rather than just assisting the ground).
April 20th, 2007 at 1:13 pm
One thing that I really one is to be able to have air factories to be able to set the planes that they make to automatically go into an aircraft carrier, much like having the factory make units go straight to a ferry point
April 20th, 2007 at 1:14 pm
Edit, not ‘one’, I meant want :)
April 22nd, 2007 at 3:48 am
This game is so eco-micro: remove this engineer micro assist crap, and the game is just fine.