Hello everyone, first post here.
I'd like to remind the devs about two games in the 1990s that had unit automation features still unsurpassed today:
1) Dark Reign
While unremarkable for other aspects, it fared greatly on the automation side.
For each unit you could choose to let AI take control and do the following actions:
1) Scount (self explaining)
2) Search & destroy (unit would automatically hunt down enemy units and pursue them until destruction)
3) Harass (similar but would do hit & run attacks)
Additionally, you could set health levels at which the unit would retreat for repairs, greatly helping survivability.
2) Warzone 2100
Aside from the huge tech tree and unsurpassed level of unit customization, there were two awesome features:
1) Commanders to which you could assign units (or even factories!) and could lead armies of increasing size tied to veterancy (which imho would fit like a glove to AOTS meta-units)
2) Extreme strategic depth with specialized sensors (RADAR, counter-battery, VTOL strike tower and so on) to which again you could assign units or artillery positions, several kinds of artillery plus tons of specialized weapons and chassis types (wheel, tracks, hover, VTOL and so on...)
If you don't know about them you can get the first one from GOG for cheap and the 2nd one is available for free at www.wz2100.net
I'm aware this is pretty late feedback but it might be useful for expansion packs later on... What do you guys thik?
Hoy zarax999!
I really like this one. I would love to have more strategic depth in sense of scouting, permanent reconnaissance and in general more possibilities for artillery to lay siege to heavily fortified enemies.
As for the other points, I think it's good to take care of everything else. Automated commanders and unit would take away the immediate tactical aspect of the game and make it pure strategical. Also what would you do the whole time then? Now you are permanently busy with "build this, attack there, defend here..." and I like it!
Try warzone 2100, it's free at www.wz2100.net and see how "there is nothing to do"...
Automation means that you will instead define critical sectors and focus on optimal layouts and finding weak points in the front, AI won't win battles for you by itself...
Totally agree with the OP, even Sins of the Solar empire allowed factories to be assigned to an army, it will reduce the micro a lot.
I also wanted to add the patrol system in Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander was great I would like to see something similar in Ashes.
I have just started playing this weekend so I only manages to put in a few good games but so far I noticed I spend more time rebuilding my armies manually instead of focusing on strategy and due to not being able to set up air patrols properly I go my HQ sniped by some air incursion I didn't even see until the Game Lost screen popped up.
I'm also one of the older players that would rather focus on strategy than micro so options would be great. People who want to keep clicking stuff can still do so, but us that don't can use some improvements.
Sound like you want to play somekind of lane RTT where there are couple of attack lanes where you assign troops. There are a ton of good flash games for that.
Why does so many people want the game to play itself with minimal user input?
To me that is ridiculous.. Thats like watching AI bots fight each other.
There are already a number of siege options, overly powerfull static defences, plenty of reasons to scout, scan and expand radar network.
There are reasons to perform surgical strikes, take out critical enemy buildings with bombers or to reinforce certain locations.
Maybe you haven't played the game enough to understand the flexibility of the unit types already in play.
To have automated armies sounds really stupid. If people really want that I don't mind as long as it isn't forced on all players.
I really want to play some games with you guys to clear some things up for myself.
Steam nick: wasa
add me and lets get some games going
TL:DR I'm afraid you're confusing task automation with "let AI do the work for me". Automation helps you focus on critical fronts where microing matters more and makes individual units behave smarter.
I'm afraid you're confusing task automation with "let AI do the work for me".
I'm not talking about MOBA creeps and things like that, rather to add some diversification to a possible sequel or expansion.
I'll put some examples from Warzone 2100 (which is free and you should try to truly understand what I'm talking about):
Early game: Sensor tower
Basically a radar, you can assign artillery to it in order to improve their accuracy and automatically fire upon units in sensor range.
Useful in defensive chokepoints, but beware of...
Counterbattery tower:
Backtracks artillery fire and reveal position of enemy artillery firing at targets in its detection range, giving you precious information for a counterstrike.
Artillery units can be assigned to it so that they will retaliate against enemy artillery on their own.
Mid game: Radar detector tower
The next step in sensor warfare, it detects enemy sensor units in a wider range, helping you to cohordinate defensive strikes
Especially useful if coupled with...
VTOL strike and VTOL CB towers:
Similar to earlier sensors, these towers will instead cohordinate air forces assigned to them, allowing you to have a handy quick strike force watching over an area while you focus on the offensive.
In late game you get access to tech like sensor jammers and satellite uplinks to give the player even more options and that's only the information warfare part.
All sensors can be mounted on units to give you similar offensive options, while offensive operations can instead be given to a commander unit.
WZ2100 commanders are useful as units can be assigned to them in increasing numbers a they experience and according to what you set the commander to they will be more or less aggressive in pursuit, prefer maximum range or shorter range for better accuracy and how much of a beating to take before retreating to repair (and come back to the commander after).Similar to Ashes meta-units, commanders can be used to help units around them to focus fire and regroup, basically helping with micro but not replacing it.
Adding a similar gameplay layer to AOTS would pretty much make it the perfect game, giving it an uparalleled wealth of tactical and strategic options along with smart units that don't behave like a bunch of suicide drones, a personal gripe I have with supcom.
Still afraid about lack of user input?
Welcome to the tech tree: http://betaguide.wz2100.net/Research.php?tree=1
There are several weapon classes, propulsions types and building defensive properties.
All of these interact with each other in different ways, meaning that you'll have to take care of properly mixing units otherwise you'd get armored columns kited to death by hovercrafts and same for defenses as bunkers can be easily taken out by flamers.
Automation is there to assist you so that you can focus on critical parts of the battlefield, but given the variety of tools at disposal a good player will make sure no trick will work twice.
Why dont you play warzone then?
I play that among several other RTS, I just think some features of that game could work great in AOTS.
Feature cross-contamination is usually a good thing in games and helps the genre expand, something RTS need to do in order to avoid becoming all MOBA-like.
Well Dark Reign was a more focused RTS, where you could actually micro your units, you also had resource transporters like workers. It was a very micro focused game, sure it had some cool things, but i dont get the automation argument here, since we already have armies that micro themselves.
Now i believe scouting should be done by the player and not automated, otherwise more posts about the game being slow would start to show up.
Search and destroy, isnt that what the player should be doing? telling where his armies should go?, plus you already have a patrol option which works in a similar way.
Harass? armies already do this in a way by keeping their units at range, but id like pull back micro to stay in the game, like pulling units or specific individual cruisers or dreads out of harms way should be a thing in the game.
You can argue that the army AI can be improved or even provide several options when you create an army, like having several types of army behaviours you can create, and i agree with you, but i think we are reaching a point where the game gets to be so automated that all the player does is click on buttons.
Click on the economy button and constructors build for you.
Click on the attack button and the army micros itself, controls itself, and searches the enemy and attacks where its weekest point is.
Seriously there has to be something the player has to do, you cant just bring these features from other games and apply them here to ashes.
Because those games were so heavily focused on micro, and individual control of your units while constantly macroing, that while they might have worked there they will for sure not work with ashes.
After playing a lot of Warzone when i was a kid, i loved the campaign in that one, in terms of unit veterancy, dreads already have a levelup system and kinda work like commanders, i think you should check how dreads work, they get some super powerfull level up abilities you can click.
In terms of regular cruisers, maybe some unit veterancy to reward the players that actually take care of your units? maybe? who knows might actually give some micro incentive to just unform the army and pullback the high veterancy cruiser.
I already do that with dreads.
The good thing about the Dark Reign unit AI was that you could do multiple things at the same time ... like have a few factories that made unit with the Harass AI which kept the enemy busy or distracted while you could attack somewhere else.
Not all of us want to do 60 clicks a minute to co-ordinate 3 armies on three fronts at the same time while defending your bases from attacks. Some of us actually enjoy setting up a strategy and then watch it unfold, it can be quite fun and relaxing. Look at Sins of a Solar Empire ... that game can be played with minimal micro almost like an interactive movie. I believe a lot of people played it that way, I know I did and it was fun.
All we ask is for options, especially for single player skirmish. I don't care if any of the assist stuff is disabled in multiplayer if is too much, but we already have StarCraft for that style of playing, we need a new Total Annihilation / Supreme Commander type RTS. And it seems to me the demand is there and looking at the description of what the game is meant to be ... it needs the extra features discussed here.
BTW thank you for the Warzone 2100, I don't have my original disks anymore. That game was so revolutionary at the time it's amazing all those features were never copied. I agree Ashes would be the perfect candidate to implement a similar control method with the Meta units. I still remember watching units go back to the repair bay to get repaired then come back to join the fight ... all on their own.
Exactly, not everyone wants to play Rommel, some prefer to micro logistics and factory outputs rather than battles themselves.
I think you fail to grasp, that all these games being mentioned, from dark reign to total annihilation and supreme commander have more micro than ashes of the singularity.
Even sins of a solar empire.
Every reference you make towards older games, is to one thats actually more demanding in terms of macro and micro than ashes is currently. It seems to me that you have all played the game years ago and barely remenber how it actually played in multiplayer.
Or just played it on a more casual manner, which is totaly valid, but it fails as an argument to support these features.
I suggest you go look at this video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbhD_vx7cxY
Or this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3ui-W4AwD4
I never said Ashes should become starcraft, and im sorry to break it to you but dark reign is similar to starcraft.
I have nothing against that, and for this reason they implemented the army system and the meta units, but theres another thread in this forum where people are claiming economy should be 100% automated, and this thread now wants 100% automated combat.
There has to be a limit, and that to me is the following, the player has to be doing something or planning to do something at all times, either scouting, either moving units towards the front. Something to keep the player from just watching a bunch of colors moving across the map.
If you dont have this the game starts to feel slow and uninteresting to play.
Starcraft requires an excessive amount of mechanical skill, ashes doesnt require it and its totaly fine, but it has to require other things, involving strategic depth. One of these is knowing when to scout, when to attack or pull back.
Where do you see the mention of 100% automated combat?
Ok, let me clarify ... I don't play multiplayer and don't intent to. Like Brad said the game is aimed at single players mainly, the extensive work on the AI is for that purpose. Sure there is multi player and ranks and other stuff, but those players will be a minority.
Me and the OP do not ask for much. First in Sins I can assign a shipyard to a fleet and units build there will join the fleet ... neat and less micro. In Ashes I can't do that and I still can't work out how to replenish my armies without manually adding units to it. If it can be done the UI needs some improvement because it does not seem easy to me.
Second the patrol function is very basic. In TA/SC I could set up a patrol from a factory and all units build there would start patrolling ... also neat. I played with the patrol UI today and I have to keep clicking shift F for every point and they do not go in order, I have to move them after in the right sequence. To me it's useless at the moment.
I am happy to keep doing stuff like scout and move armies ... what ever. But I can't do that because I have too keep managing my units and factories.
These two simple things would make the game a lot more fun for me ... the rest of the suggested stuff would be gravy.
We don't ask for full non-interactive automation ... just the boring stuff. Units should be smarter, especially in an Army meta unit. At the moment my cruisers and frigates die so fast there is no point getting medics which means I have too keep re-adding units to my army.
And defenses really need a boost, any reasonable attack just blows up stuff so fast it makes it a big waste of time to build defenses, better off just have an army to defend ... which also needs to be managed when attacked.
All these features can be ignore by people who don't want them, they will not affect your game but it will make mine a lot better.
Just an update on Army management, I did a test game versus a beginner AI. I managed to get the reinforcements interface to work, it can use some improvements such a showing a number of the units queued, but I can work with it. Some kind of tutorial down the track would help a lot.
However the patrol system does need a lot of work, it is very basic now. Even a number label on the way point would help with re-arranging the path.
I still believe the army system could do with a lot more improvement but its functional at the moment.
Wasa, if you want to churn your own butter and crank start your car, go right ahead. The rest of us live in 2016, and want to think about tactics, position and strategies, not spend the majority of our time babysitting and doing useless busywork. I'm surprised you did not say "You newfangled game whippersnappers, get these new game progressions off my lawn!".
Also, for those not aware, there IS an auto build/join utility in the game. But for some inexplicable reason, they won't explain it. Try this: When you have an army formed (the higher Tier units, the better this works), select it, and you will see a build menu appear below, with all the units possible to build. Even better, make that army Ctrl Group #2 for fun. Now, with that army selected, click on the medic icon below. Nothing will seem to happen. But take a look at your nearest factory, and you will see that it's making a medic; and there is also a "2" in the medic's icon. After the medic is produced, it will move to group 2 and auto-join it. GREAT!
Problem is, it's really flaky, and you just can't get it to work right, plus there is no information or feedback in the auto build/join menu itself, so you will never have any idea what if anything you have in a cue.
no they don't ?if you played ashes to win you'd realize that.being actually good at ashes right now requires a shitton of micro. way more WAY WAY more then the games you mention.
Then i have to conclude you havent played them like i did, or you are mixing up micro with macro.
Because i can only see ashes having more macro, it has nothing to do with having more micro.
Sure theres some combat control and some bomber micro here and there, but by far nothing to the lengths of constantly having to micro back and forth units or you loose your whole army like in TA or supreme commander.
Ive yet to see microing rockos so that they would just hit their attacks. Or microing Aks versus flash tanks and actually wining. Or spamming flash tanks aggainst buldogs tier 2 tanks and wining by just abusing the fact buldogs have high turn rates on their turrets.
Or dodging attacks with cybran tier 1 by constantly moving around in circles. Or In TA where you had to force attack ground or bombers attacks could be dodged.
Or microing pewees back and forth to dodge stumpy projectiles(Arm tier 1 tanks).
Or spamming buildings with the commander to delete projectiles incoming towards your commander saving his HP.
The only thing that comes even close to this is microing each artemis and the substrate avatar and even then its hard cause they refuse to move where you want them to.
Clearly your mixing stuff up, just because a game requires some APM, doesnt mean that APM is micro related.
The moment you want to automate scouting? and things like harass and search and destroy.
Sounds like automated combat to me, which the game already has with its army feature.
I could see patroling improved , and AI behaviours in armies like ive stated before but no more than that.
In Dark Reign that was a nice way to use aircrafts instead of microing them, basically you sacrifice individual unit performance in exchange of putting pressure on enemy defense and supply lines and gaining more intelligence.
It would be way less effective than an army by design and would work only against reckless inexperienced players but it has its uses especially when you want to cover an area instead of a perimeter.
Heck, Fantasy Siege in 1992 (yes, the same year as Dune II) had meta-units (I kid you not, platoons of up to 50 units, where having elites mixed in would boost morale and healers would heal) and at the same time you could order them to cover an area, reinforce, relieve or replace other units in their task.
I've been a Stardock fan since the first Galciv (and thanks guys for using GOG btw), I really want AOTS to become the new master RTS and IMHO to do that it should give the players the possibility to do the some of the nicer tricks they could do in the 1990s golden era of RTS, where the scope went from TA to Battlezone.
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