Badly Needed Unit Command Change

make micro more fun

from Sins Forums
The way ability commands are handled when selecting multiple identical units is getting in the way of effective control. For a game that is supposed to be less micro-intense, there is a HUGE oversight in the ship ability logic.

In Warcraft3 (cited because it's the best RTS ever made, especially for fluid unit control) if you have a homogenous group of units selected (let's say Orc Shaman) and clicked "Bloodlust" on a unit, the closest, most relevant Shammy would cast Blodlust on the target unit. If you consecutively clicked 5 or 6 units you wanted to Bloodlust, the game would assign a single Shaman to each cast, remember the que, cast them in order, all from a single large-group selection of available casters.

As it stands now, if I want my Hoshiko Robotics Cruisers to disable enemy Heavy Cruisers using their special ability, I have to Alt-select the group, tab through my units until I find one with anti-matter, then manually pick a HC I *hope* is near that one (because it can be hard to see which single unit is "active" when I have all of that type selected). This is tedious and slow, and shoudn't be part of the "skill" of the game.

If you really want people to be able to micro large fleet battles, look at the innovations already established in great RTS games (Warcraft3 specifically) and let us use the same brilliant, fluid control schemes. Only if the developers are trying to make a truly great game that is.

There's nothing wrong with standing on the shoulders of giants. Use what's out there to make THIS innovative game even better.

Thanks.
11,218 views 5 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
I agree. This game has a lot of unique and very creative micro- and macro-management aspects. The usage of abilities is a little lacking as far as the interface goes, though.

The ablities seem very random in how they operate when multiple units are selected. If I tell a group of units to dicontinue autocast, like the vasari long range frigate special ability, only one of them actually stops autocasting, when really I want them all to stop. If I tell my support cruisers to cripple an enemy ship, I of course don't want them all to execute that order, yet they all do. If I select multiple advent superweapons, and fire them at a planet, only one of them at random fires. So sometimes issuing a command affects them all, and sometimes it doesn't.

It seems like a lot of abilities behave the exact opposite of how you would expect them to behave when issued to a group of the same unit. This might be one reason special ability units aren't used as much online. The micromanagement for abilities seems less advanced than the micromanagement in many other aspects of the game.
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
In Warcraft3 (cited because it's the best RTS ever made, especially for fluid unit control)
End of quote


I wish I could say I stopped reading here... It was such a clear sign, but something inside me said "ignore it, read on"...

There are some things that can be improved upon in the special abilities command system, true. Well, actually just one thing, command chaining. But it's not such a critical need, cause Warcraft 3 had it to offset it's "click this ability now sixteen times to avoid army death" split-second clickfest. It was a spamfest. If you look to, for example, Dawn of War, there's no such thing. Only teleport/jump units use group ability commands, all other ability commands are unit-specific. Sins could have it improved, but it doesn't need it, as there's no "click this now to not die", as the whole pace of the game is much more relaxed.
Star Control: Origins
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
I threw in the part about "fluid unit control" to try and avoid the inevitable dispute, but the truth is there has never been as effective a micro-control scheme as War3 had. They took unit control to a whole new level.

If you want this game to be less of a click-fest, then the fix I'm pointing out is exactly what we need. As it stands, you would need a lot of scrutinizing, tabbing, hunting and searching for units in order to get the same effect that maybe 5-10 "press hotkey ability, click target" sequences could deliver. Instead of having a "focused" selection exist within a group selection, I would rather have my ability commands logically apply to the whole selection equally. It's not just chaining commands in order, I need to be able to issue multiple units individual commands from one selection, and not worry that my "top" selected ship with antimatter is on the other side of the grav well.

Top-level Warcraft3 ladder players fell into two categories: 300-400+ actions-per-minute clickers who controlled every unit individually, and people who hovered between 60-80 APM by making effective use of the control scheme provided. The speed-clickers didn't have a clear advantage because of the elegance of the system.

Sins could have it improved, but it doesn't need it, as there's no "click this now to not die", as the whole pace of the game is much more relaxed.
End of quote


The problem is scale. If I want to specifically disable certain ships, buff/debuff certain ships, heal certain ships, it becomes impossible at a certain fleet size. I will win battles because of doing these things. Help me to do them by cleaning up the controls.

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
This is especially a problem for Kodiak groups and other hordes of units with similar abilities. Let's say your fleet's on the other side of the gravity well and you need that heavy cruiser detachment over to the other side now. You click the Intercept button...and now you've got one heavy cruiser getting picked to shreds by your intended target instead of your battle group/fleet picking the target to shreds.

We don't need an ultra-complex ability management system for masses, just one that actually lets us more effectively control these masses.
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
I made a similar post once and really hope Ironclad take notice of this.