Jythier

Join Date 02/2003

+52

It's the Little Things (Ideas)

Hey everyone.

Just started playing this and I love how streamlined everything is. Units form into armies and they just work. However, the streamlining also removes certain things that have been in RTS since Warcraft 2.

If I have an army with artillery I want to stay out of range with all my units from the defenses while bombarding them. It would be nice to have an 'attack ground' or 'bombard' command that causes artillery to attack without moving everything in, particularly I've seen Zeus units moving in and attacking turrets and getting themselves blown up.

Another thing is that the engineers are micromanagement heavy. I'm picturing a system where I can tell an engineer with one click to build extractors for a whole region. I mean, we can group up armies, but the engineers aren't smart enough to find all the metals and build extractors on them?

And, I have to choose which extractor I want to build.

The way the building option goes away as soon as I let go of shift is unintuitive from every other game I've played, where holding shift and clicking will cause a new building to be built but letting go doesn't cancel the construction. When you build the last one you want, you just don't hit shift and then the construction option goes away. I feel like that works a little better on the click front, as often I'm having to click on a building again to build a second extractor or whatever.

Anyway, these are just thoughts and ideas, certainly not bugs. So do with them what you will. Dustbin if needed. I'm not a dev so I don't know. And it sounds like the player base is more interested in other things anyway. Other players are still going to be faster than me, I'm only playing against Easy and Intermediate AI.

Regardless of my little ideas, the game is wonderful and the concept of armies is mind-blowingly simple and effective in allowing me to manage from a much higher level.

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fantstc1
xyphonic
igncom1

"And, I have to choose which extractor I want to build. "

I've thought the same thing.

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I agree about the extractors. Might be nice to set them to auto-build too - although that might restrict the advantages of economic warfare as it would very easy to rebuild economic losses. So maybe not auto-build.

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fantstc1

Join Date 01/2015

+18

Yes. This. Smarter unit AI in general. In this context and many others. People have been asking for this forever. Last I saw, the devs were complaining that unit AI is "hard." I'm sure it is. I still want it though. This is one of the areas where I think time investment would be felt in a very significant way. FAR more important, IMHO, than Navy or more Juggies. I'd love to see a single dev (or three) strictly devoted to unit AI.

A point on zeus, though. The reason that it charges in is that it is one of the units that can actually damage buildings, I think. But the damage is very modest. So it tends to get squished. This is perhaps yet another point where AI could potentially be better, I think. A smart unit would float in and zap, and then float backwards, I think. Zeus, as it stands, is definitely something like a mid-range charger.

This is actually a good idea. I agree, and never saw anyone recommend it.

Would also be pretty awesome if there was only one extractor building, and the engineer just chose the right type. The current split is probably just a holdover from the popular tropes of Starcraft, if I had to guess. In this case, though, the building type is not of interest. The real choice is whether to build the extractor or not. The type is really a non-issue. (Actually, perhaps it's noteworthy that in starcraft, there were perhaps two extraction methods, but really only one actual extraction building, for gas)

So ultimately, IMHO, this is a very good idea, maybe. Now that you've mentioned it, and I've considered it, it doesn't really feel like having the different building types for metal vs. rad extraction necessarily adds anything. It just forces me to think a little bit more. This is something that could potentially be streamlined to make the game more friendly. Very good point.

I'm not sure what you mean about the shift key. I can usually select metal extractor, and as long as I hold shift, I can usually drop a whole bunch without clicking on the building. (Pretty sure on this point.)

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The shift thing.

If you hold shift the whole time, yes you can drop a bunch. In other games, you can let go of shift, so long as you're holding shift when you enter the order, and it'll hold onto the build order. It's a little thing, as the title says.

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Quoting Jythier,

reply 4

The shift thing.

If you hold shift the whole time, yes you can drop a bunch. In other games, you can let go of shift, so long as you're holding shift when you enter the order, and it'll hold onto the build order. It's a little thing, as the title says.

Uh, Ashes handles this 100% exactly the same way as Supreme Commander and Total Annihilation do. It feels extremely intuitive to me. I don't want them to change this behavior at all.

I agree about your other points though.

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It's just a different interface than I'm used to. Maybe an option then? There are other options like that around. But honestly I'm getting used to it anyway. It's just not the way I remember other RTS games I've played working.

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The trick is to use the hotkeys, rather than moving down and clicking on the building each time. It may be annoying for extractors, quanta, or factories, but if you're queuing up a bunch of buildings it encourages you to do it the fast way (hotkeys).

As for extractors, I definitely agree. It doesn't really seem to add anything to the game. It just feels like a thing to fill another slot/hotkey. Maybe there are roadmap plans down the line that we're not aware of? Maybe for the other factions? I don't know.

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Hey nice suggestions, and glad you like the game. I have already thought about most of those and would be keen to get them in.

I always thought it was weird you had to manually select either Metal or Radioactives extractor. Merging those together so it turns into whichever extractor depending on which type of Deposit would not only make it less fiddly an easier for new players, but also free up UI space. Like many other things, my only response is "It's on the list" as I have no idea when that could be changed.

Double clicking an extractor on a Generator would be a neat way of building on every Extractor in that region instead of clicking all regions manually.

Though, I'm not sure what the point is about shift clicking, it works in Ashes the same as any other RTS as far as I am aware.

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Hey cool. I know you seem to be always thinking about the game. I appreciate that a lot as a player, and reading some dev diaries really turned me on to the game more. I especially like two things - when Brad talks about the business, and when you use community members as a resource instead of ignoring them like many other devs. Although reading the map rebalance thread it seemed like he just turned all the maps into the sort of map he likes instead of keeping them diverse. Balanced for fun against the AI and balanced for 1v1 MP ranked play is two different things.

Thanks for taking an interest. I'll continue putting up videos and having a good time with this game. I've found I have a couple friends with it, and I had my first 2v2 comp stomp - I think we're about even players so it'll be fun to play 1v1 with him too.

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Brand new to Escalation - grizzled veteran of RTS.

To give you an idea how grizzled, I remember when Total Annihilation was brand new and came out for multiplayer on an online gaming server called Mplayer, which was the 90s version of Steam. Supported a number of game titles. Both were way ahead of their time and I've been a big fan of TA style RTS ever since.

Glad to see there's an active community here and I love the UI tweaks you all are suggesting. But, IMHO, Escalation's UI is spot on for TA, SupCom, and Planetary Annihilation players`. Mining rig goes on metal and Energy rig goes on Radioactives - been playing that way for almost 30 years now. If you're more from the C&C and Warcraft side of RTS, I can see how this UI does seem a bit more micro-managey (invented a word!).

Totally agree that Unit AI is fairly attrocious. The DEVs should think about adding in a unit escape peroragitive when it falls below 25% health. Shouldn't be too hard to add that into the algorithm. Better yet, make it player selectable so we can choose at what level of damage we want out units to start backing off. Could make for some really interesting tactical depth.

Ok - my 2-cents for this tread. Battle On!!!

- NJJediZ

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What we need, maybe not in Ashes, but in the next 'grouped unit' sort of game like this, is a programmable unit AI that you can set up however you want. Players with different styles will want to do different things with their units. There will never be a one-size-fits-all unit AI. Or one size fits all situations.

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Also, I think the whole point of Ashes was to blow away the idea that 'just because we've done it this way forever doesn't mean we should keep doing it that way'. Sure, lots of things came forward, but the massive leaps in the background technology and scale are the real heroes for this one.

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fantstc1

Join Date 01/2015

+18

Quoting NJJediZ,

reply 10

Totally agree that Unit AI is fairly attrocious.

I don't want to annoy the devs, but squeeky wheel and all that...

We appreciate everything that you guys are doing, but please give this issue some love.

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fantstc1

Join Date 01/2015

+18

Quoting Jythier,

reply 11

What we need, maybe not in Ashes, but in the next 'grouped unit' sort of game like this, is a programmable unit AI that you can set up however you want.

This is yet another intriguing idea.

It would give purpose to the meta unit in a way that would make the ashes meta unit fairly unique.

It would just need a UI that would be accessible to everyone.

And the ability to bind the resulting logic programs to keys... so instead of only having "move" and "a-move," maybe you have a series of custom logic commands ...

It could potentially be as simple as enabling players to create prioritized lists of logic settings.

The UI essentially would just enable you to input and sequence a series of commands/directives:

1. All: health withdrawal at 25%

2. Artillery: stays at range

3. Artillery: Target buildings

4. Artillery: Target Dreads

5. Cruisers: ignore nearby

6. All: attack anything in line of route.

7. Air: Don't stray

And you would bind this to a particular key.

So you might have U-move, or O-move, or whatever.

I like it. A lot.

And if you use a different hierarchy, your units would behave differently.

(imagine what would happen if you moved #1 in the list to #4, or whatever).

Then maybe people could share their configs and key bindings through steam workshop.

Love it.

Probably not memory/CPU load friendly, though.

But what a terrific idea!

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I think you can 'program' unit behaviour in zero k but personally I think that's a step too far.

Unit micromanagement should still be rewarded in my opinion rather then just making all of combat fully automated. It's a skill like any other.

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fantstc1

Join Date 01/2015

+18

Quoting igncom1,

reply 15

Unit micromanagement should still be rewarded in my opinion rather then just making all of combat fully automated. It's a skill like any other.

Couple of issues with this:

1) units aren't fast enough or responsive enough to be totally microed, like in Starcraft II.

2) The game was never supposed to be about micro -- rather focused on strategy.

3) There would still be PLENTY to click, and LOTS of decisions to make... lots of decisions to change commands, move, etc.

I like the skills aspect of RTS too, but this is a solid idea IMHO!!!

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Bleh, nevermind.

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How do you even micro when things are in an army? Do you separate your armies and select individual units to do things?

Why even bother having armies if that's the thing that you're 'supposed' to do to win?

Also, why should I have to tell my artillery to stay at range? Shouldn't any halfway decent artilleryman KNOW THAT?

Anyway, I wouldn't mind having 'artillery strike' vs. 'attack' orders, but I'm not sure unit behavior being set by order each move would be so great. I do like the order list thing you've come up with but I'd want it to be global rather than specific orders. Like, a per-army setup that you can apply, or that applies automatically based on what's in the army. All pre-game setup things, and being able to share them would be key. It would harness the community into the building of the unit AI, as opposed to it being hardcoded in and set by a dev. Again, play style might dictate this as well, because I'm guessing multiple command structures would be viable.

I'm thinking it's like the setup in Final Fantasy 12 where you can set up orders for your guys... or like Gratuitous Space Battles. One or the other.

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Shift-click queueing behavior makes sense as-is to me.

Condensing the extractor buildings into just one type buildable on both resource types is a reasonable simplification, but more importantly frees up UI and hotkey space.

Creating user-customizable AI army choices is probably a ton of work for little gain. There will just end up being one or two 'builds' that people settle on as the best and plug it in.

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