Micro versus Macro... Again.

I won't go into this subject again even fractionally as much as last time (which wasn't that much), except to remind my hapless readers who aren't in the mood to follow that link of what I'm talking about.

In RTS games, many players micromanage things. Excessively.

You often can't win if you aren't able to keep up. (I can't, because I have large, slow, clumsy hands.)

I actually had no idea of how excessive this could be until I looked a bit more into Starcraft, which is pretty much the most widely played RTS out there (and the one most full of fun-sucking features).

According to this page, 50 "actions per minute" (i.e. how many things you do in that span of time) are typical of a "casual" player. To be counted as "proficient," you must reach three times that.

Then there's this guy.



When he says "spam," he's talking about his "APM" (actions per minute), which is unnecessarily high. How unnecessarily high?

If I'm reading correctly, he breaks 700 APM at least once, and may have broken 800.

That's not human, man.

What really, truly bothers me about this nonsense?

The fact that it basically turns your units not into soldiers and bases under your command, but your Borg drones under the command of your overmind. (This might not be inappropriate if you were playing as the Zerg or Total Annihilation's Core or something, seeing as how they're hive minds/huge AI networks; but for human based races or independent-minded ones, even telepaths, it seems radically inappropriate.)

I actually just had a thought as to how to integrate an anti-micro tool into an engine without reducing skill level.

There's a game called Achron which is currently under development. (The developers are using a system where they allow preorder customers to download the beta, so it's playable now.) In the game, you can give commands to units in the past, and it will alter the game's present.

The further in the past the orders you give are, the more "energy" you use up, and if you don't have any of this kind of energy, you can't influence the past until you generate more.

Why restrict this to orders to the past?

In the real world, flinging out senselessly huge numbers of commands would do nothing but confuse the troops and cause endless radio static. Using a system based on Achron's past-controlling model, you have a set amount of "order power" that you can give out, and excessive micromanagement will hurt your ability to respond to changes.

Achron also has systems like slaving units to "commanders" so that orders to the commanding unit will be followed by its "squad." This was implemented to allow more efficient use of order-giving in the past with limited capacity; obviously, it can be put to the same use in this hypothetical present-play model.

The orders to the past would not necessarily be part of the game, of course.

Another idea which I like, which was already implemented in the game Kohan II, involves actively in battle being unable to receive hyper-specific orders. Once a squad in Kohan engages, you can only give it two orders: Retreat or rout (i.e. throw the group into a retreating panic). This prevents ranged unit focus fire micro, among other things.

I complain about the gameplay aspect being ludicrous, but the flavor-based aspect is even worse, really. It's harder to have fun when things don't make some kind of in-universe sense.

-Signing off.