That's one thing that bugs me, to all get out, in starcraft, you have your M&M's in a group, and you want to stim your marines, well guess what your out of luck, because the one unit that is controlling, is a medic, or some reason the hot keys won't display because of the medics in their too.

It's kinda of dumb because unlike some situations you have about 4-5 free hotkeys, I think carefull consideration of the hoykeys and interface is important, because from SC's point of view, you only have 9 commands and most of those are taking up by the Move, Attack, Stop, and Hold.

I love the last post, soo many different options, some I haven't even though of before. Recently a ton of squad games have hit the market, however they are all too realistic and unfun. I love starcraft, in the fact it's open ended, but it's just too limiting in a lot of ways. Just hordes of enemies attacking each other. I love the bunker pushes. So will be designing in the future, for more elements to the strategy.

Great forum post btw, going to have to write this all down, and design docs to implement later.

MikHaven

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Original post by MikHaven That's one thing that bugs me, to all get out, in starcraft, you have your M&M's in a group, and you want to stim your marines, well guess what your out of luck, because the one unit that is controlling, is a medic, or some reason the hot keys won't display because of the medics in their too. It's kinda of dumb because unlike some situations you have about 4-5 free hotkeys, I think carefull consideration of the hoykeys and interface is important, because from SC's point of view, you only have 9 commands and most of those are taking up by the Move, Attack, Stop, and Hold. I love the last post, soo many different options, some I haven't even though of before. Recently a ton of squad games have hit the market, however they are all too realistic and unfun. I love starcraft, in the fact it's open ended, but it's just too limiting in a lot of ways. Just hordes of enemies attacking each other. I love the bunker pushes. So will be designing in the future, for more elements to the strategy. Great forum post btw, going to have to write this all down, and design docs to implement later. MikHaven

I don't see the problem. Just keep your marines in a seperate hotkey from your medics. 1a2a3a4a5a still works because for medics, "a" is heal.

OT: As a Terran player, I'll agree that being unable to stim my marines because there's a few medics in that group really does eat my lunch a little bit. It makes it tough to coordinate large attacks with good micro. Same thing with deploying siege tanks with goliaths or wraiths with valkyries. Warcraft III fixes this by allowing unit-specific commands in mixed groups, but Blizzard chose not to implement that change in SC1.12. I understand their reasoning, but SC is so much more fun than War3 that I wish some of the handier features could be transferred.

Back to the topic at hand, be careful with a huge diversity of units. It can be hard to balance them if there's a large array of choices. Depending on how you make them available to the player--Blizzard's "build" economy or just having a bank to start with or requesting reinforcements or whatever--you could wind up with insanely powerful units (who can resist eighteen Protoss Carriers?) or units that are highly prized and indispensible, so that games will turn into races to see who can kill the other's queen, thus securing an eventual victory.

I'm not sue what sort of scale you'll be dealing with, but if your fire teams will be using marching formations, zones of fire and building assault tactics, track down a copy of U.S. Army Field Manual FM 7-8: Infantry Rifle Platoon and Squad. It's a government document, and quite difficult to read, but it has all kinds of terrific information and diagrams in it, covering everything from how to set up a minefield to formations for travelling to assaulting enemy machinegun nests. If you'll be automating your team's behavior to reduce the "blind charge" of StarCraft units, you will benefit from at least an academic understanding of such things. If you have a half-dozen friends with the same FPS, you could test the tactics in UT2004 or something, and get some simulated experience, as well.

I think there have been a lot of good ideas suggested in this thread. d INC, let us know what you finally decide to go with. I'd like to see the fruits of your labor.

Thanks everyone for posting such good ideas. My design doc actually took into account several of the things posted here like facing direction, fire teams taking up defensive formations when stationary, and sniper/scout classes. I hadn't been able to figure out how to integrate formations, however. I lean towards keeping it more simplistic....so a player might be able to assign an offensive formation, a defensive formation, a double time formation, and a recon formation. The player could then get the troops into the proper formation based on the current situation with a hotkey or toggle command.

There are only 7 or so classes of soldier involved......I'm not interested in hero units....and to keep demo/grenadiers from blowing the holy crap out of enemy units, I'd severely limit explosvie ammo. About the closest thing to a hero would be the C.O. who could buff the rest of the troops stats just by being alive and close by (simulating him "leading" them effectively).

As far as where I'm leading for grouping rules? Probably version three from my first post. That along with a couple other planned design mechanics should do well. Now I just need a decent programmer living in Socal to help me prototype it. If I ever get my wife's cousin to webhost me I'll throw the design doc up there.

I would go with option #2. Seriously, micromanagement sucks. StarCraft is a lot of fun, but not simply because it is fast-paced and you have control of every little thing. The atmosphere and overall quality of the game are what really set it apart.

In fact, the micromanagement is the worst thing about StarCraft. Take the medic/marine example. No player has time to stim out all his marines prior to every battle, or to make sure they all get healing quick enough (this was decently automated, at least). Another horrible micro issue was defense against Protoss Carriers. If I could program my AA towers to shoot at the carriers, not their infinite supply of drone fighters, the game would be much easier for the Terrans.

Try playing Kohan - you'll get a really good feel for how forced-grouped units can make for a very fun game.

Removing all that micromanagement suddenly adds a whole new level of strategy. Instead of worrying about getting all ten of my dropships loaded with 6 marines and 2 medics each, I am deciding where and when to attack with my whole force.
Coordinated assaults are also easy when you don't have to worry about dozens of seperate units.

- Mike

Well, I dunno about you guys, but having played RTS ever since Dune2, I cannot possibly imagine why anyone would want to go back to micromanagement.
Please enlighten me as to why you would want that?

I mean, every since I started playing those games, I always wondered why I couldn't just group my soldiers like in a proper army and order them around as squads. Want to heal your guys, attach a medic to your squad. And so one and so forth. It's not that hard to _think_ about it. I guess it was just too hard to implement up to now.
Praise Relic for finally doing it properly. Dawn of War is the first time I finally had _fun_ in a RTS game. Instead of watching with horror as my archers overcome my soldiers and get mowed down by the enemies, or my marines get chargrilled by their slower flamethrower squadmates... stupid AI [razz]

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Original post by d INCI lean towards keeping it more simplistic....so a player might be able to assign an offensive formation, a defensive formation, a double time formation, and a recon formation. The player could then get the troops into the proper formation based on the current situation with a hotkey or toggle command.

Simpler still, link formation to commands automatically. If you issue a "move" command, they'll file out in a column, making good time and sticking to easy terrain. The "Patrol" command would see them in a versatile wedge formation, while a "defend" command might prompt them to stack into a block formation. This way, the micro is automatic, and the player doesn't even have to concern himself with it. If he tells his units to hold a narrow bridge, he can count on them to do it to the very best of their ability.

That brings up another concern: If you're going to have tactics for specific situations, you might want to have classes of terrain or structure, so that your units can tell the difference between a bridge, a road and a tunnel. Doorways, sandbag walls, wooden walls and windows all have different strategic characteristics. Whether or not your game calls for that sort of contextual cueing is beyond my ability to evaluate, but it's something for you to keep in mind.

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Original post by Iron Chef Carnage OT: As a Terran player, I'll agree that being unable to stim my marines because there's a few medics in that group really does eat my lunch a little bit. It makes it tough to coordinate large attacks with good micro. Same thing with deploying siege tanks with goliaths or wraiths with valkyries. Warcraft III fixes this by allowing unit-specific commands in mixed groups, but Blizzard chose not to implement that change in SC1.12. I understand their reasoning, but SC is so much more fun than War3 that I wish some of the handier features could be transferred.

The reason that SC is so popular is *because* it is an intense micro game. Ask nearly anyone in the community and you will get that answer. When 1.12 was about to come out, there was actually a huge scare that blizzard would allow players to select multiple buildings at once. That would dumb down the game, making it more accessible to bad players, but would take out the competitiveness found at the pro-level.

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I would go with option #2. Seriously, micromanagement sucks. StarCraft is a lot of fun, but not simply because it is fast-paced and you have control of every little thing. The atmosphere and overall quality of the game are what really set it apart. In fact, the micromanagement is the worst thing about StarCraft. Take the medic/marine example. No player has time to stim out all his marines prior to every battle, or to make sure they all get healing quick enough (this was decently automated, at least). Another horrible micro issue was defense against Protoss Carriers. If I could program my AA towers to shoot at the carriers, not their infinite supply of drone fighters, the game would be much easier for the Terrans.

You should really play more! :)

I'm not trying to be rude, but you obviously never got very good at SC (probably from lack of playing). Goliaths are the counter to Carriers because turrets are stationary and die so fast to them. Also, you shouldn't be having that much trouble microing m&m. I am relatively bad, and have no problem at all controlling 36 marines + 12 medics.


The more micro-intensive a game gets, the more fun the games are to watch and the more skill matters in deciding the outcome of the game. Anyone could get good at a slow paced game from reading an online strategy guide, but it takes practice to reach 450 actions per minute.

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Original post by Daniel Miller The more micro-intensive a game gets, the more fun the games are to watch and the more skill matters in deciding the outcome of the game. Anyone could get good at a slow paced game from reading an online strategy guide, but it takes practice to reach 450 actions per minute.

Says you. Don't forget, there is a large percentage of gamers who prefer games where they don't need to practice like this to be good, and don't need to look after every little detail - so there is a market for a game designed towards either group. It's worth considering both of these points of view, as any particular given game may be better suited to either of the two.

And don't forget - there are types of skill other than being able to click the mouse and use hotkeys really fast, and there should be some games that cater to these as well. [wink]

That being said, I myself am a fan of being able to micromanage, and love games that allow me to make usage of this. I also enjoy a well designed game that doesn't require this skill set on occasion.

A fast past micromanagement game reprents skillmainly in fast reaction times. I particulary don't agree with "Anyone could get good at a slow paced game from reading an online strategy guide". This is a horrendous overstatement. All types of game develop their masters, irrespectible of how much reaction times come to play with it.

I love the Close Combat series for example, which is a lot less micromanagement than the Blizzard games. A lot of the tactics of CC3 is being able to recognize WHEN to give orders; it is never obvious if and when they should be given. A incorrectly timed order is worse than no order at all. I used to think I was good at this (having played the bad AI in single player), but during brief period when I didn't have a firewall I got my ass kicked online by people who really possessed the optimal knowledge of squad based warfare. I tell you, it's no fun to have your force slaughtered by an enemy force that in theory equals yours. ;) My opponents here had got all this skill from experience, and I harly think "Anyone could get good at a slow paced game from reading an online strategy guide".

Personally I enjoy squad based strategy games and other less intense input games a lot more than clickfeasts and I know many others that also do... If I want action, I usually play Counter-Strike and not some unrealistic total control game. That said, I do appreciate some merits of AoE1 and WC3 (the two such games I still play).