Video Games

[Surgo]

Okay, PL must be just trolling. Whatever.

How about you address a single of the playability concerns star craft has that something as incredibly shallow as prefered faction of the ultra fan boy elite effectively don't even begin to address?

Seriously, unit balance, faction balance, I don't give a shit if the game play and resource model means the game is over based on a drone rush micro management exploit in the first fucking minute.

Why don't you look at what you even said, Mr. Shifting Goalposts?

Starcraft is one of the best-balanced games ever created

Really? Why? care to explain in some detail or are you just parroting the same mantra chanted by moronic Starcraft fan boys since BEFORE it's god damn release?

[RandomCasualty2]

You've described one of the most incredibly major game play problems it presents.

Unless you conform to its incredibly BAD micromanagement requirements you will be tipping pointed out of the game before you begin.

What problem is this? That bad players lose games? I don't get it.

If your micro is bad enough that you lose right off the bat, then I don't see a problem with making you lose right there.

Especially when, might I add the hate of the zergling rush, for the reason you described is so wide spread as it is the FIRST thing you will hear anyone say when someone mentions star craft. It is that much of a game play problem.

Yeah, I used to hate the zergling rush. Then I figured out how to beat it and now it's no big deal. At any competent level of play, zergling rushes don't win games.

The zergling rush is basically a huge gamble. You try to win the game right in the beginning by outmicroing your opponent. If you get stopped, then your economy is in the toilet and you're probably not going to come back from that. Most beginning players have awful micro so the zergling rush is a great way to take them down fast. But any reasonably experienced player can stop it. It's the reason that competent players don't use that strategy.

And honestly, if you thought zergling rush was so godly powerful, why didn't you use it? That's the first natural way to learn how to beat a strategy: See how other people beat it.

That is a serious fucking issue with the game being playable. And frankly I don't care if you over come it because even if you want to handle star crafts shocking micro management issues the tipping point issue never goes away.

Whether its Zergling rush or any other attack even mid or late game the resource tipping points mean that the one single encounter will pretty much win or lose the game for the attacker regardless.

Not quite. I've played plenty of games where I've lost a battle, but still won the war.

It really just sounds like you're whining because you weren't good at the game and thus kept getting your base destroyed, and you thought the game sucked because you couldn't win. You never even bothered to figure out how to beat a zergling rush, instead you just whined that it was cheap and gave up on playing.

A good game of Starcraft is a series of ongoing skirmishes that have changes in momentum and eventually determine a winner. While occasionally you may see a single battle determine a game (usually if someone uses a gambling strategy), that's generally the case only if the skill level difference between players is large. But when you're outmacroed and outmicroed by a better player, you can't expect to win. Why again do you think it's bad that he beats you quickly? Do you want the game to just drag out the fight for no good reason?

As for losing all your army in one battle. Here's an idea: Retreat. Nobody says that you have to send all your zealots into a suicidal battle. It's the number one newbie mistake in SC. People will literally just throw away their entire army just because they were dead set on making an attack and not thinking tactically.

The people who don't like Starcraft inevitably end up being the people who never understood the game and found it too hard. Yeah, if you want to be good at SC, you're going to have to take some losses. It's not going to be easy. If you want some easy grinding game that lets you win, play WoW or Final Fantasy. SC isn't one of those easy casual games. If you want the wins, you're going to have to earn them.

[PhoneLobster]

And honestly, if you thought zergling rush was so godly powerful, why didn't you use it? That's the first natural way to learn how to beat a strategy: See how other people beat it.

I appreciate that unlike the other starcraft wankers on this thread you are attempting vaguely to actually interact with my post rather than just wanking all over each other,

But you are still focusing on the typical star craft straw man. All criticism, and any mention of the zergling rush must mean that the only problem the critic has with the game is that they don't know how to beat its most basic emergent bad strategy.

That is patently ridiculous. It was only one point I mentioned, and arguably only a minor aspect of it. If your only counter to it is that yes it is a terrible thing that does happen but you can over come it by adhering to the badly set micro requirements of the game... no really that's not a good argument.

The zergling rush is basically a huge gamble. You try to win the game right in the beginning by outmicroing your opponent. If you get stopped, then your economy is in the toilet and you're probably not going to come back from that.

Raising exactly the point I was getting at with the zergling rush and my ongoing complaint, and main complaint with star craft. Its resource model means that the zergling rush can win you the game (which is bad enough) but also that if it doesn't it pretty much guarantees it loses you the game.

Like I said, one encounter, no matter how minor, no matter how early, defines the game, win or lose.

That is indeed a game balanced on a knife edge tipping point. There are those who would call that good balance as long as you fall either side in some manner they see appropriate, I call it bad balance because I expect a game to provide a richer experience where a mere minor set back doesn't decide the entire outcome.

I expect, and demand the balance point to be more robust such that there can be an actual exchange of blows between opposing parties instead of a mere one hit KO.

It's like having a street fighter clone where every character has one hit point. Any further balance point considerations don't interest me, the one hit point thing is shocking game play balance.

Not quite. I've played plenty of games where I've lost a battle, but still won the war.

Not something I've ever seen and not something I can see rising easily from the resource and game balance of the system. Care to explain how that actually happened?

The closest I ever managed was to plague some sucker who spent every resource on the map destroying my base with an aircraft that he had failed to build any significant defenses against (and couldn't because he was out of resources). And that's a pretty lame scenario all around.

The people who don't like Starcraft inevitably end up being the people who never understood the game and found it too hard ... SC isn't one of those easy casual games.

It's a game, but it isn't casual? So perhaps you might perhaps support my claim that the damn thing has serious accessibility, playability and above all fun deficiencies?

But more importantly as long as you continue with this "all those who hate it do not understand it and must suck at it" angle you are presenting a case which relies exclusively on a giant straw man that can never be defeated or meaningfully interacted with.

Which brings me back to the reason why I mentioned Starcraft and the other crafts as an example of games that the vocal fans of which are useless to listen to about games.

I mean if your opinion on a game is "You need to get better, like this group of 24 world champion professionals, then it is perfectly balanced and fun! All criticism outside of that group is just sour grapes!" Then your opinion is stupid.

[Surgo]

Not something I've ever seen and not something I can see rising easily from the resource and game balance of the system. Care to explain how that actually happened?

An example with (stoned?) commentary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3KcQrcRBYs


What is game balance? I've been using the term as "If you and your opponent can start the game with any available option, and both have the same chance of winning (barring out-thinking your opponent)." I wasn't aware there was some controversy as to what 'balance' meant.

But you'll probably just shift the goalposts away from balance again or be like "starcraft [EDITED]!!!" (which I've found to be pretty odd seeing as how I don't even like Starcraft), so whatever. This argument will continue going in circles.

[Avoraciopoctules]

I enjoyed Starcraft, but primarily because of the level editor and story. I played a multiplayer game once, and I played every mission of the campaign in god mode.

However, the declaration that most matches are determined by a single engagement seems wrong to me. Here:

http://www.starcraft2.com/features/battlereports/1.xml
http://www.starcraft2.com/features/battlereports/2.xml

Multiple engagements. The balance of power shifts several times. This is Starcraft 2, but I've heard enough about the previous game's play to indicate that matches often go through similar shifts.

[Draco_Argentum]

For a start you just pumped TA:K. That game was just TA with fantasy themed graphics. Back in the day my friends played the fuck out of TA and dropped TA:K like a hot potato. We even got TA:K for free and didn't want it. You can't be serious that that is in any way a worthy game.

Second, TA has massive micro benefits. Bulldogs can beat goliaths it they can cross their T. My friend used to beat all of us with a microed pee-wee rush. Losing early metal extractors is an unrecoverable resource loss.

Third, SC tourney ranks. If you're going to dismiss professional gamers turning up results that look like faction balance fuck off. Seriously, these people are playing for cash prizes. If only one team could win we'd be seeing all the winners play that. The game is rather obviously balanced faction wise at high levels of play.

[RandomCasualty2]

That is patently ridiculous. It was only one point I mentioned, and arguably only a minor aspect of it. If your only counter to it is that yes it is a terrible thing that does happen but you can over come it by adhering to the badly set micro requirements of the game... no really that's not a good argument.

It's not a "Terrible thing", it's a strategy, and a particularly poor one that only works on weaker players.

As far as calling the required micro to be "badly set", That's certainly not true, in fact the micro game is what makes SC such a great game. It's not just pumping out units, but you need to tactically control and position them as well. And you definitely want tactics in an RTS.

Raising exactly the point I was getting at with the zergling rush and my ongoing complaint, and main complaint with star craft. Its resource model means that the zergling rush can win you the game (which is bad enough) but also that if it doesn't it pretty much guarantees it loses you the game.

Well yeah, it's a gamble all-or-nothing strategy and pros don't use it for that reason. Yes, Starcraft has a few gamble strategies that hurt you later in the game if they fail. But the majority of strategies people use aren't like that and certainly pros don't use these gamble strategies because there are quite frankly better strategies out there.

Like I said, one encounter, no matter how minor, no matter how early, defines the game, win or lose.

Not true. I've played plenty of games where I've lost major engagements and still come back to win.

I expect, and demand the balance point to be more robust such that there can be an actual exchange of blows between opposing parties instead of a mere one hit KO.

There usually are. Yeah, occasionally you can get a one hit KO if the opponents isn't ready for your tactic, but that's just the nature of the game. If you get super surprised by something like a dark templar tech rush to your worker line and you don't have any detection, then you're screwed. Sure. But the game benefits from having strategies like that, because it gives you things to legitimately fear.

Exchanges of blows happen between players of relatively close skill levels.

Not something I've ever seen and not something I can see rising easily from the resource and game balance of the system. Care to explain how that actually happened?

Well variety of scenarios, the easiest one is where your attack fails, but you have time to rebuild your army before the opponent can counter attack. Other times you may tech up to something to let you fend him off (usually cloaked units). Sometimes there's really an exchange of blwos where you get attacked and maybe let the opponent destroy your expansion, but you counter and destroy his expansion, or maybe just get him with some kind of drop to destroy part of his economy.

The battles are seldom one sided, so even if you end up losing, you should be taking down men with you and good micro is going to let you even the score usually.

Terrain is a big factor as well and so favors the defender. Even though your terran strike force may have gotten destroyed, a couple tanks on a cliff with a few spider mines on the ramp is often enough to deter a protoss attack for instance. A bunker being repaired by multiple SCV can hold off most zerg attack, even more so if it's on higher ground.

Just because you lose one battle it should rarely be the end. The only battles that are truly game losers are the ones that occur within your own base, and if you've got any momentum at all in the game, that shouldn't happen.

It's a game, but it isn't casual? So perhaps you might perhaps support my claim that the damn thing has serious accessibility, playability and above all fun deficiencies?

I wouldn't say deficiencies there, the biggest problem with it is that like any complex game, it has a pretty big learning curve and you're going to get your ass kicked a few times before you master the game. And it's really not a casual game, it's an intense game. You better be constantly doing stuff all the time, so people who want a relaxed gaming experience won't really enjoy starcraft. It's not a game where you're going to be able to sit back and relax while your units do all the work. But if you like your games to be intense and action packed, then it's a great RTS.

I mean if your opinion on a game is "You need to get better, like this group of 24 world champion professionals, then it is perfectly balanced and fun! All criticism outside of that group is just sour grapes!" Then your opinion is stupid.

Nah, you don't need to be a professional, only to the level that you start to actually understand the games' tactics and counters and understand the basics of microing stuff. Things I'd say you should be able to do:

• know what units beat what other units and why.
• Be able to do competent micro, like stop zergling rushes and lay spider mines.
• Know some good build orders, such as the mech build for terran.
• Know basic strategy about using terrain to your advantage.
• Be capable of seeing enemy numbers and terrain and deciding if a battle is winnable.

Now if you can do those things, then you're qualified enough to make balance judgments about the game. Otherwise you're like those guys who claim the fighter is perfectly fine in 3E.

Before you can criticize a game's balance and gameplay adequately, you have to understand it. And if you can't do the things I mentioned in the above list... then you don't even know enough about the game to comment on strategies.

[cthulhu]

Just going back to the rushing point - Rushing is hugely useful to gameplay dynamics for a number of reasons:

A) Because heavy economy or 'fast tech' strategies are vunerable to rushing strategies, the existance of viable rush strategies limits the usefulness of economy or fast tech strategies. This leads to more, earlier conflict in the game and also encourages the use of lower tier units.

B) All RTS games have a number of basic moves you have to be able to counter. So you have to know to have a detector unit ready for when he has access to invisible units, otherwise you're just going to lose. Or in TA, you have to have nuke defenses for when he has nukes, or your just going to lose. Same for AAs and the attack helicopter things the non-core guys have.

[PhoneLobster]

A) Rush is good

Actually, I'm going to agree with you. The mere existence of rush strategies is not specifically bad. It's even OK to get the early win from them, Ideally however it shouldn't result in the sort of cripple your enemy or cripple yourself effects that occur in star craft. Many other RTS games have viable rush strategies that don't permanently cripple economies.

Dune 2, TA, TAK, Supreme commander, Emperor Of Dune, er... what other RTS games did I enjoy... (can't think of any right now, it's a bit of a suck dominated genre) they all had viable rushes but lacked the severe tipping point effects of the entire war craft franchise with it's fetish for exceedingly draconian limited basic resources. (Or worse in warcraft 3, that and punishing tipping points on unit XP stuff, at least to the limited degree I ever bothered with that game).

B) Counter Strategies Are Good, those helicopter things in TA were good

Actually a lot of TA air units were good, especially when you had a lot of any of them, and anti air was a big deal, of course your anti air could often double as anti ground which helped.

But anyway, to a limited degree counter strategies are good. "Must have" and "Must counter" strategies, a little less so. For instance anti nukes are... not actually a must. And the great thing about Supreme Commander for instance is that their are different viable anti nuke strategies.

In addition the "killer" strategies in that game all come in effectively heralding a new phase of game play at approximately predictable intervals. It creates a system where you must use one (of a number!) of viable counter strategies and attack strategies of your own with at least moderate success and either win or be "this tall" to go on the ride for the next ten minutes of game play.

That doesn't happen in star craft because if someone actually commits to an attack strategy in any game phase that's really the end of it.

List of stuff especially the actual list

That was actually the best put together and least mouth breathingly stupid defense of star craft I've seen anyone put together (which I would like to think supports my point on most star craft defenders).

But ultimately it rests on two things. A yes it is no it isn't argument about the resource model, I suspect your no it isn't somewhat relies on what at least around here was the common practice of playing on maps intended for more players than those actually playing in some vain hope of overcoming the one hit wonder economy thing (which always annoyed me, I mean if you were going to play star craft what the heck?).

And on that list of things you presented which you say are good and I say are bad. Like say what you see as the "intense rewarding micromanagement" which I as a former programmer just see as really shoddy GUI design, dodgey UI philosophy and poor unit AI.

If you like "intense micromanagement" like that there isn't much further to go. But I think that makes your opinion on say, what makes a good UI in a game somewhat less worth listening to.

To elaborate on the intense micromanagement issue I'd like to bring up a game from a series I actually like (and have actually played in the last 6 years).

Empire Total War introduced playable naval battles, yay! But the ships primarily fired broadside and the unit AI (at least on release) would always seem to steer to point the prow at any enemy ship you told it to attack, thus never actually firing it's cannons unless by chance some other target strayed across your broadsides.

Now certainly the solution for that was for the player to engage in "Intense rewarding micromanagement" and steer and fire every last damn boat manually simultaneously for the entire battle. Something very tedious and frustrating and damn near impossible somewhere above 3 or so ships. Especially for what is largely a turn based single player strategy game fan base.

So was that GOOD game design to do that?

[cthulhu]

You can make tipping rushes in all of those games no problem - but just like in Starcraft they have the downside of sucking.

You keep making the assertion that top players commit to all or nothing gambits, which is rarely the case, because the strategy is risky and most all or nothing gambits are not that effective, compared to slowly building continious advantage (what most RTS players do).

And this is the problem that all RTS games have - extreme slippery slope. If I get off an extractor or power raid in SC, you are fucked, because you are wasting time rebuilding power while I'm rolling on with more stuff, so I'm more likely to get off the next raid and so it goes.

This is the biggest problem with all RTS games and ideally would not be the case.

[Surgo]

I don't think slippery slope is really a bad thing. It just means that the game actually ends before it's coded to tell you it ended.

[cthulhu]

Yeah, but you can have a fun game without slippery slope. There is no reason to make someone perform worse because they are losing - fighting games, FPS games (except counter strike), etc do just fine without it.

It's like making a racing game where the car in second place actually gets a speed penalty.

[PhoneLobster]

You keep making the assertion that top players commit to all or nothing gambits, which is rarely the case

YOU built that straw man, you can take it to bed and continue to fellate it.

I claim that certain resource models in RTS games, like the punishingly limited models of the entire "x-craft" series happen to push a single deciding encounter scenario. Running away because you can't win an encounter, and because sacrificing forces is almost exclusively a pure LOSS scenario for the attacker is simply a means of delaying that single encounter.

Then you describe a Supreme Commander scenario that actually involves committing an entire attack force you will almost certainly lose in order to make some profit. Something which just plain doesn't happen in star craft.

Though the scenario is kind of insane. Since it is both the thing you say shouldn't happen and is a bad strategy and then you use it as an example of a successful strategy.

If I get off an extractor or power raid in SC, you are fucked, because you are wasting time rebuilding power while I'm rolling on with more stuff, so I'm more likely to get off the next raid and so it goes.

Really?

Well I suppose if you are insanely successful and significantly better than your opponent.

But really controlling more extraction points or destroying major base buildings is just called "winning the game", it has to happen sooner or later. Thing is your armies, losing them isn't always a bad thing if you lose them in a profitable manner.

And there are plenty of ways to counter those sorts of raids and they aren't exclusively "be better at micro".

Also Supreme Commander's exponential economy (which otherwise somewhat annoys me due to the focus it draws away from exploding robots) is handy here in that actually you will have all sorts of outlying resources you just don't care about.

Now if you can roll into my only tech 2 mass extractor that is contributing as much as the rest of my entire tech 1 economy through every damn defense, and offense I have and kill it. Good for you, that was a pretty decisive win.

[cthulhu]

I was thinking post FA which much poorer economic performance from the fabrication buildings, meaning you actually have to expand, and thus are vulnerable to raids. Then if you turtle up with base defense, I'll expand rapidly and win because I'll be able to fast tech because I won't be under pressure and have access to more metal. So you'll be building base defense to fend of my raiding force, but once I see you doing that (and lose a scout), I will build a much smaller mobile force than I otherwise would - parity to yours obviously but not more.

Then I win twice, because you're getting less income, spending more on non productive buildings. So I'll reach tier 2 first, out tech and win.

In the stock game, SC is just poor because the green side whos name eludes me right now is just better and turtling is just so good because the fabrication buildings are excellent and then stock base defense is better than mobile units, making the game an exercise in teching up.

Finally, all of your points apply equally to starcraft:

I claim that certain resource models in RTS games, like the punishingly limited models of the entire "x-craft" series happen to push a single deciding encounter scenario. Running away because you can't win an encounter, and because sacrificing forces is almost exclusively a pure LOSS scenario for the attacker is simply a means of delaying that single encounter.

Watch great players, say terrans using drop ships. They'll run away a lot - it lacks the single decisive encounter. Typically you'll have long protracted running battles from the first few minutes of the game until right at the end.

Bad players do go for a single deciding encounter, but you'll rarely see that happen in good games - and not just with terrans.

Then you describe a Supreme Commander scenario that actually involves committing an entire attack force you will almost certainly lose in order to make some profit. Something which just plain doesn't happen in star craft.

Nah, in both games expansion raiding is very common (post FA) and key to victory.

But really controlling more extraction points or destroying major base buildings is just called "winning the game", it has to happen sooner or later. Thing is your armies, losing them isn't always a bad thing if you lose them in a profitable manner.

Sure, thats why losing a force to take out an expansion in starcraft can be very profitable. Until you rebuild, I have twice your income. Badass. However, if you got favourable exchange, you should be able to kill my expansion.

[Draco_Argentum]

Now if you can roll into my only tech 2 mass extractor that is contributing as much as the rest of my entire tech 1 economy through every damn defense, and offense I have and kill it. Good for you, that was a pretty decisive win.

Honestly this sounds like Starcraft except its a much smaller game so you haven't got chaff resource operations to lose.

[Murtak]

I claim that certain resource models in RTS games, like the punishingly limited models of the entire "x-craft" series happen to push a single deciding encounter scenario. Running away because you can't win an encounter, and because sacrificing forces is almost exclusively a pure LOSS scenario for the attacker is simply a means of delaying that single encounter.

Look, the defender should already have the advantage since he has had more time to produce troops and his reinforcements are already at the point of conflict. Additionally he can take advantage of fixed defense installations and choke points. If the attacker still wants to take the huge gamble that his opponent did not build a sizable number of defenders so he can actually overwhelm him (simply winning is not enough after all) then let him. There is a reason games are not won by rushing at higher levels of play or for that matter between opponents of equal skill. They don't work against even a moderate amount of defense.

Now if you can roll into my only tech 2 mass extractor that is contributing as much as the rest of my entire tech 1 economy through every damn defense, and offense I have and kill it. Good for you, that was a pretty decisive win.

I have never played Supreme Commander, but to me that sounds a lot like "Now if you can roll into my base and go for my workers while they run away from you through every damn defense, and offense I have and kill them. Good for you, that was a pretty decisive win.". Where is the difference? That it happens sooner?

[RandomCasualty2]

But ultimately it rests on two things. A yes it is no it isn't argument about the resource model, I suspect your no it isn't somewhat relies on what at least around here was the common practice of playing on maps intended for more players than those actually playing in some vain hope of overcoming the one hit wonder economy thing (which always annoyed me, I mean if you were going to play star craft what the heck?).

I dont' even really understand your argument against the resource model. Yeah if your worker line gets decimated, you're screwed, but that's why it's something important for you to protect. If you see something going at your workers, get them out of there. Generally the main things you have to avoid happen to be drops, as opposed to full blown attacks. If the main attack force is in your worker line... you've already lost the game anyway. And that's just early game, once you have an expansion you can generally afford to lose some workers.

The single decisive encounter part just isn't true, and the best way to see that is to watch some replays of pro games. They are almost always a series of skirmishes, as opposed to just one armageddon battle that settles everything.

And the resource model is actually what makes Starcraft so great. Because small skirmish strike forces can make a difference. It's not just a game of two massed armies.

And on that list of things you presented which you say are good and I say are bad. Like say what you see as the "intense rewarding micromanagement" which I as a former programmer just see as really shoddy GUI design, dodgey UI philosophy and poor unit AI.

This is largely a gameplay preference. Some people like micro, others don't. But as far as skill games go, micro introduces something else you can be good at. The less micro management and quick reflexes that are required the more an RTS turns into a turn based strategy game.

I prefer RTS to be a fast paced adrenaline rush, and that's what a Starcraft game is like.

Micro is effectively the "tactics" part of the game, where your overall build order and the like is simply the strategy. And I feel that adding micro makes a game much richer. Choosing to do things like focus fire or correctly decide when to use spell abilities is a good feature in a strategy game, because it allows you more tactical options. This is much superior in terms of game depth than just clicking one attack move and sending your troops in a fire and forget manner and letting the game AI take over.

Now some people don't like that because it adds a speed requirement. Not only do you need strategy in Starcraft, but you also have to be fast. And if you don't like that style, I can understand that, but that doesn't mean its a bad game, only that it's just not the game for you.

Empire Total War introduced playable naval battles, yay! But the ships primarily fired broadside and the unit AI (at least on release) would always seem to steer to point the prow at any enemy ship you told it to attack, thus never actually firing it's cannons unless by chance some other target strayed across your broadsides.

Now certainly the solution for that was for the player to engage in "Intense rewarding micromanagement" and steer and fire every last damn boat manually simultaneously for the entire battle. Something very tedious and frustrating and damn near impossible somewhere above 3 or so ships. Especially for what is largely a turn based single player strategy game fan base.

Yeah, there's a point where micro can get just too tedious if units literally can't be expected to handle themselves on their own.

But Starcraft isn't nearly that extreme. All your units with the exception of pure spellcasters can do basic attacks. Now if you send a carrier to do a straight up attack, it probably won't be as effective defensively than if you micro it on a hit and run strike. Your zealots won't soak damage quite as well unless you micro to tell them to retreat. But all that stuff is going to still fight and defend itself. Medics automatically heal your units and all that.

Only pure spellcasters don't cast automatically but that's understandably so because energy reserves are rather short resources, so you don't want your high templar blowing his wad because the enemy happened to bring a few zerglings nearby.

And really I'm not sure what other things you'd want automated in Starcraft. About the only real pain is constantly having to send newly produced workers to mine instead of being able to just rally them to a mineral field as you could in Warcraft 3. Though as I understand that feature is being added to SC2. Besides that, I really can't see too many features that an AI could adequately handle in actual combat micro.

[PhoneLobster]

I was thinking post FA which much poorer economic performance from the fabrication buildings, meaning you actually have to expand, and thus are vulnerable to raids.

Well now it's my turn to call people crap players. You don't have to care about outlying metal extractors until late tech 3 when you run out of safer sites to upgrade. By which point you have more than enough resources to cover the situation and "rush raid" is more like "full scale late game attack".

I will build a much smaller mobile force than I otherwise would - parity to yours obviously but not more.

So in a counter to just one option of potential strategy (and a fairly badly selected one at that) you will counter with just one option of several potential strategies (and a fairly badly selected one at that).

After messing with a lot of FA I'd have to say stationary defenses are better than they were, and useful for various things, but really the best option for defense up till sometime mid tech 2 at least is just plain old mobile units. Which is also cool because it's more adaptable into offense for added fun.

Amazingly as of FA, despite the metal maker nerf, it seems like you can manage a fairly reasonable turtle economy where you cover less ground, throw down some thick stationary defenses and run up some patrolling air forces/fast attack/artillery to both protect and destroy stuff outside the territory you actually develop. But it's a fuck ton harder to do. The trick is all in commander upgrades, Aeon and Seraphim especially.

Now if I saw someone investing heavily in stationary base defenses I wouldn't be so certain, sure it's one way to approach it, but it might be wiser to build a larger mobile force than you otherwise would have (to either take the defenses down before they harden or just go round and destroy everything else he owns).

Or cover his base defenses with some forward artillery positions because something like a simple relatively cheap tech 2 artillery or tactical missile launcher behind some shields, a few tech 2 units and an ever growing number of point defense will ruin your day on the kind of small map that your described scenario is likely to happen on.

Then I win twice, because you're getting less income, spending more on non productive buildings. So I'll reach tier 2 first, out tech and win.

FA is much more complex than that. Destroying a few outlying sites, even taking them is no guarantee that you have more income. What I saved on defenses could easily have gone into upgrading my economy to do as much (or more) than yours in a smaller area or just into offensive options that will prevent you from holding the ground you took from me, and the ground you took unchallenged, and threaten your starting position.

Even reaching a tech tier first is no guarantee of victory. Producing sufficient units of a the next teir to overcome earlier tier units is required. And the economic requirements to do that are onerous enough that it is difficult to pump out a single tech 2 whatever early enough to make it a win.

Now you can get one or two tech 2 units out at five minutes or so if you put your all in, but by then that is, if you are lucky, only JUST enough to defend against everyone elses tech one, and odds are their economies have just as good or a better long term out look compared to yours.

Though I think it was about 9 minutes? as my record to get out a walking destroyer (tech 2 Cybran amphibious naval unit) while still covering my ass with tech one units, do that that early and sure, you've probably won. It's pretty freaking hard. And you better hope they haven't invested in some reasonable amount of bombers, air units or tactical missiles. And you better bombard their ground forces like crazy before walking that crazy spider boat onto the beach.

In the stock game, SC is just poor because the green side whos name eludes me right now is just better and turtling is just so good because the fabrication buildings are excellent and then stock base defense is better than mobile units, making the game an exercise in teching up.

You mean Aeon.

And you are talking about fabrication buildings that were very good for every faction stationary defense that were actually more expensive and a more questionable deal than they are in FA, and a game which like any RTS is by it's nature always to some extent an exercise in teching up, I mean what else do you want to do? Tech "Down"?

(Actually, just to try and prove if they were any use back on plain Supreme Commander I tried a one on one vs the hard AI where I only built tech one LIGHT assault bots. But to win it I still had to tech up to a tech 3 economies worth of output of the little useless bastards. Any human player would have wiped the floor with that strategy, but it led me to a new respect for the full diversity of available units and strategies in the game).

Anyway, I'll agree that plain Supreme Commander is not as good as it is with the FA add on. The mas fabricator re-balance was a good move. But really the biggest issue as far as I'm concerned was that plain supreme defaulted to the worst possible of several available GUI options while FA defaults to a much superior one.

And FA fixed commander upgrades and base defenses so that they had some conceivable role in the game. And did good things with experimentals.

Watch great players, say terrans using drop ships. They'll run away a lot - it lacks the single decisive encounter.

They run away, and don't have a the decisive encounter until later.

Running away, isn't an encounter. There was no trade off of resources, no cannon fodder for strategic gain. There was an attempt to see if they had an advantage to press the single actual decisive encounter maybe some opportunistic attack on anything they could take with no actual losses and then they run the heck away to delay the only actual resource trade off the game can afford until they have an actual real advantage.

Now any RTS can have run away as a so called "encounter" that you might occasionally have. But star craft is made of that shit because it is backed by a resource model that encourages cowardice and discourages any sort of significant trade off of forces when you don't have a very clear upper hand.

Nah, in both games expansion raiding is very common (post FA) and key to victory.

Territory control, IS a valid strategy to victory in FA. More resource points is an advantage you can leverage, it takes effort and investment in various specific ways but if you have even 150% of the mass extraction points as your opponent, especially if you have them from early on and KEEP them (the tricky bit) you will win. But that's fine, controlling 70-80% of the map should be pretty damn rewarding.

Not so much in star craft. Control a point, mine the crap out, move on. Or more accurately on a map designed for the actual number of players present, pretty much control your starting point, mine the crap out of it and Single Decisive Encounter! (unless single decisive encounter pops you first).

Sure, thats why losing a force to take out an expansion in starcraft can be very profitable. Until you rebuild, I have twice your income. Badass. However, if you got favourable exchange, you should be able to kill my expansion.

Sounds a lot like single decisive encounter, so assuming the map has a significant metal or crystal or whatever the crap that stuff was deposit beyond starting site and some strays (ie you are playing on a map for double the number of players) whiping out at least half your opponents entire economy and forces, as you describe... is not a single decisive encounter?

You describe the scenario that the attacker gets a good deal and... just plain wins or the attacker gets a bad deal and what? Loses?

Is there any variation on that? I mean if I just took out an entire mining site from your economy in starcraft, the resources you or I lost out on, either of us is coming back from losing that encounter? In star craft? Are you bat shit insane?

Honestly this sounds like Starcraft except its a much smaller game so you haven't got chaff resource operations to lose.

I have never played Supreme Commander, but to me that sounds a lot like "Now if you can roll into my base and go for my workers while they run away from you through every damn defense, and offense I have and kill them. Good for you, that was a pretty decisive win.". Where is the difference? That it happens sooner?

Actually it is a much larger game. But for most key moments the focus of your economy will be a mere handful of sites, and during the phase when the initial kamikaze rush on your resources would be genuinely crippling it will likely be focused on just two buildings, one tech 2 (or upgrading to tech 2) metal extractor and maybe one energy collector.

So you still care about outlying sites, and there could be a lot of them, and they could be ASS TONS of miles away (Some maps are large enough you can have 3 levels of tech in active operation at some point in the game because the outliers are so damn far away the new units just won't have got there yet and outlying factories started building so recently it may not be profitable or possible to have upgraded them)

But you don't care much. The outlying sites are a great early boost to your economy, but once you start going to tech 2/tech 3 you won't especially care about them again until you run out of other sites to upgrade in late game.

It's a much bigger deal if the enemy walks right into your central base and blows shit up (and if you really want you can screw with them by having a largely decentralized base, not a serious star craft option).

So the difference here is, you can have running encounters with some real impact and losses on both sides that don't utterly determine the outcome of the game. Yes you can walk right into my most valued base and destroy it. But in star craft every unit and resource is too highly valued to lose, you don't actually have to walk into my most prized possession during a key 3 minute game time window.

[Murtak]

I feel that adding micro makes a game much richer. Choosing to do things like focus fire or correctly decide when to use spell abilities is a good feature in a strategy game, because it allows you more tactical options. This is much superior in terms of game depth than just clicking one attack move and sending your troops in a fire and forget manner and letting the game AI take over.

I liked the way Dawn of War handled this. Squads with per-squad-abilities, coupled with stances cut down a lot on the micro needed for individual units, but you still had quite a bit of microing with grenades, rallies, deep strikes, hero abilities and the likes. Starcraft was annoying for me in that regard, because you had to keep telling ranged units to get away instead of shifting them into the right stance and then worrying about squad placement. I guess it may be different from tohers, but DoW really found the sweet spot for me.

[Murtak]

PL, to me it still sounds like you complain about the same things with Starcraft you brush off as newbie talk when talking about Supreme Commander. Is it possible that both games have very similar issues, but you don't recognize them with Supreme Commander because you are much better at that game than you are at Starcraft?

[Draco_Argentum]

So the difference here is, you can have running encounters with some real impact and losses on both sides that don't utterly determine the outcome of the game. Yes you can walk right into my most valued base and destroy it. But in star craft every unit and resource is too highly valued to lose, you don't actually have to walk into my most prized possession during a key 3 minute game time window.

I think thats kinda the point. SC is a skirmish game. TA is a battle game and SupCom is friggin' 'uge. I'd be rather perplexed if individual SC units and buildings weren't worth more. So far as I can tell SC is meant to be quick and brutal and your objection is that you don't like that. At least thats what I'm getting.

[PhoneLobster]

Micro is effectively the "tactics" part of the game, where your overall build order and the like is simply the strategy.

It's RTS not RTT, being largely a game about constantly clicking your dumb ass units to tell them their every last decision is a failure at the most basic claimed goal of the genre even if you DO chose to call it tactics rather than bad UI/AI ("It's not a bug, its a feature!").

Star craft, and the craft series in general are all micro and little or no macro. That pisses me off. That's why it's a game for obsessive compulsive teenagers with very little imagination. I'm not an obsessive compulsive teenager any more, and I never had that imagination shortage required to enjoy the tedious click fest.

The reason I remain impressed with the TA line, especially its most recent incarnation in FA is the remarkable moves they have taken to ensure that it is not just user friendly and well designed on an interface level but also that they have balanced and designed the game so that for all it's real time roots it is largely actually strategic in it's emergent behavior and decision making.

Micro continues to exist because there are hard limits to just how good you can make your AI for path finding and target selection. Though the TA line has ALWAYS been better at that when units are left unattended (something which in star craft is just plain suicidal despite your claims that it is "OK") and requires less and more appropriately supported micro in order to improve unit performance.

And for all someone was talking up war craft for patrol routes I think the TA line is arguably the only RTS dynasty to have any seriously effective unit patrol AI. (Though those dumb builders still totally freak out when confronted with treed mountains anywhere on the damn horizon while on patrol).

But more importantly things like active only spell casting are very severly limited in the TA line. And with the exception of a puzzling decision regarding stationary tactical missile launchers FA reserves such interfaces to only the rarest of units in roles where it is appropriate (the commanders gun of last resort and nukes basically).

And I feel that adding micro makes a game much richer.

Until it becomes failed UI design. Which star craft spell casting certainly is.

Choosing not to cast some spell right now is not the same as being unable to have it cast in ANY automated manner. As much as TA:K had failings (primarily issues with melee units) it got spell casting right.

You could turn it on auto. That was a big deal, that's the way it should for the most part be. Target selection for every other damn unit is like that, auto return fire, auto aggressive, no automatic fire at all, and shoot anything you tell it to.

Should some Protoss drag queen really be that different and deficient in UI support just because he shoots out lightning and thundercats instead of bullets or bile?

[PhoneLobster]

So far as I can tell SC is meant to be quick and brutal and your objection is that you don't like that. At least thats what I'm getting.

Largely that is one of my major complaints. It is not remotely a strategy game. Like most of the crappy end of the RTS genre it's basically rather shallow action. And frankly FPS games, and the rare but cool FPS/RTS hybrid genre (Battle Zone 2 forever!) do that better.

And anyway, what does differentiate it from the crappy end of the RTS genre? I don't see people running around wetting their pants over Dark Reign 2. But give them star craft and watch them tug the monkey any day.

But there are plenty of other objections apart from its entirely false aspiration toward being a strategy game, like for instance the fact that I'm pretty sure the reason it IS action rather than strategy is a total accident of failed third hand chinese whispers of poorly understood intellectual theft by Blizzard from Dune 2 which for all it's primitive cave man game issues actually was rather strategic.

Star craft fails in a number of areas. And that's why I have serious problems with people who hold it up as a great example of gaming. It doesn't do what it is meant to. Large aspects of it in fact suck but have retroactively been declared features rather than bugs (like RC's take on "Micro") and imitation of it can only hold back the art form.

I mean RC is of the opinion that spell casting units that are useless on auto or in any numbers are "cool micro action" while boats doing the same thing in another game "yeah kinda sucks".

That's not really a great contribution to the gaming review community there.

[Murtak]

Look, one thing is 100% certain: Microing in Starcraft is not a bug. It is a design decision.

It is entirely possible that, looking back at the game, Blizzard would change stuff. On the other hand, some parts of the UI, such as the hotkeyed commands and the waypoints, are very well designed, so it is plausible that microing was a conscious design decision, especially when using abilities actually costs resources. And while you may not like it, it is still a valid part of the game. Belittling those who like it as obsessive teenagers is a dick move. Noone is calling you a slug-brained autopilot player either.

You have two possible extremes. Either you have to tell everyone unit every move, or your units work entirely on their own. Obviously no game goes as far as that (and for good reasons). But where exactly a given game should position this slider is entirely a matter of opinion.

[PhoneLobster]

Look, one thing is 100% certain: Microing in Starcraft is not a bug. It is a design decision.

HAH!

Stupidest thing ever.

You know the whole "Its not a bug it's a feature" line?

You know, the one they use to avoid fixing glaringly obvious bugs.

The whole justification after the fact thing portrayed in microcosm on the medium of the world of software?

I used to write software, so I can smell it a mile off.

Things like RC was describing like manually retreating meat shields to make them actually perform their role as meat shields?

NOT FUCKING INTENDED DUMB ASS.

Now you can walk RCs path and declare it good in retrospect but if you dare to suggest that things like major UI and unit AI short comings are intended then I'm going to call you a moron in variously insulting ways and point at you as proof of my claim that Star Craft fans shouldn't be listened to about game design.

Because you just sat their straight faced and said "Really Bad Unit AI was intended all along."

And you know I thought it might be hard to actually demonstrate the point that liking star craft is indicative of poor game taste. But you guys are suddenly just rolling it right out there...