@Jip said in A Topic of Dumb Ideas!:
Competitively this is not true and happens throughout the game.
ASF that fight on high-rated games are part of some micro
Land battles that fight on high-rated games are part of some micro (shields up front, move them back when they are about to fall, try to bump into the other ACU, use overcharge carefully)
Navy battles are full of micro, especially when you are Aeon or fighting against Aeon. Managing the hover shields and moving your ships manually to evade enemy fire is crucial.
Manually placing your engineers between reclaim (props, wrecks) and then queuing reclaim commands is more efficient, regardless of whether the reclaim are props or wreckages.
Up to an extent, you can even micro your economy.To me being able to do things manually is the difference between a casual match and a competitive match. In a casual match I'll just let an engineer reclaim through attack move and / or patrol. But if the match is competitive then hell yes - give me all the manual control when applicable and let's go.
Removing this, and other elements of micro, is in my opinion the same as removing the capability for the game to be competitive. Speaking off, some micro has been removed from the game through UI mods. Such as Eco Manager and Advanced Attack Priorities. If used properly these mods will allow a player to play the game more casually while achieving (roughly) the same, with less clicks.
I'm not saying that the game should have no micro, I'm saying that to the extent possible your micro should reflect a conscious decision that you've made about how to defeat your adversary.
Mindlessly clicking individual trees is not that. If you replaced that with an attack-move order, the decision to put an engineer on reclaim is still captured, still meaningful.
Having to execute dozens of little actions to convey your intent to the game - that goes against the spirit of this game series.
The devs ruthlessly removed silly bullshit micro from this game with a powerful UI and AI system that allows the players to convey their intent in just a few clicks.
Reclaim of minor map objects is just one instance that they missed.
At the very least, attack move should reclaim rocks and trees as efficiently as manual micro when not factoring in things like keeping the engineer from moving. If people want to select whether they micro a rock or a tree - if they want to expend their attention on that, I think that's fair, but the race to the bottom should be removed by making attack-move and patrol more efficient at reclaim collection.