BreakfastBurrito_007

good find!

@Atrik I totally agree that spamming alt-clicks to win a fight is not a good place for the meta to be at, but I think adding automated tools that are optimized for the best results don't just remove clicks, they also remove the game we enjoy. This stands in stark contrast to the default unit and structure behavior which is not optimized and needs player engagement to get better results, meaning that players need skills to execute strategies as opposed to choosing them from a menu. I think the best case scenario is that we have a successful melee/ranged rebalance effort that makes alt-clicking less powerful.

RTS games have a focus on using strategies to beat opponents, however good rts games force players to execute those strategies using skill, focus, and multitasking. To see an example of this compare the success of AoE 2 to AoE 4. In order to execute strategies in Aoe4 players just choose a landmark to age up which decides their strategy and then follow a formulaic build order. There is nothing inherently good about reducing the clicks needed to execute strategies in 0ad like ProGUI does. I am not upset yet about proGUI only because I haven't lost to it yet, but I am sure that it will happen sooner or later. Definitely not. Unlike the ProGUI army composition manager and population generator, this feature is not optimized. Some players spread out their units and focus them so that they gather the right resources and gather them efficiently. In other cases and situations, players rely on the automatic behavior of the storehouse, accepting the inefficiency, because their focus is on more important things.

interesting point @halep. I really don't think its healthy for players to have to investigate each other for having cheat mods so I think some kind of identifier should be emplaced. I think genuine GUI mods or visibility mods, such as autociv, feldmap, and some others that don't have macros should be left as they are as they don't cause balance problems.

Deathmatch and revealed map are fair since it applies to everyone. ProGUI is not since players can choose to use it in a game where other people don't use it. Right now there is not really a mutual agreement not to use it in multiplayer, and my worry is that it could become the standard for multiplayer because people want to use it to win. If it becomes the standard for multiplayer, then people who enjoy the game without the automated "easy mode" won't be able to find games to join.

While its obvious the need for sniping comes from a balance situation that can be improved, I don't think auto-sniping would help improve gameplay. I am also very concerned about other things in the pro-GUI mod but this one would be most OP by far.

Like all realism based changes, I'm ok with it as long as it is a well thought out mechanic for gameplay purposes. Realism isn't fun by itself.

If someone has 80 skirms and 20 pikemen and they snipe your ranged units then they will win. Citizen skirms do more damage than champion melee units, so even melee damage from champions can be ignored to some extent. another simpler possibility is they could have had a better army, or more upgrades.

Option/alt: individually task units. This can make you win any fair fight in a26, as well as gather resources and build buildings more efficiently.

free siege I think is hard to balance. If we make the train time slower it will add significant time to the “fast siege” strategy. On the other hand more normal train times would result in ram attrition strategies where rams are killed as fast as they are made, which idles units and lets the mace player’s army win at no additional cost (pop space cost is non-negligible ofc so this would be most op for border conflict).

I like the non-random building ai, but I think there should be a target choice component of it as well.

@Mentula Very interesting results. I would expect the auto-batching to be quite powerful economically, because the only reason not to use autoqueue as it is in a26 is that when you have 1-by-1 training you can start to float resources, which causes the economic return rate advantage of smaller batches (ie 1 by 1) to be offset by the negative economic effect of having unspent resources. With automatically scaling batch sizes, you can ensure that you are using up your resources while ensuring 0 idle time, all while not paying attention to the barracks. Earlier we were discussing the unfair advantage purely from the standpoint of focusing more on military, but considering that it causes a faster boom even in non-combat situations is really concerning. Obviously for testing purposes you have to isolate the economic effect, but it is important to keep in mind the compounding effect that increased military focus would have on the advantage of proGUI.

I'm against all macros, so the "solution" I am most in favor of is no solution at all.

Usually units (people) do all the seeing in the game. If you have plenty of units around compared to the number of buildings you will be able to see far and wide. In a standard multiplayer game, especially team games, you can usually know what is happening over 100% of the map by late city phase.

Interesting developments! There has been work by @real_tabasco_sauce to give melee units more combat value which would go a long way to make sniping a secondary form of micro, with actual movement, formations, and positioning being more important. Sniping, automatic or not, is not a great place for the game to be. During fall of 2021, the meta was all about melee units (mainly pikemen) allowing ranged units to be invincible. Around that time I learned how to snipe using option/alt after watching berhudar spread women out on his berries and since then I have been teaching players to snipe who are frustrated/want to learn how. I figured if everyone knew about it it would be fair, but its just not good to have such a powerful micro technique not be obvious to newer players, 0ad in multiplayer right now is basically divided by those who snipe and those who don't. I suppose we just have to all vote for @real_tabasco_sauce's melee rework when its on the ballot

In settings you can also adjust the hp fraction that classifies the unit as wounded or not. Usually the units that I want to evacuate are expensive champions which usually take a lot of damage before dying, so I set it to 1/4 or 1/5 of total hp.

There are a lot of maps that aren't much fun to play. Its a bit more serious in multiplayer too, where 80% of the time mainland is the map of choice. If I recall correctly, someone was working on a series of multiplayer optimized maps, which would be lovely to see.

The K means a lot, it means 1000. From a gameplay standpoint if you see a K by any resource, it means you need to do more fighting and less gathering with your units, ie spend that resource that you have more than 10,000 of.

Not all civs and strategies will have the same start. I think a good feature of the quickstart mod would be some way to opt out of your preset actions before the game starts, although I have no idea how it could be done. I suppose if a macro keystroke is used to initiate the quickstart sequence you can then choose whether or not to do it. Macros in 0ad ... hmm.

I think many players, myself included, have gotten used to the way the wood upgrade costs wood, as well some other less severe cases like metal and stone. I would vote for this in the community mod if some reasonable adjustments were made, although I can't think of my own recommendations. I definitely want to avoid a situation where eco upgrades are "insta-clicks" with zero opportunity cost. I would suggest starting with just the wood upgrades since the metal and stone ones don't cost that much stone.

I think new civs can be added as they are worked on, balanced, and added from other mods. We don't strictly need new civs in my opinion, but I would welcome any creative, balanced, and fun civ to play with whenever they reach a state that is compatible with the civs that are already in 0ad. That being said I don't think we need every flavor of Greek to have their own civ in 0ad lol.

No, but @real_tabasco_sauce recommended that I check out the nomad implementation in it.

AoE4 had Mongols as a nomadic civ, but basically all it meant was that their buildings could pack up into carts, and it was quite gimmicky. I would prefer to maintain the functionality of the cc (territory root, training) while it moves, and have it move very slowly, also other buildings should be mobile as well but faster and with a pack up pack down feature. moving cc territory would be very challenging without making some features to help make it feasible, such as a dedicated territory root building, permanently mobile storehouses and farmsteads, and/or buildings not decaying to gaia once they are out of cc territory. Nomadic society doesn't simply stop when they are on the move, so the cc should remain functional as it moves. Having a slow but still functional cc also means players need some planning and strategy while moving around the map, instead of zooming around and using the cc to snipe enemy units like in AoE4.

I think 1v1s are less fun and less popular because the interaction of team bonuses is a good source of strategies and variability. Of course changes don't have to improve gameplay experience in only 1v1s or only tgs. I think civ and unit differentiation would help the 1v1 scene as well as tgs, for an example look no further than @real_tabasco_sauce's unit specific upgrades community mod patch that could be seen in the community mod for a27.

@ShadowOfHassen yea a lot of people agree that the women/citizen soldiers roles could be adjusted eco wise, there is some discussion about adding a male economic unit so that citizen soldiers' economic role would be secondary. Interestingly in 1300+ multiplayer it is rare to see corral economy and farming even with 45-50 women is fairly standard, while corral food eco is more population efficient and durable it also requires more focus and is less predictable/reliable in usual 0ad games.