Permanent creation of units

[BeTe]

4 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

I think the best balance is to have rudimentary automation features. Leaving those automated features un-optimized allows a player to manually outperform it if they decide to allocate their apm and attention to the task. 
 

A good example is auto-scout from aoe2. It has known behavior, like trending toward the bottom right corner of the map. One could think of many ways to optimize the path taken by autoscout like using map script knowledge to scout likely other high value locations, automatically avoiding danger ect. Some modders of 0ad would call these changes “quality of life” improvements, but the result is the destruction of gameplay.

i am not sure I undertand 2nd paragraph.

Regarding 1st one: I don't think there's "best" balance. It really depends on what type of game you want. 

I think you can automate a lot things and still have good game. For example , (extreme) example: you have FreeCiv/Cilization or Heroes of Might and Magic 3 games - you don't have micro and APM requirement at all there, but it's still good game. It's extreme example, but you get point. 

Thing is, if you remove mechanical requirements, you need to add complexity elsewhere. HoMM has many resources, upgrades, location and possible decisions. FreeCiv has many tech paths, city improvements, units, etc. Mechanics doesn't help there. You need to read and learn a lot there. 

For 0AD, I really think we need to constantly look at AOE 2 but keep 0AD unique and not just bad copy of that game. But those fundamentals need to be taken into consideration. 

Also overall 0AD players skills are lower then AOE 2 - so it's good to keep that on mind and make sure it's not too APM demanding. With time, as players' skills progress, you will need to switch more towards mechanical demanding game to make sure top players are not bored. 

Edited March 19 by BeTe

[ffm2]

26 minutes ago, BeTe said:

Also overall 0AD players skills are lower then AOE 2 - so it's good to keep that on mind and make sure it's not too APM demanding. With time, as players' skills progress, you will need to switch more towards mechanical demanding game to make sure top players are not bored.

I don't know about this part. I haven't played AOE2 in so long that I can't say anything about it. AFAIK borg and Valihrant were also good AOE2 players. I don't think one should change the complexity based on the current skill of the lobby users.

I think it would be interesting to see statistics of nr. of players over the time. How a releases draws in players, how it may go down over time. Maybe with elo ranges.

For myself I can say that I don't have as much of a competitive drive as before "enhancement mods" were around.

[seregadushka]

11 hours ago, Deicide4u said:

The result is tolerance of macro mistakes. 

If this feature gets in, all I have to do in the first 10 minutes of the game is set my CC and Barracks to produce certain batches of units, set Auto-train to ON and never touch those buildings again until I get to the City phase to unlock champions.

I don't know about you, but this simply awards laziness and kills the fun of actually managing your production.

This makes you look like a cheater, If your  have only question is to setup three barracks. Enabling auto-queue doesn't eliminate the resource supply.

If you came to my topic to stretch it to 5 pages, so that even the developers refuse to read it, then you are a troll. Choose for yourself.

Poking the barracks every 30 seconds is not a game, it's the job of an elevator operator. I want to manage the war, not the queue in the cafeteria.

Edited March 20 by seregadushka

[Deicide4u]

4 hours ago, seregadushka said:

If you came to my topic to stretch it to 5 pages, so that even the developers refuse to read it, then you are a troll. Choose for yourself.

I'm actually one of the first who understood what you're trying to introduce to the game. That's why I've reacted the way I did.

I'm sure the developers understood, as well. Your incoherent, strawman analogies and personal insults have prolonged the discussion and pushed it on to a different path. 

It's good that you're acknowledging this. There's nothing more to add, honestly. 

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

Well my point wasn’t to copy design decisions that aoe2 makes, but to highlight how automated features should  be left unoptimized for better gameplay results. Aoe2 is just a good example of this.

I agree that in general aoe2 has a much higher skill level than 0ad at the top level, but that doesn’t at all mean that we need “easier” mechanics, there should be no skill ceiling. Just because high apm can help players win the game, doesn’t mean apm is “demanded” by the game. A good game is one where a bad player can learn a lot of a certain mechanic, win more as a result, and still have a lot left to improve in that same mechanic.

[Thalatta]

These rants were hilarious to read.

I never used auto-queue in other games, but once I started using in 0 AD, I liked it, and now I get annoyed when I have to set it up again because I run out of resources for a few seconds, so I get where the proposal comes from. But this attitude of “this is the only right way, look at this picture and implement it” is going to go nowhere. I disagree that these automation things are letting “the game play for you”, it would be a poor game if clicking on portraits is such a big part of it, I think better if it concentrates its complexity in other aspects, but maybe since tactics is not a big thing yet that’s how players find the fun. I think AoE2’s auto-scout resembles more letting the game play for you. I guess I used it back then, but I haven’t missed it in 0 AD.

So, it’s all a matter of balance, it’s not about what’s better or worse, just different kinds of games are being proposed, and as someone said, “if you remove mechanical requirements, you need to add complexity elsewhere”. Many arguments are being made on the basis of competitive clickiness, but it’s wrong to think that’s the only right way to play a game, and even an online game could be challenging and fun with less clickiness and more thinking. It’s just a choice, but I think many more people prefer the latter, the impression here of course will be the opposite because of a biased selection: online-players are actually a minority, they just seem overrepresented online for obvious reasons.

[guerringuerrin]

29 minutes ago, Thalatta said:

These rants were hilarious to read.

I never used auto-queue in other games, but once I started using in 0 AD, I liked it, and now I get annoyed when I have to set it up again because I run out of resources for a few seconds, so I get where the proposal comes from. But this attitude of “this is the only right way, look at this picture and implement it” is going to go nowhere. I disagree that these automation things are letting “the game play for you”, it would be a poor game if clicking on portraits is such a big part of it, I think better if it concentrates its complexity in other aspects, but maybe since tactics is not a big thing yet that’s how players find the fun. I think AoE2’s auto-scout resembles more letting the game play for you. I guess I used it back then, but I haven’t missed it in 0 AD.

So, it’s all a matter of balance, it’s not about what’s better or worse, just different kinds of games are being proposed, and as someone said, “if you remove mechanical requirements, you need to add complexity elsewhere”. Many arguments are being made on the basis of competitive clickiness, but it’s wrong to think that’s the only right way to play a game, and even an online game could be challenging and fun with less clickiness and more thinking. It’s just a choice, but I think many more people prefer the latter, the impression here of course will be the opposite because of a biased selection: online-players are actually a minority, they just seem overrepresented online for obvious reasons.

I’m not sure whether you’re aware of what kind of automation is actually being discussed.

I agree that you can’t really say one thing is better than another, or that one approach is “how it should be” and the other isn’t. In the end, it comes down to consensus about what a community wants or accepts as valid and what it doesn’t. The case of AoE2 is quite illustrative: a feature like 0 A.D.’s vanilla auto-queue is considered cheating in the multiplayer scene. Is that right or wrong? That’s not really the point. The real question is whether there is a broad consensus around one gameplay mechanic or another.

The issue is that, when playing against a human opponent, the sense of fair play matters. Whether certain features are accepted or not is part of an ongoing discussion and a necessary consensus in any community.

This debate has been going on for years and has been approached in different ways. Some have led to a good, inclusive understanding despite disagreements. In other cases, things like this happen, where someone shows up out of nowhere and starts treating everyone like id**ts, and nothing productive can come out of that.

[AlexHerbert]

On 18/3/2026 at 4:05 PM, seregadushka said:

I don't allow myself in such aggressive attacks : "write your mod, code, the whole game." This is an attempt to humiliate. It's even worse if such words come from someone who thinks it's really a matter of 10 minutes. His level is clear. 

I have given examples when such "write it yourself" are heard only from illiterates. This is not the first time for me. 

My children's code is in JavaScript, but not in C++. 

Or can text suggestions be made only via GitHub?

I geniunely recommend you to learn how to play.

Top players in the game don't use any automated training system.
If you think that recommendations of doing your own mod is "humilliating," then will be faster for you learn the game mechanics than make a mod. GG.

Edited 10 hours ago by AlexHerbert
Change word "that" for "than"

[Grautvornix]

If it was for SP only, I would recommend this as an optional setting to chose from. For MP games I am not so sure.

[Thalatta]

2 hours ago, guerringuerrin said:

I’m not sure whether you’re aware of what kind of automation is actually being discussed.

Well, this started with "I think stopping the birth of new units due to lack of resources is a big mistake", and "unit production queue should be restored automatically when resources become available", and "This is incorrect. This can be considered a bug" (I just copy-pasted that last one because it's funny :D). Then I said "I get annoyed when I have to set it up again because I run out of resources for a few seconds, so I get where the proposal comes from". I guess I'm aware of what's being discussed, unless I missed something in between all the mayhem.

I totally agree with "the sense of fair play matters", in fact I take it to such an extreme that that's why focusing on thinking and not clickiness seems fairer to me. The first criteria is fair only between players that have memorised not only at which time what building orders must be executed, but also have a click rate only achievable by playing often, while the second criteria puts a broader audience at a similar level, by allowing more creativity and less mechanicality. This is not a problem just with this game, this is a known problem for many games, even chess has this problem, and that’s why variants like Chess960 have been created. That doesn’t mean that variant is not competitive, and having people answering “learn the game mechanics” to people that question the status quo is misleading. I completely understand that for many here the second criteria might not look as fun or challenging, although I think this is a preconception rooted on habit, but I would instead ask myself which criteria would make the game grow more (if that's even intended).

Edited 9 hours ago by Thalatta

[guerringuerrin]

28 minutes ago, Thalatta said:

Well, this started with "I think stopping the birth of new units due to lack of resources is a big mistake", and "unit production queue should be restored automatically when resources become available", and "This is incorrect. This can be considered a bug" (I just copy-pasted that last one because it's funny :D). Then I said "I get annoyed when I have to set it up again because I run out of resources for a few seconds, so I get where the proposal comes from". I guess I'm aware of what's being discussed, unless I missed something in between all the mayhem.

I totally agree with "the sense of fair play matters", in fact I take it to such an extreme that that's why focusing on thinking and not clickiness seems fairer to me. The first criteria is fair only between players that have memorised not only at which time what building orders must be executed, but also have a click rate only achievable by playing often, while the second criteria puts a broader audience at a similar level, by allowing more creativity and less mechanicality. This is not a problem just with this game, this is a known problem for many games, even chess has this problem, and that’s why variants like Chess960 have been created. That doesn’t mean that variant is not competitive, and having people answering “learn the game mechanics” to people that question the status quo is misleading. I completely understand that for many here the second criteria might not look as fun or challenging, although I think this is a preconception rooted on habit, but I would instead ask myself which criteria would make the game grow more (if that's even intended).

Sure, I understand you. I also don’t think that arguing “learn to play” contributes much. For me, the key point of the discussion is how to reach a consensus—how to bring both “playstyles” closer together without pushing everything to extremes. And I’d like to elaborate a bit on this so you understand what I mean.

There’s a big difference between allowing the queue to resume once resources are available and a mod that assigns batches of units sized exactly to fit each building automatically and at instant speed. Moreover, the mod in question (ModernGUI) doesn’t simply leave a preassigned production queue; as a player, you can choose the composition of your army—for example: 40% javelineers, 40% pikemen, and 20% cavalry—and the mod will produce units in batches, assigning them to the queue just 1–2 seconds before the currently produced unit finishes. This also optimizes resource usage, since you keep them available until that exact moment. Then, if you run out of resources because you used them elsewhere, as soon as you have resources again, the mod automatically resumes production. Of course, there are caveats—you can’t say it’s perfect. Additionally, the mod includes some very interesting GUI improvements that, in my opinion, would be very positive to incorporate into vanilla. In other words, for me this isn’t a black-and-white issue. It’s true that the vanilla 0 A.D. system has some fairly clear functional bugs, and there is ongoing work to improve them. If you haven’t tried the mod already, I invite you to try it yourself so you can compare it with what I’m saying.

Sure—against the AI, use whatever mod you like. Personally, I find it frustrating to lose a match to someone and then realize they were using this mod. There’s also been a lot of discussion about transparency—whether people should disclose when they’re using it. And in my experience, until you watch a replay and notice it yourself, players usually don’t tell you.

It’s true that many people aren’t deliberately hiding it. In my experience, most players who use the mod don’t feel like they’re cheating; they just enjoy the game more that way. Some at least acknowledge that it helps them play better; others argue they would play just as well and that they simply find it boring otherwise—something I personally find very hard to believe, since the advantages of this training system seem quite obvious to me.

That said, it’s natural that someone who doesn’t use that mod and plays against someone who does might feel it’s unfair. It’s humanly impossible for a player not using the mod to perform all the tasks that someone using it can, especially in battle scenarios where, while one player has to manage unit production, the other can keep clicking in combat while the barracks are practically producing on their own—as long as you have houses and resources, it will keep going. In other words, one player can focus on microing units in battle, while the other also has to deal with barracks micromanagement. And you might say these are just different schools of play, different preferences. Fair enough—but in multiplayer, when you’re facing another human who has these advantages, it’s natural that someone might feel frustrated or that it isn’t fair.

This thread mixes many different issues. That’s why I asked whether you really knew what kind of automation was being discussed, and to what extent that automation goes. It’s not a minor debate. And even if the multiplayer community is a minority, let me say that it’s a very active one, and many people who actively contribute to the game’s development are part of it. Moreover, I think the multiplayer aspect should not be minimized at all—considering that this is an RTS, it’s only natural that it carries a certain weight.

Sorry for the length of my response. I’m terrible at summarizing my ideas. At the same time, it felt more practical to just dump this whole rant at once rather than go little by little, haha.
 

[Atrik]

18 minutes ago, guerringuerrin said:

one player can focus on microing units in battle, while the other also has to deal with barracks micromanagement.

That's often what is brought up but it might be overstated, as you can already have very low clicks per minutes assigned to managing production if you use vanilla autoqueue. From 0 to 5 apm? 5 being if it reset every 10 sec.

[guerringuerrin]

3 minutes ago, Atrik said:

That's often what is brought up but it might be overstated, as you can already have very low clicks per minutes assigned to managing production if you use vanilla autoqueue. From 0 to 5 apm? 5 being if it reset every 10 sec.

I don’t agree with this. There are different cases of this. Calculating the exact batch size for your available resources isn’t instantaneous to begin with and it changes over time. (besides 3–5 seconds in the heat of a battle is a long time). Also, we know the vanilla system is buggy so you end up with some barracks having long queues while others sit idle, and figuring out which one is idle takes time. Even when using auto-queue. All of that adds up. ModernGUI does this instantly everytime. No -or almost no- mistakes. Finally, there’s the issue of awareness: the human mind forgets things, and the more elements it has to keep track of, the more likely it is to make mistakes or forget to perform certain tasks and that all adds up over time.

[Thalatta]

@guerringuerrin Thanks for the ModernGUI explanation, I didn’t know all those details. I think its capabilities are very interesting, but maybe for a game that has a lot of complexity in other parts, and as we all know, it’s still work in progress, maybe much of that will be implemented eventually if the actual clicking has be done somewhere else (unit’s formations, abilities, more city-building, who knows).

I agree that in MP everyone should play under similar conditions (unless something else is agreed), I use the vanilla auto-queue in SP because all that clicking seems mechanical to me, not because it gives me an advantage, even when at the end I think it does, and although I don’t find the AI challenging anymore, I’d rather fight a much harder AI than deactivate auto-queue. So, it’s not that I want things to be easier, I just don’t want them to be boring, but I guess what is fun or not depends on each one. What really surprises me (and this from ignorance) is why the game in MP mode has not been made to detect which mods are being used by the players (maybe for some reason this is an impossibility?).

It’s not that I want to minimise the MP aspect of a game, it's that I feel the opposite happens too often, and I stated what problems I see with that. In fact, as I hinted, I don’t even see it as a MP vs SP issue, but more as a mechanicality vs creativity issue, which is different since both could occur in MP and SP, although in competitive MP there’s a clear tendency for mechanicality, which I find unfortunate since for example a MP battle in Total War can be fun, tactical, and not just a clicking race, but it is what it is.

[Atrik]

@Thalatta, some players, and I'm part of them, think some aspect of the game-play like formations should have a greater role in this game. And I'm fairly dedicated to make it happen, as much as the development process allows it.

My thoughts are really to try getting the game a bit away from this cheap filling of clicky gameplay toward funnier and mentally rewarding mechanics. But it is the hard path from what I've experienced. Much more work for sure. As you can see, there is also a lot of controversy when it comes to vision on the gameplay, which add up to make the triple combo : more work, slow development, resistance to change. But there are a lot of awesome people in the staff, and in this community so there is no reason to give up on making the game better, whatever the path might be.

 

 

 

Now about ModernGUI, the mod itself is bundling the work of plenty of awesome modders, and I did a lot of work too to get it where it is, I don't think it's no longer a small project as the incremental enhancement added to the UI are starting to make it something reasonably cool imho. There are so many things you can explore through the various overlays, hundreds of added stylized tooltips, and added pages. Generally the mod is named only for the "autotrain" who, even if I do like a lot for playing, is a bit clumsy in the way it is currently. I'm currently undertaking a total rethinking of it, that will resemble more to a feature that fit more naturally into the game.

[AlexHerbert]

When I started playing this game and didn’t know how to play, I looked for mods. Autotrain helped me avoid getting stuck in the early stages of matches, and the GUI showed useful in-game information, which definitely helped. However, over time, as I became more familiar with the game’s mechanics, relying on a feature that performs complex calculations—like pop cap, resources, batch size, and army composition—actually made me lazy. I started to find matches boring, and I lost control over managing my resources.

When I began playing more manually, I gained much better control over my economy and units production, maybe I am not as fast like other players that boom faster even without autotrain or autoqueue, however I definitely have more control over my game. Now I have to use my ingenuity during matches to manage the game’s variables, and that makes it more enjoyable for me.

It’s also worth mentioning that all the visual elements and large queries the mod uses can impact performance to some extent, and as we all know, multithreading is still a technical debt. The game is beautiful, with lots of details and good graphics, but when a single CPU core gets overloaded and everything starts to stutter, it really hurts the overall user experience.

Instead of focusing on overly sophisticated features, improving performance is what will truly enhance the user experience for everyone. (I know more than one case that they think they have bad PC that's why the game don't run well and is not that).

All I know is that the more players rely on autotrain in multiplayer, the more players there are that I end up not playing with. This mod should be treated like others (such as Delenda Est, Millennium A.D., etc.), with compatibility checks enabled so it’s used under equal conditions (I have seen some players avoid to host so others don't see they are using ModernGUI.) 

GG.

Edited 2 hours ago by AlexHerbert
Forgot a word

[AlexHerbert]

1 hour ago, AlexHerbert said:

When I started playing this game and didn’t know how to play, I looked for mods. Autotrain helped me avoid getting stuck in the early stages of matches, and the GUI showed useful in-game information, which definitely helped. However, over time, as I became more familiar with the game’s mechanics, relying on a feature that performs complex calculations—like pop cap, resources, batch size, and army composition—actually made me lazy. Matches started to feel boring, and I lost control over managing my resources.

When I began playing more manually, I gained much better control over my economy and units production, maybe I am not as fast like other players that boom faster without autotrain or autoqueue, however I definitely have more control over my game. Now I have to use my ingenuity during matches to manage the game’s variables, and that makes it more enjoyable for me.

It’s also worth mentioning that all the visual elements and large queries the mod uses can impact performance to some extent, and as we all know, multithreading is still a technical limitation. The game is beautiful, with lots of details and good graphics, but when a single CPU core gets overloaded and everything starts to stutter, it really hurts the overall user experience.

Instead of focusing on overly sophisticated features, improving performance is what will truly enhance the user experience for everyone. (I know more than one case that they think they have bad PC that's why the game don't run well and is not that).

All I know is that the more players rely on autotrain in multiplayer, the more players there are that I end up not playing with. This mod should be treated like others (such as Delenda Est, Millennium A.D., etc.), with compatibility checks enabled so it’s used under equal conditions.

GG.

This just reminded me of a time I used a mod in Counter-Strike where all I had to do was hold down left click, and the script would auto-target enemies and get 20+ headshots in 3 seconds. Please don’t turn the game into something like that.

 

If the mouse breaks for too much clicks you can replace it in half an hour.
If the game stutter or lag you see it everyday.

 

GG.

Edited 1 hour ago by AlexHerbert
Forgot a word... again.

[Thalatta]

1 hour ago, AlexHerbert said:

I used a mod in Counter-Strike where all I had to do was hold down left click, and the script would auto-target enemies and get 20+ headshots in 3 seconds. Please don’t turn the game into something like that.

I don't think anyone wants something like that. There has to be a separation on what is mechanical and what is (too) automatic. Basically, I'd say that if there's only one simple way to do something, then that's mechanical, and if you need a tool that solves more complex issues and/or makes choices, that's automatic. That's why I like auto-queue in vanilla, there's only one simple way to "keep producing these units from this building". That's why I don't like auto-scout, there are many ways to do it, and auto-target is much worse, the point of a FPS should be to aim first. Now, maybe many things in ModernGUI are hard to classify, and then it's a matter of consensus on what would be mechanically boring for most people, and with most people it has to be taken into account that most people here are not necessarily representative of most people overall.

Edited 1 hour ago by Thalatta
Added the "(too)" since I don't mean everything that has been considered "auto" has to enter in this "automatic" classification.

[guerringuerrin]

38 minutes ago, Thalatta said:

There has to be a separation on what is mechanical and what is (too) automatic. 

(If you haven't already) the best thing you can do is try it and draw your own conclusions.