Should micromanagement of battles be more advantageous?

How exactly did you get your fleet of 10 to beat their fleet of 20? I'm kinda curious By flanking attacks, did you mean you had your entire fleet come in on the side of a line of enemy ships, so that only some enemy vessels could engage?

While I definitely agree that micro should produce an advantage, that seems... excessive, IMO.

Flanking with the whole fleet won't work as well, as the entire enemy fleet will then move there guns to bear. Although, I previously wrote how I took out 45 cobalts with a fleet of one Kol, two cobalts, and six light carriers, the key to victory is the same: movement.

For a 20 on 10 cobalt fight, let's assume both fleets jump into an otherwise empty grav well. My 10 start north and head south to fight, while my enemy vice versa. I will then make sure that 7 of my ship fly through the enemy fleet. Most of the time, all 20 of my enemies fleet will turn to chase and attack my 7, whilst my 3 get to attack openly.

Recap: My 7 ships heading south in the midst of 20 enemy ships, all turning to head south. My other 3 ships heading south, while attacking without consequences.

I then will split the 7 in two groups, one heading south-west and the other south-east. The enemy fleet, too, splits to follow, while my three ships focus fire and chase the smaller of the enemies two groups. By dividing and conquering in the manner, I can lessen the advantage my enemy has over me from the 10-20 to groups with ratios of 7-10 and 3-10. Usually, by running the 3 in circles, I can focus fire the group of 7 to beat the enemies' 10 with little or no damages because of tactical retreats of one or two ships at a time. I think it should be noticed that even when the odd are even, I use tactical retreats of badly damaged ships to save them from destruction. This is very important when outmatched.

This post is getting long so I hope you get a understanding of the basics I am talking about. This is not the be all end all strat, but is one way that you can currently win any battle, even outnumbered.

Once again the question is: Should this advantage be SO extreme where I can beat an enemy fleet double my size?

I think that the question itself may be confused. If you don't want tactical decisions to come into play and just want the numbers themselves to work out the victory then play GalCiv2. Its a great game, but I think the developers of sins are trying for something different here.

Are you suggesting that the range of tactical options should be limited so that people cannot make either tactically brilliant or tactically stupid moves? Consider the following:

I take my fleet of 5 ships into a gravwell with 15 ships (where each ship is of the same strength). I group my ships together while my opponent spreads his ships across the gravwell as much as he can. I go up to each ship and destroy it one at a time, destroying each one before they can do any significant damage to my ships. My five ships beats his 15.

Are you asking whether this should be allowed to work in the game? If you say no then I think you are looking to play a different kind of game that does not involve tactical combat. If you say yes, then you contradict your claim (or suggestion) above that micro-management should play a less significant role in determining the winners of battles.

Tactical combat is part of the game and to succeed at the game you will often need to devise better tactics than your opponent (just as I will have to run faster if I want to win a running race).

If your question is better interpreted as a criticism of the present AI, then I agree that it needs improving, but your question misaddresses this.

Or if your question whether too much micro management of battles will make one's whole empire unmanageable (due to our having rather limited attention, perceptual and interface capabilities), then I would also agree. I think there is a serious danger of the combat in sins requiring too much attention (and micromanagement). This is why think a very sophisticated tactics governor would be great. You could still devise better tactics than your opponent for your fleet, but you need not micromanage it yourself.

Nickname Nick, what your talking about sounds more like the AI needs improvement

Yes, I am aware much of this advantage will go away with each iteration of the AI. Yes, I believe that using superior tactics should confer some advantage. And yes, I do seem to have two concerns:
1. That combat AI is not (yet) able to win... really any battle against a micro-intensive player
2. The current combat scheme rewards a micro-intensive player too much

I think my first concern can best best explained as currently, all AI combat is static. Dynamic combat will defeat a static combat. No matter how good the AI eventually gets at chasing down ships, if it then still tries to stop and shoot, more manual dynamic movements will defeat it. In general, the AI does not utilize offense tactics in fleet battles. It only reacts. That is not to say it does not attack, but once engaged in combat, all tactical moves are counters, except retreats.

My second concern is tied to the first. Proper tactics and such maneuvers should be valued, but that currently they confer too much advantage. Of the example Red gave:

This isn't really going to happen (yes it could w/ wp range) in the game. What does happen is 15 chasing 1, with the other 4 chasing it. With many movements queued up, the one ship may stay just out of attack range, I have seen it happen. Yes, the more evolved the AI the better, but there will still be some advantage gained to micro-ing due to my first concern.

So, yes, I'm thinking about Beta 3, in which I have many fleets, each involved in separate battles. Do I really want to jump continually back and forth to manual move and re-move my fleets/fire groups/lone ships? But what if my enemy is doing this? So, yes, I guess I want your magically tactical governor, or whatever you call it, to be told in advance when certain ships should maneuver.
But what the hell is that and what are you proposing?

And still, What do you think about this advantage that is gained by micro-managing combat?

Very Roughly, what I have in mind for the tactical governor would be more for defence than offence. This is not to say that I don't think it would be used for both, but I usually like to give my attention to my offense (where I do not have the advantage of system defences) and hope that my defence in other systems can hold their own. As you rightly point out, a smart opponent micro-managing their fleet will easily destroy my defences if I cannot micromanage in response. If I am engaged in another battle then I cannot do this.

When I talk of a tactics governor I borrow the name from governors used to manage cities or planets or whatever in empire managing games. But, I have something more like scripts of some sort that would be organized by the player. Off the top of my head I might select a planet (and its gravwell) and assign as its primary strategy "attack with bombers". This general strategy would basically include a template with various slots in which I can assign different ships (or ship types) to play certain roles wthin that general strategy. In the various defence slots of the general strategy I might assign all flak frigates "Defend against bombers and fighters". I could pick defence priorities (such as hangars) or just leave it general. Perhaps there could be a "skirmisher" or "Support turret" slot that I could assign LRM frigates to. I could also set the fleet (and static defences) to concentrate fire on ships (giving priority to different kinds of ships). What could also be cool is a "lure" tactical role slot to which would assign commonly targeted ships which would try to bring enemy ships that are likely assigned to attack them into the attack range of a nasty ambush (group of kodiacs perhaps).

It is not as if I have this all worked out. I am pulling this out of my *ss.    It would indeed be a feat to pull this off without making it way too technical for most players. But it could be seen as optional details you could use and you could perhps save certain strategies which you can use later. Then again, micromanaging ships is also optional. The benefit of my suggestion is that it would help reduce the demands made on the player's attention but still allow the player to make a difference in their tactical decisions. You could still micromanage your own fleet, but you don't have to and you would likely stand a better chance of winning a battle you are not attending to (even though your opponent may be micromangaing it).

In regards to what I think of the advantage that is gained by micromanagment. I think that the game is not just a tactical game and also involves developing an empire. I think it is a shame if I have build a good solid fleet and put resources towards research to make it stronger, only to find that I lose that fleet in a battle against a much weaker force that I was not attending to. I think your concern may be (and I think mine is) that micromanaging battles should not determine victory more so than the other factors involved in carefully planning one's empire. Why should I lose a battle that I have way better odds in (because I planned my empire better) simply because I am busy micromanaging some other battle? You shouldn't really. That's why a tactical governor would be good. It is not just a number comparison between fleets and it is not micromanagement, but it still resolves battles based on my tactical decisions (that I set in the tactical governor).

Sorry about the length of this.   

NO, I don't think micromanagement of fleets should make too big a difference. Strategic decisions like when and which system to attack and tactical decisions like how to approach the planet, what fleet composition to use etc. should have 90% of weight at least.

Micromanagement-heavy games simply mean CLICKFEST. Which is (so I think) what Sins is NOT all about.

But what Nick is talking about IS tactics. Tactics are how you win battles. Look at classic naval warfare: tactics include raking, positioning yourself so your enemy is down wind of you (giving you more manuevering control and limiting his). That's the equivalent of naval "micromanagement". The execution of the tactics requires specific orders and commands, they don't just happen automatically. That execution is called micromanagement.

Micro is not about a clickfest, it's about playing smart

Yes, I see I didn't read his post too carefully... The thread title mislead me. Sorry.

I want some magical AI to know how I want my battles to go, but I'm not going to wish for it.

With regards to "Tactics" and "Micromanagement" and "Clickfests" - Let me further elaborate.

Yes, I think strategic and empire wide planning as well as fleet building should be a major factor in winning. However, each "battle" is played out in one grav field and usually consist of two fleets and either aprox one large reinforcement or a trickle of some reinforcements. I think that "Tactics," like flanking (attacking from two (or more) sides) or jumping in a second prepared fleet at the right moment, should effect the local battle.

My concern, is since currently combat is static, using "micromanagement" a human player can keep combat dynamic. This dynamic, moving micromanaged combat confers great advantage against none moving, static combat, like the current AI. My problem is that this results in "clickfests" in order to continue to out-maneuver that static enemy NOW. If my enemy then uses this type of moving, micro, combat, I will need to "click" even more.

I think micro-managing combat to use battlefield tactics should confer "some" advantage. However, currently I think it is too much, and am unaware how to better it.

I know this post, as well as topic is long and some terms are being confused because of it. Hopefully this clears up my opinion. Still, should INTENSIVE micromanagement (clickfests) confer this advantage?

I think we dont call it micro , I call it expert meanuvres. I think there are enough expert meanuvres to be done in the "macro game" and more to be discovered when we get multiplayer and it will satisfy the hardcore fans.

Forexample a neat tactical meanuvre for me, is to send light carriers 20 seconds ahead of my main fleet. Once the carriers enter the fray , they send out their fighters to neutralise the bombers. 20 seconds later my fleet arrives and hopefully the bombers will have been destroyed.

so in summary , I think micro can work on many levels. Just sins is one level above homeworld so what is deemed micro or expert tactical stuff is just done through the moving of phaselanes and stuff.

But should 10 cobalts be able to destroy 20 cobalts using said "expert meanuvres"?

I don't think it is in any way unfeasible to set up a tactics governor. I have, admittedly at a rather abstract level, worked out several ways by which AI's could be built to do this. If you already had a more generic AI that assigned weightings to the different tactics it engages in then it would one easily have players change the weighting for different types of tactics (targetting priorities, safety thresholds etc.. It's not at all magical

BUT!, the difficulty is making a user-friendly tactics governer. That could be tough, but I think it may be do-able.

I still think that people are mis-identifying the issue somewhat. It is not a matter of whether "expert manoevers" requiring lots of clicking should make as much difference to the winning of a battle. It is about whether that ammount of attention can be reasonably given to battles given the scope of the game. Or perhaps whether players want to give that much attention to battles. Overall the complaint is about the amount of attention the battles take from the empire-managing generally (under which I would include fleet construction and formation).

-I still think that one way that things could be made more manageable both at the empire managing and combat managing level is to reduce the number of ships (I made a post for that elsewhere).

Well, the 10 defeating 20 won't tactic explained above won't work well against human players...unless they are noobs

If you manage to use better tactics/maneuvering during combat than your opponent, you should reap the rewards.

The AI just needs to be programed to keep its fleet together during tactical combat and use focus fire.

Thanks for the feedback Nick.

Except the devs are trying to break the use of focus fire. Deliberately.

I don't believe they are. They are trying to make it less worthwhile, which is not the same. IMO the only real option to do it is to make the usual battlefields much bigger than weapon ranges.

Actually, a better way In my opinion is to have systems damages, that mean as a ship becomes more damaged it becomes less able to deal out damage.
Simply make the reduction of damage high enough that the loss of fire-power from receiving damage on all of your ships is greater than loosing ships due to focus fire.

The only reason focus fire works anyway is because of the hit point/no systems damage model 99.99% of RTS's have.

How does that affect focused fire? I like the reduction of efficiency etc. and have written about it HERE (post 378).

But focused fire is actually a valid tactics when disposing a valuable target that can't be destroyed with one hit. What do you do? You focus fire of many ships on it... And subsystems, efficency and the likes make no difference here.

In normal warfare only the terrain, weapon ranges and their efficiency against the target limit the focus.

Focused Fire is suppose to be balanced with Shield Mitigation

If you decrease the efficiency of the enemy fighters to such a degree that they do less total damage to you, even though they have a few more ships than you do from the initial round of focus fire, you will win in the long term. Their-by discouraging focus fire. Of course this would scale.

It would be more efficient to focus-fire on smaller fleets for example, because you will have less time to destroy subsystems etc.

And don't say people focus fire extensively in real combat either, unless the enemy is trapped or something. Its not exactly a good idea to sit firing suppressive fire at the same spot while completely ignoring the fact that the enemy can move.

Or they aren't watching/microing that particular battle and the AI is taking over for them.


I agree, to a point. If I have 10 cobalts and my enemy has 20, maybe even then I agree. But if I have 10 and my enemy has 100, or even 300, I don't think better tactics alone in an empty grav well should confer a win.


ALSO, forget the sub-systems. That is not in the game. If we are going to talk about focus firing, then it should be about the shield mitigation, which is the games mechanic to deal with focus firing. Also I am unsure as to how much focus fire has to do with my question. I like these ideas, and I do agree that an efficiency reduction per damage or something would be cool, but this is not the topic for it. Maybe I shouldn't complain since it was dying anyways.

When people talk about the flanking move or Kiting (stringing along enemies while staying just out of attack range). This often is exploiting poor AI and not a good example of effective tactics usage. And even when it happens against a human player a lot of times it's cause the player had their units on auto attack and wasn't watching. The problem is unlike human players who often spot this clear baiting tactic and would quickly turn and nuke the 3 ships following the simplistic AI doesn't see it coming.

And if you mean flanking tactics where say the 20 ships are all in a straight line for some reason then when your 10 ships hit the ones on the far end the rest all head over that way even if you manage to take out like 2-3 before the furthest one on the line reaches your 10 ships you are still facing like 17 ships against 10. Granted at the end of the battle you may loss 10 ships but kill 13+ but that right there IS your advantage. But getting enough advantage where you actually win the fight isn't really possible.

Now if you talk about the hunt and kill method where the 20 ships are all scattered around and you pick them off one at a time that really isn't 20 ships vs 10 ships. That is 20 separate battles with 10 ships vs 1 ship. In which case yes that is totally acceptable to win but that's not what your talking about when you say a 20 ship vs 10 ship battle. Just because the ships are in the system doesn't mean they are part of the battle. Their Auto Attack range could be turned do so they don't attack unless you move in range.

Most tactics people refer to RTS that they often use against the AI are simple exploits of bad AI decision making. That's not to say their aren't valid tactics to be used and taken advantage of it's just some of the most obvious ones your average human player wouldn't fall for but the AI does. The biggest example is Kiting. The AI shouldn't be so dead set on targeting a curtain ship that it ignores everything else around it. Instead it should focus more on the closest threat like my fleet of frigs instead of tring to chase down that colony ship.

Its called "defeat in detail" or "divide and conquer"

Yes, I guess one could say the main problem currently is with the underdeveloped AI and "kiting," and I did try to explain my examples of my posts above, but I think that intensive micromanagement, "click" "fest" "ing", or "kiting" are going to stay. I hope and believe that the advantage gained by this will diminish, but stay due to the imperfective nature of programming. That said I still believe battlefield tactics should confer some adv.

My question pyro, and anyone else, is do you have an answer to my posts' question and not just another name for the problem?