Dawn of War 2: IGN preview plus brief gameplay video

[Stark]

False dilemna, but whatever. Relic aren't going to do anything interesting with it, so the bit of automation in the OP is still staggering in it's outlandishness.

[Covenant]

I think that's too much automation and removes too much of the player's focus.

The things to automate should be the things that require no decision making.

Infantry moving to cover, for instance, isn't a decision. You always want your infantry in cover if there's cover to be in, so they should do that by themselves. You might not always want your infantry to use their grenades at the start of a conflict, because there might be a juicier target just around the corner and you don't want to wait for cooldown though, so they should be manual.

Base building in most RTS games hasn't really been a decision path either. In DOW it was bascially down to whether you build advanced infantry or vehicles first, and that could be handled with doctrine paths (which are always on screen, so less faffing about scrolling).

I agree. What I was disagreeing with that the default level of automation should be "do my raids for me, protect my base for me, build my base for me," level of automation. At some point the game is simply playing itself, and what you're going to get is a bad experience because the AI is going to do dumb things. This isn't to say we keep units as brainless squads unable to carry out simple, Easy-level defensive tasks on their own, but that automation is not a panacea for out-of-control micro. The solution for that is removing micro, and frankly macro too, and letting us focus our energy on the combat ourselves.

I've always been of the opinion that basebuilding is an unnecessary distraction that could really be better boiled down to a landing pad and some strategic points to secure--or just strategic points, and let people deploy troops into any area they have secured, ala the troop-calldown powers of C&C3.

However, I do believe some things related to combat response should be automatable, such as interception of air forces by other air forces. C&C generals actually had a button for that, which was astoundingly useful, but manually selected air patrols still won overall due to facing. What they need is a wider range, or ideally, the ability to simply click on your airfield or Airforce overlay and assign some forces to CAP, and some to reserve (like not putting your A-10's on patrol, but leaving the F-16's on automated sky scour mode).

I would even enjoy a "commander" AI that I could assign to a unit, either by adding an Officer to a group of units, or simply letting them be automated with a goal, but I think that at this point it's starting to get messy unless you've got Supreme Commander size battles going on where there's a huge strategic map to worry about in addition to the tactical shoot-outs. In a game like CoH, you have relatively few units that an automated 'raid bases' unit AI seems a little silly. I don't have a real issue with it, and I'd include it, but I think it's almost gone too far by then. There's really no risk of an AI ever playing the game BETTER than a person, especially if we remove the moronic automation of clicky powers that require so much stupid micro (I'm definately with Stark on the grenades thing) and simply roll it into the averaged-out performance of the units... along with things like taking cover.

But you'll need to be cautious. Eventually you'll automate so many things that you start to lose control. I really hate feeling like the game is working against me, or taking control that I need away from me, and making the game confusing. Simplify the game's features, reduce the amount of micro even in the game at all so there's less to 'automate', and then give me some basic options for assigning a behavior to a unit. Bam! Done.

[Cykeisme]

In CoH, they were a significant power in an infantry vs. infantry conflict, because they could be dropped behind cover and fuck a whole squad over, so if there was no limit on their use infantry battles would just be grenade spam battles, and cover would be much less significant (dancing would be the in thing again, to stay out of grenade blast).

False dilemna, but whatever.

Considering the grenades are much more effective than standard gunfire, they need to be limited in some way.
I can think of either having them on a cooldown timer, or having a limited number of them per squad.

If they're limited, they should definitely be under player control rather than automated in their use.

Or perhaps the problem is that they're too effective relative to gunfire? Gunfire is toned down from realism, but the grenades are not. If their lethality was scaled down from real life in equal amounts, they wouldn't need such severe supply limitations in the first place.

What were your thoughts in this Stark?

[Stark]

It's a false dilemna because there are OTHER WAYS OF DOING IT. As you yourself say, they could be limited (although that's just another form of micro) or they could be less spamtastic and automatic, or they could just be another weapon, etc. Sure, the way they're massively powerful in CoH would make them difficult to balance as an auto weapon (although frankly, if a squad with no orders is attacked and is in position to throw a nade, it's asinine to force the player to go back and do it), but that doesn't mean it's RTS Law that nades be micro'd to fuck.

As I said, WiC has both micro'd abilities and automatic ones - you don't have to trigger the special 'air attack' weapon for infantry, for instance, or machineguns or whatever. You DO have to micro special attacks, which are usually significantly more powerful, but again many of them could easily have an 'automated' option as they have limited roles - but WiC doesn't require it due to small group sizes.

I agree that the real issue is that in CoH they're so powerful, and battles can turn on the nade micro.

[Cykeisme]

Indeed, the problem is their power. Having the 'automated' option to allow the AI to use grenades without oversight is nice, but it would be patently inferior to controlling it yourself; the AI might throw the powerful, limited (cooldown) grenade at a single enemy instead of a big group of them.

Entirely alternatively, if grenade power relative to firearms was in line with reality (either both very lethal, or both toned down), they wouldn't be overpowered.
Thus, they wouldn't have to be limited, and troops that are equipped with frags can toss them whenever the AI thinks it's expedient with no fear of waste.
I think this is okay as well, but it does limit player interaction a bit too much.

I suppose if there were adequate levels of complexity in other areas- if there were enough other factors the player could control - that decide which side wins a battle, then we wouldn't need artificial micro-intensive abilities like powerful grenades.

CoH is already decent in this area, though, with cover and flanking etc, perhaps the killer nades are unneccessary?

[Mr. Coffee]

Interesting, I don't suppose you know where to find it?

Look on filefront for Dawn of Skirmish for DoW:Dark Crusade. Not sure if there's a version for Soulstorm yet.

[Seth]

To be honest, I think the problem with grenades in CoH is that they're so very inconsistent between factions. Grenadier grenades are next to useless, while American grenades can kill entire squads, more like the Stormtroopers' bundled 'nade. I'm not sure where Commando grenades fall in the scheme of things, because Commandoes don't really need grenades. The moving out of cover thing is annoying, but I like the micro to be honest. It's how I do mean things like beat Lonestar's StuGs with Tetrarchs, and just make Shep's losses all the more total. Then you get top players like Nystrom who have ungodly micro abilities.

It would be nice if they did throw grenades on their own, but I also like the munitions costs and I'd not want the AI auto throwing grenades if they're going to run down my munitions. It does mean that you have to pay more attention to your units, but that's useful for wearing down the person your playing against. That's why I like Panzer Elite and Scorched Earth, the booby traps require a lot of micro to defend against, road blocks delay very effectively, sector arty is basically area denial for two minutes and that first 100% accuracy arty round is great for dealing with blobs, and the Hummel does bad things to anything it hits. Used right they're great for wearing someone down mentally.