MHLoppy

MHLoppy OP , 2 days ago

I thought Frozen Synapse's ability to let you simulate your opponent's moves was super cool - surprised I didn't end up seeing it in more strategy games (obviously not so much applicable to the normal real-time stuff though!).

MHLoppy , 7 days ago (edited 7 days ago)

I've sent him a DM on infosec.exchange (Y)

Edit: he said he's taking a look

MHLoppy , 12 days ago (edited 12 days ago)

It's a small instance with fairly low activity (322 monthly active users reported). [edit: excluding this one] The only two local magazines I know with semi-consistent activity and >100 subs are @floatingisfun and @firefox and even the latter seems to be only sporadically active right now. The head mod of the former mag (hitstun) has done some cool local CSS stuff though!

The thing about federation is that you can subscribe just fine to communities on remote instances, so that's where you'll probably end up getting most of your feed from.

MHLoppy , 1 month ago

There are types of time management which I think can still be interesting. For example, are you able to afford -- in the resources of time and attention -- optimally micro'ing this important fight? Or are you going to have to yolo it a bit so that you can do multi-task economic tasks at the same time?

Some (much?) of the problem is that (for better or worse) skilled players can and will squeeze the game to optimality in terms of win rate, and that tends to collapse viable tactical and strategic choices. Once those choices have been optimised (the game is largely "solved"), the main way to get better is by being faster, not by being smarter.

MHLoppy , 1 month ago

Rise of Nations (originally released back in 2003) had/has some interesting ideas to reduce some of the busywork:

• Worker units will automatically try to gather/build nearby after a short (configurable) delay if they're not doing anything.
• Cities (the main worker-producing structure) has a rally point option that's essentially "all nearby empty resource gathering", so you can queue a dozen workers and they'll distribute themselves as they're created.
• Production buildings can be set to loop over their current queue, letting you build continually without intervention as long as you maintain enough resources each time the queue "restocks".
• Units that engage in combat without being given an explicit target will try (with modest success) to aim for nearby units which they counter.

For the most part, none of the implemented options are strictly better than micromanaging them yourself:

• You will always spend less time idling workers if you micromanage them yourself.
• The auto-rally-point doesn't always prioritize the resources that you would if you did it yourself.
• Queueing additional units is slightly less resource-efficient than only building one thing at a time.
• Total DPS is higher if you manually micro effectively.

But the options are there when you need them, which I think is a a nice design. It doesn't completely remove best-in-class players being rewarded for their speed as a player, but does raise the "speed floor", allowing slower players to get more bang for their buck APM-wise, and compete a bit more on the strategy/tactics side of the game instead.