the Slow Clickers

A friend of mine, Rob, has bemoaned the need to be everywhere at once in these games.

He knows how to play, and has a build order down, but he had two bones to pick with the game so far:

1. Too much micro needed for Rob
2. Too complex for Rob (not sure how legitimate this was, considering how he multi-facked up)

Normally I would dismiss these as the complaints of a noob, and that enjoyment would come with time, but he has played other strategy games well. For instance, I find myself getting my ass kicked at slower games like SoSE, or Total War. I have also found Rob an effective ally in larger 0K games, where people like myself can run interference for the guys who have the right idea but less micro power.

Anyway, it got me thinking, Squirrels on amphetamines (ahem) probably have an advantage in Zero-K game over the longer-term thinkers, but there must be some way to ameliorate this disadvantage with the proper choice of the following:

Strategy - (Choice of rush vs. map control)
Tactics - (Raider Tanks require less micro than Comm Rush)
Units - (Skirmishers require less micro)
Unit AI - (Assign a group to a helper CAI?)
Clever UI use - (Ferry routes, repeat build)
UI Add-Ons - (for example, the Area Mex)

If there are some ways for a more, ah, "strategic" player to keep up the crazed rodentia with 70 APM out there, I would both be interested.

Hold forth!

I take it he hasn't played StarCraft :P

Anyway, there are many things like you mentioned that help with micromanagement of your army. I can't live without area-mex. I even use it for single metal spots XD

If he is having trouble being "everywhere at once" I'd suggest for him to try and play zoomed out further. You don't need to see the units and individual fighting if you are trying to be strategic.

The auto-skirmish and fight widgets are decent. Granted, it might not always be the best idea to always fight-move in... but that is not a matter of micro. Its just knowing when to fight and when not to.

Shift-queuing economy can also really, really help. Ideally you'd have at least one constructor always building some sort of energy, whether it be windmills, solars, fusions, etc. en mass. (spread out to provide linkage ofc.)

If things start getting too fast paced I'll remind Rob to just try zooming out a bit.

Maackey: Thanks for your advice on the last two "slow clicker" categories, UI use and Add-Ons.

I will need to have him get the area mex add-on.

Any more tricks for the APM challenged?

Licho sometimes AFK's in the middle of games. He often just gives fight orders from his factory and then makes long build queues with his cons.

This might just say something about the calibre of his enemies, but he still wins a lot this way. What really wins game is taking and securing more territory faster, and staying on top of your e/m/bp balance. If anything, Zero-K handles too much for you.

ScarySquirrel: Areamex is already included in the game, just enable it with f11 menu.

Hotkeys really enable you to do things quite faster than other methods (even gesture menu is slow by comparison) so if he is having trouble with specific things being slow its a really good idea to bind them to hotkeys. Editing uikeys.txt is pretty easy already, and the Chili menu lets you bind a lot of stuff with a nice menu from ingame so you don't even have to touch any configuration files.

"Usually on builders I end their queue with a reclaim order that covers the entire map", yay doing it all the time. It makes them heroes! Martyrs! :D

You might want to put two or three different reclaim orders at the end of their queue though: One to cover your entire base, where it's save and they wont die, then a second to reclaim the front, just a tad before the enemy static defense and then a third to cover the whole map. This stops them from suiciding too early. :)

Uhm, does your friend know about the very basic hotkeys and custom formations, Squirrel? I guess I'll have to write a manual on these once, if not.

If you are playing vehicles, a great combo for just steamrolling on a flat map is 1 leveler 3 ravager.

With the repeat, tell him to think of it as deciding what proportions he wants his army to be. With my previous suggestion, his army composition will be 75% ravager and 25% leveler. It is better to think in percentages of army composition rather than numbers.

Some people like to add in 1 or 2 cons with their build, but I prefer to alt-click cons to insert them into the build queue (inserting with alt means they won't repeat) when I decide I need cons.

"(inserting with alt means they won't repeat)"
Totally did not know that either!