Larian Studios Forums Dragon Commander Dragon Commander - Beta Suggestion - Controles in pause mode in SP RTS

I have a suggestion for the SP part of the game:

Please add a pause mode in which we can give orders to our troops, just like in the Total War games. This way we could use the special abilities of our units much better and could plan our tactics better and even could enjoy the battle more (at least if you're no fast-playing RTS core-fan....)

I know that this is impossible for MP but I think it wouldn't be harmful to any extend to add this possiblity to the SP mode.

+ 1

In the SP mode, there already is a "bullet time" you can activate as a dragon. it may be available even without flying, to make use of the skills more easy ?

The bullet time imo I hope would be more like "Oh look your stuck in time, I'm not, trollolololo" while I can still macro and micro in real time. - but I am a RTS fan kind of thing.. :P

Pausing in single player to allow actions and such sounds REALLY cheap, as it then eliminates the "real time" from "strategy"

It's single player. If somebody wishes to play the game in relative comfort, I wouldn't deny them that because of the RTS-label. Of course, if you want to go online you'll have to get into the real-time aspect eventually, but for some people that's not even an option. (It is for me, although I'm not good.)

There are quite a few people asking for features that would mitigate micromanagement challenges.

Some of us are asking for autocast options (which would/could affect both multiplayer and singleplayer, and which are probably quite challenging to the programmers).

A single player pause-with-command feature would probably reduce the need for autocast, and be easier to implement, and not affect multiplayer at all. Also, if the campaign builds up to epic battles that you couldn't hope to manage at the required level, I'll be frustrated that everybody lets themselves be destroyed if I'm not there to tell them not to. Unless I can pause the game and tell everybody to do the right things.

+1000 - I asked for this before the beta started
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Also part of my ask was to consider 'time-outs' in multi-players (i.e, you have a limited number of fixed length pauses you can request during multi-player- typically 3 @ 30 seconds each). However, I can see how time-outs during multi-player might be more controversial - and would not be relevant if the rts in multi-player are short (5-10 minutes).
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While I'd love to see this I suspect the best method of adding it is to add a super slow time factor, something like 1% speed. You can already slow things down on the fly in single player (I believe, haven't tested it out yet) so if the slowest speed you could choose allowed for huge amounts of time to issue orders in it would let those of us who wished to eliminate the "real time" aspect of real time strategy.

For those of us with limited reactions, the alternative is to remove the "strategy" aspect.

I don't mind a pause being added to single-player, although for me, the F10 key works just as well if I need a breather to think.

I have to admit that it seems odd that someone would buy an RTS game if well, they don't want to play an RTS. (Yes, I know you can do auto-resolves in single-player.)

The RT isn't necessarily the most important aspect of the RTS, and this game is much more than an RTS at that (RP, just S and a part of the Divinity world, as well as a product made by a company that I really want to succeed because their games tend to distinguish themselves somewhat from everything they resemble), so in this particular case everything else about the game has pretty much brought me to overcome my fear and discomfort and play the RTS as well.

The pause function would mean that those who don't really want an RTS can play a similar game with focus on preferred aspects of the battlefield. If you can't cope with unmitigated realtime challenges, then it is odd to buy an RTS game with unmitigated realtime challenges, but that just means that the pause function would make it less odd for certain players to buy this game.

I think there are surely a few Larian fans who would buy the game because of the Divinity universe, the role-playing part and strategy/card part.

For example, I will never buy an RTS game for its own sake, but the whole package of DC with all its different parts makes it an interesting game to me. My first intention was to autoresolve all battles but after trying to enter the skirmishes as a dragon for a while I admit that I was coping with the RTS part much better than I expected I would. However, I still think, that a pause function in SP would be most welcome to people who are not necessarily hard-core RTS players.

I agree completely, except starcraft has an arcade where people use the editor Blizzard supplied them with, to create custom games that isn't even really starcraft anymore. At it's furthest extent it doesn't even have to use the models from the game anymore but your own custom models too.
I've seen and played games where you play only as a hero, command armies with, or without a hero, played an mmo style game, removes the UI completely, play an epic adventure, as a hero chained through multiple maps, even minigames that use the keyboard instead of the mouse and such.
Larian I believe is launching an editor with dragon commander, but I doubt it'll be as advanced as the galaxy editor, however I'm ok with that. People who play starcraft aren't allways into the rts aspect, but simply really enjoy playing the arcade maps too.

Well, Total War is the best example for such an addition. It's way too stressy to give all your orders in real time, especially if you have many (different) troops and just can't be everywhere at the same time.

There is a simultanous attack on your troops and buildings on two edges of the map? Well, you can't really care about both which is ok in MP because your opponent has the same possiblities as you. If he is faster than you, that's just fine, get better. But in SP you play against a programmed AI which doesn't reflect a real human. It can "cheat" in many ways and overpower you just by using the limitations of your eye and your hands. An AI doesn't have these limitations if it's programmed properly. An AI can control all its units everywhere on the map at the same time (or at least that fast that no human can compete). So a pause mode in SP is just a feature to make the game "more even" again. It's a way to close the gap between human recognition and abilities and programmed AI.

I guess that some experts and RTS pros don't use it and don't need it because they are experienced and use the general weaknesses of the enemy AI. But for less performant and skilled gamers like me there should be the possiblity to "slow the game down".

Just take BG 2. It's RTwP. Something like that I would like to see for Dragon Commander.

+1e500