I am not sure why people say that ZK is a 'macro game' any more than many other RTS? Macro is very important in anything that I would call an RTS. Perhaps people like to call the large scale exponential economy games 'macro games' (think NOTA or SupComm) and lump ZK in the same category due to shared roots.
Macro is very important in Starcraft and you spend a lot of your time actively manage it to keep it ticking over. Perhaps it is considered to be micro oriented because a lot of micro is required for decent effectiveness of many army compositions.
Perhaps ZK is considered a macro game because we have comparatively intelligent units and a powerful UI. Many difficult things in Starcraft are easy in ZK. In Starcraft it is impressive when a pro player executes the kind of split made easy with line move. Kiting Marines with Stalkers can take all your attention. The reasoning would then be that the ZK UI removes all of that micro and so what remains must be a game about macro.
I think that removing this micro has revealed more micro hiding underneath. You cannot just make a battle plan and sit back. Targets will need assigning as they are revealed. Skirmishing units may have to advance or retreat. Most raiding requires you to rapidly decide and implement what you want to kill and whether your raider needs to try to survive. Both players get the powerful UI which allows them to stack layers of complexity on battles which would otherwise be limited to who can keep their Rockos at range most effectively.
The macro:micro clicks ratio is possibly higher in ZK because you tend to constantly be engaged in skirmishes and you do not have to manage each individual action of your economy.
Automation does not aim to remove micromanagement. Broadly I think I have three aims.
1. Reduce the gap between the complexity of a decision and micro required to execute it.
Say you decide that a nanoframe needs to be complete ASAP but you are at a 2x metal stall. I would call this a fairly simple decision, but without priority you would have to pause many of your other constructions to free up the metal income. You could decide that your Bandits should kite any Glaives they encounter so give them an Attack Move order (you also have to choose where they should move). Without kiting on Attack Move you would need to click a lot whenever your Bandits run into Glaives.
In these examples the number of actions required is roughly equal to the number of decisions made. The micro is introduced when you suddenly are required to make many decisions. For example your Bandits could come across a bunch of Glaives guarding a commander. You have to decide whether to keep kiting the Glaives or to run in and kill the commander. You'll have to use the set target command to communicate your decision to attack the commander. Perhaps there are some turrets around, should you target them first? Maybe it is not obvious which side to attack from. Perhaps you decloak a nearby Sniper during the battle, should you switch targets?
On top of these decisions you really have to tell your units exactly where to go because they do not know what you are planning to do from one second to the next. Messing with state toggles that fast is infeasible so we are left with line move as the best UI to communicate decisions at that speed.
Anyone who says ZK lacks micro has not had a good go at 1v1.
2. Make balance at lower skill levels approximate the balance at high levels of skill.
I would like the 'real' balance of ZK to be accessible to many people. By this I mean that the rough shape of interaction between unit types is similar between many levels of play. Obviously it is impossible for units to remain the same over all levels of play but I can at least try.
For example imagine that Bandits could not be told to kite Glaives. This would have little effect at high levels of play but it would drastically change their relationship at the level where people do not have the attention to kite Glaives (this high level of play is far beyond our
current highest level). You can imagine examples like this for every bit of automation.
Unit automation exists here to give units reasonable default behaviours. These defaults should correspond to a common way that the unit is used in high level play. This gives lower level players a taste of the real balance and mechanics of the unit without them having to execute complex micromanagement. Sure, they will be beaten by more skilled players who know when to make the default decision and when to execute the alternatives. But at least more players get a taste of how the unit should be used.
Removing bits of automation increases the time investment (in micro training) required before a new player would get to play 'real' ZK. Creating a resiliently balanced game would be even harder than it is now.
3. Let us get away with adding more complicated and nuanced mechanics.
As a designer, automation allows me to ask players to do more things at once. You can have a Rocko/Storm battle running while simultaneously attacking elsewhere with Bandits and managing your expansion. These situations will require attention and management but at least your Rogues will dance about by themselves and the Bandits will not run in and die if they encounter some Glaives. The automation will not implement any great decisions for your units but it at least maintain a holding pattern. It lowers the APM required for this level of play.
The mechanics of slow projectiles, turnrates, acceleration, blocking etc... would make interactions too complex to handle more than one at time for most people. With automation to implement some handling of these interactions they are 'allowed' to exist.
These there points are sort of aspects of the same thing. It is not really a critique of Starcraft. It is my current thoughts on what the automation in ZK does and why it is there.
