A ship commanded by many players gets better stats and abilities

[JinM]

So I just had the quick idea, that it would be great to have multiple players commanding one ship.

Even though sadly, it's hard to implement. And the given Starmade combat mechanics give us a hard time for making it work in a fun and balanced way.

My ideas:

Add a control chair for passengers. Functions of this chairs:

Turrets
Those control chairs can get c-v linked to turrets. Only the linked turrets are shown in the chair's hud, but the same turrets can be accessible for multiple chairs. If the control chair is in use, the linked turrets get a damage and shield boost under certain circumstances.

How to calculate the damage and shield boost? When a passenger controls a chair, he can select, which turrets get a certain boost. The boosts are mass dependend: A level one turret damage boost can only be forced onto a collective turret mass of 500k. When multiple chairs are in use, the boost points are divided evenly, but the chairs are able to give their points ot another chair too. The boosts are only aviable, if a chair is controlled. Higher boost levels need more chairs in control.

The chair has the ability to set a common target for groups of turrets, example: Group 1: Point Defense; Group 2: Missiles; Group 3: Beams. A set of fighters approaches and the chair commander sets his beam group to attack these selected entities.

Fleets and Hangars; Drone remote control
Why not being able to access a 5x5x5 sector sized minimap, that lets the passenger command the fleet, and take over control over different drone ships.
Select a target for groups of your drones: Enemies mothership ship parts; Enemies formation; Defend position; Attack sector part.
Control a drone: A controlled drone is able to function as long as it is within a 3 sector radius range from the mothership. If it overheats or you are outside of the radio range, you loose contact. And it would be great, if you could make a formation: The player controls one drone, and other ai controlled drones keep a selected formation or position relative to the player, and try to mimic the players maneuvers.

Information war
The passenger should be able to mark and label parts of an enemie's ship: Things like: Attack this turret first (label: 1: turrets), after this focus your fire on the shield boost chambers (label: 2: shields), and lastly focus your fire on the generator (3: generator).
Also the passenger could be able to make label and waypoints right into the sectors, that get displayed just like ships or stations, and are visible to all other ship captains of drones etc.
Also a passenger could control a scouting drone, that can gather more information about the ship, if it uses his scanners with a close range to the ship.


I could go on. But I know that all this ideas will never be able to get implemented into the game. They are too complex in gameplay, complicated to code, and basically make a second game within the game. I wanted to share my thoughts anyway, I liked the idea. :D If you have come up to here: Thanks for reading. Feel free to add your own new gameplay additions that could improve multipe players controling one ship.

 

[captainairspeed]

This is an awesome idea and it would be sweet if a simpler version of this system could be implemented with the command chair and have the devs slowly build up on it over time

but yeah if this is implemented it probably wont be for awhile as it would be very code heavy

 

[apelsinsaft]

These ideas have some merit, as many times as it's been suggested.

I definitely would like control and communication oriented multicrew abilities on ships, like the drone remote control and the "target painting" information warfare, rather than just stat bonuses. It doesn't even need to be a chair or anything new, it could be as simple as having "console" blocks with these functions, that can only be accessed by an astronaut. The big question is how would the interfaces for these multicrew ship systems work.

Maybe the "target painter" could be a window where you select a target, and then the target appears in a box where you can rotate and zoom around a model of the target, and put little 3D gizmo markers with labels on them depending on what you find out with scanners and such. Then these labels would be broadcast to all allies. That way you could have a commander who is commanding from the flagship, but it's the helmsman who is piloting the ship and the commander is giving out orders using the labels and voice comms.

I wonder what other ideas like these could work. For example:

• A crew command console: you load up NPCs in shuttles and send them to the enemy, where the console gives you a cutout view of the target ship and lets you order the NPCs around like a real time tactics game, and similarly lets you command any NPC crew on your own ship to defend it
• Targeted abilities that the pilot can't operate, for example a targeted jamming "minigame" where the operator plays some bogus minigame to determine whether a target loses its ability to lock on to targets. Could be expanded to all sorts of "hacking" style minigames.
• Pinpoint scanners, think a system similar to in EvE, where you have to zero-in remote scanning probes on signatures in a 3D window to figure out where the enemy is. Probably best to overhaul the travel mechanics before the scanning mechanics are set in stone, though.

A lot of features could also be tied to blocks and removed from the kind of saturated menus to encourage multicrewing. Thruster setup, fleet command, weapon linking etc. This would give you a reason to actually be on the ship in astronaut form, rather than just huddling into the core and doing everything alone.

 

[Calhoun]

1. Fill your ships with AFK alts
2. ???
3. Profit

 

[JinM]

1. Fill your ships with AFK alts
2. ???
3. Profit

My suggestion, even though I might have missed to point it out, includes, that there is a maximum of boosters a ship can have, depending on its reactor size. I should have added it in the main post, but I got sloppy after realising that the suggestion is not sooo realistic.

 

[apelsinsaft]

1. Fill your ships with AFK alts
2. ???
3. Profit

1. Make the system require active input from the players for a benefit IE control bonuses rather than stat bonuses
2. ???
3. Profit

 

[Deserea]

This suggestion fails to take into account people who play alone online, play in single player only, or those who dont trust people near their stuff, and ultimately would have to allow AIs to be used to make it fair to those players, therefore making it really no different from what we have now....just saying...

 

[JinM]

This suggestion fails to take into account people who play alone online, play in single player only, or those who dont trust people near their stuff, and ultimately would have to allow AIs to be used to make it fair to those players, therefore making it really no different from what we have now....just saying...

Ofcourse a solo player should loose if he fights vs. three players. And if 3 solo players try to fight versus a ship that is controlled by 3 guys, they should have a harder to beat ship, but in the end be victorious.

Are you more of a singleplayer type of guy? I understand that. But anyway: If you encounter 3 other players that are your enemy, it would make no difference, if they controlled 3 weaker ships, or only one bigger ship. You would loose anyway, as you are one person versus three. So a "fairness" argument is kinda wrong.

I think it makes the three guys even weaker, when they try to fight in one ship versus three other players that all use their own ships.

The balancing booster math I had in mind, should still favour using single ships, but making the usage of a ship by multiple players something special and noteworthy. It's an addition, not a gamechanger.

But you obviously failed, to read the whole text here...And I am kinda pissed by that. You allready know that this suggestion is unrealistic: I admitted that. So either help some guys who are happy to brainstorm and dream a little, or be a little bit more gentle with this "this makes no difference" talk.

 

[Deserea]

Ofcourse a solo player should loose if he fights vs. three players. And if 3 solo players try to fight versus a ship that is controlled by 3 guys, they should have a harder to beat ship, but in the end be victorious.

Are you more of a singleplayer type of guy? I understand that. But anyway: If you encounter 3 other players that are your enemy, it would make no difference, if they controlled 3 weaker ships, or only one bigger ship. You would loose anyway, as you are one person versus three. So a "fairness" argument is kinda wrong.

I think it makes the three guys even weaker, when they try to fight in one ship versus three other players that all use their own ships.

The balancing booster math I had in mind, should still favour using single ships, but making the usage of a ship by multiple players something special and noteworthy. It's an addition, not a gamechanger.

But you obviously failed, to read the whole text here...And I am kinda pissed by that. You allready know that this suggestion is unrealistic: I admitted that. So either help some guys who are happy to brainstorm and dream a little, or get out of this thread.

Yes i am a singleplayer type of person. I cannot play online, and if i was able to, if i came across the exact same type of ship i was flying(NO differences) that had better stats(faster ROF, more damage, as your examples) than mine, because it was controlled by more players, i would be annoyed and irritated, two ships that are exactly the same should be balanced, and a fight should be dependent on player skill, not stat boosts. If a ship has players controlling its turrets, its already at a bigger advantage than the one with AI controlling it, depending on how the accuracy setting is, no stat boosts are needed, and i would still consider that fair. My argument stands when it comes to solo vessels for solo vessels. Multiple ship engagements do not matter in this instance, because multiple ships easily defeat solo, or lesser amounts of ships, if they are built properly, no matter their size, unless their pilots are terrible.

I did read the whole the text, If you wanted to have nobody even discuss your idea in a way that you dont like, you shouldnt have posted in the suggestion forum. Yes you posted that its not realistic, that doesnt change the fact that this is in the suggestion forums, which if i understand correctly means ideas to be discussed,, which is what i will continue to do.

There is one part i would like to see added without needing another played to do it.
The ability to tell drones what to attack specifically, it would be something amazing to have as someone whos wanting to build a carrier type vessel. most of the games ive played that have drones, allow them to attack specific parts of a vessel. This i would like to see.

 

[Calhoun]

Ofcourse a solo player should loose if he fights vs. three players. And if 3 solo players try to fight versus a ship that is controlled by 3 guys, they should have a harder to beat ship, but in the end be victorious.

Are you more of a singleplayer type of guy? I understand that. But anyway: If you encounter 3 other players that are your enemy, it would make no difference, if they controlled 3 weaker ships, or only one bigger ship. You would loose anyway, as you are one person versus three. So a "fairness" argument is kinda wrong.

I think it makes the three guys even weaker, when they try to fight in one ship versus three other players that all use their own ships.

The balancing booster math I had in mind, should still favour using single ships, but making the usage of a ship by multiple players something special and noteworthy. It's an addition, not a gamechanger.

But you obviously failed, to read the whole text here...And I am kinda pissed by that. You allready know that this suggestion is unrealistic: I admitted that. So either help some guys who are happy to brainstorm and dream a little, or be a little bit more gentle with this "this makes no difference" talk.

Battles shouldn't just come down to More players = Win. Skill and build quality should be far more important than arbitrary stat boosts just because you happen to have a couple of people sitting in your ship.

 

[kikaha]

Comand chair are planned.
The ability to target specific parts/component of a ship is planned also; next update (the power one).
As for telling drones to target specific things i believe it will come "naturally" as extra fleet comands when the power update is done.

One thing tho i believe no boost whatsoever be added to a ship controlled by multi players.

 

[Brokengauge]

I agree with Deserea Calhoun & kikaha : no performance boosts, no advantages.

I also find it more productive to find out why something I've written or said has been disregarded, rather than to simply assume:

But you obviously failed, to read the whole text here...And I am kinda pissed by that.

JinM I have observed that you prefer to keep things civil and open. Don't just assume that someone is giving you shit when they disagree with you. I know you get it a lot, but that's not what was happening here.

 

[lupoCani]

Ofcourse a solo player should loose if he fights vs. three players.

Point of disagreement- A solo player, having put in the time and effort to amass more resources and firepower than three enemy players combined, should stand a fair chance of winning.

 

[Az14el]

boosts should make sense, if there's an advantage to multiple players per ship it should be 100% due to multiple players adding an actual mechanical benefit, not simple stat-boost-per-player business.

There's not currently a lot of reasons to put more than one player in a single ship vs having multiple piloted ships, that's probably the bigger issue if an issue does exist here (a multi piloted ship already won last years B&S pretty conclusively, so I'm not so sure)

 

[JinM]

Yes i am a singleplayer type of person. I cannot play online, and if i was able to, if i came across the exact same type of ship i was flying(NO differences) that had better stats(faster ROF, more damage, as your examples) than mine, because it was controlled by more players, i would be annoyed and irritated, two ships that are exactly the same should be balanced, and a fight should be dependent on player skill, not stat boosts. If a ship has players controlling its turrets, its already at a bigger advantage than the one with AI controlling it, depending on how the accuracy setting is, no stat boosts are needed, and i would still consider that fair. My argument stands when it comes to solo vessels for solo vessels. Multiple ship engagements do not matter in this instance, because multiple ships easily defeat solo, or lesser amounts of ships, if they are built properly, no matter their size, unless their pilots are terrible.

I did read the whole the text, If you wanted to have nobody even discuss your idea in a way that you dont like, you shouldnt have posted in the suggestion forum. Yes you posted that its not realistic, that doesnt change the fact that this is in the suggestion forums, which if i understand correctly means ideas to be discussed,, which is what i will continue to do.

There is one part i would like to see added without needing another played to do it.
The ability to tell drones what to attack specifically, it would be something amazing to have as someone whos wanting to build a carrier type vessel. most of the games ive played that have drones, allow them to attack specific parts of a vessel. This i would like to see.

So did I understand the following stuff right? I think you just don't like the idea from the start, that there are multiple players control one ship, and get a benefit from that. You would be totally ok, when they all would control one ship, but it wouldn't be more powerfull, than the same ship only controlled by one player.

Now I have in mind, that I can make all the suggestions and talk to you all day long, and we wouldn't get a common opinion on the OP. Because if you don't like the intitial idea, I can make suggestions all I want, to how to improve parts of the root idea. This wouldn't change the fact, that you will disagree on many of my brainstorm and dreamings, because you don't like from where I started.

You get where I am coming from? It's not like we don't like to discuss ideas, but I fear, that we two guys will not improve the starting idea, of having crew players on a ship, because of how you approach the matter. I would need to change your mind, about you liking ship improvements, when they are controlled by multiple players (doesn't matter if ship stats or other stuff/abilities: it is an advantage and in the end exactly the same ship commanded by multiple players would be better as if it would be controlled by one player).

Yes i am a singleplayer type of person. I cannot play online, and if i was able to, if i came across the exact same type of ship i was flying(NO differences) that had better stats(faster ROF, more damage, as your examples) than mine, because it was controlled by more players, i would be annoyed and irritated, two ships that are exactly the same should be balanced, and a fight should be dependent on player skill, not stat boosts.
Now this one I understand. Same ships=Same damage/shield stats. I agree that this feels different from what we are used to. And it would change the singleplayer of Starmade as well.

Besides better turret aim, is there any other game mechanic, that could make more players commading one ship more beneficial?

Real world refference (It might not change your mind but at least I can try): A ship sometimes needs more crew to fully function. But I know this is a game and real world comparissions don't help. But it's not like this doesn't make sense at all. =)

Anyway thanks for the reply, now I understand other side problems of the multiple crew players idea, and why it is even more unrealistic to implement into Starmade.

I did read the whole the text, If you wanted to have nobody even discuss your idea in a way that you dont like, you shouldnt have posted in the suggestion forum. Yes you posted that its not realistic, that doesnt change the fact that this is in the suggestion forums, which if i understand correctly means ideas to be discussed,, which is what i will continue to do.
All I read was: fail; this isn't helpful; and not many sentence marks or even some capitalized letters - So I assumed you didn't care so much, and went to some kind "defence mode" immediatelly. I am just done talking to people, who don't really like to discuss the stuff, and only write without improving the actual topic at all. Obviously you do care, so please don't think I tried to be rude to you. I just tried to see how you react to it: If there comes some usefull reaction or the same "only disagree and not helping" stuff like I often get from others. ^^

There is one part i would like to see added without needing another played to do it.
The ability to tell drones what to attack specifically, it would be something amazing to have as someone whos wanting to build a carrier type vessel. most of the games ive played that have drones, allow them to attack specific parts of a vessel. This i would like to see.
I think we will get there one day, as this one seems to be important to the devs. Don't worry about that. =)

 

[Az14el]

there's some very real mechanical/practical reasons why real life ships need more hands to operate, we don't have those, for those we do, we have to weigh versus a very limited player base & the pilots ability to simply hotswap between pertinent cores

 

[KiraSerra]

Turrets
Those control chairs can get c-v linked to turrets. Only the linked turrets are shown in the chair's hud, but the same turrets can be accessible for multiple chairs. If the control chair is in use, the linked turrets get a damage and shield boost under certain circumstances.

How to calculate the damage and shield boost? When a passenger controls a chair, he can select, which turrets get a certain boost. The boosts are mass dependend: A level one turret damage boost can only be forced onto a collective turret mass of 500k. When multiple chairs are in use, the boost points are divided evenly, but the chairs are able to give their points ot another chair too. The boosts are only aviable, if a chair is controlled. Higher boost levels need more chairs in control.

The chair has the ability to set a common target for groups of turrets, example: Group 1: Point Defense; Group 2: Missiles; Group 3: Beams. A set of fighters approaches and the chair commander sets his beam group to attack these selected entities.

I like the basic idea of a command chair to provide system access for buddies. I have a few ideas:

• I would also allow multiple systems linked to a chair but I would only allow a single chair linked to any systems. (So, a chair can have two or more turrets linked to it but a turret can only be linked to a single chair.)
• I oppose the system boost part. It is unneeded, you already get the advantage of your friend controlling one or more systems and not the AI.
  Getting x% boost to damage, shield or anything else just because there is someone sitting in a chair linked to a system is wrong. By your logic player controlled ships should have a similar stat boost.
• I love the idea of proper control over your turrets. However it should not be tied to a control chair but the ship core. Everyone should have the ability to command his/her own creation as accurately as possible without an additional player.

Fleets and Hangars; Drone remote control
Why not being able to access a 5x5x5 sector sized minimap, that lets the passenger command the fleet, and take over control over different drone ships.
Select a target for groups of your drones: Enemies mothership ship parts; Enemies formation; Defend position; Attack sector part.
Control a drone: A controlled drone is able to function as long as it is within a 3 sector radius range from the mothership. If it overheats or you are outside of the radio range, you loose contact. And it would be great, if you could make a formation: The player controls one drone, and other ai controlled drones keep a selected formation or position relative to the player, and try to mimic the players maneuvers.

It would be really lovely to be able to remotely control your fighters, bombers, drones and such. In strategic view and 1st person as well. Upon losing contact the fighters should switch to auto pilot and return to the carrier's latest known position.

Information war
The passenger should be able to mark and label parts of an enemie's ship: Things like: Attack this turret first (label: 1: turrets), after this focus your fire on the shield boost chambers (label: 2: shields), and lastly focus your fire on the generator (3: generator).
Also the passenger could be able to make label and waypoints right into the sectors, that get displayed just like ships or stations, and are visible to all other ship captains of drones etc.

I would make this a feature for factions.

 

[JinM]

I like the basic idea of a command chair to provide system access for buddies. I have a few ideas:

• I would also allow multiple systems linked to a chair but I would only allow a single chair linked to any systems. (So, a chair can have two or more turrets linked to it but a turret can only be linked to a single chair.)
• I oppose the system boost part. It is unneeded, you already get the advantage of your friend controlling one or more systems and not the AI.
  Getting x% boost to damage, shield or anything else just because there is someone sitting in a chair linked to a system is wrong. By your logic player controlled ships should have a similar stat boost.
• I love the idea of proper control over your turrets. However it should not be tied to a control chair but the ship core. Everyone should have the ability to command his/her own creation as accurately as possible without an additional player.

It would be really lovely to be able to remotely control your fighters, bombers, drones and such. In strategic view and 1st person as well. Upon losing contact the fighters should switch to auto pilot and return to the carrier's latest known position.


I would make this a feature for factions.

Thank you for you advanced ideas on how to improve the suggestions. Sadly I will now disagree onto most of them...But non the less I like that you made some thoughts about it.

I would also allow multiple systems linked to a chair but I would only allow a single chair linked to any systems. (So, a chair can have two or more turrets linked to it but a turret can only be linked to a single chair.)
This sounds legit, but it would prevent shared control of the same turrets. In my meta the pilots are meant to ask each other which turrets they use. This encourages communication and doesn't limit the players. If an engineers doesn't like that a turret is controlled by multiple chairs, just don't link them. If you can't link a turret to multiple chairs, you won't be able to give the turret control to another player. I just have this movie scene in mind, where the astronaut A says to B: "Hey I need to make some jump coordinate calculations, please control my turrets too.".

I oppose the system boost part. It is unneeded, you already get the advantage of your friend controlling one or more systems and not the AI.
Getting x% boost to damage, shield or anything else just because there is someone sitting in a chair linked to a system is wrong.
It's just the first idea, that came to my mind, how to actually give some reason for multiple players controlling one ship. Right now you just hurt yourself, and loose a significant efficiency, if you don't have one player for each ship. I mean even if you have a ship of 2k mass controlled by 2 players, and 2 ships of 1k mass controlled by one player each, the 2 ships should allways win, if they are on the same level of engineering experience.

By your logic player controlled ships should have a similar stat boost.
I don't understand where my logic implies that. Maybe I am understanding you wrong on this one... I know there is some ingame logic...but in the end game mechanics behind games don't have to be logical (like: why do citizens in Anno need streets, when they can walk between houses), what the player needs to think about just has to be give him some depth and a new way of approaching solutions. I mean comeon why are there coins lying around in any jump 'n run game like Super Mario? This doesn't make any sense at all...They are just there to encourage the player to do a certain task. And this liberty of non reasonable game mechanics is possible in Starmade as well.

I love the idea of proper control over your turrets. However it should not be tied to a control chair but the ship core. Everyone should have the ability to command his/her own creation as accurately as possible without an additional player.
This is a nice idea. Even though I am against it (again - sorry for just disagreeing with you on everything...). Reason: I know this from other games like Starcraft, where your gameplay experience becomes a tedious fast click orgy. I don't like to force such a gaming experience onto solo players.

If I would have to choose, wether I force this fast click orgy, or a multipe player neccessity onto my players, I choose the later option. I am an older semester, and for me the fun of a strategical game is more important, than some nerds who can say "whooooah I am some esports guy who has ultra fast clickrates and thats why I am winning this game". I love chess. And the tactical depth this game has is something I like to see in other games too. And I despise this pseudo tactic bullshit in Starcraft, where the players only win, because they conditioned themself like apes to the perfect fast clickers and know every keyboard shortcut combination for every strategy... I am a bit rantily :D

It would be really lovely to be able to remotely control your fighters, bombers, drones and such. In strategic view and 1st person as well. Upon losing contact the fighters should switch to auto pilot and return to the carrier's latest known position.
Jup, exactly my thinking when I wrote this.

I would make this a feature for factions.
Exactly what I had in mind too. Thanks for supporting it. =)

 

[PLIX]

i think it would be better if it benefits...

in a different way E.G. theres a scanner you can hire an ai crew, use an ai computer or use a player crew member the way the benefits would be laid out is that an ai computer is weak and doesn't notice much, ai crew is a full crew replacement but costs a lot so only makes sense to put on special command ships or titans and the system should be interesting enough so that if 2 people wanna go on an adventure they can and will both have fun though this will yield no benefit over an ai crew
[doublepost=1495536526,1495536489][/doublepost]i think it would be better if it benefits...

in a different way E.G. theres a scanner you can hire an ai crew, use an ai computer or use a player crew member the way the benefits would be laid out is that an ai computer is weak and doesn't notice much, ai crew is a full crew replacement but costs a lot so only makes sense to put on special command ships or titans and the system should be interesting enough so that if 2 people wanna go on an adventure they can and will both have fun though this will yield no benefit over an ai crew

 

[KiraSerra]

Thank you for you advanced ideas on how to improve the suggestions. Sadly I will now disagree onto most of them...But non the less I like that you made some thoughts about it.

You are very welcome. I will try and clarify some of them in this post.

This sounds legit, but it would prevent shared control of the same turrets. In my meta the pilots are meant to ask each other which turrets they use. This encourages communication and doesn't limit the players. If an engineers doesn't like that a turret is controlled by multiple chairs, just don't link them. If you can't link a turret to multiple chairs, you won't be able to give the turret control to another player. I just have this movie scene in mind, where the astronaut A says to B: "Hey I need to make some jump coordinate calculations, please control my turrets too.".

The main reason behind my version is the issue of conflicting inputs from two (or more) players trying to control the same thing.

It's just the first idea, that came to my mind, how to actually give some reason for multiple players controlling one ship. Right now you just hurt yourself, and loose a significant efficiency, if you don't have one player for each ship. I mean even if you have a ship of 2k mass controlled by 2 players, and 2 ships of 1k mass controlled by one player each, the 2 ships should allways win, if they are on the same level of engineering experience.

Not always. If the 2 ships of 1k mass lack tactical skills they can lose against the 2k mass ship. And having two ships will always provide more tactical options just by their ability to be at two different places at the same time.

By your logic player controlled ships should have a similar stat boost.
I don't understand where my logic implies that. Maybe I am understanding you wrong on this one...

Your idea is that ship systems linked to a chair and controlled by a player should get some kind of stat boost because it is controlled by a player. If we apply that to ships then a player controlled ship should get some kind of stat boost.

This is a nice idea. Even though I am against it (again - sorry for just disagreeing with you on everything...). Reason: I know this from other games like Starcraft, where your gameplay experience becomes a tedious fast click orgy. I don't like to force such a gaming experience onto solo players.

Just by having the possibility of doing something you are not forced to do that something. (For example, It is possible to change the colour of the text of your forum posts, but not everyone does so. Because it is not forced on anyone just by the option being there.) Also, having the feature of creating turret groups and giving them orders in multiplayer but making it unavailable for solo players is wrong.

If I would have to choose, wether I force this fast click orgy, or a multipe player neccessity onto my players, I choose the later option. I am an older semester, and for me the fun of a strategical game is more important, than some nerds who can say "whooooah I am some esports guy who has ultra fast clickrates and thats why I am winning this game". I love chess. And the tactical depth this game has is something I like to see in other games too. And I despise this pseudo tactic bullshit in Starcraft, where the players only win, because they conditioned themself like apes to the perfect fast clickers and know every keyboard shortcut combination for every strategy... I am a bit rantily :D

If I would have to choose I would let the players decide what features they want to use or not. I played some starcraft with my friends and the only hotkeys I used were the ones that create groups of your units so they become easier to manage. The same feature would be really useful for turrets. (Or a target priority list of some sort like in Gratuitous Space Battles but that is another topic.)