So I bought the humble bundle mostly because this game seemed interesting, and it sort of is but that's about all.

Like is there any way I can just play in a scenario where I either don't win after 20 seconds (or even instantly, what's up with that? About 3 or 4 scenarios I can't even play because of this) or lose after 20 seconds because I'm swamped by to many enemies? It's not very fun to try to elaborately set up defenses and then just have 3 enemy dropships crash into it all and smear all my troops across the map. The second I try to send the same number of troops as my enemies does they usually die by rubbing into each other, or their weapons constantly fall out of their hands. And if that doesn't happen they usually get stuck behind a 30cm high object, and my jetpack isn't powerful enough for anything but the lightest troops?

I see how this can be fun, but it's so goddamn difficult to efficiently manage anything. Is there some way I can zoom out and command several units at once? Some way I can set a unit to automatically dig gold? Some scenario where I can just play the game without it being completely lopsided in my favour or the AIs? Also, why don't preset buy lists save? Even when I start a different scenario they're gone already, and it takes frickin forever to add a few useful combos into there. I don't want to spend a full minute in the buy menu, only to have everything I bought ruined for some stupid reason within 2 seconds of arriving on the field.

Mostly annoyed by this all because it is fun when it actually plays, problem is that it's about 99% frustrating nonsense and 1% play.

most of those things will be in the final game (auto-dig, fixed command system) but the "smoosh and smear" dropships are an after effect common to physics games: It's controlled by physics. Filling your dude with nades and smooshing people until you explode is part of the fun. That said, this is an early build, and most of that will be fixed by the end.

I understand it's not done yet, but I atleast expected basic stuff like this to be in place already. At least a good selection of gamemodes that are decently playable right out of the box, but you have to make that yourself apparently? Or download other peoples mods? I read somewhere this has been in development for 10 years???? How is it even possible to not have any basic stuff like that included already?

Relying on AI to do anything is just silly.
The only reason that enemies can win in skirmish at all is that they're infinite,
and well, because your troops have the same AI.

If you want something done, do it yourself. Put a roof over your troops, and babysit them nonstop.
Goto-AI mode can handle most of gold digging.

hi, i’ve also just bought the game via humble indie bundle (i payed about $40, all to devs, which is $8 for the game. a little stupid you can’t distibute your money amongst the devs, since i already had machinarium and braid.)

i think (apart from the game not being finished and all), it’s the pint of the game that the ai is stupid. why would anybody send his valuable brain in a jar on a battlefield if he could get things done with ai only?

Flying sheep, that's a good point - the AI aren't supposed to be perfect, and Data has said that before. That said, they're a little too stupid right now, so hopefully it'll be fixed a bit in the future.
Hartmann, sorry to hear you're having issues with the activities - I programmed them, so it's probably my bad. Which ones in specific are making you win instantly, and what settings do you have for them (number of teams, which team you're on, difficulty, etc)? I'll try to have that fixed by the next version. We'll also be tweaking the jetpacks, because they are definitely not strong enough right now. The Presets are also a bit of a work-in-progress, so they don't work quite how they should (for instance, saving between games).
Just keep playing with the game for a bit. It really is fun, but it does take some time to get used to its quirks. In the final version, that will hopefully not be the case (or at least less so than it currently is), so stick around for a bit and maybe you'll get some more enjoyment out of it

It'd be nice if they had better path finding to be sure. A lot of the time bots don't seem to take the obvious/easy routes and instead loiter in strange places and/or trying to take the shorter, but harder path (digging through the ground rather than down a corridor.) Granted, you'd want to have some units try the digging method, but it shouldn't be the norm.

And if the AI is remarkably improved, I think it should only be active for only one or a few enemy bots, to balance the fact that you can only control one bot at a time yourself.
Otherwise, bots left to themselves should be fairly dumb like they are now, but perhaps better at not falling of ledges and accidently killing/landing on each other.

Most gamemodes where you have to setup your own base (brain vault?), I forgot exactly which ones it were but there were 3 or 4. Usually I just put myself on team 1 and the CPU on team 2. Now that I think about it, probably all gamemodes where you need to manually drag the CPU into a slot. Difficulty didn't matter I think.

That's really bizarre, I can't reproduce it on my end. Let me know if you can think of any other circumstances that might be causing it - I'd really like to fix it. Sorry it's causing you problems.

Ok, now I am weirded out because it's not happening for me anymore right now either. I'm doing exactly the same thing but I can't reproduce it right now anymore either.

Maybe it was an error on startup, because when I started it for the first 5 times or so it would force minimize during loading the game about 20 times before I got it to stay maximized, which it doesn't do anymore right now. Might be related but I dunno. Oh well, atleast I have a few new gamemodes to try out. Now lets see about an infinite money cheat.

The first few times I tried skirmish defense I had the same issue of instant winning, and like you hart, I now can play fine.

Also the AI seems to be improving slightly (Or different maps are helping)