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Video Game Delegation Penalty

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Some games allow you to set certain mechanics to "automatic" or assign certain tasks to an NPC. After all, you're The Chosen One and the only person who can stop The End of the World as We Know It! You've got better things to do than pick Healing Herbs in The Lost Woods. However, having a steady supply will help you save the world, so you ask your NPC buddy to do it. You can gather 10 herbs every day, so why is it that when he collects them, you only get five?

You've just experienced a Video Game Delegation Penalty. By setting a certain in-game task or mechanic to "automatic", or by delegating it to an NPC, you get a less desirable result than when you do it yourself.

In some cases, this may be done for game balance. If setting a tedious task to automatic yields the same result as doing it yourself, why would you ever bother? If the game offers Anti-Frustration Features or Reduced-Downtime Features, the penalty may be a logical result of taking advantage of those. In other cases, there is far less logic or justification behind it, such as it being the result of Artificial Stupidity if the Video Game A.I. is just plain bad at handling the task.

This trope is about game mechanics. If going above and beyond is required to get a preferred ending, see Earn Your Happy Ending and Golden Ending.

Compare A Quest Giver Is You, which differs in that the task can only be completed by an NPC, Manual Leader, A.I. Party, where the party is AI controlled by default, and Easy-Mode Mockery, where modifers to make the game easier in general either insult the player or reduce rewards.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    4X Games 
  • Endless Legend:
    • There is an "auto explore" feature for armies. However, the AI is extremely inefficient with their pathing at best and, at worst, will "explore" areas such as moving back and forth along the same section of coastline or directly around your home base. Since it only takes a split second to set a new path for an exploring army, you'll get much more desirable results moving them yourself.
    • Similarly, there is an "automate" option for cities. The AI is very poor about choosing what to build, and won't hesitate to drain the strategic resources you might be saving for something else to build what it thinks is best.
  • Stellaris
    • The game allows players to automate sectors and planets, assigning the AI governor to develop and manage the planets under their control. However the AI has not been capable of doing a halfway decent job for much of the game's lifespan, to the point that before the tile-system was removed it could build farms everywhere, even on tiles with minerals and a tier III mine, even replacing the rare event buildings (such as the particle collider). So players largely need to handle such things themselves.
    • The Auto Explore feature, on the other hand, is very efficient and methodical. Probably because it's an upgrade you need to research.

    Action RPG 
  • In Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin, although you can send your allies to gather resources to areas you have cleared without penalty of any kind, it is a completely different matter if you ask for them to help you with the rice farming process. And if you do so, you will have your rewards (both stats and rice production) severely reduced. So, if you want your rice harvest to be as bountiful and productive, you will have to do it yourself.

    Adventure Games 
  • Quest for Glory IV has a "strategy mode" in which, rather than the player directly controlling the Hero's actions, allows the computer to do so, based on the Hero's current skill levels and settings defined by the player. However, the AI controlling him is rather sub-par, and no matter what settings you use generally ends up using the Attack! Attack! Attack! strategy.

    Card Battle Games 
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links:
    • The game provides an option to auto-build a deck, but doing so will pick cards that are weaker than other available choices. While there are special situations where a weaker card is better, this isn't the case for the auto-builder that intends to build a generic deck.
    • There is an Auto-Duel function to have the game play a duel for you, but the auto-duel AI is both highly limited (read: just plain worse than NPC Duelists) and also coded to not use skills. Don't be surprised to see it blunder games that you could've easily won if you played them yourself. As a result, using Auto-Duel pretty much requires you to build something particularly brainless to give the AI as little room for error as possible.

    Fighting Games 
  • Modern controls in Street Fighter 6 map complex inputs for special moves onto one button. However, not only is there a flat damage reduction for a player using modern controls, some moves just aren't available with them. Over-all damage is also reduced while using the control scheme.
    • While this can be suberted depending on the character (even at top levels of play) as some, like Luke and Zangief, lose relatively little and gain 1-button reversals or command grabs, it's played completely straight for characters with charge motions (holding one direction for about a second, then putting kn the opposite direction and an attack button). Charge moves don't get any benefits motion-based specials have (no one-button/instant sonic booms or flash kicks), but still do reduced damage. This makes the benefit objectively useless, since charge characters rely on their charge moves for most of their gameplan.

    Hack and Slash 
  • In Fire Emblem Warriors, directing your NPC Allies or just letting them do their thing can allow you to take control of the map and rack up the K.O. count very quickly. The only problem with this is that you miss out on the materials of every enemy they defeat which is not good if you're farming for silver and gold material drops.

    Idle Games 
  • Armory & Machine: Workers can be used to automate tasks, but their efficiency rating is initially only a fraction of what you have by simply doing things manually and makes them underperform until you upgrade it. Furthermore, certain types of ammo can have their crafting speed boosted or amount of ammo crafted increased if you craft them manually.
  • In Deep Town: Mining Factory, this is Zig-zagged with Drones set to mining. If you give them the proper skill, they can mine even the rare resources rather quickly while online. However this is played straight when offline, when they mine even slower than the miners.
  • In Tap Titans 2, your inactive progress is generally a lot slower than your active progress unless you put several points into Silent March (increases offline speed) and Ambush (chance of finding multiple spawns per enemy), and it cannot progress past your maximum stage. Furthermore, you can only encounter the Game-Breaker (until it was nerfed) Portar during active play, who skips you 50 stages when killed.
  • Realm Grinder:
    • Subverted, passive coin gains will pretty much always be superior to those obtained by clicking, and even specialized builds only bring it up to nearly the same amount.
    • Played straight at first when you unlock autocasting, which gives a 50% penalty to mana regen. Then subverted when the next upgrade reduces it to 25%, and the third removes the penalty.
    • Subverted with assistants, who not only suffer no penalties for being used, but several factions depend almost entirely on them.
  • Zombidle: Bob falls asleep after a while if you don't actively click to deal damage, letting his monsters do the work for him (kinda the point of being a necromancer), and many items increase DPS or skulls gained as long as he's sleeping. Sloth Form is a spell that greatly increases DPS for a while, which most players have painstakingly increased to 5 minutes (the spell's cooldown). A much-hated update caused Bob to wake up when Sloth Form is used, reducing those items' effectiveness to near-zero.

    Platform Game 
  • Infernax: If on the Ultimate Good route, you can skip the raiding of the first two cultist hideouts (the third is necessary for completion) and let Tancred and his men go it alone. It results in several of them dead, Tancred criticizing Alcedor for not helping out, and an achievement titled "Sins of Omission" mocking your dereliction of duty.
  • The "Super Guide" introduced in New Super Mario Bros. Wii and used in subsequent Nintendo games during the Nintendo Wii era allowed players the option to allow the CPU to complete a particularly difficult level for them. However, they all had their penalties.
    • In Donkey Kong Country Returns, Super Kong, a white-furred invincible Donkey Kong, plays the level for the player. The player can jump in at any time and play him themselves, but items and collectibles aren't kept.
    • In New Super Mario Bros. Wii and New Super Mario Bros. U, the Super Guide (as Luigi) won't collect any Star Coins or find any secrets. Using the Super Guide will also remove the sparkle of your stars on your save file (in the former game, this happens if the block even appears, regardless of if you use it, and it's permanent. Later games allow you to remedy this by completing the level without the Super Guide.)
    • In Super Mario Galaxy 2, the Super Guide in the form of Cosmic Mario can complete the level, earning the player a Bronze Star. Bronze Stars count towards the player's Power Star count, allowing them to progress with the game, but if they want to access the Brutal Bonus Level, they need to complete those Bronze Star levels themselves.
  • In Super Mario Maker 2, if you lose all your lives while attempting a job in Story Mode you can delegate Luigi to complete it for you. You receive the full payment for the job, but Luigi doesn't collect any Coins during the level, resulting in a lower total overall. For levels without many Coins it doesn't make much difference, but on some of the later levels the amount you get from Coins in the level can equal or exceed the job payment. Dispatching Luigi is an Anti-Frustration Feature, letting you skip the more aggravating gimmick levels, but you'll have to complete a higher number of jobs overall.
  • Sonic Frontiers has a fairly large combat moveset that Sonic can pull off with various button combinations. However, one unlockable upgrade allows him to mix up any number of moves by just tapping the attack button repeatedly. The game makes note that damage output is lower this way than actually doing the combos.

    Rail Shooter 

    Rhythm Game 
  • The beatmania series has options to automate certain lanes or note types, with the most prominent one being Auto-Scratch, and older versions of beatmania IIDX having the 5-Key option to automate two of the leftmost or rightmost lanes to simulate classic beatmania. All of these options do not give you points for auto-played notes and mark your run as an "Assist Clear" as opposed to standard "Clear" status, and earlier games simply don't record scores achieved with assist options.
  • D4DJ Groovy Mix lets you automate certain types of notes, with the specific options being "Scratch", "Slider", and "Tap" (which also includes Hold notes); these options can be combined, up to and including all three of them for "Audience" mode, and can make it easier to clear songs and get score-based rewards. However, automated notes don't count towards your combo, which also means you cannot get a Full Combo, and if you have the Live Pass subscription, automated notes don't count towards Technical Score either. Auto-play modifiers will also disqualify Stage Qualifier missions.

    RPG 
  • Baldur's Gate and its sequel have various customized AI scripts that mostly work well, except that spellcasters can't distinguish when it's worth using their limited magic and when it's not. If you use a script that allows the use of spells, chances are that the character will waste them against low level mooks, while you will swap to another script and manually control when to cast a spell.
  • Counter Side:
    • When set to auto-play, the game will only deploy units at your ship and only in a fixed order, meaning it does not try to adapt to battlefield conditions and cannot take advantage of forward deployment (making certain characters less efficient).
    • Sweeping through previously cleared Dives costs more Info than playing through them the old fashioned way, and while you get some Credits as compensation for not going through all the battles, you miss out on the other rewards for doing so and the Credits are often less than what you'd receive if you picked up artifacts along the way.
  • Dragon Age: Origins allows you to take control of any member of your current party. The (up to three) characters not actively under your control will be controlled by the AI. You set orders for them to follow using the Tactics system, which enables you to automate how your characters respond to situations in combat. This allows you to setup your party members to work together efficiently without needing constant direction. However, even with very specific Tactics set, the AI-controlled characters may still not do what you want or need in a given situation. If you need them to do something very specific, your best bet is to switch to controlling that character manually and executing the action yourself.
  • Most Dragon Quest games will allow the player to set a rough strategy, such as being offensive, defensive, healing, etc. There is also usually a "Manual" setting that will let players issue individual commands to each character much like any other JRPG. Using anything other than the "Manual" strategy is by nature prone to various amounts of Artificial Stupidity, though it can make Level Grinding a bit less tedious.
  • The Elder Scrolls:
    • Daggerfall generates a background for the Player Character based on your answers to a series of questions during character creation. These questions affect your starting skills, equipment, and reputation. Answering them in certain ways (you'll likely need to consult a guide) can make you a Min-Maxed powerhouse and can hand you a Disc-One Nuke starting weapon. You can also choose to skip the questions, which has the game answer the questions at random. Skipping can be quite detrimental, however, as the game is likely to saddle you with buffs to skills you don't intend to use and can give you poor starting equipment.
    • Inverted in Morrowind in regards to Enchanting. When self-enchanting an item, the odds of success depend on the strength of the enchantment and your Enchant skill. Even with a maxed-out Enchant skill of 100, the odds of success when enchanting end-game quality items are astronomically small. Further, failure means losing the soul gem you were trying to use. However, if you go to an NPC with Enchanting service, they will never fail when creating the item. (The trade-off is that it costs a ton of money, but with all of the Money for Nothing in the game, this isn't particularly discouraging.)
  • Fallout 4:
    • You can grow a number of crops at your settlements. Assigning a Settler to take care of the crops not only prevents the crops from dying, but surplus crops (those not required to feed the Settlers) will automatically be placed in the settlement's workbench. However, if you go to the settlement and manually pick the crops yourself, you'll get those crops as food items in addition to the surplus crops harvested by the settler.
    • If one of your settlements is under attack, you'll get a message (and quest objective) to defend the settlement. You can personally go to the settlement and defeat the attackers, saving the settlement—though the defenses you set up may beat you to the chase. However, if you choose not to, the settlement has a chance to successfully defend itself based on the ratio of defense to resources. For a massive settlement creating 100+ food/water, the best odds of it successfully defending itself against an attack, even if you've turned the place into an absolute fortress with 100+ defense, is a 69.4% chance.
  • Final Fantasy XII has a Gambit system which allows you to set orders for your party members who are not actively under your control. This allows you to setup your party members to work together efficiently without needing constant direction. However, even with very specific Gambits set, the AI-controlled characters may still not do what you want or need in a given situation. If you need them to do something very specific, your best bet is to switch to controlling that character manually and executing the action yourself.
  • Final Fantasy XIV:
    • Quick Synthesis has a formula that gives only a token chance of producing high-quality products, halves experience gain, and doubles durability loss. Several high-end recipes also arbitrarily forbid Quick Synthesis entirely. And just for good measure, you're not allowed to even try it until you've crafted the item once manually.
    • In your island sanctuary, you can regulate the tasks of feeding your animals and watering your plants to your mammets so you don't have to do it yourself, but this comes with a few penalties: First, it costs some of your island currency since you have to pay your mammets to do your chores and the more animals and/or plants you have them look after, the higher the costs. Second, you can collect your animals' materials and your fully grown crops when they're ready, but they won't give you any experience points whereas collecting them yourself will do so.
  • Inverted in Final Fantasy Tactics, particularly with respect to the Calculator/Arithmetician job, which can hit any unit on the field with nearly any spell, instantly and for free — provided you can line up the level/experience and factor criteria. Doing so manually involves either guess work or trial and error, but putting the Calculator on automatic results in the computer going ahead and utterly, efficiently devastating your enemies.
  • Mount & Blade has this apply horribly. Should you choose to not lead your army in battle, they'll get massacred, regardless of how weak the enemy is. If you do lead them in battle, they'll fare far better than if you sat out...even if you spend the entire (potentially incredibly lengthy) battle camping in a safe spot and not actually participating.
  • During the Trial Sequence in Neverwinter Nights 2, your character is framed for the massacre of a village, and assigned a wizard named Sand as a defence lawyer. The overall outcome of the trial doesn't affect the story in any major way, note  but trusting Sand to organise the defence will always result in a guilty verdict (since he's an Insufferable Genius who understands the law but pisses off everyone else in the courtroom), while speaking up on your own behalf may, depending on how well you speak, result in a innocent verdict, expose the party who did the framing, and award you the "Master Orator" character trait.
  • In Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous strategic decisions can be handed off to the computer to allow you to focus solely on adventuring, but doing so costs several potentially useful items you'd otherwise pick up. Crusade battles can also be automatically resolved, but at time of release this feature was almost completely unusable, penalized so greatly that a battle you could easily win manually without meaningful losses would result in your army being completely wiped out or taking crippling casualties.
  • Pokémon:
    • In most core series games, you may choose to leave one or two of your Mons at the Pokémon Day Care. Pokémon in Day Care gain one experience point per every step the player takes. While it's nice to have a Pokémon leveling-up while you simply walk around, there are several drawbacks to this method. For one, Pokémon in Day Care will not evolve. Two, if a Pokémon reaches a level where it can learn a new move, it will always learn that move; if the Pokémon already knows four moves, its first move will be forgotten and the new move will be placed last. This can lead to your Mons forgetting moves you wanted while learning moves you do not. Since the main reason why people used the Day Care in the first place is to breed Pokémon, which said move deletion can ruin, Pokémon Sun and Moon removed the experience gaining mechanic entirely and it has been absent since.
    • Pokémon Scarlet and Violet introduce the "Let's Go" feature, which Zig-Zags the trope. It allows you to send out one Pokémon to "auto-battle" wild Pokémon in the area, but doing so gives much less EXP than usual, won't trigger evolutions that require leveling up, and they won't drop as many materials. However, doing so also won't give the Pokémon any EVs from the Pokémon they knock out, making for a decently efficient method of gathering EXP for a Pokémon without affecting their EV spread or resorting to Rare/EXP Candies.
    • In Pokemon Masters EX, you can have your team battle automatically. However, not only does the auto battle AI suffer from severe Artificial Stupidity, it can only use one move where you could have queued up three if you were controlling your team directly.
  • Starfield: Inverted when it comes to mining/harvesting resources by using an outpost. If you only need a few of a certain resource, you can simply mine surface nodes of minerals or run around hunting/harvesting animal/plant life to get what you need. However, if there is something you're going to want in large quantities, it's worth the time/resource investment to set up an outpost to generate them. A mineral extracter can pull up hundreds of a given resource in just a few minutes while farming will generate far more in the same amount of time as it would take you to seek out and harvest them manually.
  • One of the difficulty options in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 lets you turn off almost all Action Commands in battle. This is convenient, but you will only ever get a "Good" on the automatic commands, making your specials weaker than doing them manually.

    Real Time Strategy 
  • Crusader Kings: Your ruler characters have a demesne limit based on a number of factors, if they hold more territories than that they take penalties until they dole them out to vassals. Vassals pay a fraction of the income that personal estates produce, they only provide troops to certain conflicts and hold back the majority of their levies, and are prone to rebelling if their lord doesn't appease them enough.
  • Dawn of War: Dark Crusade and Soulstorm both allow you to auto-resolve invasions of your territory. This can fail even if you left the territory brimming with turrets and troops, as the AI doesn't follow the Straight for the Commander strategy of throwing all troops at the enemy HQ for an instant win.
  • Girls' Frontline: Neural Cloud: Planning Mode makes a return from GFL, but saddled with way more drawbacks than its counterpart.
    • Secret Path nodes are never accounted for in map pathing. Even if the player manually adjusts the planned path, they still can't make use of these nodes.
    • The game always chooses Function Cards that give the highest percent increase to the team's combat power, even if that card doesn't make much sense for the team's composition.
    • The Professor's Tactical Skills are often used suboptimally during battle.
    • Save for certain material farming dungeons, the game never makes use of the team's Ultimate Skills.
  • Red Alert 3: When ordered to attack normally, the Shogun Battleship will only use its front turret. Telling it to move from side to side or turn broadsides allow it to use both turrets, greatly increasing its firepower, but this requires more micromanaging.
  • Total War series:
    • Throughout much of the series, you can choose to manually fight battles or have them automatically resolved. In cases where you vastly outnumber an enemy force, choosing to automatically resolve the battle will cost you far more casualties than manually playing the battle would.
    • In Rome: Total War, Horse Archers are a Fragile Speedster unit which requires significant micromanaging on the battlefield. They can be absolutely deadly when properly using Hit-and-Run Tactics, but are disproportionately weak in auto-battles. If you're playing as a Horse Archer-heavy faction, expect to manually play every battle, as all but the most overwhelming matchups will result in losses when resolved automatically.
    • In Total War: Shogun 2, due to the way Auto-Resolving Naval Battles is calculated, it is highly recommended that you play them all manually. Owing in part to Artificial Stupidity, the calculations can be skewed and unreliable. To note:
      • You have two Nanban Trade Ships against one Bow Kobaya. If you fight manually, the Bow Kobaya will never survive or even inflict any damage. If you Auto-resolve, the Bow Kobaya will inflict minimal casualties and hull damage on one Nanban Trade Ship.
      • You have eight Medium Ships against one Large Ship. If you fight manually, the Large Ship will surrender or be sunk with minimal or no casualties to your fleet. If you Auto-resolve, you will lose at least one Medium Ship.
      • Large, slow Ships are strong in manual battles but fare poorly in Auto-resolve whereas Small, fast Ships will get crushed in Manual Battles but seem to tip the odds more favorably in Auto-resolve.
    • Throughout the series, using auto-resolve with some heavily-damaged units in your army makes it likely these damaged units will be destroyed, even if the player's army overall still handily outmatches the opposing army and they would have no issue winning the battle whilst keeping the damaged units back to preserve them.

    Simulation Games 
  • In Growing Up, you can skip the dialogue in conversations with your classmates, but unlike most games with skippable dialogue, doing so will randomize the choices instead of skipping straight to them. This risks a less-than-desirable outcome for your classmates' arcs in the long run.
  • In I Was a Teenage Exocolonist, the Targeting Autohelm autoplays your best hand during card challenges, but deducts 2 points from all card values.

    Space Management Games 
  • City-Building Series:
    • Inverted in Zeus: Master of Olympus and Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom: both allow you to simply bribe invading armies to go away. This is much faster than actually fighting, which cuts into your manpower, slowing down production for months, and frees you from having to maintain expensive troops. That said, if you maintain zero troops whatsoever other cities will happily attack you.
    • Played straight in Zeus with the auto-combat system in which troop movements are handled by the computer, usually resulting in losses because the troops only go to their preset positions instead of defending outlying suburbs.
    • In Pharaoh, the overseer of Commerce will automatically adjust the minimum amount of goods to remove from sale if a request is made for them (though this amount can be manually set). While this works fine for most trade, he has an annoying habit of informing you that you have enough goods to fulfill a request just after the deadline passes, and considers that building materials should be imported in a single go/should only be exported if you have enough left over to finish the monument, despite the absurdly huge quantities involved (while some monuments do require a minimum amount of materials to be placed, the bigger ones don't need the entire stock to be present to be built as this would require covering half the map in storage facilities). Similarly, he considers goods required for the tomb as part of the quantity required to import, which can quickly exhaust your treasury if you don't dispatch them quickly.
    • In Zeus and Pharaoh, honoring the gods can net you some very interesting blessings such as increasing trade frequency or instantly killing enemy armies. However, to prevent you from getting overly reliant on them there is a limit to how often you can pray/hold festivals per year, and in Zeus sacrifices regularly lower your sheep/goats/cattle, which need to be manually replaced (there's no automatic warning that your livestock population is getting low).

    Sports Games 
  • Madden NFL:
    • This is especially prominent when playing defense. On offense, under most circumstances, you control whichever player has the ball. The other players will run their routes or block as designed, with their attributes (especially "Awareness") playing into how well they do these things. On defense, however, you can take control of any player. The ones you aren't controlling can almost certainly be expected to perform worse than they would under your control. One of the most prominent examples occurs when the opposing QB rolls out out of the pocket. Pursuing defenders have the option of either going for the QB (at which point the QB will try to pass the ball), or dropping back in coverage (at which point the QB will try to run with the ball). This is a desirable situation in real life for the offense, as it forces the defenders to choose and should leave one of the options open. However, in the game, if you are not controlling the closest pursuing defender, expect to see him get indecisive and hover in between, leaving both the pass and the run wide open. This can even happen with defenders who have maxed out Awareness.
    • In Franchise Mode, you may choose to skip over offseason events such as the free agent signing period and the draft. Do so at your own risk, as the AI may decide to, for example, sign multiple expensive free agents at one position leaving you without enough cap space to fill other needs. It may draft players at positions where you already have excellent players and good depth, meaning those players won't even see the field while leaving gaping holes at other positions on your roster. It may allow a young stud to leave via free agency while re-signing an aging player with decreasing stats to a multi-year extension.
  • NCAA Football:
    • Much like its Madden sister-series, which isn't surprising given their shared game engine, any players you aren't controlling can be expected to perform worse than if you were controlling them.
    • Skipping offseason events in Dynasty Mode leaves you wide open to this as the AI will complete them for you. Cue awful recruiting classes, players transferring away, and all sorts of other program mismanagement.
  • In combat sports games with a career mode, such as Fight Night and UFC Undisputed, there are often training minigames for building your stats. These are painfully repetitive, but automating them results in a fraction of the stat gains.

    Survival Horror 
  • Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator has the "Mediocre" ending, one of the worst of the Multiple Endings. You "achieve" it by going through the game without buying any objects or salvaging any of the animatronics. In the ending cutscene, Tutorial Unit passive-aggressively tells you that you did a horrible job, and you're fired.
    "You stood on two feet and convinced someone that you could do something, when in fact you couldn't. Now get out."

    Tabletop Games 
  • Ubiquitous in Pathfinder first edition, where there are multiple systems for having non-dungeon-crawling game modes. Since you can hire managers for businesses, have teams perform work for you, run small nations, and lead armies, you can have a Non-Player Character do all these things for you, too. However, as they are less wealthy and powerful than a similarly-leveled Player Character, and they have their own interests in mind, this trope is in effect.

    Turn-Based Strategy 
  • In Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny, the Item World Research will not be as fast or as lucrative as actually playing the Item World. Additionally, auto-sold items will only fetch 1/100 their normal value.
  • In Fire Emblem Heroes, during Aether Raids, you can use the Auto-Dispatch feature up to 3 times each season to send one of your attack teams to automatically fight another player's defense team with reduced structure and unit numbers, but there is a 20 hour delay before you get the results and use the Auto-Dispatch feature again (meaning that you cannot do this on the last day each season), you get 75% of the Lift you would have originally gained if it succeeds, and the Aether you spend sending those units cannot be refunded with the Escape Ladder if the attack fails. On the other hand, Auto-Dispatch uses a much less unforgiving matchmaking algorithm, so unless you've min-maxed your Aether Raids team, you're much more likely to win Auto-Dispatch matches than regular ones.
  • Fire Emblem: Three Houses Downplays it. Almost all of the social sim, time management, and character customization can be opted out of. Skipping ahead on the calendar will automate these aspects, and will spit out reasonably usable unit builds in the process provided you set your characters' goals at some point. However, this automation won't be as specific or thorough as the player doing it themselves.
  • Choosing to "auto-calc" a battle in Lords of the Realm 2 is generally not recommended unless you massively outnumber your enemy. Your troop losses will be much higher if you do, plus there's some odd corner cases in the formula that can result in you losing what ought to have been a Curb-Stomp Battle in your favor.
  • The Dragnet special ability from XCOM: Chimera Squad completes a situation for half the reward, not triggering any Field Squad ability, and having a 4 days cooldown. Downplayed Trope since situations are automated to begin with, and only happen once every other day (missions happen the other other days), so in effect this is a free resolved situation with a cooldown.

    Wide-Open Sandbox 
  • Palworld: Digtoise is a tortoise Pal who can use a spinning shell attack to mine ores by damaging them. This can be done by either manually using Digtoise as an active Pal and sending it at ores or activating its partner skill Drill Crusher, or automatically by assigning Digtoise to a base where it will auto-mine ores for a lot less damage. A fully condensed Digtoise will destroy copper ore in five Spin Attack cycles if assigned to mine at a base, which is already very powerful, but it will destroy that same ore in one cycle if manually commanded to as an Active Pal.
  • Red Dead Redemption II:
    • Downplayed when it comes to camp donations, which can be used to purchase items for the gang's camp including supply and crafting upgrades, an enhanced horse station, and more. While other gang members will donate even if you do not, the more you donate either directly (as cash or valuables), in terms of food (hunted game), or in time (chores around camp) will increase camp morale and cause others to donate even more. Additionally, companion missions are more likely to become available with a high camp morale, so donating gives you more to do in gameplay terms as well.
    • Zig-Zagged when it comes to using "Cinematic Mode" while on horseback. Setting a waypoint while on your horse and then going into Cinematic Mode will allow your horse to take you to your destination automatically. However, random events will not spawn while in Cinematic Mode. This can be beneficial, as you won't have to worry about rival gang ambushes or wild animal attacks, but also means that you'll potentially miss out on rewarding NPC encounters and rare game hunting opportunities as well. If you don't mind this latter fact, then the "penalty" aspect is negated.
  • In State of Decay, sending an ally to loot a place can cause this ally to be lost, forcing you to rescue them.
  • In Satisfactory, machines craft things at a much slower pace than the player character can do by hand. However, you have more important things to do than handcrafting screws and plates, and setting up multiple factories across the gameworld will pay off in the long run.

    Miscellaneous 
  • In Death Stranding, Sam can eventually unlock drones that will perform deliveries for him, but these are way less efficient than he can be: the drones will take more time to complete deliveries and the cargo will invariably get damaged, earning him fewer likes.
  • When you buy desserts (which act as power-ups) from Angel Cake's bakery in the Nintendo DS game Strawberry Shortcake: Strawberryland Games, you can choose between baking them yourself and having Angel bake them for you. The former choice gives you two desserts, while the latter only gets you one.

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