Your ideas for a resourcs system for an RTS

[Commodore]

I think a good RTS should have you fight for the control over the whole map, camping should be greatly discouraged but building defensive structures to gain map control is greatly encouraged.
But because you only can build one building at a time, you can for example either rush out and build alot of resources buildings or you could expand slower and build defensive structures because they would make raiding alot harder.

That's kind of how Dawn of War had it set up. Because your resources came from capturable strategic points it forced players to actually leave their base and attempt to take and hold territory instead of turtling inside their base. They also had the strategic points "decay" over time, providing fewer and fewer resources to encourage players to continue pushing forward.

 

[Hygro]

or causes people to be more turtley the way starcraft 2 ends up more often than not,

I'm perplexed. People are aggro AF in sc2.

 

[Kennigit]

i havent watched recently (like 5 months?) but for a very long period I would have described sc2 as being an aggressor vs a defender, rarely battles out on the map by neither person's base

i.e. all protoss matchups

and I know everyone complains about turtling nowadays in 750 hour long swarm host turtle vs T raven or swarm host vs P.

 

[Omega124]

That's kind of how Dawn of War had it set up. Because your resources came from capturable strategic points it forced players to actually leave their base and attempt to take and hold territory instead of turtling inside their base. They also had the strategic points "decay" over time, providing fewer and fewer resources to encourage players to continue pushing forward.

Minus the decaying, Company of Heroes is set up the same way (which makes sense since they're both made by Relic; DoW is just CoH with a 40K paintjob to it like Dune2000 was dune-themed C&C).

I think CoH's system of subcurrencies, along with the map-based economy, makes it the best RTS. Since you have to move out of your base to cap, you engage in numerous small skirmishes throughout the entire match (which can last for up to an hour if both players are good), in which you have squads fight each other until someone gains the upper hand. Thanks to the retreat function (and unit preservation being heavily rewarded via massive veterancy bonuses), the losing player will retreat before the squad gets completely wiped out. With cover for infantry and front/rear armor for vehicles being important, where you fight is just as important as what you bring to it. And since most units have special abilities, you can easily change the fate of a fight.

Meanwhile, the game is split between three currencies which are all used for different things. Manpower is used to buy units, munitions is used to upgrade existing units and activate their abilities, and fuel is for teching and building most vehicles. You only naturally generate manpower, and need special points to generate fuel and munitions. Since building vehicles takes a long time (you need to save enough fuel to build fuel-needing units, and then generate more fuel to buy them), this gives more than enough time to build and vet up infantry, meaning they will scale better in the endgame. Meanwhile, having more munitions gives you the extra edge to win engagements and turn an enemy retreat into a squadwipe.

CoH is long but fast-paced, and there's always stuff to do but there's no real micromanaging. It is really the perfect RTS and I reccomend everyone here tries it out.

 

[Hygro]

i havent watched recently (like 5 months?) but for a very long period I would have described sc2 as being an aggressor vs a defender, rarely battles out on the map by neither person's base

i.e. all protoss matchups

and I know everyone complains about turtling nowadays in 750 hour long swarm host turtle vs T raven or swarm host vs P.

Regarding the aggressor vs defender, I think that's a feature of who is winning. If you are losing, then you appear to be playing defender. But really you are trying to flip it as soon as possible. It's like judo.

 

[Commodore]

Minus the decaying, Company of Heroes is set up the same way (which makes sense since they're both made by Relic; DoW is just CoH with a 40K paintjob to it like Dune2000 was dune-themed C&C).

Small correction: CoH is DoW with a WW2 paintjob. The first DoW was released in 2004 and the first CoH was released in 2006.

EDIT: Also the first C&C game was really just a stream-lined version of Dune 2, which was also made by Westwood Studios and released about two years before the first C&C.

 

[Tahuti]

Anyway, resource collection should be automatic, and resource gathering units should be replenished automatically as well. At most, the player should only have to control the priorities in which resources have to be gathered, if there are multiple resources.

Let's face it. As a genre, RTS is still fairly immature. There is something grotesquely problematic about labelling games 'strategy' when the winners tend to be those who click fastest and in so doing build the largest armies.

 

[Commodore]

Anyway, resource collection should be automatic, and resource gathering units should be replenished automatically as well. At most, the player should only have to control the priorities in which resources have to be gathered, if there are multiple resources.

Let's face it. As a genre, RTS is still fairly immature. There is something grotesquely problematic about labelling games 'strategy' when the winners tend to be those who click fastest and in so doing build the largest armies.

Or at least they should make automated gathering a selectable option. That way those who, for whatever strange reason, like micromanaging can still do it, while those who don't can actually have fun with the game.

 

[Hygro]

Let's face it. As a genre, RTS is still fairly immature. There is something grotesquely problematic about labelling games 'strategy' when the winners tend to be those who click fastest and in so doing build the largest armies.

I agree although those who click faster are often also performing decision, as in being decisive, which is part of strategy. Some of it is dexterity, but most of the speed is knowing what decision to make right away.

 

[Commodore]

I agree although those who click faster are often also performing decision, as in being decisive, which is part of strategy. Some of it is dexterity, but most of the speed is knowing what decision to make right away.

But therein lies the problem. Games like StarCraft have certain build orders that greatly increase your chance of victory no matter what the other player does. At that point it isn't strategy, tactics, or even decision-making anymore; it is just rote memorization and regurgitation of established "battle doctrine". So you are no longer winning because of your own abilities or skill, but because you just copied the methods developed by others.

A true RTT or RTS game would create an environment where no one tactic or strategy would prevail all the time, or even prevail on a consistent basis. It should force players to constantly have to adapt and change how they play instead of allowing them to develop one or two "ace-in-the-hole" tactics/strategies and just repeat it over and over again.

 

[Kennigit]

Q for all: is blitz chess an RTS yes/no?

Like 5 min or less time limit.

If yes, is 10 min?

Though i guess time can be irrelevant since only finite number of moves can be made at any one time, even if those (strategy decisions) moves are much faster than some RTS.

 

[Tahuti]

I agree although those who click faster are often also performing decision, as in being decisive, which is part of strategy. Some of it is dexterity, but most of the speed is knowing what decision to make right away.

Most Paradox games have solved it the right way: Building new units takes long and is sullied by numerous constraints that make it not always the best choice. Games like the C&C series would benefit enourmously from adopting this style of unit creation, which will not at all negatively affect other aspects that make these games unique.

Rise of Nations did it pretty well too. Games with low population limit tended to be both very strategic and tactical and rushing was discouraged as players first needed to build up an economy before building units.

 

[Smote]

But therein lies the problem. Games like StarCraft have certain build orders that greatly increase your chance of victory no matter what the other player does. At that point it isn't strategy, tactics, or even decision-making anymore; it is just rote memorization and regurgitation of established "battle doctrine". So you are no longer winning because of your own abilities or skill, but because you just copied the methods developed by others.

A true RTT or RTS game would create an environment where no one tactic or strategy would prevail all the time, or even prevail on a consistent basis. It should force players to constantly have to adapt and change how they play instead of allowing them to develop one or two "ace-in-the-hole" tactics/strategies and just repeat it over and over again.

Doesn't real life have ace-in-the-hole tactics/strategies as well though? Like, just nuke them. How do you counter that? Nukes.

I think certain modern board games get the closest to this idea of many strategies being equally viable.

This article says a lot about how strategy developed: http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/strategy-and-tactics-military

I like Nathan Bedford Forrest's quote:

Get there first with the most men.

The key way to make various strategies possibly good is to randomize some feature of the game, which gives bonuses to certain strategies. Starcraft developers were certainly aware of the effects of the map on gameplay. In SC2, maps generally all have choke points, to stop zerg from being overwhelming. They generally don't have protected cliff-islands, to stop tank drops from being overpowered. In SC1, only specific maps were played competitively, because maps that didn't conform to this recipe were too one-sided for certain races.

Random map-making fixes some qualities of this. If you don't know the map ahead of time, it's tricky to figure out the best strategy. Air units, scouting, and fast units gain more priority. But this could be countered by a rush, if someone figures out where you are and troop travel time is somewhat low. In civ, the number of cities you might build is highly dependent on terrain (and luxuries). The number of cities you build has a huge effect on your overall strategy, generally.

Board games like Terra Mystica give random benefits based on turn number, such as if you are at turn X, and you have this thing, you get an additional benefit. This sometimes makes sub-optimal strategies into optimal strategies. Strategies have to be planned around the random benefits, which are viewable at the beginning of the game. This helps make sure people don't always do the same thing, because if the random features don't favor the strategy, it won't be as effective.

Another fun board game I played has a feature where you choose 5 actions for each turn from a set of about 18. These actions are represented as cards. The cards have multiple effects, but if someone else uses the same card as you, both of you share the results of the action, rather than someone getting double benefit. Thus, it becomes more effective to do a unique strategy, because your cards will be more powerful. There's more to it than this, but overall it rewards having a unique strategy and predicting your opponents strategy to sabotage theirs.

So randomization is done either via other player actions or via game features at the beginning of the game, or both. Perhaps a civ-style randomization for Civ 5 could be to change which techs lead to what, or to change costs of techs, or to change effects of buildings, or effects of policies,etc. However, based on the large amount of turns in civ, the snowballing effect of a civ with a superior early game will offset the entire outcome of the game.

Terra Mystica and other board games fix the snowball effect by making various actions throughout the game gain you "points." You can sacrifice economy for points for much of the game, have a terrible state at the end, but win based on points. Starcraft and Civ both suffer from having the result of the game be dependent on economy, rather than incremental victories, necessitating having a strategy which attains a better economy than opponents. (There are other intricacies at play, but this is the largest factor.)

Mobas like LoL heavily suffer from the snowball effect as well. However, the snowball effect is fun for the person doing the snowballing. I don't think people really enjoy a game that strive for perfect fairness. Otherwise, games like Chess or Go would be more popular.

 

[EgonSpengler]

That's kind of how Dawn of War had it set up. Because your resources came from capturable strategic points it forced players to actually leave their base and attempt to take and hold territory instead of turtling inside their base.

For a while there, I was playing Company of Heroes until my head fell forward onto the keyboard, and they used a similar system. It seemed to always lead to a dynamic battle.

 

[Commodore]

Doesn't real life have ace-in-the-hole tactics/strategies as well though? Like, just nuke them. How do you counter that? Nukes.

I think certain modern board games get the closest to this idea of many strategies being equally viable.

Nuke everything is the endgame strategy though. That's what you do when your nation is burning and you just don't care about taking the rest of the world with you. So since nukes are out for an everyday strategy, real life nations are forced to constantly change and adapt their tactics and strategies to the enemy they are fighting. Take the US for example: If you look at each war the US has fought you will see different tactics and strategies develop not only from one war to another, but even several times during each war itself. In real warfare the belligerents are constantly trying to counter the moves of the other side which leads to a constant evolution of battlefield tactics. Those changing tactics are also fueled by the ever changing strategic objectives of a conflict as well. As the supreme commander of your nation's armed forces, you might have to adjust what your strategic goals are (and thus how, when, and why you fight) many times throughout a conflict.

So far there hasn't been a single game yet that has been able to truly simulate the reality of an ever-fluid and ever-changing battlefield. There are some that have come close though.

 

[Archbob]

That's like saying chess shouldn't be turn based.

Are you saying you've never played real-time chess?