quote: Original post by Extrarius
I've just had a few more ideas:
In addition to making the minimap always reveal everything vaguely (one or two troops together wouldnt show up, but if there was a group of 3+, it might show up as a small dot, the more together the larger the dot)...

I think that is a great idea... it would seriously hamper with players 'nesting' in one part of the map and just waiting for the enemy to arrive... Another twist on the minimap feature would be to display moving units on the minimap... movement sensors and while at it dont forget weaponsfiring...

Leadership could be implemented similar to the Paladin's auras in Diablo II... being close to a leader gives them better accuracy, firepower, armor. The better the leader the greater bonus or.. larger aura radius.

quote: Original post by Extrarius
Since 4 minutes is a long time when you dont have any units, I think a simple solution is to allow players with no units left to click a button that reduces the time till respawn to 20 seconds or something like that, to allow those still with units time to select what reinforcements they want.

Why have a button to reduce the time? It serves no purpose.. have it done automatically =)


::aggression is the result of fear::

[edited by - grimjack on August 16, 2002 4:08:19 AM]

The reason to have a button is mainly for team games. Especially in large games, it becomes important. Imagine a game with 32 players divided into two teams of 16 each. If they play together well, they will compliment eachother''s strategy with units that fill in for the weaknesses of the other players and the units they chose. For example: Player 1 on team A is responsible for artillery, and begins moving his unit across the map. After a few seconds of movement, they come into the field of vision of a few enemy snipers strategically placed. The snipers easily take out the slow moving artillery units, and player 1 is left without any units because he didnt diversify and move the units skillfully enough. Now there are 15 people on team A that still have units, and 1 that has none. The teammate could click the button to get troops quickly, but then his teammates wont have the time they need to get ready for an assault on a factory owned by team B. However, if his teammates were already in place or close to it, he could click the button with no worries and make the next wave come several minutes sooner.

The idea sounds similar to mine. For my game, I''ve totally eliminated any buildings and resource management. I took it a step further and I''ve prevented the creation of new units. The number of units you control is never huge, 16 is a reasonable sized army and 20 would be around the max.

Now, as for justifying my descisions:

Why no new units? I figure that with a system like you described, soon, the played will decide that one unit is an uber unit (as much as you try and balance it), and will only create that unit. Once the unit cap is reached, any units which aren''t the uber-unit will get sacrificed so they can be replaced. Which brings me to the next point - the value of a unit is greatly increased by making them irreplacable. Every single unit is looked after.

Why so few units? It was suggested above that rather than capping the units at a small number, to allow lots of units and have them organise themselves in platoons. Instead of this, I decided to just make each unit significant, so that they have a power even if they aren''t in a platoon. When you think about it, if you have a platoon of a certain size, the other team will probably have a platoon of a similar size and the extra numbers will just cancel out.

Finally, if you want to check out how it plays, there is an alpha version at the website emoticonvb.cjb.net. It has a fully playable level, and uses some of the concepts discussed, so it might be alright for just checking what it does to the way you play. I found I was actually a lot more likely to use my units together more than I would normally, the long range units would do the bulk of attacking, while the others would try and stop the enemy from getting to them.

Trying is the first step towards failure.

quote:
hmmm... how to disable a unit without destroying it...

In Z, by the Bitmap Brothers, you could get Sniper units who could shoot the drivers out of a tank, letting your guys take control.

ragonastick-
For a truly tactical level of gameplay, you are probably on the right track by not allowing any sort of in game unit building. Tactical level games by definition are small scale battles, and hence, the player is actually only controlling a small number of units and is probably low on the officer totem-pole. Therefore it would make sense that the player does not have the capacity to order new units to be built....though perhaps he might request a certain amount of reinforcements. But the amount and availability will never be certain for the player in the best of worlds.

for all-
I think an important distinction should be made here on the concepts of tactics vs. strategy. The way I see it and can best describe it....strategy are the ends and the plans, and tactics are the means and ways to get to that end. It does not necessarily mean, large-scale battles vs. small scale battles, but the connotation usually implies so. For example, you could have two fighters go against each other. One fighter''s strategy might be to wear out his opponent, since his opponent is stronger....but also more fat than he is. Conversely, the other fighter''s strategy is to close in and grapple with the other guy as soon as he can. The tactics used by each (for the first fighter, dodging evading, and throwing long kicks...and for the 2nd guy to rush in, feint, and use trapping techniques) will be in large part dictated by each sides capabilities...not just as individual units, but how all the units are used together synergistically and holistically.

i loved ground control...

but it had its shortcomings.

for example, if you wanted a platoon or squad of infantry to use grenades or mortars or somthing, you had to actually tel them to.

a few suggestions/ideas i think might be useful
a basic infantry grunt would be a rifleman, with some sort of automatic rifle and grenades.

a squad or whatever, group, would have 4 riflemen, 2 machinegunners with M249 SAW''s or M60''s, a sniper or two, medics and radiomen.

you can split the group up as long as each group has a medic and a radioman in it.

if the radioman is killed they will need to regroup first.

don''t do what a lot of the rts''s do nowadays which is make every unit have a rate of fire of like 2 rounds per hour. make it so that the riflemen can fire as fast as they aquire a target, at full auto or semi auto as fast as they can pull the trigger, and then pause to reload. like for example the only pause in firing would be when someone is out of ammo. make it so that they can run out of ammo, and then they will need to resupply.

maybe you could also have a stamina system.

you can tell your groups of men to run/sprint/move afap (as fast as possible) to a certain point. this will deplete their water reserves, like a canteen. in the loadout screen or whatever, you can choose what each man will be carrying. if he carries a lot of ammo and equipment, he''s likely to dehydrate and move slower. food is not an issue, because it''s real time, and i doubt that anyone will play for more than a few hours.

medics use up supplies when treating wounded.

calling in backup could consist of requesting backup, like asking for air support or something, to having vehicles arrive.

these vehicles could be things like humvees with a crew of like five, and a machinegunner

the vehicles could arrive in a convoy.

you can call in reinforcements like more tank support, or resupply trucks with ammo and water and stuff.

you can call in airdrops for more troops, or supplies, or vehicles, or all three.

another good idea i think is to have the units use their own intuition on dealing with threats. i recommend you look through field manuels and ranger handbooks and stuff for an idea of what i mean. look at real life techniques for clearing bunkers and entering/clearing trenches.

for example, the unit will use its m203 grenade launcher to take care of a sniper rather than run out into the open and expose himself. like they use indirect fire weapons correctly.

why not have the ability for units to, after they run out of ammo with their main weapons like rifles and machineguns, switch to a pistol or a knife or something?

Well...this idea sounds very interesting...let me just say a few things...

I would love to see a reinforcement wave system, but I would like to see that you just get an amount of soldiers when you get your reinforcments, and you use your on site training facilities to specialize them, depending on how fast paced you are aiming to make the game, that can be ignored, but it would be interesting.

Second of all, I''d like to be able to assemble my own battalions, fireteams, groups, etc. to my own liking. What you could do is make it smaller scale, like division level, where you''re fighting battles, and not the entire war, and progressively move further into enemy territory when you win, or the enemy regroups and retreats. This would make tactics far more important. Now, if you wanted to do away with the micromanagement, you could just have the computer automatically form your groups. Anyway...

Snipers usually work in two man teams, one as the actual sniper, and the other as a spotter. You could have recon teams go out and look for enemy encampments, and call artillery, or air strikes, depending on where your artillery is, or if you have any availible aircraft. Also, how you equip your soldiers is very important. Sure, the M16A2 is pretty accurate, but it only has 3 shot and single shot burst selective fire, and the action is prone to jamming if any dirt gets in. They''re also a bit expensive, and SOMEONE has to pay for that equipment. The United State Army''s standard issue sniper rifle, the M24, is very outdated, but rather dependable, whereas you have the M82A1 Barrett .50 Sniper rifle, which SHOULD render any sniper equipped with it unable to shoot humans, the Barrett was designed to take out vehicles, not people. Believe me, it''s ugly. This is micromanagement, yes, but I LIKE micromanagement, I like having that kind of detail and control. You could just have it set like, all snipers are issued a M24, or all infantry are issued M16A2s, but I think the player should have a choice. If we want to get real technical, If I had the choice, I''d give my infantrymen a Diemaco Canadian C-7 assault rifle, because not only does it have a 3.5x scope, but it''s far less prone to jamming than the M16A2, AND if has a full auto trigger group. And no, I''m not Canadian, I just know too much about guns.

I could continue on, but I''m tired, and I really have to take a piss, so I''ll shut up now.

Why?!?

While I would like my game to be realistic, I don''t want it to be TOO realistic. I plan on all weapon/vehicle names be false rather than trying to model realistic weapons, partly because I don''t know anything about real weapons other than what I''ve seen in games like Counter-Strike and FireArms, and I''m pretty sure they aren''t a very accurate representation. I plan on making the ROF of the basic unit fairly fast, and I plan to implement reloading. Instead of giving the basic unit grenades, I think I would make a unit that specializes in explosives and gets a grenade launcher and perhaps land mines, maybe even timed charges that could be planted/thrown on trees to clear paths, ''cliffs'' to make ramps, maybe even just on the ground to make places that vehicles can''t travel.

Currently, I plan the game to be multiplayer ONLY, so implementing a campaign where you fight several skirmishes of a single war isnt an option. However, if I succede in making it ''massively multiplayer'' (big for an RTS, 32 player probably), each player will be in charge of a small-ish squad (20 units) and it would be as if each player was part of a platoon (or whatever a group of 320 units would be called), each player would be a small part of the war instead of a massive player with 200 units as in normal RTS.

All units will be controlled directly by the player. They will have some basic AI (pathfinding, the ability to keep a sweeping view, be able to travel in formations if so instructed, small things like that, but they arent going to plan anything on their own... Since I plan on making it moddable tho, maybe somebody else will add that). Unit groups will be formed by the player however they want. I will support the traditional 10 unit groups.

quote: Original post by Verek ...
I would love to see a reinforcement wave system, but I would like to see that you just get an amount of soldiers when you get your reinforcments, and you use your on site training facilities to specialize them, depending on how fast paced you are aiming to make the game, that can be ignored, but it would be interesting.
...

What purpose would this change server? I only see 2 effects: 1) Game play is slowed down 2) SuperUnits are now possible, as you could just train each unit to do more and train less of the units you recieve

While slowing the gameplay down isnt always a bad thing, I don''t want this game to be extremely slow, I just want it to be slow enough that one has time to think instead of just watching huge battle after huge battle with little or nothing to do while the armies die.
I really dont want to allow a single unit to be extremely powerfull, I want each unit to be of approximately equal strength (relative to their cost). This doesn''t mean that each unit can do everything exactly as well, but rather that each unit is better for some things and not so worse at others. If a unit could be trained with skills that all compliment eachother(like a unit that can fire artillery, a sniper rifle, a normal rifle, a rocket propelled grenade, etc etc), it would end up being the only unit the player really needs and he could use the other as cannon fodder to protect the one superunit. I would much rather the player be encouraged to care about each and every unit.

Just had an interesting idea:

What if, instead of having a few fixed units, I could make a database of strengths and weaknesses, and have the game generate custom units each game. That would make the game stay challenging, and be an interesting twist from the norm. Or maybe instead of making units totally random, make them slightly different each time though. Also, it would be interesting if the game would keep track of everything everybody bought and try to figure out what units are overpowered (or what attributes are bought most often) and make those units(or attributes) cost more.

There are a few problems, however. The first and foremost is making it fun. It would be pretty lame if a superunit was generated that only cost a little, so there has to be some way of calculating how much all the benefits and disadvantages are worth together. Simply adding some to the cost for an advantage and subtacting for weaknesses doesnt always work, for example, weak armor isnt much of a problem for a unit good at extreme range combat because it wont often get hit. Does anybody know of a good way to handle this other than manually associating different weakness that dont effect a certain advantage much?

Sound interesting?