Doesn''t it all depend on what you define an RTS as? Some of you may remember bishop_pass'' threads on a political manipulation/strategy game (too lazy to search right now) - to be carried out real-time, MMO; I''d consider that an RTS even though combat is merely incidental within its given framework. If you accept that as an example of an RTS (not a definition, but merely one way to look at the genre), then the answers to the questions of feasibility and good idea are definitely "Yes" and "Yes."

quote: Original post by CGameProgrammer
One idea I have is to have each battle be a relatively small-scale thing (16 people playing, at most) but the battles can affect a persistent MM world. Similar to console games in which you travel on a map and select a location to play it (like Super Mario Bros. 3 and World and various RPGs) you can click on a location hotspot in the world map to set up a battle there. The outcome can decide who controls a village or mine or whatever.

~CGameProgrammer( );

That would work, each star system could be that little section, instead of each player managing the whole galaxy they could fight in one star system at a time.

quote: Original post by Oluseyi
Doesn''t it all depend on what you define an RTS as? Some of you may remember bishop_pass'' threads on a political manipulation/strategy game (too lazy to search right now) - to be carried out real-time, MMO; I''d consider that an RTS even though combat is merely incidental within its given framework. If you accept that as an example of an RTS (not a definition, but merely one way to look at the genre), then the answers to the questions of feasibility and good idea are definitely "Yes" and "Yes."

Whatever happened to that thread/idea/project? It sounded wicked cool.

I can''t really see an MMORTS in the near future (3 years) because of the massive hardware strain. Unless everyone has 128mb G4s people are going to be crashing and experiencing major slowdown when a bunch of people (50) have half their army (again about 50) attacking each other. that''s about 2500 troops. Unless we are talking about crap flat 2d graphics (8/16bit) I know it''s probably gonna crash my pc considering I experience slowdown while playing Age of Mythology on my 32mb G2.

quote: Original post by beantas
Whatever happened to that thread/idea/project? It sounded wicked cool.

It got overrun by people who, in bishop''s terms, didn''t "get it." Too many simply couldn''t wrap their minds around an RTS that wasn''t based on combat, that didn''t pit the player as the Center Of The Universe And All Else That Is - a game where the player was merely a cog (big cog, small cog, medium cog) in the political machine.

quote: Original post by PSWind
I can''t really see an MMORTS in the near future (3 years) because of the massive hardware strain. Unless everyone has 128mb G4s people are going to be crashing and experiencing major slowdown when a bunch of people (50) have half their army (again about 50) attacking each other. that''s about 2500 troops. Unless we are talking about crap flat 2d graphics (8/16bit) I know it''s probably gonna crash my pc considering I experience slowdown while playing Age of Mythology on my 32mb G2.

Graphics are merely incidental to the experience. We could let people with slower machines play using sprites or even Asteroids-era vector graphics. The core is the computation, the interaction and the statistical representation, and it is perfectly possible to implement a game based on that on a massively multiplayer scale today.

I''m just guessing that there is no reason why a Lieutenant or Captain would ever need to see every single unit in a war. Heck, most of the time they wouldn''t be able to. What can most smaller unit commanders see? What is around them. On the large scale, they can see the frontlines (not units, just what the lines look like), but that''s nothing, just showing areas of control.

So is it possible? Of course. The longer you''re online, you can choose to take on a controlling role (general, etc...) and when you take control of a company/battallion, it''s units (squads/whatever) are higher quality if you have more experience.

Does anyone need to see ''everything''? No. That''s just kinda silly. You aren''t showing 2500 people in an MMORPG, are you? Of course not, because that''s pretty much impossible with communication speeds the way they are today to keep track of thousands of units at real time. Heck, even 100s is not going to be possible across a modem. Go with 40-100 and you should be mostly fine updating every 1-5 seconds, mattering on connection speed and commander options (maybe visibility units), weather, etc...

Heck, I could design the mechanics of this game in a week... LOL. Then again I''ve played some of the more complex wargames (board) out there, so I''m used to these types of problems. Double blind... that''s the way you play, only it''s more like 100s blind.