Here''s my thoughts on the issue, which may be totally off base since I don''t play a lot of RTS games and don''t know what''s cliche or unacceptable, but here we go.

Allow players to create their own factions/alliances, and then their allies can defend them while they''re offline. This forces people to carefully choose allies who (a) won''t attack them, and (b) are typically online at different times. Also allow people to leave their current alliance and start a new one, or join a different existing one. This type of alliance would also allow info to be passed from one member to another, i.e. maps and projected strength of enemies. So spying could be a viable career. The alliances could be set up in a chain of command type thing, and thus one of a player''s goals is to gain enough prestige to command an alliance.

In addition to military bases, there could also be towns. Players could send their troops into a town to rest, buy new equipment, etc. and thus increase the money the town has, which enables the town to grow, which enables the players to recruit more military units from the town''s populace. So players would want to build a lot of towns or control an area with a lot of towns, but they couldn''t recruit TOO many units from the towns or the town population would suffer and the town might die out without even having to be attacked. Also you could buy food and medical supplies from the towns. And towns could also economically benefit by some other neutral guy''s army passing through and buying stuff from them. Towns of course would be destroyable, so another goal is to make them as big as possible so it takes longer and is harder to do.

Eventually, this model would turn the gameworld into a series of countries controlled by various player groups. In each country''s center would be an area that''s so hard to reach that offline players could easily be safe there. Then there''d be the border areas where the units are constantly fighting trying to increase their territory. And the shapes and sizes of various countries would change over time as land gets taken by one group or another, towns and forts are built or destroyed, etc.. Heck you could even add in natural disasters such as eartquakes and floods to change the whole terrain of the world over time.

If we''re talking space, then you could give each player a solar system and then make the entire solar system cloak when offline.

darkspace.net
you can play for free, it''s persistent but sometimes they do reset the universe(usually when one faction whomps the other two). There are other persistent games, mostly tick-based, not real time, but I think the same design problem haunts all of them, check out
mpogd.com

however, there is a more fundamental problem to be solved,
why do people play strategy games? to conquer. So, that means that in a MMO environment, someone has to lose, otherwise just make an RTS in the style of Elite(it was infinite or nearly so)

No, listen folks. When you play a RTS, you are fighting FOR a side. You play a role. You are not the entire faction, only a small part of it. Offline RTS games try to make you feel important by placing you at the scene of critical battles, but you shouldn''t let that go to your head. You are still just a pawn in the greater scheme.

Your bases that you build are similarly irrelevant - in traditional RTS games when you complete a level you lose your base and have to start all over again. Trying to draw an analogy between a base and a RPG player''s inventory is wrong. Your base, even your army, does not need to be persistent. Only your ability to fight has to remain, and that''s normally governed by access to tech upgrades and cash.

So! If you play the game on a particular side (think Orcs, Humans, whatever), when you log-off you get to retain a reputation and your cash (which is the sum of all the cash value of your constructions plus your remaining unused funds), less 10% handling fee. All of your units revert to be used by the AI. When you log back in, if you choose to fight for the same side again, you retain your reputation and your money so... what''s the big deal?

When you play a RTS, you are only really concerned about winning the map you are playing on. Having a persistant world around you is only of benefit because it allows you to feel like you are contributing to a larger mission. You get the player to feel like part of a bigger world by giving them ''missions'' (aka Quests) when they log in. A strategy AI is making long-term decisions about what maps should be won for strategic purposes (you want the area at 106x89 because it has bigger mineral deposits. You want to take over the dam because it produces power for the enemy). When you log in, the AI tries to entice you to fight for a particular objective by offering cash rewards/prestige. Should you achieve the objective, then your side benefits. Of course, now the other side will want to try and take-back the area, and so its AI will offer its mercs more and more money. And so the pendulum swings. The side with the best players/most cash will win. Then you can restart the whole game on another planet.

After the first version of the game (the RTS), you can start to introduce more game-play levels for players to engage in. For example, excellent players may be given the choice to be promoted to strategic decision making levels (so you remove the AI). Other players may decide to go rogue and just fight everyone, making their own decisions as they go along (this could be a really interesting development... you could have an ''informal'' faction in the war that is always controlled by humans working in off-line co-operation... like a guerilla faction).

A single round of the big game (faction vs faction) could take months or years to complete, and that would be pretty damned cool. The ultimate clan war. Entire side-line industries involving news-letters, press-gangs and so on could easilly start up.

As for the Guild thing earlier... well, it would be natural for players to form off-line guilds to help out fellow clan members, so I don''t see why you''d want to put anything into the game for it (except perhaps clan-run stores or shared bank accounts).

Still, I digress. Putting the player into hibernation / AI-run control whilst offline is not applicable in the context of a RTS. You want players to be able to conquer and defeat the enemy, regardless of what the enemy is doing. It is up to the enemy to sort out its own life and encourage players to log-in and fight for the team. If you have areas of strategic importance (which I believe you must have for this kind of game to work... otherwise it resolves into a disconnected set up endless maps), imagine how frustrating it would be to have a player ''win'' the map, then log off and stay logged off for months, effectively locking the map! You would then have to go into all kinds of artificial and unnatural rules like, "if you are logged off for longer than xxx hours, then y will happen". It''s far better to have the system cater for such eventualities by its very nature.

Consider: When you sign up you can optionally be registered as am "Emergency Combatant". When an area is under threat, and the AI controlling your side is unable to get any help from currently logged-on players, the server can send you an Email/SMS requesting your aid. That''s a neat trick.

Since its a space based game how about making the battles interplantry battles. Players represent a single faction and start of with a single planet. They then choose other planets to attack. If the player is online then they fight it out in a standard rts style battle for control. The planets owner would have the advantage of a small preconstucted base. While the Attacker would have to build up their base but start with more units. The more planets you control the larger your empire. In order to protect offline players their could be plantary shields which are able to absorb X minutes of bombardment, if the shields fail then the planet is lost or if you prefer left to the AI to defend.

It could also be interesting if you could build fleets, say each planet can build one ship ever six hours, only while the player is online. These ships could then be used for invasions, bombing protected planets, attacking other fleets.

as a side note I doubt its possible but if your engine was sufficent lightweight, you might be able to institue a multimap system where players could be fighting on diffrent planets at the same time. What I mean that you invade venus and are fighting to take it over, but while that battle is going on another player attacks you on earth. Forcing you defend earth and invade venus at the same time by switching back and forth between the two battles. Greatly increasing the challenge and stress of game play.

How long has everybody been paying attention to the online gaming world?

I ask because back in the day of BBSs, there were quite a few games that could be roughly called RTSs (though I think they were almost turn based--tick based--not real time..) and the most famous of them was Trade Wars. It was just like an RTS in that you had to allocate resources, build units, tell them where to go, etc. They would eventually get where they were told to go, as the system would move them every "tick" (which was a predetermined amount of time).

All this I hear about cloaking a player''s forces when they log off, preventing attacks on the main base, letting teammates take over forces, etc. is just plain bullcrap. Unrealistic, completely disruptive to a persistent game, and open to too many abuses such as logging off when you know there''s a big attack being mounted on your main base.

I think coderx75 started in the right direction when he said "Allow no micromanagement." The leader of a force should be able to tell a unit to guard a base or whatever, and leave it alone. The AI should be good enough (and granted it is NOT in many RTSs) to allow the player to go take care of other things, or even log off and go to sleep, without worrying about the base. Log back on the next day and receive a "battle report"-- and there was nothing better that the player could have done that the AI didn''t take care of. These games SHOULD be about management and planning strategy, not about actually coordinating tactical combat. That should be left to your command units (i.e. generals, lieutenants, whatever).

If your main base got destroyed while you were asleep, TOO FRIGGIN'' BAD! You lost. It''s a tough world. Your forces weren''t strong enough to defend you, and you didn''t have the allies to protect you. But YOU are alive, and probably have made some sort of escape plan. Regroup, Rebuild. Get some allies. Ask them for some help rebuilding.

I''m sick and tired of games pandering to weak willed people. Protecting them when they''re not online... Making death and dying not a big deal with no real punishment for doing so... Moving the creature slaughter fields just outside of town to make powerlevelling easier... bah... It insults me as a gamer.

-Desco-

Anyone here use to play in cavedog''s boneyard system? It was an online-gaming thing for total annihilation (best RTS ever (in my humble opinion)). When you created an account you picked a side, and then the games you fought on that system counted as victories or defeats for that side, resulting in a change in dominance in the larger world (a system of planets).
now this thing was put into place long after the game total annihilation itself was designed, so it didnt fit together very well (these battles were fought out on independant standard maps, for example), but the concept would not be too hard to implement. players belong to a faction, and they command parts of the forces of those factions when logged in, when they log out these troops go to other players or to some kind of ai when there is a shortage of players on that side. sounds like a real neat game to me....

Marijn

Anyone ever play games on the NoChange BBSes in the 80''s?

There was a great game called (I think) Tradewars. Multi-player, although (of course) only one player was generally connected at a time.

Basically, there were planets, you had troops and trade fleets. When you logged in you had X minutes (or X moves?) to play, each day. Usually you''d log in and find someone had wiped out half your forces while you "were''nt paying attention" (offline).

While offline, you''re defensive only, but everything of yours can be taken. If you lose everything, you have to start over -- but the universe was designed to be big enough that generally you could expand your territory enough that you''d still have a safe core.

Yes, it''s vulnerable. Players can gang up on you. If you skipped a few days, you could be wiped out. But it did work fairly well.

The problems with having some or all bases be unattackable is that there never really is an end of a regime.

If no bases are attackable, my strategy is simple: login when few other players are around. Even if all my troops were destroyed I''m monopolizing a bunch of bases, and can presumably create more troops.

If only the central base is unattackable, the game could suck, as someone who plays infrequently has their territory surrounded by a strong player -- they''re essentially stuck. If that''s the case, there needs to be a way to "quit and start a new base" -- which leads to exploits.

Just some thoughts. Tradewars was by no means a perfect game, but it did feel pretty well balanced to me.

quote: Original post by Desco
I ask because back in the day of BBSs, there were quite a few games that could be roughly called RTSs (though I think they were almost turn based--tick based--not real time..) and the most famous of them was Trade Wars.

Ah, Desco, thanks! Should have read further down before replying. Sorry...

You could have some sort of hiearchy built in for the different factions. You could have a person at the top making decisions on the whole-picture, giving general orders and making general policies. You could then have 3-10 players who get even more specific than that for certain areas, and then hundreds for individual cities & armies.

If the person on the top logs off, no big deal, they are just there to set things up and tweak things. If a person on the bottom logs off, no big deal either, you will be part of a greater whole with other players in your faction protecting your assets (of course if they refuse or fall in battle it is another story). Then you can add the alliance system previously mentioned & a watered down (suck-up resources while you are gone) system.

rdaneel, you have got to check out Shattered Galaxy. Seriously, its one the most enjoyable rts I''ve ever played on line. Looking to subscribe as soon as my job come through.