Is it just me or have RTS games become endless stalemates? I used to be a big fan of these games, but now they all seem to be all about 3D terrain engines and not about gameplay. All of the RTS games I''ve played over the last few years have used the rock, paper, scissors approach to combat, which I''m personally against and it has resualted din games become endless stalemates. Both sides produce units at about the same rate and both sides have basically the same units. And because of this games go on forever, you battle endless against enemies troops. You raise a big attack force and attack the enemey only to be confronted with an equally big force of the enemies. Sure eventually one side gain a foot hold and capture and enmey base and eventually drive the enemy back but that usual takes along long time, and many faild invasions. I don''t know if anyone here has everplayed an old RTS game called Total Annilation but that was game that never resulted in stalmates. propably because there where over a hundread units between the 2 sides, and they used the unit stat approach rather then the Rock paper scissors approach. But that no good these days, companies ae so concerned with play balancing that they have over balacanced and now games are endles stalemates with all side identical. So does anyone have anythoughts on how we can end the deadlocke and bring fun back into RTS games? ----------------------------------------------------- Writer, Programer, Cook, I''m a Jack of all Trades Current Design project Chaos Factor Design Document

One side has a huge nuke and the other side has none.

James Simmons
MindEngine Development
http://medev.sourceforge.net

I still play Total Annihilation and usually not any of the new crappy RTS''s

So if you ever want to play a game, send me a mail @ siaon@hotmail.com (I''m on a 4mbit, so dun worry)

I seem to remember plenty of stalemate situations in TA. Particularly on the island maps, where your sea and air defences got so good no one could actually attack you, and the games just turned into pointless nuke slinging matches (pointless because everyone had anti nuke defences). I wouldn''t say stalemates were any less common in TA than in other RTS games, at any rate.

I agree with you on RPS balancing being a bit boring(I''ve posted about it before, and suggested an alternative - I''d also recommend a search on the subject)

However, RPS balancing doesn''t cause stalemate as such - stalemate in my experience usually comes about when players leave it too late in the game to be aggressive. Late game, population limits are the big equaliser, so differences in resource gathering are irrelevent. In the absence of pop limits, things like maximum group size and number of unit hotkeys (relating to the number of units a player can usefully control at a time) become limiting factors.

The other cause of stalemates is the finite resources in most RTS games. Coupled with the above, its easy to find yourself in a situation where you are safe from attack, but have no money left to build an attacking force.

What I''m really waiting for in an RTS where strategy makes a significant difference. Most of the RTS''s I''ve played (which admitadely isn''t too many) are nothing more than a technology race. First person with the really big shiny weapon wins.

I had been considering (not extensively though) a FPS/RTS combination not all that long ago, where espionage missions and the like can be taken in first person mode as the grand battle continues around you (AI controlled) from where you left it in RTS mode. Although some is modern tech specific, some stuff I''d considered on the RTS side of things:

* Every RTS I''ve played always assumed that units can communicate with the command center without problems. What if this wasn''t the case? Communications over an area could be jammed or comms relay stations destroyed leaving units in a state of confusion over the affected area.

* Landscape matters. For example, if you build a communications tower in a well protected valley you''re going to be able to transmit to all of that well protected valley....and not much else. Comms stations would have to be placed on high ground, vunerable ground.

* Randomness. Units/equipment could malfunction occasionally on the battlefield.

* Randomness could perhaps also be applied to research, where by the player researches into a particular field but isn''t guarentteed what the final tech will be or how long it will take. This would prevent people (or the AI) from just following the most optimal path to researching and building everything each time they play (since it would be different each time).

* Unit emotions. If I was part of a small team of grunts that accidently ran into team of mechs I don''t care what command HQ says, I''m getting the fuck out of there!! Emotions such as fear or bravo could be incorporated that affect how well units perform on the battle field.


Some of these would need some fairly careful thinking over to get working without pissing the player off, but if I ever get around to making my RTS/FPS combo game they''re definately things I''ll be looking into.

the rock paper scissor way and the stat way? what''s this weird "stat way" you''re talking about? all existing rts games use some form of rock paper scissors be it simple or advanced. the only way not to do it would be to make an imbalanced game wich would automatically be a very bad game.

True, in some RTS games stalemates occur. But certainly not because the game use rock papper scissors techniqes but rather other reasons like too little resources on the map or too expensive and slow to build units.

StarCraft for an example extremely seldom lead to stalemates. As a matter of fact I have yet to see a single one after years of playing.

No stalemates in Starcraft!? I''ve had more than my fair share. I forget how many times we''ve been playing a single game for well over 3 hours finally just giving up because we couldn''t penetrate each others defenses. This is using maps with effectively unlimited resources, we very quickly got sick of running out of resource on the standard maps.

quote: Original post by joanusdmentia
No stalemates in Starcraft!? I''ve had more than my fair share. I forget how many times we''ve been playing a single game for well over 3 hours finally just giving up because we couldn''t penetrate each others defenses. This is using maps with effectively unlimited resources, we very quickly got sick of running out of resource on the standard maps.

See my earlier post about stalemates being caused by late aggression.

If you sit behind a wall of defences for most of the game, what is stopping your opponent from also maxing out? And once you''ve both maxed out your forces, and assuming that the units comprising those forces are balanced, you''ve thrown away any strength advantage you might have had earlier in the game.

Next time you play that person, ask yourself how he is going to play. If he is like most BGH turtlers, he probably doesn''t attack much early, and concentrates his defences around his initial choke point, later expanding his defences to cover his whole start island. This is dead easy to beat - distract him with an attack on his choke point, and while he is messing about with that send a dropship or two full of reavers/seige tanks/lurkers and dump them in the middle of his resource area. If you don''t bother wasting any money on static defences, you can get the required tech pretty early, and you''ll be able to pull this off before he gets a chance to completely surrounds his base with anti air defences. Even if he survives, you should have done substantial damage to both his choke point and to his resource collection, which will cripple him for long enough for you to build your next attack force.

quote:
See my earlier post about stalemates being caused by late aggression.

If you sit behind a wall of defences for most of the game, what is stopping your opponent from also maxing out? And once you''ve both maxed out your forces, and assuming that the units comprising those forces are balanced, you''ve thrown away any strength advantage you might have had earlier in the game.
...

Actually, we tend to put our defences in close to our buildings covered by a line of supply depots, expanding out from there to eventually cover the entire island, so that doesn''t work quite as well.

That and we occasionally filled the rest of the slots with computers as well, so by the time we turned on each other there was no hope

Anyway, I was just surprised that Origin2052 rarely came across stalemates in StarCraft.

Have any of you played European war or American Conquest ? They''re of the best RTS game becuase they depend more on battle tactics. I played AOE:2 in which u can change ur troops formation but this wasn''t of much value, but in European war u can really change how things are going by changing ur troops format, how and when to attack, beside u really can manage huge armies to have a good control of battle events..