I think giant super defenses and giant super armys are a good idea...the only thing ia with a max pop limit thats so low the defense becomes to good and you get stalemate...although I have never played a RTS where I have ended in a stalemate (except AOE)...Usually I am either way underbalanced or way overbalanced due to my suxoring brain in RTSes

How I shot Web.... How I drove ship.... How I thinks Hard.... How I arent You.... How I....

I don''t know if the close combat series qualify as RTS but Close Combat 2 and 3 were amazing games. If you popped up the difficulty factor... each single game that might last a few hours was just captivating. I found the online aspect to be good too but it never was as good as single player against the computer. I think RTS need to focus more on the fighting strategies more than economy building and such. In Close Combat 2 and 3 I remembered when my soldiers were out of ammo.. and i was cornered with only one team that could disable tanks, one sniper, and a quarter of a squad left.
I guess my point is: Modern RTS should look at the Close Combat series and learn from it. Most RTS now are just derivatives of AOE or warcraft, CC. We need more variety!

3 step how-to on making Total Annihilation the best game ever.

1. Get rid of metal maps and moho metal makers
2. make long build time units stronger.
3. Improved artillery.

1,
People comment on how RTS''s have no strategy. You know why? Because all your units are free goods. you can build as many as you want at no cost! weeeeeeeeee! Just build lots of big stuff and throw it around!

2,
Ever take a look at a how long a maverick takes compared to a flash? why the heck can 4 flashes take a maverick!? (hint: because of #1, people can make too damn many mavericks, so they can''t possibly be powerful at all)

3,
This pisses me off. Yay! futuristic technology! unfortuneatly this somehow means all of our explosions affect nothing beyond a 1 meter radius! Those big defensive guns you can build? the huge PLASMA balls it shoots do nice damage, sure, but only on 2 units!? should take out 6!

I've come up with a few ideas that might make RTS game better, although I don't think all of them would work well in a single game.

Defence:

1) Buildings and Defences should be manned; each would have a manpower requirement representing the number of people needed to operate that building. Also any structure can be taken over by killing the occupants and placing your own units inside it. So if your opponent builds a long ranged cannon with manpower of 2. You could have your troops storm the cannon and seize control of it turning his own weapon against him.

2) Firing arc, fixed emplacements should have a firing arc, this would not always be 360 degrees some weapons may only have a 45 degree arc in front of them,

3) Walls and structures immune to some weapons, not all weapons should affect walls and buildings, for instance if it’s a primitive game no matter how long you hack at a wall with a sword nothing should happen. A player would have to bring siege weapons or use explosives to damage a building or wall. This idea would work with idea 1 in that you infantry armed with machine guns would storm the building trying to capture it while your mortar infantry would try to level the building.

4)Establish a perimeter, in modern warfare one of the first things a commander would do when establishing a base is construct a defensively perimeter. It would not have to be elaborate. Walls around the base with gates at the entrances would be enough to establish a perimeter. But there should be an incentive to do this. Perhaps you can't bring in civilian personal until your base is secure. Limiting the kinds of building you can build.

Super Weapons:

5) Consequences to your actions. In real life you can't fire off nukes whenever you enter battle as such there should be some kind of consequence to the use of super weapons in a game. For instance if it’s a nuke then you would have fallout, firing a nuclear weapon during the battle should leave a large part of the map contaminated killing anyone entering it. There could be other consequence it would depend on the weapon and the game.

6) Last resort most of the time I find super weapons more annoying then anything else forcing you divert attention form you attack to replace the 2 or 3 buildings destroyed. So unless they really add a something to game play super weapons should be left out entirely.

Resources:

7) No resources, in tactical battles that RTS games are, resource gathering isn't something that acutely happens. Instead how about 2 stats manpower and allocation. At the start of the battle the player is assigned both of these allocation points would be used to request units and buildings. The amount increase at intervals as HQ provides you with additional resources to use. They would also increase and decrease based on the players actions. For instance sending hundreds of units to die against the enemy’s walled fortress would be cause HQ to see you as an unfit leader and decrease your allocation points. By the same token capturing that walled fortress with a few units and well planned strategy would cause HQ to reward you with additional allocation points.

8) Power supplies, building and defences should require power to operate if these are destroyed it would cripple the base as such they are of strategic importance. But to balance there importance they should have some draw back to prevent people from building dozens of them. They could require a constant resource to operate so the more power plants you have the heavier the strain on your resources.


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Writer, Programer, Cook, I'm a Jack of all Trades
Current Design project
Chaos Factor Design Document



[edited by - TechnoGoth on September 13, 2003 1:39:23 AM]

Stalemate? I think not. I absolutely guarantee I''ll beat you ten times in a row in either of the following games:
Starcraft
Warcraft 3
CC Generals
Age Of Empires

Think before you spout.

argh, that one got me

1. You beat who ten times in a row ?
2. The discussion is about equally skilled people. If an experienced player can bash joe newbie then that does not solve the possible problem of a stalemate.
3. Yeah, you should better do.

4. I am this threads original AP or whatever D;

[edited by - Eternal on September 16, 2003 4:55:55 PM]

I find that the big name RTSs tend to have the worst playability IMO. Publishers arent interested in new rts typs but rather one that will make money and they know what will make money. Most of the RTSs you dont ear about are the ones that are very entertaining becouse they were willing to risk a new idea on the market. its usually a financial blunder, but a creative masterpeice. RTSs tend to be just clones of each other with their pop limits ,resours limits ,group limits, an econemy that cant be negative in its income, and a population of mindless drones.

here are some examples of some RTS that are more diverse, that are in developementP:

City States: Stone to Steel
Knights of honor
Lords of the Realm 3

BTW ^^^ thas me

the reason I favor these is this:

City States: STS is almost compleatly differant from the aoe2 style model.I almost dont want to call it an RTS becouse the only thing incommon with other RTS is that its real time, and its a stratagy. your city''s culture changes depending on your actions. if you draft lots of citizens your city''s militarist culture becomes more dominant. your people demand war more readaly, make better soilders ect. but are less likely to accept other players as allies. this is just 1 of the culture factors including (about 30 of em including: relegios, nature freindlyness, economic,patriatism and many more.) and you can only effect them through action, not by pre setting it, and it is always changing.
your people have their own oppinion on about every issue of your city and are not mindless nor limitless like in other RTS. its been said that the map can be so large that a man on foot takes an hour to go from end to end in a strait line. 30,000 world pop limit is anouther plus.
these are only a few of the many orriginal ideas in CS, as you can see im excited about it.

I dont know much about Knights of honor but from what i can tell it looks differant. thats all i can say

Lords3 is differant in that you give parcels of land to vassles who rule it. they rase the armies and make the money. it looks like a more historicly accurate representation in an RTS.

I''m really looking forward to Lords of the Realms III, I''m a big fan of LotR2 and will probably enjoy LotR as much.

I like Myth. It has no stalemates; it has strategy (buy your units before the game) and tactics (landscape truly affects combat).