Zerg have Guardians to take out siege tanks and protoss have arbiters that can in practice extend the range of their units (by allowing them to move closer without being fired upon).

Oh and technogoth, you got the idea of rps totally wrong. RPS does not in any way exclude terrain or circumstances. RPS is ANY game where an element is good against another element etc.
An element can be a unit in any specific combination and situation.

[edited by - Origin2052 on September 24, 2003 11:49:05 PM]

quote: Original post by Origin2052
Zerg have Guardians to take out siege tanks and protoss have arbiters that can in practice extend the range of their units (by allowing them to move closer without being fired upon).

Oh and technogoth, you got the idea of rps totally wrong. RPS does not in any way exclude terrain or circumstances. RPS is ANY game where an element is good against another element etc.
An element can be a unit in any specific combination and situation.

[edited by - Origin2052 on September 24, 2003 11:49:05 PM]

sorry I''m afriad your mistaken. RPS balancing is a technique used in most modern RTS games, that is identical in all game. units are strong against one unit and weak against another. Thats the basic principle of RPS.

Not all games use RPS for instance, Total Annilation and Starcraft to name a few, they balance stats and don''t use RPS.

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

umm no. you got it wrong. get over it.

siege tanks kill dragoons, zealots kill siege tanks, zealots kill marines, firebats kill zealots, dragoons kill firebats, siege tanks kill reavers, reavers + arbiter kills siege tanks, templars kills all mass, all non mass kills templar, siege tanks on cliffs kill everything ground, anything ground with a shuttle kills siege tanks on cliffs etc. etc. etc. etc.

The name RPS is used because RPS is one of the simplest most balanced games in history. It only means a game is (atleast trying to be) balanced, because everything is good at something and bad at something else.

I have never ever played an RTS that uses your definition of the RPS, where units always kill specific units no matter the situation, combination, terrain and micromanagement.

[edited by - Origin2052 on September 25, 2003 8:35:14 AM]

What about dark templars? They are fun to USE, but it is near impossible to beat a DT rush.

The RPS I mentioned was used in the following games just to name a few:

Age of Empires 2
Rise of Nations
Age of Mythology

In starcraft none of the unit effectviness are hard coded. Anyone can use any combination of units depending on the bcircumstances. The comparissons you listed are just your opions based on the games you've played. I could just as easily say that guardians + the flying anti air zerg, kills everthing. Or persision zergling rush takes down any building.
-----------------------------------------------------
Writer, Programer, Cook, I'm a Jack of all Trades
Current Design project
Chaos Factor Design Document



[edited by - TechnoGoth on September 25, 2003 8:05:27 PM]

quote: Original post by TechnoGoth
I could just as easily say that guardians + the flying anti air zerg, kills everthing. Or persision zergling rush takes down any building.

which would be wrong tho...

quote:
What about dark templars? They are fun to USE, but it is near impossible to beat a DT rush.

erm, it takes a bit longer to get 1 or more DTs than a detector and zergs even start with one of those neat overlords.

Can you name some more? I haven't played the games you mention more than a few minutes.

Anyway StarCraft is still RPS. It's just a much better game than most (or all) other RTS games.
What I think you are talking about is how strongly units counter each other. The stronger a unit counters another unit the less room it gives for other factors to play in such as micromanagement, terrain, combination with other units etc.

In the original C&C units countered each other very strongly for an example (the game was also imbalanced but thats another question). The plus with these kind of games is that players intuitively feel what units are good vs what units pretty much right away. I covered the minus before.

Of course on the other side of the spectrum we have games whose units counter too little. Then it gets very hard for the players to figure out what units to use vs what (Warcraft3 is a good example). As a plus it leaves very much room to micromanagement, combinations and terrain factors to play in. That is NOT however saying if a games units counter weakly it automatically means the game has good micromanagement, combinations and terrain to take up that room. WC3 again has very weak unit countering but still has extremely little tactical micromanagement, terrain and combinations. That's just because WC3 is a really badly designed game though.

As always there's the golden middle road to aim for and I think StarCraft hit it pretty much dead on. Its counters are weak enough to allow room for other factors to play in and strong enough to let the player get a basic feel for what is good aginst what (while still making the player have to play alot to completely understand it all, giving the player a sense of developing as he plays the game, wich is nice.).

[edited by - Origin2052 on September 26, 2003 6:44:50 AM]

quote: Original post by Origin2052
Anyway StarCraft is still RPS. It''s just a much better game than most (or all) other RTS games.

You may be right. However, some of the relationships in SC are more obvious than others. Scourges are an obvious anti-Carrier weapon, but how do Seige Tanks compare against Dark Templars? The answer is so dependent on circumstances (how soon the terrans can detect the DT, how quickly the DT can get to the tanks, what mode the tanks are in, etc...) that it is impossible to really define their relation to each other. If the designers did use RPS balancing, they certainly didn''t use it in a basic form - there are so many different relationships going on that there are invariably more than one viable counter to any given strategy. I could think of about 6 counters per race for the terran turtling strategy mentioned earlier, without even trying too hard.

quote: What I think you are talking about is how strongly units counter each other. The stronger a unit counters another unit the less room it gives for other factors to play in such as micromanagement, terrain, combination with other units etc.

Yes, I think this is a very good point. If the counter strength is too high, the game becomes all about unit selection - and the optimum strategy will always be equal amounts of everything - or at least equal amounts of each ''Counter'' unit. If the counter strength is too low, every unit might as well be the same, and you can get away with just spamming one unit type en-masse.

quote: That''s just because WC3 is a really badly designed game though.

I have to admit that I did''t really get on with WC3, although enough people seem to enjoy it for me to hesitate to call it badly designed. I would disagree that it didn''t have much micromanagement though - despite it''s helper features (autocast spells, unit formations, find idle peon etc) I found it to involve far more micro than Starcraft. Probably because of the ridiculous importance of spellcasting in it, and all that pissing around levelling heroes.

I said tactical micromanagement. WC3 has more micromanagement than any other RTS game I''ve ever played. But unlike most other games the micromanagement is just that, management, and not tactics. There are so many things you "have to" do and not enough thinking. Just alot of clicking.
In essence, I think you could play alot more "perfect" in WC3 if it was turn based than you could in any other RTS if they were turn based.
And sure some people are enjoying the game but I''ve noticed alot of people in the community are complaining and whining about things and many people have gone back to SC etc.
Did you also notice how quickly the price of WC3 sank? Atleast over here it was basically in the bargain bin after one year costing next to nothing.

About SC and DT vs Siege Tank etc. you could say that SC is an RPS game in the bottom with some neat things on top to make things alot more interesting. Most games work this way. A base of RPS units and then some "special" units to upset the "balance" so to speak.
You can still consider even that RPS though if you think of specific game situations as the elements rather than single units.

So the RPS debate seems to be a question of definition - on the one side is the use of RPS to mean that a) any encounter is resolved deterministically and b) for any given types of units, A, B, C, D... Z there are conditions under which A>B, conditions where B>C, conditions where C>D ... and finally conditions where Z>A

The other side seems to use RPS to apply to any system where, for unit types A,B,C,D... Z, under all conditions, A>B>C>D>...Z>A

Those who deplore the use of "RPS balancing" in RTS games are generally talking about the second definition.