I think "Real Time Strategy" games are over complicated. They are a lot of fun unless your to busy telling your little mining fellows what to do. This frustrates me no end. I also wish RTS''s were more balanced. They all seem to have an overkill vechial of sorts which completely ruins the strategy element of the game. I say that when it comes to a RTS we should dump the attitude that bigger is better. What ever happened to games designs like axis and allies. Why can''t we make a RTS like this. Wouldn''t this be more appealing? We are their, "Children of the Free"

The first problem you mentioned (always having to manage workers) is really bad, however the new generation of RTSs is dealing with it. Strifeshadow by Ethermoon (Ethermoon.com) is going to be a great game. It is designed by one of the top starcraft players and is sort of a starcraft/myth crossbreed. It also has surprisingly good graphics if that matters. It should come out around Christmas with a beta in the fall. Warcraft III is also going to downplay the tedious parts of the genre. Myth II has been out for a few years and it simply an amazing game (bungie.com).

The second problem isn''t really a problem, at least not for starcraft. Well in brood war that''s another issue... stupid corsair but they''ve promised a patch once they get the D2 server overload dealt with. (they "only" had capacity for 100,000 but it turns out 2 million preordered and all tried to get on at the same time...)

There''s also the issue of contolling ground units like infantry in an easier fashion.

KKND solved the issue of mining but unfortunately Beam/Infograms gave up on this genre because they thought it was expired or some rubbish. What a bummer :-(

We are their,
"Children of the Free"

I''ve been working on a RTS design since ''97 (well on and off since then), where the micro-management can be turned on or off (off is the default). I want to allow the player to decide just how much "work" they have to do to play.

What I have decided is that in the mode where the player doesn''t conrtol the mining units, there would be a goverment, if you will, that would determine how much "money" the player would get ever game year. There would be many factors that the AI would take into account to determine how much "money" to give to the player. A few that I have come up with are:
- How many units the player lost.
+ How many enemy the player killed.
- How much land the player lost.
+ How much land the player gained.
etc...

I agree with your point that RTS''s are unbalanced. But in all "warring" societies you find weapons on one side or the other which are unbalanced. I think this is acceptable.



Dave "Dak Lozar" Loeser

quote: Original post by Dak Lozar

I agree with your point that RTS''s are unbalanced. But in all "warring" societies you find weapons on one side or the other which are unbalanced. I think this is acceptable.

I would accept that from myself if i was making a real life war simulation. But a game is different. Balance is essential don''t you think.

Your example comes from a reallife situation which is far from a game.





I love Game Design and it loves me back.

Yes, balance is essential.
I would think that as long as the weapons systems for both sides are comparable then individual weapon systems could be unbalanced.

An example would be, side A has a tank that is slightly inferior to the side B''s tank. And side B has plane that is slightly more advanced than side A''s. But the total of the systems side A has is equal to the systems that side B has.

True this is a game, and it is unnecessary to emulate the real world. But if both sided are exactly the same then the game is limited in playability. If each weapon has its own strength and weaknesses then the games life is extended, allowing players to play all sides.



Dave "Dak Lozar" Loeser

I think the secret to making strategy games is to allow the players to play each time with multiple ways of playing. This is why map design is crucial in RTS''s and other strategy type games.

If the designer just makes bigger and better weapons then it might as well be a player once FPS.

I personally believe that making balance and options are the key ingredience for strategy games.

So it''s more important to make strategy game units do different things rather than better thing. But not always completely at course. That is, taking chess as an example.

I love Game Design and it loves me back.

I can''t help but feel this is just down to poor control methods rather than overcomplication. Personally, I am always wishing for more control over my units, although that might just be because I grew up on turn-based games where deep analysis was more practical.

Setting workers on a task should be largely automatic. In fact, I found this quite good in Age Of Empires, you could set them off felling trees and leave them for half an hour. Total Annihilation was a bit more awkward, but was alleviated by allowing for multiple orders to be queued. This is where an extra ''complication'' is actually going to simplify things: instead of having to multitask and switch back and forth as I would in Command And Conquer, in Total Annihilation I would give 1 unit 4 or 5 orders, then the next, and so on. The ability to concentrate on one thing at a time and have all this run concurrently made it feel less like I had to manage everything, even though I was doing the same amount of order-giving.

You need intelligent, yet overridable defaults. For instance, games where you can set a military unit''s response to attack as being one of Do Nothing, Return Fire, Pursue, etc. The sensible default is usually Return Fire, so they start off like this, but if you want to change this, select the unit, go to the ''advanced orders'' page or whatever, and change it.

I think more is better in these games Less control only leads to more frustration, for me at least

The original Age of Empires and it''s expansion pack was a great RTS game to me. As mentioned before, you can set a villager to cut trees and he won''t stop until he runs out of trees.

Age of Empires also had a nice balance, that''s me anyway.

The strongest bround unit was a centruion (upgrade of phalanxman). They could kill a villager with a single poke. But they were incredibly slow. So inturn, if the centruion was overwelmed he didn''t have much chance at surviving, for he couldn''t run if his life depended on it. We have just created a balance.

Catapults are strong attackers, but takes a bit to reload and fire another boulder. Also, it is quite slow. It''s counterpart, the ballista launcher, has weeker attacks, that fire faster, and it can get around fairly well. Another balance.

All balances are, are one units weeknesses and strengths, reversed. This is how I look at it anyway.

Having a perfect balance doesn''t make the game endless, or any less fun. It just stops you from making an invisible army and crushing your foe. Instead, it gets you to think a little bit more, and make a strategy.



............
Guardian Angel Interactive

Hey Paul Cunningham, KKND was my favorite RTS and I played KKND2 DEMO like long time ago and it rocked.I m trying to buy a copy of the game.

Do you know where I can get it from???

I ordered it from Chips&Bits like 6-7 month ago and it still backordered.

I know like beam games(or melbourne house) was sold to inforgrams, and they are only distributing playstation version.


Thanks.