I've often thought of what I would try and contribute to an RTS genre. Now most (if not all) are probably found else where. I might have seen one or two but not all of them in place. I would just like to see more of them used. Here's a few of my ideas. : AI Managers - Setting parts of your strategy on auto. Take Warcraft for example. Suppose you are a building type person. You could take the role of a building manager and set the offensive units to Auto. When you build enough warriors, they would automattically march off and fight the enemy. You wouldn't have to control them at all. You could fine tune their strategy to aggressive / cautious / defensive... but you wouldn't have to do 2 things at once. OR you could take the role of warleader and command the army. Leave the computer to manage building your town and building units for you. YOu could concentrate completely on attacking. Note: You could turn off the AI at any time and take over the roles. But it allows for you to turn your back on part of the game without worrying that they need your constant input. I think Star Wars Rebellion had this... not sure though. First Person Ability - One game off the bat I know of is Battlezone. I'm a huge fan of the game. You ARE one of the units. If you die it's game over. But at the same time you command the army and tell other units to build/attack. I think more games should have this feature. Or at least something like Dungeon Keeper where you could "possess" one of the units and fight in First person mode. You'd lose all other command options until you unpossessed them. Gives you a unique view into the battle. Path Defining - Haven't seen this anywhere. Well really this is just an advanced waypoint system. You plot out a series of waypoints which make a path. You could then tell units to go to the start of the waypoint and they would procede to follow the path until they reached the end... where they would stop. Or you could have complicated ones which caused you to stop until you gave another command which would get them moving again.... actually I have seen this before. Rainbox 6. But it wasn't as flexible as what I'm saying. In Rainbow 6, the guys had to follow the path every time. in my explaination, i'd have the units do what they want or at least have no orders unit they are told to go on the path and then they'll do stuff. This is usefull for where you want to position units behind an enemy base where normally your units would walk directly at the front. Order's priority - Getting a little more complicated here. Have a priority list for units. You can give multiple orders to a unit and they would carry them out. but the orders could be never ending. Example. You tell a group of grunts to guard the wizard. That's their first order. You also tell them to patrol the area. (second order). They procede to wander the patrol route until the wizard is in danger. They will rush back to defend until the wizard is safe... then go back to their routes. And when you tell one of the units to do something they will do that first until they are finished,.... then return to the orders (orders will only disappear if they are not constant (like attack enemy sheep) or if they are deleted. Intelligent Guarding - Basically if you tell units to guard something, they don't follow it the whole way. Units will spread around the target so there's some guards infront, some behind. They automatically pick up the path of the target. So if the target has a patrol route or is moving somewhere... the guards know what the path is to allow them to stay in front. Pregame building - Both teams start with a limited amount of resources... enough to build a decent base and some offensive units OR build a great base and very little offense OR a LOT of offense and a small base. But here's the catch. You have unlimited time to build it but can't attack as the game is "paused" while you set up your base. Since it's paused, you can't gather resources either. You can advance in your tech tree but that means that the resources used to advance can't be used to build anything. And when both teams decide that they have the base they want... they click the "ready" button and the game starts. [edited by - trapdoor on November 1, 2003 6:07:50 AM]

quote: Original post by trapdoor
AI Managers - Setting parts of your strategy on auto. Take Warcraft for example. Suppose you are a building type person. You could take the role of a building manager and set the offensive units to Auto. When you build enough warriors, they would automattically march off and fight the enemy. You wouldn''t have to control them at all. You could fine tune their strategy to aggressive / cautious / defensive... but you wouldn''t have to do 2 things at once. OR you could take the role of warleader and command the army. Leave the computer to manage building your town and building units for you. YOu could concentrate completely on attacking. Note: You could turn off the AI at any time and take over the roles. But it allows for you to turn your back on part of the game without worrying that they need your constant input. I think Star Wars Rebellion had this... not sure though.

I''d like this if the implementation followed a few rules:
1) In a game where it is not _needed_ (warcraft) implement it as a newbie help, make it help the player, make sure the AI is decent, but the experienced player should always be able to do much better on his own.

2) Design the game so that it is necessary to use AI help, still so that every player can decide up to which level he needs the help, but he''d have to use it in some area unless he wants to lose. Here the AI would have to be very advanced though, so it might be very hard to pull that off.

For both it would be imperative that the AI is solid, so that it might do "stupid" things, but never things the controlling player couldnt forsee.

quote:
First Person Ability - One game off the bat I know of is Battlezone. I''m a huge fan of the game. You ARE one of the units. If you die it''s game over. But at the same time you command the army and tell other units to build/attack. I think more games should have this feature. Or at least something like Dungeon Keeper where you could "possess" one of the units and fight in First person mode. You''d lose all other command options until you unpossessed them. Gives you a unique view into the battle.

Not my type of game, would work better in a tactics style game tho i think. (Think OFP with more control over your squad)

quote:
Path Defining - Haven''t seen this anywhere. Well really this is just an advanced waypoint system. You plot out a series of waypoints which make a path. You could then tell units to go to the start of the waypoint and they would procede to follow the path until they reached the end... where they would stop. Or you could have complicated ones which caused you to stop until you gave another command which would get them moving again.... actually I have seen this before. Rainbox 6. But it wasn''t as flexible as what I''m saying. In Rainbow 6, the guys had to follow the path every time. in my explaination, i''d have the units do what they want or at least have no orders unit they are told to go on the path and then they''ll do stuff. This is usefull for where you want to position units behind an enemy base where normally your units would walk directly at the front.

Yep.
Might be that C&C Tiberian Sun had this... poorly implemented and without "go-codes".

quote:
Order''s priority - Getting a little more complicated here. Have a priority list for units. You can give multiple orders to a unit and they would carry them out. but the orders could be never ending. Example. You tell a group of grunts to guard the wizard. That''s their first order. You also tell them to patrol the area. (second order). They procede to wander the patrol route until the wizard is in danger. They will rush back to defend until the wizard is safe... then go back to their routes. And when you tell one of the units to do something they will do that first until they are finished,.... then return to the orders (orders will only disappear if they are not constant (like attack enemy sheep) or if they are deleted.

Better suited to either "Large-Scale RTS" or "First-Person Tactics thing" than "current standard RTS" imo. In current RTS games the situation is often constantly changing and you can be at every spot of the map within one click to change orders within half a second. So the time spent setting up those complex orders would almost always be wasted.

quote:
Intelligent Guarding - Basically if you tell units to guard something, they don''t follow it the whole way. Units will spread around the target so there''s some guards infront, some behind. They automatically pick up the path of the target. So if the target has a patrol route or is moving somewhere... the guards know what the path is to allow them to stay in front.

Another yep. Just a little feature, not really changing the gameplay, has drawbacks aswell from my point of view. But if the player doesnt like he can simply not use it.

quote:
Pregame building - Both teams start with a limited amount of resources... enough to build a decent base and some offensive units OR build a great base and very little offense OR a LOT of offense and a small base. But here''s the catch. You have unlimited time to build it but can''t attack as the game is "paused" while you set up your base. Since it''s paused, you can''t gather resources either. You can advance in your tech tree but that means that the resources used to advance can''t be used to build anything. And when both teams decide that they have the base they want... they click the "ready" button and the game starts.

If the length of the build-up time is a game option, not forced then yep, why not. Can see many people who''d like that, me probably not being one of them


As you can see i think all those ideas have their place, aslong as they fit into the game and you don''t overdo it.

P.S. i really hate that strategy game related (non-)terminology ;/

Just thought I might point out a few thoughts I had.

First off, the First Person Ability concept. I enjoyed Battlezone as well, but the battles just weren''t as far-reaching as I would''ve like. Actually being one of the units is a severe limitation to one''s control ability. However, a variation of this that I know works is that in Dark Reign 2; while you can''t actually go into first-person per se, you have complete control of the camera - you can float above the battlefield like any other traditional RTS, or you can get right down in the midst of your warriors and watch the bloodshed in all it''s glory detail. In my opinion, this would be an excellent addition to most, if not all, RTS games.

Secondly, the Path Defining. The original Dark Reign (yes, I like my Dark Reign games so sue me) had this, and although it was far from perfect, it was a step on the road. And remember, it was made many years ago, after all. At the base of it all was the waypoint system, and the unit orders and behaviours. Clicking ''Scout'' sends the selected unit(s) out around the map to scout unseen map ares. ''Harass'' makes them scout around to find enemy units, and employ hit-and-run tactics. A problem with this one is that squads of units will disperse and all scout around for a target individually; this could have easily been remedied, but it wasn''t. Still, it''s a good concept. The third and final order was ''Search And Destroy,'' which I believe is rather obvious. Again, however, the squad disperses.
Unit behaviours are great. One can set the units Pursuit Range, Damage Tolerance (when they should return to base for repairs), and Independence. Independence sorta comes under your concept of Orders Priority. It determines how willing your units are to disregard and order you have issued, to go do something important, like blow up a nearby enemy structure or something.
Now, on to the paths. There were three different settings. Theres One Way, which is the standard and usually only method in most games with waypoints - the unit follows the path, then stops. Then theres Patrol, which is like any other patrol command - back and forth, although instead of a direct line they follow their waypoints. And finally, Loop, meaning (obviously) once the unit reaches the end, they will go back to the start and through the whole path again and again.
Pretty basic, but they make it much easier to use waypoints effectively. And, of course, my favourite - path saving. This is great. It means you can save a path, and then assign multiple squads to it, time after time, for as long as you have it saved.

Finally, a little point about the Pregame Building - Metal Fatigue had this feature. You start with your usual construction vehicle and ''Matter Converter,'' and then you can build your base unmolested, untimed. You have a resource limit, and you can''t harvest any more, and you can''t leave a certain defined area around your M-Converter. This, I believe, was a great addition.

And my opinions on the other things...
AI Managers: I like the idea, and I agree with what Eternal said about them.
Intelligent Guarding: I REALLY like the idea - it''s always annoyed me how the unit being guarded is invariably the first to come into weapon range. Guard unit should be patrolling ahead of the unit.

Anyway... enough of my rambling.

Dodge
~~
Open your mouth to my bloody rain. And upon your Second Birth we shall slay the Earth, and stalk Mankind ''til Heaven burns.
~~

AI Managers. I have seen them mostly in Civilization type games. The games are so big that they need them or else new players would be totally overwhelmed by the stuff they have to do. I think it would be almost useless to an experienced starcraft player but could be usefull.

I agree. Being an ''experienced Starcraft player,'' I can see that while an AI manager would probably not be of any use against the computer, when playing against human adversaries it would most likely be a rather valuable tool. I''m glad you mentioned your ideas, f''sure; I''ve been drumming my head against a brick wall, trying to think of a way to assist new players in the RTS game I''m working on (it''s currently only in the design phase), as I didn''t want one of those tutorials with all the text and the annoying voice telling ya what to do. I''m pretty tired of them. So, yeah... an AI manager would be rather effective.

Dodge
~~~
I''m leaving. You''ll dream of me, then forget me. But in the darkest shadows of night, I''ll be there watching you.
~~~

I think an important feature is the attack move command, in which units will engage enemy enroute to a location, I can remeber playing games recently where my whole attack force was wiped out because I sent them to attack a certain building and they where killed enroute by enemy units.
So it would be good to include several kinds of attacks moves.
such as:
move or attack - just move to the location or attack the specifed target.
move and attack - move to the location and attack enemies enroute.
move and harress - fire at enmey units and buildings while enroute without stopping
move and destroy - destroy all enemey units and buildings encountered enroute.

as well being able to have special orders while attacking such as.

Attack - keeps attacking target till its destroyed.
Counter Strong - attack stronger targets who attack the unit while its attacking.
Counter weak - attack weaker targerts that attack while its attacking.

Ideally I should be able set of these unit AI modes at while to the default, that way I don''t have to worry about speical buttons when attacking if I always want use move and harress.

also the idea of units speacial abilites should come under this. I find that in many game espacialy warcraft 3 they become a major hassle and difficult to use. Since they units for the most part won''t use a specail power unless you tell them. This becomes increasingly annyoing when faced with the fact that a when selecting a mixed group as a whole you don''t have access to all the units specail powers at the same time. I''d much rather see them either removed or automated.

I like the idea of customized set up. But what if you did it at set up time for the game? When the player joins the game and choose their team it also opens up a second window where you distribute your points, to choose starting units, buildings and technologies. Then when the game begins the players simply starts the game with those things already built and reaserched. Instead of having the inital cease fire to construct your base at the begin of the game.

I also have an another idea not hijack your thread or anything. How about:
Communication Ranges - You have a limited communications/control range this would be generated by your main base structure communications tower could be built to extend your range around them. The idea is that you can only control units within comm range. So if you sent your units to attack an enemy base outside your comm range then they would be on there once they left that range and instead would be governed by their last orders and unit AI. Comm towers would be vital logistical buildings and valuable targets of oppertunity for opponets.

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

quote: Original post by TechnoGoth
I think an important feature is the attack move command, in which units will engage enemy enroute to a location, I can remeber playing games recently where my whole attack force was wiped out because I sent them to attack a certain building and they where killed enroute by enemy units.

I agree with TechnoGoth on the above point to a certain degree. In Warcraft III, attack move is sometimes a bad idea. A troop under such order can get into trouble by attacking sleeping monsters at night even if the troops are obviously outclassed. Perhaps the list of special commands need to be expanded?

AI Managers:
you could make the ai with a scripting system and exposing it to the public which would lead to better ai and even botmatches
but i guess that would just be overkill

also the idea about communications range would lead to some interesting concepts like generals who take over a squad and lead it in cas communications are lost (and even could take the part of an ai manager on unit level)

I like the first person idea, although it''s not very RTS.
This is something I wanted in a game like Battlefield 1942. You''re a sergeant and when you should an order ''attack on the left'', ''retreat'', ''cover me'' your soldiers should immediately follow them and work as a team.

Instead all of the AI soldiers jumped into a jeep or truck and drove off when starting or respawning, forcing you to walk to the battle while the AI soldier drives off alone in a truck big enough for 8. Also they jumped in and out of trucks at random, deserting when you needed them most.
And of course you could should orders but they all ignored them completely. If this was properly implemented it could have been more a strategy game instead of a ''do it all alone'' game.