quote:
This guy hits this thing and this thing always takes this much damage. Thats terrible!

Warcraft II and several other games work around this. What it amounts to is yes, they always take *this* much damage (called piercing damage), but they may take a lot more. I agree with you, though, this is a little silly, so it should be altered so enemy armor is taken into account. Of course, players are going to get upset if their unit never does damage against another one, like a laser trooper firing at heavy armor, but this will make them work more for strategy and less for tank rushes.

As for battle credits.... Don''t let landfish hear you talking about experience or rewards for murder! Maybe rewards for taking certain mission-based objectives. However, the big problem with this is that if you are thumping the enemy, you don''t really need these extra points, and if you''re doing crappy and not getting the points, you probably need them. This is counter-productive, and while it may help them work towards strategy, I don''t think people are going to like it in your game any better than they did in FC.

quote:
This may be a bit off topic...
I would like to see a RTS that incorporated some elements of RP.
Such as keeping a squad throughout an entire campaing... individuals getting awards for valor etc... This would of course have to be squad based or platoon based to be realistic.
Hell, maybe someone has already done that????

Dave "Dak Lozar" Loeser

Yeah, I''ve seen this, but I don''t remember what game it was. Or maybe that was my idea before...I think there was one game at least where you were able to choose 3 or 4 units to take with you to your next mission. As for squad-based combat-- JA''s squad-based combat is neat, since you''re controlling each member separately. However, some Warhammer PC game used movement of squads of either 9 or 16 units (I remember they started formed as a square) and it was too hard to control them.

---

Nope, I haven''t played Warhammer 40K or anything--I''m too cheap to buy it. That''s more of the squad-based combat, I think. The only warhammer PC games I''ve seen have sucked out loud...I''d like to see one that worked well. If I could figure out how to do DOS graphics and stuff in BC++ 4.5, I''d try it myself, but alas, I can''t.... Do you know how hard it is to find dos tutorials now?

--

All hail the Technoweenie!

quote: Original post by draqza

Nope, I haven''t played Warhammer 40K or anything--I''m too cheap to buy it. That''s more of the squad-based combat, I think. The only warhammer PC games I''ve seen have sucked out loud...I''d like to see one that worked well. If I could figure out how to do DOS graphics and stuff in BC++ 4.5, I''d try it myself, but alas, I can''t.... Do you know how hard it is to find dos tutorials now?

ALL games workshops games ported to computer have sucked BIG TIME so far (except maybe space hulk ... but that was a long time ago).
As well, games workshops are legal thieves. OMG the price of their figurines is shameful.
I just wanted to point out the game mechanics, which are VERY good (those guys have been doing this for the last ..pff.. 20 years or so !)
there are plenty of other games around, I just thought most people would now W40K.
As well you are right, Warhammer 40K is unit based (very few tanks, usually you play with no more than a company).
But EPIC 40K is platoon based, and you play with 6mm figurines, which means litteraly hundreds of little men on a table (a friend of mine counted them one day, around 1000 units on the table !!!).
The tactics used in the two games are as well VERY different, and personaly I don''t play WH40K because maneuvers just don''t really matter.

But anyway :-P

If I ever get a game as good on a computer as those guys do on me carpet, God I''ll stop painting my figurines !

As we''ve disscussed, combat engines could deffinitly do with a major overhaul. Maybe a look at the systems used in rpgs (as mentioned) could be useful. I personally love the thac0 system from 2nd edit D&D.

Although, the system i was planning on using for my java-script strategy game took a few pages out of the Axis and Allies combat engine. What i''m talking about is rather than having the entire combat system revolve around shelling out damage the player also manages how much damage they take. Called a "Damage Control" Managment system. You can already do this in most RTS''s by using canon fodder in front of you expensive firepower but these game don''t supply any "control" help/game-orientation for these senerio''s. This would have to be my main criticism on current RTS''s. They need a better tactical gui/control-system for the game.

But apart from this micro-management issue there''s also the second most important issue [to me] that most RTS games don''t address well enough. This is "Combat Opportunities". Combat Opportunities are what allow one player to "prove" themselves better over another player. It also allows more space for player improvements/skill-growth. Most games rely on the map design to address this issue but i think thats lazy. This can and should be address in the function of units in terms of what they are capable of doing.

To top off, i also believe that every army (tactically speaking) should have a weak spot and a strength. The reason being is that by bringing in weak spots and strengths it allows the player after the battle to be able to pin point where they went wrong. It also allows the better player with a smaller force to win again a larger force because they knew things like how and when to strike at the enemy. Enough for now :p



I love Game Design and it loves me back.

Our Goal is "Fun"!

Armies having a weak point is a good idea, but IMO, only if you do them in companies you move together, rathre than single units...and that isn''t a good idea to me. Controlling a block of soldiers which have to stick together doesn''t work well for me in an RTS.

In a TBS, this has already been implemented a little bit. I think HOMM II had units which were weaker against certain types of spells and stronger against others. This is another of those RPG-ish things that would be good to add to a RTS/TBS--elemental weakness.

quote: Original post by draqza

Armies having a weak point is a good idea, but IMO, only if you do them in companies you move together, rathre than single units...and that isn''t a good idea to me. Controlling a block of soldiers which have to stick together doesn''t work well for me in an RTS.

In a TBS, this has already been implemented a little bit. I think HOMM II had units which were weaker against certain types of spells and stronger against others. This is another of those RPG-ish things that would be good to add to a RTS/TBS--elemental weakness.

Sorry, can you enlighten me on the meaning of TBS please.


I love Game Design and it loves me back.

Our Goal is "Fun"!

TBS = Turn Base Strategy.
opposed to RTS = Real Time Strategy.

youpla :-P

One thing I''ve been thinking of is customization...

Let the user define their own squadrons, which units should be in them, define behaviour/AI with a scripting language?

Let the user write their own building patterns, detailing what to build when... e.g. ''when gold > 100 build archer-healer squadron'' ''build 30 % swordsmen-squadrons, 15 % light cavalry, save rest of gold. order cavalry to scout surroundings.''
Maybe it would be possible to make a ''choke-point''-pattern, and placing it at strategic places...?

Just a thought... /Ksero

My god, havent any of you ever heard of or played Age of Empires 2? Your whole discussion on squad based control or individual unit control has been pretty much solved by that game.

In aoe2 you can set units to formations, and they walk/manauver in a really nice neat formation, yet you can also control each unit individually if you need too. Plus, if you set like a group of swordsmen, archers and monks (healers) all in the same group the formation system automatically organizes them with swordsmen in front and archers in back and monks at the rear to heal the troops. Or you can choose like a box formation that will put the monks at the very center, archers around them, and swordsmen around the perimeter of the box, and its the neatest damn thing in the world to watch a box formation move across the map in aoe2, and watching the formation move around obstacles and still stay in formation.

The system works so great that when you play a normal game and are just getting started you can easily control or initial army of 2 or 3 units and when you play death match and get armies of 150+ units you can put them into easy to control formations.

So my point is you guys need to do a little more research in the rts genre before making such claims as to its nature.

Possibility

Edited by - Possibility on August 1, 2000 5:40:09 PM

The controlling system of AoE2 is far from perfect and I don''t think it represents a method people are discussing about. AoE2 has massive amounts of cumbersome micromanagement and controlling huge armies is IMO very difficult.

If game really had working squad based controlling there would be no need to be able to control single units. I think Shogun Total War could be better when it comes to controlling squads but I haven''t tried it yet.

I agree that the formations in AoE2 look nice and the organisation of different kind of units is basically right. There are still quite a lots of problems with them. You talked about the monks healing units. If you have a monk in group of archers and you command them to attack something from distance the monk starts to run towards the target to convert it and eventually gets killed while he should have stayed healing those archers.

But don''t take me wrong. I like AoE2, it just could be a lot better.

-Ratsia

AoK has horrible control. I have trouble believing that anyone would publish an RTS without attack-move. The formations are fairly useless too, just use the default one all the time. It doesn''t matter anyway since in order to play you have to micro an attack against every single unit you come across because of the lack of attack move.