quote: Original post by Spitfire_mk5
-Think about what a large part american codebreakers did in WW2, this is never included in games.

My Grandpa was a codebreaker in WW2, and it''s because of his team that Admiral Yamamoto Was assasinated, because they broke the code and found out the times he would be inspecting bases throughout the Pacific.

I actually have code breaking in my origional design plan. I think it would be cool if you could try to break opponents codes and even try to send commands that are easily cypherable so that the opponent decodes it and thinks its a real message.... then you send a REAL message that is highly encoded to the unit. etc... their are some cunning kinds of tricks you could play by doing these kinds of things. I also just like the idea that your messages can be intersepted by the enimy...

Dwiel

Here is an old post for some of my wish lists for RTS gameplay additions.

Regarding customizable units. I personally don''t see the problem with this as long as you create an equalizing system. Equalizing system? Well, in the real world, the more unit types you have, the bigger overall headaches you are going to have. Just logistically speaking, you''ve got a whole slew of additional parts, maintenance training, and other upkeep for all of your new units. Think too of the training required, not just to pilot the vehicle, but to create combat group cohesiveness (all the seperate units of a combat group ideally should know all the strengths and weaknesses of all equipment). In other words, you have to include drawbacks to having too many unit types. How much is too much? It depends partially on your industrial capacity, partly on your skilled crews, and partly on your leaders.

As for morale issues, again, I see nothing wrong with making low morale units not fight, or for that matter making it hard to detect if a unit will rout. Ideally, morale is somewhat beyond the control of the player other than to order the Commanding officer in charge of the routing units to retreat, rally, and reform the units under his command.

I think many players feel that anything that takes control of the game away from them is inherently "unfun". However, I see them as challenges or obstacles. We as players are so focused on winning at every point, and every level and every engagement, that sometimes we forget the big picture. There''s a saying to the affect that happiness is directly correlated to the amount of control we have over our lives. Me, personally, I think our happiness is directly correlated to how much we can control our own actions, and accept the ones we can not.

[BEWARE:: THE FOLLOWING IS MOSTLY RAMBLING... THE LAST PARAGRAPH ACTUALLY CONTAINS MY POINT...]

That thread you posted a link to is very interesting and posses some very though tprovocative questions that I hadnt really thought of that much. Very cool. One thing though is, I thing that when designing the RTS, you must deside which group of people you would like to target. Some people believe that it is better if the RTS is more realistic and doesnt allow for you to do things that a present day (maybe more like early/middle 1900s) army chief wouldnt be able to do. Things like see reconosance missions take place, command individual units, etc are just not feasible. I believe more that the player should be given more control, though I''m not sure about control of each and every unit. I think that right now, most of the things like watch recon missions take place, and such, are actually fairly reasonable. I find it hard to believe that if the cheif of state wants to watch a battle take place via a satelte feed, they will be able to, (maybe not quite the present, but fairly close) In any game that is set in the future, I believe that it might be wrong in thinking that we must rely on units telling you information that they see, because some of it can be generated with-out even going there.

This however makes for a rather borring game. what fun is it when you can see the entire map in real-time, and watch your enimies from the start of the game. Even though this may be realistic in the future, it is not quite condusive to fun gameplay.

This is where I make my point ;P It really makes no difference wheather or not commanders have the ability to do this or that, or what the ''gameplay rules of real life(tm)" are. We have out own universe that we are creating. The rules can be anything. We all want to make the gameplay interesting though, se we go about it in different ways. I prefer to add gameplay that allows for the players to use more complex stradegy when designing battle plans. You find it more interesting to restrict the players'' ability to control their units to give a challenge. What it all comes down to is how you want to make your game interesting. If you want to make your game interesting by restricting control, go for it. If I want to add gamepaly to my gameplay by adding more control and therefor the added ability to stradegize, then Iwill do that. I guess I am trying to say that neither method is any better than the other, it is simply a matter of preference.

Wow did I take a long time to make a simple point.... *seesh*

I do however find your ideas verry interesting and see them as an excelent way of adding gameplay, I just prefer other methods .

I still think that I want to incorperate your idea of communication into my design. Mostly in the details that individual unit control is not time-effective, control of entire groups is more efficient... Units not inside your netowrk on communications can not be tracked, etc... You may however set up towers which help lengthen your communication network. As the network gets bigger, the harder it is is to update, so it is will be made so that it is really only helpful to make a limited network...

I also think that supply lines add an interesting gameplay feature and allows for much more stradigizing by each player...

well... Im done for now

Dwiel

Two of the things that bug me in RTS games are micromanagement-like resource collecting and converting enemy units.

First of all, collecting resources. Does it really matter who does the collecting? Why must I spesifically choose the villagers who do the collecting? It would be a lot better that instead of giving orders to workers you give jobs (like in Dungeon Keeper, for instance). In a RTS it is usually much more important which trees get chopped and how many workers are chopping than who spesifically chops the trees. You also might want to leave some trees unchopped for cover, but currently there's no way to control that. Also, if you want to chop a spesific forest and nothing more, the villagers shouldn't try to find more trees after they're done (for instance move into enemy territory to do their search and get killed).

The main point is, I'd rather set job areas and prioritize them (e.g. by setting minimum and maximum numbers of workers) and let the computer worry about which villagers go do the work than having to baby-sit my villagers at the same time I'm doing something more interesting (like waging a war).

To the other point then, converting enemy units. I hate it as it is. I really hate it, but mostly because it is done rather lamely. For instance in AoE, all you really need to do to convert an enemy unit is to move your priest close enough, let him sing his songs for a few seconds and all of a sudden, the enemy changes sides and starts to fire upon his former friends.

I think the best way to fight this would be to use moral, so that if the moral of a unit goes low it would surrender (and become a POW) or even (rarely) change sides (maybe even go berserk and shoot at everyone). Then you could try to convert the POWs with success levels varying according to the level of training (commando level units would of course be harder to convert than rookies), but it would take time. Also you might gather intelligence (maps, base locations, etc).

The idea of POWs could also be used strategically: not everyone would nuke the area where their own soldiers are held, spesifically if there's a chance of a rescue. POWs could also be used in work (put'em to the mines!), but then again they should also use up unit support (they do have to eat, don't they? still it should be less than for common villagers, after all they're still enemies for all practical purposes).

EDIT - fixed a typo

[edited by - Grim on January 15, 2004 8:15:39 AM]

I really like the idea of using POW as a way of gathering intelligence and even reason for rescue. The only problem I see with this is that in real life, there is a reason for soldiers to be rescued. If the military just, said, oh well, we might as well just consider them dead, and tell their families that they should just get over it, is kind of hard. There is a public pressure to rescue your POWs; on the contrary, in many RTS games units are fairly dispendible, and for rescuing to be efficient, either the unit needs to be MUCH MUCH more important to keep alive, or the moral of other units drop when they find out they''re friend is a POW, or moral increases when they rescue a POW... either way, there needs to be some kind of motive for the rescue op, as in most RTSs of late, units are not worth enough to sacrafice a rescuse missions for. I think it might be interesting if the units do raise/lower moral in these POW situations. Could be a way to pressure the player to try the rescue.

On the flip side, there is stradegy where the player captures a POW, sends him to a small, seemingly, ungarded camp, and hopes that the enemy comes in to rescue, and then ambush them while they try to rescue their POWs, etc, etc... I do see how it can some gameplay to the stradigy side as well.

Good idea

Dwiel

sadly the project ended shortly after I began working on it, due to a virus, now all that remains are some early handwritten documents.

There where lots of ideas in TA that I was disapponted never made it into later RTS games.

such as Being able to fight on land, sea and air. It is really surpising to me that RTS games seem to focus entirly on ground combat, with occasionly a couple of ships or planes thrown in almost as an after thought. Why not have more ships, and planes in modern RTS games? Since these are critcal elements of modern militaries. I don't see why I shouldn't be able to play an RTS level thats consists entirly of air and navel combat.

In the rts game I was working I even had plans to include the ability to build and launch a verity of satilites for one faction. Although I could never think of a relistic countermeasure to these for the other two factions. But I still think they would be fun to include.

TA also had long range guns something else that was for whatever never repeated.
There was also multiple construction orders which I can't belive was never included in other games. TA allowed you to give multiple build orders to a contrution unit and it would then go and build everything you told it to build in order. You could even assign other construction units to guard the primary one and they would assist in all its constrution commands.


As for scale I think it would be interesting to see an rts with a realistic scale. So that buildings are far bigger then infantry, could be interesting.



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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 January 15, 2004 11:09:56 PM]

i always thought in RTS games there wasnt a reel need for villagers. You spend most of your time managing your villagers and town instead of planing and attacking people. While i know this is part of the game, why couldn''t you do something like for each lumbercamp you can create 10 woodcutters. The woodcutters aren''t actually shown on the map there just shown in the lumber camp info. I think this would allow more focus on the military part. That way with all these features it wouldn''t end up to cluttered.

I agree. I think that in my RTS, I will somehow remove the need to micromanage ''peons'' to get rescources, not only is this unrealistic(which really doesnt matter), but its something that, from my experience, not a single person enjoys doing. Its tedious, and pointless.

I am still unsure, however, how exactly I will implement the supply structure... maybe a governament is paying you based on what you have accomplished... maybe you make a rescource gathering building and then magically, it starts gathering rescources... Im not too sure. One thing that kind of goofs things up, is that I was hoping for my game to be fought on a different planet, say mars. You are ecentially batteling for the right to the surface of mars. Many other countries would like to be able to live there but you are greedy and want all of it to your self. Your goal is to take over this planet. Now, in this case, it is actually feasible for you to have to gather your own rescources, though I think that it is un necessary for you to handle the micromagement of which unit is gathering which rescource. Maybe an idea like yours will be implemented? what do you guys think about this?

Thanks

Dwiel

I like the idea that all you have to do as a military man is capture and hold the area that contains the resources. Perhaps an Ore Mine, or on Mars, a Farm-Pod greenhouse thingie. If you posses it, then you benefit from it.

It''s not up to you to manage the resources... that happens automatically ... your job is to hold it.