I''m looking to take some of the clickfest out of RTS games. After playing a game of Starcraft last night, I had An Idea (tm) What if you could attach "resources" to certain units / groups in a game like Starcraft? For ex., say you''re Terran and you get attacked by stealth units. Terrans have CommScan, an anti-stealth scanner with a limited supply of replenishing energy. Normally, you''ve got to click this thing and tell it to scan the area. Sometimes you''d better pray you have it hotkeyed so you can reach it quickly enough. Now, what if, instead, there was an option to __ATTACH__ the CommScan functionality to a group of units, say a bunch of Tanks and Marines you have guarding a flank. If the Marines get attacked by stealth, they have permission to summon the Commscan. Now, yeah, they might not use it as effectively as you (you''re the commander, after all), but you''d have to babysit them a lot less. This would be an extension of something the enemy AI has to do already! OK, so take this a step further: Let''s say you can designate a __GROUP__ of units as a resource. Ex.: You''ve got a bunch of Wraiths (aircraft) at your base. You also have 3 chokepoints guarded by Marines and Tanks. If any one of them is hit by a large force (yes, requires offense / defense strength comparison) they can summon __ANY__ resources you''ve attached to them. (OR, maybe you don''t attach resources, but simply make them available for general use, or use within a zone you click and drag) The whole point of this is that some units (like Ghosts, for instance) require a heck of a lot of micromanaging. While you''re off micromanaging them, your base could be wiped out due to lack of attention. You could slow the game down itself, but you''d always run into the speedfreaks that want to play on fast because they''re superclickers. This means that you don''t **entirely** win a game of Starcraft because you''re a better tactician, but rather because you can click the fastest. Witness the AI, with it''s precise Lockdowns and Psi Storms, perfect tank drops, but stupid grand strategy. You can lose games to it in fast mode that you''d have ABSOLUTELY NO CHANCE of losing at the slowest speed!!! Might this be a way to kick some super-clicking munchkin''s butt? -------------------- Just waiting for the mothership...

Good idea!

Of course, it would allow without further change attaching batteries, engineers, doctors, and other repairing/ re-supplying structures to a group.

Attaching a peasant/drone to a bunch of defensive structures could mean to rebuild those structures if they are destroyed, and repair them if they are damaged (if enough minerals are available - the threshold can even be accessible to the player).

Attaching troop carriers to a ground group will automatically load/unload the troops as needed.

An automated way of building scarabs would be nice too (say a 15% crystals quota is attached to a group of scarab firing maggots; they would automatically use 15% of new resources to build up their ammo).

Attaching building structures to a group would reinforce that group by building the units that were destroyed from the group.

A special reinforcing attachment between two groups can transfer units from the reinforcement group to the main group to keep its effectives complete. The reinforcement group can be thus attached to more groups, reinforcing the one that needs it.

A special repair attachment between two groups can transfer damaged units from a battle group to the repair group. As a side effect, if the repair group is also set as the reinforcement group of the battle group, and the repair group has some unit building factories and some repairing resources the following will happen:
- unit gets damaged above certain level in battle group.
- the unit breaks off and heads towards repair group.
- the total no. of units of the battle group drops
- a healthy unit breaks off from the repair group and heads towards the battle-group
- damaged unit gets to the repair facility and gets repaired
- fixed damaged unit is ready to replace another damaged unit

Neat, ain''t it?

Heh, attaching a transport group to the reinforcement group would make sure reinforcements are flied to the needed area. Attaching a fighter group to the transport group would make sure the reinforcements have an escort. Yes, I think I like this system!

quote:
Original post by Wavinator

OK, so take this a step further: Let''s say you can designate a __GROUP__ of units as a resource. Ex.: You''ve got a bunch of Wraiths (aircraft) at your base. You also have 3 chokepoints guarded by Marines and Tanks. If any one of them is hit by a large force (yes, requires offense / defense strength comparison) they can summon __ANY__ resources you''ve attached to them. (OR, maybe you don''t attach resources, but simply make them available for general use, or use within a zone you click and drag)

I''d like to see an easy to use system that can allow specifying the behavior of those groups like the following:
group1:
"retreat position : base"
"active position : chokepoint1"
"on small attack, fight"
"on medium attack, call air group 5 as reinforcements"
"on heavy attack, retreat"
"on retreat, signal group 1 to retreat"
"on retreat, signal group 2 to retreat"
"on retreat, signal group 3 to retreat"
"on player signal A, become active"

group2:
"like group 1 except:"
"active position: chokepoint2"

group3:
"like group 1 except:"
"active position: chokepoint3"

I''ve made all the groups to retreat if one retreats because once one choke-point is breached, it''s no longer useful to hold the others. I''ve made all groups retreat to the same place to concentrate forces and prepare for a counter-attack. The on player signal option is very nice, because it allows the player to re-deploy to previous positions w/o doing all the work all over again.

Just wondering...

Can the AI that''s used to control enemy units be used to make player-controlled units act on their own?

Because like you say, the AI can do things like "Lockdowns and Psi Storms, perfect tank drops" while this takes an enormous amount of clicking and precision on the player''s part.

Why not combine the strategy of the player with the efficiency of the AI?

This may be tangential, but how about a notification scheme? I know many games allow you to send out scouts, but all that does is open up previously darkened portions of the map. Shouldn''t a scout be able to relay information (which could potentially be intercepted if unencrypted or weakly encrypted) to you, including information of advancing formations? That would be an effective warning system.

Taking it a step further, you could pipe notifications into several other units as inputs so that a radar alarm of approaching missiles would automatically cause your anti-missile defenses to activate themselves. Your opponent could then use such tactics as distraction while mounting an offensive from another angle at the same time (so we''re no losing strategic or tactical potential with all this automation).

So at heart, if you attach a CommScan to a single unit (soldier) in a platoon, the platoon would make extra effort to keep him alive - just like real-world platoons protect their radio operators. Ooh, drama!

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Thanks to Kylotan for the idea!

Aye, and then we would *finally* have real RTS... And soon, we will eliminate base building an on-site creation of units, so that you will have to make do with what you have (and reinforcements have to be flown in...).

So that when a tank gets destroyed, the drivers might be able to escape, and since material is easier to replace as manpower, you would have to set up a rescue team.

So you could create several transports and set them as rescue team (if unit in distress, go there and evacuate him to base).

Then create other aircraft as escorts (follow transports).

Then create a few armed commando-type people, that also defend the transports (they board, and if the transport is on the ground, and under attack, they disembark and defend).

Then the transport would also be linked to the commandos (dont leave without your commandos ^_^ ).

And then, when your tank is destroyed, your drivers hide, your transports immediatly fly in, you get a heavy air blanket to provide air cover, your transports land to let the drivers board, and when the drivers run to the transports, the commandos defend the transport as well...

Damn, this is cool ^_^

-Maarten Leeuwrik

Follower of the NLS
(New Lounge Standards)

Don''t you just love the prospect of real Real-Time Strategy/Tactics?

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Thanks to Kylotan for the idea!

Oddly enough, some collegues & I were talking about this exact issue.

Generally speaking, RTS developers try to remove all the ''mundane'' tasks from the player to allow them to focus on the ''strategic'' parts of the game.

In the beginnig of a scenario, the player needs control over all the little details to take every advantage. But, as the game progresses, all those details become distracting & often annoying.

One way to address this is to allow the player to create units that control groups of other units in a intelligent way.
These units ( leaders, overseers, middle-managers, ...) would take a directive from the player & execute it with the resources given to it.

For example:
The player creats a "overseer" & assigns a region of land to farm, mine & basically exploit. The player gives in a peasant generator as a resoure & forgets about it. The overseer then proceeds to create peaseants & puts them to work farming, mining, etc.
If anything odd happens, the overseer reports the info back to the player.

A computer oppontent, aka AI, makes all these decisions. There in no reason the AI of the game can''t also do some of them for the player, if the player wants it to.

I am sure we will be seeing this type of stuff in future RTS games, if it doesn''t already exist...

I really like these ideas. I had some similar ideas with unit groups, but this seems like it adds more power - multiple groups could then be assigned as resources to other groups.

Now we just need to figure out how to implement this as an interface...

[edited by - Sandman on April 16, 2002 6:01:26 AM]

Have you played Kohan Wavinator? It has a lot of more wargaming concepts to them, and one of the ones I like is creating "companies". Companies have a main unit and support units. You get to chose what you want in each. So you could for example make a light cavalry unit with support engineers.

I intend to do pretty much the same thing, however, there will be a price to pay. Let me give an example:

Let's say you want to create a motorized infantry company composed of 3 platoons and a headquarters unit. When you create the company, you choose the base unit....a platoon (in my game, the platoon will be smallest sized unit that can be controlled via AI commanders) you chose what elements compose the platoon itself. In a standard platoon, it may be comprised of 3 rifle squads and a heavy weapons squad. However, while platoons are the smallest kind of controllable unit, they too are made up of building bricks. These building bricks are heavy weapons squads, long range recon patrols, AT teams, AA teams, EW teams, Comm teams, medic teams, rifle squads, mortar crews, etc etc. So you can create a company you name "Rifle1", which is composed of 3 rifle squads and a Heavy Weapons team. ANd you could create another company called "Rifle2" composed of 3 rifle squads and a Medic team. So for the above mentioned company, you may want a standard rifle2 company, an AT company, an EW company, and a headquarters unit housing the AI commander, 2 rifle squads and a Comm team.

Get the idea now? You can either choose a pre-selected TO&E (Tables of organization and equipment) which has a pregenerated "standard" battalion, or you can modify your own customized units. So let's say you want your company to have some heavy duty armor stopping power. Set them up with more AT teams and Heavy Weapons teams. You want a company capable of long range harrassment and interdiction duties? Give them lots of LRP's, EW and Comm teams.

Basically, each unit class can interface with the special functions of a specialized class only if they have have a unit member capable of doing such a function. The same holds true for non-organic support. WHat's non-organic support (for the non-grognards out there...)? Non-organic support are resources which are not integral to the unit itself at a certain rank level. For example, some battalions may have a battery of artillery for their own personal use. They do not have to escalate up the chain of command to request fire support. So, my unit organization is faceted on many levels....including whether it has organic support, and whether the AI commander in charge of the unit can request directly support, or has to request support from another organization.

So what's this price to pay I mentioned? Well, firstly, there's a lot more pre-work to be done to set up your Organized Units the way you want them. But even once that is done, there's another catch. The more "non-standard" units you have, the harder it is for logistics to keep up. Supply and maintenance will be a big issue in my game.

In a nutshell, I want to see more aspects for game play other than what the capabilities of a unit are. Pretty much that's all strategy games are nowadays. Make the most units you can by maximizing resources, and figure out the best combination of units. That's it in a nutshell. There's no worrying about whether you have control or access to your units. Nothing like command control and communication worries (does the order get to the unit? will the unit obey?). There's no need to worry about having units a thousand miles away from home. There's no difference in managing the control of large forces (all militaries are controlled the same, even if they have different units).

My ideas aren't new. They exist in virtually every decent wargame I can think of. But in the computer arena, they just don't exist. I think a part of the reason is a fear factor on the part of game developers and publishers that the mainstream audience doesn't want all these features. Essentially they "dumb it down" on purpose to attract a wider audience. I don't see why certain features couldn't be turned off however, to at least give more hard core gamers a more enjoyable experience. Plus this way, a mainstream person might be able to slowly add advanced features as he gets comfortable with the game.

Okay,


[edited by - Dauntless on April 16, 2002 1:02:48 PM]

I think this post actually begs the question....what functions do my units possess? Resources are just really attached functions.

So it''s all a matter of having a base object (which is your unit), and being able to "plug in" other objects with added functionality. The trick here is in issuing orders to units. Let''s say you have a base unit with no added objects to give it increased funtionality. When you issue an order to it, it has a preset number of orders you can give it. But once you add a new object the kinds of orders have increased. I suppose it would be simple enough on a programming level. Just give the new object a "socket" to attach to the base object in which it informs the base object of what new functions it possesses as well as updating an order switch statement.

I think if you view Units as base objects, and resources as additional functions rather than as seperate units themselves, a different style of gaming opens up. Now some resources CAN be seperate units...but by attaching them to another group, many things can be automated.

For example, let''s say you have an infantry company with an attached AA squad. In a normal AI response if the company had no AA squad...the AI would see enemy plane and try to duck for cover (if possible), or possibly call in for AA support. But since it has its own organic AA support, the object "knows" it has the capability to defend itself, so the AI response is now, "fight back". No need to click on the unit to have it do anything....it will do it itself.