Ooo, two of my favorite games... Dune and Deadlock.

Heh, anyway... there are more ways to limit resources than just the literal "you don't have enough"-ness. Transport and indirect supply, mainly... I recall one time I was playing Deadlock where I had all the food my entire sprawling empire could eat... but only realized that it cost money to move food across territories when I couldn't build enough units to repel an incipient invasion. I had thousands of units of food, but people were starting to die off because ALL my production was focussed in two territories. Simply having resources wasn't sufficient, I had to place and distribute them efficiently. One of the best technologys in the game was the one that let you move resources more cheaply.

Another interesting wrinkle could be demonstrated in the Dune games (or at least some of them), where you could spend a long time building units, or you could build a starport and buy them ready-made, though the unit you wanted wouldn't always be avaliable. Now, if they had taken this a step further they could've done a lot more with it... have interceptors shoot down someone's freighters, out-bid the enemy for a shipment, have spies hijack it en route... But I suppose that'd put more focus on strategic elements than tactical ones. Ah well, it's a neat idea. I just think it'd do good to think of resources as something other than numbers. Resources are anything you can do things with, and have limited supplies of. Time, trained and experienced troops, and good diplomatic relations are all resources.

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Original post by Raloth .... The thing I liked about Starcraft was you always knew where your workers were. They wouldn't go off half way across the map in search of some lone giraffe. ...

they would :) build a second commando/nexus/hire, kill the first commando / nexus / hire, and your worker will start running over the whole map just to reach the new one :)


I think it's question of balance, what it is all about in RTS. For example in starcraft, also in late game, where vespene gas, the resource of higher value, is needed to create higher units or just to upgrade, you can still have low units, which don't need gas to be created, drive your oponent mad (try a 40 marines drop with stim :)), if well placed. That makes the mineral overall important throughout the match as vespene gas.

One more important thing: don't get a RTS become a RTEconomySimulation. A good thing would be to stick to 2 or 3 resources of some value, and after game is finished for alpha runs, play it again and again and check how many time players or you yourself spend on keep your eco tight.