Hmmm... I was wondering... I'm thinking about designing a game based around commanding a few millitary units in a SMALL-SCALE conflict. That is, there won't be any unit creation or construction or anything fun like that. Each unit will be highly customizable and valuable, and each side will probably have only five or six units per battle. Anyway, I was toying with four different "timing" concepts for this: 1. An Inquisitor/Advance Wars/HoMM/whatever-style system, where each side has a "turn" consescutivley after the previous player, during which they can command their units at once. The main advantage I can see to this is more tactical possibilities for the player and an ease of programming, but it lacks realism. 2. A Final Fantasy Tactics-style system, in which each unit keeps track of its own time. When its time reaches a certain value (faster units would have lower values than slower units, and thus get more turns overall), the unit would get a turn to act. Though this solves some of the problems of the first system, it reuces a player's tactical options (since they don't have all their units avalible to command at one time) and still seems a bit unrealistic. 3. A system in which each player sets commands for units and then the commands are executed simeltaneously at the end of each turn. In theroy, this sounds excellent, but implementation-wise it would be a nightmare, and it once again reduces strategic possibilities. Plus, it adds a lot of wierd complications, like what if one unit goes to engage another unit at close range, and that unit is moving away to engage another... does the first unit just chace after the other unit, while the other unit is oblivious to the first's attack? I've also never seen this executed well, but I'm sure someone's thought of it before, so is it just not feasable? 4. A truly real-time system. This is the most realistic solution. The problem with this is that real-time starategy seems to be a lot more about how quickly a player can command all the seperate units rather than actual startegic possibilities, and as each unit would be highly varriable, commanding them in groups, especially at such a small scale, just seems like it would cut down on the individuality of the units. The main way to solve this would be to slow down the pace of the game, which I guess is fine, but if a machine gun fires a bullet every two seconds and/or takes about a hundred bullets to kill a single soldier, it no longer really feels like a machine gun. Anyway, my project wil probably never come to fruition, but I'm still wondering about what the best system would be. The most important part for me is startegy - I want the player to actually have to think (so have the time to think), and not be bogged down by millions of complications, yet still have a lot of stategic options availible. I especially want position to be important (high ground or attacking from an unarmored side of a tank or something like that), which I feel is something lacking in many real-time startegy games. So, anyway, any ideas -____-? If you were making a strategy game, which woul you use? Might there be a way to combine these systems, or maybe a totally different one?

I like age of empire style RTS; however, the game can't be to fast paced and the players need to start FAR away from the others.(instant strike teams ruins multiplayer) Also, warlords wasn't so bad. But online warlords? I can imagine what a nghtmare that would be, someone going to the bathroom while everyone is cussing him out to take his turn. (Even if you have a timer on, he still needs to click off the 'your turn' screen, and may not notice it.)

And as for the FF tactics. I hated that game, but loved to watch my brother play. It was too slow for me, and I guess it all boils down to Online or Offline gameplay.

Hmm... That's cool; but it doesn't really answer the question directly. Any other thoughts?

I'm talking spcifically about commanding a small number of units, and how exactly that would best be done to open up the most strategic possibilities. I'm thinking right now about getting the game design together, not about any specific features (i.e. online multiplayer), and online multiplayer is not something I wish to focus on now. I'm thinking about this only in terms of player vs. AI or at most on a LAN, right now.

Turn based then; without a doubt it is much more stradegy like, while with real time you just make thousands of units and swarm your enemys.

Tactics was impemented well enough, it just went at a slow pace for me. But warlords (Turn based stradegy were you take a turn as a whole, not individuel charaectors.) required thinking and planning.

I would suggest a turn based like number 1.

how about hotkeys?
i'm assuming the commander has 3rd person view ov the battlefield like the usual RTS view.

for really samll teams (2-3 man teams) you could assign a key to a player
lets say ctrl, alt and shift for team members A, B,C respectively.
clicking on the screen while pressing ctrl-alt will command both A and B to
move/attack to the location of the mouse cursor. this removes the time consuming part of selecting and commanding each member separately. The player can concentrate on tactics instead of picking out on the screen where his units are.


The bad part is the limitation of keys\team members that can be used and the steeper learning curve to effectively command the team members.

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Original post by yapposai The bad part is the limitation of keys\team members that can be used and the steeper learning curve to effectively command the team members.

Not really; you can click for example: ctrl + 1-9 for nine different men.
If you use ctrl for selecting/setting hot keys it would give you 44 just with the ctrl key. If you use shift also, it would give you 88. However, the main problem with hotkeys is memorizing what does what or which key brings up which soldier. ~S of the L~

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Original post by xycos 3. A system in which each player sets commands for units and then the commands are executed simultaneously at the end of each turn. In theroy, this sounds excellent, but implementation-wise it would be a nightmare, and it once again reduces strategic possibilities. Plus, it adds a lot of wierd complications, like what if one unit goes to engage another unit at close range, and that unit is moving away to engage another... does the first unit just chace after the other unit, while the other unit is oblivious to the first's attack? I've also never seen this executed well, but I'm sure someone's thought of it before, so is it just not feasable?

Why wouldn't it be? Those are all issues you'd have to deal with for an RTS. Which is essentially what you're talking about, albeit one that only allows orders while paused, and pauses periodically.

If anything, it's not only the most strategic, but the most realistic of the four. The squad leader can't control the actions of every one of his comrades every second like you can in an RTS. He can however signal orders every so often when that chance arrives.

Personally, for the kind of game you're describing, I think this is ideal. Given that you're looking for a little more depth in your units, there's a lot of room with this approach, because you have real-time combat, but you're really letting the AI take care of the details. Which means you can give units a little personality in how they act, and it will actually come out in the game since the player isn't able to override them.

For example, the enemy throws a grenade of some sort, but you've ordered your unit to cross over to some cover, without knowing the grenade would land in the path. Depending it's traits and ordered stance, a unit might attempt to cross, stay put, open fire, or even retreat out of grenade range. With some carefully designed factors, it's possible to have players identifying with their units more than any game yet; and you can do it because the player can't intervene.

yapposai - That's a really good idea, but I'm not really thinking about implementation details yet. The major problem I forsee with that is how it cuts down on units personality. I want each unit to have a lot of diferent weapons and being able to tell two units, each of which are probably totally different types of units, or at least have different weapons, to "attack" a target would cut sown on this "personality" aspect of it. Howver, thank you, as this tells me that it might just be possible to do this all real-time. However, this seems like a great method of control, and I actually don't think it'd be too complex if you only allow the player to command a single unit at a time.

nuvem - That's an excellent idea, and givs me heart in that plan, which is what I originally was thinking about anyway. The problem I see with that, though, is how it's all quite "conditional". Using your example, here's two major ways to handle this. Firstly, when you give the order, you'd have to tack on additional orders (ex. run over there, unless you get attacked, and in that case, retreat). Besides adding to the complexity (which is something I definitley don't want to do), it also begs the question of how deep into conditionals should the player be able to go. The scond way, which I think is sort of what you're suggesting - that units have "personality" that dictates how they act, is really an awesome idea, and I like it because of the game design I'm planning. However, coding this would be a real *****, but actually that's a really great idea. I'll have to think about that more.

Anyway, the game design I'm planning has three main foci:
* Strategy - I want there to be a lot of strategic options for the player and a lot of different ways to achieve objectives.

* Simplicity - I want the game to be rather easy to pick up and play, yet difficult to master. A lot of startegy games, like the Civilization games, Homeworld, or many real-time games turn me and other gamers I've met, off because of their steep learning curves just to be able to actually do anything in them. I want the player to be able to quickly familiarize himself with all his options, but have to discover the best way to combine these for any gaming session.

* Unit Creation and Specialization - The setting of this game is a near-future "mecha" universe, in which a team of pilots use MHWPs ("Mobile Humanoid Weapons Platfroms", or at least that what I've been calling them so far, but they're basically mechs/mobile suits/gears/wanzers/armord suits/whatever) to do battle. I want to allow the player a great level of customability with these MHWPs, and be able to give each one a unique personality (outfit each with its own weapons, armor, frame, propulsion system [some might even have wings or jump jets], shielding, pilot, etc.). The player designs these, so I want the player to be able to add lots of special features to each one, so no two are alike.

With those in mind, nuvem's solution seems like the best one I've heard so far, but I'm still slightly worried about complexity, and I want the player to know exactly how any unit will react to allow for the most possible starategic options (I've already decided that there will be NO random anything, except maybe with the enemy AI).

Anyway, thanks for your help, I'll keep thinking about this... both those ideas are very appealing...

You might want to try playing the game MechCommander. It's a small-scale strategy game with a lot of mech customization set in the Battletech universe. It's a lot like what I think you're talking about designing.

That game looks cool -___- However, that's not exactly what I'm after. That looks more like a traditional RTS. I'm trying to keep my game more focused on very small-scale battles with only a very few units per side, and each unit COMPLETLEY different from any others on the battlefield. Nonetheless, that looks like a fun startegy game.