I'm back, and I posted before that I would reciprocate some of what my team and I have put together! http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=380962&whichpage=1� First though, I would like to thank everyone that posted in the above topic, I saw some great ideas in there. If you skim through it, you'll see a few of their influences in here. Before I go into any details, I want to give a general overview of our current and future (hopeful :D) projects. We want to do a tied together series of games spanning 3 different genres. We are kind of stealing from Blizzard in a way with this. We would (as you probably guessed) like to start with an RTS with a strong RPG influence. After this we would like to either continue with another RTS depending on feedback or carry on to the next genre, which is going to be a RPG. We are not certain yet here, but we may do a series of RPG's, do a single one with multiple expansions, or put in a powerful editor for user-created content (ala Neverwinter Nights). Each of the games would have a storyline based in a world of our own creation. We have created a rough history for this world and chosen a few points where we feel games would fit in well. This brings me to the first project. An RTS. I tend to play a lot of games, and lately, the RTS genre seems really bland. Each one is the same as the next, with barely any changes in between them. I feel like I am playing the same game over and over with different faces and locations, but no new gameplay. I know it's difficult to come up with unique ideas anymore, but we want to go in a little different direction. So, instead of seeing what the big game companies publish, I decided to check in with you, the community, for some new twists. Suffice to say, I like what I saw! - One of the first issues that was brought was nicely summed up as EGOD (elves, goblins, ogres and dwarves) by Jpetrie in response to the "lots of games steal from D&D, you can too" line. In this RTS, there won't be any of that, and I can say this with a straight face! We are accomplishing this by putting the setting on a continent where humans are the only civilized race. There will be other creatures on this continent, but they won't have established cities. Elves and dwarves will not be showing up later on either, at least not in a form most players are familiar with. These two races will have very close ties to nature and its elements. - Veovis brought up the idea of having "peasants" start off as a builder (for your first houses). They then build more specialized buildings and become specialized peasants themselves. As the next person said, this is describing Settlers, which I believe has some great ideas. I want to take this one step further, and then a few more, by doing the same with military units. - Iron Chef Carnage hinted at not attacking castles, and I would have to say that is my biggest pet peeve. A guy with a sword alone, should not be able to knock down a stone wall... that is just absurd. On that note, something no one brought up, but I feel is important. Each map of a game, you build a base and build your walls (when applicable). I would just like to ask, but how many militaries back in the "less-civilized" days, built entire cities when they went out on conquests? This brings me to my next point... - We are going to use a campaign map setting seperated into regions. Each region will be its own strategic map (same as your regular maps in most other RTS'). When you move into a region, instead of building a full city, you build a military encampment. This would include trenches, palisades, and military tents plus whatever other little quirks and such we deem necessary. - In order to keep these armies moving, supply lines, as brought up by Edtharan, will be implemented on the campaign level. These supplies will come from the cities you have conquered, and your capital. These will come in regular amounts based on how much your army actually needs, and of course, how much your cities are coming up with. - NotAYakk said something about mana grids, which is similar to an idea we were toying with from the start of our project. Instead of using it as supply lines though, we are changing how mages cast spells. In almost all other popular RPG's a mage channels mana from his body out into the world (thus your mana pool). In our design, we want to create a world mana that the mages can draw from, creating some interesting strategies for players to use. - Edtharan brought up another point, about evolving units through magic. Instead of using magic, we believe a better "levelling up" system could be used for your military units. We don't have much on this yet, but we are tossing some promising ideas around. - robert4818 suggested alterable terrain. From the start of this project, I have wanted to see dynamic terrain implemented. This opens up so many new strategies in a game. Spells that can alter terrain, or troops digging up trenches for example (play Earth 2150 for the latter). - The Shadow Nose mentioned a magical alignment that can affect the terrain and in turn, affect the units on them. We have an idea close to this that has sort of an overlay on the map for the different elements. A mage of the fire circle would be able to cast stronger spells in an area "attuned" to fire, and he would be much weaker in a water area. Also, each creature of our world will be born with an attunement to a certain element, which will also come into play in the overlays. - Son of Cain brought up the most important problem of all. RTS aren't about the strategy at all, it is all about who can hit the right shortcuts the fastest and mob an area with the most. While I don't have the definitions in here, Strategy and Tactics mean two different things, and thus, should be implemented in different ways in a game. A very broad topic, so I won't be going into any detail on what we have planned for this other than what is hinted at in the other bullets. - More specialized classes was another idea brought up by Takaloy. We do not know what we will be doing with this yet, that is a little far ahead for details, but it is something that lacks in most RTS'. I just want to say thank you again to everyone that has given us input on this. A lot of the ideas brought up are great, and we would like to implement all of them, but realistically, as designers, we know it is regretably not possible :(. That is why I am doing these threads, to get feedback from the people who will either play these games, or are in the process of designing them as well. Give and take, if you will :) More ideas and comments in here would be great, and I'm sorry for the long read! But for those who finished my above novel, thanks in advance for your comments. HunterCyprus

looks like that would make a really nice RTS
some ideas(not sure if there any good)
if you make it so most units cant destroy stuff like castles make them easy to capture, i dont know why most rts make its so difficult to take control of a abandoned building,
if its more realisitc like by captureing citys insted of building a army from one builder guy and some money mabey make it so you can press people into your army but can just "make troops", the thing i hate the most about RTS is the S seems to be spam basic troops and flood them into the enemy, anything to make your forces finite and to make destroying your enemys foreces criple them for more than 1.5 min.

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- One of the first issues that was brought was nicely summed up as EGOD (elves, goblins, ogres and dwarves) by Jpetrie...

It's funny 'cause I read this topic and saw my name and had totally forgotten that I replied to that other topic.

Sounds kind of interesting. I'm not a huge RTS player - current place of employment notwithstanding - but you seem to have some interesting ideas. Good luck; keep us posted.

<quote>
- Son of Cain brought up the most important problem of all. RTS aren't about the strategy at all, it is all about who can hit the right shortcuts the fastest and mob an area with the most. While I don't have the definitions in here, Strategy and Tactics mean two different things, and thus, should be implemented in different ways in a game. A very broad topic, so I won't be going into any detail on what we have planned for this other than what is hinted at in the other bullets.
</quote>

Except for the Total War series. Because units are units and not individual soldiers, and because the pace is slower. The problem is still present in Dawn of war, because you *still* need to manage base-building, resources and combat at the same time.

IMO Rome:Total war currently have the most strategic real-time battles.

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Original post by HunterCyprus93 This brings me to the first project. An RTS. I tend to play a lot of games, and lately, the RTS genre seems really bland. Each one is the same as the next, with barely any changes in between them.

Hmm, sounds like you haven't been playing the right games.
My favorite example is Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War (or specifically, the multiplayer part of it, because their SP campaign sucks)
That's some new gameplay, and if you're making a RTS, I'd definitely recommend you check it out.

Other than that, how about large scale games, like the Total War series? Yeah, I know they're part turnbased, but might still be worth stealing a few hints from them. (Star Wars: Empire at War was an attempt at doing the same, but 100% realtime, and it wasn't too successful, but that too might be worth looking at)

I think there's quite a bit of innovation in the genre. But it comes in waves. Until Dawn of War popped up, I'd almost given up on RTS games. Sure, Warcraft 3 introduced heroes, but that was about the only innovation compared to 8 years ago.

Anyway, I'll just make a quick comment on each of your paragraphs in the following, then try to add my thoughts.

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- One of the first issues that was brought was nicely summed up as EGOD (elves, goblins, ogres and dwarves) by Jpetrie in response to the "lots of games steal from D&D, you can too" line. In this RTS, there won't be any of that, and I can say this with a straight face! We are accomplishing this by putting the setting on a continent where humans are the only civilized race. There will be other creatures on this continent, but they won't have established cities. Elves and dwarves will not be showing up later on either, at least not in a form most players are familiar with. These two races will have very close ties to nature and its elements.

Sounds good so far. I'm glad we won't have to deal with another EGOD game.

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- Veovis brought up the idea of having "peasants" start off as a builder (for your first houses). They then build more specialized buildings and become specialized peasants themselves. As the next person said, this is describing Settlers, which I believe has some great ideas. I want to take this one step further, and then a few more, by doing the same with military units.

Question, especially considering the following points. What the %¤#¤% are peasants doing here? It's supposed to be a military camp, right?

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- Iron Chef Carnage hinted at not attacking castles, and I would have to say that is my biggest pet peeve. A guy with a sword alone, should not be able to knock down a stone wall... that is just absurd.

Check the battles in Rome: Total War. If you're going to have city walls/palisades and so on, then they should be used properly, agreed. :)

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- We are going to use a campaign map setting seperated into regions. Each region will be its own strategic map (same as your regular maps in most other RTS'). When you move into a region, instead of building a full city, you build a military encampment. This would include trenches, palisades, and military tents plus whatever other little quirks and such we deem necessary.

Definitely check out the Total War games. :)
Also, Dawn of War seemed to have some of the right idea there. It's stupid to start building new cities. What you *might* build is, like you said, a defensive encampment. Furthermore, you wouldn't actually *train* troops there, would you? They'd be sent in as reinforcements.

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- NotAYakk said something about mana grids, which is similar to an idea we were toying with from the start of our project. Instead of using it as supply lines though, we are changing how mages cast spells. In almost all other popular RPG's a mage channels mana from his body out into the world (thus your mana pool). In our design, we want to create a world mana that the mages can draw from, creating some interesting strategies for players to use.

You mean it'd depend on where he is? If he's near some kind of mana source, he'll be able to cast spells, and otherwise not (or at least in a more limited sense?) Yeah, sounds good.
Here's another little thought, although this is more to do with the setting. Is magic going to be the standard fireball-tossing stuff? Just archers with added fireworks and shader effects? I've always been fascinated by the (few) games that take either a more psychic or religious approach. Instead of having people tossing fireballs and lightning at each other, it could be limited to only working on people's minds. Or, instead of regular magic, you could take an approach where people instead tap into some kind of alternate world inhabited by gods/demons? So instead of throwing fireballs, you might be able to summon a demon. Or get a god to bless your troops. Or other more indirect effects. That could also create a bit more of a two-edged sword effect. You might be able to summon a big demon to slaughter your enemies, but what will the cost be? And how do you make it *stop* fighting when it runs out of enemies? Anyway, just a few random thoughts.

Moving on, one *major* problem in almost all RTS games is, as you mentioned above, that they're not actually about tactics (or strategy, if you prefer, although I think strategy would be better suited for a slower-paced campaign map, probably turnbased). Second, why do I have to build a city on every damn map? Why am I lugging peasants around in the middle of a war?
Why do I have to mine gold or chop trees down? I thought I was supposed to fight?

So, looking at Dawn of War, which is the only RTS I know of that has more or less solved these issues: (And no one has mentioned it yet, so I guess I'll bite. Bear with me, these aren't new ideas, but you might be able to get some inspiration from them)
You don't build a city to recruit troops. You construct a military base, from which you can requisition new troops. These (and your buildings) might be summoned magically or flown in, or dropped from a spaceship (all three approaches are used for different races in Dawn of War), but the main thing is that you're not *building* a city, and you're not *training* people to become soldiers. You're fighting a battle, so you damn well expect your soldiers to be trained already. You just have to get them to the battlefield.
Second, you don't go around mining gold either. You might do that in peacetime.
You fight for control. If you're doing well, your HQ is willing to send you more troops.
In DoW, this is reflected by having strategic points you fight over. If you control one, your gain more of your requisition resource faster. But the main thing (gameplay-wise) is that it's not about peasants chugging back and forth between a town hall and a mine. It's your soldiers doing the work. You have to send troops to capture this strategic point, and your opponent might do the same. or he might attack another point, or he might even try to hit your base.
That's where it becomes tactical. You're almost by definition stretched too thin, because you have to defend your base, while constantly fighting over strategic points, and preferably, you should even be able to spare a few troops to actually attack as well. So you have to know what your enemy is planning, and you have to react to that. And you have to think on your feet and improvise. A lot.
I think that's the single greatest innovation in RTS games in the last 5 years (at least). Getting rid of civilians harvesting resources, and trading them for a constant series of skirmishes. It's not just "I attack your base, you defend", there are constant skirmishes at different strategic points, and you might try to use this to distract your opponent, while you sneak a small force over to hit his base. And because you might win by holding these strategic points (or more usually, the rarer critical points), you actually *have* to attack and defend on multiple fronts. If you just hide in your base, hoping to beat him when he attacks you, you've lost. He'll just capture all the strategic points, and that's it. Or you might be close to taking his base, but if he holds all the strategic points on the map, he'll win unless you can stop him in time. You're *constantly* involved in multiple smaller skirmishes all over the map, and if you lose one, you're not doomed like you'd be in most other RTS'es, where it's one big decisive battle. Instead, you just have to move your units to fight somewhere else.

Next up, they add a few extra dimensions to the various units. There are different damage types and weaknesses, which is an obvious feature. (heavy weapons are most effective against heavy armor, but might not be able to compete with faster, lighter weapons against masses of light troops), but a just as important, but less obvious feature is that they mix melee and ranged combat. instead of having an archer who fires arrows no matter what, and does the same damage at any distance, you have a unit with a bow, and maybe a knife. A bow is useless in close combat, so if another unit gets close, he'll switch to his knife just to have a chance of surviving, which of course has much lower damage output. And vice versa, almost all units have *some* kind of ranged weapon (in Dawn of War this makes sense, since it's sci-fi, and anyone can carry a small pistol. In a fantasy game, it might be harder to explain that everyone has a small bow or crossbow). The important part is that this add a lot of dynamics. You might have powerful ranged units, but if I can get up close with some fast troops, I've basically rendered you harmless. Even if I'm using my weakest troops, all I need to do is tie your units up so they can't fire with their ranged weapons. And vice versa, you might be able to outrun my big heavy melee units, which means they can't use their best weapon, but they can still at least hit you, so you can't take anything for granted.
There's a bit of rock-paper-scissors effect really, even though there are only two variables.

One last interesting feature they use, is that of units can easily be customized, and their squad can quickly be reinforced. All units are divided into squads (so you don't recruit a space marine, you recruit a squad of them). Then, you can upgrade individual units in the squad with better, or more specialized, weapons. That adds some more flexibility and makes it less predictable. In terms of DoW, you never really know what you're up against if you're fighting a squad of space marines (who are by far the most flexible/customizable unit types). All you know is they're tough, and have good aim, whatever weapons they're given. And up to four members of each squad might be equipped with a combination of four different heavy weapon (Flamethrower, missile launcher, plasma gun or a kind of heavy machine gun). So depending on their outfit, you might want to attack them with powerful melee units, some kind of units that are immune to morale (because flamethrowers have a nasty effect on that), or heavy or light armoured ranged units.
And to keep the battles flowing constantly, you can by a click of a button begin reinforcing a squad. It then starts "building" one more squad member, who is automatically added once he's finished. Even if you're in the middle of the enemy's base, you can quickly replace fallen squad members. This means you can't just turn your back to enemy units, even if you think they're weakened, and you want to wait a bit before finish them off. If you do that, you'll come up against a full squad again. So you have to fight, and you can't afford to let go (unless you're losing, of course)
This last idea is definitely not very realistic, and I'm not sure if I'm an unconditional fan of it. But it works really well in DoW, simply because it helps drive the pace up, and forces you to be more aggressive.

Now, a couple of other random thoughts, not ripped from any particular game.
Does it even make sense to build bases and recruit troops? What if you were to start with a fixed number of troops, and simply have to take some kind of objectives? Especially if you have some kind of overarching campaign map.

Next, supply lines? How to model this? And how to model it in a fun way? Any kind of reliance on unarmed, "civilian" units is dangerous. It might end up really frustrating for the player, not least because supply lines tend, almost by definition, to be long, which makes them almost impossible to defend efficiently. And how many supplies are needed? Are we modelling a 30-year war? Or a single battle that might be resolved in a single day? If the latter, *are* there even supply lines? Won't you just arrive with the supplies you need already packed? You say you'll have a campaign map (Sounds like Total War to me), in which case, I'd assume each RTS battle to take place over a short span of time.

Victory conditions: Make sure there are more than the usual "wipe out your enemy". There has to be multiple paths to victory, because that's how you keep the player on his toes. If he has to juggle three different strategies, prevent the opponent from achieving victory in either one, while pushing to win in one of them, the game suddenly becomes a lot more unpredictable and more challenging.

I thought of a bunch of other ideas earlier, but will have to get back to that later. [wink]

Well, thank you for pointing out the Total War Series. I love them, I have all of them, but for some reason I over-looked them. We do want to do the squad type combat, instead of individual units, probably halfway between R:TW and WH40K:DoW size. That was another game I forgot, but I didn't play DoW for very long. Had some fun playing MP with a buddy, but it wasn't for very long.

To answer your question about peasants, no, there will not be a peasant on the strategic maps. Peasants are restricted solely to the city maps (which are strategic maps when sieged of course).

For the strategic battles, we are thinking of making them a set-and-forget setup, or a completely playable. What I mean with this is having either a learning AI, or a "level" system for generals. The former learns to fight when you're gone based on how you play when you are there. The latter gains levels and you give them skill points that govern how they are going to fight. The level system would have skill trees such as Defensive, Offensive, and Skirmish (possibly more, just pulling this off the top of my head). The reason for this setup is because some of the battles may be longer than your standard game. With a real-time campaign map, this would allow you to run multiple battles at once (keep in mind, this is just a growing idea, we do not know how well hardware can hold out with this or if a player would be able to keep up). The reason I bring all that up is because we wanted to do small level wood gathering for things such as spear shafts, arrows, shields, etc... This wouldn't be performed by peasants, it would be done by your low level infantry, your grunts if you will. This gives reason to have these weaker units with your army as well as adding a small sense of realism to your army.

The supply line problem is something we won't be able to come up with a good game mechanic solution until production and testing.

With the "should you even recruit troops" question, I say yes for our game. It does span a longer amount of time, so it will make sense to do this. The change is that you won't be recruiting in your military camps, all units will be recruited in your cities (ala the Total War series) and then moved to your already deployed armies. If you don't have an army yet, then you just gather them up in a garrison and deploy them as a full army when you have however many troops you want.

I think I covered most of the points, a lot to read in here :-/

HunterCyprus

I toyed with a mechanic once that created a squad system. In it there was a Noble leader. This leader was produced by building a Mannor House.

The Noble could then collect a group of peasants. This squad could then be trained into a specialist group or remain as peasants. Specialist groups could be specialist peasant groups (farmers, builder/sappers, miners, etc) or could be a military unit type. Squads could be reverted to the basic unspecialised squad and then re trained to fit another role, but this would take time and you would not get the resources back that you spent to train them in the first place.

resources could be collected from a region by stationing a peasant unit in that region and could be enhanced by building certain buildings (mines, farms, etc).

Each mannor house needed to be suplied with gold, and the noble/squad unit needed food. The supply lines were in a campaign map where the amount of time it took the supplys to reach the destination was determined by the number of regions (and the time cost of traveling through those regions - the AI was to find the shortest path or the player could set it). If these supplies entered the region where they were needed then the supply requierment was met (it didn't need to go directly to the unit or building). The supply lines did not have an actuall unit that represeneted them, they were just numbers that existed in the campaign map.

Reasources that were traveling through a region existed in an encampment. If the player had specifically built an encampment (it also offered increased defence if there were military units stationed in that region) then the resources were stored in that encampment untill they moved to the next region. If the enemy captured the region they would be able to get the resources from that encampment.

If a player was building troops in one region they could transfer them to another in the campaign map. This was handeled similar to supply, but the units actually existed in the region map and if the player selected that map they could use them.

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Original post by Edtharan The Noble could then collect a group of peasants. This squad could then be trained into a specialist group or remain as peasants. Specialist groups could be specialist peasant groups (farmers, builder/sappers, miners, etc) or could be a military unit type. Squads could be reverted to the basic unspecialised squad and then re trained to fit another role, but this would take time and you would not get the resources back that you spent to train them in the first place.

I like this idea for the specialist peasants. Also, we did want to do military units like this. They start as a peasant, go to a barracks, become a recruit, and then go on to the next form of training or stay as recruits (keeping their "class" open). The one thing I don't like about your idea is being able to revert back to an un-specialized class. I think that if a peasant specializes in a certain job, he should stick with it for the rest of his days. Only problem I see with this is if you had too many lumberjacks and not enough miners. You would have to sacrifice LJ's and train new peasants to become miners... Well, I believe a compromise is called for!

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The supply lines were in a campaign map where the amount of time it took the supplys to reach the destination was determined by the number of regions (and the time cost of traveling through those regions - the AI was to find the shortest path or the player could set it). If these supplies entered the region where they were needed then the supply requierment was met (it didn't need to go directly to the unit or building).

I agree on this point, the supply trains shouldn't have to directly come into contact with a specific building. Just entering the region is a good idea, or you might run into more micro-management issues as you attempt to defend your newly arrived shipments, which are still en-route to your camp! This could also work in your favor though for raids....

HunterCyprus