First off, if you're looking into reality, then rushing is very much a part of tactics in general. In a RTS, you start the map knowing that there will be a conflict, and soon, and can make some safe assumptions about what you're going to be seeing in that conflict. Rushing is roughly similar to a small, scattered and poorly armed army sneaking in, in the middle of the night, out of nowhere, and attacking before the defenders even realize that they are being attacked. Reality would be terrible in an RTS, having to worry about preserving lines of communication between places, loosing control over things sent away from where you are [since in reality, you really are a single thing, unless it's a modern game with broadcast communication, but you still have to worry about loosing contact].

Preset resources though, sounds like it can be interesting. Though depending on how specific you are with your present resources, you might have to take into consideration if a pair of players are simply unwilling to take risks, and just huddle up and refuse to even participate, instead just holding the choke point since they know that they can win there, given even numbers.

If it's any consolation, the rusher is always at a disadvantage, being that he is required to travel to the enemy base, and the enemy gets that bit more time to prepare. [thats not even including what is often true, that defenders have an advantage even if evenly matched.]

Well Spoonbender, I stand humbled. Good point(s). I'd like to clarify and/or retract a couple arguments then, and answer your question.

First, I think the rushers do have a positive gameplay experience, but one similar to, say, a spawn camper in online FPS's. Or to provide a lower tech example, people who use that chess trick to beat you in a couple moves. They seem to do it wholly for the sake of winning, not for the enjoyment of the game. I guess it isn't "wrong," but it seems kind of soulless to me, and it saps enjoyment out of everyone they play.

Your second point is absolutely right. I'm not going to argue it.

Sometimes we are trying to do reality. Or at least something somewhat realistic. Think Age of Empires II. Producing a very large amount of warriors would have taken more time in real life. And that game was based off of a real era. Actually, that game seems really "out of focus" now that I think about it, between physical sizes of units and buildings, numbers of troops, and time progression combined. But I digress. I can see instant training in futuristic games. But when I play a say, World War I RTS, I'd like to feel the correct sense of timing, relatively. That hasn't happened yet, though, I think it's just my little pipe dream about gaming.

I suppose my main problem with rushing, is that it leaves so little options for the rushee. It seems like a cheap strategy. When someone rushes, the other person can either flee, which isn't very practical, defend themselves, or die. So they have one good choice that will probably do a good bit a damage to their own economy. It just seems like the all-powerful item in a MMORPG that needs to be nerfed a little. The player should have to work a little more to gain such a one-sided advantage. Just my opinion.

@Peachy Keen

Where is an RTS-style rush used in reality? And RTS-style rushing is more comparable to a horde of locusts than an sneaky army. And the term rush means to me that the opposing player doesn't even get time to hardly set up a base. I'd also actually like an RTS like that (I am, as you can tell, a reality freak. I like to see the soldiers in RTS's have to go to a bathroom building, actually.)

I do agree with your point about players refusing to participate. That's happended to me in checkers actually. We both moved so conservatively that we eventually had a complete deadlock.

Not to go off on the tangent of rushing that this thread seems to have taken, but as I used to be a heavy RTS player (since Dune II, Dune2k being my personal favorite, Total Annihilation soon after, Dark Reign, and Starcraft somewhere i nthe list) I felt the need to comment.

I will make a few statements. Rushing is an absolutely valid tactic. On top of that, it is a tactic that gives just as much experience and enjoyment as a non-rush tactic.

Now, to backup my claims. I'll use the obligatory subjective claim first. That is to say, enjoyment is up entirely to each individual user. So someone who is rushing may enjoy rushing. Whether or not that is tied to the enjoyent of winning is a different story. However, it is enjoyment and satisfaction from the same game.

Secondly, don't most RTS's revolve around patterns anyways? You can hardly say no. If you look up "build orders" on various RTS titles you're sure to get hundreds of hits. A build order is simply a recorded, tested pattern. Part of what makes a game interesting are the patterns. When you 'learn' a game, what you're really learning most of the time are the various patterns and rules to the game, as well as how to exploit them. This is part of the enjoyment experience.

So why do I bring this up? Because rushing is a valid pattern out of the varying options. In every RTS i play, I encounter rushers and I am a rusher. Why? Because I feel it is the greatest challenge. It pits a players ability assess a situation and identify a pattern up against my own. In a rush, every one of your units is a valuable piece of your army. With the death of every unit you run the risk of losing your economy, or worse, the game. My most favored memories in RTS's are games where I've rushed a player, he countered defended my rush, so i switched my rush up into a different kind of rush, he defended that rush, so I fall back into an alternate decoy strategy, only to bombard, and so forth. Each time, both of us are in the edge of our seats, cursing and into it because we know that one of us could lose it all with the wrong moves. That is entertaining to me, on the contrary to spending 20 minutes to build my giant economy, defense system, then sending a slew of my troops to die halfhazardly. Sure, there are other tactics involved here as well, and they could be just as gratifying, but you don't have as much riding on a single unit.

Rushing is but one of the many options and patterns available to a player. Both players have access to these patterns, it's a matter of who best executes them.

Unfortunately I don't really like writing exaughstive posts, so i'll be brief. The idea of a non-resource based RTS is intruiging, but I'd be willing to be that if you're not micromanaging your resources, you'd be micromanging something else. As I see it, It's always going to come down to who can think the most steps ahead, and executes those steps the fastest while making the least mistakes.

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Original post by Mephs The problem as far as I see it is that victory does not go to those that are tactical genius', but rather to those who are best at micromanagement and developing the best "rush" strategy.

The ever so popular Starcraft does reward "tactical geniuses". Since "rush strategies" and micromanagement is already well know by all in the competitive community, the top players of Starcraft are those who can come out with creative new strategies and exploit situations.

The "legendary" Slayers_boxers who won WCG twice in a row and was regarded at one time to be the best SC player ever demonstrated his ability to concot strange new strategies on the spot in many tournaments. So did many top players.

But I agree, there are too much "finger work" in RTS nowadays. The more recent Warcraft III is a prime example. Micro is almost 100% of the game, there isn't much strategies you can implement which hurt your opponent much. (if the opponent walks into a trap in SC he'll lose much of his army, while in War3 he could simply run away...) Which is the reason why all the top Starcraft players are still playing Starcraft.

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Original post by Mephs I think it would also help remove the see-saw effect in most RTS games where a battle goes on for hours as neither can get the upper hand, or the situation where a player knows they are going to lose, but the end is hours away because they are on a slippery slope to failing. With pre-defined armies, you can roughly predict how long a game will take, you can accommodate for long or short games as you wish and you need never wory about setting a unit building cap because you specify how many units are available at the beginning of the game!

I tend to think the see-saw effect is fun. Personally, i have not seen competitive Starcraft see-saw for hours. Usually games finishes in 20mins-40mins. Rarely it'll finish close to an hour.

In short: Being tactical doesn't mean being slow. But I agree that RTS nowadays are too much finger work.

Hmm, I have to say the thread has lost smoewhat of the vision I had for it. I really didn't intend for this to be a bash on rushing or a particular style of player, I think it can be enjoyed and can be tactically brilliant. I'm not suggesting we eradicate this design because it is so bad, like I say, it has its place and even I can enjoy it.

It's not that the thread is off topic because I think it is making for some fantastic reading and I hope there is further discussion on the topics :), but it's just that I wanted us to play around with the idea of a resourceless, reduced micromanagement system because I do think it would offer a genuinely interesting experience that could sell well.

It's like me saying that I want to make the worlds first RTS game because I'm bored up of first person shooters and want to make a game with a different focus of skill, and then having someone complain that FPS games take skill and I should stop bashing FPS players just because I can't handle being camped.... it's not the point!

To throw the conversation another way, something I've always thought would be cool would be a skirmish game based on gang warfare, something akin to Necromunda, GorkaMorka or Mordheim, again providing even more focus on a smaller number of troops. Necromunda was an amazing game for moving your gang about tactically, gang members out on their own being more prone to fleeing, multiple levels of buildings making the game great for fighting over the best sniping spots and amount of cover dictating the importance of ranged over melee combat, over use of equipment like grenades. With gangs of 8-20 or so people, you coudl afford to customize each and every gang member and see them develop giving the gang an identity as a whole.

I think it could work anyways :P

cheers,

Steve

RTS games without resource management exists. For example, Rome: Total War where you start with a pre-configured army and no way to get additional resources/troops.

But i think resource is important in an RTS. It serves as a vital point in a opponent's base for attackers and prevent turtling. Without the need to go out and find new resource points, what is stopping players from turtling up instead of attacking?

Perhaps the fact that you may build your army specifically for offensive action? Defensive play isn't such a bad thing anyway, siege warfare for instance can be quite interesting.

You could also still have objectives like take and hold, assassinate, rescue missions, infiltration missions etc. If a player took an assault objective, then they would have nothing to gain by playing turtle.

I'm just saying that predefined resources would mean that once you lose your troops, provided there are no reinforcements, there is no second chance. You have to be bold in your decisions, if you are going to play defensively, every man counts, if you are going to play offensively you have to minimize risks and not be drawn into a fire corridor for example.

Sure, players could both turtle up under the right situation, but then it becomes a game of trying to draw out your opponent, or switch tactics at the right time because while you are both playing turtle, nobody is building up their forces, nobody is gaining an advantage by holding back other than the defensive position they occupy, so you have to look to other means to gain your advantage... perhaps send out a few units in what looks like a major assault, draw the enemy out of cover and retreat back into your own, perhaps send troops to flank the opponent, or send in teleporting troops to pick off weaker units. Granted these options exist in a game like DOW, but with the option to build troops to order, it becomes a race to build troops/harvest resources.

Having really thought about it a lot now, I can agree it may be no better than the existing system, but it is different and offers a different challenge and one that I'd personally rather face when playing a wargame.

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Original post by Mephs Ahem.. no sorry, just kidding. Basically yes, I want to play the tabletop game on my computer, why is that bad?

It isn't. I'd like to be able to do the same. [grin]
It's just wrong to expect DoW to provide that, because it doesn't even *try* to go in that direction.

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DOW is not perfect IMO not because of any individual thing you have to micromanage, but because the combined total leaves you unable to ever optimally control your force.

But is that so bad? Isn't that where tactics really come in? When you're unable to pick the perfect solution, but have to weigh various imperfect ones? When you have to balance your time and attention and knowledge of what's going on in the game?

Anyway, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with the tabletop game, I'm just pointing out that DoW has some merits on its own, features that actually contribute to a better experience, and while yes, these features stray from the tabletop game, they should still be considered and appreciated, because they do add to the genre.

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Just to answer a couple of last things to do some justice to your posts.... yes I have experienced long games, see-sawing of balance, short rush games and games where defeat was inevitable but took a long time coming.

In Dawn of War? You said you hadn't played it online... [grin]
I don't really count the AI, because, well, that's the AI.

But just to be clear, I love the WH40k tabletop game (Or I did when I played it some years ago), I love the Total War games, and I love Dawn of War. Each have their own focus and their own ways to make the game fun, and I try to appreciate all of them. Dawn of War uses the resource management aspect in a way neither of the two other games do, to encourage you to take risks, to drive the pace of the game up, and to force you to engage the enemy rather than sit and wait.
While it's certainly a deviation from the tabletop game, that in itself isn't a bad thing. It just means you have more different games to play, rather than more different platforms to play the *same* game on.

If you want to make a "resource-less" RTS game, go ahead. I'd love to play it.
(There are already a few of those games, but like you say, the idea has a lot of potential)

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Sometimes we are trying to do reality. Or at least something somewhat realistic. Think Age of Empires II. Producing a very large amount of warriors would have taken more time in real life. And that game was based off of a real era. Actually, that game seems really "out of focus" now that I think about it, between physical sizes of units and buildings, numbers of troops, and time progression combined. But I digress. I can see instant training in futuristic games. But when I play a say, World War I RTS, I'd like to feel the correct sense of timing, relatively.

Why does it matter? Dawn of War solves it by not letting you train troops. Instead, you "requisition" them. You tell your HQ in orbit or wherever "Send more space marines", and they're airdropped into your base.
but that's just backstory, it doesn't really affect the gameplay. it's just a way of explaining away the fast "building" times. The same logic could apply to a WW2 game. They too had the ability to call for reinforcements.

About rushing, keep in mind that when rushing, you make a big gamble. You totally cripple your economy to build troops. And you're unable to grow your army while en route to the enemy, so when you arrive, you basically attack with yesterday's army, while the defender is able to keep reinforcing and building new units. The only reason rushing works as well as it does is that a lot of people refuse to adapt and counter it. (And yeah, I tend to do the same. I find rushing a boring, cheap strategy too, and prefer to play games where it's not easily done. But I know it can be countered quite easily simply because you as the defender has a few advantages)

What PyroGuNx described doesn't *really* sound like rushing to me. Rushing is usually when you totally cripple your economy to be able to make one all-out, all or nothing rush. Either you wipe out the enemy then and there, or you're dead. If he defeats your rush, he'll have a working economy, and you won't.

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To throw the conversation another way, something I've always thought would be cool would be a skirmish game based on gang warfare, something akin to Necromunda, GorkaMorka or Mordheim, again providing even more focus on a smaller number of troops. Necromunda was an amazing game for moving your gang about tactically, gang members out on their own being more prone to fleeing, multiple levels of buildings making the game great for fighting over the best sniping spots and amount of cover dictating the importance of ranged over melee combat, over use of equipment like grenades. With gangs of 8-20 or so people, you coudl afford to customize each and every gang member and see them develop giving the gang an identity as a whole.

Sounds like the X-Com games... :)
And yes, that definitely does work. Feel free to make more of that kind of games [grin]

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Perhaps the fact that you may build your army specifically for offensive action? Defensive play isn't such a bad thing anyway, siege warfare for instance can be quite interesting.

But siege warfare becomes a lot more interesting if the defending army also has a reason to be more than a passive spectator. or if the attacking army has to withstand the occasional counterattack.
And if both sides can play defensively, it *is* a bad thing. it just means two armies can both sit and wait for each others forever.
That's where I think DoW is really clever. No matter how you play, you always need *some* offensive element. If you don't push your opponent, he'll defeat you. Turtling isn't an option. Turtling, with the occasional assault on a critical location is viable, but "pure" defensive play isn't. Again, this makes te game much more unpredictable, and forces you to improvise your tactics on the spot.

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nobody is gaining an advantage by holding back other than the defensive position they occupy

But that's enough, isn't it? If I hold a defensive advantage, why would I move? If I move, I lose my advantage. If my opponent moves, he loses his. I can wait. If he wants to wait 3 friggin' days before running out of patience and attacking me, that's fine. (Ok, I'm not that patient, but that's what it would seem to reward)
I think it'd be better if the game encouraged and rewarded *taking risks*, rather than *Waiting for your opponent to lose patience*

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Granted these options exist in a game like DOW, but with the option to build troops to order, it becomes a race to build troops/harvest resources.

Again, I disagree. In DoW, it becomes much more than that. if you try to play defensive, I'll just grab the critical locations and wait for the timer to reach 0. Instant win. The defensive player is forced to go out of hiding occasionally. You're forced to improvise your strategy, rather than just wait patiently for the game to fit your premade strategy. And if I know what units you're building, I can counter them without losing more than a few units.
DoW hardly ever becomes *just* a race to build troops. Much more often, it becomes a race to counter your opponent's movements, a race to build *the right* troops, and to weaken the opponent literally by outwitting him.

Some of the best DoW games I've played have literally been a battle of wits and bluffs. You're always overextended with too many places to fight, and too few troops. You move your troops to counter one threat, and just bluff and try to prevent your opponent from even discovering how vulnerable you are everywhere else. Your base is under heavy attack, so while putting up a good fight there, you drop a few units into the enemy base, which by now is almost undefended.
or you spend 10 minutes fighting over one critical location, only to break off with a small part of your army, to capture a different one. Or you fight using only old units, to fool the opponent into building specific units to counter them, while you secretly build a different unit type with different weaknesses. But a race to build units is hardly ever an important part of the game.

I've played matches where I won without losing more than 8 units while killing 200. Not because my opponent sucked, but because I managed to stay one step ahead of him in that particular match. No matter what he built, I either predicted it, or spotted it in time to produce a counter. So in those cases, it wasn't a race to build troops for me. It only turns into that if both sides are unable to adapt their tactics, and instead tries to just flood their opponent with semi-random units.

Oops, another loooong rant. I'm good at those.

Once again, Spoonbender, good points.

Your example about DOW is exactly what I'm talking about. That's feasible. It is feasible in a WWII game that focuses on a single battle or campaign. So I suppose that it is kind of a petty issue. And you're right on (again) about rushing.

@Mephs

For gang warfare, don't forget our Gang Wars, being developed by our own Danny Green (dgreen02). Check out his journal, if you didn't already know about it. It is more of a RTS with management, than just combat, but it seems fairly similar to what you're talking about.


DOW definetely appears to have the tactical advantage over a lot of similar games.

Those who are looking for a more boardgame like experience may want to look at turn based strategy games. Many have a different pace and aren't as resource focused.