Speed.

I've had a lot of ideas about things wrong in the current set of RTS games. To sum up a few:

- Too much micromanagement(as mentioned before). You're busy with a lot of minor things: Repairing buildings, making sure harvesters are actually harvesting, etc.

- Factories and building: Either 1 unit at a time, or having to go to the factory, select it, and build up a build queue

- Lack of strategy: It's impossible to setup advanced strategies, as having to manage 5 attack formations is tedious and painful. And each attack formation stops it's attack once the target(unit or building) has been destroyed, instead of marching further.

- Bad power management: Low power = slower building + no rader in all C&C games. While in reality, 1 building would have been shut off from power and voila, power is back.

In my current game I'm trying to fix these, but I haven't gotten to the part of implement anything remotely to this. Perhaps in the coming month(s).

Toolmaker

I would quite like to see more custom parts to RTS games, such as choosing the colour of your army, or even their flag. This customizable angle will make players feel like this is theirs and your not just taking control or building something that is pre set. Going along with this idea of custom parts, I think that custom tech trees works quite well (idea from Warrior Kings or something) its the idea that if you choose one building you go down a different part of the tech tree and another part is shut off for you. Take the example of Warrior Kings, if you built the Church your tech tree would go down a more Christian, western approach, having swordsman and monks, but if you choose the may pole it would go down a more pagan route which lead to demons and giant statues made out of hay for BURNING.

I hope these ideas help or are even valid to the discussion.

Ian

1. I would like something like "On my signal, do this, then that, then go there". Like an order queue. Perhaps combined with X different signals. Using this, you would get way better attack coordination, as you could plan the attack instead of just sending units..

2. Hiding and camoflage, as well as better use of terrain.

I would like to see:
A 'Rush' timer, say you can only rush or create vast sums of units after a period of time, it shouldnt limit action before,but it will stop the mammoth rushes i keep getting on cnc3 early into a match.

Descent interaction, ala, zoom ;) after playingsupreme commander i felt really limited in command and conquer,ill admit supcoms zoom level could pose a threat to programmers so i'd sayh something in between, id like to see all my base and just around all in one go. and i also want to admire the animators hard work too.

Realistic deaths :D I mean in the way p[eaple die and what happens, in many rts's you send in a squad or 2 of infantry and even though there being shot at from the front the ones at the back and middle tend to be picked off first :S and they also fall forwards.

Balance too, i mean its alright having an army of the higher units, but its no challenge and therefore no fun to just wander in and kill everything with no effort, because the bestr defenses arent anyway near good enough to cope with even one of the units.

I really want to see better single player AI.

I hate just having to build two super-defense structures in the path that the enemy always takes to completely defend my base. CnC 3 was very guilty of this.

I think it would more interesting if they could choose different paths depending on which ones are more defended.

As mentioned already a thousand times...better AI would be nice. Instead of sitting there and not really doing anything ie:worker units should automatically repair damaged buildings, mine resources, and build unfinished buildings.

Also, more diversity in units. Its not so much a problem but it would probably be more fun to have a large diversity.

Quote:

Original post by Xtlk Also, more diversity in units. Its not so much a problem but it would probably be more fun to have a large diversity.

Diversity is guaranteed. I've also thought of several ways to add simplicity to it.

I'll give you a hint to it:

I kill him, he kills you, you kill me.

I think Supreme Commander got a lot of it right for me.
Though I think it is lacking some afore mintioned things like "AI" in the sense that the AI can be godly, but it
tends to stagnate making you think it stalled out or something.
I also think it, like so many RTS games, lacks balance across all the units and races. Something that seems
like a cool advantage for one race (Aeon range) needs a good counter, or it becomes overpowered.

I like the select a building+make a build queue just because it puts enphasis on where you place your buildings, and
what you build at them.

Unit massing should be a perfectly valid strategy as long as there are structures/units/AI that can deal with it.
IE, most units need smarter targeting, so that say Air units will auto target anti-air batteries before anything else unless you pick their first target.

If resourcing is done by units, they should be a bit smarter. But I'm a fan of using persistant resource
generators of some sort. ie supcom, DawnOfWar, Utopia, ect.

I think most RTS could benifit from a command-code feature like RainbowSix, where you can prequeue some
actions for multiple groups, then on a "blueteam GO!" command all the groups move in attack, for
a perfectly timed flanking manuver.

They should have ways to disable particular unit combinations (ie no naval+anti-naval, or
no air+antiair, or no tech-level 3) so that you can remove tatical aspects of a game to make it more
chalanging on particular maps. For instance, my friends and I sometimes play Supreme Commander with no-nukes vs CPU
just to make the games last longer, and be more interesting.
And a good chokepoint map would be fun to play with no air. So it would be cool to force these for online play.
(note im not sugesting anything like "no zerglings"/"no ghosts"/"no templar" or anything specific, but more of a broad sweeping
disable for particular tatical realms (air,sea,hightech))

Co-op anyone? Again, being a fan of SupCom, I got to thinking that the expand-a-map campaign would be awsome in
Co-Op, becuase you could have maps where both people are playing, you are helping each other out, but
untill the last parts of the map, you can't actually get units near the other person's base to assist directly.