Me again for my 30th post and another irrelevant idea. With RTS games in general I've often found myself helplessly at the whims of higher generals that arbitrarily decide when and where the battles are fought. My job is simple: I have a base and they have a base and it's my job to destroy the latter at any cost (money's not too important when I lose it all at the end of each battle anyway now is it?). Never mind that my 'strategic' position is located on some odd corner of the continent or that I depleted every bit of its resources in the battle, I still won, right? Okay, so maybe I'm thinking on too broad a scale. If I really wanted overall control I suppose I could play Romance of the Three Kingdoms or something like that. But isn't it still odd that the outcome is no more favorable if I completely decimate the land or flawlessly eradicate the enemy with minimal resources? I might be the difference between a "C" and an "A" in the score sheet but that's all. Since that's boring, but I didn't want to suggest anything too complicated from either a player's or developer's perspective, I came up with a crazy good (read: stupid) idea. The goal: Gain control over the most and prettiest land in the continent. So I only barely worked this out in my head, but here's how it plays out: Yadda yadda random backstory yadda yadda Audubon Society yadda yadda based in some dystopian future where people pay you to take care of uselessly gorgeous land (oh wait). In this pristine and beautiful world you need to take control over landmarks and landscapes and all sorts of pretty places. But of course other people are also trying to do the same. With tanks and machine guns. Of course, in typical RTS fashion you too are armed to the teeth and equipped with some form of nuke to boot, but you have to be careful because bombs and shells have a very detrimental effect on the overall beauty of any given forest. It is therefor your job to establish and maintain your borders as cleanly and efficiently as can possibly be achieved with a sub-machine gun. Not only that, but you need to balance your resources between caring for captured lands and funding the conquering of occupied territory. Overall the concept is very complicated and exceedingly messy so it'd probably never work (especially in real-time, as RTSs by definition are), but if you're a fan of RTSs and global warfare games then you already love complicated messy things, so this idea should just be a progressive step (if properly elaborated and developed). I know my description is pretty unorganized and hastily written up, but do any of the concepts have value? Am I missing some important games in strategy game history that have already incorporated similar elements? Are there any losers out there crazy enough to take and make this concept (feel free if there are!)?

Quote:

Original post by Portugal Stew Me again for my 30th post and another irrelevant idea. So I only barely worked this out in my head, but here's how it plays out: Yadda yadda random backstory yadda yadda Audubon Society yadda yadda I know my description is pretty unorganized and hastily written up, but do any of the concepts have value?

Oh, it definitely yadda yadda yadda and furthermore I think you should yadda yadda yadda game playing audience will yadda yadda yadda!

That wasn't unintentional I hope you know. Yes, overall my post had limited coherence, which wasn't intended (and never should be, by which I mean piss off; your "art" is worthless to the majority of the new york art scene), but I did mean to downplay the relevance of a backstory. I thought of the entire background after clicking "New Thread."

But hey, you're a good guy, you amped my user rating up about a dozen points. In all honesty I'm probably just posting this to draw attention to the thread.

Except for the yadda-yadda, it sounds a bit like the Total War games. Cities can be improved during gameplay, but they can also be damaged during sieges. Capturing a city is most rewarding when it's still mostly intact, of course. I don't remember sieges doing too much damage to buildings though, but the effect was there.

Emperor: Battle for Dune also had something similar: if you harvested all spice from a region, fighting over that region a next time would be pretty hard. Unless perhaps you had built a strong fortress there. Neighboring bases would send reinforcements every now and then, too, so that game definitely had an over-arching strategic element to it.

And Warzone 2100 had a main map where you built your persistent base. Most missions played on other maps, where you could send in vehicles and build defensive structures, but occasionally your main base would be assaulted so you'd play on home ground. Keeping that base in good shape was vital, as it was your source of income and research.

Quote:

Original post by Portugal Stew (and never should be, by which I mean piss off; your "art" is worthless to the majority of the new york art scene)

..dwaa?

But I sort of like the idea of it, if I get it. That you could win the fight against you enemy, but in distorting the land during the fight you get no benefit from the victory.

You would have to have some sort of developed campaign or dynamic world for it really to work I think. Otherwise there would be no demonstration of the downsides of the player's destructive behavior. Your players could also end up in a doomed world very quickly and not realize it- like if you eradicated the last clean water on the planet just to kill General Whosits army.

Ah yes, stupid RTS ideas, those are my specialty! Well, not really. I thought yours was a little interesting but agree with the comment about the need for actual consequences.

Yesterday I was trying to think of some RTS innovation. My newbie ambition took hold.

That's when I came up with the revolutionary new genre (bear with me, or don't, heck probably half of you have already stopped reading). It's the RTS/RTS hybrid! Wait a minute, how can that be? That's the same genre. I'll use the rarely explored World War II as an example for the setting of this terrible idea. One player on each team commands the entire team effort, although they don't command troops in actual combat. Instead, they get a world map (think Total War series) displaying their teammates as military icons which they can supply. The leader also gets to position them and force them to go places. The other players would have to be on makeshift servers, I don't really know it's all newbie ambition. Anyways while the players are in battle they request supplies/troops/etc from the commander and assess the situation. The commander gives as he pleases. After all, the commander only has so much to give, and has to conserve his forces and use them where they are needed most. The game would need dedicated servers so players could just fight over bits of Europe as long as they pleased. The object of the game is to take all of Europe (WW2 example remember...). Sure, you might not get the great feeling of victory if games lasted 14 hours, so perhaps it could have time based settings too. There, flame away I don't care I know it's a stupid idea haha.