Re: leiavoia

Quote:

I'm thinking that to make "defense" vs "offense" of any real concern, there have to be offensive and defensive abilities beyond what simple numbers are able to provide. Any thoughts?

I would just like to point out that the default model of 'defense' is a wall or a shield. Its function is to block an attack. The attacker is not trying to attack the defense, but the targets behind the defense. Attacking defenses uses up the ammo/strength that could have been used to attack the targets.

If the game has the concept of strength or ammo, then any thing that is cheap that can block attacks become defensive units.

The root number you want to look at is probably not "attack point" or "defense" point", but "ammunition".

In general, the purpose of defensive units is to absorb the attacks intended for other valuable targets. Destroying the defensive units is not the objective, otherwise there won't be a difference. The game needs to distinguish between valuable targets and obstacles.

[Edited by - Wai on November 9, 2008 2:09:55 PM]

Micromanagement is really the key to any units success or failure in defense or offense.

Starcraft is probably one of the better examples of this.

Adding abilities essentially adds more probability for imbalance.
Removing them and just making success dependant on who has the largest group of high attack units would most likely be boring.
Except when blowing things up.

Try a mix of both.

Maybe add shields?

I'm not sure.

But RTS isn't really a genre known for it's groundbreaking *shudder* gameplay.
Rather it's emergent *shudder* gameplay.

Count on the player finding a way to exploit something.
Just give every unit an equal opportuninty to succeed, rather than having units on a scale of bad to good, just to give more room for strategy.

Divide and conquer - you put your defensive-minded forces (say 25% of total) in front of half of his army while swamping his other half with your offensive forces. Then, once you've finished off his first half, you clobber the other half with everybody.

Also, it allows you to set up several 'pickets' of defensively strong forces along your frontier and have a more mobile force able to respond to enemy incursions no matter where they happen. The defensively strong pickets can hold out until help arrives. This allows you to reduce the total number of units needed to hold a given area