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Regarding resource management, I also favor the TA/SupCom model over the StarCraft/C&C model. To me, the TA/SupCom model is more realistic, because it allows more explicit planning for the future. Players can queue up units and structures without needing the resources to build them right away.

This would lead back to the old question of: do games benefit from REALISM? One party will argue against this, and I am one of those. Think back to warcraft. Nobody cared that a farm gave you food for 6 people, steadily, without sub-mechanics to govern this, etc. It was perfectly non-realistic in application, but it was overly simplified and easier to understand (it didn't make the game easier to master in any regard though, it just reduced information flux).

With that said, the planning and construction is a good idea nonetheless, not solely because it is more realistic, but because it is a tool.

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I tend not to bother about the whole strategy/tactics issue myself. I know its an important distinction in the real world, but there is no point diverging from the type of game you want to make because of a word in the genre description. One of the key issues I've found with strategy games is unit balance. This needs to be absolutlely spot-on and can probably only be achieved through testing.

My thought exactly.

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Original post by Orymus This would lead back to the old question of: do games benefit from REALISM? One party will argue against this, and I am one of those. Think back to warcraft. Nobody cared that a farm gave you food for 6 people, steadily, without sub-mechanics to govern this, etc. It was perfectly non-realistic in application, but it was overly simplified and easier to understand (it didn't make the game easier to master in any regard though, it just reduced information flux). With that said, the planning and construction is a good idea nonetheless, not solely because it is more realistic, but because it is a tool.

I agree that realism should not be pursued merely for its own sake. But sometimes added realism also makes things more intuitive. To me, the resource model of TA/SupCom is more intuitive because it reflects more of a real-world condition. Hopefully that makes sense.

I think a large problem is the accessibility of learning the strategy of a game. (I over did it slightly with following example.) Just read the final paragraph for the main point if the content is not of interest.

For example a lot of people say warcraft 3 isn't particular strategic - it's all micro-managment - and while micro-managment is a large part of the game, there are important strategies underlying the game, which are almost certainly not apparent to inexperienced players (or those only with single player experience).
I say this from having played more than a fair share of the multiplayer game, and I could list almost countless examples.
e.g.
The game features small scale strategy -
An orc hex could be used offensively to either
- provide a hero kill by preventing it from running
- stop a weaker army teleporting out of battle
or defensively
- stop a stronger unit killing an important unit/hero
Knowing when to use the skill and for which purpose to get maximum effect is most definitely strategy game play! But a lot of players new to multiplayer will not understand this and will not use it to full effect or be able to defend against it. And yet this is a single skill in a game which features ~ 80 hero skills and many unit skills.
Building strategy -
A few valid human strategies
- not upgrading buildings and units to take another gold mine using the pricing and upgrades of human towers to 'turtle' the mines (which other races are not able to do due to the price point of human towers and extra strength from worker units.)
- standard upgrade routine available to all races
- tower rushing mid game (other races are not nearly effective at this.)
Over arching strategy -
What units to build!
It is not the case that the strongest units will win, its the knowing which combinations work well together against what your opponent has.

None of this is presented in the single player campaign and players new to multiplayer will find them selves losing as they do not know the basic strategies of the game! This means a lot of people quit frustrated, but they would be far more competitive and would enjoy the game far more if they knew some of these simple strategies that could be presented in the single player campaign.

One thing which can be fun, though not usually combined with base building and resource gathering, is unit persistance. I'm not talking about "hero" units I'm talking about the units you use from mission to mission are the same with some opportunity between to upgrade or change (possiblity limited some how). This can mean that some thought needs to go into the composition of your forces prior to the mission rather than just getting out whatever units during the battle.


In terms of trying to avoid a 'good vs. evil' story you could try going for an 'evil vs. evil' story where sides are rather nasty or a 'good vs. good'. I think one problem with trying to avoid it though is that people will generally assign good and evil themselves anyway based on there own beliefs etc. Which can also mean for some the side you "made" "good" was for some reason evil to them.

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Original post by Dragoncar One thing which can be fun, though not usually combined with base building and resource gathering, is unit persistance. I'm not talking about "hero" units I'm talking about the units you use from mission to mission are the same with some opportunity between to upgrade or change (possiblity limited some how). This can mean that some thought needs to go into the composition of your forces prior to the mission rather than just getting out whatever units during the battle.

Unit persistence can be a fun way to get attached to your soldiers, but the danger in story based campaigns is that it can make game balancing a right pain. The last mission might be a cakewalk for someone who has a fully maxed out super squad and nigh on impossible for someone with a squad of raw recruits. And the worst part is that the players who have to go with the raw recruits do so because their troops keep dying, suggest they're not at good at playing the game - precisely not the players who want a punishing challenge.

With RTS story-lines I generally want them to be interesting enough to chain the missions together in a way that I want to keep playing to see what happens next, and varied enough so that they throw a variety of different challenges at me. Starcraft was good in how it managed to weave together ways of having all combinations of race vs. race play out. However a lot of RTS single player campaigns feel like they're just training for the multiplayer - especially how they tend to slowly unlock the tech tree so you only get to play with the most expensive units in the last mission; while some warm up is welcome, I think a few missions with the higher units with other units forbidden per mission would make an interesting change of pace.

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Original post by Trapper Zoid Quote: Original post by Dragoncar One thing which can be fun, though not usually combined with base building and resource gathering, is unit persistance. I'm not talking about "hero" units I'm talking about the units you use from mission to mission are the same with some opportunity between to upgrade or change (possiblity limited some how). This can mean that some thought needs to go into the composition of your forces prior to the mission rather than just getting out whatever units during the battle. Unit persistence can be a fun way to get attached to your soldiers, but the danger in story based campaigns is that it can make game balancing a right pain. The last mission might be a cakewalk for someone who has a fully maxed out super squad and nigh on impossible for someone with a squad of raw recruits. And the worst part is that the players who have to go with the raw recruits do so because their troops keep dying, suggest they're not at good at playing the game - precisely not the players who want a punishing challenge.

Get around the "Maxed out Army" by having maximums (and Minimums) on points you can keep with you as you go. If you start producing a large number of first rate soldiers, then the higher ups draft them into other units. If you keep struggling, then the game will kick you a few good specialists if you don't have the required points to complete the mission.

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Original post by Dragoncar In terms of trying to avoid a 'good vs. evil' story you could try going for an 'evil vs. evil' story where sides are rather nasty or a 'good vs. good'. I think one problem with trying to avoid it though is that people will generally assign good and evil themselves anyway based on there own beliefs etc. Which can also mean for some the side you "made" "good" was for some reason evil to them.

I'm thinking I'm going to go with an assortment of opponent NPCs who vary from comically inept to enviably cool to dangerously villainous. Comparable to a superhero universe's cast of super villains or a sports anime's cast of opposing teams in a tournament, or for that matter the various villains (comic relief, rivals, minor villains, and the big bad) in a jRPG.

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Original post by RobAU78 Regarding resource management, I also favor the TA/SupCom model over the StarCraft/C&C model. To me, the TA/SupCom model is more realistic, because it allows more explicit planning for the future. Players can queue up units and structures without needing the resources to build them right away.

I also prefer Supcom's resource model. Most RTS games only allow you to build things you can afford, and they take a fixed time to complete. Supcom allows you to build anything you like (tech level permitting), any time you like, regardless of whether your economy can support it.

This gives you tremendous flexibility, and opens up some interesting emergent effects. Buying the commander's teleport upgrade for example, is almost guaranteed to cause a power crash, shutting down production and defenses, leaving you vulnerable until it's complete. At the other end of the scale, you can rush build things with engineer assists, sometimes getting a powerful experimental up in a very short space of time. To add a further twist, there is the reclaim mechanic which can be used to contribute resources to a large project.

Unfortunately, by giving the player this power, the game also gives the player the power to shoot himself in the foot, often without really realising why. It's all too easy for a beginning player to try and upgrade a factory before his economy is ready, resulting in an economy crash which he lacks the experience to recover from. Everything starts taking too long, he gets bored waiting for things to happen, and then gets utterly crushed by the enemy. It's a steeper learning curve, and a lot of people aren't prepared to scale it.

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Original post by Orymus 2 - Control points is the weakest mechanic of the dawn of war series. Rather than expand on physical resource fields (where one who controls more would potentially win) it becomes a matter of covering the map... This isn't as much an improvement as a regression in that regard.

Control points are essentially just an abstraction of the whole resource malarky. Instead of having a cluster of minerals that require a whole load of peon/town center infrastructure to exploit, the whole lot is abstracted away in a single doodad.
What it does do is dramatically reduce the obstacles to expansion, and motivates the players to get their units out into the field and bumping into each other more quickly. While at higher levels, players do that anyway, for beginners this makes a much more fun and accessible game, as it forces them to overcome their turtling tendencies.

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Original post by Trapperzoid Unit persistence can be a fun way to get attached to your soldiers

It doesn't really work for me. I generally find that it is enough to manage blobs of different unit types, without having to worry about differences on the individual level. If I drag-select a blob of soldiers to send off on a suicide mission, I don't want to have to start worrying about whether one of them has survived three battles and has earned some kind of special upgrade. The only way to make it work is to reduce the overall scale of the game down to just a handful of units.

I'd rather not have to care about individual men. While there should be reasons to try and keep men alive on the battlefield, rather than always sending them on suicide missions, these should be strategic reasons, not gimmicks that simply add to the player's micromanagement load.

In terms of connecting the player emotionally with all the casualties he's taken, I liked Cannon Fodder's approach: each soldier had a name, and when he died, a little tombstone appeared on a hill. As you lost more and more men, the hill became more and more densely packed with headstones, a simple graphic reminder of your casualties.

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However a lot of RTS single player campaigns feel like they're just training for the multiplayer - especially how they tend to slowly unlock the tech tree so you only get to play with the most expensive units in the last mission; while some warm up is welcome, I think a few missions with the higher units with other units forbidden per mission would make an interesting change of pace.

I kinda like this actually... Stacraft's campaign was interesting regardless, but it was honestly 'a tutorial' Real gaming starting in skirmish (either vs ai, but most notably against players).
I still play a game versus a few computers once in a while, and I still think its fun.

The upside to putting the tutorial IN the campaign is that you do not need a 'tutorial' of its own. I hate games with their own tutorials where they expect you to understand a lot of info in no time. The idea of spacing it through 15 hours or more is just like school:

1 - Learn something
2 - Put it in practice
3 - Learn from the process
4 - Proceed to the next learning thing

Also, each mission builds on what you've previously learned, so the process allows you to become "a better player".

Live to fight another day.

The RTS I envision some day taking up my free time (playing, not designing) is one where the choice NOT to attack is a vital part of the game.

Has anyone here played Majesty: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim? Instead of directly controlling your units, you place bounties across the map to entice your units into either exploring an area or attacking an enemy. I rather enjoy this concept, as it gives a whole new spin on the genre, but it doesn't really allow for a lot of strategy.

However, the concept of markers drawing units across the battlefield can be expanded into one where markers draw entire armies across the battlefield; your army being one of them. The longer your army holds and controls a marked area, the more power your army gains. The marked areas would pop up somewhat randomly, grow in intensity, and then fade out after some time. I envision the gameplay to function much like the way lions will hunt and kill prey, feed on it, then leave the carcass for lesser predators once all the good meat is gone. The stronger armies would attack and hold the marked areas that are most intense, while the smaller armies would seek out marked areas that are less intense.

The power gained from holding a marked area could grant different rewards. Your army might attract more followers and/or more powerful followers. You may gain increased control over your followers.

But since the consequences of a battle gone bad would be that your army would lose followers to Mr. Death, the player would always have to weigh his or her options. Do I develop a fast-moving offensive army, ready to take free areas, or a slow-moving defensive one, ready to hold areas against even the mightiest armies? Do I move into this marked area? The defenses are rather poor. The power intensity already seems to be waning. Some of my scouts that I sent out to the north haven't reported back yet. Is there a more powerful army waiting to crush me? Should I attack that area already held by another army? It's a small army, but it looks like a well-fortified area, and the units look to be more of the defensive kind. Should I withdraw from this approaching army, abandoning the area I am holding, but making sure my army lives to fight another day?