I think a very important thing to distinguish is the focus of an RTS. Games like starcraft focus on base building, resource management, unit composition and to an extent micro management of units. Other games basically remove some elements and emphasize other elements much more. Decide what you want to focus on.

Also, you want to give as much flexibility to the player. Do not make hard counters to strategies. If Strategy A is very strong, do not make a Strategy B that counters Strategy A. It ruins the game. You want to give players the control, and make them feel as if every unit can be good and is not wasted.

Finally, you want to allow the game to be customizable. Starcraft has the map editor complete with triggers (conditions, events, actions) that could create almost entirely new games. Warcraft 3 had an even more powerful editor which was basically like a programming language. EVERY great strategy game needs this.

One feature I really want to see in an RTS is the ability to zoom with the mouse wheel and zoom out all the way to seeing the entire map at once.

Once I got used to this in SupCom, I always wish I had that feature when playing other RTSes that don't have it.

Dunno if anyone finds this humorous, but a thread with this same content by me got me permanently banned with absolutely no discussion or recourse on GameSpot for 'Advertising'... I still fail to see how a thread like this is 'advertising'.

Thats interesting but I'd leave things like that out of the topic. I think its ironic because I was actually interested in your company/game. If you can tell me what company you can PM me.

Quote: Original post by Ameise
Dunno if anyone finds this humorous, but a thread with this same content by me got me permanently banned with absolutely no discussion or recourse on GameSpot for 'Advertising'... I still fail to see how a thread like this is 'advertising'.

Probably automatically does a google search for similar text and reports it to moderators. Just a guess.

Also you didn't list what you or your teammates preferred in an RTS game. Did you guys have any neat idea? I was going to point out saying "an RTS game akin to Starcraft or Total War" is very broad and flawed. Total War is actually a real-time tactics game. I'll assume you just meant the scale in which case you should have said Supreme Commander.

Quote: Original post by Sirisian

Quote: Original post by Ameise
Dunno if anyone finds this humorous, but a thread with this same content by me got me permanently banned with absolutely no discussion or recourse on GameSpot for 'Advertising'... I still fail to see how a thread like this is 'advertising'.

Probably automatically does a google search for similar text and reports it to moderators. Just a guess.

Also you didn't list what you or your teammates preferred in an RTS game. Did you guys have any neat idea? I was going to point out saying "an RTS game akin to Starcraft or Total War" is very broad and flawed. Total War is actually a real-time tactics game. I'll assume you just meant the scale in which case you should have said Supreme Commander.

Hard to go into heavy detail at the moment. We are definitely taking suggestions into account... by Total War, I was planning on having a tactical element (which RTS seem to always have) to be akin to that... I used Starcraft as an example of an RTS -- trying to be distant from SC though because I honestly dislike Starcraft's gameplay.

Quote: Original post by Ameise
Hard to go into heavy detail at the moment. We are definitely taking suggestions into account... by Total War, I was planning on having a tactical element (which RTS seem to always have) to be akin to that... I used Starcraft as an example of an RTS -- trying to be distant from SC though because I honestly dislike Starcraft's gameplay.

Its also good to distance yourself (some) from other games because they have such a huge market share of that breed of RTS

What i enjoy more than anything is the building and expantion of the faction you are controling, Star Trek: Armarda 2 and Emprie Earth II do this well but in recent years i havent seen mutch of this, RTS's now days just try to make the games as simple as posibull from a design perspective.

A machanic i was working on for an idea i had was for a user defined custom components based on the tech tree, basicly a tech is reserched sutch as steam power, the user then can merge this tech with older one to create somthing new or an improvement, say merging Steam power with a ships sail to create a steam engine.

The issue i had was its shere complexity to implement but it was an idea designed give the users control over how the civ develops while also allowing them to create or trade tech that other players may not of even thaught of in a sence adding a new and original methord for tech reserch. But depending on other mechanics within the game it may not work well, in Command and Conquer this concept wouldent work, as it requires user imput and thaught somthing that cant work in a fast paced game, but in a slower game it might work.

The most inspiration for an RTS for me was Warzone 2100, with the epicness that it deserves in the genre.

For example:

Features for an RTS (that appear useful and might be in a battle) would be the ability to customize units. Doing so give you a chance to power up your tanks 'n stuff, but can be a drag on everything else.

And indirect tech trees could be another one. One thing researched leads to another without bothering with individual categories of technology.