I feel that logisitcal warfare is just as important, if not more important than direct warfare - historically entire conflicts have been won without firing a single shot simply through clever maneuvering and resource denial.

And therein lay the beauty of Kohan. Resource management is very important in the game, but there are no 'workers' that gather resources. Instead you either build structures with your settlements that produced resources, or you take over resource-sources that occur across the map.

Any RTS fan who has not played Kohan seriously should. While it's over a decade old now, it's still a great game, and it pioneered several components that made it into later RTS games.

The problem with that is, that's not logistics, that's just resource generation. There's no logistical chain "delivering resources to the front", instead there's static structures that are a part of your normal base building (common in most modern strategy games).

Captureable resource generators can work well - Company of Heroes did this exceptionally well, but it does absolutely nothing to represent logistical warfare, it's a purely territorial concern. The reason it worked so well in Company of Heroes is that it required players to spread their forces more thinly in order to occupy more territory to gain more resources for construction of more specialist (but not more numerous) units - a formula later entries in the series failed to capture quite as well.

The problem with that is, that's not logistics, that's just resource generation. There's no logistical chain "delivering resources to the front", instead there's static structures that are a part of your normal base building (common in most modern strategy games).

Captureable resource generators can work well - Company of Heroes did this exceptionally well, but it does absolutely nothing to represent logistical warfare, it's a purely territorial concern. The reason it worked so well in Company of Heroes is that it required players to spread their forces more thinly in order to occupy more territory to gain more resources for construction of more specialist (but not more numerous) units - a formula later entries in the series failed to capture quite as well.

Ah, but you see, in Kohan, you have supply as well as being able to block the resource generation. It basically just cut out having to manage individual peons. When a town was under siege, it's area of control would be contested, and things like mines built in that area would no longer be under the area of control, so the town owner would no longer get resources from it. And being under siege just meant that an enemy unit's area of control was overlapping the towns, so one could set up a blockage, or use raiders to deny resources.

Also, for supply, units auto healed when in friendly supply zones, provided by towns and outposts. without that, units would not replenish, so you could often circle around behind an enemy who had penetrated too far too fast into your own territory, cut off his supply line, and his units would slowly get whittled away.

It really does have lots of utterly fantastic and unique gameplay features, and holds up fairly well, I would put it on any list for RTS research.

the thing that's awesome about those old games like c&c red alert 2 is that on today's computers they run crazy fast. So if we'd introduce some improvements in terms of level editing and gameplay (plus a bit of graphics) we'd get a crazy fast running game that is just as fun as it's been back then.

That's sort of my point. If you basically just had the gameplay from the games I mentioned, and created a decent campaign, or regular updates of new content, would people who love RTS buy them for their next RTS fix? Or would they only buy a game which does something new and exciting?

That's really the heart of the question -- The classic games you mention already exist and already have mindshare, so why aren't they still being played? Is it because they're difficult to get running on a modern machine? Is it because its player base now prefers different kinds of platforms (e.g. tablets). Is it because the community of players has dwindled? Is it because the content has gone stale? Is it because the gameplay hasn't aged well? Is it because player expectations have outgrown them?

You're not selling fruit, so simply being a fresh rehash of some old games isn't going to cut it. Not without addressing the reasons those games have been left by the wayside. Likewise, can you determine what was good about those old games so that you can retain their core while bringing those ideas forward. And exectly how much *does* need to change to get to a game that's worth playing in this day and age, anyhow? Is it so much that you've essentially got another "modern" RTS?

Luckily you have 10+ years of hindsight to aid in your analysis, so finding things to improve shouldn't be impossible. The worst thing you could do is to assume the old games were infallible in their design, put them on a pedestal, and not add, remove, or evolve anything. If there were nothing to fix, people would still be playing those games en masse. They're not.

My issues always seem to stem from streamlining the pathfinder algorithm.

Having more than 3 or 4 items on screen at once, slows the frame rate down a lot in Java .

Well, we can shoot in the head the "it's because Java is slow" argument for a start I definitely remember having concerns about pathfinding but in reality it wasn't an issue, I worked on a tiled map of 1000x1000 or something like that and used a very standard A* implementation I think.

If it slows down your FPS that suggests you are doing path-finding every frame, maybe that is the problem? I'm sure I cache the route and follow that until I find the route is blocked. Of course you can try to be more clever, if you have multiple units making the same journey you could try to calculate a single path for all of them, etc.

That's sort of my point. If you basically just had the gameplay from the games I mentioned, and created a decent campaign, or regular updates of new content, would people who love RTS buy them for their next RTS fix? Or would they only buy a game which does something new and exciting?

That's really the heart of the question -- The classic games you mention already exist and already have mindshare, so why aren't they still being played? Is it because they're difficult to get running on a modern machine? Is it because its player base now prefers different kinds of platforms (e.g. tablets). Is it because the community of players has dwindled? Is it because the content has gone stale? Is it because the gameplay hasn't aged well? Is it because player expectations have outgrown them?

You're not selling fruit, so simply being a fresh rehash of some old games isn't going to cut it. Not without addressing the reasons those games have been left by the wayside. Likewise, can you determine what was good about those old games so that you can retain their core while bringing those ideas forward. And exectly how much *does* need to change to get to a game that's worth playing in this day and age, anyhow? Is it so much that you've essentially got another "modern" RTS?

Luckily you have 10+ years of hindsight to aid in your analysis, so finding things to improve shouldn't be impossible. The worst thing you could do is to assume the old games were infallible in their design, put them on a pedestal, and not add, remove, or evolve anything. If there were nothing to fix, people would still be playing those games en masse. They're not.

Good argument but I do think "it's old" is a factor. Games do have a shelf life, and also people have had time to play the missions in those games to death. Plus, those classic games have technical restrictions, the biggest being resolution (in my view). They were the last big games before everyone went 3D, so they run in 640x480 or something like that which puts many people off, myself included. I reckon a spruced up Red Alert would still be fun, sort of like they did with Dune2000.

Regarding resource gathering and logistics - I definitely think it has its place but it just depends on the style of the game. Fast-paced RTS games where you are micro-managing every unit, it can get in the way. I always disliked that gameplay style, I wanted to play at a more strategic level. I had put quite a lot of thought into logistics but never tried the ideas out - not only do you have to harvest resources and physically transport them, but you have to transport resources to the place they're needed too. Want a new building? Fine you can build anywhere you want (not only next to existing buildings) but you have to send trucks to take the resources, Want to build tanks - need to keep supplying raw materials.

I even considered making units require fuel/food so you have to set up supply lines, but this might be going too far.

Regarding resource gathering and logistics - I definitely think it has its place but it just depends on the style of the game. Fast-paced RTS games where you are micro-managing every unit, it can get in the way. I always disliked that gameplay style, I wanted to play at a more strategic level. I had put quite a lot of thought into logistics but never tried the ideas out - not only do you have to harvest resources and physically transport them, but you have to transport resources to the place they're needed too. Want a new building? Fine you can build anywhere you want (not only next to existing buildings) but you have to send trucks to take the resources, Want to build tanks - need to keep supplying raw materials.

I even considered making units require fuel/food so you have to set up supply lines, but this might be going too far.

For an example of units that require fuel/ammo, you could look at the Eugen series of games, like Wargame Airland Battle. Granted, they get away with that extra management by removing all building of buildings and peons.

Good argument but I do think "it's old" is a factor.

It absolutely is a factor, and one which we remain unchanged in your "new" game if nothing of substance changes. To be clear, things as simple as updating the graphics to be more modern is something, new art is something, new content is something. Whether its enough is anyone's guess. But keep in mind that RTS games were the original sandbox games, and among the first to have good support for user-created maps and such. Many officially supported alternative art packs, or the community figured it out. So there has been new art and new scenarios, and in some cases new units in some of those old games 'total-conversion''-style. Why aren't people playing those in droves? Probably a lot of reasons, but I'd be willing to wager that SVGA resolution and lack of pixel-shaders are pretty low, and there's no lack of content to speak of -- or rather the community could keep making content if they were interested enough to do so.

Its a question of endless mario-clones; plenty of great mario-style platformers exist with tight controls, original graphics, or whatever, but when they have no strong hook of their own, I'd rather just be playing the real thing. In my opinion, you need to provide more than a fresh coat of paint. There was an indie freeware game that put Link (or link-like) character into a 2D platformer that was sort of a mash-up of Castlevania and Super Mario World style platforming. That was a great game, despite few or no truly original elements, it was all done by distilling elements from three great games and putting them together in a new way. I'm not saying you need to go that far afield to make a fun RTS with retro sensibilities, but I really do believe that the worst thing you can do is stay too close to home. Especially in an RTS where things like character and plot aren't the differentiation they are in other genres.