Well, this is the result of trying to add mass of options, but providing only a few real choices. This is bad gamedesign. Instead of adding (mindless) options, try to add real choices first. Eg. you have armor and hp (health/hull point). There's no real difference, because the effect is the same (taking more dmg until being killed/destroyed). Therefor you have 2 options (invest your resources in health or armor) , but no choice, because the best cost-value ratio will dictate the choice for the experienced player.
Either remove one of this options or add real choices, eg. different damage types like physical/energy damage. This way you have two armor types and 3 options to increase it (hp increases all armor types simultaneously).

I agree. The only meaningful choices (at relatively similar cost-efficiency) were between trying to destroy something, or capture it (by dealing damage to the crew) which I felt was a nice addition, but hardly justifies the entire system (a mere checkbox could've been sufficient, really).

My personal take will have different things. For example, shields automatically regenerate over time, whereas armor needs repairing, so you'd rather have your shields take all of the damage, provided your ship generates a lot of energy to make these shields worthwhile, otherwise, you'll trust your armor much more, but will consider bringing along resources to fix your ship.

Also have a rock-paper-scissor relationship between three dominant weapon archetypes and how they interact with crew, armor and shield. Should feel ok, but I don't want rock-paper-scissor to thrump all other strategic elements.

I don't think that this will really work. Humans can only handle/differentiate a few states concurrently (5-7?), even in TBS games, and 100 ships which each being critical is mental overkill If you want to handle this amount of ships, you need more abstraction and customization of single units is too much. As mentioned above, you could have many options, but only few real choices. Common options would be different ship classes, different customization of ships, different squadrons etc., but eventually you only have a few specialized groups, which can be build in many different ways (options) to maximize the effect for a certain task (real choice like planatary siege, planatary defense, fleet battle, escort etc).

I meant, each faction would have 7-10 different ship classes, but could control up to 100 units on the battlefield (each of which would be a straight copy from one of these classes, meaning you only need to know 7-10 different ship classes). Also, some ship classes would be straightforward (scout, basic cargo transports, etc.) so you'd probably only ever have 3-4 ships to consider to any given "mission" you have in mind, each of which should be viable options, but would determine your playstyle: do you tend to build more cargo-intensive warships or go with slim rocket-punch designs?

The fun would come from grouping these as you see fit.

For example, you, as a player, have chosen that your "usual battlegroup" is 2X Ship A + 4X ship C because it gives you confidence that you have sufficient logistical support (from Ship A) and firepower (from ship C). That's your usual battlegroup, and nothing ties you to using it but yourself. Since it works for you, more power to you!

Try to focus on real choices and use a manageable abstraction layer. Many strategy games adds hero units (eg. table top games), which could be customized and are restricted to only a handful of units. Standard units are then only classified accordingly to their specific role (attack bomber, shield unit, attack fighter..).

I'm not a big fan of abstraction. I find that, imo, what prevented me from trully liking some of the best 4X games out there (MoO series for example, and even Civilization) is that there was too much abstraction and I ended up lacking the proper feel of managing my army.

Since I want this game to be trully about the ships themselves, I'm also opposed to adding hero units. From experience, they tend to take away the entire focus of the game. For example, I liked Warcraft I and II, and absolutely hated Warcraft III... similarly, I'm not a LoL fan :)

My sugguestion would be to boil down your gamedesign to real choices first, throw away all unnecessary options, then try to refine your game design to add more options which supports real choices.

I feel I've already done that. Though my ref games seemed to fail there, I believe I've brought up a system that has a lot of strategic decisions. Ultimately, I feel that my customization would work "as is" because, it's a lot more meaningful than my competitor's, but ultimately, I can't shake the feeling that it's just too much. Though I approach this problem as a question of depth, I now believe the concern is mostly that of design space, or rather, how much attention span I expected the player to dedicate to this game. If it goes too derply, it risks becoming unplayable, and I feel that customization, no matter fun/deep, is a strong culprit. It also feels as part of the solution than to "cut" the customization out, and I am merely assessing the damage report on my minimum viable product when doing so... My instinct tells me it would work, but I love feedback!

PS: after re-reading my own text, it sinks in , that I'm in a similar situation (customization of 20-40 minions)...Darn !

Per faction? Woahhhh

My concept currently has approximately 50 units total, but that's got 6 very different factions (some ships get reused). I anticipate that the global unit pool will never exceed 70 for all factions involved, and that in an average game, players will only get to see 40 or so (depending on players' choices). Most of the time, they would be likely to be confronted to only 5-10 beyond their own (depending who they are at war with, or close to for example).

I have been reading recently on your beloved VGA Planets Note they seem to be about battlegroups, not individual ships (the player builds one "fleet composition" and then copy it for all/most needs).

Ah the DreadLord manual! A strategy guide based on the teachings of Sun Tzu. Note that these tips are not inherently built systems in the game, but rather, a "pro" approach to fighting. There is nothing called "battlegroups" in the game, rather, it is a strategy employed by the writer to determine functional units of combat (as I've described above). These groups exist only on two planes: in the player's mind, and by the mere fact they generally occupy the same coordinates in the universe. Nothing would actually prevent them from breaking up but the actual player's doctrine.

The reasoning is that consistent battlegroups bring consistent expectations. If you see a "green dot" on your worldmap at a given coordinate, your instantly know what forces you have there, what sort of threat they can take on, and what they can't cope with. You also know all of their side-capabilities (can they lay mines? cloak? move over large distances? repair themselves? capture a planet? etc.)

This approach is very strong, but the game should not enforce it, rather, it should lure the players to get there on their own so that they feel they are getting better with their tactical analysis and planning.

100 important individual ships seems unmanageable. It's much easier to control 10,000 ships of more or less standarized setup

It is not as bad as it looks. Though you could potentially have 100 ships to manage, you would hardly get that many to focus on every turn. Why?

- Let's assume 20% of them are freighters, which are in transit for 3-4 turns. On any given turn, you'd probably have 15 of them "flying" with no actual input required. It's good that you know where they are, in case there is a threat of them being intercepted by an enemy, but their order is set regardless.

(-15)

- Some of your warships are busy defending your borders and need to stand idle (possibly 20% of your fleet)

(-20)

- Some utility ships need to remain in orbit of planets to terraform them, or transform resources or even mine (possibly 20%)

(-20)

- Of your remaining ships (45) many are currently in-transit but haven't reached their destination yet. Most likely, more than half. You just need to wait and let them resume their movement.

(- 20)

- Your remaining active ships (25) are possibly arranged in 4 or 5 battlegroups (5 - 6 ships per battlegroup). You only need to bother issuing orders once and have the others follow, so you end up sending out... 4 or 5 important orders for this turn for your mainstay fleet. You might have each battlegroup have a fore-runner/vanguard/scout to avoid traps, so let's double that number.

In a given turn, you end up giving 8 to 10 meaningful ship orders. Doesn't look so bad now does it?

I used to be overwhelmed by having to control individual ships, but more and more, I see the value in being able to break away from the fleet to do a side-mission.

BTW, if you want "space chess" reduce both the board and the number of pieces.

I really don't want chess, because chess has no production, a finite and pre-determine symmetrical amount of pieces. I really want to capitalize on the infinite and asymmetrical aspect of gameplay, where each faction gets to slowly customize their army's composition (from an asymmetrical ship list) as this would slowly shape their battle plan / doctrine.

Even if two players, using the same faction, have the same end-game (target using the same ships) they would probably still get there building them in a different order, making the early / mid-game quite diverse.

These groups exist only on two planes: in the player's mind

How the player think/perceive it is the only thing that counts. The game works in practice as "moving piles of standarized battlegroups", therefore I find the interface flawed since it does not support it natively.

Anyway, my point was that the player builds a fleet by composing it from various ships. And that's, sort or, customization I suppose. Yet, I would add something to the mix (like technologies that "add radiatuion shields to all my battlecruisers") since it's a bit thin.

In a given turn, you end up giving 8 to 10 meaningful ship orders. Doesn't look so bad now does it?

No difference. As a player only the "freighters" once I would exclude (so -15 only), I would definitely need to think and check all others (especially the ones in transity, I don't know how anyone could exclude these, actually, they are more important that the ones already in place - when my reinforcements will arrive, should I reroute them to more important location, etc).

It's not about giving orders bout about "keeping in mind".

Some utility ships need to remain in orbit of planets to terraform them, or transform resources or even mine (possibly 20%)

It puzzles me why they make these as ships... These could be made as planetary instalations or something, and therefor keep the ship count lower (plus it's inconsistent, ships should be for warfare and transport). In my prototype I have "terraform" button (acutually, I also have colonize and scout buttons so these ship classes are not present, but I understand that would be too drastic for most designers) :)

I really don't want chess

Liar :) You even rigged the random dice to always roll predictable and "fair" results (I wonder why you bother with the "random" results in the first place). You definitely want space chess :)

How the player think/perceive it is the only thing that counts. The game works in practice as "moving piles of standarized battlegroups", therefore I find the interface flawed since it does not support it natively.

Yes and no. The UI should also support the ability to break away seamlessly. Adding a system to handle fleets would be a problem (such as in GalCiv). That being said, simplifying the "follow leader" could definitely be improved.

Anyway, my point was that the player builds a fleet by composing it from various ships. And that's, sort or, customization I suppose.

Agreed.

Yet, I would add something to the mix (like technologies that "add radiatuion shields to all my battlecruisers") since it's a bit thin.

Sadly, as you might remember from last year's thread, my "technology" behaves differently from other 4X games. Instead of linear progression, my system assumes a form of sinus curve where each new base starts "vanilla".

No difference. As a player only the "freighters" once I would exclude (so -15 only), I would definitely need to think and check all others (especially the ones in transity, I don't know how anyone could exclude these, actually, they are more important that the ones already in place - when my reinforcements will arrive, should I reroute them to more important location, etc).

Planets.nu uses a very clever approach (single and double checkmarks). When you drop down your list of ships (click next ship) it will ignore any double checkmarked ship unless its current order is completed. As such, you won't need to cycle through these (you might however see them on your startchart and if a danger pops up, you can determine what the best course of action is, but in this case there's a single event to process: threat (not actual ships))

It's not about giving orders bout about "keeping in mind".

In RTS, you get to keep track of many units (up to 200 food worth, but generally about 50-100 actual units). You do this in real time, and often, manipulate them in 9 groups or more.

TBS and particularly Grand Strategy or 4X games give you the luxury of time, so I don't feel this is over-reaching.

It puzzles me why they make these as ships... These could be made as planetary instalations or something, and therefor keep the ship count lower (plus it's inconsistent, ships should be for warfare and transport). In my prototype I have "terraform" button (acutually, I also have colonize and scout buttons so these ship classes are not present, but I understand that would be too drastic for most designers)

Because terraform ships can be mobile (build once, move as needed, or choose to be impatient and build more). Also, they tend to have weapons as well (can be recycled as interceptors, cargo transport, etc.)

The Merlin, particularly, is a very cool ship: it can transform supplies into resources, carry a lot of fuel, or strike out smaller vessels or minefields. Some just tow it to minefields (because they don't put good engines on it) to remove mines and recycle whatever resource they can.

Liar You even rigged the random dice to always roll predictable and "fair" results (I wonder why you bother with the "random" results in the first place). You definitely want space chess

If the accuracy modifier was one-sided (only weapons), it wouldn't make much sense, I could probably just adjust damage as needed or at least cooldown. Since some defensive countermeasures will affect this though (such as ship maneuverability) the impact is much different.

For example, a -10% accuracy on a 80% accuracy weapon won't have much of an impact in the early rounds, but on a 50-59% chance weapon, it means it will START with a miss, making short fights very deadly.

It allows be to depict differently the advantage of mobility over sheer armor power. From a math standpoint, the relationship is different between a dodge and actually soaking up damage (either through static numbers or %) and because "time" will be a measure of combat, having specific "misses" will help.

I may resort to seeding from the preset list so that it is not always static, but insures proper distribution (to avoid 5 misses in a row cases) but this will need further testing.

Re: Chess, it's all in good fun, and I trust that you understand how drastically different the design is. That being said, I agree that some precepts found in chess should apply to this game, but there's a lot more to it than just positioning and movement patterns (as each unit effectively moves EACH turn).

I'm also at a crossroads where I feel that adding ship customization might add a bit of fun / strategy, but would add a significant level of complexity (micro-management) and this smells to me like a poor design decision.

just make ship customization optional. they can build a pre-defined ship type or define a new type to build, then build it. that way you please all your users.

But what I've uncovered after a while is that, the better you get at this game, the fewer actual "choices" you realize you have. For example, there may be 10 options for a given slot, but you'll grow into using a maximum of 2-3, with very narrow roles.

the game design has a "dominant strategy" that makes only 2 or 3 of the 10 options worthwhile. dominant strategy! bad designer! no twinkie! <g>.

"Would it be viable for a 4X game to have no ship customization whatsoever?"

certainly. take rome total war II for example:

its a "conquer the map" game, just like a 4x.

you build units and structures, just like a 4x.

you have resources, just like a 4x.

no custom units, but a wide variety of pre-defined unit types, and many unit types which are unique to a given faction or group of factions.

all you have to do is provide "requisite variety" in the pre-defined ship types included.

and no dominant strategies! <g> IE: no dominant pre-defined ship types.

just make ship customization optional. they can build a pre-defined ship type or define a new type to build, then build it. that way you please all your users.

That kind of indecisive design could hurt competitivity in the game though. A group of people not interested in the feature would naturally argue that players that use it come up with more competitive designs and have an answer to everything. I don't want to penalize players if I am to implement a solution without customization.

the game design has a "dominant strategy" that makes only 2 or 3 of the 10 options worthwhile. dominant strategy! bad designer! no twinkie! .

Agreed.

certainly. take rome total war II for example:

its a "conquer the map" game, just like a 4x.
you build units and structures, just like a 4x.
you have resources, just like a 4x.
no custom units, but a wide variety of pre-defined unit types, and many unit types which are unique to a given faction or group of factions.

all you have to do is provide "requisite variety" in the pre-defined ship types included.

and no dominant strategies! IE: no dominant pre-defined ship types.

Mechanically, it does. I'm a bit concerned about staying on-theme however. But despite a long history of customization, I suppose that a number of brands have come up with standardized models (Tie Fighters, X-Wings, etc.)

In RTS, you get to keep track of many units (up to 200 food worth, but generally about 50-100 actual units). You do this in real time, and often, manipulate them in 9 groups or more.

TBS and particularly Grand Strategy or 4X games give you the luxury of time, so I don't feel this is over-reaching.

On the contrary, I never feel overwhelmed with RTS (note I'm a poor RTS player). Mostly besuse it is real time (yep, it makes it less taxing). Not controlling every unit and forgetting about some is part of the game. While in turn based you are supposed to know where each unit is all the time, you control every single one separately.

Besides, in RTS I use groups (1-3 are my cannon fooder troops, 4 is heavy artillery, 5-fast reaction forces, 6- transport, 7- heavy bombardment fleet, 8-0 special ones like repair or science), I use similar setup no matter what RTS I play :D. So in fact I need to remember just 10 keys, not taxing at all, even with millions of units (again, note I'm a poor RTS player :)).

Because terraform ships can be mobile (build once, move as needed, or choose to be impatient and build more). Also, they tend to have weapons as well (can be recycled as interceptors, cargo transport, etc.)

It would be much more fun (and reasonable/realistic) if these did not. It's a higly specialized piece of equipment that should be deployed with escort.

I mean, really, fighting terraformer is a degenerated case :)

I never feel overwhelmed with RTS (note I'm a poor RTS player).

I'll give myself the permission to disregard everything that followed :) Forgetting a unit pretty much seals the deal in a RTS, and I find it much less forgiving in that regard.

Besides, I think it all falls down to execution anyway. And true, the game may not be for the faint of heart...

It would be much more fun (and reasonable/realistic) if these did not. It's a higly specialized piece of equipment that should be deployed with escort.
I mean, really, fighting terraformer is a degenerated case

On the other hand however, you'll note that the most 'realistic' sci-fi (and I tend to classify Star Trek as a wannabe realistic sci-fi here) recognize that, because of the nature of space (longer distances), it is best to have a ship that can do a bit of everything instead of overspecialized designs. As a result, even medic ships, science vessels and even more importantly, explorer vessels (such as many Enterprises) are moderately to heavily armed. Most of them can fight toe-to-toe or annihilate smaller crafts that are actually military spaceships.

I tend to follow the same train of thought with my multi-purpose ships (minimal weapons to get stuff done without fear).

For flavor reasons, I don't intend on having very huge spaceships with narrow purposes, so the terraformer problem should not be presented under the same light.

Think of it this way, what if the large mothership in independance day could use its ray for prolonged exposure to heat up a planet slowly from its core? It would still be a more than decent battle carrier because its purpose is twofold (I'm assuming): conquer new worlds AND make them habitable. It was designed assuming that worlds wouldn't be ripe for the taking, so it is a belligerent utility ship.

Some of my factions will have a more 'utility-based' approach where some small ships are meant to do simple economic tasks without actual much firepower.

I'm not a big fan of abstraction. I find that, imo, what prevented me from trully liking some of the best 4X games out there (MoO series for example, and even Civilization) is that there was too much abstraction and I ended up lacking the proper feel of managing my army.

Abstraction is vital for games (take a look at how children play games, it is all about abstraction, or look at chess) and I'm sure that you already use a lot of abstraction in you game design. Nevertheless, I think I got what you want to say

Sid Meier once said, that his first game (more or less) failed, because he tried to put two different games into one. I made a similar experience (resulting in heavy refactoring ). What I want to say is, sorry about repeating it, that a game should be build around a single, powerful core concept. Everything else just supports this concept, therefor use abstraction to remove complexity (not depth!) from support parts and leave more details for the core concept.

I dont know your whole game design, therefor I can't really evaluate the ship customization feature. But for example, if your core concept is space/fleet battle, then ship customization would be a good support, whereas if your core concept is conquering new solar systems, planets, building up an empire and economy, then a higher abstraction layer in ship customization (eg. from customizing single ship to customizing battle groups from predefined classes) would support the core feature more (less complex).

I can't shake the feeling that it's just too much.

Remove it. As game designer we often regard only isolated features, pimping them, then process the next feature. This leads often to adding a lot of complexity to the final product. The player will only play the whole product and often will be overwhelmed by the complexity. The hard part about game creation is to get a working game out first, then add more features over time.

This seems to be hard these days, because the player expectation is often really high (eg WoW growth over years, yet it is expected, that each new MMORPG includes and tops all the feature WoW has + some new innovations).

Nevertheless, 4x is a good niche and many 4x player seem to love complexity, therefor you have a lot of freedom here

Per faction? Woahhhh

My concept currently has approximately 50 units total, but that's got 6 very different factions (some ships get reused). I anticipate that the global unit pool will never exceed 70 for all factions involved, and that in an average game, players will only get to see 40 or so (depending on players' choices). Most of the time, they would be likely to be confronted to only 5-10 beyond their own (depending who they are at war with, or close to for example).

My game is not a 4x, it is more like DungeonKeeper or DwarfFortress, that is, lot of autonomous entities with little to no direct control (this is one of my abstraction layers to remove unnecessary complexity). Nevertheless, you can equip single minions individually and I think now, that less would be more.

I'll give myself the permission to disregard everything that followed Forgetting a unit pretty much seals the deal in a RTS, and I find it much less forgiving in that regard.

Why? It does not matter if I'm playing these proper way or how pathetic at them I am. All that counts is if I play these and buy these, which I do (sometimes) :) Do not cater only to pro gamers who excell at the game type you are making.

Real time strategies do not require that level of focus on individual unit (since you are limited by time). It's part of the game to decide whete to allocate your focus. While in turn based you are supposed to process all information available for infinite amount of time & focus. Therefore, the number of units is much more overwhelming in turn based games.

Everything else just supports this concept, therefor use abstraction to remove complexity (not depth!) from support parts and leave more details for the core concept.

I think we agree on this.

I dont know your whole game design, therefor I can't really evaluate the ship customization feature. But for example, if your core concept is space/fleet battle, then ship customization would be a good support, whereas if your core concept is conquering new solar systems, planets, building up an empire and economy, then a higher abstraction layer in ship customization (eg. from customizing single ship to customizing battle groups from predefined classes) would support the core feature more (less complex).

I realize my current concept may appear a bit confusing. The core of the game should be combat, or rather, near-deterministic auto-played combat (where the player has no input aside from bringing the forces he wants to see fighting). There is a strong support set of mechanics for how the game's economy is handled, but so far, it remains relatively lightweight and straightforward.

As a result, I find that my game may be a tad on the simple side for a 4X game, but I can definitely live with that (besides, we need more straightforwards 4X games without tech trees and whatnot). That being said, I'm a bit scared of lacking depth.

To better explain this, let's have a look at the actual impact of removing ship customization:

My concept does not have science / tech trees, instead, it has a set of technologies which are known but require logistical support. Bases that can construct ships need to invest in these installations before they can apply these technologies.

Under a system that allows for ship customization, these investments would be categorized as "hulls", "energy weapons", "Kinetic weapons", "missile weapons", "engines".

If ship customization was to be removed, we would only have "hulls" and thus, instead of introducing strategic depth, we'd end up with a linear system here. There would still be some strategy involved because the resources used for "hulls" could otherwise be spent on economy, but there wouldn't be an actual choice between each tech is the most pressing to implement (I need better weapons vs I need better speed).

In addition, the actual ship customization would be removed, but given the conversation so far, I'd say that this is the least of my worries as you've made a good point arguing that finite units can be equally strategic and introduce much less variety which allows for a quicker and more manageable understanding of the allowed permutations (aka, understand the potential outcomes of all situations).

Corollary to this, the player would have a harder time swaying smaller battles in his favor through careful planning. He'd have a much harder time trying to set side-objectives (I want to capture ships instead of destroying them) as he couldn't directly manipulate ship gear.

Similarly, the game economy would play a less important role as the player wouldn't be allowed to use the same ship designs but add "better weapons" when needed, making huge investments, or, choose to be economic and made specific downgrades where appropriate (I don't need this ship to be fast AND strong).

Of all elements listed above, the one that concerns me most is the tech system's sudden lack of depth. I could theoretically abstract a more complex system and retain all categories (I need hulls level 3 and beams level 4 to build ship C, but beam level have no impact on anything else, it's just an elaborate complex tech system with no real purpose) but that wouldn't feel right.

It is possible however that keeping "hulls" only would emulate the tech race sufficiently.

Nevertheless, 4x is a good niche and many 4x player seem to love complexity, therefor you have a lot of freedom here

Or I could use my own advice and playtest it first :P

I see your point though, and it is true that the concept is a bit "elitist" which means I may already have limited my player base to hardcore fans which may tolerate (or even require/demand) such complexity.

My game is not a 4x, it is more like DungeonKeeper or DwarfFortress, that is, lot of autonomous entities with little to no direct control (this is one of my abstraction layers to remove unnecessary complexity). Nevertheless, you can equip single minions individually and I think now, that less would be more.

Interesting.

I have some level of abstraction: battles are simulated and played back. The players have a lot of control on movement, missions, etc (which systems are on/off and how crew allocation works) but combat is pretty much a stand-back and watch.

I'm a big fan of combat, and I think that quick tactics on the battlefront are never as important as preparation. It was important for me to have battles play out on their own, as a form of "outcome" of your preparation. To me, that's like being handed back an essay with your grade on it. You've done a lot of prepp work, you wrote it, now it gets tested by the system which returns you a result of how well you've handled that particular situation/conflict. It is a great way to learn about the game mechanics as it keeps giving you feedback on how well you are doing.

Having a system where combat would have user-input would become confusing. For example, if you lose badly, could you really tell whether it was because of poor preparation or poor execution? By freezing execution I think we actually end up making things that much straightforward.

Why? It does not matter if I'm playing these proper way or how pathetic at them I am.

It does. A competitive game is not built for those that don't succeed at it, that would only anger those that could be good at it. The game is primarily built for the top 10%, but it must introduce mechanisms to handle "forgiveness" for lower tiers.

A big reason why SC and SC2 are successful RTS is because they do emulate competitive gameplay. While there's a lot of noob-friendly features, players are still allowed to go on full hardcore mode and win the game through sheer APMs and map awareness. If not, then it would be a noob's game, which means it wouldn't be competitive, which means it wouldn't be an e-sport, and quite frankly, we'd probably have hardly ever heard of it.

All that counts is if I play these and buy these, which I do (sometimes)

That would assume that you are an integral part of the target audience of every 4X game ever. I realize the genre appeals to you, but it had been made clear through our previous discussions the last 18 months that we like very different 4X games. If I end up making a game "for you", I might just be missing my target audience altogether. As much as I'd love to make a game you like, I am naturally more drawn to make a game that I'd like first. It is possible some of the features would appeal to you, but it is entirely possible that some others would put you off, and yet, would be critical to my target audience.

Do not cater only to pro gamers who excell at the game type you are making.

Our opinions diverge here. Between 2010-2013, I was stuck in the "casual market" bubble where nearly all studios involved in commercial game development decided to target soccer mums (this started a bit earlier, possibly in 2008-2009 with Facebook). This was a definite step back into making "good games" for the most part (despite a few interesting titles, I'll admit). The specifics could be discussed through another thread, but essentially, given my position in the industry, I had access to a lot of data that I cannot explicitly share through here. For the most part, developers that kept on focusing on hardcore players during that period didn't do "worse", however, developers focusing on the casual market did much worse quickly after. It was a bubble, and like all bubbles, it blew. The problem is that a lot of people learned the wrong lessons from this. I can distinctly remember in 2011 that every game being developed in this area had to have a very strong tutorial. So much so in fact that it inhibited actual gameplay on several levels. It took a while for developers to re-discover actual game development (and I would theorize that this is one of the arguments that led to the upheaval of indies in the early 2010s).

My point here is that trying to artificially enlarge your target audience to make more people happy (make more sales) is a business model that is inherently flawed. The best indie games I've played in the last decade were extremely abrasive. You knew, coming in, if it was something you'd like or hate. As a result, fewer people would buy them than, say, Assassin's Creed IX, but the resulting community was extremely supportive because they felt a game had been made for them specifically, not for them, their mother, and everybody's dog.

Case in point:

*FTL. That game is not for everyone. It is not forgiving. Completing it is so rewarding!

*Legend of Grimrock: Sure, there's an easy mode, but even so, if you're not a fan of the genre, you probably won't even beat fifth level, so why bother... Was amazing!

*Gnomoria: Arguably, it is a simplified version of Dwarf Fortress, but it can still be goddamn hard to understand, much less use. I had a blast!

I will always cater to pro gamers first and foremost so that newcomers aspire to become pro gamers. I'll be sure to help newcomers, but I won't alter the game design to accomodate them, that would be silly.

Real time strategies do not require that level of focus on individual unit (since you are limited by time).

Both players are, and whatever you are not doing, the opponent can take advantage of. In others words, you should be having this level of focus as much as possible. One good example from SC2 is the usage of protoss shields (or zerg regenerative life). Once shield becomes close to depleted, you need to kite a single unit back so that it doesn't get killed and starts to regenerate, all the while keeping within firing range of its target. At the same time however, you need to advance or move back your entire group of units, so you find yourself selecting all units, making a move, then selecting one unit and micro-manage it within the entire batallion.

Pro players excel at this and it makes much of a difference. Arguably, such micro-management will ultimately fall down to execution, and in real-time, this means APMs (or how efficient you are with your mouse and keyboard). This gives Koreans an edge as they are very well trained for that kind of pressure.

Turn-based Strategy takes this a step back where the friction does not come from the input device (keyboard and mouse) or the actual player's physical prowess (hands and eye coordination). Rather, it puts everything back to brain level. How much information you can chew, whether you can come to the right conclusions, your thought process to assess a situation, etc. The same amount of information flow is expected, but the delayed nature allows you to make cold-minded decisions (although, quite often, even during tbs games players are prone to emotional responses that have no strategic foundation).

While in turn based you are supposed to process all information available for infinite amount of time & focus. Therefore, the number of units is much more overwhelming in turn based games.

It would be possible to spent a near-infinite amount of time playing a TBS, but VGA Planets (Planets NU) has demonstrated quite efficiently that despite its complexity (and it IS a complex game), late-game turns can take on average 30 minutes or less for pro players simply because experienced players know what to focus on. Not everything can be micro-managed to great efficiency, so it's best to stick with what CAN be controlled.

My concept is much simpler in design in order to avoid things that can't be micro-managed efficiently in that regard hence this current topic where I'm questioning a staple of the genre: unit customization.