quote: Original post by Argus
The sad thing is that everytime I play an RTS I see the same people complaining "there''s no strategy, it''s just click click click". But in a game design forum ? Maybe we should be trying to design a better interface instead ?

Yes. Let''s stop fighting about whether or not RTS games truly have strategy, and try to summarize how we can improve them. The more specific the better.

-treknerd

quote: Original post by Argus
Sandman - You talk about what you believe strategy is in RTS games, yet you can barely play them. Is it surprising that what you claim to be the truth is dubious at best?

Huh? Granted, I am a casual player, I don''t take part in any tournaments or whatnot, and there are probably thousands of players out there who could easily beat me. That doesn''t mean I am a clueless n00b like you seem to be suggesting. But like i said, the purpose of this thread is not to brag about relative skill at starcraft, it is to discuss strategy.

quote:
It may seem this way to you, but how one divides their forces, where they strike and in what manner all play big parts in RTS games. I can accept that the interface makes things difficult to pull off - it''s annoying when you don''t have the finger speed to pull off the tactics you want I agree. But user interface is the only major problem with RTS games - quite a lot of them have fairly deep strategy. And I''ll tell you why.

*groan*

There are strategies, I agree. I even said so in my previous two posts. But they are abstract strategies which bear no resemblance to real world military strategies. When I look for starcraft strategies online, all I see is build orders and the odd tactical manouevre like the terran drop or the reaver drop or whatever. What about terrain? Once air units are discovered, it is virtually irrelevant, unless you are terran, because in my (apparently inadequate) experience they are more reliant on ground units than the other two. Even then the terrain interaction is simple, a case of finding choke points and defending them, or parking seige tanks on cliffs so they don''t get wasted by melee units.

I think what it boils down to is not that SC is a shit game (it isn''t, I still enjoy playing it, even though I am apparently completely rubbish at it and am a clueless n00b) but it isn''t what I consider a real strategy game. I would like to do away with the peon pumping and focus entirely on the combat strategy, ala Ground Control.

I think something everyone can agree on is that RTS games like StarCraft allow the player to use tactics--the intricatcies of carrying out an attack. What myself and many others would like to see is a way to organize those tactics into a strategy--an overall plan to overcome the enemy. Without tactics, there can be no strategy. Without strategy, tactics are useless. (thus we get the amorphous, unorganized mob of units in most RTS games.) Let''s put our biases aside for a moment and concentrate on how we could create a true ''strategy'' warfare system.

-treknerd

OK, I apologise to all concerned for my slightly trollish attitude above. I was in a bit of a bad mood, and when Argus and the AP seemed to miss my rather badly explained point, I got frustrated.

(for the record, I am not a great starcraft player and probably never will be. However I did grow up with tabletop wargames, which, to me, have always felt more strategic/tactical than any RTS I have ever played)

The point I was trying to make, was that a 'stupid' tactic like marching 20 carriers into an enemy base, seems to be disproportionately more efficient than any vaguely intelligent tactics. By efficient, I mean efficiency in terms of damage caused, damage taken, and most importantly for the micromanagement impaired, player time . In a game where you could be attacked from several different directions at once, in addition to maintaining a steady resource stream, player time is a valuable commodity.

I think this player time resource is extremely important. This is perhaps one of the reasons that die hard strategists prefer turn based games to real time - player time is effectively an unlimited resource. So changing the availability of this 'player time' resource will have a profound effect on the overall strategic feel of the game or the 'clickfestiness' of it. (I think I just invented a new word)

Some ideas on how to give the player more 'player time':

1. Slower game pacing (may not be desirable)
2. AI Lieutenants.
3. Better command structure and unit grouping mechanisms.
4. Better AI and interface (we always want better AI )
5. Remove some micromanagement (automate/remove resource management for example)



Edited by - Sandman on January 16, 2002 5:47:57 AM

Amen brother.

Precursory note: I''m only a very casual strategy gamer, but I hope my comments won''t be brushed off entirely.

quote: Original post by treknerd
I think something everyone can agree on is that RTS games like StarCraft allow the player to use tactics--the intricatcies of carrying out an attack.

No, this the opposite of what we all should be agreeing on: RTS games do NOT allow you to use tactics, making an attack with any kind of delicacy or wit.

Just think for a minute about the most-voiced opposition to RTS games:
"It''s just a point-n-click speedfest."
"Unit swarming is the only working strategy"(sic)
"The Amorphous Mass beats you every time"
Even some of the rebuttals here were almost funny to read. Someone mentioned an actual tactic (the Carrier Recall tactic), and the retort was: "you''ll never get that far because the opponent will attack you with lots of (insert unit X) before you build those carriers". Or translated: "it won''t work, because it takes less time to build a destructive swarm".


So, analysing this, what IS the major problem with RTS games? It is control. The AI of your own units is so incredibly deplorable, that the only thing you can COUNT on is that they will be shooting at enemy units when they get in range. You can''t count on them moving defensively, retreat en-masse to let the troops survive, perform surgical strikes on the weakest points of the defense, UNLESS you hold their hand through the whole process. The problem is, at any given point, you''re only holding one unit''s hand (a "unit" possibly meaning a grouped set of troops). That means: any tactic involving more than one unit, performing something more difficult than a straightforward "attack what you can see" move, will leave you at a control disadvantage severe enough to make it useless to even try.

Unless that control disadvantage is equalled out, you will never find a better tactic than unit swarming unless the game is badly balanced - why?
Well, just think about it. What is unit swarming? Amassing a well-balanced but hardly controlled strike force with a certain amount of power. You can select all of them at once, forcing them to act as a single "unit" with massive firepower. You have ultimate control, because you only need to hold the hand of that single unit - chances are that defense cannot be organised in the same way to any kind of effect. By the time you see the swarm coming, it''s too late to organise a counter-unit because of the pacing of the game. The only way to make sure the game is still fun, is by making sure the "swarms" of opposing sides can be made to equal strength. It''s just a question of "who dares to try out their swarm against the opponents defense first".


But, that still leaves the question: how do you remove the control disadvantage for more intricate tactics? Individual Unit AI could be one way, but again you''d have to plan it during the game, and you do not have time (usually) to do this before your opponent will swarm you and annihilate you because you could have spent the time planning your tactic (telling the AI what to do) holding hands, and getting YOUR swarm first.
You''d almost have to be able to give units very simple orders designed beforehand. So that you could amass the carriers, scouts and arbiters, and all you''d have to do is select the "Carrier Recall Attack" for the unit you''ve just created, and select the target, and it would INTELLIGENTLY run that attack for you.




People might not remember what you said, or what you did, but they will always remember how you made them feel.

Which is better, chess or Quake?

An RTS is a different game from a non-real-time game. There''s a fundamental difference brought on by the choice of timing. Each has strengths and weaknesses in simulating real war. Of course wars are fought in real time, not by turns. On the other hand, the speed of real time must mean that the controls in the game must be simple and thus not offer the maximum tactical control, which is where turn-based excels.

Decide what you want, then choose what you must choose.

---------------------------------------------------
-SpittingTrashcan

You can''t have "civilization" without "civil".

RTS stands for ''Real Time Strategy''. Not ''Real Time Conventional Military Simulation'', nor ''Real Time High Level Wargame''.

RTS games are strategy games. Choosing where to spend your time is part of that strategy. Most RTS games have a speed setting for players who like to have more time to think. But do turn-based fans use it? Rarely. Instead, most just make the baseless claim that the game is all to do with how fast one is with the mouse, that there is little strategy in the game apart from producing a big swarm of troops and attacking.

Such claims are the equivalent of me playing Panzer General for 20 minutes and then putting it away saying that whoever has more tanks wins.

MadKeith wrote :

quote: No, this the opposite of what we all should be agreeing on: RTS games do NOT allow you to use tactics, making an attack with any kind of delicacy or wit.

Untrue. One does need to be reasonably efficient with the mouse and with one''s time, but there are a lot of people who could prove this statement false. Let''s suppose that strategy in RTS games is easy and all that one needs is decent mouse speed. Now do you really think that people would still be playing it if strategy was that simple. Are _all_ of those people strategic morons who just like to bash "amorphous masses" against one another all day long? That''s a bold claim indeed.

I''d rather stay out of specifics, but it has been brought up so often that I should put it to rest. The only reason that any mention of 20+ carrier tactics in SC is treated with such ridicule is that it is a very large force of probably the most powerful unit in the game. If you actually amass such a force, then you have already won, since even just 4 carriers is enough mobile firepower to cripple most players. Similarly claims that terrain doesn''t matter once air units are out. Ground units are more efficient than air - no good player will solely build air units.

There are people who execute recall(teleport) tactics, although they are usually used with reavers more often than carriers. Reason being that carriers are fairly fast anyway - so you don''t gain that much from recalling. While on the other hand reavers are really slow, so the gain is greater. A simple strategic analysis which can be done before a game. Surely that is where turn-based fans should excel? Apparently not.

RTS games are typically not swarm vs defence games. They are about scouting, resouce control, information hiding, and tactical engagement determined by a long-term/large-scope strategy. That said, I prefer turn-based games merely because I can eat and have a drink while I play.

i'm not a big fan of RTS games for these reasons... if i am supposedly the commander of a huge army of whatevers, i want CONTROL over what they do. i do not want to have to highlight each one, or even groups of them, and click where to walk, and who to shoot. this option could be left in, just for fine-tuning of tactics, or if you want to change the strategy halfway thoguh a battle or something... but basically, a real commander of a real army would have a plan of action before the enemy was even sighted, and each individual in the army would know where and when he should be doing what. i do not see what would be so hard about programming in a "strategy planner" thing for these games, so you could tell your troops ahead of time what formation to stay in, who when where and how to attack, and some other stuff, and use these defined tactics with a macro key or something.
for example, the player could design a few strategies:
* flanking: a third of the selected troops stay where they are and fight it out with the enemy. the other two thirds split up and run around the enemy, surroungind them.
* bum rush: all selected troops rush at the enemy, firing at will (ok, well they have this one in most of the games already)
* sneak attack: troops lie in wait, hiding. when given the order (by the player, who is watching the enemy army come near with some scouts or a satellite or something) they leap out and let em have it.
* hold area: do not chase after enemies, but kill them if they get too close (and chase them down if they are being bitches and shooting you because they have better range)
then, by selecting a group of units and hitting a key, the player can launch his strategic maneuver.
i might be mouse-challenged, but even a simple flanking thing where you get 10 units to fight, 10 to run around the left side and then fight, and 10 more to run around to the back right side to cut them off is impossible to do in modern RTS games. yet, this is a basic strategy.
perhaps if the land is already reconnoitered (say, for the siege of an enemy base), the strategy planner interface could allow you to mark certain points on the base/terrain for things (i.e. at all times during the battle, make certain that at least 2 snipers and a vehicle of some sort are covering the back door).
all this would require barely any more AI than they have now for the units (a few overall "team" AI rules, and maybe an orders/missions/priorities queue for each unit), and result in a much better game.

EDIT: i know, i didn't use strategy/tactics properly (or even consistently) in my post. i don't care; for once in my life i am not arguing semantics...

--- krez (krezisback@aol.com)

Edited by - krez on January 16, 2002 4:58:13 PM

RTS games need a lot more pre-battle options.

Get rid of peon-pumping. Units should be there BEFORE the battle ever starts.

With this in mind...

Pre-game:
Group units together.
Create group commands.
Create an overall strategy that your troops will follow.
Create 'if-->then' instructions.
Etc.

If you give the player the ability to instruct his units before the battle, then DURING the battle, the player will actually have time to play a general and make wise decisions. The player can study the surroundings, study the enemy, study his moves, send reinforcements to weak spots in his army, etc.

Current RTS gameplay:
Start
Build buildings according to a set procedure
Create units according to a set procedure
Make sure you have enough units, find the enemy, and then...
Mass attack
Win or lose
Next game

Future RTS gameplay:
Create units before play
Give all units specific instructions which they will follow during battle
Group units together and give each group specific group instructions
Start
Survey surroundings
Maneuvre army
Locate enemy
Create battle tactic
Attack
Reinforce weak spots
Take pleasure at seeing the results of your wise decisions...
Or cringe at the horrible outcome of the battle because of your idiotic plans!
Learn from the battle and go on to fight a new one.

PS I prefer real-time, but I guess it all depends on the actual gameplay if real-time or turn-based should be used.

Edited by - Silvermyst on January 16, 2002 5:13:14 PM