Inspired by a thread from the Lounge, of all places I have actually been considering some very powerful weapons in my design, such as orbital strikes and so forth, and have sort of put them in as a possibility, pending playtesting. Anyway, I was bored so I thought I'd start off a brain storming session. 1. What effect do you think such weapons might have on a game? 2. How do you stop them dominating? 3. What defence is there against them? Obviously 'Mutually assured destruction' doesn't work well in an RTS environment, although it might work for more of a civ style game. Edited by - Sandman on March 7, 2002 11:30:52 AM

2. You could have a long reload \ weapon cool down time.
3. Im thinking in the lines of EMP waves or something, that wil knock out all electrisity in an erea (Hencforth causing the weapon to mailfunction.. they tend to to that with no power)


--If you look to the clouds you cant see traps--

1) they are a good way to prevent long stalemates within a game, although you do have to be careful that the entire game doesn''t degenerate into a race to get the uber weapons.

2)You have to give these sort of weapons some restrictions, ie. long recharge times , limited range etc.

3)It depends upon the type of weapon you have in mind I suppose, but spreading your bases out over a large area is often the best defence against such weapons, that way when they do strike they can only take out a limited amount of buildings/units.

I''d also look into ways of encouraging the player to use these weapons against the opponents defences rather than their main production facilities, so while having these weapons would give you a distinct advantage you couldn''t use them to win the game by themselves.

---- People are strange.

Uhhh... I HATE super destructive weapons. At least those in the Westwood games. StarCraft had a good solution, though. In that game you had to use a special Ghost unit to use as targetter. If the Ghost was killed before the missile was launched (you had a few seconds) the missile would go to waste.

Whatever you do don''t go down the path of Red Alert. The nuclear weapon took ages to build (fair enough) but when it did hit the enemy base it took out a couple of buildings and that was it. These are nuclear weapons for God''s sake! They should level whole parts of the map leaving only barren wasteland, the whole map should suffer after one of these babies has been fired. That could be one of the setbacks, such a large blast area or accuracy so bad you risk doing as much damage to yourself, only the desperate or foolhardy would risk using one.

- DarkIce

?!?! My reply disappeared...?

I''ve had that idea myself, mainly because I would like to see a nuclear blast in a 3D game (shockwave, flash of light, stirring up the dust, disintegrating buildings, etc.)

One possible counter is to put up missile defense systems to shoot down the nuke.

Another is to limit the other player''s ability to target your location, by having to put something at risk to make that possible. (aka StarCraft Ghost, but maybe not so vulnerable)

Yep, long build times and high cost will help too.

I''m sure you''ll realize its effect on play balance as you test it. You might end up tweaking it or doing away with it altogether, depending on how you want the game to feel.

1. What effect do you think such weapons might have on a game?
Severe imbalance, which can be a good thing. It may force other formerly hostile forces to cooperate in the face of this threat; it could spark very alternative methods (someone mentioned taking out the power lines if the weapon required electricity to work) such as eliminating operators/supply lines, etc.

2. How do you stop them dominating?
For one thing, make it virtually impossible for one side to acquire any of these babies without at least one of the other sides being aware. That way the other side can either stockpile offensive countermeasures or make defensive provisions (underground bunkers for intelligence, submerged missile silos, submarines, etc).

Also have repercussions (if your game includes a political element, there could be a backlash from the local constituency on the "inhumaneness" of using such weapons) for using these weapons. Nuclear fallout at the target site could lead to high winds carrying irradiated material towards your location, which would begin to kill/mutate/otherwise disadvantage your forces.

Strategy: If the opponent has weapons of mass destruction, relocate to be as close to him as possible such that employing those weapons becomes suicide.

3. What defence is there against them?
For missiles we have anti-missile missiles (as well as Star Wars); for nukes we give the other side nukes (the only effect this would have is to cause the instigator not to achieve the victory conditions). Generally, though, there is very little tactical defence that can be organized against sufficiently powerful weapons of mass destruction. I would say strategy (alliances, sabotage, etc) are the only real options given the constraints of an RTS environment.

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Thanks to Kylotan for the idea!

Edited by - Oluseyi on March 7, 2002 2:27:15 PM

I''m making an RTS at the moment, and I''ve played many games which have so called UBER-Weapons. They seem to follow the same path though, which I have no doubt some people will agree on.

First off.. they start out as being amazingly strong, will destroy everything and anything that stands in its path..nice

Then.. they add a REALLY high cost, so n00bs can''t just buy a truck load and use them like fireworks.

THEN.. they make them weak, so you can''t use it to destroy a huge incoming destruction crew.

AND THEN... they make them really slow, so you can''t run in, use it, run back out again.

FINALLY!?!!... they decide its too strong anyway, so they decrease its power.

If you need proof.. RA: Tesla Tanks, Shock Troopers, Nukes, Nuke Trucks.

Personally, i hate WoMD, i devised a similar method to the dice rolling thing in RPGs, weapons can''t be good at everything. And i added a cost to each section. Speed, Defence, Attack, etcetc.
So all the units seem to even out. This is only present in an Excel spread sheet, i''ve yet to test it, no idea what it''ll be like

-= DarkStar =-

quote: Original post by DarkIce
That could be one of the setbacks, such a large blast area or accuracy so bad you risk doing as much damage to yourself, only the desperate or foolhardy would risk using one.

Another setback for nuclear weapons could be that the blast area is left inhabitable for a long time. That''s one of the setbacks with real nuclear weapons. That way noone would use weapons of mass destruction to take over valuable resources or strategic positions.