There''s too much destruction in RTS games. It''s not that the violence bothers me, it''s that every battle rapidly ends with one side or the other wiped out, so the fighting gameplay is overly reduced in favor of the building gameplay. In real world wars, even in the most destructive battles of WWII, the majority of troops involved survived a battle (with the exception of a few encirclement battles - which mostly ended with lots of prisoners too). Comments like "army x pushed army y over the z river" are very frequent. Strategic options like slow retreat, all-out attack, encirclement, etc. cannot work if units blow each other up as soon as they enter each other''s range. This gave me an (IMO) funny idea. What about a game where there is no destruction, but just pushing? (hence the RTS title) 3d land, 2d physical engine, bulky cubic bulldozer like robots/vehicles (think the Can in Total A). The game is mostly a football clone (move ball in enemy target area), although some changes can be made (more than two teams / balls, capture the flag like, Artifact like, etc.). Available units are: - medium robot with chain arm. Can link to a robot next to him. - medium robot with spiked feet (once fixed in the ground it can be very hard to remove). they are used to link with the chain robots and make sure the entire chain stays together. - medium vehicle: big pushing power, slow speed, low inertia. - heavy vehicle: low/medium pushing power, slow speed, high inertia (best used to stop an attack by shear mass, or even better by rolling down from high ground to break chains or all other formations) - light vehicle: low power, low inertia, high speed. Used to carry the ball around fast. - heavy robot: slow, can roll over enemy vehicles or robots - light robot: moderately fast, can turn back on their wheels/feet friendly rolled robots. Can roll over itself. So what do you think?

Could be interesting.
Remember that school-yard game "Red Rover" ( as in 2 lines of kids. you sing "Red Rover, Red Rover send right over, and then that kid has to try and run + break the chain of other kids )

Where would the strategy part come in? in it being foot ball based, having to click really fast to order your sumo to stop the hulk from moving through with the ball? It would be fun to design starting lineups of your units, if formations could be made and fixed and used. I''m thinking using the football coach X/O/Arrows notation to give troop orders before they are needed

Ever seen those mcdonalds toys where you have the car that runs into the wall, flips, and drives away becasue its wheels are taller than itself, that would be a cool design for your flipper robot

DUDE, I LOVE RED ROVER!!! (so what if I''m 19). Anyways maybe there should be an RPG/fighting game with sumo wrestlers. You got alittle sumo guy who goes around training then enters sumo matches. When the actual match begins you fight in Street Fighter style mode. Real Time, Combos, the works, plus no killing!

I''m not sure... Destruction is the part my friends and I enjoy the most out of RTSs. Perhaps its the general lack of violent output otherwise. ^_^

It would be interesting if you added a "legendary" character -- a machine that you start with that is critical to the story and game. And that this character could be altered and upgraded and those alterations maintained.

-Solstice

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