The 'rush': detrimental to RTS strategies?
Besides endurance one could also consider fuel, of course, RTS''s often have such ridiculously small battlefields.
One of the best RTS/wargames I''ve played was the Close Combat series...in particular, "Arnhem: A Bridge too Far". Units had endurance, ammunition considerations, supporesion, morale and a host of other factors absent in many RTS games. It also had a unique system for getting replacements. Instead of having bases and buildings which you could continuously use to pump out new additional units, instead you had to achieve certain objectives or fallback and retreat. Once this was done, you could chose how long until the next engagement took place...the quicker you decided the fewer reinforcements each side would get...and the side that chose the quickest time to reengage was the winner of the decision.
And since the campaign was fought in 3 major areas with 5 distinct units (the 101st AA at Eindhoven, the 82nd AA at Nijmegen and the royal 1st Airborne and 1st Polish Free Brigade at Arnhem with the British XXX army corps rolling up each city one by one). This meant that the XXX corps couldn''t make it to Nijmegen unless the 101st won its objective, and to Arnhem unless the 82nd won its objective. In real life, the battle became a huge cluster F#$% for a variety of reasons (a single lane road connecting all 3 cities, the 1st royal airborne''s radioes weren''t working, the Germans happened to pull back the 15th Army from Antwerp even though the Canadian 1st Army could have pinned them down, giving them an additional 60,000 troops, and British intelligence failed to heed the warning photographs of a Panzer corps also in the area).
What makes the game so interesting to me is not just the level of detail and human aspect in the tactics required, but also the fact that the game is true to life balanced. In other words, it''s VERY hard for the allies to win. In real life, the 1st roayl airborne was tasked with taking Arnhem....only a battalion managed to make it to the northern section of the bridge. This lone battalion fought off an entire German Panzer Corps in the city for almost 2 weeks with little ammunition and supply support (the airborne drops usually dropped them into the hands of the Germans). Out of 20,000 British airborne troops who went into Arnhem, a little less than 2,000 made it back. I find this refreshing in light of game designers trying to make everything "fair" and "balanced". The game is neither fair nor balanced (the Germans have every advantage including crack experienced troops who had been resting, and German weapons were superior in most regards to Allied weapons...not to mention Tank superiority)
Rushing strategies simply are not an option in this kind of game for the allied side. It''s possible for the Germans since they outnumber the allies, but city warfare has a way of negating that. Infantry in cities are like cockroaches (and had the Iraqis had the gumption to fight, it could have been very messy for American troops...in Chechnya a few years back, Russian troops tried to take over a city with Chechnyan resistance fighters...they lost over 100 vehicles trying to capture the city against simple infantry).
They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. - Benjamin Franklin
And since the campaign was fought in 3 major areas with 5 distinct units (the 101st AA at Eindhoven, the 82nd AA at Nijmegen and the royal 1st Airborne and 1st Polish Free Brigade at Arnhem with the British XXX army corps rolling up each city one by one). This meant that the XXX corps couldn''t make it to Nijmegen unless the 101st won its objective, and to Arnhem unless the 82nd won its objective. In real life, the battle became a huge cluster F#$% for a variety of reasons (a single lane road connecting all 3 cities, the 1st royal airborne''s radioes weren''t working, the Germans happened to pull back the 15th Army from Antwerp even though the Canadian 1st Army could have pinned them down, giving them an additional 60,000 troops, and British intelligence failed to heed the warning photographs of a Panzer corps also in the area).
What makes the game so interesting to me is not just the level of detail and human aspect in the tactics required, but also the fact that the game is true to life balanced. In other words, it''s VERY hard for the allies to win. In real life, the 1st roayl airborne was tasked with taking Arnhem....only a battalion managed to make it to the northern section of the bridge. This lone battalion fought off an entire German Panzer Corps in the city for almost 2 weeks with little ammunition and supply support (the airborne drops usually dropped them into the hands of the Germans). Out of 20,000 British airborne troops who went into Arnhem, a little less than 2,000 made it back. I find this refreshing in light of game designers trying to make everything "fair" and "balanced". The game is neither fair nor balanced (the Germans have every advantage including crack experienced troops who had been resting, and German weapons were superior in most regards to Allied weapons...not to mention Tank superiority)
Rushing strategies simply are not an option in this kind of game for the allied side. It''s possible for the Germans since they outnumber the allies, but city warfare has a way of negating that. Infantry in cities are like cockroaches (and had the Iraqis had the gumption to fight, it could have been very messy for American troops...in Chechnya a few years back, Russian troops tried to take over a city with Chechnyan resistance fighters...they lost over 100 vehicles trying to capture the city against simple infantry).
They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. - Benjamin Franklin
Keeping these replies short, as I feel the useful debate has run it''s course.
Critical_waste: "Warfare (whatever its shape) is fundamentally about limiting your oppenents options. If you are playing a game about war what are you doing?"
Games are fun - warfare is Not Fun. We''re trying to strike a balance, and I believe my idea of the ideal balance is some distance from yours.
"A good player makes his first move with dileberation. A good player shapes the game affecting your options with each move."
Nearly all good players choose the same move to begin with. And with few exceptions, each chess move is pretty small. If anything, RTS games are more like checkers where the correct move allows you to capture a lot of pieces in one go. Sorry checkers fans, but I prefer chess.
"Maybe you shouldn''t try "fixing" RTS''s. Prehaps try
playing another type of game? Question: Have you
played Myth?"
Hey, I''m not interested in ''fixing'' games. If you guys like this sort of thing, then great. I don''t want to stop anyone playing the way they want to play. But what I see is an opportunity to create a variation on the theme that suits players like me better.
And yes... Myth is probably my favourite RTS. But even that is rock-paper-scissors throughout. (Dwarves > Thralls. Archers > Wights. Berserkers > Soulless. etc.) The game suits me because, as put forward in my first post, a rush in the early stages is largely pointless because you begin at full strength rather than zero strength.
Dauntless: "When games do not offer enough unknowns and variable starting conditions, players will quickly figure out the possible permutations and develop strategies accordingly."
Exactly. I''m not claiming that developing these strategies doesn''t involve thought or skill, but that the emphasis becomes more on the metagame of considering your ''strats'' rather than a perpetually evolving battlefield state which only the best generals can react to.
Argus: "The fact that almost every RTS game provides the defender with a marked advantage from the start (not even including the distance factor) reinforces the likelihood of such anti-rush strategies existing."
But this just supports the point I made right from the beginning, so I''m not sure what all the opposition is about
"If you have no examples, then where are you getting the basis for your argument?"
Theory. There''s no point me arguing RTS practice with you, just as there''s no point me trying to convince a professional weight-lifter that my grocery shopping is heavy. Just because the best players don''t suffer because of feature X, doesn''t necessarily mean feature X isn''t a problem. (And it doesn''t necessarily mean it -is- a problem either; I just put forward a hypothesis.)
"There are always strong strategies. The fun is in figuring them out - and figuring out how to beat them."
I think the fact that much of this ''figuring out'' is done outside of gameplay time is what puts me off. It''s a bit like twinking on MMORPGs - if you know the right people (or visit the right forums), you have a massive advantage over those who don''t, even if they are usually quite intelligent in that way.
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Critical_waste: "Warfare (whatever its shape) is fundamentally about limiting your oppenents options. If you are playing a game about war what are you doing?"
Games are fun - warfare is Not Fun. We''re trying to strike a balance, and I believe my idea of the ideal balance is some distance from yours.
"A good player makes his first move with dileberation. A good player shapes the game affecting your options with each move."
Nearly all good players choose the same move to begin with. And with few exceptions, each chess move is pretty small. If anything, RTS games are more like checkers where the correct move allows you to capture a lot of pieces in one go. Sorry checkers fans, but I prefer chess.
"Maybe you shouldn''t try "fixing" RTS''s. Prehaps try
playing another type of game? Question: Have you
played Myth?"
Hey, I''m not interested in ''fixing'' games. If you guys like this sort of thing, then great. I don''t want to stop anyone playing the way they want to play. But what I see is an opportunity to create a variation on the theme that suits players like me better.
And yes... Myth is probably my favourite RTS. But even that is rock-paper-scissors throughout. (Dwarves > Thralls. Archers > Wights. Berserkers > Soulless. etc.) The game suits me because, as put forward in my first post, a rush in the early stages is largely pointless because you begin at full strength rather than zero strength.
Dauntless: "When games do not offer enough unknowns and variable starting conditions, players will quickly figure out the possible permutations and develop strategies accordingly."
Exactly. I''m not claiming that developing these strategies doesn''t involve thought or skill, but that the emphasis becomes more on the metagame of considering your ''strats'' rather than a perpetually evolving battlefield state which only the best generals can react to.
Argus: "The fact that almost every RTS game provides the defender with a marked advantage from the start (not even including the distance factor) reinforces the likelihood of such anti-rush strategies existing."
But this just supports the point I made right from the beginning, so I''m not sure what all the opposition is about
"If you have no examples, then where are you getting the basis for your argument?"
Theory. There''s no point me arguing RTS practice with you, just as there''s no point me trying to convince a professional weight-lifter that my grocery shopping is heavy. Just because the best players don''t suffer because of feature X, doesn''t necessarily mean feature X isn''t a problem. (And it doesn''t necessarily mean it -is- a problem either; I just put forward a hypothesis.)
"There are always strong strategies. The fun is in figuring them out - and figuring out how to beat them."
I think the fact that much of this ''figuring out'' is done outside of gameplay time is what puts me off. It''s a bit like twinking on MMORPGs - if you know the right people (or visit the right forums), you have a massive advantage over those who don''t, even if they are usually quite intelligent in that way.
[ MSVC Fixes | STL Docs | SDL | Game AI | Sockets | C++ Faq Lite | Boost
Asking Questions | Organising code files | My stuff | Tiny XML | STLPort]
Dauntless - I understand where you''re coming from, and imo it would be great if you could create the game you want to play. The reason very few "leadership simulators" have been created (I think Close Combat and maybe Kohan are nearest in the RTS domain) is because writing the AI is really tough, and it''s a central feature in such games. I can tell you right now that the kind of planning algorithm you are trying to construct will be very hard to implement.
Kylotan - The problem is that as far as I can tell, there is no variation on wargames that would satisfy your ilk.
Kylotan - The problem is that as far as I can tell, there is no variation on wargames that would satisfy your ilk.
quote:I''m not claiming that developing these strategies doesn''t involve thought or skill, but that the emphasis becomes more on the metagame of considering your ''strats'' rather than a perpetually evolving battlefield state which only the best generals can react to ... I think the fact that much of this ''figuring out'' is done outside of gameplay time is what puts me off.This I can understand - you''d rather a game which was extremely adaptation heavy. Most RTS games rely on a large amount of in-game adaptation, but evidently you don''t consider it to be enough. Now to the problem - every game which has any constant features (which is to say all games as we know them) allow for strategic analysis outside of actual gameplay. You yourself realise that in Myth you are able to store useful information about units in game - in your case you remember what counters what etc. There are in fact no games which could satisfy your desire for strategising only in game. Kohan is the most adaptation heavy game I know of (random captains, random map, random rewards from conquest, random start position, random faction) and yet a huge amount of strategic debate goes on outside the game. So given that this game does not satisfy your criteria, what game could?
quote:Argus: "The fact that almost every RTS game provides the defender with a marked advantage from the start (not even including the distance factor) reinforces the likelihood of such anti-rush strategies existing."But if RTS games are ok in their present state, then what is this thread about? What you (and others) have seemed to be implying is that rushing is a problem in standard RTS games. If you are now going to say that it is not a problem, then that''s fine with me.
Kylotan : But this just supports the point I made right from the beginning, so I''m not sure what all the opposition is about
quote:It''s a bit like twinking on MMORPGs - if you know the right people (or visit the right forums), you have a massive advantage over those who don''t, even if they are usually quite intelligent in that way.The simple truth is that a thousand people learn a game faster than one person. People learn strategies by watching others execute them, or reading about them, or trying them out themselves. The best strategies naturally propagate faster. This happens in any game, although some are more conducive to this than others (chess states are chaotic in nature, while wargame states are much less so). The sad fact is that those who are not on the forefront of this "strategic wave" are consigned to either copying the strats of those who are, or being beaten by those strats. How do you propose to break this trend, taking into account that strategic analysis outside of game can happen for any game which has any constant attributes?
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