"Realistic" RTS idea, feedback appreciated

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30 comments, last by DvDmanDT 15 years, 1 month ago
Quote:Original post by Drathis
I can't believe no one has mentioned Dwarf fortress. It has even more things to micromanage than what has been described here :)
That would probably have something to do with why the majority of the player base belongs to this forum ;)

From your description, it sounds like your idea is more concerned with tactics than strategy. As such, I am not sure about the validity of comparisons with the RTS genre. Tactical gameplay with deep interaction seems to be a relatively undervalued genre, so you would seem to have a lot more latitude for experimentation.

Tristam MacDonald. Ex-BigTech Software Engineer. Future farmer. [https://trist.am]

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Quote:Original post by Booze Zombie
Hey, those wacky Cuban revolutionaries did it for real... anyway, a lot of actions are automated (in my plan). You fill the base up with stuff and the soldiers their manage it on their own.


If you think cuban revolutionaries did it the way you described, you need to read up on cuban revolutionaries:


Search for "Cuban" to see that the Cuban Revolution was a Guerrilla campaign.



Also, if a lot of those actions are automated, why have them at all? You could argue that most RTS games automated the process of harvesting resources, constructing buildings and assembling units. That is why we "count to 60 and our barrack is done" - it is all automated like in your game.
Quote:Original post by Girsanov
Quote:Original post by Booze Zombie
Hey, those wacky Cuban revolutionaries did it for real... anyway, a lot of actions are automated (in my plan). You fill the base up with stuff and the soldiers their manage it on their own.


If you think cuban revolutionaries did it the way you described, you need to read up on cuban revolutionaries:


Search for "Cuban" to see that the Cuban Revolution was a Guerrilla campaign.



Also, if a lot of those actions are automated, why have them at all? You could argue that most RTS games automated the process of harvesting resources, constructing buildings and assembling units. That is why we "count to 60 and our barrack is done" - it is all automated like in your game.


Hey, I didn't put "realistic" in quotation marks just because it looked cool, y'know?
It's realistic for a game, perhaps that would be a better way of putting it?

Besides, once they took over some major area, they got an army going, didn't they? That's how I planned the beginning of the game. Guerrilla warfare until you secure a city and can mobilise some more troops.

Quote:Original post by swiftcoder
350 is a lot of units for an in-depth simulation. A lot of modern RTS have fairly tight unit caps, and with that amount, you will be pushing your minimum specs pretty high.



Okay, so basically, I thought about it... instead of controlling every section of your army, you can control battalions of up to 200 soldiers, but your army would be bigger than that, but you could only control 200 soldiers yourself (in the classic point and click manner).

You can then go to a map screen select another army group and your camera warps over to that group or you can issue orders from the map screen like "raid here" (kill the enemy and steal their stuff) with a drop-down menu having options like "take trucks with you" "take jeeps with you" and other things, so your soldiers know what you want them doing without you having to take your mind off the squad you want to directly control. Other options such as "attack move" and "capture this area" would exist and they're pretty self-explanatory.

But your army can do things on it's own. Like you'd get an alert that a section of your army is chasing down a hostile force attempting to hide in the mountains (which would come up in a pop-up box on the left). You could tell them to stop, order them to build a barricade on a choke point on the mountain, sneak up behind the enemy, march in or disengage.
Quote:Original post by Booze Zombie
Quote:Original post by swiftcoder
350 is a lot of units for an in-depth simulation. A lot of modern RTS have fairly tight unit caps, and with that amount, you will be pushing your minimum specs pretty high.
Okay, so basically, I thought about it... instead of controlling every section of your army, you can control battalions of up to 200 soldiers, but your army would be bigger than that, but you could only control 200 soldiers yourself (in the classic point and click manner).

You can then go to a map screen select another army group and your camera warps over to that group or you can issue orders from the map screen like "raid here" (kill the enemy and steal their stuff) with a drop-down menu having options like "take trucks with you" "take jeeps with you" and other things, so your soldiers know what you want them doing without you having to take your mind off the squad you want to directly control. Other options such as "attack move" and "capture this area" would exist and they're pretty self-explanatory.

But your army can do things on it's own. Like you'd get an alert that a section of your army is chasing down a hostile force attempting to hide in the mountains (which would come up in a pop-up box on the left). You could tell them to stop, order them to build a barricade on a choke point on the mountain, sneak up behind the enemy, march in or disengage.
The UI issues in managing large armies can be surmounted in various ways, but you have in fact just increased the size of the army, and I was suggesting that you could be limited by sheer horsepower, rather than UI. While your total number of units could be similar to Supreme commander, you seem to want to make each unit a lot more intelligent, and the AI to implement that may cost you a serious amount of CPU time.

Tristam MacDonald. Ex-BigTech Software Engineer. Future farmer. [https://trist.am]

Quote:Original post by swiftcoder
The UI issues in managing large armies can be surmounted in various ways, but you have in fact just increased the size of the army, and I was suggesting that you could be limited by sheer horsepower, rather than UI. While your total number of units could be similar to Supreme commander, you seem to want to make each unit a lot more intelligent, and the AI to implement that may cost you a serious amount of CPU time.


Well, it could just be like an advanced game of Risk... that wouldn't take up too much CPU, would it?

Once you add all of the units together, they could become one unit anyway, would that work?
Quote:Original post by Booze Zombie
Well, it could just be like an advanced game of Risk... that wouldn't take up too much CPU, would it?

Once you add all of the units together, they could become one unit anyway, would that work?



I think we are discovering the reasons why RTS games made all those simplification you were against in your first post.
All of the logistics and micromanagement make it sound more like a tactical game than a strategy game.
Quote:Original post by Girsanov
Quote:Original post by Booze Zombie
Well, it could just be like an advanced game of Risk... that wouldn't take up too much CPU, would it?

Once you add all of the units together, they could become one unit anyway, would that work?



I think we are discovering the reasons why RTS games made all those simplification you were against in your first post.



I think I'll not even try starting to make this game until technologies advance. About 2-3 years should do it.
Quote:Original post by Josh Heitzman
Quote:Original post by swiftcoder
Quote:Original post by Booze Zombie
Quote:Original post by swiftcoder
350 is a lot of units for an in-depth simulation. A lot of modern RTS have fairly tight unit caps, and with that amount, you will be pushing your minimum specs pretty high.
What's the normal cap on units for modern RTS games?
Warcraft 3 reduced the StarCraft supply limit of 200 back down to 70, and the Frozen Throne expansion pushed it back up to 90. However, since your basic fighting unit consumes 2 supply, it is rare for a player to field more then 50 units.

Halo Wars just launched with a unit cap of 40, though this may in part be due to limited resources on the 360.

These numbers may not be terribly representative however, as I haven't been keeping up with the RTS genre lately.


The default unit cap in Supreme Commander is 500.

The minimum unit cap. Heh.

IIRC the maximum is 1000, and modders have patched it beyond that. ;-D
The resource collection acts as you suggest in several games, including Warcraft, Starcraft, AoE, Dark Reign ... in fact pretty much every RTS I have played, heh. Most of the other things would just be irritating, I think.

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