One small suggestion: Allow the player to name the units. It can contribute to the feeling of attachment. It's a different story if "Jim" dies rather than "that unit that I made an hour ago" dies.

Unless you purposefully pick out identifiable traits and try to tie them into the real world as a poorly disguised inside joke, I don't see anything wrong with making black orcs tougher yet possibly not as smart as goblins or whatever. In lord of the rings the black skinned/painted orcs with the white hand mark on them were stronger. bred that way out of the earth as a twisted form of elf.

There is no way to avoid having characteristics that set races apart and personalize them in a fantasy world. Players will want to look at a race, read a short description and have a feel for what its all about. So having intelligent devious yet weak goblins or gnomes breed with a big nasty troll to create a half breed that's not quite as large as a troll, but is more cunning and agile could make it a desired pairing.

If you go into detail as much as the "sims" game goes to personalize every character in the game, and then breed them together it would be way too much micromanagement for a rts.

What you could do is develop a combination, take the trolls and goblins base hereditary stock, and then experiment with percentages of lineage from each type to end up with a desired set of characteristics or stats in combat. Then once discovered you could apply those base races as resources that you must combine in the correct parts or fractions thereof. And as long as you have the right mix of the base breed you can create a stock or barracks of the hybrid. After that they could just breed with eachother.

I think this type of game could be fun, as it may end up like spore but instead of one race you have various genetic branches you can explore.

I think what others may have posted worries about is a deep seated ethnic slant to the game corresponding with real world peoples and cultures.

I don't think its an issue as its a game, and you would have to go out of your way to pattern in such slights.

If you are familiar with the wheel of time series, the trollocs in those books are humanoids with various beastial mixes to them. Horns, feathers, claws, hooves and all in a humanish looking form. That may give some inspiration.

So, I have been thinking of working on an rts lately, and thought up something i thought would be a nifty type of rts. The overal concept is the same, amass army, destroy opponents. But the way you amass armies would be radically diffrent.

What i was thinking is that instead of buying units, you breed them. Basically you build homes for units, based on who lives at that home, and if they are focusing on breeding rather than working, attributes what type of child you'd get. So basically, if you put two strong units together, you are likely to get an equally stronger unit, or chances are you get a unit slightly stronger/weaker. Basically this gives generally a more personal attachment to your units.

I was also considering giving units an equipable inventory, further personalizing each unit. For example, i could stock pile a small pool of armor at a blacksmith, to be used before sending my units off to battle. However this level of detail might be overkill?

I'd suspect these types of games would last much longer than regular rts games, sure a player could try to amass numerous weak units, but supporting the food for that population without workers to compensate could end with most of the army dieing pretty quickly.

I think this game could be fun, particularly if i use fantasy creatures, rather than humans, but i'm really not sure, opinions on the idea, has it been done already?

Sounds like we're making the same game. I have the exact same system in mind.

Instead of just one character, the player is in control of a castle full of characters, all of which level up, can be equiped, and follow somewhat limited career paths. These characters face permadeath, which creates a solid Risk/Reward curve. Having equiped gear buried with characters helps the economy

A genetic component helps offset the loss of permadeath by ensuring stronger offspring each generation. There is no endgame, your troops will die, the fun is in the metagame.

Seperate gene pools for the general troops and ruling elite, as well as for pets such as dragons and milipede mounts.

Then give random satuses to troops for fun such as Hero, Legend, Champion, Chosen One.

There is potential for too much micromanagement, but there is also potential for lots of player specialization.

Personally, I think this model would scale well into a full fledged MMO.

This may be a relevant game: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_Creatures

To lighten the micro management load create natural hierarchies. Add charisma and intelligence to your units tab off variables, intelligence enabling a unit to move from soldier to a commander and charisma to inspire troops to follow. You can either add a rank structure which the player issues or make it experience based or ideally both.

For example you send a rabble of units to take down a monster, a good chunk of the group dies however a few survive. These warriors earn rank for winning the kill and now when ever you issue an order to these new higher rank units they will grab a few soldiers and bring them along and issue specific skill orders (caster skills) to those units (so you don't have to micro them). The higher the rank the more units, teams or groups of units they will use to achieve the action requested of them. Now your surviving commanders are sent to kill a monster and each bring teams along with them. That same monster is killed easier, not because of more troops, but because of a truly better military.

This system could be carried across to none military as well. Think of a wood cutter becoming a lumber camp. A smith becoming a forge. Etc. This doesn't happen because you simple clicked it into existence. This happened because your populace has a wood cutter that is intelligent and charismatic enough to lead other wood cutters. This system could explore taught skills as well, but I digress.

I was thinking about it and, I'd REALLY like to play a single-player strategy campaign where I breed units in between RTS battles. But I'm not sure how the breeding could fit into a multiplayer version (it's like the problem with balancing pokemon duels when players haven't completed the single player game, including maxing the level on their dueling team). As for putting the breeding right into the RTS battle, I can't see how breeding, which is a though-requiring activity, would fit into a session where one is playing as fast as possible.

The in between and level issue could work. You just would have to have a rating system that evaluates how strong a team is, or at the very least display what levels people are so you don't get overwhelmed unwittingly or just demolish the competition.

As for breeding in the game, it would depend on how your UI works and a knowledge of the breeding system/what breeds you have available.

I was thinking about it and, I'd REALLY like to play a single-player strategy campaign where I breed units in between RTS battles. But I'm not sure how the breeding could fit into a multiplayer version (it's like the problem with balancing pokemon duels when players haven't completed the single player game, including maxing the level on their dueling team). As for putting the breeding right into the RTS battle, I can't see how breeding, which is a though-requiring activity, would fit into a session where one is playing as fast as possible.

You could have a set number of breeding combos to toggle on throughout a multiplayer game. Sort of like magic the gathering and the sideboard cards, when you come up against something the units you have cant beat, you can start generating some mixed race from your sideboard.

That way you would not have to come up with a combo on the fly.

Would rts really be better for this than a turn based game?

A game I have been playing lately is xcom, and I could see how coming up with your own mixed up units to play in a squad like turn based game could be fun.

Or it could be played out like savage newearth, its a sort of rts but also a first person shooter.

I think a game like savage is always going to be better than mouser games like starcraft, warcraft, or command and conquer. Because units left alone or even those in combat that you aren't micromanaging are going to make a lot of mistakes.

Cool thing about savage is that each team has a player controlling it like its a rts, but every combatant for each side is directly controlled by separate players.

http://www.newerth.com/