49 minutes ago, Kavik Kang said:

If you really want to do something "next level" as an RTS game you should spend a year or so learning Avalon Hill's Advanced Squad Leader.  This would give you a LOT of ideas about how to improve this genre at a fundamental tactical level.  ASL evolved over a period of 50 years, developed by actual WWII veterans who had actually fought in a war.  ASL is the original "RTS game" and is still light-years ahead of any RTS computer game that has ever been made.  It should be the bible of RTS designers.

 

Is there an official pdf manual online?

1 hour ago, Telcontar said:

Worth adding (and Orymus touches upon it) is "How it can be attacked/disrupted." Orymus definitely discussed this, but didn't enumerate it in the list. Given that we're talking largely about RTS games I think it's worth considering as a primary concern. Economic warfare is underutilized in RTS games, in my opinion. Many of them pay lip service but don't do enough to actually make it a viable or noteworthy strategy. I especially enjoy economic "cold" warfare approaches, for games when you have options to hamper other player's development without actually going to all-out war with them (Orymus mentioned "burning" of other players crystals, for example). 

I like to think that Dune 2 (the grandfather of all RTS) did this brilliantly. Unlike late C&C entries (inspired by this game), the harvesters were actually rather vulnerable and slow. In addition, you could lure a force of nature (the sandworm) towards one to have it 'eaten' without actually engaging much. Trikes and Quads could run from the scene whereas the harvester was as good as dead.

1 hour ago, Telcontar said:

As to Michael Aganier's concerns about balance... yeah. Like Orymus I enjoy the idea of asymmetric RTS games that have much more wildly differing factions than, say, Starcraft (which itself was groundbreaking in that area) - but as you said attempting to balance them against each other would be something of a nightmare. Honestly I don't really think there's a solution to that issue in and of itself, so I opted to try and deal with it in other ways - providing for multiple levels of victory and defeat, multiple win conditions, and even by awarding rating points based on faction matchup (pulling out a win when the other faction is rated  70% favorable against you should be worth more). In effect, I'd cede that there will be unfavorable matchups and just try to deal with that rather than eliminate the fact entirely.

As for balancing, I don't think this is any more a nightmare than balancing units. You're adding variables, but you're also adding tools. It all falls down to your process for analyzing imbalance, and dealing with it. Then, you need to have some heuristics in place about how 'easy' it should be for a particular species to have access to a specific resources, and balance unit acquisition accordingly, considering their actual offensive and defensive capabilities. If a species has a 'harder time' economy-wise (less 'hit-and-run, and more 'established' for example), you need to err on the side of natural defensive bonuses so that its moving army has more value when mobilized to protect a site than it has when actually attacking. This way, you confer it a situational advantage without making them 'OP' in open conflicts or offensive ones.

Think of the Terran Siege Tank in SC for example, it packs a serious anti-ground punch against small unit groups or clustered enemies, but only while it is in siege mode, which prevents it from running amok. It is much trickier to use offensively (except if you're a combined arms expert) but provides a relatively straightforward bonus to forward positions. If you'd need to build a proxy base and needed ground support, you'd probably have a similar unit that's slow to move, require some 'investment' from the player to actually maximize, in such a way that it can't just steam-roll the enemy on an all-out attack.

You get something similar in spellcasters, where they require a lot more micro, but when used well, are more efficient. If their skills are decently matched and tailored to such situations, then you can 'make it work'.

The idea here is to have a holistic approach to unit design, making sure the units a species have (and more importantly don't have) support their economic and tactical doctrine. A particularly interesting game for this (although turn-based) would be VGA Planets (dated back DOS era, but with a reboot still active to date in Planets Nu). Each species has varying needs, some are fuel guzzlers, others lack Duranium by essence, and though they share relatively the same resources (although in wildly different ways sometimes), the fact they were built in such a unique way made for a particularly challenging experience. It is true the game is not entirely balanced (the Cyborgs are a threat in the early games for all other players) the devs have progressively managed to balance the most hideous quirks of the original design, while still embracing some of the imbalance (which somehow does not decrease the fun or sense of fairness, quite ironically).

1 hour ago, Telcontar said:

Only one example of a resource idea I've played with feels worth mentioning in addition to the above in this thread, that being something like Computational Capacity: A resource that cannot be gathered from the environment (unlike, for instance, power generation which often has "nodes" that can be exploited in addition to building free-standing power plants). In the game in question, Computation is in effect the primary resource, with all other activities from resource acquisition to warfare existing in support of creating more. Computational Power is then divvied up across several uses according to player priorities.

I'll agree the 'food system' used in Blizzard games (farms, supply depots, pylons, overlords) was always a bit lackluster and could be revamped in such a way where a 'static resource pool' could be used. I think some RTS games used it intelligently in the past, but I can't quite remember the names right now. I think there was a game in particular (mech commander?) where it would also directly affect the speed at which you could build units, etc. Kind of like a dynamic budget where, if you incur debt, everything gets harder to handle.

In a more 'meta way', I'm a big fan of worker allocation systems (RimWorld, Dwarf Fortress, etc.) where, if you assign tasks poorly, certain things will 'never get done' due to priorities, etc. In this case, the resource is the priority allocation of the workers themselves, which is a bit abstract, but nonetheless critical.

3 minutes ago, Telcontar said:

Nor do I - and I agree entirely with your comments on holistic design. A faction's army and economic style should complement each other and both (along with whatever other elements you might name) should contribute towards a single "feel". My concerns about the nightmare of balancing largely stem from the fact that (in the game I have in mind) there are many factions. Balancing any two factions against each other is perfectly manageable. It's when you add 1, 2, 3, ... n additional factions that it turns into a nightmare - when changing any particular variable to more perfectly balance armies A and B completely screws the balance of matchups between B and C. Multiply by however many factions you have. Hence the acceptance that bad matchups will exist (and development of systems to make that tolerable to the players).

This is true of 1v1 games, but in RTS that have more players or AIs involved, this can be diminished by the fact perfect micro-balance is not a requirement.

In the very rich world of Planets Nu for example (once again, a TBS, sadly), some species simply can't fight others as they're at a disadvantage, but they have ways to force an uneven fight, and other species will have an incentive to take care of the seemingly overpowered threat early on so that even an inferior species may end up a fierce contender for the win in the late game.