Ever played Shogun? In that game you move your troops to different provinces in a turn based mode and when you are in the same province as an enemy you get to play that fight tactical (like myth) in 3d rts mode. This game gave me a cool idea. What if both modes where real-time? Instead of moving, and clicking on end of time, you could set a move from one province to the other and then your troops would start to marach to that province and slowly move. This would make planet-size real time strategy possible. In real time you could also keep track of how the weather is changing (think of the "province-map" as a sattelite image) and make tactical moves accordingly. You could watch the stock market change in real time and there are almost infite possiblities. Also, lets say that you are able to build bases anywhere on the map. Then that is also a new level of strategics. How to move the materials from one factory in that part of the world to another base, so you can build units there without losing the shipload of materials. Lets get ready for brainstormin!

I had something similar in mind.

Players would move across the globe with their armies, much like you control a character in an MMORPG.

Basically, you''d have yourself an MMORTS.

I bet technical limitations would come up. Where now servers are burdened with thousands of characters, they''d surely be even more burdened by hundreds of thousands of units in thousands of armies, all crossing the world at the same time.

But yes, I think that for any tactical general, being able to move entire armies across a persistant world in real-time, be it single-player or multi-player, would be something truly magnificent.

KYLOTAN:

Yeah, that''s what I thought. The only time it''d be important to have all the individual units'' data available would be when two armies collide (or when a scout spots one of the armies). So only when two armies get within a certain distance of one another.

Still, an MMORTS with multiple armies traversing the virtual world seems like a daunting task for programmers.

I see a potential problem if more then two players are involved...this assumes you have two maps...the larger "big picture" world overview map...and the smaller focused "battle map" where the armies battle each other...

specificly...what happenes in the "overview" map when players are engaged in combat? does it pause until the battle is resolved...or would players have to constantly switch between the two to control things (control the ships in the "overview" map to keep them on course...then switch back to the "battle" map to control your troops in battle)...if so then what would happen if player 1 is fighting player 2...when player 3 enters into battle range of player 1?...would player 1 now have to battle both player 2 and player 3 on seperate "battle" maps?...Mmm...add in the Massivly Multiplayer aspect and player 1 may have 3,16,57, or 134 battles going on at once (or even MORE!) in a persistant world...actually this could prove to be the winning stratigy...just gang up on one player...he/she couldn''t even hope to keep up with that many battles takeing place at once

It''s not exactly the same idea, but you may want to check out the Conquest: Frontier Wars demo. This SF game has large multiple maps that represent star systems. You get two mini-maps, one for the star system you''re in, and one for all systems. You can jump between system maps at will, and there are a bunch of little interface hints that help make it all manageable.

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Just waiting for the mothership...

When I came up with the idea i thought of it as a single player thing with the abbillity to play against your friends on smaller servers (like many first person games today).
But of course the idea off bringing it MMORPG style is absolutely amazing.

No, I dont think the world map would stop... the player could switch behind the maps with the click of a button, and to keep you updated messageboxes would appea reporting on thing ("Army #1204 arrived at destinied location")
Also I would have to equip the armies with a powerfull AI so that the troops are not completely useless.
Imagining that you are fighting a larger battle when you find this message on the screen:

"Unit #1 colided with Enemy troops. What action would you like to take?

1) Aggressive 2)Defensive 3)Hold and wait for my command"

Of course even if he choosed agressive or something similair he could, when he had time, take command.