[RTS] What are the arguments against pre-build?

[Hawkwings]

Supcom did have a feature where you could build a formation of buildings, then save that formation and have it available for future use, so you can plop down 20+ buildings with one click. Woe be you if the terrain doesn't cooperate though.

[Covenant]

Some people like having to establish an economy from the ground up. It's really that simple.

You still are, the base level is just different, as Strak said. If you mean that there are people who are happiest if they build all of them themselves, I find that hard to believe, I really do.

That's just familiarity, comfort, and those reflexes talking. The only thing I can think of that you might miss with a huge base at the beginning is that bit of early-game warm-up period before the huge pile of palm-sweat inducing monster units shows up. But there's nothing saying you need to remove that aspect.

What about if you pre-plan the base, and then your base "unpacks" them over time, giving you about 5 minutes of warm-up before your Unit Production Base is fully up and running? The only thing you're losing is the microing of individual harvesters for those 2 minutes until you've built all 12 or so. After that they're on autopilot until you lose a mineral pile anyway. So what's the difference?

We can give you little scouts and infantry to micro. That would be fun for a change, wouldn't it? Microing shit outside your base, doing actual recon, etc?

[Uraniun235]

I definitely agree on prebuilt bases as an option in RTS. I think the one I felt that the most in was Dawn of War, where (and I'll admit I was never stellar so maybe this was more a function of my incompetence) it seemed like every game I played had nearly the exact same first five minutes. It's like, really? Can't we skip ahead to the point where we start to send out raiding parties?


But then, starting out with just one builder seems a bit dodgy itself. I remember Total Annihilation was considered pretty good in part for giving you an okay base defender (although the comm-bombing was pretty lol), but if we're doing prebuilt bases can we also have some prebuilt scouting/raiding forces to go along with them? Or does that lend itself too much to early game defense?


Taking it one (or two or three?) steps further, how about the ability to create and play pre-built scenarios with your chums? So maybe have a 1v1 map where each side's already got troops on the front line, moderately developed resourcing, and a good-sized base? Lets you jump immediately into the mid-game, and even allows for scenarios where you might give one player a handicap because you know you'd handily paste your friend in a one on one, or where there might be special objectives ("bomb this bunker", "don't let them bomb this bunker"), etc. Completely useless in competitive play, but think of all the man-days that we'd save for the sort of people that play with "no-rush" rules.

[adam_grif]

You're still establishing an economy from the ground up. You're simply not doing so to a fractional-second timeframe whilst raiding and microing at the same time. The game is otherwise exactly the same, with the same need for management.

You know what I mean. Starting from scratch while the pressure is on. Pre-build essentially means that you can design it at your leisure and skip the first stage of the game. Time management is a cornerstone of RTS gaming (Real Time). Base/economy building is another way it can manifest itself, and another way in which experienced or skilled players can get an advantage by better managing it. Many, many people like starting from scratch and building their way up in real time.

It's not like I'm saying pre-build shouldn't exist, but it's pretty simple to comprehend why not everybody likes it. I prefer going without, personally.

You still are, the base level is just different, as Strak said. If you mean that there are people who are happiest if they build all of them themselves, I find that hard to believe, I really do.

See: Korea.

That's just familiarity, comfort, and those reflexes talking.

Right, nobody can genuinely like a game mechanic, it must just all be nostalgia goggles.

The only thing I can think of that you might miss with a huge base at the beginning is that bit of early-game warm-up period before the huge pile of palm-sweat inducing monster units shows up. But there's nothing saying you need to remove that aspect.

What about if you pre-plan the base, and then your base "unpacks" them over time, giving you about 5 minutes of warm-up before your Unit Production Base is fully up and running? The only thing you're losing is the microing of individual harvesters for those 2 minutes until you've built all 12 or so. After that they're on autopilot until you lose a mineral pile anyway. So what's the difference?

I'd rather have vanilla pre-planned bases than what you just proposed.

We can give you little scouts and infantry to micro. That would be fun for a change, wouldn't it? Microing shit outside your base, doing actual recon, etc?

You think base building is boring but recon isn't?

What you've described is current RTS, except now you're shoehorned into your initial build order. And if you can interrupt to change it, then how is it any different than normal RTS? You may as well just have a 20 second pause at the start of the game where you give orders, it would achieve largely the same thing as long as your game has a queuing function.

[Covenant]

Aww shit, we've got multiquote going on. Now it's all downhill. Dammit Grif!

...if we're doing prebuilt bases can we also have some prebuilt scouting/raiding forces to go along with them? Or does that lend itself too much to early game defense?

I wouldn't think so. The kind of early-game raid that catches a person with their pants down is usually only possible because early units are good enough to kill a resourcer, fast enough to get there, and cheap enough to produce while also not being valuable enough that a newbie would consider making them.

The issue is that in most games area control is meaningless and essentially valueless, and stationary defenses offer just enough value that fighting in your friendly base is better than fighting in the field. It's also often hard to successfully stop an enemy from getting to your base if you even did want to engage them in the field. The best way to take the focus off defense in the early game is to make static defenses high-end and relatively unimportant versus normal units (make them geared towards slowing down T4-type siegebreaker units, and ABM's to stop game-enders) and also to upgrade your main base's walls/shields to put them above the level of T1 units.

Pre-build essentially means that you can design it at your leisure and skip the first stage of the game. Time management is a cornerstone of RTS gaming (Real Time). Base/economy building is another way it can manifest itself, and another way in which experienced or skilled players can get an advantage by better managing it.

Horseshit. Base/economy gameplay is preserved. Pressure is preserved. All you're skipping is an arbitrary section of the grindplay by accelerating the game about one minute into play. The only people this negatively affects are the over 9000 APM crowd, but what you get in return is an opportunity for immense depth of play increases. Objective benefit.

See: Korea.

Appeal to Korea Fallacy. /joke

You think base building is boring but recon isn't?

I don't think basebuilding is boring--I think the portion of the game before I'm allowed to build my base is boring, because all I'm allowed to do is micromanage my units with such mechanical precision as to not lose a moment of input. That's not a strawman, that's the way to maximize a no-built mechanic. You only get to 'design' your base once you have some money and time to plan one of the build order strategies--which is the point in time that pre-built bases would accelerate you to.

What you've described is current RTS, except now you're shoehorned into your initial build order. And if you can interrupt to change it, then how is it any different than normal RTS?

It was merely a compromise. I still want to enter the game with my base already built and laid out in the way I'd set it out of game.

[adam_grif]

Aww shit, we've got multiquote going on. Now it's all downhill. Dammit Grif!

All of this could have been avoided if only you had constructed additional pylons.

Base/economy gameplay is preserved.

Yes.

Pressure is preserved.

No. Prebuild is, by its nature, lifting the pressure from base building because it happens before the game starts. Your base is up and running at second one. Some people like that, some people don't.

All you're skipping is an arbitrary section of the grindplay by accelerating the game about one minute into play.

Is minute one of Company of Heroes arbitrary grindplay? What's wrong with having to chose between sending your engineers out to capture territory or stay at home and build a barracks? It's an interesting tactical decision.

If all you're trying to avoid is, as you say, catering to the 9000 apm zerg rushers, then you're throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Early game play can be interesting and rewarding without the first 90 seconds consisting of building SCVs over and over to strip mine the map.

I don't think basebuilding is boring--I think the portion of the game before I'm allowed to build my base is boring, because all I'm allowed to do is micromanage my units with such mechanical precision as to not lose a moment of input. That's not a strawman, that's the way to maximize a no-built mechanic. You only get to 'design' your base once you have some money and time to plan one of the build order strategies--which is the point in time that pre-built bases would accelerate you to.

If the game is designed well in the first place, missing one second at the start of the game when you tell people to build isn't a horrendous disadvantage. I understand where you're coming from, but not every game is Starcraft, especially modern RTS.

I still want to enter the game with my base already built and laid out in the way I'd set it out of game.

I don't. But this is a false dilemma since not every game has to have one or the other.

[Covenant]

Thankfully these are all on the same topic so I can merge my responses.

I do hear where you're coming from--and if I were making an RTS, I'd want to take these opinions and make sure they're respected in the final product. I think the core of "prebuild is better than wtflame" comes down to the problem with the early game often being a grind in terms of economy. You bring up CoH, which is an interesting point, since CoH's economy is inherently hands-off. This frees you to work in divergent fashions--maybe you'll build a barracks first. Maybe a special weapons hut, and throw down some machinegunners instead. Or you can send your engineers to go lay down some barbed wire.

This is an example of low-prebuild with low-grind. If this is the compromise I'm asked to make, I'll make it gladly, as I enjoy CoH immensely and think it's got an econ model (along with WiC, and the oddly maligned DoW) worth modeling future products after. How the bullets are harvested is of less concern to me than the gameplay benefits of area control and low grind, where playing the game (taking territory) is actually the best way to win the econ struggle as well. If the Koreans want us to throw some SCVs in there as well, so be it.

Taking a step back, the real issue is twofold--and I love lists:

Firstly, damage to sense of scale: The econ model of many non-prebuilt games predisposes it towards the kind of thing I've just been complaining about. I never get to enjoy the epic battles because the GUI, the econ, and the effectiveness of harvester harassment force you to be twiddly from the first moment to the last. But this is an issue with the econ model, not the amount of units and structures you have in the base. As a side effect, strategy and balancing usually tilt in favor of money/time/raiding mechanics rather than position/territory/logistics and the gameplay 'suffers' from the wargamer's perspective. It also reduces the gameplay to being essentially shallow, even if people can finesse it to make it look deep.

Secondly, too much focus on mechanical tasks: Or that is to say, too much clicking, and a focus on gameplay micro over actual strategy. My wrist gets enflamed due to overwork (three fucking jobs!) but even a normal person has trouble keeping up with the added micromanagement aspects, which is part of what separates the skilled from the slaughtered in games where build orders and early-game rapid-speed strategy is key for reasons stated above. This isn't strategy, and if you're always going to want to do the same thing (build x harvesters, build factory) and the only issue is click speed, then it's really an unimportant step. CoH avoids this by altering the econ model, but there's other ways to do it.

Reducing dead space is always good. If you can do this without prebuilt stuff (CoH, WiC) then that's fine. SupCom skirts the issue--no prebuilt stuff but you start with an immensely potent unit.

The solution that would make everyone happy is if your initial structure gave you enough options that, from the beginning of the game, you're able to enjoy the fun parts of it, and the gameplay was designed to minimize grind and overly repetitive elements of micromanagement. I completely dismiss the "These people like it and that's an argument for it," thing, but I don't mind games where that first structure you build is actually a nondeterministic element of strategy, and doesn't slow the gameplay down. CoH gives me two good options for first-built structure and early game strategy, and that sucker is not only tab-togglable once it's finished but barely costs anything to make, during which time my other engineers are free to nab some territory.

In essence it's a game like Starcraft, but where my Headquarters produces SCVs that can also fight, my first structure builds siege tanks, and there's a reason to exit the base.

[Stark]

Or like in RTSish 4X games like Kohan, where your starting structure has short-ranged defensive units, can build most of the units quickly, can be upgraded to do different things, etc.

[Teleros]

The CnC3 SP (while shit) could really have used prebuild. Ugh, let's build the same half dozen structures AGAIN.

They did at least try to help you occasionally by deploying a bunch of buildings for you on some levels. Just some though, sadly.

Since nobody apparently has a problem with prebuild...

Uhm, it depends on the style of gameplay you want in the game. Starcraft or Red Alert 3 (*retch*) are based around rushes and such, so I doubt you'll see much pre-build stuff in games like them. In addition, Age of Empires can have your little tribe start off as Stone Age barbarians before finally growing into a big & prosperous nation, so lack of pre-build there is arguably a good thing from a thematic point of view (same with various TBS games like the Civ series). Less so in the sequels though.

Is prebuilding a preferrable way of reducing base micro to simply doing away with bases/having off-map bases? Games like WiC and GC just let you order stuff (and lack resourcing) and games like WZ and Earth 21x0 let you use off-map bases to order stuff and send them in. However you lose the whole base business (although defences etc in stuff like WZ are pretty complex anyway).

Certainly I prefer having a base on the map I can interact with, but having grown up with Warcraft, Starcraft, AoE, C&C, Homeworld, SupCom etc etc etc I'm kinda biased . On the other hand, if I don't have a base... yeah ok, I'm not going to simply not play it or something silly like that. As for whether or not I'd like to see pre-built bases in games... given that I'm someone who goes on a base-crawling spree in games vs the AI when I'm bored... yeah it sounds like a nice idea. I'm not sure I'd want it for each and every game, but as Covenant said, the option to have it would be nice.

Taking it one (or two or three?) steps further, how about the ability to create and play pre-built scenarios with your chums? So maybe have a 1v1 map where each side's already got troops on the front line, moderately developed resourcing, and a good-sized base? Lets you jump immediately into the mid-game, and even allows for scenarios where you might give one player a handicap because you know you'd handily paste your friend in a one on one, or where there might be special objectives ("bomb this bunker", "don't let them bomb this bunker"), etc. Completely useless in competitive play, but think of all the man-days that we'd save for the sort of people that play with "no-rush" rules.

The trouble I can see with that is people new to a map / start location being unprepared for the stuff those more experienced with the map know about. Obviously that'll change with time, but it could be rather daunting the first few times.

[Vendetta]

I think base-building should start with a pre-gen base that you've designed out of game. Let it be a base of X squares around a central structure with a buildable radius of Y. Depending on the things you put in those X squares, you'll have a different allotment of forces available, and until you actually expand outside your base with new buildable radius expanders, that'll be your base. You'll start with funds and a handful of units depending on your base layout.

That's actually how Halo Wars works, limited build spaces available, central base structure upgrade increases available spaces, and it is impossible to have all of the production structures and resource structures and tech structures required on one base so there is always an element of choosing what to actually do with limited resources. Okay, it does pretty much everything else poorly, but base building is actually more about choice than Sim-Tankfactory.

[CaptHawkeye]

CoH is a game that's pretty exemplified by unit spam. I've noticed a favorite tactic is to just spawn LMGs everywhere and render Engineers and Infantry obsolete for the first critical minutes. This also brings back Stark's point. If you lose the early game, you've pretty much lost completely. In every replay of CoH i've got I think I got a Tank factory going once before the guy just quit.

This is pretty typical of the Zerg Spam crowd. You know, the guys who ruin custom-class games by essentially boiling the gameplay down into 1 or 2 useful tactics that make every other approach worthless. The RTS genre has been suffering from this for years and the FPS genre is just starting to learn about it.

[Admiral Valdemar]

CoH is a game that's pretty exemplified by unit spam. I've noticed a favorite tactic is to just spawn LMGs everywhere and render Engineers and Infantry obsolete for the first critical minutes. This also brings back Stark's point. If you lose the early game, you've pretty much lost completely. In every replay of CoH i've got I think I got a Tank factory going once before the guy just quit.

This is pretty typical of the Zerg Spam crowd. You know, the guys who ruin custom-class games by essentially boiling the gameplay down into 1 or 2 useful tactics that make every other approach worthless. The RTS genre has been suffering from this for years and the FPS genre is just starting to learn about it.

This is why a well thought out rock, paper, scissors plan for units is mandatory. If you make LMGs, there should be a single unit that trumps them in some way, so as to make such spamming totally futile, unless part of some combined arms force, and even then, it shouldn't be a win because of sheer numbers. I was just thinking of the Angry Mob used by the GLA in C&C:G. It was way overpowered as a ground unit, so some would say. Unless you had an air unit to hand, and then it was like shooting fish in a barrel, regardless of how many came by. Admittedly, this was a high end unit anyway, so an early victory with that spam was impossible. Bringing intelligence, counterintelligence, mixed unit types and special abilities and so on can make those who just crank out the lowest units en masse pretty foolish if all they get in return is an early humiliating defeat because the opponent spent a minute anticipating such an attack and made plans to deal with it.

This won't deal with the issue of someone quitting the game as soon as they find their petty technique can't ensure an immediate victory. I used to think people played games for the enjoyment of a challenge, not to get more digits in a leader board score card.

[adam_grif]

CoH is a game that's pretty exemplified by unit spam. I've noticed a favorite tactic is to just spawn LMGs everywhere and render Engineers and Infantry obsolete for the first critical minutes. This also brings back Stark's point. If you lose the early game, you've pretty much lost completely. In every replay of CoH i've got I think I got a Tank factory going once before the guy just quit.

This is pretty typical of the Zerg Spam crowd. You know, the guys who ruin custom-class games by essentially boiling the gameplay down into 1 or 2 useful tactics that make every other approach worthless. The RTS genre has been suffering from this for years and the FPS genre is just starting to learn about it.

About 50% of my games (I play as Commonwealth, American and Wehrmacht) feature teching up to the final Tier. The same goes for the pro replays I watch. Sometimes you can lose the game right at the start, but that only happens if the losing side is outplayed by a significant margin.

Locking down the map as Wehr with MG42's is an early game tactic, but don't act as though it's unstoppable. It's been there since the start, and counters are readily available for both allied factions. Weapon Support Centre starts for Ami totally pwn it, and even with the 3 rifle start you can flank them easily. If they persist with it, back tech to WSC for snipers/mortars OR research grenades for your riflemen. Brits can build mortar pits to prevent getting pinned, and are less dependant on map control to begin with.

If all you're complaining about is games being won in the first five to ten minutes, then you should be playing a different game. I've had quite a few epic comebacks from near-total loss (one particularly amusing one involved summoning a tiger when I literally only had my HQ building left and no territory sectors), and numerous 45 minute slogfests. Early game victories are possible, but as I said, they're a sign that you either got incredibly lucky (very rare) or have outclassed your opponent significantly.

[Hawkwings]

I think WiC got it right with their Tactical Assistance menu. It's a whole other "tech tree" of "units" that you can use to counter what the enemy throws at you. Conceivably (and in actuality) you can run a base defense with nothing but TA, and it would work out pretty well.

So for your CoH example, if the enemy has spammed early LMGs and rendered the map uninhabitable, you call in the light artillery barrage TA, costing you 5 TA points which you've gathered by building your barracks and capturing a strategic point.

[Stark]

Unit spam and micro are the worst features of CoH, but that's not relevant. If people think prebuilding eliminates early game 'pressure' they can't read; it's limited (and possibly very limited). The early phase is still important but the raiding involves a wider selection of units.

But hey, I'm told WiC by definition has not strategy because there's no base, so RTS players are largely retarded.

I played some Sins the other day and realised I can't stand playing without 'advanced start'. All it does is prebuild your factories and mines, so you lose nothing but five minutes of clicking for no reason. If you got to pick x value of ships and structures I'd be even happier.

[adam_grif]

For sins it's more like 5 hours of clicking. That game is played on geological timescales.

[Spyder]

I think I'd like it if there were RTS games that had pre-build options but I wouldn't want it all the time though. It's fun being able to deal a crippling blow in early game and then finishing an opponent off with low-mid level units. I do enjoy good deep strategic gameplay but it's important to have a creative outlet for our inner arseholes.

[Stark]

For sins it's more like 5 hours of clicking. That game is played on geological timescales.

Are you retarded? I just gave you an example of limited non-customisable prebuild not affecting early game 'pressure' since it just places 4 structures, and you respond with 'LOL SLOW GAME IS SLOW'?

Turns out with prebuild RUSHING STILL WORKS.

[Covenant]

Sins is one of the few 4x space games worse than Sword of the Stars, a game which only became a decent game by absorbing the ideas of it's modders over the course of a few years of expansion pack development. Sins is broken at a fundamental level.

I think I'd like it if there were RTS games that had pre-build options but I wouldn't want it all the time though. It's fun being able to deal a crippling blow in early game and then finishing an opponent off with low-mid level units. I do enjoy good deep strategic gameplay but it's important to have a creative outlet for our inner arseholes.

This is a misconception--prebuild systems do not assume you can't use low-end units, or beat someone early. In a game that's designed around prebuilt structures your 'early game units' wouldn't be useless since they'd be designed to function with the increased competition of other units. Sloppy RTS games use the 'tech tree' as a lazy way of balance, and just throw the shitty units at the bottom and let them get phased out rather than matured and kept relevent.

A prebuild system could easily let you lose in the first five minutes, if the game was designed for it. You'd just lose to something other than a single marine shooting your SCVs. You could feel like just as much of a smug asshole blowing his base to smithereens with an early rush of something interesting.

Prebuild just reduces a lot of the grind. A game designed with it in mind wouldn't have the same kinds of tech trees as other games, since you'd need to assume that your foes are able to field more varied units from the beginning. Your asshole potential is still there.

[Samuel]

Sins is one of the few 4x space games worse than Sword of the Stars, a game which only became a decent game by absorbing the ideas of it's modders over the course of a few years of expansion pack development. Sins is broken at a fundamental level.

Could you explain how? Is it the economic model, the unit balance or something I missed?

[Stark]

I can't say what Cov is thinking of, but the combat is magic hits instead of geometric bullets, combat is static, nobody has turrets or any animated models, information on units and unit balance is a joke, the econ is totally worthless becau 30m in you'll have infinite money, the effects are so awful a mod made them thousands of times better by editing text files, and whole features like the floating stock price never worked.

The expansions addressed some of this, but I'd still rather play Conquest Frontier Wars 2010

[open_sketchbook]

My Red Alert 3 mod, Paradox, has a special "No Rush" gametype maps with a several minute build time allowance in which you are allowed to tech up, are not allowed to build superweapons, and cannot move out of a preset area until the timer runs down. The maps will specifically be designed for high income flow so as to encourage setpiece battles. After the time limit is up, you can't build new production structures; just economy, power, superweapons and defense turrets. This should result in short, furious battles with larger-than-normal forces, forgoing the usual battles over expansions in regular games or victory point spots in objective-based maps and just dedicating the game to smacking the shit out of each other with dozens of units. We just got it working quite recently and it's quite a bit of fun.

[Covenant]

Could you explain how? Is it the economic model, the unit balance or something I missed?

The stuff Strak said is reasonable, but the other issues with it is the incredibly, stupidly simplistic gameplay. SotS was a mangled mess of a game, but Sins is a mangled mess of a bad game.

Sins is worse than a Homeworld mod at doing just about anything it sets out to do, and on top of that adds a degree of grind and wasted time that is unnecessary and unwelcome. It takes too long for a game that is no deeper than your average "I have more units of X type than you do, so I win" deterministic strategy game. I'm not saying you're a bad person for liking it if you do like it, but from a game design perspective it's creatively bankrupt and the crunchy grit of it is also flakey as hell.

For a 4x-style RTS, that's really a black mark on you. The game has only the bare minimum of requirements--have a functioning econ model, allow me to send units to attack things, and have a basic yet satisfying combat engine. This isn't hard to do--and botching it that badly with a game that has, in many ways, so many things going for it... it's just laziness on the part of the design staff. They chose to do several things that they didn't have to do, and they just did them poorly--while the things they HAD to do (like the econ model) were also poorly done, and that's nothing more complex than running some numbers through an equation. Making a fake stock market is not difficult.

[Stark]

The fake stock market fails because it's heavily bounded and price magically returns to base. This means they decided to have floating prices dependent on demand and by design made it totally unable to work.

[Nephtys]

Sins is really a terrible game. It attempts very hard to be Space Supreme Commander, but fails because units aren't interesting. You just send a blob into the next system and overwhelm the enemy blob. Attempts to make ships 'different' don't do anything. You're just microing around a giant fleet of levelling capitals and clicking power buttons.

Meanwhile, your braindead industry won't even build itself, taking more time. And don't forget you need to blow money in research, and tons of other 'juggling' stuff that has nothing to do with actual strategy, just obtuseness and clunkyness that adds up until someone loses.

That's the problem with games that are too much a throwback to the 'old way' of things without innovating. It's not that someone wins, it's that your opponent loses first due to poor features and design. Competitive rounds of starcraft work this way. The stupid 'drone conservation' trick is so insanely counter-intuitive to what a game should be balanced around, that it means anal-retentive rote memorization is what's important, not clever planning and adaptation. That's where a game like Homeworld had interesting play. A clever person can use the Z-Axis and tactical hyperspace to launch surprise attacks, or to neutralize a larger force using a well planned attack by a smaller group. Combat is not decided by who has the bigger blob, but rather who has positioning advantage and surprise. Not that Homeworld didn't have it's problems of course. The Battle-Sphere formation trick and similar formation-play with fighters to abuse their AI were really rather stupid.