RTS innovations

[Vehrec]

I've been giving some thought to the effects of terrain, and I realized that not only are people not exploiting it as much as they could, I've never seen a game designer even try to give real depth to Terain as an element of RTS games. What I have seen are:
1. Higher Ground as cover. This was kinda cool back when I first played Starcraft.
2. Negative/light/heavy cover in Dawn of War. A good effort, but it seemed like the only cover in the world was found at the bottom of a crater.
3. Impassible terrain. Those places that you can never ever send any units ever that don't fly.

Now, there are even fewer actions one can take that interact with Terain. Offhand, the only one I can remember is Entrenching from Rise of Nations, and that was just a General ability that could only be preformed on your own territory.

Now, some ideas to change some of that are laid out. Someone mentioned Cover, Concealment and altering line of sight. I'd like to add spead changes as well, but that might just be me. Different troops would get different benifits from different terain. A ranger/scout unit might get more cover, command longer line of sight, and be harder to see in a given terrain area than regular infantry. On the other hand, specilized combat engineers would have bonuses to the entrenching, and lay down things like tank traps and other obstacles. Trees would have a bonus to cover, and provide material for building your foxholes up with, but it would also provide a deadly rain of splinters when your unit comes under fire from arty or missiles. Flat grassland might be easy to dig into and move across, but it's also Tank country and they can rule your ass if you just dig in normally. Mountain areas might look impassible, but a diligent effort can find a path that a few units might be able to slip through. Hills block line of sight, but units on top of them can se and be seen at great distance. shallow water slows you down, but can be decent cover even if it can occasionally immobilize a vehicle in it. Hard rocky ground has minimal cover and takes longer to dig into. And so on. It's really quite logical and not difficult at all.

[Uraniun235]

Part of the reason a lot of your ideas have never been implemented is that most RTS games have been focused on much smaller areas of land. For example, how would mountainous regions come into play in a game like Starcraft or Dawn of War? A single mountain would be bigger than most/all maps in either of those games.

[Vehrec]

But most of what I've put forward is viable, even on tiny maps. Dense forests, rolling hills, you name it. Maybe we would need a bigger map, but so what? We aren't using Starcraft or Dawn of War exclusively as our models. On the other hand, my ideal map isn't quite as big as a Supreme Commander one. But the ideals work at any scale.

[Ace Pace]

Most of what you mentioned has been implemented. In 98. Ground control, anyone remember it?

Differant bonuses for differant units, impassable terrain. Specialised actions per terrain wasn't in, but quite of the rest was. Cover, concealment, etc.

[SWPIGWANG]

You know what, most of this thread is reheashing old ideas really.

All the ideas on terrain, unit AI and such HAS ALREADY BEEN DONE and for one reason or another never quite caught on in the scale of more click-festy games.

If you want an example, look no futher than Earth2150. It has deformable terran, primative concealment, ammo limits and resupply, user customizable units, persistant units, night-day cycles and resources and an entire unit AI scripting language(!) build in.

In other words, almost EVERYTHING those discontented players could want. It was also relased in 2000, showing that the technology was there.

If you are interested in the sort of thing you are talking about, go hunt down a copy.

----------------------------
I've played that game back when it was new, at around 2001 or so. I was very underwhelmed.

The single player campaign was mostly about mining for the overarching campaign (you win the game after you've accumlated a certain amount of money) and punishes player that tries too hard to fight. This favors obessive compulsively conservative play, which thankfully I'm good at. I take pride in having crazy kill ratios in single player games and losing absolutely nothing in combat. That said, grinding wins with long range units is hardly exciting. My first campaign was with LC, with its self repairing units which means I was spending a bit of time doing unit juggling so to not lose anything, despite the AI scripting.

They mutiplayer was a joke. The original game was so unbalanced (i don't know about moon project expansion that supposely fixed some stuff) that one can hardly make sense of what is intended. Of course, it was not helped that it never had a large MP population, with the highest I've seen at under a dozen. (Microsoft Zone) The tech tree takes more than an hour to fully traverse (just the research) on default setting. (and there is enough options setting to make the gameplay totally nonuniform) Depending on the game type, there is almost always this one single imbalanced way to play it. For example, island maps result in auto-win for the LC, and small land maps are all about energy-weapon rushes. Full tech at start games are just nuke spam. (at least the nuclear graphics was nice, and dropping a dozen nukes in a row is fun)

For people that played "as it is intended", it probably was a fine game. For players looking for cheese and powergame to break the game, they found it in spades.

But it ain't strategy unless it survives the acid test of optimalization. Any less is self deception.

-------------------------------

you DON'T see this dedication though is most American servers of Starcraft, where last time I checked and I have little reason to believe otherwise, money maps abound. APM isn't an object like it is on other maps in Starcraft, which is good, but strategy? Well, that need not apply either, just meatnormous walls of men and defensive fortifications.

It is not that APM or strategy does not apply in those maps. Someone with good APM and strategy do win those games, however the thing with money maps is that there is an implicit "proper" way to play the game. For example, people are "forbidden" to rush and there is endless curses if they do. Many strategies that could prevent an meat grinder battle is simply not used in those circles because people only play those maps because they want meat grinder battles.

Much of the strategy in Starcraft is about fighting(rushing)-resource-tech tradeoff. In those games, resource is irrelevent and rushing is forbidden.

I still like mining and building, but it's really TURBO LAME to have a scrawny Korean punk move an SCV into your base and start building supply depots in the middle of your resource harvesting, slowing it down, and then forcing you to chase a probe in circles in your base for the 1st 3 minutes of the game. I've seen that crazy shit happen too...

What, you want non-chesse in RTS games? Seriously, we are talking about a game where you build a entire army in 5 minutes. The entire thing is lameness, but that can still be fun.

Using an SCV to build supply depot in the enemies' base is a losing proposition. The smart response is to encircle the now immobile SCV (constructing the building) and kill it with your own peon, and kill the very incomplete supply depo dead in no time. It costs more too your opponent than to yourself that way.

I suppose you are talking about the so called "t3h Mannar/Tribute Pylon" where a probe uses a plyon to trap your peons behind the minerals while running away in large circles. In that case, if you use your peon and military units at the time, the cost (in mining time) to yourself and the enemy (destroyed pylon) is the same. (its been calucated and tested) It is mostly a psychological tactic to distract the opponent. It also risk the probe from death.

There are some strategy that does have serious effect on game flow however, like building an assimilator on the enemy's gas and "steal his gas" to slow his technology. This generally does not happen to real teching players. What it does is force a more mineral-economic-based strategy, for the cost of 100 mineral to the enemy.

Of course there is other cheese, like using pylon to wall a probe behind a mineral line (if the map allows this) and building cannons. This can be countered by standard build order's first zealot/marine and only works against seriously high risk builds. (fast expansion and so on)

Personally, I find tactical building construction an unique and interesting part of Starcraft tactics. It is hard to do real damage to the opponent (other than annoying him) with defenseless peons and equally defenseless buildings, however there are sometimes oppunity for serious effects and that is when the game favors the creative and the knowledgable. It doesn't take high APM to build buildings in the enemy's base after all.

In an game as abstracted as Starcraft, being able to come up with new "cheese" that actually works is an sign of intelligence. As for old cheese (ones listed above), the game is balanced enough that they can be countered.

As for peons running away, well if he is busy controlling his unit, what are you doing? Staring that it and be annoyed? That is what the opponent wants you to do. What about using your own peon to do stir up some stuff in the enemy base, or figure out how to trap his peon, or simply ignore it. As long as you are keeping tabs the it so that it can't do real damage, the real damage of the peon is distraction, not combat. Knowing what you, as the player, is suppose to be doing (and lame things are included) is important.

When Slayers_boxer (professional Starcraft player) build a bunker (incomplete) to block enemy zealot movement path in conjunction with a marine rush on a protoss player, the crowd cheered. It takes intimate knowledge of the size of buildings, size of units and pathfinding rules to know when it is possible to slot a building into a perfect watertight fit with the protoss base and build an strategy around it in under a minute and half while spotting the "weakness." Ah, the protoss player build his base wrong, and paid for it.

[Vehrec]

You know what, most of this thread is reheashing old ideas really.

All the ideas on terrain, unit AI and such HAS ALREADY BEEN DONE and for one reason or another never quite caught on in the scale of more click-festy games.

If you want an example, look no futher than Earth2150. It has deformable terran, primative concealment, ammo limits and resupply, user customizable units, persistant units, night-day cycles and resources and an entire unit AI scripting language(!) build in.

In other words, almost EVERYTHING those discontented players could want. It was also relased in 2000, showing that the technology was there.

If you are interested in the sort of thing you are talking about, go hunt down a copy.

----------------------------
I've played that game back when it was new, at around 2001 or so. I was very underwhelmed.

The single player campaign was mostly about mining for the overarching campaign (you win the game after you've accumlated a certain amount of money) and punishes player that tries too hard to fight. This favors obessive compulsively conservative play, which thankfully I'm good at. I take pride in having crazy kill ratios in single player games and losing absolutely nothing in combat. That said, grinding wins with long range units is hardly exciting. My first campaign was with LC, with its self repairing units which means I was spending a bit of time doing unit juggling so to not lose anything, despite the AI scripting.

They mutiplayer was a joke. The original game was so unbalanced (i don't know about moon project expansion that supposely fixed some stuff) that one can hardly make sense of what is intended. Of course, it was not helped that it never had a large MP population, with the highest I've seen at under a dozen. (Microsoft Zone) The tech tree takes more than an hour to fully traverse (just the research) on default setting. (and there is enough options setting to make the gameplay totally nonuniform) Depending on the game type, there is almost always this one single imbalanced way to play it. For example, island maps result in auto-win for the LC, and small land maps are all about energy-weapon rushes. Full tech at start games are just nuke spam. (at least the nuclear graphics was nice, and dropping a dozen nukes in a row is fun)

For people that played "as it is intended", it probably was a fine game. For players looking for cheese and powergame to break the game, they found it in spades.

But it ain't strategy unless it survives the acid test of optimalization. Any less is self deception.

I notice that all your complaints about this game have nothing to do with it's terrain, AI or any of the other novel features, but rather with it's pacing and its balance. If you cannot find anything wrong with the idea of Terrain and AI control other than the fact that they have previously appeared in games that suffered in other areas, then I will consider your arguement against these features null and void.

When Slayers_boxer (professional Starcraft player) build a bunker (incomplete) to block enemy zealot movement path in conjunction with a marine rush on a protoss player, the crowd cheered. It takes intimate knowledge of the size of buildings, size of units and pathfinding rules to know when it is possible to slot a building into a perfect watertight fit with the protoss base and build an strategy around it in under a minute and half while spotting the "weakness." Ah, the protoss player build his base wrong, and paid for it.

While I would consider this to be cheese, I would at the same time acknoledge that it is a masterful move. However, just because an art can be mastered doesn't mean that we want to persue it or that we consider it worth our time. I for one almost never bother to learn more than a couple of hotkeys. I don't memorize build orders. I tend to get distracted an accumulate surplus resources. I tend to regard it more casually that other players do, and that's the way I like to play.
Does this make my opinion less valuable than yours? No, I don't think it should. Casual players aren't fond of Micro, but there are quite a few of them out there. So why are you playing up hardcore professional players that only make up a tiny fraction of the gaming comunity as somthing to aspire to? Most of the high-school football teams I know look very little like the NFL on the field. Why should casual players of video games try to play like men who do this for a living?

[HSRTG]

*snip Earth 2150 complaints*

All of your criticisms of the game had nothing to do with the unit AI. In short, you have no argument.

*snip Starcraft example*

Yes, that is the hallmark of a professional player. Now how about some bones for the 99% of gamers who aren't professional?

[Stark]

You know, Conquest: Fronter Wars had multiple linked maps. It was also unfinished, unpolished and pretty much sucked if you didn't use Terrans. The single campaign was silly and the multi was unbalanced due to the unfinished teams.

Thus, multiple linked maps are a total failure. Nobody EVER mention that concept again: they did it in Conquest, and it sucked. Nobody will ever use this idea again, and anyone who doesn't want to play Starcraft should go get Conquest - the unfinished, unpolished mess that it is - and be happy because it's the only linked map game that will ever exist. Concept - rejected!

<Rambling, meaningless anecdote that demonstrates my total lack of perspective and inability to see beyond the way I like things to be done.>

For Americans, this has been a parody. Deformable terrain and supply inevitably leads to poor game design and balance? How fucking stupid can you be? This is SDN, nobody is ever going to let that fly. At least TRY.

[GuppyShark]

TBH I'm not sure what the appeal of linked maps was supposed to be. Since we're discussing hypotheticals, why not just have a huge map?

[SWPIGWANG]

I think this thread has been messed up the flame-war-ish stuff before, time to start a new one to start over?

*snip Earth 2150 complaints*

All of your criticisms of the game had nothing to do with the unit AI. In short, you have no argument.

I am NOT trying to start on whatever stuff that was conceeded on.

I'm just saying that its been tried in a game and how its flawed prevented it from being good.

The stranger part is why the game engine never caught on to the imagination of mod teams. Considering all the required features are there in the engine.

It wasn't even remembered for its features like how ground control was. (than again, ground control was actually a good game)

I guess probably parallels the original dark reign which was also forgotten despite its innovations in interface and powerful unit AI unparalleled at the time. It probably suffered the fate of being relased at the time around TA followed by the blizzard/westwood marketing machine.
------

Deformable terrain and supply inevitably leads to poor game design and balance? How fucking stupid can you be? This is SDN, nobody is ever going to let that fly. At least TRY.

I'm not saying that.

From the sample of games I've played, it is rare that those features are implemented in a way that actually improve gameplay and balance beyond the eye candy level. Even something like the Tiberium Sun engine allows deformable terran, but all it added up was irritation when rebuilding bases after cluster missile attacks. A large set of engines that implements terrain deformation under-utilize it to the point of near irrelevence to core gameplay. I have absolutely nothing against the terrain features of, say, company of heros.

As for supply, it is often considered the kind of boring micromangement or simple irritant that few players want and is generally abstracted out in all types of war games. If you have something in mind that would make this feature actually work, speak up.

[Fire Fly]

I would like to add another point and that is, I wish more RTS games would incorporate the concept of a fighting retreat. Rarely can you attack, find yourself in a bad situation, and try to extradite your attacking force. Often, when you attack, its a one way street. If your units were capable of continuing to fight will retreating, you could preserve your forces a lot more. Some games do incorporate this concept but it tends to be not worked out well. Its because of this reason that often, an attacking force will suffer enormous casualties or be completely annihilated. In addition, if it could be properly implemented, it would allow people to actually pull off better traps.

[Uraniun235]

I would like to add another point and that is, I wish more RTS games would incorporate the concept of a fighting retreat. Rarely can you attack, find yourself in a bad situation, and try to extradite your attacking force. Often, when you attack, its a one way street. If your units were capable of continuing to fight will retreating, you could preserve your forces a lot more. Some games do incorporate this concept but it tends to be not worked out well. Its because of this reason that often, an attacking force will suffer enormous casualties or be completely annihilated. In addition, if it could be properly implemented, it would allow people to actually pull off better traps.

Part of the problem there is that the concept of supply lines and fatigue is not implemented in the vast majority of RTS games. In a real war, your army cannot advance indefinitely; you will either stretch your supply lines to the breaking point and start to run out of supplies, or your troops will become exhausted and no longer fight as effectively. As such, while an attack may be pressed against a retreating enemy, it is not always advantageous to do so.

Furthermore, in many RTS games battles are often fought with the vast majority of your entire force against the majority of the enemy force, and sometimes span the entire front of the conflict. In a real war, a single battle will usually involve only a fraction of the total forces spread out across a larger front, and thus pursuing a retreating force too far could leave you highly vulnerable to encirclement (or to creating an opening whereby enemy forces could slip past and wreak havoc in the rear). To go even further, most RTS games don't really have a mechanism where by encirclement is really the danger that it is in real war.

Implementing "I want retreat to be really viable" will take more than just "set the can_fire_while_moving flag to 'yes'". (No, I'm not saying it's a bad thing.)

[Fire Fly]

I would like to add another point and that is, I wish more RTS games would incorporate the concept of a fighting retreat. Rarely can you attack, find yourself in a bad situation, and try to extradite your attacking force. Often, when you attack, its a one way street. If your units were capable of continuing to fight will retreating, you could preserve your forces a lot more. Some games do incorporate this concept but it tends to be not worked out well. Its because of this reason that often, an attacking force will suffer enormous casualties or be completely annihilated. In addition, if it could be properly implemented, it would allow people to actually pull off better traps.

Part of the problem there is that the concept of supply lines and fatigue is not implemented in the vast majority of RTS games. In a real war, your army cannot advance indefinitely; you will either stretch your supply lines to the breaking point and start to run out of supplies, or your troops will become exhausted and no longer fight as effectively. As such, while an attack may be pressed against a retreating enemy, it is not always advantageous to do so.

Furthermore, in many RTS games battles are often fought with the vast majority of your entire force against the majority of the enemy force, and sometimes span the entire front of the conflict. In a real war, a single battle will usually involve only a fraction of the total forces spread out across a larger front, and thus pursuing a retreating force too far could leave you highly vulnerable to encirclement (or to creating an opening whereby enemy forces could slip past and wreak havoc in the rear). To go even further, most RTS games don't really have a mechanism where by encirclement is really the danger that it is in real war.

Implementing "I want retreat to be really viable" will take more than just "set the can_fire_while_moving flag to 'yes'". (No, I'm not saying it's a bad thing.)

The "fire while falling back" was the simplest solution (in the context of current RTS games) that I could think of. In regards to your point about the a working mechanism to encircling, the best idea I could offer is a morale system with different HP values for different faces of a vehicle (ie the rear is more vulnerable). Both have already been demonstrated to be viable by games like Ground Control 2. I think all that is necessary is some brains to be able to incorporate all three (fighting retreat, morale, and different HP face values) together into an effective combination on a grand scale like Supreme Commander. It would be nice to be able to play on such a scale and try to incorporate some elements of real modern warfare instead of classical warfare where attrition wins the day.

[GuppyShark]

Cough, Cannae, cough.

[Uraniun235]

The "fire while falling back" was the simplest solution (in the context of current RTS games) that I could think of. In regards to your point about the a working mechanism to encircling, the best idea I could offer is a morale system with different HP values for different faces of a vehicle (ie the rear is more vulnerable). Both have already been demonstrated to be viable by games like Ground Control 2. I think all that is necessary is some brains to be able to incorporate all three (fighting retreat, morale, and different HP face values) together into an effective combination on a grand scale like Supreme Commander. It would be nice to be able to play on such a scale and try to incorporate some elements of real modern warfare instead of classical warfare where attrition wins the day.

Careful; making rear armor more vulnerable could make retreats even more disastrous.

[MKSheppard]

SWPIGWANG, go play Combat Mission, and then get back to me. I'm sure you'll deride it as a slow paced game that plays itself.

[Stark]

Careful; making rear armor more vulnerable could make retreats even more disastrous.

Like in Armada 2 where hits aft almost always destroyed the engine, meaning it was almost worthless to retreat ever?

[Fire Fly]

The "fire while falling back" was the simplest solution (in the context of current RTS games) that I could think of. In regards to your point about the a working mechanism to encircling, the best idea I could offer is a morale system with different HP values for different faces of a vehicle (ie the rear is more vulnerable). Both have already been demonstrated to be viable by games like Ground Control 2. I think all that is necessary is some brains to be able to incorporate all three (fighting retreat, morale, and different HP face values) together into an effective combination on a grand scale like Supreme Commander. It would be nice to be able to play on such a scale and try to incorporate some elements of real modern warfare instead of classical warfare where attrition wins the day.

Careful; making rear armor more vulnerable could make retreats even more disastrous.

What, they can't implement a system that mirrors the Allied tank retreat in the movie Battle of the Bulge?

I think the problem with retreating in current RTS games is that its not worth retreating; there's no incentive to retreat when 1) you can pump out a lot of cheap units to replace your losses and 2) it is actually to your disadvantage to retreat because the number of survivors is so small that its better to try and kill one more unit and just let them die and 3) if you retreat, it means you're not firing at the enemy. Now, these are not always true in all RTS games, but many games do not factor in some sort of retreat mechanism and so the player simply throws his forces away.

In addition, part of the reason so many units die in an attempted retreat is because you really can't control the speed at which your units can disengage. If ground units had a variable speed setting for walking/driving, then you could disengage your forces and actually preserve some form of a remnant. If I may again point to another game, the Total War series factors in fatigue and strength, which allows you to make some sort of a fighting withdrawal by out pacing the other side or by using missile troops/calvary to provide cover for retreating troops engaged in a line of battle.

In real warfare, ground units rarely engage enemy forces directly; there is some distance. In RTS games, units tend to be deployed right next to enemy units in a disordered melee. This is partially why retreating is so impracticable. RTS units have very short ranges. But if we again consider a game on the scale of Supreme Commander, units shouldn't have such a pathetic range. I'm not saying that all units should be able to shoot from afar but simply that the ranges do not permit a suitable retreat because your forces are forced to engage in a melee fashion. By the time you want to retreat, it simply is not doable.

To me, it seems simple (which I'm sure it isn't). If you could continue to fire and walk/run, factor in morale, variable HP values for different faces, factor in fatigue and variable marching speeds, weapon ranges, you could actually execute a decent and orderly retreat. But, I may simply be asking for too much.

[Darth Wong]

It would be nice if RTS games could evolve beyond the "ant colony" model of warfare that is currently in vogue. However, as PIGWANG has demonstrated, there are a lot of people who are so wedded to the ant colony model of attrition warfare with expendable mindless shit-quality drones that a new game would face the same problem that any non-Star Trek sci-fi show has always faced: there is an already-existing cultural juggernaut with a huge and mindlessly loyal fanbase, and they don't tolerate variation from their expectations.

Creating a model of RTS warfare that actually valued individual units, made strategic retreats viable, allowed entrenchment, treated terrain intelligently rather than using it as a mere "rat's maze wall location" system, and replaced speed-clicking with thoughtful strategic analysis would be great, but unfortunately, one must wonder whether the kind of blinkered reactionary bullshit demonstrated by PIGWANG would make it commercially unviable even if it's well put-together. You would think that, in a "strategy game", there would be moments where you would have to ponder your strategy.

[SWPIGWANG]

MKSheppard: I have CMBB, you twit.... now if only I have a credit card I could get the rest..... But my current level of income means I'm using a 4 year old computer which needs money pumped into first, so it'll have to wait.

On fighting retreats: If you never retreat in RTS, it probably means you aren't playing optimally. In any game with strong static defenses and penalty to fire on the move, there is a time to retreat behind a wall. In games like Warcraft3, it is inconceviable how it could be played if the hero never retreats from a skimish for resupply/healing. (and war3 is a extreme clickfesty blizz game) The real issue is short engagement times, making it often too hard/meaningless to retreat after fighting have started. Incidentally, the games that have no fire on the move(pursuing enemy can't do damage), no systems damage(no slowing down units), no quick unit kills (long health bar), and no armor facing favors retreat the best.

On encirclement: In some RTS game, encirclement is an real and serious tactical disadvantage. The attack power of large group of units in RTS is limited by the surface area of the formation in range with the enemy. Encirclement allows greater attack power with no less vulnerability. Of course, encirclement also prevents retreat. Lack of armor facing and resupply in most games make both less critical than it would sometimes be in real life of course.

[SWPIGWANG]

It would be nice to be able to play on such a scale and try to incorporate some elements of real modern warfare instead of classical warfare where attrition wins the day.

As long as there is terrain differences, there is always a time for maneuver. (reposition, retreat...etc)

It would be nice if RTS games could evolve beyond the "ant colony" model of warfare that is currently in vogue. However, as PIGWANG has demonstrated, there are a lot of people who are so wedded to the ant colony model of attrition warfare with expendable mindless shit-quality drones.....

Creating a model of RTS warfare that actually valued individual units, made strategic retreats viable, allowed entrenchment, treated terrain intelligently rather than using it as a mere "rat's maze wall location" system, and replaced speed-clicking with thoughtful strategic analysis would be great, but unfortunately

I think you are making a strawman out of a style over substance fallacy.

The mistake is to consider running the optimal ant colony as an trivial problem. The sheer cooridnation problem with less than effective command tools means that command and control would have to factor in the inefficiencies and inconsistancies in the system, becoming a control system for nonlinear random variable as oppose to one to one mapping between the mind and the units. That is like saying running the Soviet Union's Red Army takes less strategy than a German Army because the former had worst communication between levels of command and more man.

Really, the obsessive "micro-manager" is completely different from the "swarm of units" player. The micro-manager works so hard on mouse speed and other things because every unit count. They'll spend alot of their attention to saving one peon or one basic troop especially at early game. The kind of "basic" micromanagement that every micro-based player does is pulling damaged units from the front line, let the enemy target another unit, and returning the unit back to the front when it is no longer targeted. (mirror effect of concentrated fire) This is indeed a case of relatively stupid micro, but it shows that every unit matters. Seriously, if an RTS player doesn't value his units, how is it that he wins games? By clicking on the the empty map area record speed?

As I said in the above post, strategic retreat is always a viable option give a certain number of factors. It is not my problem that many players decide to play sub-optimally.

As for entrenchment, static and quesi-static (transforming artillery) defenses is an approximation for it. Yes it is an abstraction, but their shaping of the battlespace is similar and it is no more abstract than a tank that builds in 45 seconds.

As for terrain, there are already dozens of ways games treat terrain, in dramatically different manners at times. I don't see too much revolution happening in this sector. Everything from movement impedences, range boosting, spotting, defense boosts and such have been done.

[Stark]

That's hilarious. 'Running an ant colony' is complex and interesting, but you'll be damned if any other kind of real-time game could be. Your responses to ideas are so fantastically blinkered and repeditive it's awesome. Not only are you clearly not reading most of what anyone posts except you, you don't even make sense.

Running the Red Army takes less strategy than the German Army? There's that PIGWANG trademark use of the word 'strategy' again.

[SWPIGWANG]

*Typo: Fixed post*

Now read the last post again.

'Running an ant colony' is complex and interesting, but you'll be damned if any other kind of real-time game could be.

Of course they can be. I'm not contesting that.

What I am contesting is the claim that current RTS can be won by sending waves of units while being blindfolded and clicking at random areas on the map, which is how I read the claim.

----
I should note players do not always use strategy. That does not mean planning and strategy is useless in those games.

[Stark]

What? You've been saying that any 'real time' 'strategy' game that isn't like a genre-normal RTS will be boring/a failure/unplayable/you won't like it and you'll cry/etc for PAGES now. Nobody cares about your opinion - it's your awesome arrogance in simply saying that nobody should ever try to make a different kind of RTS that is objectionable.

I honestly don't know why you bother posting in this thread. You've been repeating yourself for days now - inventing reasons why innovation in game design is bad and everything is just fine as it is. You even have your very own use of military terms - something I've noticed in many RTS players, actually.

Someone is going to saying something bad about bland RTSs, or maybe suggest a different approach they might find more involving... and you'll just say 'na uh' AGAIN and AGAIN. Why? Obviously RTS's are your football team, but why would you even care if they made RTS's for adults? Your defensiveness (and your hilarious jibes at players looking for innovation - 'go play a TBS lol you n00b' etc) is just sad.

[SWPIGWANG]

You've been saying that any 'real time' 'strategy' game that isn't like a genre-normal RTS will be boring/a failure/unplayable/you won't like it and you'll cry/etc for PAGES now.

I honestly don't know why you bother posting in this thread. You've been repeating yourself for days now - inventing reasons why innovation in game design is bad and everything is just fine as it is.

I've dropped the claim that a game that is different will necessarily be bad. I did demonstrate that it had not been successful (player base-wise) up to this point.

The reason I post in this thread is two fold.
1. Arrogance concerning what is strategy. (those Realtime click-festers, I am more intelligent because I hate those games)
2. What I believe to be an mistaken belief that simply adding features would result in desired gameplay dynamics.

But really this thread has been too poisoned now it is pretty much off topic in the flame-war territory. It could be just me reading this wrong, but no one is correcting me on that.