Spring RTS Engine

Rock paper scissors is nessicary, you can't make an RTS fun without it. Without some kind of implimentation of RPS structure then the game just instantly slippery slopes and isn't really fun for either side.

What is slippery-slope?

How to make RPS fun

From Theory On Strategy:

In a multiplayer game, the new element of trying to outguess your opponent is added. The simplest multiplayer game is Rock/Paper/Scissors, which requires no logic or creativity. It is pure multiplayer strategy. The only differences between the rock, the paper, and the scissors are that they come in different orders in your mind. So if you are playing an opponent that you have a low oppinion of, you usually use paper. But if you are playing an opponent that you have a slightly higher opinion of, you usually use scissors. And so on.

The only way to predict what your opponent is going to use is to try to guess what your opponent thinks you are going to use, based on how smart you think that your opponent thinks that you are.

Almost every multiplayer strategy game involves figuring out what your opponent is going to do, and then reacting accordingly.

Rock/Paper/Scissors is just a simplified version of what happens in every strategy game: You do something depending on what you think your opponent is going to do. The difference is that in games there are an almost infinite number of possible strategies (and even if only 1% are good, that's still a theoretically infinite number of good strategies) and, since every strategy has a bunch of "good" things and "bad" things, it is easier to guess what your opponent is going to do.

It is possible to guess in R/P/S, just harder because there is no fundamental difference between the R, P, and S.

R/P/S
with different payoffs
read that awesome stratgeys stuffs posted by someone

Please dont turn my useful, guide that has saved millions of lives into a boring strategy discussion.

You either pwn noobs or you dont.

Yeah, I know. But I couldn't resist the chance to show off how much time I've spent thinking about strategy.

Especially after SwiftSpear posted about a rival strategy article.

I vote that slippery slope theory is a noob idea on strategy, and so is actually an example of what this thread is all about

Ches rules. You win when you are smarter than your opponent. Rock Paper Scissors just puts an element of luck into games, allowing the less skillful players to have a chance of beating the more skillful players.

I guess at least unequal payoffs in RPS mean that in stead of blind random choice between 1 of 3 possible options is the best strategy, then random choice of 1 of 3 (or whatever) possible strategies with a carefully judged weighting (10% option 1, 25% option 2 and 65% option 3 for example) will be the best strategy. But the win in an individual instance (of which there may be many within a game) is still based on luck, not skill.....

In theory, there is nothing wrong with RPS, if it is not overdone.
Example Starcraft:
You notice the enemy Protoss is going for Carriers (huge, "level 3" spaceships), so as a Terran you build Goliaths (Mechs with SAM missles) and turrets.
If you scouted his tech early enough, you might be able to fight off the Carriers.
This is fine for me

Slippery slope, Sun Tzu himself wrote about how the art of war is deception.

If he is taking his ease, give him no rest. If his forces are united, separate them.

Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected.

If you can sacrifice 25% of your troops to draw away the enemy, the other 75% will be that much more devastating.

Decoys have value even if they are lost it will help strengthen your attack. Slippery slope only applies to old school colonial war type battles. While I can understand what you are saying diversionary forces are itegral to victory. At the end of the day a few shots fired with lots of cheap fodder units used for radar blips will win a battle.

jellyman wrote:Rock Paper Scissors just puts an element of luck into games, allowing the less skillful players to have a chance of beating the more skillful players.

Do you really think that?

It is what makes anything have STRATEGY. Without R/P/S, the game becomes just an arm wrestling match of who can click the fastest. But what makes any game a strategy game is that you have to try to guess what your opponent is going to do, and then decide what would be the most effective against it. R/P/S is just the simplified version of that.

You mentioned chess. Chess played at the highest level is ENTIRELY R/P/S. The entire game is about trying to predict your opponent's intentions, and then trying to counter them. THAT IS WHAT R/P/S IS

OK, I'll give you an example, to further grind reality into your head:

Say that it late-early game. Most of the pieces are deployed, and you are in a position to castle. If you castle, you would be temporarily set back, for a better late-game position. If instead you try to prevent your opponent from castling, you would have a better short term position, but at the expense of defense. Which option you decide to take is based off of what you think your opponent is going to do. If you think he is going to attack your king soon, you should castle. If you think that he is going to castle soon, you should attack him. If you think that attacking him would spring a trap, you should castle. If you think that he is getting ready to attack for control of the center, you should deploy more pieces.

Unless you are an infinitely powerful supercomputer who can perfectly analyse the game and figure out for sure that if you do a certain move, you will win 30 moves later, or you are just learning how to play chess and are just trying to figure out good formations, chess is a series of R/P/S games.

That's what gives it strategy.

Note: I'm talking about multiplayer strategy, which some of you may call tactics. But the only difference between strategy and tactics is that strategy is the long term "I will try to get a good economy and then heavy tanks because that should counter what he is probably going to do" and tactics is the short term "I bet those 3 peewees will head to that hole in my defenses, so I will quick run over there and lay a few mines."

P.S. That was a long post.

smoth wrote:Slippery slope only applies to old school colonial war type battles. While I can understand what you are saying diversionary forces are itegral to victory. At the end of the day a few shots fired with lots of cheap fodder units used for radar blips will win a battle.

You are also wrong. Slippery slope is not:

"when you lose a few units your opponent will crush you."

Slippery slope (as it applies to TA / Spring) is:

"If your opponent wins the first few skirmishes and expands over half of the map, even if you suddenly start playing really well, you will probably lose."

Slippery slope is more the concept of momentum, and that early losses will make it harder to win the game. It is that the early game matters enough to affect the late game.

Without Slippery Slope, the early game has no importance and is just a "practice" for the late game.

Map Control FTW

I think that the "Slippery slope" argument only applies if the inital skirmishes are so important that you don't have any possibility to win at all if you lose them. I don't belive Spring (at least not all of it mods) suffer from this. It does become quite a complex subject though.
I could write a bit on the subject, but I don't have the time right now, I will say though that I don't belive Spring suffers from slippery slope as such, and my arguments can be condensed in a few words;
Wreckage, map control, risky/clever tactics, metal makers, information.

Basically, losing the initial skirmishes might put you at a disadvantage (assuming the skirmishes are on the middle of the map), but you have far from lost just because of that. On small maps they matter more of course, but on larger (comet catcher, painted desert etc) you still have a lot of options that can lead to victory after losing the first battles.


All strategy games obviously have some kind of RPS as well, but when I talk about it at least it usually means that what is important is what units you have (pikemen vs. cavalry, soldiers vs. pikemen, cavalry vs. soldiers) and that is what determines the battle. While a game that doesn't have RPS as such is one where the maneuvering, flanking and weapon properties determines the battle.
Or, that's the best explanation I have to say what I think is the difference between a RPS game and one that isn't.
TA for example isn't a RPS game in my mind, but that doesn't mean it isn't one in a way in reality. You wouldn't put a Can to attack gunships if you could help it, because a Slasher is much better, thus it is really a RPS, but still not one in my mind. Yeah, kind of confusing perhaps, but hopefully you understand what I mean.

I'd say slippery slope is very much in evidence in AA at least. I've played games where I've been crippled in the first five minutes and games where I've crippled my opponent in the same amount of time. It's not gaurnteed by any means but most games are won in the first fifteen minutes.

The biggest exception to this I've found is in ffa games on large maps, if your base gets ravaged it is possible to rebuild in secret while the stronger players duke it out.

Slippery slope does NOT mean that it is impossible to win after making a mistake early game, it just means that it is harder.

And so is present in every RTS ever made.

Even Spring.

Well, that's not what the Sirlin.net article said, and if it is what you claim, then it becomes a moot point in my opinion.
It would be possible to create a mod for Spring however which gives you a kind of an advantage if you are on the loosing side, but I'm not sure it is possible to do it on the same magnitude as the puzzle fighter game.

I quoteth:

sirlin.net wrote:Even some of the very best strategy games (chess and Starcraft, for example) suffer from slippery slope. That means that once one player begins to lose by a little bit, he├óÔé¼Ôäós at a disadvantage and likely to fall further and further behind. In this type of game, one player usually loses long before the game is technically over, which isn├óÔé¼Ôäót exactly fun.

"Once one player begins to lose by a little bit, he's at a disadvantage and likely to fall further and further behind."

The only way you start losing in a RTS is if it is harder for you to win, because there is only one objective: Kill your opponent. And so you are losing if it is harder for you to do that, which, in a RTS, means that it is harder to defend yourself too. And so you are more likely to start losing more.

Anyways, yeah, we're going off on a tangent. This sorta started as a joke thread, and now it has desintrigrated into a strategy argument.

Yeah, just one last post

I never liked Sirlin.net myself, but what I meant was;

There basically aren├óÔé¼Ôäót comebacks in Starcraft. And just as in chess, the moment of loss comes long before the actual conditions of the game ending are fulfilled. As fun as Starcraft is, this slippery slope aspect definitely detracts from the experience.

Where I belive Spring does have comebacks (or am I only fooling myself? I know I have done it myself in both OTA and XTA, but then again that was on an average player skill level. Also possible in SWTA at the average skill level at the very least).
A suprise air drop would be an example of a very possible comeback depending on your enemy forces, their defence and the mod used obviously.

They also go on to claim that fighter games doesn't have any slippery slope, just because you still have all your moves left. Only claiming that the loss of health is a very tiny slippery slope, and only when you are at such a low amount of health that you can't block. But why is this? Are you not at a very large disadvantage if your enemy has full health and you only have half of your health left? Is it only damage potential that determines slippery slope according to them or what is it?

Yeah, the main sirlin ideas are sound, but the supporting evidence has a bunch of errors.

But what I think he meant by "there arent comebacks" is that "it is difficult to win when your opponent took an early commanding lead"

I guess it depends on which element of rock paper scissors you are talking about. Lindir, you seem to be talking about the 'psychological' element - i.e. predicting what your opponent would do next. I tend to look at games very strongly from a 'computational' point of view - what would a totally rational player who has calculated all the odds do to mathematically maximise the odds. When I think strategy I automatically think 'computational' but I guess you could consider the psychological element to be strategy as well.

My experience in chess is that the psychological element is weak, although not totally non existant. In the 'castle or not' dilemna, I would consider each option and weigh up disadvantages. I assume that if I cancel the opponent will try and do what is worse for me - and consider 'whats the worst he can do to me if I castle'. If that is better than the worst I think he can do if I don't castle I will castle. Generally the worse that can happen if you don't castle involves nasty stuff involving the king trapped in the center, so I castle.

However the psychological element can come into play in chess. If you know that your opponent likes playing the type of play that happens if you chose say an 'open' game style, and hates playing in 'closed' game styles, you may chose a closed game style to put him under pressure. However you can play a very strong game of chess without considering these factors at all.

I have learned in Spring that considering the 'psychological' element pays dividends, and I guess RPS is part of that. But RPS also adds the luck element. Because often you are playing against players you don't know very well. You know that most players prefer a certain style of play such as 'rock' for instance, and can consider going for the 'paper' play to take advantage. You may win a fair few games, but in an individual game it is partly luck whether you happen to be playing against another 'rock' player, or whether you happen to be playing against a 'scissors' player instead.

Of course scouting comes into it, as does the fact that one RPS decision will not decide the game, but it takes several, and you can play based on early decisions. For instance you may chose the early air attack route hoping to take advantage of a player going strong land with little AA. After that attack you then switch to strong land attack hoping to catcth the opponent with too much AA and not enough ground defence.

So I was a bit strong suggesting that all RPS does is add luck. But there is an element of luck, which I strongly dislike, and adds some psychological element which I'm not a big fan of, but tolerate, and understand how other players can find it a rewarding element of the game play.

RPS 25