Spring RTS Engine

Just an idea that I had and wanted to put out before I go to work today. I'll try to flesh it out more when I get home.

The basic concept is a mod centered around forcing teamwork. It would be designed for 4v4 (or 3v3 or 2v2 or whatever) play. There would be 4 different "races" to choose from, each representing a distinct branch of the war machine of whatever is at war. The game would be designed and balanced under the assumption that each of the 4 branches is played by one player on each team.

The idea is simple. Each branch, in addition to the obvious difference of having radically different units from the others, would be responsible for a different crucial aspect of the war effort. In my preliminary thinking, it would go something like this:

-Armor. The meat of the army; the close range stuff and spammable stuff. Reponsible for capturing and holding territory (building mexes and producing metal).

-Artillery. Long range stuff. Two ideas on the crucial aspect: either the Artillery player produces units that generate some sort of "command field" that provides significant bonuses to units in its area of effect (via Lua), or more likely a near-monopoly on stationary turrets/base defense.

-Air Force. What they do is obvious. Responsible for building drop pads for supplies to flow in (energy).

-Special Forces. Stealthy stuff, all special abilities go here (capture, rez, stealth, cloak, amphibious, all of the special stuff). Responsible for building detectors (radar, sonar, long range sight, seismic, decloak/intruder detection, whatever).

As you can see the sides would have to work together in order to get anything done.

For the moment I'm operating under the assumption that the players will be intelligent and will play to the purpose of the mod; it's obvious that there is no way to force players to conform to rules about sides, or sharing resources or working together, so we just assume good faith and don't worry about the idiots who fail to appreciate the concept.


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Since the community seems to have gotten even more defensive, accusatory, and legalistic, I offer the following.

Important Disclaimer. This is merely a mod concept presented to the community for discussion and refinement. This post does not constitute an offer, promise, agreement, or proposal for me to produce such a mod, nor does it constitute solicitation of an offer, promise, agreement, or proposal for another community member to produce such a mod.

Copyright Notice. This post, and the intellectual property presented therein, is the original work of Ryan Felix, holder of copyright on said post and intellectual property. Ryan Felix hereby releases this post, and the intellectual property presented therein, to the public domain, subject to one caveat: if the mod concept presented in this post is used as the basis for a mod for Spring or any other project, Ryan Felix wishes to be notified, and wishes to be credited with any original concepts presented in this post.

Thank you, Spring community, for making such notices and disclaimers feel requisite.

sounds like world in conflict - but still a good idea.

So, a similar role-based teamwork design to that of War Evolution or, alternatively, a good Dungeons & Dragons party, applied to military forces of limited scope to simulate a group of divisions/classes uniting into an army/society rather than individuals uniting into a team. Fair enough, Felix, you've engaged me.

However, if you desire to make this a reality, I suggest you head up a team gathered from those who seem interested - otherwise the idea may be buried and lost. I just got out of a meeting, but if you prod me, I can look around for people who might be interested in this.

teem fortrez?

Lots of people have thought of this, and personally, I think posting a copyright notice on a "hey, I've got an idea" post is exceptionally tacky.

Fairly sure that its a joke on all the license drama we've seen on the forums. Besides, other license issues in the spring community are FAR tackier, like slapping GPL notices on #define lists blatantly copy/pasted from Cavedog work.

Oh I like this idea. Count me in as a modeler and play tester if you want some help

I suggest that all of the 'sides' be able to do a little of everything - like, sure Air Force brings in most of the Energy economy for the team, but for the start of the game or whatever, the other 'sides' can build little Generators are don't have the output or efficiency of the Air Force side's E generators.

Same as everyone else being able to make cut-rate little metal extractors, because obviously the Armor guy isn't going to be able to be everywhere at once at the start of the game.


And everyone should be able to make basic infantry 'bots, so that the enemy Armor guy can't just rush your Air Force guy and completely destroy you.


On the other hand, how do we prevent everyone on a team from just building 3 extra constructors of their 'side', and just handing them out to their teammates as quickly as possible? Then the Air Force guy will be able to build Armor-side metal extractors, and have Artillery's long-range guns and stuff...



Still, though, the concept of "The x player won't be able to be everywhere at once for quite a while" seems to make conventional maps, like DeltaSeige, not work at all. Would this then impose a requirement for new maps - say, long, thin ones, where everyone starts at one end? "Armor guy, you go claim all the mexes for the team and then push forwards, Air Force guy, you stay in back and make E for the whole team before making planes, Artillery guy, you make turrets so we don't get rushed and start on that Big Bertha 5 minutes in, SpecFors guy, make some cloaked scouts and spy on the enemy base..."



On the other hand, how will the simplest things work? What's keeping the Armored player, with all the main metal income, sharing his metal evenly? He'd either have to be making more than he could possibly ever spend, or else intentionally gimping his production, otherwise all his teammates will be forever deprived of metal. Or is this something that LUA will somehow be able to fix?

LuaRules can:
- force sharing levels
- disallow resource sharing (ex: of the immediate variety)
- disallow unit transfers (by id, type, old team, new team, and captures)
- give and take resources from teams, and from individual units
- etc...

These are all easily implemented (CA already has gadgets that does them all).

* Unrelated note: CA also has a new LuaRules gadget that
disables direct unit control (FPS mode), for specific unit types.

/me shoots a glare at maelstrom

Interesting idea. Maybe as a very quick test of the concept make a mod where one side can build only flash (fast raider), another only stumpies (main assault), third side lugers, and fourth side banshees.

An issue this mod will have is that it's very hard to find players for obscure mods so a mod that requires 8 players for a basic match won't manage to get a game up very often.

Copyright Notice. This post, and the intellectual property presented therein, is the original work of Ryan Felix

I believe you mispelled world in conflict.

And phail.

For the moment I'm operating under the assumption that the players will be intelligent

don't worry about the idiots who fail to appreciate the concept.

Your assumption is false, and all players will fall into your idiot category. This mod will fail. 80% of players will go: WTF? I can't build mexx? This mod is broken! And ragequit under 1min. The 20% remaining will go: So, all sides but amored are unplayable, let's only play this one.

Players playing as a team in a team game is super extra rare on online internet games. And here not only must they defend and attack as one, but they even must evenly redistribute the ressources produced by only one guy! This just will never ever happen!

Imo if you want such separation of tasks between players, use a regular mod with comm sharing (choose same team in the lobby).

how about you dont use mex, but everyone can produce the same ammount of units in the same ammount of time, just different units, and then you have to defeat the enemies pretty much same force by using strategy and tactics

I'd say a bounded force size would be necessary for Day's proposal since otherwise it'll end up like Kernel Panic: He who spams moar wins.

I'm also not sure about how you'd give incentives for attacking. Without mexes there would be no easy targets on the field that would be easy to attack and with constant "econ" the only way to gain a force advantage is to lose less, if there's any kind of defense people will bunker up behind it in the hope that the enemy attacks, loses units to the defense and is thus weakened and can't win. In Gundam the lack of field targets works because bases are huge and hard to defend, defenses are weak once you have the right units and just a few bombers getting into his MMs will already do some economic damage.

How would you make attacks be a good idea in a situation where unit growth is constant?

KDR_11k wrote: How would you make attacks be a good idea in a situation where unit growth is constant?

Warcraft 3 solved that by creating upkeep. After a certain number of units (some units count as more than 1) you lose 30% of your gold income, and after another threshold you start losing 60%. As soon as your number of units is reduced below the thresholds, you go back to the smaller upkeep. At high level play, this lead to 3 sizes of armies:

1) The no upkeep army, for the man with few resources. It was max army size 50, i believe.
2) The small upkeep army, for a man with a resource advantage, at size 70. Having a resource advantage (in warcraft it would generally be twice the income, 2 goldmines vs 1 goldmine) would translate into a bigger army, but not too big, and a lot of wasted gold.
3) The unit-limit army: heavy upkeep (you waste 60% of your gold) but army size can go up to 100 units. This is the army you build right before a large attack, and each second that passes in which you have such a large army is a huge loss in economy, so you usually attack, attack, attack.

In spring a standing army costs nothing so that is not an incentive to attack. The fact that the economy is spread over the map is the incentive to attack. If you take out the spread economy, it might not work.

Warcraft has a bounded army size.

You could use energy to limit the amount of units you can have at once, just make them all require a certain amount to move.

That'd stop armies getting too big, or else they are useless

And the noobs will go "WHY MY TENKS NOT MOVE?!?!? THIS IS SHIT!". A WC food system is what you need.