Spring RTS Engine

First, a quick introduction and some ground rules for this thread.

I'm SpliFF, from Australia. I've been involved with playing Spring and writing Spring widgets (lua scripts) for about 3 months now. I've been studying existing mods and the Spring source code and I've compiled it on Windows and Linux. I am writing a Lua Manual for Spring which is already in excess of 30 pages.

Before this I was writing mods for Dawn Of War and Supreme Commander, about half of which were actually released (I'm very fussy about releasing incomplete mods). I am also somewhat experienced in 3d modelling and I work as a Web Developer with access to high-ping/load servers. I own original CD's of over 60 strategy games (not an exaggeration) including TA.

Below is the outline of my new Spring mod I started today. It is based on concepts from my Advanced Tactics mod, Epic W40k (table top game), Rome TW and a few other non-conventional strategy titles. I'm porting the concepts and code to Spring because I'm sick of trying to work around bugs and poor documentation in closed-source commercial games.

Anyway, what all that should tell you about me is I'm no stranger to modding or strategy titles. So with that lodged in your brain please consider the following rules before commenting:

* No comments on how impossible you think this will be to write (I probably know more about that than you).
* No asking me when it will be done (one day. i'll update this thread with news)
* No comments about how this is like this or that or some idea you had (i'm not claiming originality, just intent)

What I would like is for people to read the proposal carefully and tell me if you see any major flaws or potential improvements in general gameplay.

Thanks for listening.

Spring: Global Annihilation
GA is a spring mod set a few centuries from now amongst the blasted ruins of Earth. With space travel a long forgotten dream, the survivors of World Wars 3 and 4 have banded together into armed factions to fight over the remains of once-great cities and precious farming land. Even within factions most allegiances are stretched and mutiny and civil unrest are never far away.

Factions
Each player is a general in one of the many large armies fighting over the dwindling resources of Earth. There is no limit to the number of factions except that only highly ranked generals may start new ones. Factions have 'presence' in one or more regions on the global map and the extent of the factions presence, more than the number of generals, determines a factions true power.

Rank
Completing objectives and killing enemy units will gain you rank, you also lose it for failures. Rank is your primary 'resource' in the game. The higher your rank, the more (and better) units you may control in future battles. Higher ranks also receive special priviledges such as control of super-units and nuclear strikes. In future versions the highest ranked generals will also be able to control alliances, army deployment and production on the global map.

Although rank is generally assigned automatically it is not totally immune to politics. High ranked players may grant or penalise limited amounts of rank to faction members who display considerable valor or stupidity in battle. You can also gain rank through desertion to a lesser faction (the faction can bribe you with a higher rank). To improve faction balance generals may never defect to a more powerful faction.

Gameplay
Games are automatically hosted by the Global Annihilation server. When players join their first game they are placed as a low ranked general in the weakest faction. In your first game you will receive a small allocation of troops and a set of orders for the battle. During the setup phase you will choose units from your allocation and place them on the map within your allocated setup area.

When the game starts begin manuevering your units towards your assigned objectives. You can focus on a single one or split your troops to attempt multiple objectives.
After 15 minutes of play each team will learn the enemy objectives as well. At this point you may need to adapt your strategy to intercept. The round will end when:
* the game timer ends (usually 30 mins from setup), or
* a team completes all its objectives, or gains a set amount of rank, or
* only 1 faction remains (others have fled or been destroyed)

Units
Unlike many Spring mods (and RTS games in general) you do not produce units during the game. Instead units (and sometimes structures) are allocated to you at the beginning of the game or as reinforcements. Allocations are based on a number of factors that include:
* Your factions tech level (based on labs and factories controlled)
* Your factions popularity with the local civilian tribes (civilian units may join you team for the battle)
* Your rank (defines the percentage of available faction units you personally command.)
* Reinforcements may be automatically gifted when you complete an objective.

Objectives
To keep gameplay fluid and exciting each game will automatically generate objectives. Objectives are usually variations on the following mission types:
* Take & Hold: You will be directed to capture a map location. To do so you must hold the 'balance of power' in the area surrounding the objective for a given amount of time.
* Destroy: You will be directed to assasinate an enemy or civilian unit or destroy a structure.
* Escort: Prevent a given unit, resource or structure from being destroyed until it reaches a given location, or the game ends.
* Survive: An order to minimise casualties or simply flee. You'll be rewarded extra rank for units that escape destruction.

Persistence
Battles do not take place in isolation but instead inherit from the global and regional situation and recent battles. Surviving units keep their experience across battles and may be put back into action in future games. Wreckage and defence emplacements may already exist under the control of the defending faction or even civilian militias. Even available start locations are affected by a factions previous domination of a region (the defenders usually get a larger setup zone).

Nice, the suffix Annihilation might cause confusion or problems, however Id like to see this implemented, it would make for an interesting use fo the spring engine, good luck!

He's not using ta models.

Agree about the name. Concept sounds good, except I'm confused - does the faction itself have a rank, or only the player? That is, does the faction have a fixed amount of unit income, and the rank of the player determines their portion of it? Or do factions with more ranks mean more units for that faction? Or a compromise thereof?

If rank/power is faction-wide, then you have a problem of balance. The faction that wins many battles gets a huge advantage over its adversaries, and so becomes impossible to confront.

Alternately, if the rank simply determines power within the faction, then you hit a problem of balance, but within the faction. On the one hand, the factions are balanced... but within the faction, you've got one player doing everything while a bunch of low-ranked n00bs are effectively spectators.

Imho, the best would be a compromise - players get an allocated portion of the faction's common units, but there are also a few fixed hero units that a player gets a fixed limit of (regardless of rank) and so filling out that roster of heros is important for n00bs and allies of said n00bs (that is, you want to get a 2nd B-1 bomber, but your hero roster is full, so you need to level up a n00b on your team to get him a B-1). Thus, if you had a game between two teams of factions where the faction is of equal power, but the players of are different rank, then the balance would be similar except that the higher-ranked players would have a few more special-units in their roster that would open up some special attacks.

Do battles involve the whole faction, or does each player branch off and fight their own battles, supporting their faction? If player success influences faction success, then there is a problem of elitism - nobody would want newbies in the faction, since they'd drag down your success. Unless you have a n00b-oriented mode where n00bs must pay their dues as mercenaries for main factions or something while they build up enough rank to get accepted to a faction.

Sounds really good, if not extremely ambitious. Please rethink the name though.

Call it "Hoi gets a cookie"
Do NOT replace the last o with a c in cookie!

You said you don't want comments on the feasability so I'll just trust you to run the custom server you need and design your custom lobby that will respect the limits for the battle conditions of the faction you play as well as somehow making that not turn into a huge slippery slope despite one victory giving advantages for the next battle... Good luck with your MMORTS. Oh and have fun trying to make people play your game afterwards.

KDR_11k wrote:You said you don't want comments on the feasability so I'll just trust you to run the custom server you need and design your custom lobby that will respect the limits for the battle conditions of the faction you play as well as somehow making that not turn into a huge slippery slope despite one victory giving advantages for the next battle... Good luck with your MMORTS.

Well, it'd be really tricky but he could do it without the lobby approach. Have it handled by a network of lobby-bots which connect to a 3rd-party app that handles the metagame. Metagame would best be web-based. So you do a webapp for the metagame, which the lobby-bots connect to and they manage the invitations to their games.

For example, on the web-based metagame you say you're going to attack X and recruit Y as an ally, and then in the Spring client the three of you get a request from bot Z to join his battle room.

Heheh, it'd be nice, actually, to implement conventional war/boardgames like that. Like Risk, or Diplomacy, or Cosmic Encounter.

Or Boneyards.

Is there an "invite" functionality for lobbies?

Thanks for the responses

The name can change, though I really like it. I'll reserve that decision until I make a final decision on whether to dump OTA. I would prefer to bring in custom models, possibly even shorten the dev time by rebuilding the GPL'd warzone2100 models, but there is still a serious time hit there if I do not have some serious modellers to rebuild the connectors, textures and animations 3DO style. License issues aside, OTA is just much, much easier. I've had some offers though so we'll see.

Rank only applies to generals. Factions increase their power through 'presence', or more precisely, the accumulation of lands and equipment and subjugation of civilian tribes.

The faction "slippery slope" is indeed a big issue. I have played many online games where the largest faction/player ended up several orders of magnitude more powerful than the least. I'm hoping to mitigate this in several ways:

1.) Allow high ranked generals to increase their personal ranking at the expense of their faction by deserting to a lesser faction. The granting of rank is essentially free for the faction so they gain a good player but lose nothing. Although the faction joined may have less power the player has a larger share of that power relative to their last 'job'. The point is to encourage good players to leave the top factions. As noted earlier the game prohibits the reverse (deserting to a more powerful faction).

2.) Make civilians essentially hostile to large factions (call it a distrust of central government). The civilians will provide support to lesser factions in the form of free units or better factory and lab efficiency.

3.) Make civilian rebellions and uprisings more frequent so that large factions are forced to retake their own provinces or disband units for militia (law enforcement) duties. The result being that large factions face additional strain on resources that smaller factions do not.

4.) Provide game mechanisms to encourage smaller factions to ally or merge.

The above are really justifications. The intention is to ensure that larger factions have more enemies (including internal ones) which makes keeping the top spot very difficult. This is like leading in Mario Cart. It's fun and you're winning, but every bastard keeps hitting you with shells :D

This leaves the second issue of balance within factions. If a player has more/better units then they can capture more objectives/kill more units etc. That's a hard one. I can share the rank from battle objectives between all playing members of the winning faction. This has the advantage of encouraging faction members to cooperate rather than compete over the same objectives. On the other hand players who contribute very little get more rank than they might have deserved. Rank needs to be a calculation of effectiveness relative to your resources. But how to calculate that? Maybe an attrition system similar to the one I propose for factions? Somehow high-ranked players have to work harder for their respect.

Finally the lobby. For simplicity sake I was going to let the lobby bot decide the location based on the alliegances of the players waiting for a game. If players from factions A, B and Z are waiting in the lobby then the battle might take place on A's turf with B and Z attacking. Maybe a voting system when things are flexible.

KDR_11k wrote:custom server you need and design your custom lobby that will respect the limits for the battle conditions of the faction you play as well as somehow making that not turn into a huge slippery slope despite one victory giving advantages for the next battle...

Or work with the current lobby to be more flexible,(If we have single player campaigns in the future, we will want to represent them nicely too, and different mods will want to represent them differently aswel, so we might want to make it more flexible anyway.
As for the slippery slope, one side winning does not need to be such a bad thing, as long as players still have chances to play cool missions. And some random events could push it a little.

serious modellers

3DO style

Heh.

Global Annihilation>Global Domination.

Jasper1984 wrote:As for the slippery slope, one side winning does not need to be such a bad thing, as long as players still have chances to play cool missions.

How cool would it be to play missions where your opponents get more and better units than you?

It'd need some incentive for smaller factions to gang up on large factions more than they fight each other.

Or maybe it wouldn't require an incentive, so long as you could only attack factions whose territory borders yours. Large territory = multiple borders. If there were some way to co-ordinate attacks, it'd be much more difficult to retain control of land when you're getting assaulted 3v1.

KDR_11k wrote:How cool would it be to play missions where your opponents get more and better units than you?

Guerrilla warfare? Maybe give some better units like that specifically to the losers, or maybe on 'semi-contested' areas, as in resistance forces? Simulating supply lines and consequences when they are broken could be cool too.
Also commandos-style missions would be cool, but SpliFFs goals are ambitious already.

SpliFF wrote:License issues aside, OTA is just much, much easier.

Have you considered other mods, like EE. EE is nearly unplayed currently, and i think there might be some good units there. As i remember it, i thought the units you got in EE were too bland, tank -> bigger tank ->yet bigger tank, but still there probably are good models in there.

I'll bet you've played Emperor: Battle for Dune. Combine that with the single player from Dark Crusade, and that's what this idea reminds me of, but MMO style.

The use of WZ2100 models would be a good way to kick-start the project, and keep with the post-apocalyptic theme. I've always wanted to see a game like this: it will be a good application of the Spring engine.

Jasper1984 wrote:

SpliFF wrote:License issues aside, OTA is just much, much easier.

Have you considered other mods, like EE. EE is nearly unplayed currently, and i think there might be some good units there. As i remember it, i thought the units you got in EE were too bland, tank -> bigger tank ->yet bigger tank, but still there probably are good models in there.

EE's models are not up for grabs.

You can also introduce random events and justify it somehow(shouldnt be a problem).
bigger factions or higher ranked players would be more susaptible to all kinds of cataclysms in the form of machinery melfunctions,sudden revolts,spontaneous combustions due to some melfunction :)etc..
You can also make supply a crucial and more complex than usual element wich will mean that larger forces would be harder to control and keep supplied.
Maybe devide it to a few supply systems,each one needed at different force sizes and may be more or less complex than others.
for example,light units and low tech units wouldnt need cumbersome energy supply systems and can just be completly autonimous while heavy high tech stuff need external power grids or power supply or manual refuel or a certain substance etc..
Or maybe make high tech units rewarding but also very punishing if mishandeled.

Jasper1984 wrote:

SpliFF wrote:License issues aside, OTA is just much, much easier.

Have you considered other mods, like EE. EE is nearly unplayed currently, and i think there might be some good units there. As i remember it, i thought the units you got in EE were too bland, tank -> bigger tank ->yet bigger tank, but still there probably are good models in there.

I like how people just assume they can take what they want because the *a mods do.

I think the ancient Roman empire provides a good model for faction balance. For most of its existence the Roman Empire was militarily capable of defeating nearly any enemy, including other empires.

In practical terms however they could usually not handle a campaign of that scale. Internal political factors and threats on other borders usually required campaigns to involve a strong attack followed by withdrawal of the bulk of its army and prolonged occupation via small garrisons. In other words, Romes fighting legions were not a single unstoppable legion but rather a dispersed army that relied on the threat of reinforcements and punitive measures to keep regions under its thumb.

More importantly though the internal factions within the empire spent as much time backstabbing each other as they did uniting against other nations. Before its fall the Roman Empire was essentially composed of two seperate empires (eastern and western).

So perhaps the trick to faction balance is to create a gameplay mechanic where a large faction can be forced into a civil war where all faction players are forced to chose between loyalty or rebellion (or auto-balanced). That would really spice things up as your friends suddenly become your enemies!

For player rank i think i'll make your battle rank bonus relative to the size of the force you control, your faction force, and the enemy force. Players/Teams who field more units have to achieve more kills and objectives to receive the same rank bonus as smaller teams. This also provides an incentive to field less units than your full allocation in order to acheive a better rank bonus (at the risk of losing completely).

In other words, something like:
rank_bonus = (objectives_rank + kills_rank) * (enemy_units_deployed / faction_units_deployed) * (total_units / your_units)