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[bobthedinosaur]

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[thesleepless]

well yes there's a few rtses without basebuilding or resource management myth for example, DoW2 is heading in that direction and focuses more on unit micromangement and use of cover

TA allowed lots of things like radar jamming/stealth stuff to help change the gameplay around putting some emphasis on information as opposed to just numbers

there's diplomacy, not often emphasised in RTS games could make for interesting gameplay

[Argh]

A couple of thoughts:

1. Starcraft / Warcraft and C&C pioneered a diminishing resource economy, where eventually all of the resources just plain run out. This provides a very different model than the OTA economic growth sequence, where eventually growth becomes exponential, and only stops because of outside factors. This leads to a very different game, because your loss is directly the enemy's gain, whereas this relationship is more theoretical than actual in OTA games, where economics may eventually make any early gains or losses moot.

2. Warcraft III, DoW II (and, one presumes, StarCraft II) feature hero-centered designs, where heroes are a growing resource, somewhat offsetting the diminishing resources available overall. DoW I had this feature, but it was less strong than in Warcraft III, where leveling the heroes against creeps is a practical necessity even for competitive play.

3. Don't forget that there are games, starting with the venerable Battlezone II, where, eschewing a hero-based game, it instead gives the player strong incentives to take personal command of combat units. This is something that can be done in Spring, but until KDR developed his jet sim, there had been little substantial work done towards developing the user interfaces required, and Spring's stock system is wholly unsuitable for this job.

4. There are literally dozens of board / tabletop game designs based around either points systems, or giving each player dominion over parts of the board at the start of play, instead of having them develop an economy per se. The problem there is complexity, and of course scenario systems would probably require a dynamic map, built from tiles.

5. Then there's the Kohan model, where cities are potentials for economics and tech development, but have a flat development cycle, where eventually all high-end cities of a given faction are largely the same (with the crucial difference of which facility you don't have in a given town, something the game's designers tried to make a tricky choice).

Econ-building of the OTA sort is, basically, totally un-necessary to build a RTS.

It is featured in a lot of games because people like messing with their simulated towns, and it keeps ramping straightforward... but it could just as easily be abolished, giving people entirely other options.

[yuritch]

One more way is like it was done in Blitzkrieg (WW2 RTS for those who don't know). That's for campaign mode ofc, in MP it's different.

Player has a military rank (which goes up based on mission performance), and can command a number of units based on his rank (for ex. you start the game with 3 tanks and 3 arty, next rank gives you 1 more of both, etc.). Those 'core' units carry their experience over from mission to mission. Player can upgrade the units themselves to any type available at that point to his faction between missions (or he can complete some special missions and gain some non-standard upgrades as a reward). So it's like a hero-centric gameplay, but all of your core group are 'heroes' (and they aren't that much more powerful than normal units of the same type, experience gives relatively small bonuses).

There is no base building, no resource gathering - at the start of mission you're given your units and you have to complete objectives with just that (and often with some 'auxiliary' units that won't carry over to further missions). The only ways for you to improve your forces are to perform better so you're given higher rank (and corresponding 'unit slots') sooner in the campaign, and to do 'special' missions so you can fill those slots with better units.

[Argh]

Both Myth (and for that matter, one of my all-time favorite games- Warhammer: Shadow of the Horned Rat) used similar systems. In Myth, you'd see guys you leveled up in later missions, meaning that to beat it on hard, you absolutely had to keep certain guys alive and level them up, and in Warhammer, you not only leveled your units, giving you more guys (potentially, if you had the money, mind you) but your heroes gained important abilities- and leveling a unit made them a LOT more effective, making leveling a big deal, even sometimes at the cost of deliberately taking more casualties than was totally efficient.

I really like the idea of a game where units gain abilities if you keep them alive. That makes play a lot more interesting, imo. If you can't resurrect them, then there's hardly any reason not to allow their eventual buffs to get quite strong, imo, giving you serious leverage over time, and an alternative to simply teching up. However, to make that work, you really have to have healing spells implemented, or insanely-fast health recharge when out of combat, which would facilitate kiting.

[Otherside]

i wish warhammer dark Omen worked on windows XP loved that game

[smoth]

S44 has the flags and sws has the waypoints. Gundam uses a constant resource system.

Then there are games like CBC generals where you have money+base expansion. And abilities that come on an experience basis.

Metal fatigue was interesting because you could retrieve enemy weapons on the battlefield

[Pxtl]

Battlezone 1 had a nice resource model, in that it went with depleting resources a-la C&C, but they depleted really, really fast... but kills dropped resources. So in effect, the game was all reclamation-based. An analogue to this in Spring would be like playing CA on a metalless map with a bunch of reclaimable metal features dropped at the beginning of the round.

[Erik]

A depleting ressource system is definately one of my favourite aspects since its avoids games becoming long and stale and also forces players to expand and take control of the map.
Other aspects that make RTS interesting are special abilties for units ( see C&C generals and RA3) and supportive player abilties ( however destructive stuff turns out to be rather bland but abilities like scout planes and emergency repair are interesting).
Another thing is to make the game fast paced by disencouraging defensive playstyles and increasing the importance of individual units.
Also stealth options and fast transportantion units can add great possibilities for ambushes.
I wouldnt lay to much emphasis on a tiered tech system, more than 2 tiers will most likely turn out bad by limiting the player too much, see all those games with one or two strategies per faction (again C&C Generals is a good example, but most RTS i know are similar).
Dont reward spamming, neither high nor low tech units. The correct counter should easily reduce an army of one type only to dust.

[KDR_11k]

If you don't want numbers, resources or RPS then how about looking at an FPS?

[Cabbage]

Ground Control (the first one)

[Google_Frog]

I think RTS could be boiled down to deciding how to split resources between immediate gain and investment in the future. Resource can be anything (metal, bp, XP, credits, space) and there are degrees of the future which can make it very complex. For example a turret is a different kind of future investment than econ and a raider can be used constantly throughout the future.

[bobthedinosaur]

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[JohannesH]

I assume with better unit AIs that RTS games will start to become a FPS of AIs with the perspective of a commander. Not spring per se, but games developed for new technology.

That doesnt really make sense to me... Why have these complex processes run by the AIs, where player involvement is not rewarded? Might as well make it much simpler system, where the decisions involved for the player are similar, but without the useless clutter.

[Pxtl]

Fundamentally, aren't Spring units a jump-button away from being FPS soldiers? I mean, they can move in any direction and fire while moving. The main distinction are slow rotation rates. You watch CA Glaives with the Autoswarm Lua running and they look like FPS bots.

[bobthedinosaur]

@

[Argh]

It's not the jump button that's the problem.

It's the lack of strafe, the poor design of movement vs. aiming, and UI systems that allow for fast context switches and good clean control schemas that are straightforward and don't break.

Basically, adding jump is the easy part. The hard part is making the UI work well enough, especially if you're going to have non-insta-turn for characters.

This is on my list of things to mess with, once I am clear of a few other things on my plate.

Oh, and Bob, hitboxes, etc., are just refinement steps. Right now, it'd be very hard to make a really solid Doom clone on Spring- the issues are mainly controls.

[Saktoth]

In CA, Pyro and Can have jump. You can and often do dodge projectiles using it.

There was a surprisingly good Spring FPS being worked on but the new Spring version broke it.

At the core of almost all RTS is the Tech/Econ beats Safe/Defensive beats Rush/Aggressive beats Tech/Econ.

Its an RPS mechanic. So when you think about building an army with the correct counter mechanics, its the same dynamic at the core of the econ/army/defense decision that you have to balance over the course of the game. Its about investing your resources in the correct manner to counter your enemies decisions. To make these choices, you need intelligence to determine what the enemy is doing (while not letting him do the same), and making educated guesses on his future investments and plans based on that data. Resources and investments are not just cash monies though, your attention/micro, units in field, and your territorial positions are all both 'resources and investments' that can be exchanged/acquired for specific gains in other advantages/resources.

So really the three keys are intelligence to make decisions, investment in specific choices, and counter mechanics to allow your investments to beat the enemy.

Though there is a difference between superior decisions (It is always a good idea to do x over y) and countering decisions (If he does x you should do y). Most games with enough freedom will have both though (IE, its rarely a good idea to do nothing all game but build a little terraform fortress around your commander). A game that is merely execution of the superior strategies can be very fun, but i think there is more longevity and engagement in a game that relies more on making correct decisions in response to the enemy.

[Argh]

It doesn't need to have that RPS design, although that's the most prevalent.

For example, you could build a game where you start with two armies, which use fuel whenever units move- a really simplistic variable to emulate many aspects of logistics.

You only have so much fuel. When it's gone, your army is immobile and relatively helpless.

The entire game is about determining where you'd like to have your battle, and using scouting and information manipulation to get your opponent to fight you at the place and time of your choosing.

Think about the Total War series, as a for-example. There, you may have economic stuff going on, but it's "off board", and not something that can do anything during the tactical period.

[bobthedinosaur]

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