Spring RTS Engine

First off I should note that I am not planning to actually implement this into a working project, I have enough to work on as it is. However, I like to envision concepts in game theory and I was recently thinking about the following idea, which I think the experienced players and developers in the spring community could provide an additional

I was thinking of a design for a game that revolves around the rock/paper/scissors concept (that seems to be popular with RTS these days) but on a 256 scale.
For ease of definitions on such a large scale lets use 4 modifiers with 4 settings (A,B,C,D). So the first possible combination is AAAA, and the last DDDD. A total of 256 combinations. The places can stand for whatever, maybe the first one is vehicle chassis, the 2nd is a modifier, the 3rd is weapon type, the 4th is a weapon modifier. This is just a loose example, and could be modified in any way. But the idea is that the units are generally averaged out in over all performance, but have a RPS edge over each other.
The idea was a unit's RPS effectiveness on other units depended on an expanding scale that would decrease. So unit AAAA might have excellent RPS over say 4/256 of the units, while 0 effectiveness on 4/256 and then a exponential interval step in between so 8/256 are good RPS while 8/256 are poor RPS but not 0, and then 16/256.

Something that would look like this:


I guess the overall concept is an RPS system but with a unit type quantity of complexity instead of game design role system with a patched RPS. Any thoughts?

It looks and sounds very interesting, it'd certainly make for interesting gameplay.
The only real problems i see are that A. The 256 units are ALOT to wrap your head around (though standardized types would help (kbot, veh, hover, air for example, with the other factors possibly heavy, medium, light, scout. Weapons types projectile, missile, laser, beam and modifiers, heat, explosive, kinetic, resonance?)
and B. The actual modeling and texturing of 256 units.

seems more like the balancing of FPS classes/weapons or the charachters of a fighting game ala Takken and not like an RTS design.
In RTS you never have even 1 on 1 situations.

so a->d are armor/damage types?

I think he means they could be anything, but for simplicity's sake you could go with armour/weapon types.

Blackdutchie wrote:I think he means they could be anything, but for simplicity's sake you could go with armour/weapon types.

I speak eccentric so I think you may be misinterpreting the question.

What he's asking is if A is a damage doer and B is a method of damage prevention as apposed to there being a A type damage doer matched to an A type damage method of damage prevention... in a traditional RPS system one would have:

Unit A has a weapon that is good against B type units and armour that is weak against C type weapons making the "Rock Beats Scissors, Scissors Beats Paper, Paper beat Rock" structure.

but is sounds like these would be 4 mutually exclusive aspects with 4 possible settings... so instead of a unit with Scissors Armor, You'd have a unit with Scissors Armor, Rock Weapon, Rock Mobility and Paper Visibility ... so it could see Cloaked Paper and Scissors Units, do extra damage to Paper armored units and prevent be immune to attacks on Paper Weapons and be able to pass into terrain that Rock and Scissors units could not... or some similar level of complication with the added monkey wrench of there being a 4 phase system instead of 3 ( http://www.samkass.com/theories/RPSSL.html )...

anyways, I'm curious about bobthedinosaur answer

Pretty much and to me the post is somewhat ambiguous which is why I am asking

If it's only about damage types, you basically end up with everyone getting a rough mix of all types (maybe not all 256 types but something that can't be properly countered by anything), and micro being about forcefiring the right stuff mostly.
Now couple the modifiers with other more distinctive stats and it might get more interesting.

And why just 2^8, if you want such a basic design method why not have a bit less of them?

wow, what I posted was highly unclear and will likely lead to more confusion then clarity...

A "traditional" RPS is Structure as follows (one aspect with three settings): ...R>S>P>R... so you get just weapon/armor systems, you get weapon type 1,2,3 and Armor type A,B,C, weapon type 1 is better against armor A and bad against armor C, so a unit with weapon type 1 and armor type A will beat the unit with armor type B and weapon type 2 and lose against unit with weapon type 3 and armor type C... this system could be extrapolated to a "2 aspects with 3 settings" system relatively easily: you have slot 1 as weapon and slot 2 as armor so you can have

A1,A2,A3,B1,B2,B3,C1,C2,C3

so you'd have unit A1 might be evenly matched against unit C2 (because the ones armor beats the other's weapon but it's weapon is also weak against the other's weapon)

Whereas btd seems to be suggesting "4 aspects with 4 settings":

so you'd has a unit AAAA that would beat BBBB and CCCC would beat DDDD and DDDD would beat AAAA... but then you break it down to ABBB would beat BCCC on all fronts but would be evenly matched with BCAA or DBBB and so on... so what I think smoth (and I) want to know if what the other "factors" are going to be... he's mentioned "modifiers" so let's say you have flame, frost, kinetic, sound as "damage types" so a "flame laser" would be better against a "ice armour" but do poorly against "kinetic shield"... okay I guess I can see how it could work that way...

What it sounds like he's really getting at is a 16 x 16 grid of damage types vs armor types whith things like:

dammage type A1, good against armour type B2, decent against armour type B3/C2... this needs a picture: essencially A type Weapon Gets +0 against armor type A, +1 against armor type B, +2 against armor type c and -1 against armor type D while, weapon class 1 get's +0 against armor class 2, +1 against armor class 3 and -1 against armor class 4...

sorry, you can disregard most of this post except for the chart and what smoth said.

Thing is rps is typically a combat type thing based on effectiveness vs a unit. here is a less abstract example:

Fat man
Slow moving heavy unit with pinpoint high damage bullet also slow.

Hyperactive
Fast moving light armor unit with fast tracking high penetration laser

monolith
Structure with anti laser armor but fast tracking weapon with low penetration.

hyperactive can kill fat man easily
fat man can kill monolith
monolith can easily kill hyperactive.

So what is the extra 2 classifications you are talking about bob?

Maybe 256 might be too large.

The modifiers were just to add variation smoth. They could be anything really, as long as the units are all kind of averaged out. What I was getting at was RPS system but in a complexity of variety.

I think sinbad kind of gets it, but I don't know if a 16x16 grid is the only way to go. You could make a 4D grid of 4 aspects, but that would be hard to work on since, 4d is less tangible than a 2d grid of 16 x16.

Rock Paper Scissors Spock Lizard only works with odd numbers, and is a 1 to 1 advantage system. What I was thinking was a multi level advantage system.

I think I choose 256 because its a square binary, and its roughly what OTA had in unit variety.

Once again this is just a rough simplification, since simple unit behavior such as a gunship vs a tank can greatly tip the balance, which is why formula balancing doesn't usually work well.

so then you are talking something like:

turn speed
- some units can run circles where others have to make large turns

defense
- different levels of damage soak

speed
- outright velocity

penetration
- ability to circumvent defense

Response
- ability to react to a threat and acquire a target.

Oh, I thought you wanted to put literal A, B, C, D modules on a unit so an AAAA unit has 4 A modules and such.

Modules? Could be a possaibility, I mean the AAAA was just to give a descriptor for the combinations in 256. But AABB would be the same as BBAA, ABAB, BABA, and etc.. so if A1 was the same as A2 A3 and A4 you really don have 256 possibilities. I think you'd have like 35.