Spring RTS Engine

Yes I know "Draco you are making ANOTHER MOD!?!?!?"

And yes, I am, deal with it.

Over the past few days I've finally revived my old Computer and played Spring and come to a conclusion. Nobody knows how to micromanage units and now as I've found out. That is why I rarely win, so I've decided to make a mod that involves just that, very few units that you can build and strict unit limits. The highest limit will be 10 units. And there are only a total of 8 units and one side so.

Currently I have only the one unit done, but note this is not based on any mod and I made it from the ground up, after fixing my Scriptor.

I'd have pictures, but since I reinstalled Spring it is broke I will try to add some soon.

try watching an EE game between the EE guys = uber micro.

There is no point to uber microing units in TA for a variety of reasons.

Forboding, as much as I love E&E, I know that isn't so. Yes, we have solid micro, but it is nothing compared to the top AA players.

That said, look for E&E replays, and the works of PROrANDY, [WarC]Daywalker, DemolitiOn and... [Gen]Hellspawn for starters...

There is no point to uber microing units in TA for a variety of reasons.

AHAHAHAHAH.

the top AA guys have pretty good micro.
TA units dont need micro? WTF, have you played a TA style game recently? needs more micro than in EE, EE is more macro, moving units and arty in lines and keeping buildcues and the like going.

Ive thought about this myself, and even made a half-arsed mod of it. Primarily it focused around defensive area of effect artillery and long range emps. The only way to get your assault units close to the enemy defensive artillery was to paralyze them.

It also had some other interesting things though. One was an Impulse wepaon that can repel enemy units, or using a mountain as a ramp, repel your own units toward the enemy (Which is quite fun but not often practical).

The other was a digger, which could make trenches, obstacles, and cover. At a pinch it could even bury another unit down a hole. You can do this to an enemy as a sort of conditional paralyze (He is stuck down there until you can get a unit which can Restore ground to dig him out). Of course if the hole was deep enough nobody can shoot over its edges (Or in some cases, it puts that unit under water, which makes it prettymuch impossible to hit). Thus, you can bury your own buildings and units as a defensive measure.

Ive dabbled with the idea of making modular units, too (Probably using transports). So you can mix a chasis with one set of abilities, with a turret with others.

For example, a chassis that has a deflector shield (That effects your own units fire, can you do that? I havent checked yet) could be mixed with a turret that has a plasma weapon. The plasma weapon would, of course, be repelled outwards at tremendous speeds by the deflector shield (But become loses prettymuch all accuracy as a result).

But perhaps these ideas are not exactly what you had in mind.

I think a mod based on micro management of a small force is certainly worth making. Most RTS's have variants where you are given a small fixed force with which to fight, and they have a lot less potential than Spring does for interesting micromanagement (Like line of sight, ballistics, tracking, firing angles and things other RTS's just dont have).

Forboding Angel wrote: There is no point to uber microing units in TA for a variety of reasons.

Wow. Are you really serious?

hey why dont you just drop what forb said and move on people, there is no need for this to develop into a AA vs EE thread or what have you...

draco, good luck with this idea but honestly if you want some input wed need more than a paragraph about how we all cant micro, and about 5 sentences detailing the fact that there will be 8 units per side possibly with a max limit of 10 possibly..

What kind of units, do you have a model you could show us so we can see your art style.. will the sides be different or will only be 1 side with 2 different designs for asethetic purposes.. how will resourcing work.. what sort of units will we have.. will there be base building..

in short.. WE NEED MORE INFO BEFORE WE CAN MAKE ANY SORT OF REMARK ABOUT YOUR MOD..

at the moment your "idea" only rates a Pics or GTFO.. for lack of any sort of design and a definate lack of eye candy.. remember eye candy is what people come to new mods looking for.. pics or it didnt happen.. this is KEY...

that said again good luck...

Not to intentionally be a dick to forb or fang, but the speed of the projectiles used in EE was one of the things that always kind of frustrated me, because it limits the way micromanagement can be used. TA has more micro manageable units IMO simply because if a plasma ball firing unit starts targeting you you can cause alot of shit to miss just by randomizing your path and what not. In EE shit just kind of hits all the time, and it simplifies all micromanagement down to max ranges and hiding behind other units, and if you're fighting missle units the hiding doesn't work any more either. Watching a good mass rocko battle in AA is epic. Unfortunately it's pretty rare because of the domination of GATER and HLT.

There are many many micromanagement tricks that can be added to an RTS that most TA mod devs basically haven't looked at at all. Not that it's all a bad thing, IMO too much micromanagement being the deciding factor of a game isn't really all that appealing either, but you must admit that it worked well for starcraft

I'm not saying anything about EE, but I just remember a lot of bluster from FA about how he was a top AA player "back in the day."

Too much micro is anoying. I cannot play starcraft because that is all it is. I want strategy not tatical game play. If I want tactical gameplay I'll play a FPS.

say this with me people:

uberMicro: knowing all the little hotkeys, grouping units and never actually having to go back to your base because you have all the shit bound to some key
Micro: tactical usage of individual troops or squads
Macro: strategic usage of your squads to mount simultanious attacks as part of a larger plan or strategy.
I am sure someone will argue this though
spring is a real time STRATEGY game.

Lets focus on the macro, individual units that allow some interesting micro is a fine thing but the grunt units need to be able to be used on a macro level. Especially when you consider large forces.

Oh and AA players, I used mostly paralizers and morties. not much micro to them. Then again, I played team games and I focused on bombardment and enemy force slow down. I still sucked though.

rcdraco wrote:Nobody knows how to micromanage units

Play more gundam.

Try Dozerz. One faction, one unit. The rest is micro.

With the Spring engine it is possible to play at any point along the spectrum of complete macro and complete micro. Since everyone can only keep track of, say, 7 things at once (it differs depending on the player and on how difficult those things are to keep track of), they have to decide where along that spectrum those 7 things are. Eventually you probably want to be controlling all of the units that are possible to be controlled, but there is an advantage of being lower down because you are probably better at directly controlling the units than the computer is. How much better depends on the mod, but it's way more complex that "EE has more micro than AA."

As in so way mind bogglingly complex that it can't be analysed without actually playing and comparing.

There will be NO bases at all, this mod will be entirely based on mobility. You will depend on mobile resource trucks, mobile turrets, tanks, and paralyzers and impulse cannons.

Also the build times of units will be slower, and when you have all of your units that you can build you will end up with about 63 units total.

1 commander, 5 resource trucks, 10 scout bikes, 10 tankzors, 10 mobile turrets, 5 radar trucks, 10 gunships, and 2 builders.

meh screwit.

Matt, you have issues dude.

Please try to stay on topic, this is about a mod not petty arguments over other mods. Thank You.

Oh here's two pictures of the only unit I have so far, the Micro mobile base, AKA commander:

Its good to see a mod with a different design strategy. Even the non-TA based mods follow the general principles of TA, especially the economic ones like metal spots, unlimited energy growth, teching, etc. Spring isnt an FPS engine, but that doesnt stop comshooter. I say go for it draco.

How are you planning on limiting units, exactly? Just with the unit limit? That would mean people would just max out every kind of unit ASAP then attack, rather than making custom-built squads catering to their own tastes and styles.

You might want to think about another strategy that allows players to custom design small squads. For example: making the commander the only source of energy, and giving every unit a certain amount of energy drain as well as an energy cost to build. When your energy drain exceeds what your commander makes, you cant build units anymore (OR you can, but so slowly that its not worth it). This would limit you to making hand-picked squads, sending them into the fray, microing them during battle, and then going back to base and making a new group to replace the casualties.

Perhaps with resurection and capture you could exceed your unit limit, making those two aspects of the game more valuable than they might otherwise be.

Saktoth wrote:Spring isnt an FPS engine, but that doesnt stop comshooter.

Said in a thread by the creator of The Blue Tanks.....

KDR_11k wrote:Try Dozerz. One faction, one unit. The rest is micro.

+1

Resource Truck:



Another thing the radar truck and the builder will NOT be able to attack. The other 6 units WILL be able to.

Also I am thinking of trying to make a unit that has maybe 6 different turrets to choose from, like Smoth's script that he used in Gundam for the Zeon Transport.