Designing an RTS

[Ole John Reb]

I was wondering what you guys thought an RTS needed to actually be good.

 

[Redcoat-Mic]

Time (preferably real), strategy and a lot of good.

 

[Kleidophoros]

WWI.

 

[Average Joe peasant]

Rock paper scissors combat.

 

[Cyborg Eastern European]

A touch of creativity and a challenge.

 

[QuailLover]

A good engaging story, and of course a fully destructible environment.

 

[Cyborg Eastern European]

Ohh, a decent way to include infantry without making it all powerful.

 

[Swadius 2.0]

The ability to designing your own units, both functionally as well as purposefully. IE. Being able to attach some shield generators onto a missile and have them launch from one of your ships. Moreover, deciding how big and how dense your ships and ordnance are is also good.

 

[Cyborg Eastern European]

Orbital bombardment, lots and lots of dakka.

 

[Ambalon]

Diverse units and a combat more complex than rock-paper-scissors.

The ability to designing your own units, both functionally as well as purposefully. IE. Being able to attach some shield generators onto a missile and have them launch from one of your ships. Moreover, deciding how big and how dense your ships and ordnance are is also good.

This. Scaling, of course, the quality with the price.

 

[Cyborg Eastern European]

Oh and it helps if the starting stuff isn't completely useless by the middle of the game.*
Preferably it's best if it's never useless.


*Looks most space based strategy games.

 

[Kleidophoros]

No resource management; I want a new Myth.

 

[Swadius 2.0]

I would also like to some realistic application on how much stuff I can actually fit onto a ship. Rather than giving me a bunch of meaningless equipment points, I would rather have the components, mass, and armor of the ship to take into account where exactly you are installing the equipment.
I realize this is a wasted effort for unmodified infantry. But anything equal to or above power armor should be able to have this done. Of course, this type of thing probably isn't something people can play well on multiplayer, unless of course they came with their designs before hand and are not allowed to go into any designing phase while playing multiplayer. I imagine this would make having a good balanced set of ship or vehicle designs fairly important as you don't particularly want to be stuck stockpiling resources but not being able to go up a level in terms of what units you can put out because you haven't enough material.
And get rid of the arbitrary population limit please, if you're going to limit the number of units on screen, at least do it where having a massive force actually limits its ability to respond and fight well. Like a lack of supply ships making the effectiveness of having such a big armada extremely limited, friendly fire, or the dissemination of orders and information is slowed due to organization problems.
Don't give me arbitrary unit limits like in every other single RTS where the computer tells me I can't have it because the infernal counter in he corner dictates it to be so.

 

[Ole John Reb]

No resource management; I want a new Myth.

I was actually just about to ask what resources should be present in the game and should larger and smaller countries be given the same amount of starting resources.

And get rid of the arbitrary population limit please.

I planned on that.

 

[Kleidophoros]

Your rts sucks then.
Did we come here to kick ass or collect wood?

 

[K-64]

Decent AI meaning that difficulty doesn't span from "They're a 3rd world country, and you're the rest of the world" to "Cheating their tits off" in regards to resources and build/research speed

 

[Swadius 2.0]

Also, I'd rather not have any sort of rock paper scissor combat at all. I'm not sure whether Joe was serious when he said that, but I'll just put this out there.

 

[Ole John Reb]

Your rts sucks then.
Did we come here to kick ass or collect wood?

Thank you for being so forward about it.

Also, I'd rather not have any sort of rock paper scissor combat at all. I'm not sure whether Joe was serious when he said that, but I'll just put this out there.

Ya I know what you mean.

 

[Cyborg Eastern European]

Some sort of autonomous AI would be rather nice. I kind of doubt you could make it without a couple dozen people working on it but it'd be fun if your troops secured a building, took cover, prioritised targets, tried flanking and flushed out snipers without being told to do so after half the squad is already pasted.


If you absolutely have to have resources, at least keep it at cold, hard cash or some sort of point system in similar manner Force Commander did it.
About the pop caps: Ideally, yes, it'd be great if you could remove them alltogether but if you just can't do that, at least make them unattainable. Sure graphics might suffer but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

 

[Swadius 2.0]

Graphics is on the rear bench for me. So long as it doesn't give me a headache, you can't achieve any more points from graphics on my part.