Well, with the resounding success of, and entertainment from my FPS wishlist thread... Real Time Strategy wishlist time.
Top of the list, above all others, is a decent AI which can pose a challenge WITHOUT cheating, and still have decent pathfinding and prioritizing skills. Seriously, I don't see what's so damn HARD about this. Every unit in a game has a strength and weakness, but RTS AIs never build units to counter the weaknesses of the forces I build. Have the AI build on a prioritized basis as follows... 50% of their force built defensively as the best units to counter what I have built, focusing first on the most dangerous units and working down from their. 25% of the force should be for offensive action, based on things best to overcome the defenses the player built. The last 1/4 of the AI's force should be wildcards thrown in as an intentionally random selection so the player has things to counter that aren't expected.
In the case of a Fog of War map, same rules based on what the AI has actually confirmed outside of fog (easy/normal difficulty) but wouldn't "know" what it hasn't seen. On difficult, for a real challenge, the AI follows the rules as if it DOES see all your units.
Other things to add to RTS games...
Urban environments, some games have had this in scattered amounts, but I want the full range from light residential, downtown commercial zones, industrial, and especially superhighways and traffic routes. Tank combat on spaghetti intersections, RTS re-creations of that scene with the jet and truck in Diehard 4... FUN stuff.
Mountain Bases (and other such variations). I want a game where the "base" can be built underground or inside a mountain. Smallscale versions where only infantry can enter, large scale ones where entire tank battalions roll out of Cheyene Mountain and jets launch from secret cliff runways. Those in-base levels of Starcraft were THE BOMB, but combine that so your combat INSIDE is on the same map as the battle OUTSIDE (maybe have the mountain cut-away on mouseover just like Evil Genius). ADDED to this idea, the ability thus to tunnel through terrain (create a mountain pass), plus bridging vehicles and some aerial "vehicle transports" so the entire map just opens up as a complete playing field.
Please stop making Nuclear Missiles (or their cousins) the "Ultimate Weapon" in games. The nukes we are given aren't 1/100th of the real yield, and no sane person would launch nukes into a battlefield their troops will soon (or currently) occupy. It's a tired cliche and must die along side FPS games with no JUMP button and Paris Hilton.
Tanks. How 'bout some variety here guys? There are WAY more designs of tank used in a battle than the 2 or 3 we are always given. Yes, in WW2 the Sherman was a mainstay and today the Abrams is the top dog, but there are many other designs which fill niche roles that just get forgotten. I want to see light, medium, and heavy classes of tanks on top of the MBT. You have an Abrams, fine. Where's the option to upgrade from the M1 to the M1A1, M1A2, or others? There is a VAST difference between the M1A1 and M1A2 in both capabilities and use. Why do we always have only ONE crappy infantry transport? APCs and IFVs may seem the same but they aren't, and both have their place. I want more tanks with wider ranges of use and if they come at the expense of "Mecha" or "Hover" vehicles, GOOD! Specialist vehicles like hovercraft and amphibious units aren't even 1/10th of an army's forces but they seem to crop up all over the games.
Along the lines of more tanks, MORE and BETTER air units. C&C's approach is the worst. Thunderbolt II's as airstrike BOMBERS while Harriers are the field-loitering precision hitter? Has anyone in Westwood ever looked into what the Thunderbolt was designed for? And Mig Interceptors as ground attack jets? Games need as much variety in air units as they do land ones, or just don't fucking include them. And how about more useful Heli units? Unarmed transports are getting tiresome, why are we only able to cram 5 guys into a dual-rotor Chinook? The Chinook can carry a TANK! Give us Blackhawks, armed with miniguns for Anti-Infantry, even Hueys could carry more than the in-game units, and they'd have a browning or two on the sides. How about some machinegun equipped light copters to fill the anti-infantry role so our Apache or Hind can be the tank-slaughtering beasts they really are?
Last but not least, could someone STOP putting retarded fixed unit caps in their strategy games? Above and beyond every good or bad thing about Supreme Commander, what always stood out is that you could field more units per side, and more sides per game than any RTS prior... But the cap IS still there. I'm not saying give us unlimited, but give us a better range. The best mod out there for SuCom is a patch that lets you set the unit cap at 50, 75, 100, 150, 200, 250, 300, 400, 500, 750, 1000, 1500, 2000, 2500, 3000, 4000, 5000, 7500, or 10000. TEN THOUSAND units per side. Nobody can run that many sure, not now, but when Warcraft was first released who though 250 was even logical? The only real limiter is the players system, but 3 years from now our systems would be able to shitkick the best of games today. It just gives the game a longer lifespan thinking ahead, I don't play DoW much anymore because why piss around with two or three dozen units when I can command two or three hundred in TotalA and SuCom?
I agree with most of your points but I like my RTSs a little more down in the dirt with fewer units to control. Don't expect any game developer to actually use common sense when craeting units because most of them don't even know what an A-10 Thunderbolt II looks like let alone what its used for.
Khell_Sennet: Last but not least, could someone STOP putting retarded fixed unit caps in their strategy games? Above and beyond every good or bad thing about Supreme Commander, what always stood out is that you could field more units per side, and more sides per game than any RTS prior... But the cap IS still there. I'm not saying give us unlimited, but give us a better range. The best mod out there for SuCom is a patch that lets you set the unit cap at 50, 75, 100, 150, 200, 250, 300, 400, 500, 750, 1000, 1500, 2000, 2500, 3000, 4000, 5000, 7500, or 10000. TEN THOUSAND units per side. Nobody can run that many sure, not now, but when Warcraft was first released who though 250 was even logical? The only real limiter is the players system, but 3 years from now our systems would be able to shitkick the best of games today. It just gives the game a longer lifespan thinking ahead, I don't play DoW much anymore because why piss around with two or three dozen units when I can command two or three hundred in TotalA and SuCom?
I'm not going to address the rest, (though I don't agree with you on many of your points), but I am going to address this one.
Unit caps are an integral part of creating a balanced and tactically interesting game, because they force the player to actually think about army composition. There should always be a tactical decision to make between building Unit A and Unit B. Without a unit limit, there's no tactical decision to make, it becomes obvious what you should do, have both. An entire layer of strategic skill, army planning, just completely evaporated.
Smaller armies also give rise to more interesting tactics, armour facing on tanks in Company of Heroes would be unmanageable with more than the few tanks around on the field, but its inclusion makes combat between tanks much more tactically interesting than in any other RTS ever, because it's not just "line up and shoot".
It keeps the sides balanced against each other as well, unit caps mean that a force with exclusively powerful units is balanced by their low numbers, without that cap they are free to expand indefinitely. Imagine trying to play Imperial Guard against an opponent who could build infinte Chaos Space Marines? It also mitigates advantages from beneficial starting positions. If your starting position is a tile further away from your resources, you're doomed under an uncapped system, because your opponent has always had more resources than you, so he will always have a larger army.
Unit caps are the best thing to happen to RTS games. Seriously. Their inclusion vastly improves the strategic and tactical gameplay of the style.
I should have been more clear, I don't want them to eliminate the OPTION to cap units at X Y or Z, just to not make it a mandatory thing or set the bar much MUCH higher. The mod I mentioned is perfect, because you really can set how big you want it to be, few games ever had a cap as low as 50, and increments over 500 are unheard of. Just give us the choice.
No, don't. Because picking a fixed target and optimising the game balance around it will always produce a better overall experience than trying to accommodate everything.
"More choice" sounds like a good idea, but it's not always, sometimes it just means that the range of things to choose from is less interesting.
Edit: Dangit i didn't read the guidlines. I have never encountered a forum where indvidual quoting was illigel. Dont' shoot meee im soorryyy
Although my experience with the genre is rather limited...
Khell_Sennet: Well, with the resounding success of, and entertainment from my FPS wishlist thread... Real Time Strategy wishlist time.
Top of the list, above all others, is a decent AI which can pose a challenge WITHOUT cheating, and still have decent pathfinding and prioritizing skills. Seriously, I don't see what's so damn HARD about this. Every unit in a game has a strength and weakness, but RTS AIs never build units to counter the weaknesses of the forces I build. Have the AI build on a prioritized basis as follows... 50% of their force built defensively as the best units to counter what I have built, focusing first on the most dangerous units and working down from their. 25% of the force should be for offensive action, based on things best to overcome the defenses the player built. The last 1/4 of the AI's force should be wildcards thrown in as an intentionally random selection so the player has things to counter that aren't expected.
So, in my experience, a good portion of my enemy consists of Pikes, beacase i like a good cavalry rush. I think the computer does a decent job with unit creation.
Khell_Sennet: In the case of a Fog of War map, same rules based on what the AI has actually confirmed outside of fog (easy/normal difficulty) but wouldn't "know" what it hasn't seen. On difficult, for a real challenge, the AI follows the rules as if it DOES see all your units.
It has always bothered me how th AI comes completely prepared with my Unit's hard counter (DAMN YOU PIKES) without ever going scouting...
Khell_Sennet: Other things to add to RTS games...
Urban environments, some games have had this in scattered amounts, but I want the full range from light residential, downtown commercial zones, industrial, and especially superhighways and traffic routes. Tank combat on spaghetti intersections, RTS re-creations of that scene with the jet and truck in Diehard 4... FUN stuff.
I lot of what you want is Lights and Sounds. I would like this idea though. The 'traffic routes' would be like choke points, which maps occasionally have.
Khell_Sennet: Mountain Bases (and other such variations). I want a game where the "base" can be built underground or inside a mountain. Smallscale versions where only infantry can enter, large scale ones where entire tank battalions roll out of Cheyene Mountain and jets launch from secret cliff runways. Those in-base levels of Starcraft were THE BOMB, but combine that so your combat INSIDE is on the same map as the battle OUTSIDE (maybe have the mountain cut-away on mouseover just like Evil Genius). ADDED to this idea, the ability thus to tunnel through terrain (create a mountain pass), plus bridging vehicles and some aerial "vehicle transports" so the entire map just opens up as a complete playing field.
So like a fortified area with unit production capabilites? Towers, Walls and Barracks in one convieniant and complete bitch to take it package?
The idea of small scale skirmashes inside a fortress would be a cool idea though. Battle inside buildings for control of the fortress sounds cool.
Khell_Sennet: Please stop making Nuclear Missiles (or their cousins) the "Ultimate Weapon" in games. The nukes we are given aren't 1/100th of the real yield, and no sane person would launch nukes into a battlefield their troops will soon (or currently) occupy. It's a tired cliche and must die along side FPS games with no JUMP button and Paris Hilton.
I hear this sort of stuff a lot. YOU NEED A GAME BUSTER. If you can produce an expensive base buster, like a nuke, while still keeping your enemie's units at bay, then by all means you deserve the nuke.
I think your more complaining about realism then game mechanics.
Khell_Sennet: Tanks. How 'bout some variety here guys? There are WAY more designs of tank used in a battle than the 2 or 3 we are always given. Yes, in WW2 the Sherman was a mainstay and today the Abrams is the top dog, but there are many other designs which fill niche roles that just get forgotten. I want to see light, medium, and heavy classes of tanks on top of the MBT. You have an Abrams, fine. Where's the option to upgrade from the M1 to the M1A1, M1A2, or others? There is a VAST difference between the M1A1 and M1A2 in both capabilities and use. Why do we always have only ONE crappy infantry transport? APCs and IFVs may seem the same but they aren't, and both have their place. I want more tanks with wider ranges of use and if they come at the expense of "Mecha" or "Hover" vehicles, GOOD! Specialist vehicles like hovercraft and amphibious units aren't even 1/10th of an army's forces but they seem to crop up all over the games.
Again, realism and extra fluff. Not that this is any way a bad thing.
The tank is your Cavalry unit. Meant to be fast. For just the purposes of just gameplay, you usually have your Heavy Cavalry, strong and durable and fast (that get so owned by damn pikes >.<). And then sometimes, a faction is given a Light Cavalry, maybe to balance a lack of speed, so you can run the Heavy Cavalry down.
So add a couple centuries and you get tanks. An infantry transport should, imo, is to just keep your infantry from falling behind, or slowing down the formation.
And honestly, if they gave you all that, what percentage would you use? 20%?
Khell_Sennet: Along the lines of more tanks, MORE and BETTER air units. C&C's approach is the worst. Thunderbolt II's as airstrike BOMBERS while Harriers are the field-loitering precision hitter? Has anyone in Westwood ever looked into what the Thunderbolt was designed for? And Mig Interceptors as ground attack jets? Games need as much variety in air units as they do land ones, or just don't fucking include them. And how about more useful Heli units? Unarmed transports are getting tiresome, why are we only able to cram 5 guys into a dual-rotor Chinook? The Chinook can carry a TANK! Give us Blackhawks, armed with miniguns for Anti-Infantry, even Hueys could carry more than the in-game units, and they'd have a browning or two on the sides. How about some machinegun equipped light copters to fill the anti-infantry role so our Apache or Hind can be the tank-slaughtering beasts they really are?
Again, realism, BUT i am going to completely agree.
Air/Sea/Land need to all be represented equally! STOP MAKING NAVIES COMPLETELY USELESS EXCEPT IN INSTANCES OF ISLAND TRANSPORTAION!
A/S/L not only need a logical and implementable counter system, the also need to be able to counter units of a different type. Like, Mobile Flack Guns.
Khell_Sennet: Last but not least, could someone STOP putting retarded fixed unit caps in their strategy games? Above and beyond every good or bad thing about Supreme Commander, what always stood out is that you could field more units per side, and more sides per game than any RTS prior... But the cap IS still there. I'm not saying give us unlimited, but give us a better range. The best mod out there for SuCom is a patch that lets you set the unit cap at 50, 75, 100, 150, 200, 250, 300, 400, 500, 750, 1000, 1500, 2000, 2500, 3000, 4000, 5000, 7500, or 10000. TEN THOUSAND units per side. Nobody can run that many sure, not now, but when Warcraft was first released who though 250 was even logical? The only real limiter is the players system, but 3 years from now our systems would be able to shitkick the best of games today. It just gives the game a longer lifespan thinking ahead, I don't play DoW much anymore because why piss around with two or three dozen units when I can command two or three hundred in TotalA and SuCom?
The Limit is twofold, preventing computer raping, and keeping units in general at reasonable levels.
Like GloatingSwine said, raising the Limit too high is just going to create SPAM. and while spam is delicious, i don't want it anywhere need my RTS.
However i do agree that the Limit does have to be high enough to accomadate units.
This is all nice, in theory, however, EVERYTING NEEDS TO TAKE A BACKSEAT TO GAMEPLAY MECHANICS AND BALANCE IN AN RTS.
PS. HALO'S JUMP IS RIDICULOUS. although it extrmely funny jumping over my friends shotgun, and killing him.
Regardless of units or game play of any kind, if it has flying, digging or submersible units, I demand that the game absolutely MUST have 3D battlefield control. Supreme Commander isn't 3D, Homeworld is.
Homeworld was one of those games that was a great idea, didn't work out as well as it should. It wasn't a BAD game (or I wouldn't have bought it AND the sequel), but it just felt lacking.
And I too miss the EMP missiles. Best way to knock out an enemy's airforce for sure.
Tanks. How 'bout some variety here guys? There are WAY more designs of tank used in a battle than the 2 or 3 we are always given. Yes, in WW2 the Sherman was a mainstay and today the Abrams is the top dog, but there are many other designs which fill niche roles that just get forgotten. I want to see light, medium, and heavy classes of tanks on top of the MBT. You have an Abrams, fine. Where's the option to upgrade from the M1 to the M1A1, M1A2, or others? There is a VAST difference between the M1A1 and M1A2 in both capabilities and use. Why do we always have only ONE crappy infantry transport? APCs and IFVs may seem the same but they aren't, and both have their place. I want more tanks with wider ranges of use and if they come at the expense of "Mecha" or "Hover" vehicles, GOOD! Specialist vehicles like hovercraft and amphibious units aren't even 1/10th of an army's forces but they seem to crop up all over the games.
I think I should just say that in Company of Heroes, the main American Tank was the M4 Sherman, but what was cool was that there were three (and historically accurate, to my suprise) variants. There was the regular M4 with a cannon, but there was another which had a flamethrower, and another which had a huge 60 Tube Rocket Launcher.
Also I agree with you about better air units. Air combat can be awesome but most games either only give you one or two Aircraft, or they're so weak that they take two or three hits and fall right out of the sky.
Yeah, the T34 Rocket Sherman was the bomb. Other tanks that rock but rarely get recognition; The Ontos, Matilda, Crusader, and Canada's choice MBT the Leopard.
Can I just have units that won't hike twelve miles through enemy-held territory to avoid hopping a three-foot-tall fence?
I mean, seriously.
The ability to issue standing orders would be nice, too. I know it's silly to say it, given what an RTS is at its heart, but I HATE micromanagement. The ability to tell my units "hold this point unless overwhelmed, then retreat to here" would do wonders for my enjoyment of the genre.
Khell_Sennet: Last but not least, could someone STOP putting retarded fixed unit caps in their strategy games? Above and beyond every good or bad thing about Supreme Commander, what always stood out is that you could field more units per side, and more sides per game than any RTS prior... But the cap IS still there. I'm not saying give us unlimited, but give us a better range. The best mod out there for SuCom is a patch that lets you set the unit cap at 50, 75, 100, 150, 200, 250, 300, 400, 500, 750, 1000, 1500, 2000, 2500, 3000, 4000, 5000, 7500, or 10000. TEN THOUSAND units per side. Nobody can run that many sure, not now, but when Warcraft was first released who though 250 was even logical? The only real limiter is the players system, but 3 years from now our systems would be able to shitkick the best of games today. It just gives the game a longer lifespan thinking ahead, I don't play DoW much anymore because why piss around with two or three dozen units when I can command two or three hundred in TotalA and SuCom?
I'm not going to address the rest, (though I don't agree with you on many of your points), but I am going to address this one.
Unit caps are an integral part of creating a balanced and tactically interesting game, because they force the player to actually think about army composition. There should always be a tactical decision to make between building Unit A and Unit B. Without a unit limit, there's no tactical decision to make, it becomes obvious what you should do, have both. An entire layer of strategic skill, army planning, just completely evaporated.
Smaller armies also give rise to more interesting tactics, armour facing on tanks in Company of Heroes would be unmanageable with more than the few tanks around on the field, but its inclusion makes combat between tanks much more tactically interesting than in any other RTS ever, because it's not just "line up and shoot".
It keeps the sides balanced against each other as well, unit caps mean that a force with exclusively powerful units is balanced by their low numbers, without that cap they are free to expand indefinitely. Imagine trying to play Imperial Guard against an opponent who could build infinte Chaos Space Marines? It also mitigates advantages from beneficial starting positions. If your starting position is a tile further away from your resources, you're doomed under an uncapped system, because your opponent has always had more resources than you, so he will always have a larger army.
Unit caps are the best thing to happen to RTS games. Seriously. Their inclusion vastly improves the strategic and tactical gameplay of the style.
I've heard it said that unit caps are a crutch for badly balanced games. DoW caps the production of specific units for no other reason than that they'd be unbalancing otherwise. Why? Because they were designed badly. As for total unit caps, if it's possible to break any reasonable unit cap in any serious multiplayer match (before you've had your ass handed to you, or you've done the same to your enemy) I'd say that, again, the game has been badly made for competitive play- or it just didn't have the technological capacity, which is a bit more understandable.
Zethios: I dunno. Gundams as endgame weapons? [jokingly]
Did you see the Battle of JOSH-A in Gundam Seed? It fulfills at least a few of the things in Khell's outline post. There don't appear to be unit caps (they just keep coming), there's an absurldy huge mountain fortress which is full of giant robots, and the super weapon was a main character using an OP'd mech, not a nuke. And then it exploded, also not using a nuke.
I know I come off as a huge anime fanboy here, but it just seemed odd how eerily useful that scenario might be.
Saskwach: I've heard it said that unit caps are a crutch for badly balanced games. DoW caps the production of specific units for no other reason than that they'd be unbalancing otherwise.
I'm interested in how Dawn of War II will handle it. With little to no basebuilding, unless they just have the resource nodes and deep strike every single unit, I think it's going to be different, having a set number of units on the map. Knowing you don't get reinforcements means you'll have to play smarter. But it'll also mean that they're going to use a point-value system, like the tabletop, which, honestly, is a great move for a tactical game.
RTS are already getting rid of unit caps and are just fine as is. Unit caps are only there because lower end PC's can't handle them >>>not<<< because the engines they build can't handle them. I believe Supreme Commander has it so you can adjust the cap according to your computer.
Saying "No, don't" is like saying "No, I don't want a lot of choice in the things I play. I want the same crap we keep on getting shoveled because I'm content with how games are now and I don't want anyone else to get what they want." It's very annoying.
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One note I would like to make about the OP's request is that there is a sort of contradiction in the cheating point he made. On one hand he wants the AI to make units that counter his but on the same side he doesn't want them to cheat. That's fine, however, the AI would have to be made so he didn't know what you built unless he scouts or gets in a fight with you. This, however, is kind of how it is in this-gen RTS's (AOE3, Universe at War, Supreme Commander).
To be honest, this gen of RTS has been amazing and will continue to amaze for a good, long while.
Khell_Sennet: Zethios, I'm all for endgame weapons, I'm just sick of it always being Nukes. The Ion Cannon from C&C or Monkeylord from SuCom rock as endgame toys...
Funny you should mention both C&C and supcom then.
Nod and the Soviets have nukes as their basecracker.
The monkeylord is the equivalant of the big tanks in other games. By the time you get to build them you use t3 bots as infantry anyway. However, all factions do have something called "strategic missile launcher" which officialy shoots "strategic missiles" but it creates a mushroom cloud on impact and has a radiation symbol as targeting cursor so it's a no brainer what type of payload those things are carrying.
Most of your points are aesthetic, the only ones i can agree on are the ones about AI and the Z-axis underground fighting. Black Hole had the correct idea with Armies of Exigo but then the ea bigwigs decided that it had to rip off blizzard as much as physicly possible without being sued.
Saying "No, don't" is like saying "No, I don't want a lot of choice in the things I play. I want the same crap we keep on getting shoveled because I'm content with how games are now and I don't want anyone else to get what they want." It's very annoying.
No, it's saying that game designers should actually design the games with a fixed goal in mind, because that's always going to produce a stronger product than "well, you might want to do this, or you might want to do that, we don't really know, so here's a system that does both badly".
And it will. A system that is designed to be interesting when you're controlling ten units won't be very interesting when you're controlling a hundred, because mobility tactics get screwed up by pathfinding snarl, and special abilities are lost in the mill of massed conventional fire.
I agree on most of Khell's comments that we need some innovation in RTS games, like the more varied units and the tunnels and mountain fortress ideas (imagine defending Mt. Suribachi on Iwo Jima).
When it comes to the argument about cap limits I remember why I prefer RTSs that gives you your units at the start and leaves you to get on with it, and any reinforcements you get after that are given at a certain time or on a certain event.
GloatingSwine: No, it's saying that game designers should actually design the games with a fixed goal in mind, because that's always going to produce a stronger product than "well, you might want to do this, or you might want to do that, we don't really know, so here's a system that does both badly".
And it will. A system that is designed to be interesting when you're controlling ten units won't be very interesting when you're controlling a hundred, because mobility tactics get screwed up by pathfinding snarl, and special abilities are lost in the mill of massed conventional fire.
I don't think you really understand what I'm talking about.
Supreme Commander is a game that has an adjustable unit cap. In fact, the unit cap goes up to outrageously high limits. In effect, it's all up to your PC and if it can handle that much action at once. Programming an engine with this in mind is much better than saying "Hey, look. Here's how many units you can build. Now make a strategy based around this cap."
It's not exactly foreign to make engines that scale with the players PC. Can't handle thousands of units on a screen at once? You, the player, lower the cap.
This is what I'm talking about. Essentially you're wanting less options because... it doesn't really make sense why.
When the player is in control of parameters like that, the experience becomes greater. It's much like earlier C&C's that allowed you to put a tech-cap limit on the game. This ensured that you played the game with a specific set of rules that you, the player, created and not some set of rules that may or not agree with what the player wants to play.
I want good AI on all battlefields. Take Age of Empires III. The Expert AI can fight well - on land. On the water, it's incompetent. There's one map - Ceylon - which has players starting on these tiny islands, and then moving to the large mainland. But the AI never bothers to go on the mainland. In one game, the AI launched a successful assault on my ally's island, forcing him to evacuate to the mainland. But they never explored the mainland, or even fortified their conquered island. And this was the best AI the game has!
There are games that have tried this. Civ, Emperor of the fading suns, The first Dune RTS, just off hand.
The problem with a non cheating adaptable non scripted ai is it would take a lot of the computer's available processing power just to handle the ai's decision making.
portuga-man: Make so that the key factor to win rts's is actually some STRATEGY instead of it being a race to find out who's the fastest mouse clicker/macro user
Key Rule: The more complicated the RTS is,the more of a clusterfuck it'll become.Compare DEFCON with SupCom.
Credge: I don't think you really understand what I'm talking about.
Supreme Commander is a game that has an adjustable unit cap. In fact, the unit cap goes up to outrageously high limits. In effect, it's all up to your PC and if it can handle that much action at once. Programming an engine with this in mind is much better than saying "Hey, look. Here's how many units you can build. Now make a strategy based around this cap."
It's not exactly foreign to make engines that scale with the players PC. Can't handle thousands of units on a screen at once? You, the player, lower the cap.
This is what I'm talking about. Essentially you're wanting less options because... it doesn't really make sense why.
When the player is in control of parameters like that, the experience becomes greater. It's much like earlier C&C's that allowed you to put a tech-cap limit on the game. This ensured that you played the game with a specific set of rules that you, the player, created and not some set of rules that may or not agree with what the player wants to play.
Take Company of Heroes as an example. The population cap is the bane of the British. British players usually trench up until they can secure a few strategic points, but to accomplish this they use up most of their population. It's great to secure strategic points but 95% of the times you won't have enough population left to build a decent army to push the lines forward. If CoH expanded the population cap (or allowed you to tweak that limit), the British could easily bunker up until mid-game and proceed to build a regular army safely behind their defense lines, effectively overpowering the other factions. The "but he can build more tanks as well" argument doesn't work, since you position your defenses at choke points. Yes, he built 8 Panthers instead of 2, but he still can't fit more than 1 in those narrow streets.
It's not about technical limitations. Sure, in a game like SupCom units caps don't make sense, but in a game like CoH they do. A Tiger just used 20 of your 75 population. It's the best tank on the battlefield, but would you call in a second one? 20 population could be used to train 4 Grenadiers squads. If the enemy calls in a well-placed artillery barrage, you could easily lose both Tigers in less than 10 seconds.
fyrh56: Take Company of Heroes as an example. The population cap is the bane of the British.
The game should have you produce units slower instead when playing as the British in that case. The biggest problem with CoH is the fact that massive battles that did take place seem incredibly small and meaningless. An infinite number of small skirmishes.
fyrh56: Take Company of Heroes as an example. The population cap is the bane of the British.
The game should have you produce units slower instead when playing as the British in that case. The biggest problem with CoH is the fact that massive battles that did take place seem incredibly small and meaningless. An infinite number of small skirmishes.
Brits already train units slightly slower than their German counterparts but that's not the point tho; the point is the population cap forces you to take some level of strategic consideration that otherwise wouldn't be there. CoH without a population limit would easily fall into a slug fest. That's fine for SupCom, i like SupCom because i can spam Percivals and Titans to my heart's content without worrying too much. SupCom's clusterfucking is fun. Not really with CoH tho... Unless you know any German general that drafted the entire male population to the north of the Danube river to turn into Volksgrenadiers.
Now if you say, why is there a population cap on Starcraft and Starcraft 2, then i really don't know. Maybe for the original game (technical limitations) but not with the current state of PC gaming. The 200 unit limit has no place in SC.
Well, with the resounding success of, and entertainment from my FPS wishlist thread... Real Time Strategy wishlist time.
Top of the list, above all others, is a decent AI which can pose a challenge WITHOUT cheating, and still have decent pathfinding and prioritizing skills. Seriously, I don't see what's so damn HARD about this. Every unit in a game has a strength and weakness, but RTS AIs never build units to counter the weaknesses of the forces I build. Have the AI build on a prioritized basis as follows... 50% of their force built defensively as the best units to counter what I have built, focusing first on the most dangerous units and working down from their. 25% of the force should be for offensive action, based on things best to overcome the defenses the player built. The last 1/4 of the AI's force should be wildcards thrown in as an intentionally random selection so the player has things to counter that aren't expected.
In the case of a Fog of War map, same rules based on what the AI has actually confirmed outside of fog (easy/normal difficulty) but wouldn't "know" what it hasn't seen. On difficult, for a real challenge, the AI follows the rules as if it DOES see all your units.
Other things to add to RTS games...
Urban environments, some games have had this in scattered amounts, but I want the full range from light residential, downtown commercial zones, industrial, and especially superhighways and traffic routes. Tank combat on spaghetti intersections, RTS re-creations of that scene with the jet and truck in Diehard 4... FUN stuff.
Mountain Bases (and other such variations). I want a game where the "base" can be built underground or inside a mountain. Smallscale versions where only infantry can enter, large scale ones where entire tank battalions roll out of Cheyene Mountain and jets launch from secret cliff runways. Those in-base levels of Starcraft were THE BOMB, but combine that so your combat INSIDE is on the same map as the battle OUTSIDE (maybe have the mountain cut-away on mouseover just like Evil Genius). ADDED to this idea, the ability thus to tunnel through terrain (create a mountain pass), plus bridging vehicles and some aerial "vehicle transports" so the entire map just opens up as a complete playing field.
Please stop making Nuclear Missiles (or their cousins) the "Ultimate Weapon" in games. The nukes we are given aren't 1/100th of the real yield, and no sane person would launch nukes into a battlefield their troops will soon (or currently) occupy. It's a tired cliche and must die along side FPS games with no JUMP button and Paris Hilton.
Tanks. How 'bout some variety here guys? There are WAY more designs of tank used in a battle than the 2 or 3 we are always given. Yes, in WW2 the Sherman was a mainstay and today the Abrams is the top dog, but there are many other designs which fill niche roles that just get forgotten. I want to see light, medium, and heavy classes of tanks on top of the MBT. You have an Abrams, fine. Where's the option to upgrade from the M1 to the M1A1, M1A2, or others? There is a VAST difference between the M1A1 and M1A2 in both capabilities and use. Why do we always have only ONE crappy infantry transport? APCs and IFVs may seem the same but they aren't, and both have their place. I want more tanks with wider ranges of use and if they come at the expense of "Mecha" or "Hover" vehicles, GOOD! Specialist vehicles like hovercraft and amphibious units aren't even 1/10th of an army's forces but they seem to crop up all over the games.
Along the lines of more tanks, MORE and BETTER air units. C&C's approach is the worst. Thunderbolt II's as airstrike BOMBERS while Harriers are the field-loitering precision hitter? Has anyone in Westwood ever looked into what the Thunderbolt was designed for? And Mig Interceptors as ground attack jets? Games need as much variety in air units as they do land ones, or just don't fucking include them. And how about more useful Heli units? Unarmed transports are getting tiresome, why are we only able to cram 5 guys into a dual-rotor Chinook? The Chinook can carry a TANK! Give us Blackhawks, armed with miniguns for Anti-Infantry, even Hueys could carry more than the in-game units, and they'd have a browning or two on the sides. How about some machinegun equipped light copters to fill the anti-infantry role so our Apache or Hind can be the tank-slaughtering beasts they really are?
Last but not least, could someone STOP putting retarded fixed unit caps in their strategy games? Above and beyond every good or bad thing about Supreme Commander, what always stood out is that you could field more units per side, and more sides per game than any RTS prior... But the cap IS still there. I'm not saying give us unlimited, but give us a better range. The best mod out there for SuCom is a patch that lets you set the unit cap at 50, 75, 100, 150, 200, 250, 300, 400, 500, 750, 1000, 1500, 2000, 2500, 3000, 4000, 5000, 7500, or 10000. TEN THOUSAND units per side. Nobody can run that many sure, not now, but when Warcraft was first released who though 250 was even logical? The only real limiter is the players system, but 3 years from now our systems would be able to shitkick the best of games today. It just gives the game a longer lifespan thinking ahead, I don't play DoW much anymore because why piss around with two or three dozen units when I can command two or three hundred in TotalA and SuCom?