Relic seem to have settled on capturing command points that allocate you resources for as long as you keep control of them (Dawn of War, Company of Heroes). In Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander 1 and 2 the metal and mass deposits on the map were simply a kick start for you at the beginning, once you had enough energy you could simply make metal/mass in your base and turtle for eternity until finally your super weapons finished off the opponent (provided you survive the dreaded peewee and ACU rush). As the resources near your first base dwindled you were forced to send your harvesters further into dangerous territory to gather resources or spend your hard earned cash on setting up a second base to make harvesting safer/faster.Ĭhris Taylor changed things a bit by making resource gathering a choice. Westwood style, Dune and early c&c had a reasonable mechanic where you had to send a vulnerable unit out to collect ore/tiberium/spice and return it to the refinery for conversion into money. **** If you think this post is long then skip this bit **** A moving unit would be harder to keep hidden than one waiting in ambush.Īfter thinking a lot today about things I've decided that RTS games have real trouble trying to make collecting resources an interesting part of the game. Also the amount of sound generated could be based on if a unit is in motion. This means vehicles could be heard even if they are out of the line of sight of your units, where as infantry could remain undetected. An icon of the enemy could appear at its approximate location. Yeah so your units can gather intel based on if they can hear an enemy even if they can't see it. So, provided I implement line of sight and unit view cones I could also introduce a concept of sound (omg sound?!?!). I think I can simplify it a bit and still get all the gameplay bonuses that resulted from their system.Īlso some other advantages infantry have is they can be extremely quiet and stealthy. I also think their implementation got bogged down with micro management. I think company of heroes did a good job of touching on some of these aspects but I don't think they pushed it far enough. The heavy units also need weaknesses, like direction armour and decreased manoeuvrability in some situations. I think these things can be things to play with to make infantry a real tactical unit. They have less visibility or the same amount of vision, are slower, weaker, can often be crushed by vehicles, are just as visible to radar and don't get any terrain movement bonuses. I'm getting some cool ideas around line of sight, sound, and time of day mechanics.īasically I don't like how infantry are quite useless in most RTS games and I think this is because a lot of their advantages aren't modled in the games I've played. * Strong buildings - Make buildings so strong that destroying them is difficult and a more cost effective and faster way of winning if capturing or clearing a building out.Īs much as I want to keep this simple. * Active resource collection - Not sitting in your base camping on resource spots, you have to leave and go get retrieve the resources. * No grid, freedom to rotate things - more freeform base building. * Day/Night visibility - Units in the dark are harder to see and harder to shoot * Sound generation and detection of units and buildings (kind of like radar in supreme commander i guess but possibly only applies to infantry detecting sound and vehicles making sound). * Line of sight - view cones and elevation.
I'll keep this up to date on what i'm currently thinking about and exploring so you don't have to trall the thread to figure out what the current topic of conversation is. This probably won't amount to anything as I'll probably lose interest when it gets hard as I'm doing it in my spare time and not for commercial purposes, but we'll see. Just wondering if anyone else has attempted an RTS and if you have any tips or tricks or things to warn me about. I know the Planetary Annihilation is in the works, I'm a backer, but I simply cannot wait for that game so I'm going to build my own to pass the time. I've recently decided all RTS games aren't very good and none have done anything interesting for about 15 years.
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