One problem is knowing whether to put an apostophe in the word "RTS's". However, the other problem I have with them is always feeling that it's pointless trying different actions; either they won't make any difference, or it's all down to chance anyway.I really want to enjoy RTS's, ever since I played what I think is the very first one: Stonkers (not Dune II!). I've not played many of the later ones, but I've played C&C, StarCraft, Age of Mythology, and quite a few free ones, and even written my own.
The typical scenario goes like this: I select a group of units, move them towards the enemy, and err, repeat. All I can do now is watch them do battle. Maybe my units will win, maybe they won't. Should I try some newfangle tactics? Does it make any difference if I have some units on the left side of the enemy and some on the right side? Or maybe I should build a tank instead of two foot-soldiers? Is it better to have a tank than two footsoldiers? I don't know. All I know is the units keep shooting at the enemy and eventually some of them die. The tank is more powerful but has a slower shot rate, but I can't be bothered to check the "stats" to see if the more powerful gun with a slower shot rate is better than two weak guns with a faster shot rate.
I might be fighting another small skirmish in another part of the map while this is going on. When I go back to the original skirmish, some of my units have survived and the enemy seems to be dead. Or did they retreat? And if they did, how much damage was inflicted? Who knows. I'm no closer to knowing what the best tactics are, or if it makes any difference.
So by now I've lost interest and decided to play an FPS or something.
7 comments:
Hey Steve, don't know if you are reading you comments these days. This is something that bothers me. I would be interested in forming a project to form an original RTS based on tactical principles. One game to look at for this is original Cossacks game where unit type and formation did matter in battle. Also the older classic Warhammer games (here and here) where you could take on a much larger army with good tactics - a few well organised troops could decimate several waves of a larger army.
Hi Charlie, yes, I'm still reading comments - did you see my reply to the one you left the other day?
I'm glad I'm not the only one who finds this "flaw" in the RTS genre. The project you're suggesting sounds very interesting; how far have you got, and what can I do?
It's nothing more than an idea for the moment. However, I was going to look into it once I made progress on the game Fortress which I am working on. The advantage there is that we already have some great graphics to work with (see this castle and we have a cool archer .blend although the pics in the forum are offline atm).
Btw, I don't know if you knew, but we listed you on planet.freegamedev.net which is where I read your posts these days.
It's looking good. Let me know as soon as I can be of any help. I did notice "planet.freegamedev.net" as well - thanks! It's probably exponentially increased my audience (from 1).
Charlie, I notice that every time I edit one of my postings, it sticks it at the top of the planet.freegamedev.net. I quite often do this, but it means I'm hogging the top of your page, since the aggregator doesn't seem to read the correct "posted date". Is there any way around this?
I put a note in the relevant thread in the FGD forums to see if somebody can fix that. Don't worry about it too much though. We can handle you hogging things for now. :-)
Could you email me (freegamerblog @ gmail.com) so I have your direct contact details rather than just posting messages here...
Post a Comment