So, a few people (namely one or two) on iRC may know that I'm working on a project that'll reimagine Command and Conquer 4 as a proper RTS. (Base buildings, tank on tank warfare, etc).

It's still in the planning stages (I'm looking at the UDK), but I thought that this would be a good opportunity to ask people what they expect/look for in an RTS in general, so that I can factor it in to the design process.

Also, it may hopefully kick off a discussion about RTS games in general, methinks.

For example, one major feature that I'm weaving into this project is unit versatility: players can swap out a unit's weapons for another when near another certain unit/back at base, giving it another gameplay role, but also keeping in mind that it wouldn't be as good as a unit that has that function as a dedicated role. This'd give players more options on the battlefield, as well as challenging an opponent to adapt/scout. These units would also have dedicated secondary functions/niches in the gameplay that'd ensure that they're not rendered 'obsolete' by higher tier units, as soon as those previously said higher tier units become usable.

The reason for this is that in previous Command and Conquer games, and in many other RTS games, is that when a better tank or when vehicles become usable, infantry or previous vehicles aren't used anymore - why build a machinegunner, when you can build a tank equipped with a heavy machine gun?

So, in essence: what do you look for/want in an RTS game? What (unique?) features have you seen in an RTS game, that you'd want to see again in another?

 

Ok, let me preface this by saying I'm a big Warcraft III player. A fun game for many, but not one of the pristine games in terms of balance. The following though are some things I like in my RTS games.

1) Fun Factor: There needs to be something that hooks the player. In WC it's heroes. In Age of Empires its the history factor. In Age of Mythology its the gods factor. Whatever it is, it has to draw the player in. This would fall under the unique factor I think. For me, the Hero factor really makes it fun to play, but I think this is quite hit or miss.

2) Balance. For a game to really gain a decent following it has to have some balance to it. If one race is extremely dominant then no one will pick any other, etc.

3) Easy to use online play. I don't want to pay to play online games, and I want a game to be easily found. I think that this is the most common denominator among successful RTS games.

I'm not sure how much this helped, since honestly I skimmed your post a bit til the end. I'll reread it tomorrow when I'm not as tired and edit it with any more important information.

 

This. You really need something that makes the game unique. I like your idea of being able to switch out weapons, but you probably want to streamline it a bit for ease of use. My playing style is just to gather massive amounts of troops and throw them at the enemy. I don't really pay attention to individual units so unless switching weapons is really easy to do, I would never use it. I doubt many real RTS gamers play like that, but whatever.

Honestly, I haven't been able to find a RTS game for years that draws me in because they all seem the same, just with different races and special effects. It's all about innovation and creativity with RTS games. There are so many out there you need something to really stand out.

Good luck.

 

It's completely irrelevant to your intended game I'm sure, and doesn't fit the C&C genre, but I must say that I enjoyed the squad-based unit structure of the Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War RTS games. Well, the first series at least, I have yet to play any of the Dawn of War 2 games.
Also, while you could not replace the alternative weapon unless the unit wielding it in the squad died, many squads had a certain number of 'upgraded/alternate' weapons that they could give to a limited amount of the members in their squad, out of a select of a few different kinds(be it heavy duty anti-light armor machinegun, anti-heavy armor plasma pistol, anti-vehicle rockets, or anti-morale flamethrower).

For a classical RTS in the vein of C&C like yours is, the concept of swappable/customizable unit weapons reminds me of Tiberium Sun's GDI turret emplacements. Which could have their actual turret swapped between Vulcan Cannons, RPG's and SAM's. It's not quite the same, but sort of.

The tricky part with games that allow customizable units, is not making them too handy, thus invalidating future units either sometimes. Costower ratio, and all that. Unit caps come into the equation eventually most certainly, but before a unit cap is met, if a weaker unit is notably more cost-effective than a stronger unit, that is the unit that generally gets produced. I suppose that is unavoidable though. *ramble-ramble*


Also, as the above. You definitely need a hook. Honestly, while I have enjoyed RTS games, and still do, I have probably sunk many more hours into TBS, so take that however you will. Many, many hours of the Age of Wonders series, Heroes of Might & Magic, Space Empires, Warlords, and others.(Civilization is fun, but has relatively little re-playability to me)

 

I tend to enjoy RTS games that you can't just win in under 5 minutes. I found that with Starcraft II it almost became who could know their builds inside out and have minimal lag time between different actions so you could squash the other player faster than it took you to set up a game. I guess what I want is to have a balanced pacing of a game. I understand in games like SCII you could just slow down gameplay time to remove that factor, but then it prolongs the game for no real reason.

You also need a hook for your game that the posts before me have mentioned. I personally loved Dune where you had not only your enemy to consider, but the worms and such that could wreak havoc on your hard work if you get careless. Also having units that would go up in ranks like in C&C 2 was something I enjoyed.

The last thing would be to limit the variety of races that you could play so that each race is not a carbon copy of another with different skins - similar to how I found the original AoE to be (though it was still awesome for its time). The 3 race style of SC franchise was good as it allowed you a degree of variability in combinations for allies and enemies.

 

Never played C&C, but I played a Dune game done by them, I think. Emperor Battle for Dune. The game was great, but one aspect I loved about it was a menu on the right, part of the HUD where it showed all of your buildings built, and anywhere on the map you could click on it and queue up some soldiers, instead of hot-keying or racing back to the building on the map.

Another aspect I enjoyed were the sub-houses you could choose from. Basically, you had the three big houses with their units, then additional forces you could take in. Kind of like mercenaries I think, and each had their own units to train from the building, though I like you could only build two buildings of the six, I think, that were available to everyone.

 

RTS's are hard games to design. Most games look for a cop-out to hide the fact that the RTS element is shit in them (called the fun-factor above). And I absolutely disagree that an RTS game should have something like heroes or whatnot to make it "fun".

The second thing is simplicity, you don't want all that weapon changing thing simply because it's overly complicated. You shouldn't have to read a book to know which combination of units will perform better and how to improve them. It should not be a numbers game, at least to the player (because underneath it all, it is a numbers game) and you should do your best to hide that. But the strategy aspect is important, you may think that simplifying reduces choices of strategy but you need to make it so that there's a bunch of other factors involved that complicate the game in a relatable way. I'll try to explain the concept as best as I can.

Think rock-paper-scissors. There are ways to complicate the game. The most obvious way is to introduce other signs. (making complicated unit combinations, race combinations, etc in RTS's). You need to give the player just enough units as would be entirely comfortable with and that he can mentally keep track of. The strategy aspect shouldn't be remembering what units do what. In rock-paper-scissors, what if the player used both hands? what if you needed to do two symbols one right after the other? what about things other than hands influencing the game?

An oft ignored element of RTS games is the environment. It shouldn't be entirely about the units. A simple way would be to give certain units an advantage in certain places, affects movement speed of certain units, etc etc.

There are way too many things to influence the game in "simple" ways that do not burden the player with too many variables yet give enough variance to allow for strategic gameplay. And that is at the crux of all strategy games. Getting that balance right is the "fun-factor".

Sorry, went on a rant there. Not entirely sure if I even made sense.

 

My favourite RTS was Rome Total War but I doubt that a mix of C & C and Total war is what you are looking for.

With regards to games like C & C I have always enjoyed the base building aspect of things. Having the ability to build anywhere is a must in my opinion and, as mentioned, the environmemt is an important factor. Having areas only accesible with certain units and giving units bonuses based on terrain allows for base building to be more of a challenge.

As an example, say on a map there is a large island with plenty of resources. Obviously that will feature heavily in gameplay and will be an early focus point. As air units are the best option save a massive sea force it might not be heavily attacked by opposing players. However, to gain the island means that the player will have access to a lot more resources but their original base will be more vulnerable as the only way to gain this island is to focus your efforts on it in the early game.

Not a brilliant example by any means but I think it gets my point across: the map design is very important to overall enjoyment of an RTS game, at least for me.

Another thing to avoid is the unit that is so powerful 95% of games end up with a rush of these units. For an example you need look no further than the mammoth tank. 20 of those in C & C and you will cause your opponent a massive headache if not crush him outright.
To counteract this maybe give an early unit an upgrade that is devestating to vehicles like mines that will kill even a mammoth tank. This would require other units to detect and destroy and might help in solving the problem of certain units becoming obsolete in the endgame.

EDIT: Ignore this and look at what Socialist said. Put it much better than I did.

 

#1: Innovative resource management.

Examples:

A) C&C: Generals. In which you could construct buildings that produced cash, along with traditional resource gathering. Did you devote your time and money to income infrastructure and defence, or to quickly massing an army to overpower your opponent? Unfortunately the game was rather horribly balanced in other aspects, but it was refreshingly original.

B) Warcraft III. Before the Frozen Throne, a dude named Tillerman showcased that three sufficiently leveled heroes, along with some spellcasters, were enough to decimate even the most powerful unit mixes. Thus hero experience was recognized as a most precious resource, shifting the metagame to who could acquire the most of it in the least time possible. This made for pretty lulzy pro matches, with both players focusing on tower rushing high level creep camps, all the while trying to harass the enemy creeping. Blizzard did not appreciate this a whole lot, so they overhauled the entire system in FT.

In contrast resource management in, say, DoW 40K was boring. You captured strategic locations. Fortified them. Built power plants. That's it.

There were still important decisions to be made - where and when you would capture a point - but not enough depth.

(btw DoW was a freaking awesome RTS. True story.)

#2: Balance

Especially, unit balance. I'm of the opinion that very rarely used units should culled completely. Less is more.

I find this a terrible philosophy. Every unit should be useful.

SC:BW did this. The marine+medic combo remained the core of a Terran army versus Zerg, from start to finish. Zerglings were the main dps units in late Zerg vs any race. Zealots and Dragoons were produced in early, mid & late game as the most cost effective units in the Protoss army. And so on.

Age of Empires II did this. Excluding castle units, every unit from the 2nd age was a unit you would continue to use throughout the game.

Generals did this. Basic infantry men were the weakest unit available to all three armies. Also the only unit capable of capturing enemy buildings. And you could drop them. Anywhere.

Because he's cheaper, easily massable, can enter buildings & APCs, can be transported by a helicopter, isn't vulnerable to anti-vehicle weapons. Take your pick.

It's matter of creativity. Again, if you end up creating units that you know will be rendered obsolete by more expensive units - don't do it.

To give you an example; take the chinese Overlord tanks from Generals. They killed other tanks in a maximum of 3 shots (other vehicles with 2). They could be upgraded with machine guns to decimate infantry and aircraft. They could take a shitload of punishment.
No one massed them. It was impractical - due to cost, slowness, vulnerability. You used 2 or 3 to clean an entrenched position - that was it.

This is a big no-no, at least for returning to base. Simplicity is the key. Your army is not supposed to stay in base swapping weapons in order to counter his shit. Your army is supposed to be out there - harrassing his economy, cleaning his expansions, ,securing your own, forcing him to build defenses. A stationary army is a useless army, unless you're defending.

Weapon swapping on the go sounds pretty interesting though. Either, as you said, by being near another (mobile) unit or by disabling the unit swapping weapons, for a small period of time.

For example, a tank could switch between activated cannons & activated electronic warfare systems. The first would decimate buildings, the second would disable nearby enemy tanks & aircraft. That.. would add a significant amount of depth to the game. I would get behind that. /nods

#3 Upgrades

There's not much to say here... you should shamelessly copy Blizzard. Upgrades should be vital to one's game play - either by improving a unit's aspect or by introducing a new ability.

Again, you're limited only by your creativity.

And don't forget, Every unit should be useful.

/some of my thoughts

(btw I would totally test the shit out of this if/when it's ready)

 

I've become really fond of a cover system and infantry squads(Company of Heroes and Dawn of War as the examples). The cover system gives infantry a purpose even in late game where they'd otherwise get just blown off the field. It also adds a new dimension of strategy when you have to position your units right and flank where needed.

Unit squads is in my opinion a great addition too. It makes producing and deploying them to the field a lot easier and makes it overall more easy to keep track of them.

/my random 2 cents.

 

Right, I think Socialist worded some of what I was trying to say a lot better.

btw Jormugandr, when you say reimagine, what exactly do you mean? Also, what about copyright infringements?

 

To some degree, I'm honestly not sure how much copyright infringements would occur. How many near-identical (except for, but sometimes even including looks) games have you encountered? I have certainly seen quite a few, although I tend to avoid playing them. As long as there are a few things which stand out to say "this is 'different' about our game" I don't know how much it matters if everything else is the same.

 

To me, an RTS game needs to be fun and appealing. At the same time, each race / team must have a diverse set of tactics. And so far, only 3 RTS games have met these criteria for me. Starcraft 2, Command and Conquer Generals and Warcraft 3. All have unique sides that have unique strategies. That's what I look for.

 

I also think that this is one of the most important things. Your game should be easy enough that everybody understands the basics of it. You don´t need 100 different units who all do nearly the same thing.
And you factions should have great differences in their strategies etc...
I also liked the Squadsystem of DoW...but the whole weapon/change thing is depend on how big your game will be...When you plan to have a few hundred units in your game this level of micromanagement becomes nearly impossible.

PS: I think the story of the game is important.. a little "useless" information is always a plus in my side.. but then I am more of an offline player... I am to slow for real online matches, I like to slowly build my army and then kill the enemy wit overwhelming numbers and if I try that online I get defeated in the first 15min or so...
Hope you understand what I wrote.

 

Fun factor, for sure.

Context/setting is also important. A game can have the best mechanics in the world but I'll be "meh" if the setting is one I'm not interested in. For that reason (among others), games like Company of Heroes never interested me.

Depth of detail is also important. I don't particularly enjoy what I consider "lightweight" RTS games like RUSE, or even Warcraft 3, that are fast paced games and focus on combat. I want a civilisation building game that encompasses as many aspects of that as possible. I'm also not a fan of hero driven gameplay with units levelling up etc. I like a broad, civilisation view. This is also important for me because I like to big boom, so most of my game - if I'm playing as I want to play - is spent looking at my own base, exploring the area around my base, building new stuff around my base, etc. So I likelots of social/economic elements that give me interesting things to do during these parts. One part of Empire Earth II I loved was the sheer quantity and variety of resources on offer.

Finally, strategic depth that makes end-game play interesting. In particular, AI that allows big booming to be a valid strategy and more than just an end-game grind-fest. I'm definitely a big boomer. I don't like going on the offensive until I've maxed out tech tress and have built up massive defences. The thing is, on most games once you've done this (assuming you achieve it and don't get overwhelmed by rush play) defeating the enemy - which has been spending all its energy on sending small raiding parties your way all game - is all but a formality. A time-consuming formality.

This last point is where all RTS games have let me down in the past. My favourite RTS of all time - Age of Mythology - hit every spot except this last one. I've never really seen a game that does this well, with the possible exception of Civ5 (Not an RTS, I know), which makes at least some attempt at strategy with the inability to stack units. But even in that, once you're ahead winning is just a matter of going through the motions.

I have no idea how to solve this problem without the AI cheating itself a load of units/resources in the late game, which would be lame. It may just be a problem with my playstyle.

 

I still play Age of Mythology regularly. The expansion broke the balance though. Stupid Atlanteans.

 

Yeah, that was a great game, especially for multiplayer. I used to enjoy maps modelled on real world geography. Playing as the Egyptians with Isis as the chosen deity was awesome for defence. No one could get past my walls and massed War Elephants/Petsuchos. But going on the offensive in late game, as I recall, was actually quite difficult. My opponent was generally able to kill my army and then the whole process of turtling and amassing a new army would repeat. Eventually I got good with the Norse and stopped playing like that, though.

As for RTS in general, I like at least three factions, and each faction should be distinct, but they should all have an equal chance of winning regardless of match-up.

A good story keeps me invested in the game long after I might have grown bored of its gameplay.

A lively online community helps, which generally happens when the game is accessible for modders, map makers, etc. So a campaign/scenario creation tool is always a good thing. Although nowadays such programs generally require a lot of technical know-how, so I personally don't use them. The last time I made a good custom map was for Brood War back in 2000. Shit got too complicated after that.

 

For me it is the online play. I love custom scenarios. I played custom games almost exclusively in WC3, AOE2, and some of the older C&Cs.

My two favorite rts of all time weren't even released in this millennium (WC2 and AOE2). They still hold up to the test of time pretty well I think and are still fun. The games don't have to be complicated and complex to be good.

But my third favorite was made more recently than 1999 - Sins of a Solar Empire. Lots of here have played it, and it is quite awesome. That has to do with a lot of factors such as scale of the game and the very premise of it. My favorite c&c is probably Tiberian Sun, although Red Alert 1 holds a special place in my heart. Both are free to download and play now right off the company website, which is nice.

 

I loved the team building thing in DoW, which they lost in DoW 2... But DoW was awesome, with custom weapons for each team, so you could build your teams for different purposes.

Also agreed with Taure.