The Future of RTS...& the 7 Deadly Sins

[whippersnapper]

whippersnapper: * 1.) Distinct playable factions.

Dues: Agreed, that would benefit WZ.

- Not readily done in WZ. I'm not even sure it is feasible.to even contemplate.

whippersnapper:: * 2.) Fine-tuned command and control of combat groups on the battlefield such that multiple vector deployments with velocity are feasible. Being on the short end of the stick in sheer numbers during asymmetric conflicts is NOT an assurance of defeat. The foregoing is predicated on placing a premium on intel gathering tech and the facility to translate into intelligent maneuver with velocity.

Deus: You're probably going to need to be more specific about what features or mechanics you are suggesting adding here, or find someway to be more clear about what you mean by this in general.

But you sound like you are saying that it needs to be easier to attack from multiple angles at once with separate forces? That always seemed like something more easily done in WZ than in the many other RTS games it competed with when it was first released

- Hmmm.... I'm thinking simultaneous surgical strikes as opposed to barely controlled mass swarming in MP. I'm not gonna get into the details of our implementation but If you look closely at Elio's new UI - the Commander portion in particular - you can infer just HOW much greater command and control can be achieved in WZ.

whippersnapper: * 3.) Boons to motivate unit preservation through ranking experience

Deus: Easy, you need fewer, faster-coming ranks with a little bit more dramatic enhancements to stats versus what we see in WZ. Currently, units never survive long enough to become smart enough to be worth preserving.

- That's certainly one way of doing it.

whippersnapper: * 4.) Passive and Special abilities.... with stacking.

Deus: WZ has this. Not sure what exactly you mean by 'stacking' in this context.

- Let's define the terms by genre consensus...

- A Passive Ability is an attribute or ability that a unit or building has that can affect things around it, without the need for the player to activate it or control it by hand. For example, a healer unit may have healing as a passive ability: any units that stand within a certain radius of it have their health replenished at a constant rate. A Hero might have a morale boosting, or attack enhancing effect on friendly units around him.

- A unit with a Special Ability may lack "normal" weapons, but may possess special abilities (like changing or nullifying some attribute in another unit, e.g. casting a Shield on another unit or converting an enemy unit to an ally) or some souped up, one shot super zap. A Special Ability doesn't have to be "magical",; its more a description of any unit that has special abilities outside of the usual move and shoot. Most often a Special Ability consumes a special resource (like Manna or Energy) that needs to be replenished before being used again. And more often than not, the special ability can only be used with a special command. StarCraft's full of them: Templar, Defilers, Queens, and Science Vessels, to name but a few. Age of Empire's Monk is another example as are many of the Hero units found in Dawn of War.

- Stacking refers to a number of overlapping bonuses or other effects on a unit. Each of the effective bonuses multiply on top of each other.

For example, a unit stands near enough to a healer's aura to receive ongoing health replenishment. If that unit stands close enough to four healers, then the healing effect can be four-fold. In other words, the effect of these healers stacks when they're close enough together. Conversely, a unit might receive multiple bonuses: attack strength, healing, or shielding by standing near to different units with different auras. The combined effects of these auras stack on any unit within range. A classic example of stacking can be found in Dawn of War's Ork Mob Bonus.

Some games might prevent bonuses from stacking for balance reasons. Healing rates might be capped to prevent fighting units from becoming invulnerable. Some powerful bonuses might be exclusive, meaning that all other bonuses are disabled when they are active. Again, this is designed to prevent units from becoming too powerful or having an "exploit" where unscrupulous players can invoke these bonuses for easy wins, time and time again..

- Now you can judge to what extent WZ invokes these in actual winning MP game play. In my experience, hardly ever unless you play mostly newbies to the game...

whippersnapper: * 5.) Minimizing economy, research and leveling-up micro-management

Deus: WZ has this too....

.

- Oh my ... not nearly enough. Maybe in Campaign and Skirmish modes (except when playing against the latest "Become Prey" A.I.) but when your playing with Veterans who wanna win you better be prepared for a micro-management click-fest that follows the same inexorable pattern
game in and game out. Not much fun after the upteenth iteration..

whippersnapper: * 6.) Be able to absorb game play complexity incrementally and intuitively - the learning process cannot create confusion, frustration or feel like hard work. Complexity is a slippery slope and alone does not assure depth of game play that is both fun and challenging - sometimes the complexity can actually be entirely gratuitous..

Deus: So many games have too much of this.

- Yup...

whippersnapper: * 7.) In-game player avatar investment scheme via dual game play modalities in MP... aka, the status of General in God-mode & FP POV.

Deus: Yuck, your having a damned avatar all the time was the greatest weakness of the otherwise fantastic cross-genre battlezone games (the '90s ones I mean). But at least then your avatar was a standard trooper aside from his sniper capability.

PSX WZ had it right, you select any one of your units at anytime and just take it over, drive it around, drive it into battle (Spring also does this now).

- NOT implemented at all like any of your examples. "Drive Mode" is implemented but is NOT synonymous with FP Mode whose GFX are on the par with Fallout 3. All your examples have grid-based PF like A*. but because of our unique implementation our PF is NOT grid based. Maps can be upwards of 50kms of game world.

whippersnapper: * 8.) Squash all bugs as they manifest by stress testing in maximum # of gamers in MP mode. Play-testing at 50% load just doesn't cut it and there can never be sufficient MP play-testing for countless reasons amongst which balance stands out as the most obvious.

Deus: WZ seems fairly bug proof to me, atm. Balance is of course another story though.

- I don't know of any available data on 8 player net games so i couldn't say.

whippersnapper: * 9.) Be super mod-friendly...

Deus: Most games are, with WZ mostly being limited in this respect by the difficulties of importing new content from a real content creation program into it successfully. But again, this is just the current situation- from what I gather there are alot of folks working on this issue.

- Yes. True on all counts. And already a done deal on this end tool wise..

.....

[Skrim]

.
So let me step-up to the plate & summarize the design strats of compelling replay value as I have come to understand my own subjectivity and creation goals. This set is by no means offered as gospel or exhaustive. No doubt there are other design sets that can achieve the goal of enhancing replay value that I can't even conceive. But this is the ground staked as the goals-benchmarks for a particular RTS in development and we'll see if it pans out in the end.

* 1.) Distinct playable factions.

* 2.) Fine-tuned command and control of combat groups on the battlefield such that multiple vector deployments with velocity are feasible. Being on the short end of the stick in sheer numbers during asymmetric conflicts is NOT an assurance of defeat. The foregoing is predicated on placing a premium on intel gathering tech and the facility to translate into intelligent maneuver with velocity.

* 3.) Boons to motivate unit preservation through ranking experience

* 4.) Passive and Special abilities.... with stacking.

* 5.) Minimizing economy, research and leveling-up micro-management

* 6.) Be able to absorb game play complexity incrementally and intuitively - the learning process cannot create confusion, frustration or feel like hard work. Complexity is a slippery slope and alone does not assure depth of game play that is both fun and challenging - sometimes the complexity can actually be entirely gratuitous..

* 7.) In-game player avatar investment scheme via dual game play modalities in MP... aka, the status of General in God-mode & FP POV.

* 8.) Squash all bugs as they manifest by stress testing in maximum # of gamers in MP mode. Play-testing at 50% load just doesn't cut it and there can never be sufficient MP play-testing for countless reasons amongst which balance stands out as the most obvious.

* 9.) Be super mod-friendly...

...

1. Yes. But you'll have to run the gauntlet of MP balancing issues with a multi-faction multiplayer RTS. Sins of A Solar Empire had to undergo severe flak from it's MP players on dozens of "this is imbalanced" complaints, which lead to several rebalancing updates. LRM Frigates and Illuminator Vessels could be balanced but Siege Frigates suffered a permanent nerfage that rendered them useless to the point that they were just about forgotten.

Still, it's better than the one-faction thing we see in Warzone. The campaign has poorly-done fake factions, but I think we should build upon them, and obtain 4 playable real factions - the New Paradigm, the Project, the Collective, and NEXUS. I have an idea of how to do this, but it involves a very complicated system of interdependence between players to obtain technology that they can't just research by themselves, via Artifacts and Alliances.

2. What the heck does that mean? You can already attack with two tank groups from two different directions, plus artillery and aircraft raining down firepower from above. And if you have a giant swarm of cyborgs marching towards the enemy base, you can still beat them using a smaller number of incendiary-armed bombers and artillery. Or maybe I'm mistaken since I haven't played much Skirm/MP, but things like this do work in the Beta Cam missions.

3. Deus Siddis said it right on this one.

4. Does this mean "spell-caster" type units? Like those seen in fantasy RTS(including SciFi RTS, which are more or less fantasy in "space" or in a "future" setting) games? Well, we have EMP weapons, NEXUS Link, and repair units(all of which increase the games un-realism by some odd coincidence) but I doubt whether they're very popular. An "incendiary"-type EMP weapon that has a large, sticky area of effect would be more useful.

5. Warzone has this, as Deus said. We have only one resource(power) collected in unlimited supply from fixed locations(oil deposits) with each Power Generator structure handling 4 oil sources. Simple enough. As for research, removing the 2364382 weaponry and armor upgrade technologies would help to simplify things. Or at very least, nerf them to give a 5% increase each instead of a whopping 30%, to make better weapons actually be better than heavily-upgraded but lower-level weapons.

6. Yeah. This is a tough point. Artillery and Commanders can be a bit hard to learn at first, and a lot of people seem to get confused with Counter-Battery systems. But Warzone is relatively simple, still.

7. Nah, I'd rather overlook the whole thing than have to work one unit and run things too.

8. Yes.

Edit:

4. Ok, so you are talking about spell-casters. SoaSE's Support Cruisers are a perfect example. Each faction has 2 Support Cruisers - 1 which hinders the enemy in some way with Special Abilities, 1 which supports other units in some way with Special Abilities. The heaviest non-Hero(or non-Capital Ship in this context) combat units are the Heavy Cruisers, which can be upgraded with Passive Abilities through research. Special Abilities cost Antimatter and have a cool-down time. The Advent's abilities are always Psionic-themed, the Vasari's abilities are Nanotech or Phase Space themed. TEC abilities are generally more mundane.

WZ doesn't have Passive Abilities, but Repair Turrets, NEXUS Link Turrets and EMP Cannon/Mortar do provide Special Ability units. They, however, do not cost any special resource. Repair/Link Turrets do seem to stack, EMP doesn't.

[Per]

whippersnapper: * 1.) Distinct playable factions.

I think the lack of distinct factions is one of the most obvious things that Warzone lacks but the competition has. But if we are to have factions, we need to think out of the box provided by Warzone itself. Factions for Nexus or Babas just ain't gonna cut it, because these are really just two extreme and opposite ends of the same linear scale of technological progress which is already provided by the game.

[Zarel]

I think the lack of distinct factions is one of the most obvious things that Warzone lacks but the competition has. But if we are to have factions, we need to think out of the box provided by Warzone itself. Factions for Nexus or Babas just ain't gonna cut it, because these are really just two extreme and opposite ends of the same linear scale of technological progress which is already provided by the game.

I think of it more as something that makes Warzone unique - that having access to one set of technology doesn't lock a player out of the others. I don't think having factions is necessarily a good thing for Warzone.

[whippersnapper]

.

i'll try to respond to all the posts without quoting.

------------->

What's good and right for WZ ?

IMO - developers that improve the game from multiple levels by expanding mod possibilities (inc new art)

Modders (& artists & mappers) whose creativity is inspired and who have the fortitude to bring their work to a relatively
bug free release state.

an MP arena for stable play that can deal with cheaters and encourages clans to thrive through tourneys and standings...

-------------->

the discussion has drifted into talking about WZ as if it was ONE game play experience and it is NOT - it is actually
THREE game play experiences: Campaign, Skirmish and MP, human vs human.

some have commented - "You can already do that in WZ !"

to which I respond: "Yes - in Campaign and in most Skirmish but absolutely NOT in MP vs experienced players if you want to win..."

i can always tell when folks have limited MP experience with WZ and are speaking from a mostly Campaign and Skirmish background...

I was fortunate to come up in WZs MP heyday and played exhaustively against the best regularly over a couple years on the net and
since at lan parties periodically.

much of what i list as my goals is geared to a hugely replayable MP experience.

fortunately an old bud and master scripter created a way this past summer for folks who don't have extensive MP experience with vets to get to
know most of WZs weaknesses through Skirmish play. Unfortunately it hasn't been made compatible with the WRP binary. however if you can run Pumpkin's v.1.10 you can KNOW where of I speak when it comes to the MP game play short falls. WHY ? Because this Skirmish A.I. exploits them all, is vested with actual winning MP Strats-Tacs and does so without cheating. Indeed, you can NOT force it to cheat with the slider bars. That is how it was deliberately designed and I can confirm, having gone thru all his scripting that it does not cheat at all... Send me a PM if your interested in the script files and then run it on the stock map "Start-Up", one on one, then come back and we can again revisit the discussion on "But you can already do that in WZ !!!".... Sure you can in MP if you play against dummies or folk who don't care about winning....... or in Cam mode or against most Ski A.I.s

--------------------->

On playable factions in WZ - honestly, I don't think it's viable.

My most deeply satisfying game play experiences in Campaign Mode was against Nexus.... even though it wasn't a playable faction it was indeed playing against a faction (faked through scripting and stat adjustments - a modus totally unworkable in MP..... but still very fun..)

..

...........

[Chojun]

Regarding all this talk of SETI:

First, if people are implying that the Warzone storyline should or could have Aliens involved, I think that is simply absurd. Clearly Pumpkin did NOT have any intention of introducing any sort of Alien elements into the game.

Also, isn't the notion of Aliens seeking us out a little too presumptive of their supposed or assumed intentions toward us? That is, assuming any alien would even be interested in us, which I think they likely would not be (per-se). Maybe a very small subset of the population (as in, a few individuals) for scientific study but not the general population. There's nothing interesting about us; not until we can solve our own societal problems.

Also, assuming our Universe is all equally aged (big-bang theory), and it took us in our part of the Galaxy all this time to get to where we are, I'm not so sure any 'local' Alien race would be that far ahead or behind us technologically, assuming that any sort of supposed natural evolutionary process has guided our race on the fastest and most efficient developmental process that has kept us on par with any other theoretical natural evolutionary process on any other planet capable of supporting intelligent life similar to our own.

[EvilGuru]

Also, assuming our Universe is all equally aged (big-bang theory), and it took us in our part of the Galaxy all this time to get to where we are, I'm not so sure any 'local' Alien race would be that far ahead or behind us technologically, assuming that any sort of supposed natural evolutionary process has guided our race on the fastest and most efficient developmental process that has kept us on par with any other theoretical natural evolutionary process on any other planet capable of supporting intelligent life similar to our own.

I agree with your post — the idea of aliens seems like deus ex machina and something of an absurdity (edit: in Warzone at least).

However, it is important to remember that life has been around for millions of years, although it is only in the last 10,000 years that any kind of scientific/sociological advancements have been made. Technological advancement is an exponential process — more papers were published in the 1990s then between 0 A.D. to 1900 A.D. Therefore a species would only need to be a 1,000 or more years ahead of us technologically — a miniscule amount of time.

Regards, Freddie.

[Chojun]

Keep in mind I'm not discounting the possibility that they exist -- I do believe that Alien life exists elsewhere in the galaxy -- I just don't believe we are important enough for them to care about us (per-se).

I agree with your points about the speed of technological evolution but clearly our technological evolution is not tied to our evolution as a species -- it is arguably tied to our societal evolution so I don't think that Alien species could be that far ahead or behind us unless they as a society evolved more quickly/slowly than us.

Anyway it is an interesting discussion, despite who is right or wrong.

[whippersnapper]

.

i don't care what you guys say, i'm still going to catch the re-make of The Day the Earth Stood Still this opening weekend at
my local multiplex.

as a child i loved the black and white original movie even though Gort scared the bejesuss out of me so bad that every time he was on
screen with that eerie music i'd run and hide behind my grandmas skirt. She'd say: "Come on little man... it's not real, its fake, it's not gonna hurt you. why you insist on watching stuff that's gonna give you nightmares at night is beyond me..." well, though i knew the wisdom of her words, i still was scared and still wanted to watch it whenever it was on.

aliens as a fiction, an entertainment, are still great fun to me... whether in Sci Fi books, movies, tv shows or games...

however, as you guys have ably expressed it, there is the WHY or motivation for aliens giving a damn about us earthlings to bother with us, let alone interfere in human affairs. i'm familiar with all the RL "kooky" fringes, the reputable exobiology postulations and the entertainment tropes and i can not swallow them whole hog in the SETI context or in my own work creating an alien faction. it was not difficult coming up with alien tech or alien physiology but the so called "Alien Agenda" with us earthlings... the "alien motivation" that did not come across as hackneyed and cliche... THAT was very, very, challenging and difficult for me. sure it is a fiction we are talking about here so why sweat the WHY ? Verisimilitude, the craft of achieving a willing suspension of disbelief for the sake of game play dynamic fun. it's like finding a "hook" in music that compels listeners to hum the melody or sing the lyric....

....

[fisk0]

Regarding all this talk of SETI:

First, if people are implying that the Warzone storyline should or could have Aliens involved, I think that is simply absurd. Clearly Pumpkin did NOT have any intention of introducing any sort of Alien elements into the game.

Also, isn't the notion of Aliens seeking us out a little too presumptive of their supposed or assumed intentions toward us? That is, assuming any alien would even be interested in us, which I think they likely would not be (per-se). Maybe a very small subset of the population (as in, a few individuals) for scientific study but not the general population. There's nothing interesting about us; not until we can solve our own societal problems.

Also, assuming our Universe is all equally aged (big-bang theory), and it took us in our part of the Galaxy all this time to get to where we are, I'm not so sure any 'local' Alien race would be that far ahead or behind us technologically, assuming that any sort of supposed natural evolutionary process has guided our race on the fastest and most efficient developmental process that has kept us on par with any other theoretical natural evolutionary process on any other planet capable of supporting intelligent life similar to our own.

I think I was the one who introduced SETI into this thread, but I certainly didn't mean it in a "THERE SHOULD BE ALIENS IN THIS GAME" kind of way, just a off-topic response to a partly off-topic post made earlier about war, and I brought up the fermi paradox (if that's how it is spelled) and said something about that the invention of the radio came hand in hand with the discovery of various weapon technologies that could wipe out the species.

As for different factions in the game, though aliens are the most commonly used to get very diverse factions, I personally think something similar to the civilizations or generals in games like age of empires, civilization and C&C generals would be best. That they all have basically the same tech tree, but that one factions may have research speed bonuses, another one has weapon damage bonuses, oil income bonuses or something like that. They might start out which a couple of techs already research, which would be different for each faction. They also maybe could have either one (at the very end of the tech tree) or 3 (one at the end of each tech level, T1, T2 and T3) special weapons in the research tree, that would be specific to the faction and would only be available to the other's through artifacts, like the super weapons in the later C&C games, and just like in Red Alert 2 they could be very different for the different factions - an exceptionally powerful defensive fortress, a sniper type cyborg (might be useless in WZ though), double or triple barelled cannon tanks, long distance SCUD type missiles or carpet bombing capable VTOL bomb bays.

[Per]

Interestingly, though, with the post-apocalyptic scenario offered by Warzone, radically divergent evolution in different parts of the globe would be far more likely, since there would be little contact between the various factions until the dust literally settled on the new world disorder. So you don't really need aliens to offer varied factions. You could have some people somewhere investing, say, in trans-human biological research instead of the cybernetics of the Project/Nexus. You need only watch Resident Evil to see some of the intriguing results thereof xD

[Skrim]

The new faction for Nucnut's Australian Campaign, the Providence, sounds like a good idea.

Isolated from the rest of the world and extremely xenophobic people who practice intensive genetic engineering and consider themselves to be the ones with "Pure Genes" to repopulate the world. They seem to have nothing to do with NEXUS and just want to kick the pesky "Impure" Project off their land. They fight almost entirely through artillery and VTOL aircraft instead of regular ground forces, and their vehicle bodies are optimized for VTOLs.



Anyway, here's my idea of how to implement factions. I said earlier that it depends on a complicated interdependence between players of different factions to obtain technology.

1. The Project

Starting Weapons: Machinegun, Flamer
Starting Bodies: Viper
Starting Propulsion: Wheels
Special Technology:

-Sensor Turret
-Flamer
-Howitzer
-HellStorm
-Ground Shaker
-Project Bodies(Viper, Cobra, Python)

2. The New Paradigm

Starting Weapons: MiniPod
Starting Bodies: Bug
Starting Propulsion: Half-tracks
Special Technology:

-MiniPod
-MiniRocket Artillery
-Bunker Buster
-Cyborg Factory
-Cyborg Transport
-New Paradigm Bodies(Bug, Scorpion, Mantis)

3. The Collective:

Starting Weapons: Heavy Machinegun
Starting Bodies: Leopard
Starting Propulsion: Tracks
Special Technology:
-Hyper Velocity Cannon
-Assault Cannon
-Tank Killer
-Inferno
-Avenger SAM
-VTOL Propulsion
-Collective Bodies(Leopard, Panther, Tiger)

4. NEXUS:

Starting Weapons: Needle Gun, Flashlight
Starting Bodies: Retaliation
Starting Propulsion: Hover
Price Modifier(for units & research): 2x
Special Technology:
-Needle Gun
-Rail Gun
-Scourge Missile
-Flashlight
-Pulse Laser
-Angel Missile
-NEXUS Link Turret
-Auto Repair
-NEXUS Bodies(Retaliation, Retribution, Vengeance)

The Project, The New Paradigm, and The Collective can research all the T1 and T2 tech in regular order(but with their own medium/heavy vehicle bodies in place of Cobra/Python) except those which are another faction's Special Tech. Those Special Techs can only be recovered by capturing an artifact left from a destroyed base structure of it's faction or from a unit/structure implementing that technology, or by handing it over in an Alliance. Except for the Collective's SAMs and the Project's heavy/rotary howitzers, none of the 3 regular factions can access T3 technology without recovering it from NEXUS.

NEXUS starts out with access to T3 tech at 2x the research cost(& time), but cannot access previous tiers' weaponry technology without recovering it. Their starting technology is a fair bit stronger than what the regular factions can put out for a while, but if you notice, they lack air defenses, can be swarmed by cyborgs and can be bombarded by artillery if they fail to recover those technologies from the Collective/Paradigm/Project. They basically are an odd faction, walking a tight rope between getting mobbed to death and becoming an all-conquering power.

NEXUS is already odd, and adding an artillery+aircraft centric faction like the Providence, or an extremely odd faction like the horribly weak Scavengers, is currently beyond my imagination.

[whippersnapper]

Interestingly, though, with the post-apocalyptic scenario offered by Warzone, radically divergent evolution in different parts of the globe would be far more likely, since there would be little contact between the various factions until the dust literally settled on the new world disorder. So you don't really need aliens to offer varied factions. You could have some people somewhere investing, say, in trans-human biological research instead of the cybernetics of the Project/Nexus. You need only watch Resident Evil to see some of the intriguing results thereof xD

that is a rich vein to mine as far as storytelling premises go and fittingly elegant within the WZ back story as it presently exists.

Skrim: Cool proposition and breakdown.

I was thinking last night about a mechanic for this. I started recalling how we used to handle the simultaneous load of compatible A.I. personalities and mods with Troman's WZ Starter... Then I recalled how Speedy did his A.I. Boost Mod and how he would make it compatible with other A.I. / Mod combos (these were ai script personalities that also required their own resource .wdgs like "H2O" ai and "Ghengis Khan" a.i.)....then I started thinking about Freddie's betawidget-Lua and Elio's new UI proposition. From there I went into how Coop MP is done thru alliances in Aivolution...

some sort of possible way of implementing factions started to emerge out of all that (as far as mechanics in MP). still, i'm unsure about how feasible it is and, intuitively, it also strikes me as somewhat inelegant at this point as thought experiments go.

...

[Skrim]

My most deeply satisfying game play experiences in Campaign Mode was against Nexus.... even though it wasn't a playable faction it was indeed playing against a faction (faked through scripting and stat adjustments - a modus totally unworkable in MP..... but still very fun..)

In the "What the hell are..." thread in the Game Development section, Zarel said this:

They lose because they have practically no AI, and pretty much never rebuild anything.If you stuck a multiplayer AI in there (and gave it access to Nexus technology), Cam 3 would be practically impossible.

So, what if we do stick a multiplayer/skirmish AI in the Cam3 NEXUS and see what happens? I could theorize about it, but I'd like to see what other people would say about this, and MP AIs in the Collective, the New Paradigm and the Scavengers as well.

[Chojun]

IMO it would be unplayable. All this talk leads me to believe that people have never played Cam3 on normal or hard.

Seriously, go try it on hard. It sucks.