RTS Rant!

Evo

Evo

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No matter how highly rated these recent RTS's are, i can't help getting peeved with them. The whole having a 'builder' unit, or multiple ones is aggrevating to me. I dream for the days of classic C&C:RA2, build a construction yard and work from there onwards, more buildings opening new options, none of this 'upgrade unit abilities' crap.

Sorry for that rant, but it is something that really gets to me, was a main reason i never fully got into C&C Generals, and why i'm very 'meh' about the current RTS scene. Also, Dev's and Pub's are jumping on the Total War series' idea of a global conquest map thingy. Give us the basic mission, objectives, mission result, FMV, new mission. Was so much simpler back in the golden days


Posted by me initially, 5 mins ago here: http://www.spore-game.net/SMF/index.php?topic=65.0


Feel free to flame me and everything, but as i'm off to bed sooner rather than later, i frankly won't give a damn! :D
 
Like I posted in the other thread ....

I like how RTS's have evolved. I like the Total War series best: the combination of RTS and TBS works very well for me. I wouldn't want to go back to the basic gameplay you're describing.
 
I've been playing loads of Starcraft lately so I'm feeling rather retro.
 
Best RTS's ever= RA2,CC:Generals,Warcraft 3. RA2 has unlimited replay value for me.Ive beaten it with and without yuris revenge about 10000000 times and I still dont get tired of it.Something about trying to garrison every building on the map and build about 100 bases around the enemys base is very satisfying to me(takes me about 3hours per mission lol). But anyways, I like the serious micro managment of new RTS's. Im hooked on Dawn of War,still havent bought the expansion :(
 
The only real conventional RTS game I'm looking forward to is Supreme Commander. Bringing scale to a whole new level will hopefully make a big difference. The 'tanks are very very slow' and 'maps are very very large' philosophy should indicate a slower pace where units can't cross an entire map in less than a minute, and where microing and clicks-per-sec determines who wins. You may click faster than me, and maybe that means you get your tank out 20 secs before I do. While that may mean defeat for me in a small-scale RTS, if it takes you 10 min to bring that tank anywhere, it won't make much of a difference in the long run. I want longterm planning and superior strategy to determine the winner in my RTS games, not whoever clicks the fastest.

The other game I'm really looking forward to is Sins of a Solar Empire. Check it out here: http://www.ironcladgames.com By their design, it seems they're going for a RT4X game rather than a 'RTS'. This is a good thing. Can't wait to see how they pull it off. This is another game that toys around with a massive scope.
 
RA2 MP = Rush Rush Rush x infinity

Games are over / decided within the first 5 minutes, it was purely who had the most aggressive Build Order who could muster out that 1 extra tank / unit.
 
Evo said:
No matter how highly rated these recent RTS's are, i can't help getting peeved with them. The whole having a 'builder' unit, or multiple ones is aggrevating to me. I dream for the days of classic C&C:RA2, build a construction yard and work from there onwards, more buildings opening new options, none of this 'upgrade unit abilities' crap.

:D
Click to expand...

I suppose it is alright to include construction units, as long as they have a certain amount of autonomy. In most games the construction units/peasants are like the dumbest unit available. When underfire they stay in the same spot until they are given orders. Construction units in TA where given patrol routes that allowed them to automatically repair or assist building/unit construction, whilst AoE III avoided this all together, by having repair function as seperate from the peasants ability

Hopefully, 'Supreme Commander' should rectify this problem on its release.
 
Evo said:
No matter how highly rated these recent RTS's are, i can't help getting peeved with them. The whole having a 'builder' unit, or multiple ones is aggrevating to me. I dream for the days of classic C&C:RA2, build a construction yard and work from there onwards, more buildings opening new options, none of this 'upgrade unit abilities' crap.

Sorry for that rant, but it is something that really gets to me, was a main reason i never fully got into C&C Generals, and why i'm very 'meh' about the current RTS scene. Also, Dev's and Pub's are jumping on the Total War series' idea of a global conquest map thingy. Give us the basic mission, objectives, mission result, FMV, new mission. Was so much simpler back in the golden days


Posted by me initially, 5 mins ago here: http://www.spore-game.net/SMF/index.php?topic=65.0


Feel free to flame me and everything, but as i'm off to bed sooner rather than later, i frankly won't give a damn! :D
Click to expand...

BURN:flame:BURN:flame:BURN:flame:BURN:flame:BURN:flame:BURN:flame:BURN!

Ok, now that we got the flaming out of the way I'd like to disagree completely. I hated how flat the gameplay in the cc-series was compared to the *craft-series. I love having builders (and I love how they act differently according to which race you are in wc3 and sc) and I love upgrading and researching. WC3 gave me a fuzzy feeling inside.

.bog. waits for next blzzrd rts
 
come on supreme commander, reestablish my faith in rts.

i loved the original TA because provided you planned ahead, you could kill the enemy with anything. The game rewarded someone who turtled up as well as those who were constantly on agro.

You could turtle up with base defenses and try to win through n00ks and artillery. You could try and build up a massive airforce. If the map had water you could build a massive armada. You could try building a few super units or zerg the enemy with very cheap units. The massive amount of variety in how you could wage war was what made me love that game.

I still play the opening theme of TA in my car every now and then.

Da du da da duh da da da, da duh da da da duh duuuuh, da da da *laser noise* *laser noise* *explosion*
 
I bought starcraft last weekend..its the best rts Ive ever played (well this and dungeon keeper)
 
Codcommando said:
Im hooked on Dawn of War,still havent bought the expansion :(
Click to expand...
it's worth buying but just to warn you, imperial guard aren't that great. very hard to play as them in online MP.

starcraft is my love child right now. eight years i've been playing it and eight years i've been loving it immensely.
 
I concor. Building units are annoying to use simultaniously and often becom useless after a while. C&C and Advance Wars FTW.
 
What annoys me the most in RTS these days is the superweapons you have no defense against. In games like starcraft, there was a counter for every single strategy; in games like Generals, there isn't.
 
Evo said:
No matter how highly rated these recent RTS's are, i can't help getting peeved with them. The whole having a 'builder' unit, or multiple ones is aggrevating to me. I dream for the days of classic C&C:RA2, build a construction yard and work from there onwards, more buildings opening new options, none of this 'upgrade unit abilities' crap.

Sorry for that rant, but it is something that really gets to me, was a main reason i never fully got into C&C Generals, and why i'm very 'meh' about the current RTS scene. Also, Dev's and Pub's are jumping on the Total War series' idea of a global conquest map thingy. Give us the basic mission, objectives, mission result, FMV, new mission. Was so much simpler back in the golden days
Click to expand...
I also hate RTS's with these "hero" units. Lame as hell. There have been no decent RTS's since C&C1/Red Alert/Age of Empires 1.

I played that new Star Wars one and gameplay-wise it plays even worse than C&C.

HunterSeeker said:
Warhammer: Dark Omen is the best RTS ever.
Click to expand...
Agreed. One of the best ever.

Also, Starcraft is nothing special. I never got why it's so popular.
 
Also, Starcraft is nothing special. I never got why it's so popular.
Click to expand...
You have 3 Races.
These Races are as diverse as it gets. Yet the game is so equal, there are so many strategies and no one grand strategy. Massing units can be easily killed. Not only this but it has a very nice Editor, very easy for beginners and the community has only expanded on it and created thier own. There are as many game types for the game as you can imagine. The only editor that I would say really beats it would be the Wc3 editor.

Starcraft itself has one hell of a story, play the game and the secret mission on Brood War and you will be pissing yourself begging for Sc2. Read the back story on it in the manual and you will really really want to know what it all means.

Starcraft is a game with amazing diversity, Perfectly Paced(At Fastest), Perfectly Balanced, Amazing Custom-Maps that literally change absolutely everything and can be made with ease, Amazing Quality, and so much more. It's extremely easy to get into and well....impossible to master.

Starcraft is either the 1st or 2nd most popular RTS online, it and Wc3 are kind of right on edge.
 
Flyingdebris said:
come on supreme commander, reestablish my faith in rts.

i loved the original TA because provided you planned ahead, you could kill the enemy with anything. The game rewarded someone who turtled up as well as those who were constantly on agro.

You could turtle up with base defenses and try to win through n00ks and artillery. You could try and build up a massive airforce. If the map had water you could build a massive armada. You could try building a few super units or zerg the enemy with very cheap units. The massive amount of variety in how you could wage war was what made me love that game.

I still play the opening theme of TA in my car every now and then.

Da du da da duh da da da, da duh da da da duh duuuuh, da da da *laser noise* *laser noise* *explosion*
Click to expand...
TA was the best rts ever, I just hope SC will be more of a follow up to it, better in ways of its own of course since nothing can take the thunder TA has.
 
one more reason why TA is so awesome


5000 unit patch

thats right, you can download a little patch that increases your unit cap to 5000 units. It would take a ridiculous amount of time to build that many, but that fact that you can...there lies the fun
 
TA was the best rts ever, I just hope SC will be more of a follow up to it, better in ways of its own of course since nothing can take the thunder TA has.
Click to expand...
I believe Supreme Commander is taking various qualities from both.
The Diversity of Starcraft. What Diversity did TA have besides the graphical representation in it's 2 races? Very little, I believe even the stats were quite the same. Starcraft on the other hand...well down to how the races built, raised an army was all extremely different.

The Tactics used I believe stays more on TA's side of the board.

The Combination of both allow for one hell of an experince. Now if they intergrated Warzone 2100's idea of constructing units(You could build a unit out of a Weapon, Body, and Tracks). You could make faster hovering units that could go over water and have a very strong body and weapon, make a version that has no weapon and a bad body or a weak weapon for scouting. You could use Light-Tracks for a much cheaper scout unit instead of hovering but sacrifice going over water.

Warzone 2100 was a very nice Pure 3D RTS came out in 1999, you could make about 2500 diffrent types of units that all served a good purpose. Many diffrent styles of weapons, I mean MANY. To bad the owner Pumpkin Studios got shut down cuz Edois was getting out of the Pc area and going into the Console Area then dropped Pumpkin Studios funding.

Combine: The Diversity of Sc & Editor of Sc or Wc3, War Fundamentals of TA, Unit Building of Warzone 2100 and you do have yourself one hell of a game.
 
eh, i think TA had much more diversity than starcraft.

Case in point. Starcraft terrans had marines, firebats, medics, and ghosts as infantry

TA had emg infantry, heavy emg infantry, plasma infantry, rocket infantry, SAM infantry, repair bots, heavy laser infantry, light laser infantry and at least 10 more types if you ever got the expansion or downloaded a custom unit pack. I believe each team could have about 275 different units to choose from if you ever used one of the unit packs that are floating around the net.
 
lol, Flying.
Im talking about Diversity of RACES.
Take the oringal 2 TA races and compare them. Theres no DIVERSITY at all.

Take Starcraft.
-The protoss Warp buildings and units in, this alows their builder to construct any amount of buildings at once. To keep things powered they need a Pylon.

-The Terran build, this causes them to have to build their buildings with there builder until it's fully complete. They are free to build anywhere though and have the ability to lift off various buildings.

-The Zerg use there builder to actually evolve into a building(losing a worker in the process), every building but the main building must be built on a creep.

How each race builds there building is completely different and requieres a complete different gameplay approach.

Lets go off with units:
Terran and Protoss build units similar at first, but the units differences make up for this. The Protoss has the Templar and Dark Templar and Dark Archon that make up their psionic ground units. Using the Templar correctly you can kick the ass out of almost any unit when used correctly. The Dark Templar on the other hand is always invisible, has no real special powers but them being the only attackable always invisible unit adds a huge gameplay factor for the rest of the races. The Dark Archon really brings the game into hell. Being able to freeze organtic units, mind control enemies units(inculding their builders), and can cast feedback causing a units own energy to be infilicted on itself.
Now the Terrans Ground is just the Ghost, who can go invisible and call down a nuke. They are the only race to get a nuke, and it's the single most devastating weapon in the game.

When it comes to air they take a major radical twist. With the Protoss having the arbiture and being able to cloak any of his units, and being able to call a large area of units under his location and being able to freeze units. Also the Corsair being able to cast a Web that disables any units auto-attack below it. Allows you to easily get past defences and really sees how much the other player is paying attention. Corsairs plus an Arbiture can mean hell.

The Terran just get their Wraith to cloak. They also get the Science Vessel to get rid of the Protoss Shields screwing over the Protosses Strong "Archon", and being able to irradicate against zerg units. This is just the Psionic part of the game. And just the Terran\Protoss side of it.

The Zerg on the other hand build all their units from their main building. A major difference and a major advantage. Allows them to completely shift there war strategy at any point in the game. There main Psionic unit would be the Delfire, being able to cast Dark Swarm and Plague. Dark Swarm will disable any ranged units from hurting melee units inside it, cast it over ranged units and send in your melee, and you can take the weakest unit and watch it kill one of the strongest ranged ground units.
Being able to burrow is an amazing stealth ability.

Not only this but unlike TA all races have completely different stats. Protoss are by far the strongest in stats. The Zerg are by far the weakest. The Terran are kind of push inbetween. Each Race is nothing like the other and yet completely balanced.

And Yes there is quite diversity between Marines, Firebats, Medics, and Ghosts. Because each one of those units serves a completely different purpose. The Marine as your average Infantry, Medics can distract, blind, heal(health and health problems). Firebats you have to know when to use. Send them in against guys that they do less damage to, your ****ed you should of used marines. Send them in against Zerglings and you've got a slaughter fest :). Ghosts are extremely tactical, they really have poor stats but amazing range, cloak, lockdown, and nuke. Knowing how to use a single ghost can change the entire game.


Diversity != Amount of Units. In Starcraft each unit means something entirely different and is a piece to a puzzle. Each unit means something completely different and stands out from the rest. You have to be smart on what units and what tactics you use. Starcraft is all about Amazing Diversity with Pure Balance.
 
try playing Hearts of Iron 2. I wouldn't call it an RTS really, but you will never go back to playing mere "games" after. You basically play through WW2. Very realistic with every general for every country included. It's doesn't stack up in terms of graphics or sound really, but it makes up for it by being crazy detailed.
 
Y'know, I liked force commander. I thought it was fun.
*hunkers down*
 
ah okay you mean racial diversity. You have a point.

In TA the differences between CORE and ARM were minimal. Generally the ARM had lighter faster units while the CORE had more heavily armed or armored slower units. Other than that most units were the same.

However the diversity that i was alluding to was not so much the diversity between factions, but the diversity between units and that each class of unit had sometimes up to 20 different unit types depending on how many units you downloaded

In starcraft if i wanted to send in a squadron of air units it was basically limited to about 4 or 5 types, 1 of which being the staple fightercraft and the others being more specialized.

In TA you got to choose from fighters, bombers, stealth fighters, advanced bombers, torpedo planes, scout craft, construction craft, like 8 types of seaplanes, heavy lifters, gunships, and in the case of one custom unit, Nuclear bombers.

Another reason i like TA better is because combat was not instant calculations and hit percentages. Aircraft would come in on attack runs and do maneuvers as AA missles chased after them, and sometimes they could lose the missles. Artillery turrets and defensive turrets would rain plasma death on the enemy, but only if the shot actually landed on them. Large slow units would take more hits than faster ones not because of some automatic calculation, but simply because it was harder to hit them.

I once had built so many artillery turrets and so many fusion reactors so as to allow them continous fire that when my radar detected incoming aircraft, my artillery turrets, all 60 of them, would slowly align themselves and fill the air with artillery shells and actually take out aircraft. Normally an artillery turret would never ever hit an aircraft, however the shot is a projectile with a tragectory just like anything else in the game and putting enough shots into the air garantees it'll hit something.
 
Puzzlemaker said:
What annoys me the most in RTS these days is the superweapons you have no defense against.
Click to expand...

Act Of War had a good idea for superweapons. You brought the building and then purchased the war-heads seperately. Making superweapons one heck of an investment. But not just that, all of the sides had a way a destroying any incoming superweapon warhead.

The US Army had the patriot. That could hold 4 countermeasures, the Consortium had some sort of EMP device and the Task Force Talon had robotic drones that could drive around.

Then again I always thought Act Of War was a bit of a breath of fresh air in the RTS genre. It didn't do anything particularly groundbreaking (Well except story, Act Of War's story was awesome. And a few new gameplay ideas) but what it did it did extraordinarally well. Certainly worth playing at least once.
 
I would have to mostly agree, my favorite RTSs are the old CC games. However, I do like AoE III because the stupid peasants stay where they are... that and the physics + gfx make it a very fun game. I love it.

My friend, who plays AoE and Empire Earth and stuff, doesn't like YR as much, because he's used to all the economy building.
 
StardogChampion said:
I also hate RTS's with these "hero" units. Lame as hell. There have been no decent RTS's since C&C1/Red Alert/Age of Empires 1.
Click to expand...
What about the commander unit from TA? The fact that it was the most powerful unit available, if you lost it, the game was over.
 
you can't compare the commander in ta to hero units in games like wc3 and so on, the gameplay of ta is very different and the commander brings in a new structure/strategy.

ta > *
 
I hate games with hero units as well, especially in games like WC3 where if you dont have one and have him as strong as possible very soon you lose. They can take down entire bases nearly by themselves.
 
Venmoch said:
Then again I always thought Act Of War was a bit of a breath of fresh air in the RTS genre. It didn't do anything particularly groundbreaking (Well except story, Act Of War's story was awesome. And a few new gameplay ideas) but what it did it did extraordinarally well. Certainly worth playing at least once.
Click to expand...

Agreed.

I would like to say that I strongly dislike the idea of leveling units that seems to prevelant in RTS games, it seems like troops can learn more in 30 minutes of combat then 10 years of training...

Only in a few games I have actually liked the leveling of units, and those where Rome: Total War and Warhammer: Dark Omen (Cant remember if your units could level up in Shadows of the Horned rat). I have otherwise nothing against the idea of very strong units that you are limited to having a few off (aka hero units).
 
Its a frigging challange to get it to work. I got it to work by once having installed it, minimizing it via alt + tab (don this once you get into the menu). Then maximizing it again (this should remove the blur) and before you start set it to software rendering mode. It runs but you cant do it at max settings.
 
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