Balancing RTS Lethality

I hate RTSes where the units are basically bullet sponges and unlimited pop cap. It was good for Warcraft 3 because hero units and also a very limited unit pop cap. Grey Goo felt like it had bullet sponges more than its pop cap should have.

It feels like Company of Heroes was an opposite, but especially for infantry, lethality was very high but the squads were also limited pop cap. But it has a great multiplayer, compared to non-Starcraft RTSes.

However, I don't want zero lethality. That goes back to the bullet sponge thing. Ghosts with a nuke was done right, ghosts only struck one building very lethally. There still needs to be moments like that. And maybe limit the lethality to attacks that only affect a single unit/target, Area of Effect should not be lethal unless it's balanced elsewhere.

C&C Superweapons makes sense because of unlimited pop cap and also there is a clear timer for the player to react to the superweapon plus sometimes the superweapon is revealed on the map, so if you don't react, you only really have yourself to blame.

As already stated, low pop cap with less lethality is good. But if there will be lethality, there should be a higher pop cap. In such cases, unit creation should ideally be multiple units, like a squad in order to mass.

If debs want to make the debuff route viable, don't fall in the trap Red Alert 3 did, where freezing units with cryotechnology was OP. But also make that debuffing would allow lethalities to be very possible so that a player would have to perform two actions, debuff + attack to be lethal, whereas with no debuffs, it wouldn't be lethal. I think a debuff superweapon would work, I would say.

First Impressions: Star Dynasties

 

This impression is of the open beta, which has bugs and is not representative of the final product. 

Not an RTS by any stretch, Star Dynasties takes inspiration from Paradox games, billing itself as Crusader Kings in Space. While I couldn't get into Crusader Kings, I could get into the flow of Star Dynasties as it is more turn based and the UI is more flexible and intuitive in my opinion.

Asymmetry For Real Time Strategy Games

Asymmetry is more abstract than simply having heroes, so that's one reason why people don't talk about that as much. 

So I'll just give examples of asymmetry from the top of my head. Yes, I have played most of these games, though some more than others.

RTS games:

Starcraft 1+2, we all know about that. Protoss have shields. Zerg have creep. Etc.

Warcraft 3, resource gathering was different for each. The asymmetry was buried more in the details of each race, and each race had a clear counter for each unit type for the other race's units.

Warcraft 2, the clearest asymmetry are the late game spellcasters between the two races. Otherwise fairly the same.

Dune 2 is the same, factions are the same except for the 3 unique units for each faction.

Tiberian Sun (Command and Conquer 2), sort of the same thing, mostly the same in the beginning, but then branches out differently to each specialty for GDI's armor and Nod's stealth. Nod cyborg technology in particular gave a cross between infantry and vehicular endurance, and was countered by EMPs. The asymmetry was basically conventional versus unconventional weaponry.

Command and Conquer 3 continues GDI armor conventional and Nod stealth unconventional, but the alien Scrin offers asymmetry by having a flying construction unit and mind control units.

Red Alert 2, Allies have chrono technology (teleportation), Soviets have iron curtain tech (invincibility), Yuri has mind control. Other different technologies like Allies are close enough to their counterparts to not be too assymetrical, but it was still a nice touch (for example, a Prism Tower and Tesla Coil are charged differently but still have the same result, a beam of something towards an enemy).

Red Alert 3, Allies have cryo tech (freezing), Soviets have armor, Empire had a different construction mechanic entirely. Other asymmetry is more in the details.

Command and Conquer Generals have USA with lots and lots of drones that accompany units for support repair and fire and helicopters for resources, China with propaganda, nuclear radiation, and hacking (resources), GLA with chemical warfare, suicide units, and tunnel networks and quickly rebuildable structures but no air units.

Grey Goo, the Grey Goo faction basically reproduces. The Mother Goo/constructor's resources is the same as its health and they can eat enemy units. Beta have hard points they can use as defenses and uses hubs to build bases. Humans have teleportation and power conduits that give them centralized bases. The Shroud can build anywhere unlike other factions but only have slow extraction of resources unlike the harvesters of the other factions but cannot auto produce units like other factions.

Universe At War, each faction plays almost completely differently: Hierarchy has massive crawlers that function as the faction's structures and could crush other units, Novus uses a network to teleport around the map, Masari could change its entire faction into Light mode (attack) or Dark mode (defense) and each mode completely changes the faction's gameplay

Age of Mythology, there are five cultures, Greeks acquire worship by villagers assigned to temples, Egyptians acquire worship through monuments and have healer units, Norse have two resource gatherers and generic heroes that can be produced en masse and gain worship by killing enemies, Atlantean villagers do not need to return to a building to increase resources and can upgrade their normal soldiers to hero units and their town centers acquire worship, Chinese resource gatherers can drop off all resources at a single site and have gardens that gain all resources passively and have only one infantry unit (with all other units being archers) and the only culture with amphibious units.

Age of Empires have a lot of civilizations that are different details such as unique units and buildings and statistics, but there are commonalities. 3's Asian Dynasties civilizations have Consulates that receive shipments. 3's WarChief civilizations share canoes.

Dawn of War has 10 full factions. There is no clear asymmetry with just the mechanics, however the feel of each faction is definitely different.

Company of Heroes have different progression for Allies versus Axis. Armored and specialized Axis has three phases while versatile Allies usually plop a Barracks then Motor Pool.

Warrior Kings starts you off as a neutral faction. But by choosing to build a Church, you pledge yourself to the Imperials, or if you build a Maypole, pledge for Pagans, or if do the neutral route in the middle with a Guildhall for the Renaissance faction. And you can have a part Imperial and part Renaissance mix OR a part Pagan and part Renaissance mix, but no Imperial-Pagan mixing. The asymmetry here is that Renaissance is for sieges and heavy upgrades, Imperials holy units can exorcise demons and call upon Acts of God, equivalent to superweapons , and Pagans can swarm with demons and other massed cheap units.

Other games:

Civilization, each civilization is different in mostly statistics, but multiple victory conditions I believe offer the most asymmetry in a Civ game. There is a domination victory, cultural victory, religious victory, science victory, etc. So asymmetry is not limited only to factions.

Conquest of Elysium and Dominions series from Ilwinter Games have many, many factions for their strategy games that are almost completely asymmetric. They are balanced by making sure every unit has at least one hard counter *somewhere* in another race, not necessarily all races.

Endless series seems to master faction asymmetry in the 4X space. Each have different goals.

Dune board game factions had cards that had different effects on different factions, different victory conditions, and so on but have the same core gameplay.

Cthulhu Wars board game is the same, different victory conditions and yet even with same core gameplay, the factions play out very differently.

ROOT board game have completely different game mechanics for each player almost entirely. Some factions can't even transverse on the forests and have to be limited to the roads. Each player have totally different goals to win.

Among Us and other Mafia/Traitor games, there is an asymmetry between the Crewmates and Impostor. Both have almost totally different mechanics and tools, from doing tasks versus sabotages and killing. In other Traitor games like Salem, each player can have completely different roles and thus tools to win.

From that we get types of asymmetry:

Mechanical asymmetry - Games with players and factions that have completely different game mechanics from each other are probably my favorite.

Economic asymmetry - Players and factions that utilize the same resources differently and gather those resources differently. Age of Mythology shines in this.

Movement asymmetry - Factions that utilize different locomotions. For example, a faction may have air units and another has naval units but none for other factions. Another faction may have hover for their vehicles, making them able to cross water, instead of tracks. Factions that can teleport versus those that have no teleport is another example.

Weapons asymmetry - Players with specializations on different weapon types. For example, a melee heavy faction versus ranged faction. A siege faction versus a defensive faction. And weapon effects, too, for example, a piercing railgun that hits multiple enemies in a line versus a poison cloud that hits multiple enemies in a circle. You can have the same unit types but giving each a different weapon effect changes the battlefield completely.

Upgrades and technology asymmetry - Rare to have alone because it is not so impactful visually, but you can have the exact same units and everything but with different focuses on upgrades, such as more attack or more defense.

Unit type asymmetry - Sort of related to weapons asymmetry but more deliberate and wider. For example, an infantry heavy faction versus a vehicle heavy faction. It could even take the form of a faction with no heroes versus a faction with heroes.

Base Building asymmetry - This can take on the form of things like mobile structures like in Starcraft, limited construction areas like creep, or even different construction mechanics like Empire of the Sun nanoconstructors versus the traditional MCV of Allies and Soviets or a hub system versus a network system in Gray Goo.

Objectives asymmetry - As mentioned, Endless and Civilization has different victories, Among Us crew and imps have different goals. This is often paired with mechanical asymmetry but not always. Because of different victory conditions, players play differently.

Progression asymmetry - This is often tied to build orders. Company of Heroes has Allies with fairly straightforward progression, whilst Axis have three phases of progression. So mixing up things is an asymmetry, for example, a faction may get light vehicles before they get infantry, or aircraft before they get tanks. Rocketeer infantry/jetpack infantry rush is an example for Red Alert 2/TibSun for the latter. This is only progression and not unit type, for example, you can have two factions with the same exact units but different progressions, forcing a different gameplay.

Feeling asymmetry - You can have no mechanical asymmetry and have the same core gameplay mechanics but still a different feeling for each race by just having different stats. For example, heavily armored faction versus a stealthy hit and run faction are often popular archetypes. Or a melee heavy faction versus a ranged heavy faction. Same mechanics, different stats, different feels.

Map asymmetry - Or you can have no faction asymmetry whatsoever, and just have the map be asymmetrical. For example, a map with a different resource for each side.

Which asymmetry do you like? Which asymmetry do you not like?

 

First Impressions: Rebel, Inc.

Rebel, Inc is a mobile real time strategy game loosely based on the endless wars in the Middle East. It is very reminiscent of Plague, Inc. Not sure if they are made by the same company. Anywho, it offers a far more degree of control than Plague, Inc.

You pick a leader, which has advantages, and a headquarters, and try to stabilize the region by upgrading the civilian and government. You fight off insurgents with military that try to destabilize it. 

The map is divided into sections or zones. Each zone is stabilized separately. A lot of upgrades are not instant. Some emanate from your headquarters outward to adjacent zones, eventually affecting other zones. So a road upgrade would first improve your roads at the headquarters, then the zones next to the headquarters, then the next ones, until all zones are upgraded. 

You have to manage corruption and inflation as well, which increases for each upgrade you buy. Corruption increases because of inefficiencies. Inflation increases when you rapidly buy upgrades rapidly that are related to each other. I like the balancing act this gives. 

Combat is simply drag and drop the military to a hostile area. Reinforcements are done by dropping military in adjacent areas. Upgrades unlock other weapons such as airstrikes and defenses such as garrisons. Insurgents must be cornered as they can flee to adjacent zones. 

All in all, good balance of management and light combat, great for mobile.

Designing A Co-op RTS

So what would co-op probably look like? What ideas are there?

I like SC2's co-op for the short time I spent in it, I definitely liked the variety of commanders. It felt more relaxing. Kinda like a Super Smash Bros. of RTS. According to reports, co-op is the most widely played mode in SC2.

One thing I feel like is being missed, though, I don't see too much synergy between players, at least to its potential. Or maybe it's just the commanders I've played.

All-In-All, What Is The Point Of Co-op, Anyways?:

The thing about co-op is that there are other players that, for good or for ill, will affect you. If one messes up, it is your job to shoulder the team, so to speak. This can simply mean you are just in the same team fulfilling the same goal, destroy everyone else, but that seems hollow to just limit co-op to your normal RTS multiplayer alliance. If you want to be independent and not be disturbed by people in your game playing, then play multiplayer. So co-op is made to mess around with friends or whatever.

I'm not saying all these ideas are good or viable, just that they exist.

Allowing Others To Build On Your Land:

This I think is the very least most team RTSes see coop, not very far from just being on the same team and not shooting each other in multiplayer. This does help in survival, or such as squirreling away a construction or worker unit in your allied base just in case your base is destroyed.

Map Marking, Notifications, Voice Chat, and Communications:

Cooperation is based on communication. Marking on maps what your intents are to attack or to move or whatever seems like another floor for a co-op game.

Also notifications are very important, I think, to make a successful coop RTS. Most coop games have the players nearby, or other players will not reach you.

An in-game voice chat is probably necessary. I actually hate voice chat, tbh, but I know I would use it for games of Call of Duty with friends.

Pre-Planning Phase:

There are co-op games with pre-planning phases. There was a game like PayDay 2 that did it well, can't remember the name of it, but it had the tools necessary to actually draw out the plan. And the maps were randomly generated, so planning was a must. The plan was drawn on the minimap equivalent during the game.

Classes as Sub-Factions:

Command and Conquer 4 had the idea of classes for each co-op commander, divided into defense (infantry and base defenses), offense (tanks), and support (air and support powers). Other than it being a horrible game, I saw where they were going at.

They are basically very specialized sub-factions/races.

Not sure if it should reflect FPS and MOBA game classes. Though I think it's fun to make up classes in my mind at least. A sniper RTS class would have artillery and superweapon focus. And an economy class handles economy, harvesting, etc. A healer class would have the medics and repairers.

The new co-op Dwarfheim RTS has classes, but I don't know much about them. They are Warrior, Builder, and Miner, and Miner sounds like the economic class I threw out there.

More Explicit Reviving and Supplying Of Other Players:

To look at other games that are not RTS, I liked how Left 4 Dead did co-op. You are able to easily heal a fellow player. You can eventually "resurrect" a player by finding them if the other players don't die.

In Killing Floor, not only are there healers, but you can get explosives and bombs from the ammo guy.

What if there was a mechanic to resurrect your fellow player?

Unit and Resource Exchange:

How about a unit exchange mechanic? Where you can trade or lend or borrow units from your fellow player? Instead of just shooting off credits or resources to your fellow for nothing (though the option could be good), you can get something back for your trouble.

I do envision it being more packs of units being exchanged, rather than just a single unit everytime. So a squad, battalion, or whatever. Maybe there could be an in-game specific structure they can be exchanged in.

Letting Other Players Command or Lead (Some of) your Units or Structures (Sometimes or Partially):

Instead of necessarily doing a unit exchange, this can be done as well. Maybe there is a command you can use to toggle your own units that it can be used by an allied player, and an indicator and notification will notify your ally that they can use them. Then you can take back control by toggling out or the player can toggle out himself as well.

Or one can do partial control. I envision this is mostly for structures, but things like having allied harvesters drop at your refineries will add resources to their pile, and could charge them a fee for using your structures or something. Or do it for free like usual, but harvesting can take up space from other harvesters.

Special Units or Technology When You Have Certain Combinations of Factions/Classes:

I always loved the CnC mechanic where you capture the other enemy's tech, and then you can build your own units from other factions. Even better, the spy system in the Red Alert games lets you get a spy in the tech labs, and you get a super special unit that is a chimera of the factions. For example, in Red Alert 2, your Allied spy getting to an Allied Battle Lab will give you Chrono Commandos, a teleporting Navy Seal. Going to a Soviet lab will give you a Chrono Ivan, which is a teleporting explosives lobber. Going to a Yuri lab would give you Psi Commandos, Navy Seals with a mind control device. This idea gets even crazier in mods, like Mental Omega.

With co-op, one could have access to a unit that only those classes or factions share when they play together.

Edit: Added a couple of points 

Individual Units or Squads or a Combo of Both?

In most older RTS games, you can only produce one unit at a time. The first "definitive" RTS game, Dune 2, had infantry as squads, but they weren't true squad units, because they were just a sprite/image of a squad, each sub-unit was not semi-independent.

Some newer RTS games let's you produce units as squads, such as C&C3 and Dawn of War. These squads when you select one unit in a squad, you select all the other units in the squad, they act as one unit with many sub-units. Each sub-unit had their own health and their own firing and were semi-independent.

Some have combinations of both. Starcraft has reactors where you can produce multiple marines at once. Of course, selecting multiple units make them in a sort of a squad. But that's not the default, of course, just that selected units sort of act like a squad. Carriers makes interceptors, so a carrier is basically like a squad unit.

I would like more squad units in more RTS games. But Blizzard RTS games are not known for squad units. If Frost Giant will stick to the individual unit philosophy, and have things like reactors and carriers to augment units, my preference is to normalize making batches of individual units from the very beginning. In a real war, (lower level) units come in batches, 10 at once, 20 at once, or whatever, not just a single soldier you train every so often. So instead of just training one marine in the beginning of the game and then cycle to the next marine, 10 will pop out the first training class. It will normalize massive firefights in the beginning like a real war, instead of a battle, to me, at least.

If you want to make an RTS with mass wide appeal (rather than RTS gamer only appeal), look at Age of Empires and C&C

(In context of the new studio Frost Giant, a studio composed of former Blizzard developers looking to make the next great RTS)

While it is true Starcraft has far more current players today, it is arguable that Age of Empires and C&C have a wider mass appeal among non-gamers and non-RTS gamers. Current numbers would only be useful since there are no true new releases of both series that are not remakes or remasters (or the most recent titles from them do not capture the early spirit).

These are just anecdotal experiences, so you can take them with a grain of salt.

I run a fairly okay and generic RTS page, and AoE, C&C, and SC is the order of ranking in popularity in regards to posts made on there. So that's one indication.

I am not a gamer (as in someone who spends half his day gaming, cause I have work and live a fairly normal life), so I meet a lot of non-gamers and non-RTS gamers (ie someone who would play, say, Call of Duty rather than a strategy game) in my circles.

A lot of older non-gamers I've met have played and enjoyed Age of Empires with fond memory, even though they don't play any games anymore (quite a few of them were politicians, might give you an idea what line of work I used to do) but would not touch other strategy games. A lot of the reasons they would give me is that they learned history from it. Quite a few also have played Civilization alongside it, which makes sense. But they would never touch Starcraft.

Now, another trend I've seen were those who were older gamers, but not RTS gamers, again, those who would usually play something mainstream like Call of Duty rather than a strategy game. They usually gravitated to the Command and Conquer series back in the day when it was popular, particularly Red Alert 2. But not Starcraft. Some of the reasons they gave me were it was patriotic (the America versus Soviet timeline). The ones who were not into Red Alert were into Tiberian C&C's story of Kane. But they would never touch Starcraft.

So most normal people really like history. There's a reason why World War 2 games come out every year. Should Frost Giant's game be based on realism and history? Not necessarily, but it is to be considered that Starcraft's science fiction does go over the head of a lot of people. You can talk Marauders and Reapers and what have you and most people will look at you strange, while the AoE archers, musketeers, and knights people would immediately recognize what they would do. Red Alert 2 was a bit whacky, but soldiers with guns and tanks are fairly easy to understand. You have to learn basically a three new cultures for each race in Starcraft, Terrans are recognizable cause humans, and they have soldiers with guns and tanks. But Protoss and Zerg are basically homework if you want to learn how to play them. Of course, making it historical and realistic will limit gameplay, as well (unless you are creative). But the post is about accessibility to mass wide appeal. If a balance can be struck, then do so.

Those are my anecdotal experiences. It is clear to me that most Starcraft players in contrast, are RTS gamers. That's not a bad thing, don't get me wrong. I love all RTS games, as I said, I run a generic RTS game page myself. I've played almost all of them at least once, even the very obscure ones, though I keep finding even more obscure ones to this very day.

But one non-anecdote is how Microsoft made Age of Empires mass appeal. There was a very old article that I can't find anymore where Microsoft had every demographic do quality testing for Age of Empires. In that article, an old grandma was interviewed who tested the game, and it apparently went really well that she was able to play the campaign missions and hold off her own in a multiplayer match for at least 15 minutes before she succumbed. That's how strong the tutorials and pacing were in Age of Empires. Now, a grandma is probably not Frost Giant's target audience (and neither was her Age of Empires' audience), but can it really be said that a very old person can access Starcraft enough to be able to hold their own for a few minutes?

So if Frost Giant just wants to target RTS gamers, which is not a bad thing at all, and create a spiritual successor to Starcraft, with esports scene and all that, then that's totally fine. That's what they are experts on. I'll definitely still play it.

But if they want to reach non-gamers and non-RTS gamers, they need to look at how AoE and C&C do things, maybe not necessarily in terms of gameplay, but in terms of tutorials and accessibility (for AoE) and theming (for C&C).