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).

All-Time Favorite: C&C Red Alert 2 and Yuri's Revenge

Oh, where do I start? This game holds so much memory and nostalgia.

I first encountered Red Alert 2 when I was around 7 or 8 in an internet cafe. Or rather Yuri's Revenge, I think, was my first introduction to the game. It was also my first introduction to the Command and Conquer universe.

Red Alert 2 is the sequel to Red Alert (obviously). The game is set in an alternate history where Hitler was killed by a time traveling Einstein. After the Soviets were rebuffed by the Allies in the first game, the Soviets took vengeance by invading the United States led by a Ronald Reagan analogue, President Dugan.

The Soviets used their psychic adviser Yuri to mind control the counterattack nuclear missile silos and crippling the United States. There, you enter as an upstart American commander of the American and soon Allied forces.

Funny instance, the second time I loaded up the game, I had completely forgotten that right-click did not move the units. The game used left click to select and move. I kept deselecting units for almost a couple hours.

When we moved to the States, I managed to score a complete CD set of Red Alert 2 with Yuri's Revenge.

I rebought the game again with Command and Conquer: The First Decade and again with EA Origin's Command and Conquer: Ultimate Collection. It is probably the one of the fewest games I have ever rebought in my life.

With the First Decade, I created many mods. The game has awesome mod support. It was also the game I modeled primarily after for the real time strategy game I was designing and developing called Ground Zero CLASH.

It's probably my all-time favorite game of all time, and not just real time strategy. Undertale comes close, though.

Get the Command and Conquer The Ultimate Collection [Online Game Code] here. It's a lot cheaper than just buying Red Alert 2 and Yuri's Revenge separately. By doing so, you support Faction Calculus. If you don't like us... just google it or something.

Factions:
Allies
Soviets
Yuri (YR Expansion)

Mods:
Mental Omega