Calin.

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Originally posted by Calin:
Basically I'm looking to 'upgrade' the WarcraftIII gameplay.

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Well first of all, what do you see wrong with it?

I would still like to be able to click on individual units though, to send a grunt out for a quick recon around a corner or something, but what if we took a lesson from how military formations work in "real life".

If each unit has a rank, then given a group of soldiers, it's a fairly simple sort to figure out who is the officer in charge. Holding down 'g' (for "group") and clicking in a mass of soldiers will select the highest ranking person in that contiguous group of soldiers. You can then issue orders to him on a group basis (get the whole squad to follow him), or get him to move on a solo basis (less common, but still make it an option).

If you want to split up a group of soldiers, you can hold down 's' and click on a group of contiguous soldiers, and it will select a squad of 4 units from the original group, and make the original highest-rank in charge of the larger group, and the second-in-command be in charge of the second group. Similarly, you can break out a larger group of guys by holding down 'p' in order to grab out a platoon of 16 units (or, in the spirit of OSC's Ender's Game, maybe just 't' for toon as it's easier because it's on the left side of the keyboard).

However, you can still just left-click a guy to select him and walk him around for recon or whatever, but it's a more flexible way of dynamically selecting squads and assigning leaders and whatnot.

Maybe as you select group/platoon/squad leaders, it would dynamically add their portraits to a row on the bottom of the screen, with a number showing how many grunts are under their command, and also a hotkey number so that you can quickly select that commander.

Just some thoughts as far as how to quickly divide or combine and shortcuts that are "select a group of 4 soldiers in good health, and go charge that artillery" (which is something you do often in Warcraft, but it's tedious to sort through soldiers manually to hand-pick ones that are of decent health and whatnot), by just s-clicking on your main group, then issuing an attack command.

It's not terribly consistent or well-thought-out, but hopefully it's an interesting idea.

--clint

[This message has been edited by HanClinto (edited March 13, 2007).]

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Originally posted by Calin:
For example one of the biggest problems is 'unit flooding': expand quickly and flood your enemy with your units. In War3 if you get the expansion first you have 80% chance to win (even if the adversary tries a fast tech as a counter). Pretty much every RTS that involves resource gathering has this problem.

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Well, I was asking more about the unit\mirco-managing because of the nature of the original thread topic, but ok.

Maybe you could make it in game where your cities are somehow protected from attacks until they have fully built up enough?

[This message has been edited by LAVA (edited March 13, 2007).]

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Originally posted by HanClinto:
Regarding what's wrong with Warcraft III, I have a hard time with how micro-managing it needs to be, and even though it's better than Warcraft II, it's still annoying how you can't select a very large number of units at a time.

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That's how Blizzard tried stop 'flooding'(actually one of the strategies). It was also a performance wise decision I think.

micro/macro management is a huge topic. I think micromanagement was yet another tactic to stop 'mass piling'. I remember the Human tank in Starcraft, it had a huge firepower compared to the rest of the units (you could stop 15 - 30 enemy units with 5 tanks) but it required micromanagement.

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Originally posted by HanClinto:

If you want to split up a group of soldiers, you can hold down 's' and click on a group of contiguous soldiers, and it will select a squad of 4 units from the original group, and make the original highest-rank in charge of the larger group, and the second-in-command be in charge of the second group. Similarly, you can break out a larger group of guys by holding down 'p' in order to grab out a platoon of 16 units (or, in the spirit of OSC's Ender's Game, maybe just 't' for toon as it's easier because it's on the left side of the keyboard).

However, you can still just left-click a guy to select him and walk him around for recon or whatever, but it's a more flexible way of dynamically selecting squads and assigning leaders and whatnot.

Maybe as you select group/platoon/squad leaders, it would dynamically add their portraits to a row on the bottom of the screen, with a number showing how many grunts are under their command, and also a hotkey number so that you can quickly select that commander.

Just some thoughts as far as how to quickly divide or combine and shortcuts that are "select a group of 4 soldiers in good health, and go charge that artillery" (which is something you do often in Warcraft, but it's tedious to sort through soldiers manually to hand-pick ones that are of decent health and whatnot), by just s-clicking on your main group, then issuing an attack command.

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At this point I can't pin-point a solution. Your ideas seem interesting and worth be looked into though. I do have an observation, it looks like your system isn't super newbie friendly. You should be able to move your units around as easy and fast as you can.

What I had in my mind is more of a 'fixed size' squad i.e. 5 soldiers make a squad and you're able to select say 5-10 squads at a time. In my approach though you can't select individual units which I don't know if it's good. Getting a the right balance between macro and micromanagement is a huge challenge.

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What I had in my mind is more of a 'fixed size' squad i.e. 5 soldiers make a squad and you're able to select say 5-10 squads at a time. In my approach though you can't select individual units which I don't know if it's good. Getting a the right balance between macro and micromanagement is a huge challenge.

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Originally posted by Calin:
I do have an observation, it looks like your system isn't super newbie friendly.

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Perhaps, yeah -- this could be a downfall of all of the keyboard shortcuts. RTS games in general aren't terribly newbie friendly though, since complexity is one of the things that makes them so attractive to fans of the genre. One of the only newbie-friendly RTS games that I've seen are the "tower defense" games, since they really distill the whole genre down into some very simple things.

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Originally posted by Calin:
What I had in my mind is more of a 'fixed size' squad i.e. 5 soldiers make a squad and you're able to select say 5-10 squads at a time. In my approach though you can't select individual units which I don't know if it's good.

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Warcraft III already has fixed-size two-unit squads with the dwarven artillery dudes -- you always have two of them, and they work together as a unit (like a tiny squad). Are you picturing the same thing, except that there are 5 guys instead of just two?

It seems like you've just made units 1/5th the strength that an individual unit would be, and combined them to form another fixed-size unit, and you have the same micro-management problem as you did before.

Some other questions to be food for thought, what happens when one of your units dies? Does the whole squad die similar to how Warcraft III handles the dual-units? If you let just one unit die, is the squad of fixed size 4 now? Will you be able to combine and merge squads if they get too small?

--clint

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Well, I was asking more about the unit\mirco-managing because of the nature of the original thread topic, but ok.

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Unit swarming and micromanagement are directly related, i.e Blizzard uses micromanagement as a counter for swarming .

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Maybe you could make it in game where your cities are somehow protected from attacks until they have fully built up enough?

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That would take away the chance to defeat your opponent in the early stages of the game since his base would have to be invulnerable as well.

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Some other questions to be food for thought, what happens when one of your units dies? Does the whole squad die similar to how Warcraft III handles the dual-units? If you let just one unit die, is the squad of fixed size 4 now? Will you be able to combine and merge squads if they get too small?

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The squad becomes smaller. You could merge two squads but it looks like too much hassle.

I have a question for you as well. What happens if your 'general' dies, you loose the ability to select groups?

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Originally posted by Calin:
What happens if your 'general' dies, you loose the ability to select groups?

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Nope -- the "general" is simply defined as the highest ranking officer in a group. If the commanding officer dies, the program runs a search through the squad to find the next-highest-ranking soldier, and he is now the guy in charge. The portrait down in the squads list would update accordingly, perhaps with a brief flashing red border to let you know that the death of the old CO led to the field-promotion of one of the other units. It would be a nice alert for the player, an inidication that that squad is taking heavy casualties and might need more attention.

--clint

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Originally posted by jestermax:
[B]with warhammer 40,000. individual units in the squad die in combat so if at least one member of the squad is alive then you can rebuild the squad with units (assuming he doesn't get shot while you're doing it).

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That's the 'unit-like' squad HanClinto was talking about. I agree it would be a lame solution if you leave it as in WarHammer 40,000.

Since you mentioned a RTS game with squads, Defcon has them too. The user can't move individual units in the squad, just the squad as a whole. You are permitted to issue attack orders to individual units though.

One the one hand you can take all the RTS games out there and come up with some sort of 'combo', on the other hand at moments I am tempted to think that the current system is overstretched and that a paradigm shift is needed.
There's plenty of factors we can play with to get the best gameplay in any case.

[This message has been edited by Calin (edited March 13, 2007).]

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Perhaps, yeah -- this could be a downfall of all of the keyboard shortcuts. RTS games in general aren't terribly newbie friendly though

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It doesn't have to be that way though, at least not at the scale it is right now. I think more of the 'casual' gamers would be playing RTS games if it wasn't for the crazy interface. Most RTS games can be split in two:
a) games that emphasize graphics and don't give a dime on the gameplay (i.e Total Annihilation, Age of Empires, etc. ). These games aren't played too much since they get really boring after the player has explored the tech tree and the maps.
b) games with a well tuned gameplay (i.e Blizzard RTSs and some other). These games last even after you've seen all the fancy graphics and triks. This is the category the 'professional' gamers play. Unfortunately the well tuned games are limited by their interface and usually shies away 'newbs'(i.e keyboard shortcuts)

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since complexity is one of the things that makes them so attractive to fans of the genre.

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There's some truth in your statement but I really think it's the screwed interface not the complexity that scares away the most people.
In my opinion one of the 'evils' in the RTS interface is the keyboard. If we throw away the keyboard we loose the 'pros' but we gain a lot more casual players.
I think the realm of alternative USB devices on the PC is unexplored and there are ways to complement the mouse with an additional 'motion detecting' device. It is an issue that is at least worth being looked into.

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Originally posted by HanClinto:
Warcraft III already has fixed-size two-unit squads with the dwarven artillery dudes -- you always have two of them, and they work together as a unit (like a tiny squad). Are you picturing the same thing, except that there are 5 guys instead of just two?

It seems like you've just made units 1/5th the strength that an individual unit would be, and combined them to form another fixed-size unit, and you have the same micro-management problem as you did before.

--clint

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You are actually right but I don't think that's a bad thing.

I don't know if you heard about DOTA. It is a Wacraft 3 mod that doesn't look like warcraft at all. Thousands of players play it and they have international competition with major prizes. The players have to fight each other in teams, each player controls only one unit throughout the game. The units (which are 'heroes' borrowed from normal Warcraft) have abilities. You win or loose depending on how well you use your abilities.

Although I'm not a DOTA fun there is something to it why so many players keep playing it. I think it shows that controlling 'one unit' can be fun as long as that unit can do all sorts of stuff.

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a good gameplay is a right combination between performance and features.

Yes, people really enjoy playing DoTA -- it's a short-term action RPG, much like a quick quest in Diablo II except that it can be head-to-head.

Even though DoTA is built inside of the Warcraft III game, I'm not sure that it's really a real-time strategy game in the standard sense. I would call it something closer to a multiplayer hack-and-slash action RPG. Real time strategy (as a genre) generally involves troop movements on a larger scale and having to deal with strategy more than individual troop action. A good RTS will disassociate the player from the nitty gritty. It will let the player take a step backwards and view the game more like a chess board rather than forcing him to manage each troop with things like reloading and using special abilities and whatnot (exactly the micro-managing thing you were talking about earlier).

DoTA, while being mostly an action game, keeps some of it's "large scale strategy" by making it multiplayer and giving you creeps for teammates. Granted, they're pretty stupid teammates, and you have no control over the general battle strategy (which is, to blindly throw yourself "lemmings" style into the meat-grinder that is the enemy's defenses).

I like action games and RPGs quite a bit though, but I don't entirely think that DoTA is an RTS.

--clint

[This message has been edited by HanClinto (edited March 23, 2007).]

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Originally posted by HanClinto:
[B]
A good RTS will disassociate the player from the nitty gritty.[B]

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Yeah but you can't go with that too far, you still need to manage your units. I think we both agree the number of units should be increased to make the game interesting, so it all boils down to what is the best system to control all those units.

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Originally posted by HanClinto:
It will let the player take a step backwards and view the game more like a chess board rather than forcing him to manage each troop with things like reloading and using special abilities and whatnot (exactly the micro-managing thing you were talking about earlier).

DoTA, while being mostly an action game, keeps some of it's "large scale strategy" by making it multiplayer and giving you creeps for teammates. Granted, they're pretty stupid teammates, and you have no control over the general battle strategy (which is, to blindly throw yourself "lemmings" style into the meat-grinder that is the enemy's defenses).

I like action games and RPGs quite a bit though, but I don't entirely think that DoTA is an RTS.

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My intention was to keep this only on the Nanostorm private forums but I guess I'm gonna post it here. So here is how DoTA becomes a RTS:

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Imagine that you rip all those 'magic' abilities from the hero and replace them with groups of units. Each group can do a certain thing. For example instead of the 'Blizzard' spell you have the 'ability' to control the archers in the squad, instead of 'Water Elemental' you can control your swordsmen and so on. You can asign the units of one type to a task and units of a different type to another task. You do it all while controlling the hero/general. You can't select the groups individually, they are all tied up to the hero/general. Now that I think of it you can add 'task groups' to each hero. Each hero can have a limited amount of task groups. Lets say four task groups. The player can assign each task group to a different task. Each task group can have several units, say 5.( that makes a max of 20 units in the squad). The player can fill all task groups with same type units or units of a different type. The point is that each task group can execute a distinct task. With four tasks the squad under hero can do four separate things. To fill in the task groups with soldiers you approach your base and 'order' units like when you buy items for your hero in a Warcraft III shop. The buildings in the base start building the units you ordered. Once a unit is build it enters under the command of it's 'owner'. The hero can have all slots in every task group filled or few units in one or two task groups.

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a good gameplay is a right combination between performance and features.