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The Future of RTS

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Re: The Future of RTS

#241

Post by CyberDildonics »

IgorPartola wrote: post #219
sgillen wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are underestimating the difficulty of the problem. The interactions between all the stats you listed can’t be distilled to to a single number. For example maybe a very slow but powerful unit gets a normal score, but when paired with fast units to protect it from getting kited becomes unstoppable. A contrived example obviously, but you really do have to see how the units interact with all other units, and…

Interesting. So the Zergling is a weak individual unit but when amassed into a large group they become overwhelming and the overall effect is that the Zerg rush is emergent behavior.

That is the fundamental design. They are strong against a few marines once they have speed because they can get a surround, but weak against a critical mass of marines, since the surface area to damage ratio of the marines decreases.

Also their speed upgrade gives them mobility to counter attack exposed buildings. Also their half supply means that they can be worked into compositions when close to the supply cap. Also their fast and parallel time to make means they can reinforce fast after a long battle. Also their general upgrades and late game attack speed upgrade means they can take down buildings fast if there is nothing around to do damage to them. Also if they are spread out they can draw splash damage from power but slow firing units like siege tanks. They can also be sacrificed to burrow and delay an enemy base, used to scout cheaply ...

All that is just from the first attack unit in the game.

Re: The Future of RTS

#242

Post by resonantjacket5 »

wgerard wrote: post #194
chongli wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how to make the next big e-sports RTS hit, instead of a game that many people will want to play The problem is that we want to do both. The competitors to RTSes, games like League of Legends, Fortnite, Rocket League, and Hearthstone, are all (very different) games that are enjoyable to play across the full spectrum of skill levels. RTS games really seem to be split into two categories: indie games that are appealing…

> The competitors to RTSes, games like League of Legends, Fortnite, Rocket League, and Hearthstone... are enjoyable to play across the full spectrum of skill levels. I'm mostly kidding, but I do think it's worth pointing out that most (if not all) of those games have been accused of being extremely unfriendly to new players and generally being miserable experiences until you acquire a baseline level of knowledge. I t…

Fortnite, Hearthstone are much more fun/chill compared to starcraft even at lower levels.

I think part of it is does has to do with how real time rts you have practically zero downtime. It's always improve economy, then improve army micro, then do builds. Even with league of legends there's some downtime when you're at the shop or just killing minions.

Re: The Future of RTS

#243

Post by yoz-y »

IgorPartola wrote: post #240
yoz-y wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That makes sense. Doesn’t that then seem like a perfect problem for a neural net type system to solve? In theory. However if you change the balance then the mega game will change as well and you have to throw away the training data and start anew. Also it’s very important to not change too many stats at the same time because then it will be hard to learn the game and the new meta will take too long to emerge.

I think I’m starting to see the picture. Since we so far don’t have an AI capable of playing as well as the top human players, in order to figure out what’s out of balance you have to watch a sufficient amount of PvP games. And then you rebalance and must start the process from scratch. And unless you hit the perfect balance by accident you will always need to keep rebalancing. The only other way I can think to do th…

Some multiplayer games (like hearthstone) introduce a lot of randomness and quick variability to keep the game entertaining for new players. Even as a newbie you can win say 30-40% of games against skilled players. However, this also means that skill is only shown in long term and thus you attract a different crowd.

Much like in VS fighting games, people like that time and training translate to good skill.

Re: The Future of RTS

#245

Post by Kinrany »

IgorPartola wrote: post #240
yoz-y wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That makes sense. Doesn’t that then seem like a perfect problem for a neural net type system to solve? In theory. However if you change the balance then the mega game will change as well and you have to throw away the training data and start anew. Also it’s very important to not change too many stats at the same time because then it will be hard to learn the game and the new meta will take too long to emerge.

I think I’m starting to see the picture. Since we so far don’t have an AI capable of playing as well as the top human players, in order to figure out what’s out of balance you have to watch a sufficient amount of PvP games. And then you rebalance and must start the process from scratch. And unless you hit the perfect balance by accident you will always need to keep rebalancing. The only other way I can think to do th…

> Since we so far don’t have an AI capable of playing as well as the top human players

AlphaStar is a grandmaster at Starcraft 2. Training it on a new game would cost too much though AFAIK.

Re: The Future of RTS

#246

Post by whateveracct »

ajuc wrote: post #188
jtolmar wrote: post #85

Some problems I'd note for any resurgence of the RTS genre: * There hasn't been a huge RTS hit in ages, so large studios aren't going to push large chunks of cash into them. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy, and you may disagree with whether large studios should act this way, but that doesn't matter, because the observable fact is they do. * RTS games are still pretty expensive to make well. There hasn't been a breako…

In my opinion Starcraft 2 killed RTSes (just like Dota 2 and LOL killed MOBAs). With multiplayer games people can play the same title forever if it's deep enough. So new games in the same genre have to compete against a game that was made by Blizzard in 2010 and constantly developed ever since. So what happens is - people check out the new game, and either get bored (it's too similar and worse) or get discouraged (it…

People play multiple fighting games all the time though and they're as deep as SC2. FGs all have distinct flavors to them which people seem to like. Different resources, tag team vs not, 2D or 3D, zoning-oriented vs pressure-oriented, etc

Re: The Future of RTS

#247

Post by bsder »

LoSboccacc wrote: post #158
jtolmar wrote: post #85

Some problems I'd note for any resurgence of the RTS genre: * There hasn't been a huge RTS hit in ages, so large studios aren't going to push large chunks of cash into them. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy, and you may disagree with whether large studios should act this way, but that doesn't matter, because the observable fact is they do. * RTS games are still pretty expensive to make well. There hasn't been a breako…

planetary annihilation disagrees, not that your analysis is wrong, because it touches many pain points of the rts genre, but indie succeses with simple graphic do exist. (also: castle story, darwinia, star ruler in the simple graphics and indie category, zero-k and uncountable space rts in the indie category) on the other side, Hearts Of Iron and Total War Warhammer sit quite high on steam charts, maybe not runaway s…

Planetary Annihilation is the poster child for optimizing for "Twitch streaming friendly" instead of actually producing a good game.

Re: The Future of RTS

#248

Post by sgillen »

gamblor956 wrote: post #230
IgorPartola wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. So the Zergling is a weak individual unit but when amassed into a large group they become overwhelming and the overall effect is that the Zerg rush is emergent behavior.

The Zerg Rush is not an emergent behavior; it was part of the fundamental design of the Zerg. Hell, the "Zerg Rush" was part of the cinematics released with the first SC.

It depends what we mean by emergent. It was designed to be this way, but there is no switch in the code that says “if there are this many zerglings, buff their attack”. Instead it’s a consequence of their mechanics (they die quickly but in large numbers can do enough damage fast enough to offset this).

Re: The Future of RTS

#249

Post by a20201227 »

I get my real-time strategy fix from 0 A.D. [1]. It's free and open source, and has been discussed previously on Hacker News [2][3].

I've been playing for 5 years, strictly solo against AI in various configurations. I typically don't play for 3-9 months, then spend 2-4 weeks playing 0 A.D. with virtually all my free time. It's a nice sojourn from my usual side project, and a way to unwind after the day job and increasingly busy family life.

[1] https://play0ad.com/ [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10638238 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17108843

Re: The Future of RTS

#250

Post by __turbobrew__ »

izacus wrote: post #186
yskchu wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adding another game with good logistics to the list of games: The Wargame series from Eugen (the most recent one being Wargames: Red Dragon) Logistics is a huge part of it, your armies can run out of ammo, or be stranded without fuel - there are dedicated units used for resupply. Supply dumps, supply columns, and their protection, is a big part of the game as well.

The other part that Wargame series does well is unit intelligence and move a bit away from crazy clicking. You can trust your AT squad to understand that other infrantry needs to be shot at with a gun and that tanks should be engaged with Javelins. This makes the game way more strategic and fun to play than something like Starcraft where you need to babysit moronic units and manually trigger their abilities. In Warga…

My main gripe about the wargame AI is that there needs to be some sort of fire control for ATGMs. Too many times have I seen a jeep roasted by 4 hellfire missiles because all the apache helicopters in a squad engaged the same target.
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