111–120 of 147 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Planetary Annihilation devs are coming out with a factory-rts hybrid game akin to Mindustry. That seems the direction RTS is heading in general, hybridizing with other genres.
link?
Update: They have taken my money. There are few groups that have kept my trust as well as these folks. I know they'll deliver.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
To clarify, ZK doesn't population caps like e.g. Starcraft. The actual limit is actually the CPU/GPU (and maybe your bandwidth too). ZK's 16vs16 host, the "lobster pot" as they call it, can barely be playable if your rig is too weak.
> ZK doesn't population caps That sounds like poor RTS design. Popcap is one of the simplest and most effective "anti-snowballing" mechanisms. Once you're "maxed out", you cannot get further ahead - you must attack and trade to build new stuff. If you can just keep making stuff without ever being forced to trade, whoever gets ahead first, eventually wins. Supply also serves as a comeback mechanic - you were even, but…
Total Annihilation and its ilk balance that by having the commander unit, which is game-over if lost. There are a lot of really underhanded tactics one can employ to sneak a win here. (My favorite is picking up the enemy commander with a transport and then scuttling the transport...) Plus the large army size means the player likely has exploitable gaps in their defenses as their attention is split so many more ways.
The strange thing I cannot play war games any more. Not after Russia invaded Ukraine. War now seems Really Evil and playing with it doesn't seem appropriate. I wonder does anyone else feel like that?
I am OK with war games as long as there's no humans or human-likes in the game. ZK's sentient robots are fine for me, contrary to something like 0 A.D. (which even has female workers - maybe I'm old school, but that's even more a no-go for me).
I feel like such a pedantic nerd asking this, but the debate over people vs. sentient robots was the whole reason for the war!
I hadn’t heard of this before, and was excited that a new RTS was being announced, given that RTSes seem like a fading genre. Of course it’s just a link to an older game. I guess the days of the RTS really are behind us. :(
As wheelerof4te suggests, I'd keep my eyes on Stormgate. It's being developed by the ex-Blizzard team that worked on SC2 and WC3. More big names involved than I care to drop. https://playstormgate.com/>, https://store.steampowered.com/app/2012510/Stormgate/>
ZeroSpace came out of the blue a couple months ago with pre-alpha gameplay videos, kickstarter, tournaments, etc. They have several SC2 pros and community figures involved in development (Scarlett, CatZ, PiG, GiantGrant, Maguro). Their kickstarter just raised over half a million dollars. https://www.playzerospace.com/>, https://store.steampowered.com/app/1605850/ZeroSpace/>.
There's also Immortal, which has been in development for a longer while. The team has previously built some great SC2 mods, and the pre-alpha got some attention from SC2 pros. https://sunspeargames.com/>
The big "problem" with RTS is that the genre in general is not very accessible. SC1 is clunky (1998), SC2 is extremely lethal (splash damage vs glass cannons), team modes like 2v2 are not considered seriously (people want to play with their friends), getting good at the game requires learning all the rock-paper-scissors of dozens of units per faction that make Pokemon type charts pale in comparison. The 1v1 ladder is designed to give you an average 50% winrate, hence it demands that you consistently play at your best or deal emotionally with a giant lose streak.
The team making Stormgate is aware of these (and many other) problems, and takes a lot of input from the community on Reddit. It's gonna boil down to execution, but I have faith that they can make a fun game that's gonna be appealing to a much broader crowd than the hardcore RTS fans.
I definitely would recommend although can have a steeper learning curve than others.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
To clarify, ZK doesn't population caps like e.g. Starcraft. The actual limit is actually the CPU/GPU (and maybe your bandwidth too). ZK's 16vs16 host, the "lobster pot" as they call it, can barely be playable if your rig is too weak.
> ZK doesn't population caps That sounds like poor RTS design. Popcap is one of the simplest and most effective "anti-snowballing" mechanisms. Once you're "maxed out", you cannot get further ahead - you must attack and trade to build new stuff. If you can just keep making stuff without ever being forced to trade, whoever gets ahead first, eventually wins. Supply also serves as a comeback mechanic - you were even, but…
That said, BAR is trying to balance the game to reduce spam currently. Having an endless stream of trash units charging ahead is great for scouting, even if they don't do much damage.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> ZK doesn't population caps That sounds like poor RTS design. Popcap is one of the simplest and most effective "anti-snowballing" mechanisms. Once you're "maxed out", you cannot get further ahead - you must attack and trade to build new stuff. If you can just keep making stuff without ever being forced to trade, whoever gets ahead first, eventually wins. Supply also serves as a comeback mechanic - you were even, but…
Screw that, everyone is afraid of 1000 vs 1000 unit battles. This is what I want! Total Annihilation and its ilk balance that by having the commander unit, which is game-over if lost. There are a lot of really underhanded tactics one can employ to sneak a win here. (My favorite is picking up the enemy commander with a transport and then scuttling the transport...) Plus the large army size means the player likely has…
I guess what I really don't like in RTSs is turtling. If I wanted to play SimCity, I'd be playing SimCity.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Screw that, everyone is afraid of 1000 vs 1000 unit battles. This is what I want! Total Annihilation and its ilk balance that by having the commander unit, which is game-over if lost. There are a lot of really underhanded tactics one can employ to sneak a win here. (My favorite is picking up the enemy commander with a transport and then scuttling the transport...) Plus the large army size means the player likely has…
Oh well I guess that depends on the win condition, and yes I can imagine 1000v1000 units can be fun (myself am an avid enjoyer of 4v4 in SC2). But especially as the number of players go up, I think the popcap should be going down. I've played a couple custom 2v2 games in SC2 with a reduced popcap (100 instead of 200) and the games were wiiiiiiiild: you have very little economy and turtling is just impossible, so the…
Turtling lets me build up my base and economy and nurture a curbstomping offense after which I can overwhelm my opponents. If I wanted to play a tactical RTS there are a million options out there that limit you with horse-blinders
Earlier quoted context omitted.
To clarify, ZK doesn't population caps like e.g. Starcraft. The actual limit is actually the CPU/GPU (and maybe your bandwidth too). ZK's 16vs16 host, the "lobster pot" as they call it, can barely be playable if your rig is too weak.
> ZK doesn't population caps That sounds like poor RTS design. Popcap is one of the simplest and most effective "anti-snowballing" mechanisms. Once you're "maxed out", you cannot get further ahead - you must attack and trade to build new stuff. If you can just keep making stuff without ever being forced to trade, whoever gets ahead first, eventually wins. Supply also serves as a comeback mechanic - you were even, but…
I guess because economy still requires territory control, and a bigger territory is harder to defend ?
Also it's probably not a coincidence that these games have a lot of units dealing area damage, and most importantly, units cannot shoot through each other, and when they try it can often end in friendly fire, which makes snowballing weaker ?
Anyway, desperate situations where the underdog eventually manages to turn the tide are not uncommon. I even recently seen it happen in an AI vs AI match !
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Screw that, everyone is afraid of 1000 vs 1000 unit battles. This is what I want! Total Annihilation and its ilk balance that by having the commander unit, which is game-over if lost. There are a lot of really underhanded tactics one can employ to sneak a win here. (My favorite is picking up the enemy commander with a transport and then scuttling the transport...) Plus the large army size means the player likely has…
Oh well I guess that depends on the win condition, and yes I can imagine 1000v1000 units can be fun (myself am an avid enjoyer of 4v4 in SC2). But especially as the number of players go up, I think the popcap should be going down. I've played a couple custom 2v2 games in SC2 with a reduced popcap (100 instead of 200) and the games were wiiiiiiiild: you have very little economy and turtling is just impossible, so the…
http://zero-k.info/mediawiki/Detriment
http://zero-k.info/mediawiki/Flea
Not sure why you would expect that turtling (porc(upine)ing) would work in a competitive game with 2 teams, the opponnents will just take the rest of the map and then crush you using these extra resources. And a lower population cap would make it easier to turtle, not harder, so I'm kind of confused as to how it worked in your example ?
"Playing Sim City" is a common insult thrown at team mates BTW in TA-derived games (too).