Slowness Later In The Game?

[Kharille]

I haven't managed to get apocalypse but is there anyone who would deny the value of an RTS over a turn based game? I spend most of my gaming time on other turn based games like civ and similiar games. However, the amount of micromanagment gets tough. It's difficult to have a computer play a good AI but it would be nice to be able to delegate to officers who will lead their own troops.

 

Maybe sometime in the future it would be possible to assign squaddies to competent sergeants who all vary in their specialities. Sniper unit here, assault unit there, heavy support units for anti 'tank' action. Maybe some medics with varying degrees of risk taking/willingness to operate under fire.

 

 

I also play mechcommander 2. I still feel that the absolute control is annoying. Why not the aggressive loner who never retreats? Or the cowardly soldier who breaks when he thinks hes overrun? Gaming becomes more about evaluation of troop personalities. The occasional wild disobedient rambo character might actually be worth saving even if he pisses off the commanders.

[dagorkan]

If you just want to see sh1t blown up fast and don't want to strain your brain go play Doom. There's nothing wrong with that. But don't try to turn strategy games into something they're not.

 

RTS can work but it is very rare and needs very good game design. The Myth series (The Fallen Lords, Soulblighter) is one of those rare exceptions.

[Guest Azrael]

I haven't managed to get apocalypse but is there anyone who would deny the value of an RTS over a turn based game?  I spend most of my gaming time on other turn based games like civ and similiar games.  However, the amount of micromanagment gets tough.  It's difficult to have a computer play a good AI but it would be nice to be able to delegate to officers who will lead their own troops.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I agree with you, this is something I applauded from UFO: Aftermath, the ability to delegate missions to the AI, I LOVED that feature.

 

Get Apocalypse, it rocks

 

(I know this thread is old, but..)

[Snakeman]

Eh what the heck, I'll contribute to an old post I mean, who hasn't before?

 

It struck me just now, seeing this thread come up (or rather get bumped) that X-COM might have been one of the first to use real time. True, its not used where it might have mattered the most, on the ground, but I thought it cool that the Geoscape operated differently.

 

The ability to pause time aside, the Geoscape effectively acts like many recent games I've played that claim to be rooted in real time. I suppose the term is certainly valid anyway either way, but I've never really considered any game (not that I've ever known one existed in the first place) that was a true RTS one where you couldn't save, couldn't pause time at all being that definition. Certainly I believe having the time to form up and act on strategies you come up with is important where especially these decisions can be made on the fly quickly fits more with the definition.

 

Anyway, I agree RTS features can be sweet if done well. However, lessons learned from turn based ventures in the past means to me that its also just as important to be able to pause your game and think stuff through (largely I'm thinking, relating to single player in this case).

Edited July 9, 2006 by Snakeman

[dagorkan]

I didn't realize the thread was so old. It was at the top of the page so I didn't check.

[Empyrean]

Real time strategy games place huge demands on the player to pay attention to many things at once. You need to manage your resources, direct your troops, babysit workers, mess with a tech tree, and so on. While those elements can all be present in turn based games, they're not all calling for your attention at once. This allows the player to really focus on one thing at a time and execute complex strategies that just wouldn't be possible in a real-time setting. Real time action is faster paced, but extremely shallow when it comes to tactics. There just isn't time to execute any tactics that take more than a couple of seconds of frantic mouse-clicking. In some games that is a good thing, but to claim that RTS is categorically "better" than TBS in all games seems pretty stupid to me, especially in a game that is revolves so heavily around complex, time intensive micro-management of individual soldiers.

[Zombie]

Bravo, Empyrean. Nicely put.

 

- Zombie

[kafros]

Indeed, think about it a bit...

 

How can the average Joe use TACTICS in such a game?

 

Take the total war series for example. Hundreds of units, a forest where you can hide, a bridge... Does anybody care? Just select them all and do a frontal attack.

 

No special formations, no tricky tactics... So much advantage lost

[[Blehm 98]]

yeah, in real time games generally there isn't much strategy unless its like Total War, in turn based there is a basic strategical piece in it

[[dipstick]]

Real time strategy games place huge demands on the player to pay attention to many things at once. You need to manage your resources, direct your troops, babysit workers, mess with a tech tree, and so on. While those elements can all be present in turn based games, they're not all calling for your attention at once. This allows the player to really focus on one thing at a time and execute complex strategies that just wouldn't be possible in a real-time setting. Real time action is faster paced, but extremely shallow when it comes to tactics. There just isn't time to execute any tactics that take more than a couple of seconds of frantic mouse-clicking. In some games that is a good thing, but to claim that RTS is categorically "better" than TBS in all games seems pretty stupid to me, especially in a game that is revolves so heavily around complex, time intensive micro-management of individual soldiers.

 

 

Ahh, however, APOC was pausable RTS, hence you had the time to execute these maneouvers, I remember myself doing tactical retreats with one squad, to be covered by another. In addition, I may do a pincer movement with another two squads, all simultaenously.

 

And yes, this is real time, I flick from one squad to another

[Empyrean]

Whoa, who passes up an opportunity to use a bridge in Total War? I still remember a battle in Medieval where I held a bridge in either Poland or Lithuania against close to 5,000 Mongols, using only 240 fully upgraded veteran Billmen (trained in northern Spain, so they could get the weapon upgrades) and about 600 Longbowmen. I lost about a hundred men and killed around 1,500 of the enemy. Morale was totally key in that battle; they sent their General across the bridge with their forces early on, and I focus fired my longbowmen to kill him. Billmen arranged in a semicircle at the foot of the bridge really tear up cavalry, so I routed the first group. Reinforcements come after one or two units have routed off the field, but their morale is crap from the dead general and all the routing units they have to pass to get to the bridge hurts their morale further. They'd only fight for a short time before realizing that they're surrounded and getting hacked to pieces, then they'd run away. Good times.

 

The Total War series actually does a good job at avoiding many of the problems I outlined earlier. While there is base management and unit production, none of it takes place during a battle. Your forces are limited to what you start with, so making your men count really matters. Also, the combat is slow-paced enough that you can actually execute relatively intricate strategies by RTS standards. Even so, I pause the game often to issue my orders and more perfectly coordinate my different units, so as synchronizing a pila volley with a cavalry charge against the rear to instantly break almost any unit.

 

Back to the original post, the Close Combat series are real-time tactical squad/platoon level games featuring mostly-autonomous units with morale and/or personality. It's a pretty exaggerated effect compared to the morale feature in X-Com, though. For example, units won't obey orders that are very dangerous, they automatically seek cover, they tend to scare easily, and you have relatively little ability to micromanage your forces in the face of their own free will and overpowering instinct for self-preservation. All that applies until one of your guys goes berserk, in which case you'll get a little message like "Johnson has gone berserk!" and you get to see one of your men jump out of his foxhole and charge the enemy lines alone with nothing more than a pistol and a knife. Nine times out of ten, Johnson turns into a bullet sponge seconds after going berserk, but if he actually makes it into the enemy lines he's likely to kill a whole pile of germans before regaining his senses and running away to cower behind a barn again.