Minimal RTS game design?

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I was chatting with my younger son this morning, and he said his favorite type of game is RTS. (Not that he has a lot of experience with these; pretty much just LEGO Battles and SimAnt.)

I’ve greatly enjoyed RTS games too (favorite: Warcraft III, though Starcraft was a close second). So it got me thinking: what is the minimal “core fun” of an RTS game?

I don’t mean the core mechanic; I think that’s pretty clear:

  • select units and give them orders, including gather-resources and build-buildings
  • select buildings and give them orders, including produce-units

This unit-building-unit cycle is the key mechanic, but not inherently fun, though the inherent joy of development is certainly part of it.

There’s also an economic-tension factor: you want to invest in future production capability (i.e. more workers, more resource-processing buildings, etc.), but you have to also spend on current defense, since you may be attacked at any time. But if that’s the key fun bit, you may as well make a TD game, since that genre does this much better. (Indeed, what keeps me coming back to Bloons TD is that I have to constantly live on the edge of having just barely-enough defenses, in order to invest in money generation so that I can afford the really big towers later when I’m going to need it.)

Then I guess there’s the fun of exploration; RTS usually implies a fog of war and hidden goodies around the map. Finding those is fun.

What I don’t see as a core fun of RTS games is actual real-time strategy (or tactics). You’d think you would be forming your troops into well-oiled formations and executing pincer movements in the midst of battle, but in my experience at least, that’s rarely the case. Directing a battle usually amounts to little more than telling all units to gang up on whatever Big Bad is the greatest threat, and then pointing out the places where mop-up work is needed afterwards. But it’s possible I’ve just been playing the wrong games (or playing them the wrong way).

So… stripping away fancy graphics, sounds, story, and all such frills, as well as any design elements that aren’t truly essential… what would you see as the core of an RTS game, the minimal combination of elements that would still be fun to play?

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If you want to make interesting tactical combat, take a page from rock-paper-scissors. No, really. :slight_smile: Perhaps fighters are effective against battleships, battleships are effective versus destroyers and carriers, and destroyers are effective against fighters and carriers.

Something like that should give your game interesting tactical depth; having major units/“big bads” actually removes tactical depth, because, as you say, the tactic then becomes “gang up on them”.

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Paper-Scissors-Rock is at the heart of many RTS games. AOE had Mounted-Archer-Foot. StarCraft took it even further, providing a counter table of Units in the manual. Every unit was pretty much useless against at least one enemy.

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Yep, RPS is a common design element in lots of games (fighting games spring to mind).

It should have some sort of logic to it, though, rather than being arbitrary — if for no other reason than to make it easy for the player to understand and remember the rules.

So, maybe something like:

• Energy shields are very effective against energy weapons.
• Heavy shields are very effective against fast (i.e. light) projectiles.
• Dodging is effective against slow projectiles (but not fast ones).

All makes sense so far. So you could have something like (argh, why don’t we have a table feature?):

A: fires energy; can dodge; beats C (by dodging C’s slow projectiles, and wearing down its shields).
B: fires fast projectiles; has energy shields; beats A (by absorbing A’s energy, and hitting it with fast projectiles).
C: fires slow projectiles; has heavy shields; beats B (shielded against light projectiles, and pounds B into dust).

Throw in some sort of worker unit, and this seems like a decent minimal set to me… what do y’all think?

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What you need, sir, is an editing system to integrate into your unit control system. I’m specifically thinking of a formation editor. This would be a basic empty level where the user could design and save troop formations and basic behaviors for use in the game. When playing the game, the units assigned to such formations will automatically attempt to get in the saved formation on the field. The user would then have the option of selecting and directing the formations, instead of the individual units.

One could say that this is basically like the grouping system most RTS’s already have. But the formations I’m imagining could involve not only unit composition, but relative unit positions as well. So you could make formations of different shapes and unit compositions, and select and direct them on the field much more quickly.

Since there would be an editor for this, each player would have the option of creating and controlling their formations individually. This would lead to a lot of experimentation with custom formations, and how they would effect strategy. It would also allow for a more strategic approach to gameplay, as opposed to a focus on micro-ing.

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I wonder, is the worker really a part of the MVP? Sure a worker greatly enhances the game, and adds a whole bunch of interesting choices. How heavily do I invest in economy versus military. Do I attack the enemies main force or simply mess with his harvesters.

But is it truly a necessity?

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Yeah, that’s a good point. There have been a few games like this (an ancient game called Ancient Art of War springs to mind), but I don’t think it’s very common.

I do agree that this could add new depth to the game.

However, my objective in this thread isn’t so much figuring out what to add to the standard RTS formula to make it deeper, but rather, what can be taken away (while still maintaining the core fun).

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Another option is to check out real early RTS games, like Warcraft 1 or Dune 2. We were having fun with RTS games for a long time before microing or formations became a thing. These games didn’t even implement auto casting or fog of war.

Warcraft one had the same basic PSR structure, with only eight units. Footmen beat catapults, catapults beat archers, archers beat footmen. (Mostly, the unit AI was pretty easy to surprise).

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Well, that’s a great question. I do think you need some sort of resource, but you don’t necessarily need harvesters to gather it. You could have buildings that simply generate it, like the banana farms in Bloons TD, or the gas mines in what’s-that-iOS-RTS-game.

The second function of workers is typically to build the buildings, but you could instead just click to build. But this has an important consequence: what’s to stop you from building just anywhere? In the standard formula, if you try to build, say, a tower in the middle of your enemy base, your worker unit is going to get slaughtered before he ever gets there.

I suppose you could have new buildings take a while to grow, and be quite vulnerable until finished.

I dunno though… protecting your weak-but-important little workers seems pretty core to me.

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Check out dawn of war. No resource gathering in the traditional sense, it’s all about the points on the map you control. I recall that some of the races don’t use workers to build buildings either.

I think you are right, I’m playing devils advocate here. Definitely for a game like AOE or Starcraft workers are a key piece. But maybe not for all RTS games.

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Hey, if I didn’t want opinions, I wouldn’t have asked for 'em. :wink:

Seriously, thank you for the input. It’s given me food for thought… and I’m going to go check out dawn of war!

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While you are checking it out the other big thing to note is the sheer amount of variation between races.

AOE flipped dramatically on this point. The races are pretty much identical with a couple of minor stat changes.

Starcraft, Warcraft and Red Alert do it well. There is significant differences in kind between the races. But ultimately everyone is still competing for the same couple of resources. And tech trees and populations work in the same fundamental ways.

Dawn of war goes completely crazy. Each race uses different resources. Each race climbs the tech tree in a different way. Each race ends up with fundamentally different options available too them.

Talking about this game I should probably go play it again. It’s not the greatest RTS ever. But it’s got some pretty cool elements too it.

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An excellent exercise! We may all have somewhat different views considering different things appeal to different people. I guess my short list would be:

  • Acquiring Power - by this I mean the player starts out with a tiny settlement or even with a single unit to control. Over time they can build up to the point where they are in control of a thriving community. A well-oiled machine.

  • Excellent learning curve - because you start with a very tiny settlement or single unit the game introduces mechanics and goals gradually. This gives players time to get used to the game. The best RTS games kind of represent the perfect way to scale game difficulty I think.

  • Discovery - In the beginning, players will likely stick close to the starting point and focus on building. Later after they have achieved some decent level of growth they will feel more brave and venture out further. Especially in the games that use the fog of war element this makes things interesting and fun. In the beginning it can be kind of intense exploring because you never know what will be revealed. Will it be a mine or will it be an enemy camp?

  • Choices - What to build, how many to build and where to build. The good RTS games give you a good amount of freedom. Sure tutorials may say build a barracks! Or build 3 farms or whatever. But overall the player is able to create and I think that is a good part of the fun.

  • Management (aka juggling) - The cool thing here is you can send out units to do battle and then flip back over to your home base and continue building structures and more units. Or send out other units to explore new areas. And all of this is happening simultaneously. This keeps things interesting because there is always something to do, always something going on.

I think that basically defines the essence of why I like RTS games.

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Find a chart of elemental advantages in pokemon, then throw out the element names and replace them with unit names. The core is then to execute upon and counteract any strategy that can come about from that crazy ass chart. Resource management is an easy way to make sure that there is limited access to available strategies.

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What makes RTS games interesting differs from person to person. I know a lot of people who play strategy games entirely for the story segments between levels, others who play for the challenge, and others that play entirely for the multiplayer.

In order for all three of those elements to be possible, you need distinct levels with distinct challenges (like StarCraft 2’s level where the lava rises regularly), some sort of metric to measure your skill and success beyond the completion of the level itself (bonus objectives, par time, optional limitations), or a wide variety of units.

It seems like one of the hardest genres to do right, primarily because of the amount of content needed. There are a lot of elements that people expect to be included.

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I agree, for me the fun was in trying to balance resource gathering whereas I know others that thought managing resources was the boring bit & directing the mobs of troops was the fun bit.

It’s almost like an rpg character where you get a certain number of points to allocate to attributes. Some people will spend hours coming up with the best balance & character back story, go play quickly & then rush back to work out how best to spend their next 2 experience points whereas others will rush through the build & then spend hours playing missions.

If it could be done easily I’d suggest playing an rts where you just had a set number of points at the start & toons were generated as soon as you selected them from a menu. Play it through a few times & get others to play it. Then add in the worker & resource gathering with the exact same mission & repeat. I’m sure you’d find different fun bits to the others

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The main thing I enjoy about RTS games is figuring out the best unit combinations and building/technology purchases for countering each type of attack, and launching attacks of your own. This is only really fun against other human players, because it’s based on encountering new strategies you haven’t thought of before or haven’t tried (because you misestimated their potential somehow), and having to find a way to counter them to survive.

Another huge component for me is that of feeling like an important part of your team, with strengths and abilities that only you can bring out, and that your teammates will likely depend on at some point in the game. This includes both personal strengths, like being good at launching “asassination” attacks behind enemy lines to knock out key enemy structures (my personal favorite, using AoE2 Tarkans), as well as civilization/tech-tree bonuses that the game gives uniquely to your civilization.

I’ve spent hours just poring over the AoE2 tech-tree thinking of unit combinations, and accompanying civilization bonuses, that would work the best together for a particular style of play I had in mind. Most of the ideas end up being failures, but they’re so fun to formulate, and when you do find ones that work well it’s so rewarding to get to field them in a live game and see how your opponents react to it.

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RTS is one of those genres that I always think I’m going to enjoy but usually don’t. The idea definitely appeals to me - commanding an entire army instead of just one character is an awesome idea.

But in practice, I just can’t find the part of it I enjoy. A single-player campaign is usually a test of endurance more than strategy (just fend off half-hearted AI attacks long enough to build a big enough army to penetrate their big base). Skirmish mode is overwhelming in the choices it gives you and doesn’t provide any long-term metagame goals. (I need to check out Planetary Annihilation’s Galactic War mode again, now that they’ve put some effort into it, it seems like a promising solution to those problems).

And finally, multiplayer is just insane (disclaimer: I tend to prefer singleplayer over multiplayer in any genre). It’s completely opaque as to why you lost - all you can tell is that your opponent had a bigger army than you. How’d they do that? Was it a smarter build order? Did they click faster than you? Did an early raid or bad investment permanently cripple your economy? The feedback loop isn’t tight enough for anything approaching a casual experience. If you’re playing an RTS multiplayer, you must be committed.

I’ve always had the most fun in an RTS when I’m improvising. I had a plan, it fell apart, now I’m desperately trying to adapt - what are the resources I have available and what problems do I need to solve? I make a new plan, make some progress, then have to adapt again. But this happens pretty rarely, I’ve found. Most of the time, RTS is about making a plan and sticking with it, which means it had to be a darn good plan, probably researched on the game’s wiki and forums for hours before actually playing. (Don’t most people play video games to avoid homework?)

Not sure what point I’m trying to make here. Just felt like an interesting perspective to add to the conversation. Maybe these problems can be solved? Maybe they’re not even problems, just side effects of the nature of the genre. Maybe that’s why the RTS genre kind of died lately - it only appeals to a particular kind of hardcore player, calculating the best possible strategies. If so, could there be a new genre waiting to be discovered between RTS’s dynamism and TD’s simplicity?

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That’s much of what I love about RTS games! Researching all the little intricacies of one unit versus another, or in a certain scenario, to figure out which mix is the best for a given situation. And then getting to play out your ideas and strength estimations in an actual game, where lots of other people are doing the same with their own ideas, and you have to beat them with a combo of your strategy and speed/adaptability.

I think you’re right that it is geared more toward hard-core players, at least for multiplayer. Without playing online I would probably have considered myself fairly hard-core in terms of how carefully I pay attention to the details of each civilization and unit, but after playing many games in online lobbies, I’m actually very much a “newbie” relative to the online average. So for someone who’s not even interested in all those details, I can see how online play would seem completely overwhelming and non-interesting after a few tries.

Well, one way to learn from your losses is to have the game in record mode while you’re playing, and then watch over your whole game afterward (on fast-forward for the early parts, of course). This is both super-fun, and educational, as you see every action of the other players and can follow when and why you fell behind.

I agree about this part. A few games with the AI can be fun when you’re just learning the game. But once you’ve figured it out, playing the AI becomes a chore, where you just learn to exploit its weaknesses rather than come up with anything actually interesting.

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I’ve never actually found this to be very informative, myself. All I usually see is my opponent doing the same thing I tried to do, just faster and without running out of resources.

My guess is that you have to form some sort of baseline mental model of how the game’s strategies work even before you can learn from them. Maybe you watch a replay and think “he built a barracks before his fifth worker, this changes everything!!”. The most I usually learn is “oh, it was gg about 4 minutes in”.

For the record, again - I am not representative of a typical RTS player. I am what a hardcore player would call a noob, scrub, filthy casual, etc. I’m doing it wrong, and I have not put in the proper effort to learn how to play, and am in fact entitled enough to think I shouldn’t have to.

The real question is - how many other people are there like me, who like the idea of an RTS but not its current dominant form? Do I represent an audience yet to be reached, or am I just a whiny outlier? I don’t know the answer to that, but it’s very interesting to think about…

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