[HN Gopher] Build, gather, brawl, repeat: The history of real-ti... ___________________________________________________________________ Build, gather, brawl, repeat: The history of real-time strategy games (2017) Author : Tomte Score : 39 points Date : 2022-07-10 11:30 UTC (1 days ago) (HTM) web link (arstechnica.com) (TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com) | ACow_Adonis wrote: | I'd be remiss not to link to https://www.beyondallreason.info/ | | A community made spiritual successor to the total | annihilation/supreme commander series. It's notionally in alpha, | but it works perfectly, and I have to say it's pretty amazing | (hesitate to call it prefect). Yes, it's complicated, but the | balance, options, automation and strategies available are almost | perfect, as is the presence of strategic zoom so you don't feel | like you're viewing the Mona Lisa through a toilet roll and | forcing you to battle more with the interface than the game | itself (I'm looking at you starcraft). | | on the article front, I didn't see references to Sacrifice: a | bizarre hybrid mix between third-person action and RTS. It didn't | leave a legacy (as far as I can tell), but by God (pun intended) | it was a weird and wonderful game. | yoyohello13 wrote: | I used to love RTS games as a kid. I kind of fell off of them | when they started to really emphasize the e-sports angle. Mostly | because I wasn't really good enough to enjoy them and there | seemed to be an ever increasing focus on "more APM". However, I | recently picked up "Starship Troopers: Terran Command" and loved | it. It was built to just be a campaign focused single player RTS. | It's such a fun game, and doesn't overstay its welcome. | bob1029 wrote: | The new AOE never hooked me. I desperately wanted it to. Feels | like there is no RTS salvation possible anymore. | | I don't know what it is about the older titles, but I can still | play supcom (as FAF now) all day and enjoy the hell out of it. | | I also played the shit out of BFME2 until the servers got taken | down. | | Sometimes I get an itch for StarCraft 2, but it's a hard game to | play competently. Requires a certain... sweatiness. | smolder wrote: | Re: StarCraft 2, I think it's a shame that playing at lower | speeds never really caught on. Both SC1 and SC2 have (or at | least had?) options like "normal", faster, and fastest speed, | but the community normalized on the highest speed as the | standard, where mechanical skill is much more important to | winning, and you don't get much time to plan anything. | guenthert wrote: | You plan ahead of time. Of course, no plan survives contact | with the opponent and then you improvise. There is, as you | correctly observed, no time for conscious thinking then. It's | all 'muscle memory' so to speak. Hence you won't be | competitive until you have played thousands of games. | | The match-making algorithm ensures that you win ~50% of the | times, unless you're at either extreme of the skill level. | Every so often (or quite often) you're matched with a vastly | superior opponent and blasted to pieces, but it's already | much better than SC1 w/o such match-making, where beginners | never saw the light. Also Blizzard has a good handle on | cheating in SC2 (unlike SC1). | javajosh wrote: | Dark Reign was a sleek, fun RTS that never got the attention is | should have. It's balance was awful - but you can solve that | with a gentleman's agreement. Total Annihilation was still | played as of ~8 years ago. | melolife wrote: | https://www.beyondallreason.info/ | degenerate wrote: | Keep an eye out for Stormgate: https://youtu.be/0UqxgaWuYss | | A handful of the original devs for Starcraft 2 got together and | created Frost Giant Studios. I'm hoping it jumpstarts the RTS | genre again | _the_inflator wrote: | Same here. Age of Empires II is still the cash cow. Neither AoE | III or Age of Myth hooked me. AoE II is the best RTS in my | opinion. Timing, game play, balance, fun with others. | | I even - GOG - reinstalled Warcraft 2 lately and enjoyed its | simplicity. ;) | jvanderbot wrote: | My friends and I still do comp-stomp company of heroes. That game | had such sophistication of cover, unit movement, morale, and | resource capture without "drones". I love it immensely. | | Very excited for the third installment. | | Also, Homeworld 3 should be at least a re-skin of Homeworld 2 + a | few new mechanics. I'd encourage RTS fans to give HW2 a revisit, | and maybe deserts of kharak as well, for savory lore at least. | | These "non standard" RTSs are much more enjoyable than the more | copy-paste base builders, at least to me. | yread wrote: | Try Original war. Some pretty nonstandard ideas - battery | powered vehicles, limited number of people assigned to | roles,... | dimitar wrote: | I think the article is a bit too dismissive of Real-Time Tactics; | they are definitely a spin-off genre, and some like the Total War | series have significant strategy elements - you have to grow your | armies, not just lead them. | | I also like the Combined Arms RT from Eugen games - the Wargame | and Steel Division series are great and Wargame: Red Dragon has a | very enthusiastic multiplayer community. The games are very | competitive and yet the APM is quite low. Here you can see top | ranked player zoom out and examine the game map at a leisurely | pace compared to Stacraft players: | https://youtu.be/HBynkUYmH8E?t=2164 | | Their game in early access - WARNO has various smart orders to | automate some common actions. | | What sets Combined Arms RTT from others is the focus on Combined | arms and realism. They have a deck-building element where you | choose the units available to you to match your strategy of | control of the map (see why I think the article was too | dismissive?). You have all kinds of interesting tradeoffs. In | example you might find that cheap but highly available tanks are | great for fire support, even if they can't face the best of enemy | armour. | | This genre potentially will have a really good year, with three | competing titles coming out - WARNO, Regiments (single player) | and Broken Arrow. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-07-11 23:00 UTC)