RTS Design

Hmm, some stat stuff:

* alien: systematic coquering of planets
- high hp
- low agility
- fast attack speed with low damage

* nature: balanced and blended into nature
- medium hp
- medium agility
- medium attabk speed with medium damage

* enlightened: peacefull, but fast and strong when needed
- low hp
- high agility
- low attack speed, high damage
Just some basic profiles. I often use these balance things when making custom stuff in other games.

How about recourcing?

 

Ok I think you meant, this isn't earth, but some other planet? Which means that we can distort what nature is. Like this planet could involve some formidable dinosaur-like creatures, which the nature based race control?

Resources. There are various kinds of resource:
-- Mined, (like vespene, gold) Harvested from a fixed location or player built structure upon that location, and (maybe) relayed back to the Main.
-- Surface gathered, (like starcraft minerals) These are deposited in clumps.
-- Distributed all over the map, (like trees)
-- Looted. Something that you reap from a creep race.

It's possible that the races can get different things from a mine, although the harvest depletes the mine just the same, whichever resource is taken.

I'm not sure that money is appropriate. One resource could have engineering value, like ores. One could be something energy providing, like a fuel?

Another possibility is a metal like Silver.
aliens -- silver is a rare mineral which is essential to their technology.
enlightened -- silver has mystical connotations which feeds their magic
nature -- silver is money, may be used ritually or used as an animal charm.

----

As for stat stuff, what about,

* aliens, their approach is more strategic than tactical, so they focus energy with the intention of destroying specific targets.
- high hp
- low agility
- low attack speed with high damage
- use of energy shields on some units?

* nature. Very tactical race. Relies on piecemeal successes to succeed. More diversity in the stats.
- medium hp
- medium agility.
- fast attack speed with low damage.

* enlightened. Rely on casting more than other races. Although some units, (like the melee ninjas) will have higher agility to compensate for them not being casters.
- low hp
- high agility
- medium attack speed, medium damage

 

Meh, sounds ok, but the aliens are a bit overpowered now. This is of course your project, but the general image for enlighted beings: almighty. Al least, I think of it that way. Perhaps I watched to much Stargate.

And for recources: how about the aliens relying mostly on loot, the enlightened ones having some sort of auto-income from a temple or something, and the nature race gathering materials? -jay for thinking of hard to balance things, hehe-

 

Admittedly, unit balance hasn't been one of my strengths in the past. I do have a method, just that I don't often use it

I tend to think that most units can be balanced by tweaking their stats later on. But to get a good initial approximation, we can design units around their food costs, starting out with a 1-food template that characterizes how quick we want the game to feel, like how quick units die and how quick we can build a group up.

In that light, we might start with something like this:

1-Food Template : 125 HP -- 10 DPS -- 10 Seconds Build -- 75 resource cost -- melee range -- no spells -- normal movement speed -- no armor.

Then, for each unit we design, scale up the dps and HP and resource costs and building times by the unit's food cost.

Then, we'd sacrifice some dps and HP if they have other skills like higher movement speed and longer range or spells. Also catering for the micro advantage that many weak units have over fewer stronger units, I'd make units with higher food cost slightly stronger, eg, by adding armor or hp.

Also consider the combination of high movement speed with long range. Those two factors really amplify a unit's strength when they're brought together. Such units should be penalized heavily in what dps or hp they have.

The tier 1 units across all races need to be strongly balanced.

 

Uugh, I will make a word document later with all ideas and stuff. Did that before with warcraft maps already. Reading this on my phone makes me go nuts. But I realy would like to help you.

But do you have any idea where to find people who can make models and such things?

 

@ Jasmine,

I think you're headed down the right path with the race ideas. I would, however, steer away from too restrictive of a food cap. Don't think of food as a "limit" although you can certainly do what StarCraft does and cap the limit based on resources (you have to build structures to increase that limit). Perhaps you could say that there are "tiers" of food caps. So at Tier 1 you would be limited to 50 food, Tier 2 would be 100 food, etc... That would differentiate some of the gameplay from other RTS.

Also, maybe you should take a hint from the StarGate series and create a Wraith-like race of aliens that basically feeds off of its enemies. Also, in keeping with RTS culture I would have a humanoid race as well. You need some race that people can relate to in order to have a successful single player campaign.

But for your Wraith race, perhaps the resources wouldn't be all that important. Sure, they require it somewhat but the main way they harvest is by killing enemies. So the more you fight them the stronger they become. It would definitely add a crazy mechanic to this game.

What if the Zerg didn't havest minerals but instead gained power by killing units? It would force them to attack more often, be more sacrificial, etc... It would also speed up gameplay. CRAZY!

 

Hi Jon.

I think the food cap was originally introduced in rts games due to hardware limits more than anything. That food cap forced micromanagement, and then players got good at micromanagement, hence games emerged with creative supply restrictions.

Tying food cap to the level of the Main is something I've never heard of. It's an interesting suggestion.

And yeah, I've heard before of most players not liking low food caps, although a few do because of the greater emphasis on micromanagement.

I guess a related factor here is how quick units die in combat. With quick deaths you want more cannon fodder, so higher food caps.

But on the other hand, do we want to allow players enough supply to build a few of every unit type? Because that kind of spoils the strategy layer, imo. Strategy is about having limited choices, so a cap should be felt somewhere.

So something like what you've suggested might be effective.

Thanks for your input

 

*loves stargate*

A wraith race sounds awesome. Look at the Ori for inspiration on enlightened people -although the ori are evil- and look at the Nox for nature races. Quite a lot of lore for inspiration there.

 

While I have never truly balanced a game before my approach would be to build two equations, one that transforms the costs of all units into to some "value" that we can compare all units by and another that takes all of a units stats and tranforms it into the "value" as well to ensure it is not to strong or to weak.

For exmaple lets say you have minerals and gas (Sc ftw), minerals + gas for all units equals a the units value (this isn't actually true for Sc but it makes the math a little easier).

So you have two units Unit 1 and Unit 2. Unit 1 costs 75/25 and Unit 2 costs 100/0. These two units should be aproximately equal to each other in strength since they each have 100 "value." Next, we need some kind of governing equation to turn stats into "value" here is one that I used when making a futile attempt to turn the pets in our shop into some kind of game:

(A*5+B*2)*(1+(M-1)*0.8)*(tA+tG)*AoE*10+HP*10+Arm*200+Specials

A= Attack; B= Bonus against certain types of units; M= Number of attacks; tA and tG= to Air and to Ground respectively (I normally had whatever a unit primarily attacked set as, and if it also attacked the other I would set it to .5 to avoid making the cost of atack air and ground ubsurd); AoE= Area of effect, if a unit didn't have one this would be set to one otherwise it would be set to some number above one depending on the number of units it could effect; HP= Health; Armor= Armor in the Sc sense; and Specials= whatever custom amount is set for a given special ability of a unit.

I use excel so I can just assign values for a units stats and then raise them up or down depending on how or low the "value" was from my mark, it also allows me to give some units more damage and less HP while still having some kind of system to relate the two. It should be noted that the above is equation is simple to what should be used with a true RTS because it assumes every unit has the same rate of fire and it doesn't take into account movement at all.

I think the first question you really want to ask yourself though, is what do you want combat to be like, do you want units to be dying left and right (high damage/HP ratio) or do you want battles to be long and have players work to kill units (low damage/HP ratio), because this will have a major effect on the constants in your equation, if you choose to use one. The equation I posted above assumes I want units to die in an average of 5 hits. Next, you need to ask yourself about how many units do you expect each of your races to field in the beggining, middle and, late game because this will have a huge effect on how any AoE ability will impact the game, as well as how abilities that "remove" a unit from combat effect the game (think Stasis Field). Finally, I would ask how different you want the races to be stat wise, because the larger differences you have, the more important certain relationships become.

Anyways, there are my thoughts on the issue of races and balance, if you want my help in approaching balance from this perspective just hollar.

P.S. What the hell was up with Wraith super ship in the last SGA episode? That thing was just stupid with how powerful it was...

 

Thanks for that LordKerwyn

I like the idea of a combined resource cost. Weighting each resource by it's effort or time to harvest, and adding them to give a combined cost. It's clever

Combat. I think in starcraft, death is too quick for my liking. It's unforgiving. I think maybe in 1v1, death can take 10-15 seconds. In the template I gave earlier 125hp vs 10dps would favour around 12.5 seconds, before weapon-defence type modifiers, which might stretch that to around 15 seconds, so that's the kind of figure I'd be aiming for.

Early game question. I'd think it depends on supply, but maybe upto a point where you're having to temporarily pause unit production because you're spending resources on your next supply depot. Or you're temporarily pausing unit production because you've maxed out your first supply depot. There's often an economy deficit like this in the early game that prompts units to be sent out. So if that's Main + 1 depot, then it's something like 12+6 supply = 10 workers (1 food) + 4 combat units (2 food), and that's what goes out.

Upto the point of building a fast expansion, or a second barracks, or upgrading Main, or tier 1 upgrades, or maxing out a second depot, that would be upto 12+6+6 = 12 workers + 6 combat units, but players would scout earlier than that.

How different are the races stat wise? I'd say not that different. If it's fairly proportional to supply, then that's 2 for the lightest, maybe 6-8 for the heaviest. I'd imagine tier 1 and 2 units would be 2-4 supply across all races.

Of course, crowd control spells are more devastating against races with fewer stronger units, while AOE is more devastating against races with many weak units. We can account for that within the tech trees and who gets what spells.

My theory there is to make it so spells are most devastating vs one's own race. That way it adds a bit more spice to mirror games, and is fairer in non-mirror games.

Like if you had psistorm vs the zerg in the early game, they'd be slaughtered. So either give AOE spells to the zerg-like races, or put them high up the tech tree in other races. Similarly, if the zerg could crowd control the protoss in the early game, then they'd be slaughtered.

 

@ Jasmine,

I'd have to give you a prompt veto on the prolonged death idea. As we've learned from UMS in StarCraft, for the most part basic units should die pretty much instantly. Otherwise gameplay slows to a crawl.

Btw, I'm thinking of RPG StarCraft UMS games like LotR.

 

Unless you are aiming for a WC3ish game I would agree with Jon on this one. I think a decent paced game would have units die in 5-10 hits from an equivelant power/tier unit.

And what I meant by race differences do you want one race to cost more/be stronger and one race to cost less/be weaker like in Sc or do are you aiming for things to remain about 1 to 1 throughout the game? Something I think would be interesting would be having weaker/normal/stronger setup but have the races change roles in different tiers, which brings up the next question, how pronounced do you want tier differences to be? There is huge variablility as fas as this goes (look at Sc versus SupCo), and the final choice can have a huge impact on the game, also about how many tiers of technology would you like to see?

You are going to need to figure out a lot of questions before you even start building units, which brings me to my next question, are you planning to balance lore, or lore balance? The latter makes a better game (as far as balance goes) but the former actually makes the game and the universe more interesting.

 

For death time, I was aiming for something inbetween wc3 and sc.

If you look at a typical wc3 unit, like a footman, it has 420 hp, and does about 10 dps, which is a staggering 42 second death time in 1v1. Given that sc has maybe 5-10 seconds death time, I think 15 seconds is ok. It's not that long really

The trouble is, if death time is too quick, then buffs don't have time to be applied and they're not going to influence the battle, which makes these kind of castings pretty useless. I know in sc, casting has generally quite severe effects, which I suppose couples better with a quick death game mechanic.

If the number of hits to kill a unit is as low as 5, then a buff is unlikely to make any difference to the outcome anyway, because even if the buff gives 10% damage reduction, it's still probably going to still be 5 hits to a kill, or if it does change it's going to be 6 hits Quick death brings this layer of quantization to the game mechanics, which would seem to render a lot of the game data unimportant.

So do we feel that buffs are uninteresting in rts games?

 

Only in games with a quick death time. They are essential in games like Warcraft. But what would YOU like? Short, or long battles?

 

I feel that 5 seconds is too low, and 40 seconds is too long. So I would like something intermediate. Maybe around 15-20 seconds would be nice.

If it normally took under 1.5 seconds between hits, then that's at least 10 hits per kill, which is fine enough quantization to work 10% buffs into the game mechanic.

edit
I've tried a couple of wc3 games just now with all units at 50% health, which causes footmen to die in 20 seconds instead of 40, and combat does feel better like that. If the navigation was a bit more responsive, then it would be a better game, imo.

So that's what I've decided on: normal death time is 15-20s

 

I was thinking of a cool never done before RTS game
You manage your nation through a zombie outbreak you can set up how fast it spreads and stuff like that before it starts. You can decide what you want to do with the country like shut down transportion or send in the troops. With the real time staregy part you can go in and order troops what to do against the zombies and what type of formations. At frist you wont know how to kill them so you can either find out through combant or have scientist work on it. Tech upgrades for troops will be researched and other stuff like vechicles and an antiode will be researched too. It will be turned by turned base and you will be informed were the zombies are through news bulltens. The countrys i think that you be able to use is USA, Spain, France, China, Russia, India. Japan, South Africa, Brazil and you will be able to interact with other countrys and all that fun stuff what do you think?

 

Erm, that's nice, but Jasmine is actually making this. Have you even bothered to read the other posts here?

 

So a turn by turn rts game, where the higher strategy is on a political layer rather than a combative one? That's an interesting formula

I can imagine though with overarching strategies like this, that one bad game or one bad political decision early on, and you're playing with a disadvantage in all subsequent games. I think it's usually better to be able to draw a line under past failures by making each game level/session/chapter independent. Which also regulates the difficulty (and progression of difficulty) throughout the game.

I am tending towards a more traditional formula with my game, designing it for PvP more than anything, as well as being versatile enough to easily create mods of it. I'm not a fan of the awkward visual-programming-type editors that have been used in past blizzard games.

Secondly, I want to test my understanding of rts by trying to make a game that invites creative play, that is fun to watch, as well as having plenty of strategic depth for experienced players. So I'd like to try and take some of the emphasis away from micro and APM, and put greater emphasis on player creativity, on the need for re-conn, and on rewarding strategic analysis/response.

 

If you want to take focus off high APM, you might want to consider using an "action tax" where actions consume some resource (probably one dedicated to this kind of expenditure.) The only game I've seen so far that is implementing this is Achron. If done correctly, it might be a great way to take the focus off tactics, and place it on strategy.

 

That could work, for the enlightened race specifically having a universal magic instead of individual mana and you increase the recharge rate by building temples could add some uniqueness to the game.

You might also want to think about the time period of your game, does a single game take place over many months or years or even decades? Will it be symbolic like age of empires where each tier represents a period of history or like starcraft where it's all just a fairly quick skirmish.
IMO it should be the former with the nature people starting out as a more conventional human mining/farming/harvesting society that regresses into a more eco symbiotic race as the alien invasion goes through a scouting expedition to initial extermination stages. Just my thoughts.