I think it's sad

[AdrianWerner]

I never could get into RTSes...resource gathering kills all the fun for me. I want tactics, not a game about construction company operationg under army's protection

CloseCombat series > All

 

[Fez]

You should try some of the games suggested here, then. There have been a few to avoid having to go the route of peons and mines.

 

[AdrianWerner]

You should try some of the games suggested here, then. There have been a few to avoid having to go the route of peons and mines.

I did..but I do not consider games like GroundControl to be RTSes

 

[Shagnak]

Real Time Strategy
Ground Control has the above - they are its primary focus.
Therefore, it is an RTS.

And, verily, it is good.
Here ye oh sons of the gamasutra.

 

[Sol Invictus]

Ground Control, which featured batallions of units that you carried over to the next mission, beat the heck out of its sequel. You needed actual tactics to keep your boys alive in GC, whereas in GC2 you could just sit in a 'strategic point' and wait till you had enough points to requisition more units. How is that any different from C&C or Warcraft 3? If anything, it's worse - at least in C&C and WC3, those 'strategic points' aka mines eventually run out of juice and you have to move further.

Stalemates suck!

 

[Kthan75]

TA is awesome. But I think SC has it beat. Both games beat the crap out of pretty much all other RTS's though, I agree with you there.

Especially the Age of Empires series. The most over rated RTS series to date in my opinion.

TA Kingdoms blows though, oddly enough.

Couldn't have said it better myself, especially the AoE part.
Warcraft 3 was nice too, but did you notice how the story resembles SC&BW? A human is corrupted and becomes the bad guy and the sequel is focused around him....

 

[Kthan75]

Actually, for me the best RTS is still Warlords Battlecry. And 2. But not 3 (I still have my doubts about that one).
The resource gathering (or rather lack of it, something I have always hated in most RTS) combined with the sheer number of races and heroes available makes is quite cool for me.

I only played Battlecry 3. The game was fun at the beginning, but I found it too easy. I don't remember what difficulty levels it had, but I never play on easy difficulty. At some point I got some kind of angel (I think it was called Archon) in my retinue and after using it intensively for two levels, it became so powerful I could do almost the entire mission with him alone. And I kept doing that until the end of the game...

 

[AdrianWerner]

Real Time Strategy
Ground Control has the above - they are its primary focus.
Therefore, it is an RTS.
.

Excuse me..but where do you see strategy in GroundControl? The only thing I see are tactics, not strategy..so it's real-time wargame or real-time tactics, whatever naming you choose

 

[Sol Invictus]

Where is the strategy (Why did I type "there is the tactics"?) in Command & Conquer or Warcraft 3? Building queues register under 'logistics' and not under 'strategy' which usually involves making alliances, deciding which part of the country to attack first, and how, and so forth. Rushing all of your tanks in to blow up a base doesn't really count for a 'strategic offensive'.

 

[Fez]

If you want to get picky about it, Exitium pointed out before that one of the few true real time strategy games around is Europa Universalis.

 

[Saran]

Blah, Ground Control 2.

"HEY GUYZ! Lets take out everything that made the original such an amazing game, no more units that you learn to love as you take them with you threw the campaign, and as far as story, that whole weird conspiracy thing was too difficult for the key 18-30 braindead fuckstick demographic to grasp!"

Christ, its not as if the original was a groundbreaking novel but it beat the shite out of the twist free sequel.

I remember when i replayed a mission four times becuase a unit of marines i had since the first mission kept getting wiped out

GC2: I treated my grunts worse than the commisars treated the red army at the battle of stalingrad. "FOR MORNINGSTAR PRIME COMRADES!, CLOG THEIR TRACKS WITH YOUR BODYS!"

 

[Shagnak]

Excuse me..but where do you see strategy in GroundControl? The only thing I see are tactics, not strategy..so it's real-time wargame or real-time tactics, whatever naming you choose

Oh, I see what you are meaning. You are talking about semantics of the RTS term.
This has been dicussed elsewhere on this forum, and we know that in some ways "RTS" can be seen as a misnomer, but everyone knows what is meant by the term strategy in this context, even if it is slightly mangled...but, oh well, lets be laborious and pedantic then.
(and you probably know all of what I've written below anyway, but I guess I wanna see if this is what you are taking issue with)

[boring pedantic crap flag ON]

Summarised dictionary definition: Strategy - a plan of action
...so given the word "plan", and planning is usually done before the actual action, it would seem that in a lot of these games no actual planning phase happens, and if it does it doesn't occur in real time, so the "real time" aspect doesn't exist for strategy, right? (I'm certain there are games that are exceptions though, as others will point out).

Summarised dictionary definition: Tactics - the maneuvers or techniques used to carry out the strategy
...this does happen in "real time" in RTSes, so, as you have pointed out, this is probably a better term than strategy in the context of real time.

The problem is, according to the definition of "tactics" some sort of strategy needs to exist in order for there to be tactics. So, even though "tactics" is a better fit in terms of "real time", a strategy is being carried out by the tactics employed - so this makes the RTS misnomer "close enough" for most people.
The strategy (or plan) is being carried out (by the tactics ) in real time.

[boring pedantic crap flag OFF]

Not the best, but good enough for most. Iit takes someone pretty pedantic to complain about it every time it is brought up (I'm not certain you are like this, but there are others that are).

Edit: this is boring stuff that noone really cares about. Skip it if you are a regular, you have seen it all before. Now excuse me while I go get drunk.

 

[Sol Invictus]

I'd also place build queues under 'logistics' (that fucking term exists for a reason) rather than 'strategy' like most of those morons who play Warcraft 3 day and night seem to think it is.

 

[Stainless]

Where is the strategy (Why did I type "there is the tactics"?) in Command & Conquer or Warcraft 3? Building queues register under 'logistics' and not under 'strategy' which usually involves making alliances, deciding which part of the country to attack first, and how, and so forth. Rushing all of your tanks in to blow up a base doesn't really count for a 'strategic offensive'.

If you believe that tank rushing is the only stratergy worth exploring in C&C, then you need to play more under handed. Red Alert has a wonderful array of ways to kill someone. Spys, Tanyas, migs, cruisers, building tesla coils all the way into the back of someone's base, even just bankrupting someone out of the game with theives and chronotanks. Granted, everyone online just probibly tank rushed, most RA games I play against mates tend to be full of alot of under handed tactics. Chronoshifting a cruiser into a river that runs next to someone's base, or sending in shock troopers to take down harvesters, and really the main limitation I see is in playing style. I play people who'll do nothing but try to win with migs, and others who just crank out tanks. Then there're those like me that'll scout harvester routes, and stick minefields in their path.

 

[Otaku_Hanzo]

That's why I've been more fond of the old CnC games. Simply because you had a vast array more options when it came down to dealing with someone then with the likes of Starcraft. Also, GDI and NOD both have significant differences in their units and are well balanced. In the end though, it usually turns out to be a rush job depending on who you're playing against. Therefore I just tend to stay away from the usual RTS scene. I'll stick with games like Rome:Total War where there actually is some strategy involved and actually enforced.

 

[Vykromond]

If you want to get picky about it, Exitium pointed out before that one of the few true real time strategy games around is Europa Universalis.

Coincidentally, it's also a fantastic game- whose manual taught me everything I know about European history.

 

[Fez]

Yeah, it's a good game - so good they've been making it ever since.

Going through a Grand Campaign takes some effort and a lot of time.

 

[triCritical]

Europa Universalis, is a good game, but sometimes it can be a little low on the fun factor. I like to micro-manage, and there really isn't all that much to micro-manage if don't speed through time, which I don't like to do. Although, I think the biggest problem with EU is the learning curve.

 

[Vykromond]

Yeah, it's a good game - so good they've been making it ever since.

Heh. I don't deny it.

 

[Flink]

The C&C games are notorious for their tank rushes. True, Tanyas, Tesla Coils, charge up weapons can ad a shred of strategy. But in the end, it's all in who has the most mammoth tanks.

The Rock, paper and scissors approach of SC, Warcraft3 and more recently Battle for Middle Earth is far superior. Even if you mass Battle Cruisers a guy with good micro and a handful of ghosts can disable half of them with lockdown. But those same ghosts will be raped by marines/firebats.

Ahh.... good times...

 

[roguefrog]

I don't like the Paper, Rock, Scissors approach.

I like the strategy approach. Total Annihilation has this idea. A myriad of units with various abilities/functions. And you can't win with a single unit type. Knowing the units, the map, and how to play effectively (i.e managing your economy, how to expand, knowing how much units to queue up at that crucial moment without going into nano stall, etc...). makes you the winner. Not using this unit vs that unit. Plus the options are open-ended. (land, sea, air...) The amount of unit combos limitless.

 

[Flink]

It's not that non-dimensional though. It should be that only an idiot would mass one type of unit. You need a healthy mix, plus support units with buffs and de-buffs.

But my favorite part is to micro manage. The part where SC is better then TA...

 

[roguefrog]

To each their own then. I hate having to baby sit units every other second. Micromanagment in TA takes place on the battlefield where it counts, and is not wasted clicking on factories to queue up units every other minute because of a queue limit or moving groups of units hither and thither due to a unit selection limit. And no pions to worry about :D

 

[Fez]

The micromanagement intensive RTS games are a sub-genre themselves. They've got their own fans, same as the Settlers games had their own fans which liked that style of game.

 

[roguefrog]

Perhaps, but to my knowledge the TA model has never been duplicated successfully. Most traditional RTS games are either like Warcraft or C&C. I want more TA style RTS's damnit.