In my RTS I am making, I am having a little trouble with designing the defense of the units that you can have in the game. 1. I was thinking of many ways to dodge arrows and grenades and stuff, but I was wondering "How in the #@$^ will the user make them dodge? Will there be a dodge command on the keyboard, or will I have to program the AI to make the dodging and stuff?" Yes, I would think that it would make the game better and more exciting if you could have a unit that has escaped 5 grenades and a wave of explosions from missiles but how would I put that kind of stuff in my design document? 2. Storage for food. We all need it. But, when a villager collects food and brings it to the storage place, and the storage place gets destroyed 5 minutes later by a catapult, should the food be destroyed too? 3. Should buildings be only destroyed? Why can''t be capture them and use them to our advantage? Makes more sense if the user can capture a castle instead of making it as small as a grain of sand by those siege weapons. I think that is all the questions I have now. I''ll post later with a few more

ok.. well, let''s see..

1. AI, deffinately. The user can set something like how much time/energy the unit spends on defense and how much on offense.. hehe but don''t make the player do the avoiding directly in most types of games.. because it''s impossible to watch ALL units.

2. Yes, food is one of the major war breakers. starve them to death, and they won''t be able to live long enough to win.

3. Capturing buildings is not an easy thing to do. You have to invaid the building.. and kill all those inside. One unit simply can''t do this. It takes a squad of men to do it.. and even then you have to be able to kill all the enemies. I liked how Dune, the original game did this. You got men attacking something, and they would win the battle.. and capture the building. I''d have some kind of randomly figured thing as to wether a squad of men destroys a building, cripples it, or captures it completely in tact. It''s up to you how to do this, although you might consult with Paul Cunningham on this.. he''s the RTS nut I would do something like each squad damages the building from say 1-5 points per "turn". This is regardless of the level of the squad, vetern or whatnot. A poor unit would actually do MORE damage, so then you add a modifier to the damage for what status level the unit has. Then you get ammount of total damage to the structure itself. Now, you total up the damage to the men inside. The unit kills 2-8 men per "turn", and a better trained unit would kill more units per round, so you add that in.
This gives you total damage to building and total damage to men per unit attacking the building. If you destroy the building, you kill all the men inside, but you risk losing men that you have assaulting the building when it does collapse.. an aspect of many games that doesn''t exist. If you kill all the men, you occupy the building. You could choose to use siege cannons to destroy the building down, as well. Or merely to weaken the men inside before sending elite units in You hafta account for building sections getting hit, and men inside dying.
I think that''s enough for now.. let me know if you need some more suggestions.

J

I think great RTS create a distance from the player and their units, enough so that they can sacrifice their men wholesale and not feel guilty, alowing the player to play the game at the level of a commander rather than a squad leader. Personalizing the units in RTS would not only create incredible headaches for balance issues not just for the designers but also your opponets, but also put too much time/work effort in a unit which could be lost easily and quickly. So i wouldn''t let the player dodge for the units, rather let the AI do that. Also you can skew the chances for a unit to live through a barrage of missiles and arrows, however its unlikely the player would even notice within a large battle, as many RTS engagements are these days.

It would be logical for the food to be destroyed wihtin the building housing it if that building is destroyed too. This will lead to slash and burn tactics which are very effective in real life as well as RTS (killing villagers, etcc) Though having the ability to destroy such a cocentrated source of resource in one attack would proably create an imbalacing effect on the game play. Possibly making that strategy the dominant one. To offset this i suggest making buildings only destroyable by a select set of units (heavy catapults, etc..), which in themselves have some drawback to counter their unique abilities (very slow, only large boat transportable, towed by horses etc..)

Buildings could be occupied but usually in RTS games, when the enemy has breached your defenses, its a clean up job for the enemey as they already have all the resources they need, and they just want to inflict maximum damage on your base or city, knocking you out of the game. For some larger maps it possible to make a comback by hidding out and rebuilding but the cycle is still the same, once your defenses are breached or you breach theirs.

Unless there is a strategic reason for occupying buildings, in what i suppose would be in the mist of a drive by your army to destroy your oppoenent. Thats the designers job, i suppose you could add an arbitary reason, but it doesn''t follow tactically from the current strategy of RTS games. Why would you weaken your army so you can occupy a weakened building (which you weakened by the way) which could be attacked by your enemy later. It doesnt add much and i can''t think of a reason of how it could either. The priest in AOE could do that, but i''ve never seen anyone use their building convert ability to any effect.

Most RTS games by virtue of their victory condition (destorying the opponent), emphasize the most efficent use of a force and resources in inflicting the maximum amount of damage on the enemy, in the least time. Perhaps if your played around with the victory conditions, new and perhaps even more compelling strategies would emerge. What about these victory conditions:

-find a hidden treasure in a dangerous wilderness area first
-form an allaince with another nation across a deadly terrain
-build a giant wall around your city to withstand the horde of monsterous invaders before its too late
-collect the most sheep for your tribe while fending off the deadly wildlife and your thevious negihbors before winter!

What i''m saying is i think their are more victory conditions than kill your oppoenet for gold.

Good Luck

-ddn

Thank you for the posts. But, now I have some questions, and still have more forming in my head!
4. Cannons and siege weapons often are totally destroyed when the unit that is controlling it is. In real life, if you kill the cannoneer, can''t you use the cannon yourself? Of course. But, this would require much more AI programming. What do you think?

5. Should villagers be able to be captured and turned into slaves? I have not seen this yet in games, and I wonder if anyone has thought about it except me.

6. Should there be mercenaries that can work for both the enemy and you? And should there be double agents and stuff?

It seems like every question I ask if used would add pages of AI code... Oh well

quote: Original post by Lynck

Thank you for the posts. But, now I have some questions, and still have more forming in my head!
4. Cannons and siege weapons often are totally destroyed when the unit that is controlling it is. In real life, if you kill the cannoneer, can''t you use the cannon yourself? Of course. But, this would require much more AI programming. What do you think?

Well.. the point of the whole damage deal, is that you''re not destroying a single unit, but rather destroying the men in the squad which the unit represents. So i''d think that a siege weapon should count like a building of sorts. If you weaken it enough, then it shoots slower.. since there''s aren''t enough men to properly operate it anymore. And once the odds become overwhelming.. why would the people stay? They should run away and leave the cannon, and save themselves. That''s something no game does

quote:
5. Should villagers be able to be captured and turned into slaves? I have not seen this yet in games, and I wonder if anyone has thought about it except me.

Yes. It''d be cool as hell, and you could have slave revolts, as well.. so you have to choose what you''re going to do with these slaves..

quote:
6. Should there be mercenaries that can work for both the enemy and you? And should there be double agents and stuff?

It seems like every question I ask if used would add pages of AI code... Oh well

Mercs.. i''m not sure about.. but perhaps spies and whatnot. You could insite revolts within the other person''s territory. This is really too broad, i could pound out idea after idea down this line.. so how about something a little bit more in depth?

J

the most important thing to remember: forget realism in all its foul incarnations. Look at the best RTS games out there and you will not see a shred of realism. Also while a feature might be inherently good it can ruin your game if it does not work well with the rest of it. You are not making a collection of features, you are making a game.