Brains vs. Brauns

[jollyreaper]

I think the key is playtesting. If you're honest with your testers, you'll know whether your ideas are working or not.

The worst problem of any RTS game is when you have one optimal unit and there's no need to make anything else. Tank rush, anyone? Boring!

The worst problem in the space expansion/exploration games is that you never know when a unit will be decent enough to face the enemy so you can go and build it. You are instead stuck researching and reseraching until you max out the tech tree, then the enemies are all pushovers and you go forth to lay waste. It's rare to get to a battle where your forces are equally balanced and it's fun to play.

I'd like to see something like Battlescape do away with the whole tech tree thing, just unlocking units later in the game for you to play with. You have your balance of unit types, they work in different roles, there you go. Look at the balancing in Advance Wars. Brilliant.

[Poo Bear]

Well, there wont be research as such and I did consider having fixed unit types to make things easier to ballance, but I think people love playing with their toys and mixing and matching all the little bits In Battlescape you are given basic unit and squad templates, some will be held back depending on player performance in reaching later stages in the game. Each unit will have a few logical and sensible alternative equipment and behaviour options depending on that units experience. As a squad gains more experience then naturally the squads performance and access to optional extras increase. To counter that the squads cost also increases, so a player might choose to ignore a squads XP and leave it in it's current configuration. Squad cost helps make ballancing a bit easier too, as playtesting shows certain options becoming too good then cost can rise to compensate. This is sometimes better than just diluting weapons and armour as that can lead to everything feeling the same, sometimes it's nice to let gaus guns really work like they should, they just need to cost something appropriate.

Hopefully we will get a situation where your 2000 point army of ninja veteran heavy weapons specialists seated in their advanced stealth mega tanks get whipped by my rookie infantry mounted in their Walmart buy 1 get 1 free jeeps. How? Well you can only afford to field 6 squads whereas I had enough for 20 squads and they were all hiding in the trees in that valley that i'd seeded with land mines when you strolled straight into the middle.

[r000000b]

[MadCat]

Do your RTS skills a favor and go pick up Sun Tzu: The Art of War. Much of it is obsolete, but even then it has a valuable lesson to be learned.

Heck, the devs may get a few nifty ideas for tactics to encourage by giving it a read.

[Poo Bear]

Read it many years ago, it's a classic

For something a bit more down to earth about the dirty realities of tanks, artillery, planes and men check out:

"How to make war : a comprehensive guide to modern warfare"

Very interesting data on actual modern battles, what works and what doesn't.

[refardeon]

Thread is a bit old, but...

If you intend to use long-range artillery, you'll have to limit its power. I'd strongly recommend not to use support units required to make the arty useful (makes things too complicated) . You'd have to make arty either unaccurate or weak. On the other hand, short-range (read: Support for the front line, like Anti-Tank guns, or maybe infantry mortars) would be more fun, as you could not hide behind your guns. With long-range guns, chances are good that battles result in WW1-style attrition warfare. If you're aiming for maneuver warfare, you should seriously consider sticking to short-range arty.

[BlackLiger]

2 varients of Artillary....

Actual long range guns, very expencive, ammo hungry, not 100% accurate. Good for blasting chunks out of an opponents base, or his oncoming forces (ala Big Berta, TA)

Mortars and such, cheaper, shorter range, must be reguarly resupplied, but can function as a normal infantry squad while out of mortar ammo (ala Close Combat)