[HN Gopher] Build, gather, brawl, repeat: The history of real-ti...
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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.
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