RTS Concepts

from AshesoftheSingularity Forums

So this looks really interesting to me as a fan of RTS games in the spirit of Total Annihilation.

There are a few thoughts I have in mind: 

What will the stance on the UI will be? Is the UI considered part of the gameplay? Many RTS, like starcraft, consider the UI a part of the gameplay that sometimes limits players in what they do. This means fighthing the UI is part of the game. That is fun in it's own right, but I hope ashes (if I want to play a game that is about fighting the UI I go play starcraft, no need for bad starcraft clones) will not be about that kind of gameplay, but rather about what we have seen in Total Annihilation, Supreme Commander and Planetary Annihilation: The UI serves only the purpose of most efficiently allowing control of the units the player has. From what I read about the concept of a meta unit it sounds like ashes will work into that direction. Another big point of that kind of concept is that UI mods become "okay" to use in multiplayer battles. A modded UI in a game like starcraft is basically like cheating. In TA-style games however modding the UI is completely fine, since there are no gameplay mechanics that are designed around a lacking UI.

UI feature wise I am wondering if we will see something like the strategic zoom from Supreme Commander, where you can always get a quick overview by zooming out and seeing icons. I think such a feature is vital to remain in control over huge battlefields. Only having a close up view and a minimap is not feasible at all if you are trying to beat Supreme Commander or Planetary Annihilation in terms of scale.

Another question: Will modding (UI, gameplay, custom maps, etc) be supported?

 

Also I read somewhere that ashes wants to be about strategy more than about speedy clicking. That is something that is a pretty vague description in my eyes. I don't think there is any way to fully prevent player speed from having a certain effect on their performance in a real time game, as if you do stuff faster than your opponent you are well... faster and having things faster is always good, so I am wondering how exactly this will be achieved.

 

One last though: How will the resource system work. In the gameplay description it says something about a "constant stream of income". I wonder if that implies a "streaming economy" as known from TA: You don't pay up front when you construct something, but rather while the construction happens per second, if you can't provide resources the production slows down. To me that is the perfect system to support huge amounts of units production that is setup to be an endless loop that never stops, so you don't have to queue up units one by one.

 

... yeah I am looking into something that is on par with Supreme Commander and Planetary Annihilation here :p

 

Very interested into this, will very soon get the founders package.

55,328 views 15 replies
Reply #1 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

UI feature wise I am wondering if we will see something like the strategic zoom from Supreme Commander, where you can always get a quick overview by zooming out and seeing icons. I think such a feature is vital to remain in control over huge battlefields. Only having a close up view and a minimap is not feasible at all if you are trying to beat Supreme Commander or Planetary Annihilation in terms of scale.

 

This is pretty much a guarantee.  There have been statements from Wardell on how this feature in particular should be a standard and RTS games without it just seemed antiquated.  I would be extremely surprised for any strategy game published by Stardock, let alone cooperatively developed, to release without the strategic ZTC functionality used in Sins of a Solar Empire, the Elemental series, and Galactic Civilizations 3.

Reply #2 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Actually, in Ashes we plan to rely more on the mini map for that sort of thing and the Empire tree.  Because of the sheer volume of units, turning them into icons would be largely useless.  You'll want to see your meta units on the mini map (think of a war game where you see the 1st army in location X, and so on).

When a user selects a meta unit, all the abilities of that meta unit are available and the unit can even order replacement units from their factories which are delivered at the closest factory to that unit. 

Overall, we do not want micromanagement to be part of the "skill". The skill will be in your unit composition and strategic grasp of the particular map.

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Reply #3 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 2

Because of the sheer volume of units, turning them into icons would be largely useless.

That's not necessary so. Supreme Commander 2 had an interesting mechanics for such case: its high-altitude overlay displayed close amounts of similar units and control groups as a single icon. Due to imprecise semantics and unpredictable behavior, in SupCom 2 it never played well, but AotS is going to have meta-units, a concept that can provide a good set of rules for such representation. On a small altitude, it can display individual unit icons and a filled area of meta-unit operation, on a higher altitude it will display a meta-unit as a single icon of a convenient size, located in its operating point.

Reply #4 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 2

Actually, in Ashes we plan to rely more on the mini map for that sort of thing and the Empire tree.  Because of the sheer volume of units, turning them into icons would be largely useless.  You'll want to see your meta units on the mini map (think of a war game where you see the 1st army in location X, and so on).

So turn the meta units into icons. I can't see why a minimap would ever be better than a zoom out. The zoom out basically IS a minimap. Just full size over the whole screen and with a very natural "workflow":
1. You zoom out to get an overview

2. You spot something of interest

3. You zoom in to the location and do your work

4. go to 1

With every loop you do you do some action to play the game and you get a full overview of the whole map. The zoom functionality is THE best control system ever invented to control large amounts of units on large maps.

Sure if you have 10k units icons for individual units are useless, but that's why you invented the meta units. A minimap basically just is a worse version of the zoomed out view, so I can't follow your argument. A minimap has the severe drawback that the players need to practicte to constantly look at it and that basically means players spent half their time only looking at that tiny region of the screen. If the process of camera navigation around the map includes looking at a full screen minimap it is a lot more "natural" to the player than to having to watch a tiny minimap.

 

 

Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top

A minimap is better than zoomed out because it is always visible on your screen.  If you are zoomed in on one area, you can still keep and eye on the other battles going on and quickly change locations if you need to address another location.  Without a minimap, you will be zooming in and out an awful lot to try to keep an eye on everything.

Having the minimap and then fully zoomed out to be a full screen minimap would be awesome, but thinking a minimap is useless is incorrect.

Reply #6 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

I'm a fan of both. I play both supcom 1 and 2 with the mini-map on, but I rely on strategic zoom for more details. Squinting at a tiny box on a 1080p monitor is rough :)

Reply #7 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

clearly there are pro's ans cons to either minimaps or strategic zoom. So why not have the option for both?

if we would be allowed to have several windows which we can then configure how we see fit we might have an option that is super flexible aNd allows the player to get his info the way he prefers.

windows filters could then further specify how the info is displayed; for example one big view for your main window where the action is. One zoomed out view window for a strategic view (or have a handy shortcut to swap the main view between detail and strategic in a quick fashion) and then have, for example, two more small windows with one a view on a different hotspot of the map and the other a minimap sort of overview. Just as an example.

 

-and people with multiple screens might be able to use their other screens in different modes too.

 

 

Reply #8 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Frogboy, in case we misunderstood you can you confirm whether strategic zoom is in the game or not? If it is not that is a bit of a deal breaker for me I think. On the AMD booth video of the game it looked like it was part of the game, I certainly made that assumption anyway.

Additionally: 

- As someone said zooming out in Supreme Commander 2 would show the number of units in that area or group so a similar thing could be used to keep things neat and tidy.

- Strategic zoom is more important but I do like to have a mini-map up as well if possible. 

 

Cheers

Reply #9 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Quoting scritchy__, reply 5

A minimap is better than zoomed out because it is always visible on your screen.  If you are zoomed in on one area, you can still keep and eye on the other battles going on and quickly change locations if you need to address another location.  Without a minimap, you will be zooming in and out an awful lot to try to keep an eye on everything.

Having the minimap and then fully zoomed out to be a full screen minimap would be awesome, but thinking a minimap is useless is incorrect.

 

I agree a minimap is partially useful as well, when I played SupCom:FA I had a UI mod that turned on the minimap when I zoomed in and turned it off when I zoomed out. However with zoom you basically play games by being zoomed out and only zooming on on demand to do something you need to have a closer view for. Big scale army movements often could be done from high up. Also taking care of multiple fronts is much much easier with a zoom as you can go into a zoom level where you have both fronts on the main view and take care of them without having to jump between 2 locations with the camera.

Yes you have to zoom on awful lot, but it is much more "natural" to do that. With a minimap you need to practice to constantly look at the minimap so you dont miss anything. That is not something you do without having practiced it. With a zoom you naturally zoom out and zoom in all the time as you move the camera.

 

So I would say a minimap that shows when zoomed in that is hidden when you zoom out to see the fullscreen minimap that allows you to zoom in at any position is best.

Having no zoom and only a minimap reminds me of starcraft: okay for for small scale games, but managing things in different locations becomes an apm depending speed fest that many potential players of large scale RTS like ashes might not like.

Reply #11 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 2

Actually, in Ashes we plan to rely more on the mini map for that sort of thing and the Empire tree.  Because of the sheer volume of units, turning them into icons would be largely useless.  You'll want to see your meta units on the mini map (think of a war game where you see the 1st army in location X, and so on).

When a user selects a meta unit, all the abilities of that meta unit are available and the unit can even order replacement units from their factories which are delivered at the closest factory to that unit. 

Overall, we do not want micromanagement to be part of the "skill". The skill will be in your unit composition and strategic grasp of the particular map.

I like what i am reading! :grin:

 

We are a few days from June... give us the Alpha build so we can try it out.

Reply #12 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

I already start the engine to try  :ninja:

Reply #13 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I am ready to Alpha Test!