Ashes Dev Journal - Meaningful Base Building

from AshesoftheSingularity Forums



Dawn of War 2 (DoW2) got slammed on launch by many fans of the original for its removal of base building. I found the base building in DoW1 to be shallow, so I never viewed DoW2’s removal of it to be a detriment and DoW2 is still one of my favorite RTS games. Base building in RTS is typically the manifestation of strategic investment, so it’s always meaningful in that you’re choosing to build an Armory over teching up into Tier2. Though base building isn’t always needed for strategy in RTS and DoW 2 clearly shows this. (Offworld Trading Company alternatively shows you don't always need units for strategy in RTS either!)

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To me, base building is so much more engaging if the actual placement of structures is nuanced and meaningful, rather than just a way of spending resources and advancing through a tech tree. I’ll admit my position on base building is esoteric in that most RTS fans do enjoy base building regardless of if the positioning is meaningful. I think that enjoyment comes from a feeling of sandbox creativity and a visual representation of the economic, tech and production progression that happens throughout a match. While I don't think it's always necessary, I'll generally enjoy base building as there is something innately satisfying about it, but I think there’s so much potential for base building in RTS games to be more meaningful and some RTS already have nailed it. Although some of this discussion is much harder to apply to large-scale RTS games such as Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation.

 

 



Economy & Production

Age of Empires 2 (AOE2) has four resource types which are gathered in different ways. Players have to plan their base for villagers to be as productive as possible but also defended from harassment. Players have to think about the paths their villagers will take on their way to and from the drop off sites, and update drop off points as trees are cleared and animals hunted. Rise of Nations has similar resource types to AOE2, but its lack of resource depletion and villager drops removes the complexity of placement. Rather than trying to force meaningful base building, first consider how a game’s economy will naturally have an impact on the importance of base building.

A similar perspective can be applied to production, if income is slow and build times are fast (like Command & Conquer) then there's no reason to build multiple production structures of the same kind. In StarCraft, needing to invest in multiple Barracks to efficiently spend all your minerals adds a huge layer to preparing for strategies and transitioning between them. I personally prefer the design of PHC over Substrate because by merging the production of Frigates and Cruisers into the Assembly, there is less strategy and foresight required to transition between army compositions.

Blocking

Base building placement can be meaningful as a means to block access; this could be “walling off” or creating choke points and limiting surface area to reduce the efficiency of melee units. It sounds simple but there’s a lot that needs to go into an RTS game for those mechanics to actually matter. Not only does StarCraft and WarCraft 3 have lots of melee units, but ranged units have very short attack ranges relative to their model size. A blob of stalkers getting clumped up will be much less efficient than if they were firing from a nice concave. Inversely, the infantry units in Command & Conquer (C&C) are tiny for their massive attack range so being limited by choke points doesn’t affect DPS and structures won’t be a deterrent.

 

 



Utility

The more utility buildings have, the more their placement will matter. WarCraft 3 is a fantastic example of this with quirks such as shop structures that sell items to heroes, Ancients that attack nearby units, Orc Burrows that are garrisoned by Peons, Moon Wells that replenish, Farms to shield turrets and many other examples. The art of base building in WarCraft 3 is a crucial skill and the hyper-vulnerability of structures during construction combined with open maps and no natural high ground like in StarCraft means even the timing of base building is important. C&C Generals also has good examples with the GLA Palace being both a tech structure and a garrisonable emplacement that creates a trade-off of wanting to place it somewhere safe or boosting a defensive line.

Additional Vulnerabilities

Additionally, the more ways players interact with buildings the more meaningful their placement will be. C&C is the only franchise I can think of that gives buildings more vulnerability types than just simply attacking them. From capturing them with Engineers to stealing money with Spies or blowing them up with a stealthed Colonel Burton; there’s a lot of cheeky stuff that can happen to your buildings in Generals. When placing a Super Weapon you can’t just think about is it safe from attack, you have to think about is it fully covered by detection from all angles so a scumbag Saboteur doesn’t come along and reset the countdown timer. Engineers can also be used to instantly, fully repair a structure so placing a Barracks directly behind a Command Centre or other crucial building could heavily pay off. If an RTS is made with extra bonuses and vulnerabilities to structures, then base building will naturally become more meaningful. What if Infestors in StarCraft 2 could capture a Barracks to spawn Infested Terrans, how would that affect base building?

 

 



Busy Workers

The placement of base building in Company of Heroes (CoH) is not meaningful, there’s a couple of small quirks but mostly it doesn’t matter where you plonk your structures down. CoH makes base building meaningful in a different way, rather than about specific positioning, base building is a time investment from something that actually matters. Base building in most RTS comes from worker units that are either sitting idle in base waiting (DoW1) or are collecting a resource and are ready to be pulled with little consequence, but not in CoH. Engineers aren’t cheap and have enormous utility between capturing points, repairing, building fortifications, planting/sweeping mines, and being in combat especially with a flamethrower. Every time you build a structure in CoH, it’s being done with the opportunity cost of all those engineer functions, and that adds a layer of strategy to do with retreat timings and map presence.

Vulnerable Workers

The more utility you can pack into worker units, the more meaningful their participation on the map will be and therefore the more strategic consideration goes into base building. C&C Generals also does utility on support units quite well, such as Construction Dozers used for crushing infantry which comes into play in the early game because of crushing workers to deny GLA tunnels. In general, I find slow, expensive and/or fragile worker units to be much more interesting than fast and expendable ones because then sniping workers becomes a specific type of harassment. There’s no quirky utility for the Engineers in Ashes of the Singularity, but they’re still significant as a form of harassment because of how they’re balanced and their movement speed relative to the map sizes.

 

 



Building Mechanics

As much as I love C&C I think worker units are a better mechanic than buildings magically deploying from the sky. Though C&C3 and Red Alert 3 do have some units which are analogous to worker units. Build radius is limited in those games so if you want to expand out to distant resources you’ll need to send out and deploy an Emissary/Sputnik. These build radius units are expensive, slow and fragile which opens up an opportunity to snipe them en-route. Once deployed they’re much tougher but can still be destroyed to prevent building placement in that region. It’s a cool mechanic, but sadly they’re rarely used as they’re undercut by the free ability to simply unpack the MCV and then drive it somewhere else with its massive build radius. Balance in those games aside, traditional worker units may not be suitable for an RTS but there’s still room to add depth and harassment options to base building. This can also be seen with the Empire in Red Alert 3 that use weak mobile cores that deploy into a structure.

Scouting

As base structures are generally the first step of a strategic investment, they provide the best form of scouting. Scout a Dark Shrine and you know you need detection for those incoming Dark Templar, but scout mass Gateways and you know you'll need bunkers for that all-in. When the scouting of base building matters, then scouting and counter-scouting becomes a big part of the game and helps it flow by creating small skirmishes. Players will then try to place structures in a way to obscure scouting or mislead the enemy, and even more drastic things like proxy buildings (hidden outside the main base). Scouting also needs to be designed in a way where it’s fair and not too easy or too difficult, and the significance of structures at a particular timing needs to mean something that the enemy can read. Scouting a Dark Shrine wouldn’t be useful if it also unlocked Colossus and High Templar. Going back to build times for a moment, the longer the unit build times are relative to income, the more production structures are needed. The more production structures are needed, the easier it is to scout specific strategies.

 

 



Adjacency Bonus

Like with many others of these RTS discussions, applying them to large-scale RTS games can be quite challenging. Supreme Commander takes an unconventional approach to make base building meaningful via its use of adjacency bonus. Building economy structures next to certain structures will provide a bonus such as reduced energy consumption. I don’t think this is a good approach and I wouldn’t recommend it because it’s not creative, it’s mathematical efficiency telling you the exact way you should be placing structures. In theory, it’s offset by the volatility of Power Plants but that hardly matters in a real match. Adjacency bonus to that style would be a better mechanic if there were meaningful trade-offs between different types of bonuses you have to weigh up. Mutually exclusive adjacency bonus is a way to think about the Tech Labs and Reactors for Terran buildings in StarCraft 2. Those add-ons are especially a great mechanic that adds incredible depth because of how Terran buildings can lift off to swap between the two add-ons.

Summary

In summary, most RTS players tend to enjoy base building just for the sake of it, but it can be way more fun and provide an avenue for immense strategic depth if the specific positioning of structures has consequences. The game’s economy will heavily tie into the importance of structure placement, but base building can be meaningful through many other ways. Structures can be used to block pathing or funnel troops, so long as the game is designed where clumping limits DPS. If buildings have additional utility and vulnerabilities then interaction types are created which naturally gives their positioning benefits and consequences. The timing of base building can be made more strategic if builder units have additional utility as that creates an opportunity cost to having them idle in the base. Otherwise builder units should be a combination of slow, expensive or vulnerable to provide harassment targets. Lastly, an RTS should be designed in a way so that base building reveals strategic information to create the dynamic of scouting and counter-scouting, which encourages players to hide important tech buildings and creates small skirmishes.

105,959 views 10 replies
Reply #1 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

I think I missed the point of this. I'm not sure what the underlying question is.

 

To answer the question, "Do you like building your base in an RTS?" asked on Twitter:

In RTS's, I like it when units interact with one another at the macro-level. Base-building is a distraction from that. (Consider Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion, where the details of base-building can be automated without taking much away from the game. Request the construction of a structure in a gravity well and the construction frigate does it for you without you having to place the structure manually)

While Base-Building is a fundamental part of the methodology by which you implement your strategy, after a certain stage of the game it becomes a distraction from the real business of competing with and defeating your opponent.

I don't find myself outmaneuvering, outfighting and out-thinking my competitors in RTS's as much as I would like to, and I think that every mechanic needs to be critically appraised through the lens of whether it detracts from the fundamentals of playing the game.

I think this is a weakness of RTS's which has been exploited before. Consider MOBAs - they completely eliminate base-building and production management mechanics, reducing the game to a competition between you and your opponents in one particular domain - the management of heroes - for one particular objective destroying the opposite Ancient. Both bases are already built and both armies are ready to take to the field. I think there are lessons to be learned there.

 

I like the Smart Automation tools that some RTS games have implemented. For example, the Area Commands for building construction present in Planetary Annihilation, the Building Templates from SupCom, the Army Construction present in Ashes: Escalation.

 

The problem with mechanics that offer strategic depth is that there are often too many of them in an RTS, with heavy penalties for neglecting one aspect of the game, and no way to meaningfully automate the execution of the decisions you are making. In an RTS, you have to be generally good at most aspects of the game. To me, base-building is a feature which could be heavily supported by automation and player-tools and I wouldn't miss it, because rather than allocating my workers effectively and building buildings 1-by-1, I would rather be plonking down a template, allowing my workers to get on and do it, and concentrating my efforts on winning the war.

Reply #2 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

I do feel that an RTS game without base building is not a real RTS, RTS games should be called Tactical Games.

People ask why building a base in the game? well the answer is very easy, its not even fun to play an RTS game with no base building.

Base building gives a very interesting aspect to an RTS game, it make it harder to play, funnier to play, it help you create more interesting strategies, you need to build what first and by doing that you can create your own strategy, so yes it does matter a lot.

So you start with an HQ, then go ahead and build a structure to creates air units, by doing that you are already creating your own Strategy and gameplay, you have options on how to start a game.

Without Structures or base building theres not really a Defensive Strategy. you build and design your base to take care of it and defend it, and by having a base and expanding that base you can have better units, more advance units, more income, better Defense, etc...

early C&C games, Warcraft games, TA, supcom, COH, those are Good RTS games, Every Building have a meaning and by having a meaning they are very important to the gameplay and Strategy of the game.

So to end it here. a Real RTS game needs to have a meaningful Base Building or it will not be an RTS game.

other games like MOBA's, DOW2 etc. they need to be called differently

look at all the 4x Games out there, are the Strategy games? yes of course, but what make them Different is that they are Turn Based, and they should be apart from a RTS, they need to be called 4X SG (4x Strategy games) and not 4x RTS.

What I am trying to say is that people need to differentiate, an RTS game with the other Strategy and tactical games out there.

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Reply #3 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Though there is a point to be made about automation: while QoL improvements are nice, it also means that there are automatic choices - meaning that it's not a meaningful one.

Something base building needs to do is interact with the map and/or the opponent to ensure that it's always a strategic choice. The mix of defence buildings and the ratio of unit factories tends to fall into that category almost automatically (land- vs. naval- vs. air-dominated map, opponent's faction etc).

Economically, the link tends to be much weaker in most "plain" RTS games, that's usually that's more deeply explored in economic strategy or Zachtronics-style games (something I mentioned over on Discord) - though I'm not sure what lessons I would draw from that apart from "more specialisation" and "terrain-based bonuses").

Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting ErrantPigeon, reply 3

Though there is a point to be made about automation: while QoL improvements are nice, it also means that there are automatic choices - meaning that it's not a meaningful one.

You are conflating the execution of a decision with the process of choosing a decision.

Reply #5 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Quoting StormingKiwi, reply 1

I think I missed the point of this. I'm not sure what the underlying question is.


The point was that many RTS games have boring base building, where the placement of structures isn't meaningful. But then some RTS games take it to another level because of how their games are designed in a way that placement of structures has consequences. I wanted to highlight the examples of good RTS design.

Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top

When talking about building placement I immediately think of Frostpunk. With an extremely limited build area and a focus on survival, I found the placement to be very important. I think mechanics like that work for certain games because of their core focus. They go into the development of the game knowing the limitation of resources or a lack of buildable area will drive the way the player reacts.

 

Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting GGTheMachine, reply 5



The point was that many RTS games have boring base building, where the placement of structures isn't meaningful. But then some RTS games take it to another level because of how their games are designed in a way that placement of structures has consequences. I wanted to highlight the examples of good RTS design.

I think this idea of good RTS design you have is based on a shaky foundation. Yes, other RTS games have boring base building, because base building is not the aspect of the game which they focus on. It's not true to say they are examples of poor RTS design, just because the game design isn't focused on an aspect which is remote from the core experience of playing an RTS. These aren't construction sims, these are RTS's, and it is relatively easy to overwhelm the player with too many mechanics which don't fit into the wider gameplay experience or the genre the game fits in.

 

From a design standpoint, you're better off doing one thing well rather than many things poorly.

Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top

I have to admit, base building in DOW1 was pretty tedious. Spending bunch of minutes at the start of the match constructing the base, over and over every single match, boooring. The less of this repetitive BS, the better. 

I suppose at competitive levels its not such an issue, because pro players dont really let the game slip into that phase, where you see fighting one big army against another, more often than not they take their first unit and go on harrasing enemy base...but it never exactly felt to me like a strategy game, these "one unit army" games... might as play some RPG then.

Anyway, even though i consider base building boring and repetitive a lot of times in lot of RTS games, i still think its a must, because i like to think what i am doing is being in charge of a state/kingdom/empire and playing a wargame. So for the immersion i need to be able to build economy, construct armada and then fight enemies, having just the last one does not cut it. I pretty much like grand strategy games - except the actual ones like the myriad of 4X games like Civ, GalCiv, Stellaris, MOO, Total War series, which are way too complex and slow for my liking. This is why i uncoditionally love Sins, it really was the RTS game made for me. The next best thing aside of Sins was Conquest:Frontier Wars, and then maybe Rise of Nations i guess and Cossacks series. I wish there were more RTS games like that.

One more game i want to mention, which was really special and unique, and which, while having only very shallow base building, was extremely fun, was very old space RTS called Star Command Revolution. I loved it cause while it still had this simple base building, unit production and resource gathering, it was very action packed with lot of emphasis on combat, with those other aspects not really detracting from it, making you constantly wait for something.... while its old, i truly recommend it to try to anyone, it was truly awesome game, one of its kind.  

Reply #9 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

I'm not sure if I enjoyed the walling in sc2 and sc1. You really have to put time into it, or suffer in a pile of crappy base layout (broodwar more so than sc2, since base layout also affected how hard it was to run through a production cycle).

Ashes doesn't require you to learn base building, but it does have a similiar organizational challenge that broodwar has, because for a game with so many fronts, the level of automation provided is only slightly more than a typical rts.

A really interesting part of ashes is figuring out important locations on the map and controlling the map with static D + your early army. I quite  prefer that kind of gameplay over constant army posturing.

Similarly, it is also an interesting problem (though also so difficult most players don't even try) defending against air, using a combination of static AA, mobile AA, and fighters. The layout and the timing of static AA, and the positioning of your mobile AA are all factors to optimize. Ashes sort of feels a hint like Go in that they both involve committing resources and fighting over territory.

Static defense is pretty strong in ashes, but that's counterbalanced by the value of units being so high. That is because a large portion of economy on the map, meaning pure turtling is generally impossible and that units can very easily produce a return on their investment, simply by capturing or threatening to capture territory. Compare that to X-base turtling which is possible in broodwar or sc2. In starcraft, if your opponent turtles, you can only take these non-tangible advantages, like the threat of being able to attack a base, map vision, and the freedom to send workers to new expansions uncontested.

Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top

I have to agree. While playing Ashes I never found Turtling with static defenses to be that effective. Unlike games that rely heavily on defensive structures to survive, in Ashes they always felt more like support structures to help my units.