/v/ - Video Games

eh, hanging in there. though the Earth series still baffles me. I have the games but they're way too involved.

NUCLEAR LAUNCH DETECTED

>>16407823

Just waiting till the EA CnC Remake by Petroglyph

RTS games are boring and don't allow for enough of a narrative for interesting stories to be delivered. How am I supposed to relate to small disposable characters?

Please dont tell me that it was SC2

>>16407863

>the EA CnC Remake

I'd actually love to see just how much the fuck it up.

>>16407863

>(((Petroglyph))), the idiots who've made nothing but shitty meme games for years

>advised on by the (((OpenRA))) community and other bottom of the barrel tier trash

dead on arrival

some part of me is hoping Gens2 didn't die at this point

slap some sense into me please

>How are you holding up?

C&C mods :^)

Does DoW1 and its expansions still deserve proper remaster with better modelling & path finding AI? Considering the state of GW and what happened to Relic I don't think it's feasible but is there any reason to hope for it?

I am quite contempt with Dark Crusade's titanium war mode and occasional SS apocalypse mod but boy do I wish ONE(1) good 40K game without sound bug.

Been playing random RTS that I love when the itch hits. Mostly RA2 over the years, my recent obsession is with Warzone2100. It went abandon-ware years ago and the community took the reigns and now updates it still to this day.

Fucking kick ass game wish more people tried it.

>>16409038

Older by 3 and 5 years respectively.

>>16409096

Surprised we haven't seen someone try to reboot this yet.

>>16409102

Rising storm 2 had an event during Christmas with Army men maps. Was fucking amazing and then they got rid of it because everyone liked it more than the actual game.

>>16409105

This is precisely why I don't bother with games that have events. The developers always get asshurt and kill anything people like more than their standard matchmaking skinnerbox bullshit.

I've been playing Zero-K. It's not big budget at all, but if the video game market doesn't want to support RTS or certain genres, I can place my support elsewhere.

Fine.

Ancestor's Legacy.

Iron Harvest.

Conan: unconquered.

You do not need big budget for RTS.

Total Annihilation was the peak of the genre. You're free to disagree but you're wrong.

>thread hasn't been shitposted to death by niggers

Nice.

As long as I have an audience, what are some good games to play for a peabrain like myself who never liked RTS games? I always feel like I'm making the wrong decisions, and when something unexpected shows up and begins attacking my buildings, my brain freezes up.

I recently tried playing Age of Mythology (the last good Age of X game, according to a friend), which I had played as a kid and somewhat enjoyed as an adult, but the same problem emerged in the easiest, earliest missions. Having to split up my attention so much makes me feel like no individual thing is done properly: idle workers, idle military units, idle scouting units, etc.

Are there any super-slow RTS games where I needn't manage more than 2-4 small groups of units at a time?

>>16409460

So you want a RTS with Macro Management instead of Micro?

>>16409402

Supreme Commander came in and improved everything, though.

>>16409518

Basically, yeah. And where combat is less stressful, either due to smarter AI or lower DPS.

>>16409460

Have you tried the Command & Conquer games? Unit/Building production is handled on the sidebar, you don't have worker units to handle, just keep your Construction Yard safe, economy is simpler with a single resource and harvesters tend to handle themselves okay.

>>16409519

Too bad it runs like liquid ass on modern computers.

>this is what Chris Taylor is up to now

https://archive.fo/TgIfh

end this nightmare please

>>16409528

SCFA was difficult to run when it came out due to the massive number of units and full projectile simulation but on a modern computer it runs great.

>>16409528

That sounds very appealing. Is there a particular starting point, or should I just play them in release order? I know there are ~20 games, including spinoffs and expansions.

>>16409524

>>16409528

What this Anon said. If I were you id start with Red Alert 2, the single player campaign in most C&C titles is more of a puzzle for each map than a straight up Match, its very beginner friendly and very fun.

Even then you can just make a ball of tanks and crush anything in your way with very little micro, even less if you just use attack-move commands.

>>16409542

The oldest titles in the series feel different from Tiberian Sun onward. Dune 2000 being the bridging gap between the two styles of bird's eye to isometric. Very good games in their own right though, just not as beginner friendly as Red Alert 2 but that's just my opinion.

>>16409541

Really? It handles like ass on my computer and the forums do mention it handles like ass on multi-core setups.

>>16409542

I guess you can follow >>16409556 advice on Red Alert 2 (has an easy campaign and I don't remember the AI being awfully cheaty) unit production can also be queued (not buildings afaik) and it's the first one to have buildings and defense production independent of each other.

I thought also maybe the first one since I don't remember the campaign being particularly hard, unlike the first Red Alert which really was bad in the "limited unit/trial and error missions" department.

>>16409601

The only Cheating the AI does in Red Alert 2 is in Skirmish, they can build out of multiple construction buildings at once. But they are unlikely to make more than one with how their AI works. You kind of have to force them to build a specific way and if you don't know how to do that it's unlikely to happen. And no buildings and Defensive buildings cannot be queued only Infantry and Vehicles. (that Includes aircraft and navy units)

Yeah like I said most Campaigns are puzzles but the first games in the series took that to an extreme at times with how much limited resources you had vs what you had to fight / accomplish.

>>16407823

Fuck Valve

Does red alert 3 count?

Also what's your opinion on wargame:red dragon. Really steep learning curve but i think I'd enjoy it if I knew how the fuck to figure it out

>>16407937

That is something I'm looking forward to, seeing as the Westwood devs are scattered all over since they got fucked 17 years ago, and Petroglyph has like 1/3rd of them left working.

>>16408109

>Generals 2/Command and Conquer died because the suits told them it wasn't viable in today's "economy"

>Several employees say that's bullshit and it died because EA couldn't nickle and dime retards out of their money upfront.

Sad, really sad.

>How are you holding up?

>C&C mods :^)

Been playing the fuck out of Operation Firestorm for Generals

i went and bought the CNC pack a while ago, im really enjoying the older CNC games plus the mods off CNCnet.

i really missed these older games.

Spellforce 3 got relesed a few years ago, and it really shows why RTS died. Those parts of the game wore by far the most boring, I used cheats to get them over with as fast as possible

>>16410219

Never tried Spellforce 3 myself, only Spellforce 2. What did you use cheats to speed through?

>>16409519

its a decent one, but its very difficult compared to C&C.

>>16409732

>wargame:red dragon

top tier meh with terrible balancing and pay to win DLC

ALB was better, but after RD Eugen fucked themselves and lost most of their devs

>>16410761

Strict e-sports rebalancing of all units. Seriously - half the fun with old RTS games was that you had units that were slightly overpowered, underpowered, or gimmicks that weren't really practical but everyone kept using them anyway because they were hilarious.

Cue "muh esports" and everything needs to be perfectly balanced. Oh, and that one special ability of that one unit which everyone chiefly used for shit and giggles? It's been removed to "streamline" the game more.

>>16407920

If anything it's the exact opposite problem. The industry is obsessed with multiplayer because of "muh games as a service" but your average joe would rather play single-player where they don't have to worry about shit like not having a good enough apm.

NOT 'NUFF WOOD M'LORD

>>16409169

Iron Harvest has many red flags, Conan is inspired by a fucking tower defence game. I kinda forgot to check out Ancestors Legacy and I see now that it's finally out on GoG, so d1c79c7b438f9a73f60c506ff8003920dbbc2fb1 I'll check it out soon. I probably will be the only one talking about it.

>>16407863

>>16407937

>>16408109

>>16410761

When they fuck it up I hope it will prove to the people that Petroglyph is not capable to make good RTS games like CnC and that they have zero in common with Westwood studio except for a few people who worked in Westwood long time ago. They almost figured out how to make a decent CnC-like game which was 8-bit Armies, but it still felt quite off to me.

Though maybe I'm having too much of the hope, because some people do believe "Petroglyph=Westwood" meme and think that RTS as a genre doesn't work when you point at failures of RTS games like Gray Goo, for some reason they don't blame incompetence of developers, they blame the genre, claiming it didn't age well or any other nonsense and that despite the fact that even fucking Kane's Wrath is still being played and has tournaments, not to mention every other classical RTS game being played too.

Just look at this moron for example: >>16407920

On a side note, guess who have license to make Dune games? Here is a hint: Conan Unconquered.

Get "hype" for another possible Dune "RTS" game disappointment

I want to hold every game dev by his soy pencil neck and calmly ask why the FUCK they cannot make a decent RTS game anymore. "B-But nobody likes RTS!"

BULLSHIT, you degenerate queer. If you consider digital cancer like Dawn of War 3 or Spellforce 3 a "RTS" then, YES, noone likes to play that shit.

Look at Grey Goo, Act of Aggression, Deserts of Karakh. Top tier presentation but the games just suck. How hard can it be to make a non-shit RTS?

Supreme Commander FAF and Starcraft (2) is what I play with my buddy but we want something NEW, you faggots. As most RTS fans are old and rich as fuck I would pay 100 USD for a new top tier story driven epic-scale RTS with a decent multiplayer. Not some shitstarter scam, though.

Every new RTS is a disappointment.

>>16411364

What the fuck is that format. This not what I typed.

>>16411421

got it, thanks

AoE4 will save the genre, just you wait!

Guys, why is there no "Worker Manager" Tab in modern RTS games, where you can just put in a number of workers and the computer will automatically send them to mine gold, wood/oil/gas whatever? You can decide if it uses idle Workers to fullfill its mission or trains them itself.

>>16411815

I remember empire earth 2 having a nice feature where mousing over your resources displayed the number of idle villagers you had and brought up a tooltip showing how many villagers you already have on that resource, then you could click that resource to send an idle villager to collect.

the ai in there still beats my ass with how much it spams

>>16411780

The problem isn't that it wouldn't be interesting moreso than requiring effort into not making another clone.

>>16407920

>How am I supposed to relate to small disposable characters?

you aren't, they function as generic expendable gamepieces just like in chess.

>>16409169

>iron harvest

wasn't that the early access game where your units can't stop retreating until they get back to base? that was fucking retarded.

>>16409647

this tbh

>>16411780

What killed RTS was the forced ranked meta bullshit that flooded the genre with tryhard morons who treat the game like the fucking NFL draft. Soviet tier companies pushing the shit for customer data and control purposes then used it as an excuse to axe LAN, custom games and options in general leaving us with games that cost more but always have less content. Notice how grand strategy games don't have this problem? It's because as dumb as the motherfuckers making those games are they at least don't try to shove esports down your throat.

>>16414108

>Notice how grand strategy games don't have this problem? It's because as dumb as the motherfuckers making those games are they at least don't try to shove esports down your throat.

Anon, Paradox since Crusader Kings 2 haven retardely focusing in multiplayer balance, and so fucking up the posterior games mechanics & content in a bad way.. It not Esport shit, yes, but then again, its impossible to do it with that niche genre.

What are you guys' hot takes on Steel Division 2? I really liked Wargame: Airland Battle and can see a lot of similarities with SD2, so I'm interested in potential downfalls.

>>16414108

>>16414167

>It not Esport shit, yes, but then again, its impossible to do it with that niche genre.

I don't think Paradox know that and they'll try regardless. They've already converted EU4 and Stellaris into toxic BALANCED digital waste. Never played HoI4, but I expect a similar fate to have befallen it, and Imperator: Rome is pretty abysmal too. Too bad Paradox have acquired quite some good will over the years and it will take some time until people realise they're selling early access titles without telling that anybody.

>>16414167

Which they are doing in preparation for esports. This always happens.

>>16414254

The entire series is founded on the premise that killing Hitler was a bad thing so really I'm surprised it even lasted as long as it did.

>How are you holding up?

Not really, haven't touched any RTS in ages save for SoaSE:R which is more of a hybrid anyways.

>>16414289

>ashes of singularity

Deleted it after an hour. Like you said, a very empty, shallow game. RTS games should be made so that they're easy to get into, which Ashes is, but there needs to be ways to excel, things to master. The game has none of that.

What about mods, AOE2 HD has a ton of them yet none are found in free DL form, and yes, steam can go fuck itself and sometimes you have to download metashit other than steam just so you can DL mods through it.

Fuck these wannabe merchants.

Why would anyone even need any other RTS when Age of Empires 2 exists?

>>16414097

This game is fucking shit.

>>16415175

tfw got tricked into buying the normal version and then have the promised features released in another game

>>16415175

Because kikestarter, they should written parts of the code in assembly like in original total annihilation for better performance so that they can actually hold water to it but instead it became a pisspoor imitator. Imitating other gaems is not that bad if the executing is gud but that game ain't one of it.

>>16414108

Nope, that's just a symptom of the larger problem. What killed RTS is that they aren't played at all like anyone would expect and this holds true in many different ways.

Basic misconception #1: You're gonna have a fuck huge army!

No, you're not. Having a large army means you're either going to a-move your blob around or you're going to spend so much time micro'ing it that your macro will suffer greatly and you're likely not gonna have much fun, actually. Worst case scenario: the micro is so bad only a small amount of players can cope with it.

Instead, you'll have small armies of about 15-20 units max, with about 1 or 2 types of basic units that are your back bone and do nothing but move and attack and then if you're good at the game you're gonna complement it with about 5-10 caster units for support and spend most of your micro with those.

Everyone that ever wanted to field large amounts of units and see giant armies clashing against one another will always be let down once they move past the singleplayer campaigns into skirmish or multiplayer.

At that point, you're better off playing RTT for the extra depth in micro or GSG for the actual scale in conflict.

Basic misconception #2: There's a lot of transferable knowledge in RTS, and everything else is intuitive anyway!

This one is worse since it actually kills interest very slowly but surely. FPS games have simple mechanics, you move around, point at something and shoot. Everything else that differs between them exists to help this basic concept and even when it's very in-depth stuff (Quake movement) it still doesn't detract, hinder or change the basic concept itself.

Meanwhile, the basic concept of RTS games is "build units, send them to your oponent and kill him". But everything else exists almost on it's own, with specific purposes and ideas that you have to understand and can't really take away for other games. And usually, the less intuitive something is, the more crucial it also tends to be.

You might be tempted to say "Unit synergies and triangles in RTS are like shotguns in an FPS, they may look different but they do the same!" but that's not even true. A shotgun is always a short range burst damage weapon while unit synergies and triangles in RTS tend to be wildly different between each game. In Warcraft and Starcraft, it's type of damage vs type of armor, with the meta establishing the counters. In Age of Empires it's the units inherent attributes that make them weak or strong against another. In Age of Mythology they actually get a bonus or a malus to their damage based on counter types. And this is just one of the most basic concepts in RTS games.

Let's not even start with the economy, where the intuitive thing to do is NOT have a fuckload of workers\villagers\engineers that take up PopCap just by existing and thus reduce your army size. Noobs always make a small economy hoping to field a bigger army because having a replaceable army instead (something that easily beats a bigger one) means accepting you're going to lose heaps of units and that's not very intuitive.

Or things like Mass Fabricators in Supreme Commander that are practically unique AND crucial to that game. Or reclaiming that's also crucial but awfully rare. Or economies based around specific resource nodes vs buildings you just make vs resources in places you'd set up a base anyway.

It's the biggest goddamn clash of ideas a genre can possibly have and it's so inconclusive it almost doesn't even make sense to say "I like\play RTS games" since you haven't specified which type of RTS do you actually like\play.

Now try and get newer players to try this genre or devs to try and develop a new RTS without just copy pasting previous formulas.

So every time I see complaints about the multiplayer ranked meta, I always laugh. RTS as a genre was made for the kind of players that like that shit because they can put up with learning how to play a single game very, very well and stick with it. They see nothing wrong with the design, can handle the controls, the micro and the macro well enough and play against each other. Multiplayer ranked meta exists because that's what the playerbase of RTS games prefers and is a consequence of that, not the source of a problem on it's own.

>>>/v/16415584

Just letting you know you killed the genre.

>>16414289

I just downloaded AL and holy shit

>all units are hard countering some other

>there are only 5-7 of them per faction

>and also all the starting units are of different types, so if it wasn't for the defence towers you'd die immediately if your enemy's starting units countered yours

>also 10 unit limit is the maximum, minimum's just 5

I guess now I know why nobody talks about it.

>>16415591

No need to be salty, denying (you)'s on purpose just shows how angry you are.

I never played RTS in multiplayer besides a few LAN matches against actual good players that corrected a lot of mistakes I was making. I do not care for ranked meta one bit and avoid it in any videogame I play anyway since electronic dick measuring contests are suited for those that have nothing else to worry about in life only.

However I can tell you that my enjoyment of RTS went up substantially after learning from said good players and figuring out what I was doing wrong and none of that was actually intuitive stuff. Apparently, I had been playing RTS for years in the wrong way because it was what felt more fun and natural for me but not the optimal strategy to win that these games are built around, and thus I always ended up struggling far more than I needed to.

However, after that happened, I realized that what RTS games truly were was something I wasn't actually that much interested in. Like I said, if I wanted heavy micro with a small amount of units, I'd just boot up some RTT. It's just very, very weird to see many games that try a lot of different ideas but none of them ever combine them to make an actually interesting game.

For instance, I really liked the concept that Perimeter was going with, having up to 5 groups easily selectable, each having either basic units or one type of advanced unit you could morph into. I also liked how you selected the group to queue units for it instead of selecting the buildings where they are produced and units would just move towards the group to join it when produced. Almost managed to do something similar in Rise of Legends by putting a rally point on a Hero and putting him in a CtrlGroup. Every unit produced automatically joined said group, but this would stop if the Hero was killed and you'd have to restart from the beginning.

Earth 2160 also had a neat idea, automatically assigning units to CtrlGroups when being produced.

Even Achron did really good with the concept of Squad Leader to command larger groups of units (albeit, in it's case it was because of it's own gameplay reasons)

But overall, there hasn't actually been an RTS that mixes these ideas to make an easily manageable army that you can design instead of "craft" unit by unit manually everytime or with crude tools like auto-queue.

You even had things like Kohan 1&2 showing a really start to creating an army, but having it be really small. Imagine if the concept was brought to Rise of Nations (since they have Generals and Heroes to command armies as well) and you could customize your "army" with all the unit types you could produce. Maybe even do it like in Perimeter and have the Army be where you queue units, making nearby Barracks and Archery Ranges produce units to join that group.

And let's not even start with economy. Flow economy really spoils us since it stops making the sense the sunken cost into just dropping the blueprints of a building or queuing a unit. You'd expect to see far more of it, but some of the best examples we have are still just Supreme Commander and Spellforce 3 of all things. Or how most of the times, resources all act mostly the same way and for the same purpose, as if they were all currencies you're using to pay for things. Driftlands at least had a better take on Food and Gold, using the first as a pretty good soft PopCap and maintenance resource, while Gold doubled as an actual resource but also as maintenance costs.

It made it so expansion was something deliberate and carefully though out, not just because you'd have to defend your investment but because you need the infrastructure to develop further, and in return it gave you a stronger economy to work with with.

Too bad Driftlands is stuck with the "floating island" concept because a lot of other concepts in that game work really, really well.

>>16415175

>duurrrr giant worlds is gonna be great

It's not manageable. It's not fun to scroll into 5 planets to check what is going on.

Graphics sucked and the game was beyond laggy, even clashes of planets would sometimes completely fail the animation.

>>16414076

The first one is "Ушаночка", the second one is "Снизу недра", both performed by Геннадий Жаров and were released in album named after the first track. If you want I can get the album in lossless format, otherwise you can find those tracks on YouTube.

>>16415664

You're reading what you want to read, not what's actually there. I'm not judging matchmaking and saying it's good/bad. I'm telling you that it's not causing the problem, it's a consequence of the problem.

The kind of people that actually like RTS as they are, that plays exclusively multiplayer for the competition and does not want the genre to ever be anything different than what it is right now, that kind of people has no problem with matchmaking or multiplayer meta, or what have you. They do not care one bit for any of that.

These are players that have hundreds of thousands of hours into their RTS of choice. Multiplayer and it's relevant meta is what they live for. They won't clamor for matchmaking, but they won't complain much either since they easily leave the bottom tiers anyway. These veterans might enjoy the singleplayer campaign but that's not what they played all those hundreds of hours, and they might even not like it one bit since single player campaigns often have little to do with how the game is played in skirmish\multiplayer anyway.

But because these are the guys that will populate multiplayer, because these are the ones that companies will see playing their game and buying their stuff, these are the players to be pandered to, that change the game and it's meta over time. They get matchmaking so they can play against each other instead of against newbies. They get balance changes (that will affect everyone else) because they managed to break balance. They get exansions, content and other random shit because they are the ones playing AND paying these companies. And because they put up with all of that all for the sake of a genre they are perfectly happy with, they are the ones that shape how the genre is played.

Or to put it in other words: you don't get "tryhard morons who treat the game like the fucking NFL draft" because of "forced ranked meta bullshit". Other way around.

You get "forced ranked meta bullshit" because your average RTS player, especially the ones that actually pay for their games are often "tryhard morons who treat the game like the fucking NFL draft".

And for as long as RTS games try to cater to that audience, the matchmaking multiplayer ranked meme is just going to flow naturally as an obvious consequence, much like lootboxes for whales in MMOs.

What killed the genre was not the remaining players that still bother to play it, what killed it is that RTS as a whole did not evolve one yota from it's past iteractions and it's core audience doesn't see anything wrong with it.

>>16415175

I was actually more upset their follow up game ended up being cancelled. Army of robots fighting space squid monsters using humans as a resource seemed like a basic but neat idea.

>>16415701

Planetary Annihilation also sounded like a basic but neat idea but they also fucked that one up.

>>16414960

As I've gotten further through the campaign it's become more fun as the pace of games has quickened, the story is where the real cringe is at. If it wasn't so bland, visually primarily, then I'd rate it a lot higher.

Probably a good starter if someone finds supcom too overwhelming.

They're currently working on a sequel with ideas that "are too big for an expansion" and mod support/workshop support is on the way so I'll keep an eye on it in-case it becomes not shit.

>>16415639

I warned you bro, that shit's not fun.

The campaigns are all the worst too, so many forced stealth sections. It's almost funny how terrible it is considering what it's supposed to be. I don't know how they fucked it up.

>>16415584

>>16415698

>>16415655

RTS as a genre is pretty vague in how it can be played and so there's a lot of variation. I can see how it can be hard to find the right combination of mechanics and ideas that people will like. Especially as the industry seems to have lost all it's understanding about video games over the years. As budgets have gotten bigger people have experimented less and so more stuff is carbon copied, mostly without an understanding of why.

A lot of those older games you mention that tried new ideas didn't get very far either with that idea or market wise. Actually you mentioned building units with command units, Ashes of the Singularity does this where you put your units into fleets and then you can order unit production from the fleet rather than the factory and the factories fill the order and the unit drives to the fleet.

And it's awful because: it doesn't take pathing distance into account so if you order 2 tanks it'll build one in the factory next to you and one across the map and then the one on the other side of the map will die before it gets there; it builds units one fleet at a time so you can have 3 factories each supplying a separate fleet continuously and so you can get bottle-necked really easily; you can't set a static amount of say 20 tanks and when you go under it'll auto build another instead you have to manually order a new batch of tanks. These are all implementation issues so I'll move on.

Mechanically it forces you to play with these dumb fleets; fleets move as fast as the slowest unit so manoeuvre warfare is a thing of the past, now it's fleets holding lanes; small strike forces doing run-by's? Also gone since they'll just bump into a fleet holding the lane; It makes map design simpler as now the game is about these big field battles so there's no interesting maps cos the fleets would get stuck; fleets get bonuses for being fleets otherwise players wouldn't do it so you feel forced into this, it incentives only one type of play and that's antithetical to what a strategy game should be. Since it's about fleets holding lanes the game becomes the best blob wins, with no harassment gameplay or counter pushes or tech rushes.

And it's not like in supcom I didn't' mass units together into groups and use them as a big blob it's just that by binding units together you remove the flexibility. In supcom I can just rally my units to the front and then I can control 5 small strike forces back and forth and then if the opportunity arises group them together into a bigger army and make a big push and then break it up into smaller groups again. If I'm being flanked I can just grab a couple of these tanks in my big army and throw them to the side or move my rally point so the next 5 tanks that are built turn into a small group. You can't do these things with fleets because the grouping has to be explicit.

My overarching point is that there's a reason a lot of these older games are lesser known or didn't take off. Most of them are shit and your/their ideas are also shit.

>>16415175

devs seemed more interested about le smashing planets XDDDD and nukes than actual units fighting.

the release version didn't have a transport that could move more than one unit from a planet to another.

also the spherical maps are so tiny that often you can't form a good idea of what's happening, because even if you zoom out far, all the shit is going to be obscured by the curvature of the planet

>>16418140

Dunno what to say but the stealth missions in AL are not annoying.

I would say it has a very good campaign actually.

>>16409460

>>16409524

Play Supreme Commander Forged Alliance. It's all about army composition and macro economic management. In fact, there is pretty much no micro at all. The costs of units and structures are not upfront but deducted pro rata as they are built, units automatically group up into formations, factories can be set to repeat a queue of units indefinitely and rally new units to transport routes. Your function as the player is to make decisions, when to reinvest in economy and when to attack, where to expand, army composition, whether to win with conventional forces or nukes/super artillery.

The heaviest micro you would do is building a tech 1 transport and dropping some artillery on a ridge or sneaking an engineer and a mobile jammer into range to build a tactical missile firing base.

>>16418140

>ashes has no harass

haha, no

both factions can orbital drop in engineers and build a turret in your base killing your tech buildings and severing nodes

>>16417269

Yes, it's a flac and in one file, so you'd have split the files by using .cue file. I'm too lazy to reinstall EAC to change the format or split the thing. However, if you get any troubles with opening .cue let me know.

https://megaupload.nz/K7ZaB0k0nb/1992_Amnistia_Ushanochka_FLAC_7z

>>16418428

>it seems my opponent has outplayed me

>ahaha let me just spawn a single engineer or 5 tanks anywhere i have vision

>now i don't have to outflank my enemy, create openings or otherwise think

truly the pinnacle of strategy

As a sidenote you may notice that this behaviour already exists in supcom by having units move faster, having water you can cross and by having flying transports, rather than using the crutch of active abilities.

>>16418408

I didn't play a strategy game to move one squad through some bushes for 20 minutes. I'm pretty sure every campaign in AL starts this way too so it's pretty tedious and the gimmick of having tall grass wears thin fast.

>>16418602

every active ability you use is an upgrade you can't afford

>>16418535

Still, if you or anyone else decide to play through .cue, make sure to convert encoding to UTF-8 since it uses Windows-1251 encoding, you can do that through text editing program like Notepad++, you should set encoding to Windows-1251 first though so the characters would look the way they should and only then you must convert encoding to UTF-8. If that won't help then the only solution I can think of is renaming .flac file using Latin characters and change the name of the file in .cue itself.

But honestly it's better just to split the whole thing on individual tracks and not bothering with .cue files anymore. In that case you'd probably don't even have to convert encoding in .cue file, so splitting the album is the only thing I recommend.

Anyway you're welcome.

>>16419652

It is far from dead.

JRPG is dead, RTS is still alive.

>>16418602

That is literally one mission (viking 2nd campaign 1st mission) and it turns into base defense afterwards.

Looking forward to Steel Division 2, enjoyed the most recent phase of the beta

>inb4 RTT isn't RTS

Wargame/SD's scale is much larger than most RTS games if you go by map size, and you have to manage logistics in addition to frontline combat, I'd argue RTT is a subgenre of RTS.

It's a shame these games are so niche, SD1 has like 300 players, and Wargame Red Dragon has around 1k. Balance wasn't great in the beta, pretty much everyone came to the conclusion that plane and artillery spam was the best way to play, but I'm confident it'll get better. I also really like the deck building system compared to the normal faction system in RTS games.

>>16419886

>plane and artillery spam was the best way to play

Honestly, is there a single RTT game where this isn't the case? I've played games like Men of War and Theater of War and it was basically the same story there. Which is why they're supposed to be highly limited. I mean just look at real life, the U.S. is the best military in the world and they spam planes, artillery and cruise missiles.

>>16419864

RTS is dead a fuck

Strat and RTT are alive as fuck, but RTS has either tons of garbage indie or the really rare mid sized failure.

>JRPGs are dead

There's tons of them still being made though

>>16420112

I see better and relevant RTS being made than JRPG.

So Empires of the Undergrowth, the new SimAnt just comes out, is it good?

>>16420147

Persona 5 alone probably outperformed every RTS released in the last 5 years.

>>16419901

SD1 actually balanced airpower decently. It was very difficult to kill planes with ground AA, but ground AA would panic them quickly and make them leave. In SD2 air power is much more fragile but deadlier. Cluster bombers exist that can reliably kill tanks in one pass. If you don't have a credible AA network set up you just lose, the balance is very similar to Wargame.

In SD1, planes only became oppressive if they were allowed to loiter over your lines, and they mostly panicked units, particularly heavy tanks. The only exception were the German AT planes with guns, like the Ju 87 G, they could kill armored vehicles reliably, but they were slow and vulnerable. In SD2 planes are probably the deadliest asset available to either side, and if you aren't causing attrition to your opponent's air power you will lose, and lose quickly.

Artillery doesn't bother me as much because artillery was the dominant arm on the eastern front for much of the war.

>>16420147

Like what?

inb4 replies me with an RTT

>>16420252

Ancestor's Legacy.

>>16419865

Edwards campaign also has a forced stealth mission. But maybe I'm thinking of all the missions where you cant' build units, there's a lot of those and I hated all of them.

>>16419274

Air transports are expensive and so is having to build the tanks to load onto it and then you have to get it past their lines without them knowing. Just giving players the menu option of spawning 5 tanks anywhere they have vision is definitely not the same thing.

I just played a game in ashes where this kept happening to me and I just built some gunships and a couple turrets to shut it down. And one of those air scouts that can cap points. Because every time they did it there would be a "enemy has captured a point" message I could react very quickly and they couldn't spawn enough stuff to do enough damage to actually matter in the grand scheme.

I remember doing a run by in faf where I shut down an opponents production for a couple minutes because I blew up their hydrocarbon and energy storage with 4 mantis. So I stop producing tanks and got some t2 mexes up and then put some t2 PD in range of his front factories pushing him off a couple more mexes.

And I was doing this because I didn't have as many tanks so I couldn't win a straight fight so to keep my opponent from just walking into me I kept throwing everything around and past him to keep him busy while I teched.

Anyone know of any lesser known fantasy/sci-fi RTS that have well-done evil, inhuman races like the Zerg or Undead?

I haven't played any RTS besides the super popular games like C&C, Ages series and Blizzard stuff.

>>16423446

Total War: Warhammer I & II

>>16415070

Z is a fucking masterpiece, you glow in the dark CIA nigger.

>>16418140

>there's a reason a lot of these older games are lesser known or didn't take off. Most of them are shit and your/their ideas are also shit.

I heavily doubt\disagree with this statement.

Some of these games simply had gameplay that was too different from what a traditional RTS is like Perimeter, Tune or even Achron and that alone would doom them, especially when it's something so widly complicated as Achron was. The ideas weren't necessarily bad, they just were too different and nothing else in the game made it worth it to put up with all that (graphics for these games tended to be bland as fuck)

Your point about how building units doesn't take into account pathfinding is a good one but like you said, it's a matter of implementation.

What if only factories at a reasonable distance of a group start producing units, forcing you to withdraw an army to get reinforcementes?

What if factories whose rally points are on transport routes bypass the distance problem and start producing anyway so the transport can reinforce automatically an army?

What if every base has a pool of standby units for defense, that's drafted into any nearby army that needs them and then refills overtime?

What if units stay in a group until either no more is being produced or it's large enough and only then do they start moving?

There's plenty of ways to try and change this and no reason to keep the genre static just because you're well used to how it's played now.

Furthermore, nothing in a "squad-based" army control voids the tactics you mention. In many RTS games you can have several units in a control group so you can easily select them all and give a move\attack order but you're still free to select each one individually and give out individual orders.

Just because units are in a group\fleet nad generally try to stick together, that should not impede giving them specific orders or even tell them to join another group.

And if the streamlining towards groups\fleets only upsets you, which is quite understandable, the problem isn't that there's this concept but rather that it's not expanded with more types of groups\fleets.

For instance, have a fleet that has an higher cap of units it can hold and thus is perfect to hold out lanes, as we already have. But then include another type of fleet that has a much lower unit cap however it grants a speed bonus to all it's units, making it perfect to harass and flank. Maybe another fleet that is also smaller but with a bonus to siege damage so you can make an artillery fleet.

The advantage here being that you can more easily manage your army from a fleet instead of from your base and program the units you're going to be using with it instead of manually making them all the time.

There's still space for innovation, there's still ideas that can be tried and refined until they are not just playable but fun to use. And I'd rather have something like that than have the genre stagnate while everyone wonders why does no one else give RTS a try, neither players nor devs.

>>16423781

On the implementation problem the question is is it better or worth the effort compared to just building single units. If you want the new units in your army you can rally point to it or just box them and tell them to go there, "armies" in RTS games are fluid and there's more depth if their keep fluid, with units being able to move in and out freely. I can't see a solution that wouldn't at minimum require you to pre decide what is and isn't an army and then have to disband parts of it to separate. You could use a C&C style sidebar but that presents another set of problems and once again is it worth it or better than just not doing that.

Factories at a reasonable distance could bottleneck easier and you wouldn't be able to build at full capacity.

Supcom lets you assist factories with transports that can ferry units to the rally point, that's fine.

You can already build a defense pool of units by just building them, having to pre decide is just another layer of complexity with no advantages.

You can group units by box selecting them already, if you want to box a bunch fo untis out side of a factory then put the rally there and wait.

On the fleet note i was specifically talking about ashes of the singularity which uses a fleet system, it's just what I was playing at the time and happened to have a system that you described. Fleets in that game get bonuses for being in fleets so it does, in that instance, reduce the tactical diversity of the game.

The fleet mechanic is jsut a worse, hard coded version of not having it, you can already have an "artillery army" in supcom by just grouping arty units together, you don't need to have the fleet mechanic, its superfluous. Once you get a lot of armies on the go it becomes a lot more complicated to manage your forces since you have to do it with the armies so you have to go all over the place to get things done rather than the single base location.

You should play ashes and see for yourself, it has a lot of issues because of its hard coding of behaviours.

I agree that there's room for innovation, I think you can say that about the whole industry but the reason there aren't many RTS's is because most devs are shit and have no idea what they're doing and no-one wants to buy shit games so the market looks dead. Indie games have failed to pick up the slack so we're not getting any creative attempts so everyone goes back to the basics.

How many RTS games don't even have the supcom strategic zoom? Once the industry catches up with its younger self we'll start to see real innovation.

Spellforce series is on sale on Steam. I'm really interested in a fusion of RTS and RPG elements, are any of the games any good?

>>16425245

The first 2 Spellforce games are not bad, however SF3 apparently has some pozz in them >>16410799

>>16411780

>Who thinks this sounds interesting?

Sounds like a pain in the ass to cater to people who refuse to use keybinds.

>>16423928

People buy shit games all the time if there is enough marketing behind them.

Developing an RTS is a lot harder than making Yard Cleaning Simulator 2020, this is a genre that take years of tweaking in balance and machine-level performance to get right. Indie studios don't have the luxury of time, budget, or programming talent nor the sheer autism to stick with such a project, they need to make a buck eventually.

>>16431748

A straight up carbon copy with a new coat of paint would be better than most shit you see now so really lack of talent is the biggest issue here. People can't compete with 20 year old games despite technology being hundreds of times more advanced.

>>16409460

All posts in reply to you so far are abject failures at meeting your request. I recommend Company of Heroes.

>>16411311

To be honest conan is indeed a defense game, but it has a ton of building and units in it. It's much better than shit like *they are billions*.

>>16415664

Is that candlejack? This takes me back. I almost forgot abou

>>16435213

Oh, I should mention that the game is torrented, but the issue doesn't seem to be related to the crack. I've tried several of them, and get the exact same error.

>>16447554

Your genre is dead, move on.

I can't tell you if it's good or not but impossible creatures is pretty fun and wacky

>>16435213

>know what to do?

Uninstall Windows 10.

>>16410219

The only good one was the first one and it's two expansions from what I recall

RTS games just piss me off. I need to have literal bugman reflexes, know everything about the game, and handle about 20 different conflicts while buying multiple buildings and units at the same time to even stand a chance on multiplayer. It's literally just memorizing weird patterns, build strategies and just plain speed on the mouse and keyboard. Is there any games with more realistic times and better fog of war mechanics? Where you actually value what happens to your units and individual battles where you actually have valuable plans going into battle instead of spam and click jew economy games?

>>16453709

WC3 actually tried to fix this with the upkeep system but it only really works on the bigger more mazelike maps. There's nothing stopping you from just tower rushing or spamming 1 unit on any of the smaller ones.

>>16453709

Just don't play gookclickers.

>>16449112

Extremely correct.

>>16453709

Age of empires II isn't perfect but at least it has the random map system to make the game less boring and stagnant after the fifth go on each map.

The gold / 'economy' unit split also changes the way you value units and what goals you can have in a given engagement.

>>16453709

What? There are different leagues in all rts multiplayer games, and in ladder systems, you get match with people of the same skill. In Starcraft II, in their bronze league, players can barely manage to build units and have around 30 apm. Are you saying that you're worse than them?

>>16455163

That was so obviously a viral marketer drumming up buzz for the game in preparation.

I wish all RTS games had Zero Ks gimmick of drawing a formation quickly for your units to move to and having ctrl make everyone move at the same speed. So fuckin nice.

Been playing dawn of the tiberium age with friends, pretty fun.

>>16407823

>soon a decade will have passed since the last big budget RTS game

Doesn’t Anno count? Or at least Total War?

<Those games suck blah blah blah

Yeah, yeah, but you said big budget. I’m pretty sure they have that.

I'm a RTS virgin. So far the only one I finished was RA2

>>16459055

Congratulations, you played the kiddy-tier shit. Now go play Tiberian Dawn, Sun and Wars.

>>16456859

No need to be so defensive Blizzard.

>>16456801

>Has a unit that yields instant game over if killed

Didn't even play it and I can already tell it's shit. A starcraft shit clone, no less.

>>16459100

It came out a year before Starcraft you dumbdumb.

>>16459105

proto-starcraft then, and a commercial failure to boot

>>16456801

This, Dark Reign and Earth 2140 were some of the best games I've played. The expansion is really good too.

>>16459100

>>16459113

Are you fucking retarded? It's was a standard C&C clone, dumbass.

>>16459083

Will do.

>>16418602

>he doesn't support tall grass and dandelions

But anon…what about the bees?

>>16419901

Modern US is very weak on artillery. They focus on sea and sky control. Probably to hard counter the massive Chinese infantry.

>>16459050

Might want to count the Witcher 3 and Pokemon GO as well while you're at it.

>>16407823

0ad

>>16463824

Racers are probably bigger now than ever. The problem is that they're like 10% racing and 90% "grind some bullshit to upgrade your car with +1 traction" garbage.

>>16463843

I'm still finding obscure racing games from the 90's I've never had the chance to play to this day. There were that many back then.

Nowadays it's just licensed simulator garbage everywhere. Arcade racers are nearly extinct and the few that do come out turn into shit. People don't know fun anymore.