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4/05/2006

Supply lines: a failure of RTS

A large part of RTS games is gathering supplies and building units. You use these units to kill off your opponents in some means. It's also a genre in which "ubermicro" has taken root. The idea that one should micro manage individual units to gain an advantage. While I'm not an advocate of realism here, I still think this is far removed from the tactics used in real warfare.

One term I keep hearing in regards to real war is "supply lines". It's of the utmost importance in all war to control where things harvested. Along with "controlling high ground" and "controlling the air", it's one of the most fundamental underpinnings of warfare. Unfortunately, it's only with Ground Control that I even saw mention of tactics like this. GC was an excellent game, but it was geared at individual control of units for a specific objective. What if you wanted to orchestrate this operation, like you do with RTS?

It seems like you're stuck. It's kind of annoying that something that can be so interesting in real life has not been taken advantage of in games. This also has to do with the "arbitrary" nature of RTSes in general. There's a bunch of units and newcomers have no idea what they do. The balance of the game is also usually pretty questionable, and basically the guy who's figured the game out through hours of play usually emerges victorious. There's rarely a "gentle introduction" to the game. It's this kind of crap, and the promises of real battle that give me an odd love / hate relationship with the RTS style of games.
 Comments (3)
For me, managing resources and constructing bases in RTS games is a distraction. All too often a game of Starcraft or the like would turn into Simcity, and I would spend half an afternoon trying to build an awesome base surrounded by a stupid amount of defenses. It's no surprise that my favourite RTS games are the Myth series (from back when Bungie made good games (I'm so edgy)). You seem to gain a sense of attachment to units when you aren't able to "build" new ones.
 
True, and in fact that's very similar to ground control. What you're thinking about is tactics, and not resource management.

Incidentally, I'm not against building bases and stuff, but the tactical reasons for these must mean something in the larger context of the game. For example, if you're building a base to secure a supply line, you should eventually be able to get more supplies in forward areas, or better air support. That would be so cool!

It would also be nice to be able to say "Fuck the supply route, I want to go via the jungle, Guerilla warfare style". That kind of decision making would be a lot of fun, unlike "ubermicro", which is basially the same as twitch gaming.
 
Try your hand at something like rome total war for a more realistic realtime war sim in regards to the actual battles. Ubre micro skills don't mean a whole lot if anything there.

If your looking at something more focused on building and supply lines you'd need to look at something where the actual combat is abstracted like civilisation. Or even better your looking at a transport tycoon style game.

Combining the two tends to lead to overwhelming games or games that just don't do well in either the building or actual combat areas. The new Star Wars game is a good example of the later.
 

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