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Something that isn't significantly touched on here that most RTSes neglect is physical logistics. That is, actually getting resources from the point of collecti
by gamegoblin 6y ago
Something that isn't significantly touched on here that most RTSes neglect is physical logistics. That is, actually getting resources from the point of collection to the point of consumption.
In most RTSes, once you collect resources they essentially go into a magic resource counter in the cloud. You can collect wood on one side of the map, and instantly create a building with that on the other side of the map.
I would be really interested in playing an RTS that focused much less heavily on variety of combat, and much more heavily on variety of logistics.
Imagine a game where you had to shuttle food to your army to keep it fed, or physically bring stone to a construction site to build a castle, and you had to physically stockpile resources in vulnerable depots that would become targets of enemy raids.
You'd have to do a lot of design work to make the ergonomics of setting up the logistics infrastructure not incredibly tedious, but I think it could be done.
The closest RTS I have seen to this is probably the Warrior Kings series which was definitely ahead of its time in many ways.
- bitxbitxbitcoin 6y agoOffworld Trading Company addresses this pretty well.
- rektide 6y agohow? there's additional operational cost in the form of energy used if you have far off resources being harvested. and the transport shuttle has to go get the goods, which increases cycle time a little. i have less than a dozen games in but i definitely didn't feel like I was managing the logistics; that moving stuff around was an issue or concern. there's a lot of different resources but they all roll up pretty automatically wherever they are without thinking about it. that was my (limited) experience.
- rcxdude 6y agoI agree. It models it (which is more than most RTSs do), but it adds a fairly small amount to the gameplay (mostly location becomes important, it gives another element to the core supply and demand mechanics, and it gives value to one of the technologies which basically just eliminates the cost entirely).
- WaxProlix 6y agoAlmost seems like you'd be better off making mods/changes to the existing logistics game genre (Factorio, maybe?) to introduce RTS elements rather than looking for a ground-up implementation of a novel RTS.
- ericbarrett 6y agoI haven’t played it, but PvP Factorio (with rules and balance) definitely exists.
- Macha 6y agoHearts of Iron 3 is probably the closest game to a RTS that put a big emphasis on logistics.
- tohmasu 6y agoI believe The Settlers pioneered this mechanic in 1993. In the Settlers II at least, supply block wasn't a matter of constructing additional pylons but rather "someone has to carry feed to the pig farmer so that someone else can carry pigs to the butcher so that..."
- AussieWog93 6y agoI was going to say the same thing. I played Settlers III as a kid and while it was an interesting gimmick it was honestly pretty cumbersome.
- lostmsu 6y agoI got Settlers II HD Edition on GoG, and it made us a couple of good evenings.
- universa1 6y agoAnd there's a new one in the making, hopefully sticking to the more classical settlers 2-4 mechanics and feel... And not the later iterations of the series... There is also Foundation, by a smallish canadian studio (iirc), that kinda is a mix between settlers and sim city :-)
- kzrdude 6y agoThere is an open source reimplementation of the settlers II engine, called RttR and it works flawlessly (better than the original for me). There's also an open source clone of Settlers II called Widelands.
- navane 6y agoKnights and merchants did it. Including feeding your standing army. Was a pain in de ass.
- Aeolun 6y agoOnly because every unit had to be fed individually :P
- pmoriarty 6y ago"I would be really interested in playing an RTS that focused much less heavily on variety of combat, and much more heavily on variety of logistics." You've basically just described Factorio, which is all about logistics. I strongly encourage you to give it a try, not only because of this, but because it is one of the greatest games ever made -- especially when played with mods, which make it 100 times better than the vanilla game (which by itself is fantastic). You have sooo many options on what to do and how to do it in Factorio, it puts most other games to shame just by that alone. I could go on about how great Factorio is.. for hours.. but I won't because there are plenty of other Factorio threads on HN that do just that.. so don't take my word for it, but read some of those threads instead.. or just do yourself a favor and play it already! If you're interested in logistics I don't see how you couldn't love Factorio.
- Lammy 6y agoOpenTTD has something like this, but it’s off by default: https://wiki.openttd.org/en/Manual/Passenger%20and%20cargo%20distribution https://wiki.openttd.org/en/Manual/Passenger%20and%20cargo%2...
- AlphaSite 6y agoAlso there is an RTS which all about economics, Offworld Trading Company.
- rcxdude 6y agoTrue, though logistics is not a particularly deep part of it (basically the only logistics part is the further you're transporting stuff the more you'll use of a particular resource, and there's one technology which just removes that cost).
- ryandrake 6y agoI almost really liked Offworld Trading Company, but I feel 1. there aren't enough ways to win as an underdog, and 2. the devs punted on the end-game. The outcome is too momentum-based. Once a player builds a solid early game lead, there is pretty much no way to stop them. There aren't really any offense tactics besides monopolizing resources, which pretty much has to happen early on. The various "black market" sabotages are pretty weak and expensive. None of them will stop a late game player with momentum. It feels like your starting position and the decisions you make in the first 1-2 minutes of the game pre-determine the outcome 30 minutes later--which is boring. The stock trading system (which is ultimately the only way to win) is simplistic and just not a satisfying way to end the game. You're sitting there trading, making tons of money, doing everything right, then suddenly Game Over--someone had more money and decided to buy you out, which you can't defend against, even if you pre-buy all your own stock. You get a warning a few seconds before it happens (the red percentage number next to your opponent) but there's literally nothing you can do to stop them.
- rurounijones 6y agoI agree wit you 100% This is the aspect that I wish was implemented in my favourite games such as Stellaris since disrupting the logistics of the enemy and protecting your own requires a much more thoughtful setup by players * Where to site supply dumps for front-line forces * how to protect them * how to get supplies to where they are needed safely from your home world / base to these supply dumps and then to the front lines. * how to keep forces supplied if you break-through enemy lines * How to disupt the enemies logistics Without things like the above the games usually devolve into "Bigger army / fleet wins, with a bit of rock/paper/scissor based on unit composition"
- tshaddox 6y agoI feel like this concept is already fairly well covered in SC2, since you generally need to protect bases on the perimeter of your territory with your military units. You don’t need to literally escort resources from your perimeter mineral patches to your production facilities, but I think that can be hand waved just as easily as the firearm units having unlimited ammunition.
- yskchu 6y agoAdding another game with good logistics to the list of games: The Wargame series from Eugen (the most recent one being Wargames: Red Dragon) Logistics is a huge part of it, your armies can run out of ammo, or be stranded without fuel - there are dedicated units used for resupply. Supply dumps, supply columns, and their protection, is a big part of the game as well.
- Macha 6y agoNote that Eugen have moved onto steel division. Mechanically it's mostly an evolution of wargame but moves the setting from cold war -> modern day of wargame to world war 2
- LoSboccacc 6y agoSteel division 2 is completely broken at the moment, with axis enjoying ridiculous Winrate and tournaments relegated to mirror matches for the inability of eugeen to balance the game Some mods fix the most glaring problems, but they require investing in all dlc and make almost impossible to find an online match
- izacus 6y agoThe other part that Wargame series does well is unit intelligence and move a bit away from crazy clicking. You can trust your AT squad to understand that other infrantry needs to be shot at with a gun and that tanks should be engaged with Javelins. This makes the game way more strategic and fun to play than something like Starcraft where you need to babysit moronic units and manually trigger their abilities. In Wargame you can focus more on positioning, information collection and movement instead of having to focus on clickathons to win. By the time shots are fired, the winner is probably already decided.
- __turbobrew__ 6y agoMy main gripe about the wargame AI is that there needs to be some sort of fire control for ATGMs. Too many times have I seen a jeep roasted by 4 hellfire missiles because all the apache helicopters in a squad engaged the same target.
- rishav_sharan 6y agoIf I remember right, such management was a staple of the great Settlers games. But it was a base building game without the rts combat.
- 1123581321 6y agoSettlers did have combat, but it was greatly simplified (soldiers/archers/priests/towers.) I recall military victory was nearly always a foregone conclusion after the long economic buildup, so the relatively simplicity was forgivable. A more complex military game would perhaps have needed a complicated logistics path to training, route planning, sending the officers to look at the big board, etc. :)
- Pxtl 6y agoHonestly, RTS games are already so bogged down in complexity that I wouldn't want to see one adding logistics unless it decided to claw back other gameplay features.
- Buttons840 6y agoSins of a Solar Empire had an interesting mechanic: You could generate trade within the area you controlled, and little non-controllable trade ships would fly around randomly within the area you were generating trade. If the enemy destroyed these trade ships they would get a small amount of resources and your trade income would drop an equal amount. It simulated logistics, because an enemy army sitting in the middle of your territory disrupted a lot, but didn't add complexity to the game.
- nyhc99 6y agoI agree, but doing so would make an interesting game. A war that's being fought by 2 evenly matched AIs, and your job is to handle the logistics on your side to give it the edge?
- jasonjayr 6y agoMindustry is a tower defense game that has some RTS strategies, especially when playing with other human players. You have to stock your defensive units with ammo by drawing (and defending) conveyors with resources (different minerals and/or energy) that feed them. (Just noticed Factorio is mentioned below; Mindustry is similar, but also Open Source cross platform Java)
- kybernetikos 6y agoPart of the problem is that there is so much to do that you tend to let the AI do almost all of it, and then get incredibly frustrated when it sends your key resource gathering units through known dangerous territory. To really do this kind of gameplay well, you'd need to have the ability to task military units to guard supply train units, and for them to have the kind of intelligence / user interface that doesn't just have them defenselessly wandering around an opponents base. It's been interesting to read the https://acoup.blog/ https://acoup.blog/ take on the importance of supply chains and logistics in warfare, and how to organise a properly defended supply chain. I agree that it's an area that could be addressed interestingly, but it'd be a game made out of the bits that other games deliberately abstracted away because they were hard to do well, so I think it'd be a real challenge. Even fiction tends to abstract away from the details of these things because it's so hard to make interesting.
- theshrike79 6y agoIn Mindustry[1] you need to create conveyors and other transport methods to take ammunition to turrets. During late game you also need to power structures by generating electricity and taking it with wires to the structures that require it. [1] https://mindustrygame.github.io https://mindustrygame.github.io
- LoSboccacc 6y ago"From the depths" just turned into a logistic based rts, there's a block building aspect to it but plenty units on the workshop if you want to skip that part It's also fairly often on good sales