Monday, January 31, 2011

All Work and No Play, Make RTS a Dull Genre..

When we work, we do it because we are obligated to. We work for food because
we are slaves to our bellies. We work to pay the rent because we are slaves to our safety and comfort. Some of this servitude is willing servitude, such as willingness to earn money to care for our families, but it is servitude nonetheless. We are doing it because we have to, not because “we feel like it. ” The more obligated you are to do something, the more it feels like work.
~Excerpt from Art of Game Design - A Book of Lenses, by Jesse Schell
Now, let's apply this quote to something near and dear to our hearts.
When we work, we do it because we are obligated to. We harvest resources because we are slaves to our factories. We work to build up our bases because we are slaves to our safety and... well, unit producing factories, again. Some of this servitude is willing servitude, such as willingness to earn credits to care for our armies, but it is servitude nonetheless. We are doing it because we have to, not because "we feel like it." The more obligated you are to do something, the more it feels like work.
Anyone else get that feeling when playing any of the recent mainstream RTS games? It was novel at first. But now, it is work. When you are playing anything but "no rush 5 minutes, n00b game"s, be it single player missions or multi player matches, you are building the base because you have to. Because it is your only way to build up an army. And, for the most part, you do it in a time constraint, fearing the coming onslaught of Red Helmeted Fanatic Zerglings under strict orders from Saruman to wipe you off the face of Middle Tib Sara.
It's a chore on your way to the fight. Some might even go as far as calling it a hindrance.

Some games have attempted to change that, by getting rid of that whole part of the game. A move met with hostility, anger and outcry. In his book, Art of Game Design, Jesse Schell gives the story of Rico Medellin who turned his job into a game:
The task he has to perform on each unit that passes in front of his station should take forty-three seconds to perform — the same exact operation almost six hundred times in a working day. Most people would grow tired of such work very soon. But Rico has been at this job for over five years, and he still enjoys it. The reason is that he approaches his task in the same way an Olympic athlete approaches his event: How can I beat my record?
So, basically, by restating the goal of the chore, Rico turned his mundane, repetitive and otherwise stagnating task into a game. Now, anyone who just said to himself "Achievements", in an overly excited outburst, go outside and... hit yourself with some heavy and maybe even spiky object. Whatever you choose, please make sure the pain will last long.

We can't solve this with Achievements. Turning the resource and building part of an RTS into CityVille will just distract and detract from the Action and core of the game. And, in the end, we'll just end up with the same problem.
That said, permit to contradict myself, at least partly. Maybe such an approach can work - if two conditions are met:
  1. As with the story of Rico, these Achievements are properly defined and described. Not just a mere "Build two factories, a condo, brick walls with Obelisks and a brown and blue eyed Siberian Husky to guard the gate" type of achievement, but something more endogenous. Something that has meaning in the context of the fight we are fighting - specifically the current goal and mission.
  2. Perhaps more important than the above - certainly complemented by the above - is the issue of persistence. If you have a mission that only takes 20 minutes, or even 2 hours - if you cram to many of those Achievements it'll bog down on the core game, if you don't, you've achieved nothing new anyway.
    No, what needs to be considered are larger missions - or arenas of play. An approach in which the built up base can be revisited and added to over time. Instead of just building a base for the purposes of unit production, we build it first for a foot hold, then a presence and ultimately a permanent staging area.
    Allow the narrative to support this need, by revisiting the area and, of course, providing the player with the same built up base he left there. Make the player care for that base, or even for several interacting bases.
In the original Red Alert there was an Allied mission to quickly establish a foot hold and destroy a near by Soviet base so that a convoy could pass. Later, you had to return to that base in a following mission, expand it, build up an army and destroy a larger Soviet base to the north. Obviously the technology at the time did not allow for the Allied base in the second mission to be exactly as it was built up by the player in the first... but imagine the possibilities.
Once you provide such small persistence, you have open before you many other options - options you can provide the player with. For example; without revealing future missions, provide the player with intelligence regarding Enemy movement in the north, allow him to recon there and allow him the freedom to expand his base where he wishes. Later, when that future mission is reached, the player is either under attack already (base being large and expansive), or under siege, with a tiny, purpose specific stronghold.
The difference in this impromptu example is situational and well within the scope of current technology. There is no need for branching morality, dialog and decision trees. The difference comes down to the "EVA/Adjutant" informing you of either an enemy spotted or a base under attack. The player will decide for himself whether to panic.

This reminds me of an anti-rant post on the Mass Effect 2 forums by a guy called Omnicrat:
...Your choices in one have a HUGE impact on the story in two! In fact, the stories are vastly different! What IS simmilar/identical alot is the specific dialogue. Example: you say pretty much the same things to Wrex/Wreave minus the bit about how Wrex is enacting his plan. Yes, the dialog is similar, but the story is compleatly different! Wrex is the de facto leader of Tuchanka in one story and Wreave can't beat that green clan in a fight in the other! These are vastly different stories.
What I'm trying to say here is that while the basic missions and objectives may be the same, the narrative as perceived by the player can vary -and maybe, if done right, vastly so.

Still, what other options are there to make the Base Building and Resource Gathering aspects of RTS not being chores?
Perhaps another approach is the Meaningful Achievement.
In the original Mass Effect, for example, only the Soldier class was a born Sniper. Meaning, that only characters of that class could start off and use the Sniper rifle(s) to their full potential... Unless, as a different class, you've completed the Head Hunter achievement - basically, get an X amount of Head Shots. What this did, beyond the Head Hunter medal in the otherwise useless medal list, was allow the non-Soldier classed character to gain all the advantages of the Sniper Rifle(s). Finally, actually having focused cross-hairs, instead of the screen wide circle, and the uncanny ability to use the Sniper Rifle's zoom feature!

Can something similar be done for Base Building and Expansion? For Resource Gathering?

The Terrans in StarCraft 2 have this Automated Miner thingy which, for a limited time, comes down from Orbit and auto mines Minerals. What if mining an X amount of Mineras, in a limited T amount of time (maybe spread out, for a X / lim T per Mission kind or ratio), allows you to have that Auto Miner, for free, at the start of each mission after the achievement is reached?
Easily doable in Single Player. Might require some more tweaking if considered for balanced Multiplayer matches.

What about Objective based Achievements?

A mission that requires you to fortify your base from coming attacks, but an underlying achievement may be of creating a base strong enough to withstand the attacks without the use of offensive units? Kill all the incoming forces using base defenses and the Engineers to repair them! The Design a Death Trap achievement.
Gives you stronger base defenses? Less power consuming or cheaper ones?

The two activities - base construction and resource gathering - complement each other. Rather, the latter is a requisite of the former. As such, the resource gathering is in itself endogenous. So, maybe the focus should be given more to the base construction aspect, as the heavier element of this Pareto duo.

I'd love to read and discuss more ideas on making that aspect of the RTS formula, preferably as an integral part of the action of the game, less a Must Chore and more a Fun Play.

28 comments:

  1. Enjoyed the read Cypher I can always count on you to make me think. While I agree there is an element of work versus play in some elements of RTS play I'm an old schooler that enjoys those elements. I think C&C is simple enough and that the efforts to make it simpler remove some of the fun. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to have to have a PhD to play......but I enjoy base building and I enjoy resource collection and the choices you are forced to make accordingly.

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  2. What if on the world map, before starting a mission, it shows bases in areas where you have already had missions or have pre-set bases? Those areas can be upgraded and provide mission reinforcements via Dropships like what was originally planned for in TS, C&C3: Incursion and UaW (Masari campaign). Perhaps those bases could also get attacked, like in Emperor: Battle For Dune or the C&C3:KW Global Conquest mode, and you'd have to defend them, on the side of having the main campaign missions? (Sort of like E:BFD)

    This would certainly prove interesting and add lots of replayability.

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  3. Earth 2150 saw this issue fixed, while it didn't make the base build exceptionally fun, it did however remove the pain. 2 of the factions have construction units that are only involved in starting production, combined with the ability to record commands, the player could be planning the construction of his entire base and leave the construction unit to it, as he manages the first structures to be completed. the Third faction built their structures in Orbit and dropped them onto the battlefield as soon as enough currency was collected, 2 at a time. Unlike Starcraft plenty of currency is given at the start up to fully build up your base. the Game also removed Tech structures, instead of building a Tech center the player would build a cheap and quick research center, which allows the player to pick the technology he wishes to develop most and research it. the player could take full control of all R&D in the game, producing unique units that the player designs

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  4. TBH I prefer C&C's fast and fluid approach, GOLAN. You give the Earth series too much credit IMO, despite the fact that 2140 and 2150 were good and polished games.

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  5. Guys, by no means am I suggesting the removal of these two important features.

    As I've repeated before, both fiction wise and for the sake of adjustment, I would have made C&C4 with GDI having the regular, old, cumbersome bases, and Nod introducing the more agile and mobile Crawler gameplay.

    At any rate, the point of this discussion is not to compare the merits of Base Building and Resource Gathering for removal consideration, but rather to come up with ways of making those aspects more fun and less... a must.
    Don't remove, make it more worthy and more interesting and more fun.

    @Meth,
    I don't want it simpler. Not necessarily.
    Hell, it doesn't get simpler than it is today.
    Nor am I looking to complicate it.
    I'm looking to make it more worthwhile, than just being there for the sake of unit amassing, more or less.

    @Golan,
    That's the exact opposite approach.
    It's rather pointless, if I understand your description fully. It just makes the construction even more of an afterthought.
    Sure, it accomplishes the "less of a chore" aspect of this blog entry, but not in the way I'd go with. Not in the way Rico there made his work fun.

    To accomplish that,I think, would be the holly grail of this in RTS.

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  6. Crap, it won't let me post my comment lol. It was too long :(

    Basically, CoH, AoW, and DotA have solved the "chore" of resource gathering by seamlessly integrating them into the "point" of the RTS genre: which is combat and unit control. It means you use the same units to gather resources, as you use to fight. The amazing part is that in CoH, part of AoW, and DotA, you must ACTIVELY gather resources, unlike in traditional RTS, you must passively gather them. But despite resource gathering being an active thing, it's still fun and doesn't feel like a chore.

    The key is to integrate base building into the gameplay in the same way: such that it's not a separate activity, but actually part of what you ordinarily have to do anyway: fight with units.

    Though the "big mobile base" approach of C&C 4, and the Hierarchy of UaW, I think has been proven to not work very well, so that's not really an option.

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  7. Jon?

    Yeah, the "big mobile base" approach feels kinda shoehorned in.

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  8. [Porting in a part of discussion at CNCNZ]:

    Nyerguds (quote)"...Otherwise it's just "army 1 vs army 2, go slaughter each other".

    That's actually one factor that I think is missing in modern RTS's. I'll try to explain deeper here:

    The moment where you see the enemy army and think "I can beat that" and to your surprise you loose.
    What I am talking about could be called the doubt factor:

    In modern RTS's like StarCraft2, a fairly skilled player immediately sees whether his attack will fail or win against a certain amounts of units of various kinds.
    I think that we are missing the random factor, which means that sometimes a group of this kind can kill a group of that kind, and sometimes it can't.

    Theres a large amount of "armies clashing together" (action if you like), that is simply not happening because the player easily recognizes whether he can win or not.

    My point: 2 armies slaughtering each other is often a lot more fun than the flee/hunt kind of combat we see in many modern RTS's.

    - btw. nice blog Cypher, I'll pop in now and then :)

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  9. "In the original Red Alert there was an Allied mission to quickly establish a foot hold and destroy a near by Soviet base so that a convoy could pass. Later, you had to return to that base in a following mission, expand it, build up an army and destroy a larger Soviet base to the north. Obviously the technology at the time did not allow for the Allied base in the second mission to be exactly as it was built up by the player in the first... but imagine the possibilities."

    Acutally... That second mission did keep your base exactly as it was before. You got some new units, but your base was the same. Whereever your units were when the mission ended was where they would end up on the second mission.

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  10. I've noticed a lot of what you've talked about here, and I've taken some great steps to remedy them in an RTS title I've been working on. One of the biggest things I did though, was decide to turn down the speed and put an obvious limit on resource collection. It forces the player to think, and forces them to make very determinate build decisions. If you only have enough resources for the next minute to build 1 building, which do you build. A powerful Anti-air defense? A powerful ground defense? Or maybe a barracks with some soldiers spread over a wide skill set. Or a weaker defense and a scout unit?

    Players with a waterfall of resources never have to worry too deeply about balance, they can just spam hordes over and over again and let the numbers sort it out. It's not always the case, but it happens a lot.

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  11. @rm5248
    I don't think they had the tech to do that then.
    I should replay that someday.

    @Jehal and everyone else.
    I actually asked Jehal to repost this here from CNCNZ, so here's my own repost:

    It actually gave me an idea for a direction to think about regarding Base Building.
    The clashing of the armies.

    Just thinking out loud here, so to speak....
    Currently, especially on large maps, there's absolutely no action going on in the bases.
    The players reach the other's base either with scouts - for a second - or at the end of the game, finishing it off. Some RTS games even have the option to end the match when all units are killed, instead of having the obvious victor go hunting for the various buildings.

    So here's the idea - close the gap.
    Tighten up the maps.

    Now, this obviously isn't the solution, just the general direction to think of one;
    Find a way to make the armies clash near or in the bases.

    K, that was the What.
    Any of you think of How, shoot.
    -----------------------------------------------

    Hmmm, this might turn into a new entry in the blog, instead of the comments section. But let's see if we can develop it a bit further still.

    Another bit of direction to the How bit would be to look at the incentives a play would have to hit his opponent's base. Thinking of the comment I made on my previous Blog entry (the SC2 at #9 bit), one of the things that pops out is how a Zerg faction can have really interesting gameplay if they utilize and emphasize what they already presented in the Terran campaign - taking over other factions' buildings.

    This is basically an evolution - in so many ways - of a C&C mainstay: Capturing by Engineers.

    Red Alert 2 had an especially good incentive to capture enemy bases, cause that would give the player hybrid units.

    Such a mechanic, with both Dustin Browder's experience as RA2's Lead Designer and the obvious affinity the Zerg have for such antics, would actually make the Zerg campaign and entire expansion stand out.
    And, would definitely be a step towards involving the base building more in the clash and action.

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  12. Check out Warzone 2100 from waaaaay back. They had a persistent world where all your choices affected gameplay from the start.

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  13. this is why world in conflict exists. you'd be playing world in conflict 2 right now if the studio hadn't been bought by ubisoft and killed off. oh well, wic is still the best.

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  14. "Currently, especially on large maps, there's absolutely no action going on in the bases.
    The players reach the other's base either with scouts - for a second - or at the end of the game, finishing it off. Some RTS games even have the option to end the match when all units are killed, instead of having the obvious victor go hunting for the various buildings.

    So here's the idea - close the gap.
    Tighten up the maps."

    That entirely depends on what game you're playing. SC2 often sees drops in the enemy base (or expansions) at any point in the game, even (or especially) on large maps. On the other hand, Generals/ZH already had tight maps that often forced you to fight in and around the bases. And then to take the extreme, RA3 often had you fighting WITH the bases.

    So this is definitely not a universal problem in RTS games. And for that matter, not everyone agrees on whether its a good or bad thing.

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  15. rm5248 is right; the base did stay exactly the same. The map was simply expanded to contain a whole new piece with the enemy base in it.

    Shroud and ore was all reset, yes, but your units and structures all stayed where they were. I personally have no idea how they pulled that off, especially with another mission in between, but they certainly did do it.

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  16. I can't help but feel a lot of this describes CoH in some way. I mean no real basebuilding except for the most rudimentary, no harvesting, instead you go out and seize the map earning you a resource trickle that way.

    For missions you do have persistency with actions on a mission coming back to haunt you in the next or later on.

    You even have medals/achievements for taking things a bit further and doing something a bit extra during that mission.

    But interesting read for sure.

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  17. Or, you know, remove resources completely. Ground Control 1 and 2 are great examples of this. Good games ... unfortunately, they never caught on with a wider audience. :/

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  18. World in Conflict is very much an updated and richer version of Ground Control, in my view. It's more fun in many ways, though I liked the pitched battles in the wide open maps of GC better sometimes.

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  19. Yeah, if you want to mostly cut out the bases then I think that CoH is the way to do it. Fight for ground which gives you resources, and you have a few base buildings to choose from which are significant investments. Bases are usually not involved in the action except for occasional raids to kill a particular unit or hope to kill a structure.

    But I think you're looking for making bases more interesting rather than getting rid of them. As you say, they need to be 'in the game' more. You should have a reason to spread buildings across the map (maybe something like in that Lord of the Rings RTS, where there were camps which could have three or so buildings, so you had to capture more camps if you wanted to expand your economy or build more unit production structures). Perhaps make bases capturable, so rather than losing all your investment if you lose part of your base, you can go and recapture it.

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  20. For me at least the most interesting part of any RTS is the endgame, when both sides have lots of resources at their disposal and it’s all about who uses them the most effectively. For this reason I see basebuilding and resource gathering as quite vital, you’re making decisions that will have repercussions throughout the entire match. It’s also the reason why I hate matches that are won with rushes, if you’re blindly following a build order then you aren’t making any strategic decisions – you’re just following a list of instructions. Of course you can have strategy games with fixed forces (see chess) but I really don't think the RTS genre is suited for this.

    Now I think if you’re going through the motions building up the exact same base in every campaign mission then really the mission design could use some work. However one idea I do have is that prior to the match/mission you could have X money to spend on structures in a tick box menu and then they’d already be deployed when you started the mission. That way you’re shaving off a couple of minutes of build-up time at the start of every match but you’re still choosing what structures are deployed so you’re still in control of your bases development and you aren’t saddled with something you don’t want. The disadvantage is that as stated you lose control over the positioning, though that could be rectified if it was implemented as a building phase prior to the true start of the match rather than a menu. That isn’t making base development any more fun, but it is cutting out the most tedious and unnecessary parts.

    There is also the DoW/CoH approach where income is tied more closely to territory control so a strong economy depends heavily on aggressive early expansion (actually I think you can trace the origin of this idea back to the metal deposits in TA) where as in most games it depends almost exclusively on developing your infrastructure. As much as Starcraft depends on harassment there’s no immediate reward to securing a second mineral field, that’s just about long-term security.

    A couple of points in response to your ideas.
    --
    The Terrans in StarCraft 2 have this Automated Miner thingy which, for a limited time, comes down from Orbit and auto mines Minerals. What if mining an X amount of Mineras, in a limited T amount of time (maybe spread out, for a X / lim T per Mission kind or ratio), allows you to have that Auto Miner, for free, at the start of each mission after the achievement is reached?
    Easily doable in Single Player. Might require some more tweaking if considered for balanced Multiplayer matches.

    --
    I don’t see a problem with this in singleplayer but I don’t think it would change all that much. Hunting for resource gathering achievements over the course of each mission just doesn’t sound like a game changer to me. Also depending on how many of these bonuses are available it might be difficult to strike a balance between a single bonus being negligible and all the bonuses being horribly overpowered.

    However in multiplayer games players should start on as level a playing field as possible. I really don’t think you should be able to earn career bonuses for fulfilling certain tasks as that just seems like an unfair advantage. If a multiplayer game must have persistent unlockables then the unlockables should provide more options rather than additional benefits. Let’s say a new player starts with a 5% discount on infantry, they level up and they can switch that out for a 5% discount on vehicles and then later still switch it for a 5% discount on aircraft. Now depending on the balance of infantry/vehicles/aircraft one of those bonuses may be superior but that system is much fairer than one where a new player starts with nothing and a maxed player has all the bonuses. To dip into FPS territory for a moment I think this is one of the chief successes of CoD4 which was then mishandled by most of the games that tried to emulate it.

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  21. --
    What about Objective based Achievements?

    A mission that requires you to fortify your base from coming attacks, but an underlying achievement may be of creating a base strong enough to withstand the attacks without the use of offensive units?

    --

    A lot of campaigns already use things like this. Side missions and objectives that unlock units or make a specific mission easier.

    The main difference is that what you’re suggesting sounds has been spliced in with some arbitrary achievements and really I think optional objectives should avoid nonsensical requirements or limitations as best as they can. “Defend your base without using offensive units” just sounds silly to me, I mean that strategy probably wouldn’t arise organically – you’re just doing it because the intro said you’d get a bonus if you did. In war success is measured by results, not by how many hoops were leapt through. “Defend your base whilst inflicting X casualties on your attackers”,“Defend your base whilst suffering fewer than Y casualties”, are fine for me however. They’re goals you should be aiming for anyway, you want to destroy enemy units whilst keeping yours alive. Now maybe the most effective way to achieve those goals is to use defensive structures instead of offensive units, but outside of a tutorial I don’t think ‘Build Defences now!’ should be objective in itself.



    Also I remember that mission on Red Alert and I think it almost perfectly carried your base over. The only differences I remember is that I think it reset some of the ore fields and I think if you captured the soviet war factory it would instead be an allied war factory for the followup mission. (I don’t think you could train engineers in the first mission, but you could get one if you sold your construction yard – incidentally if you didn’t have a construction yard entering the followup mission you’d be provided with an MCV at mission start).

    Actually in Dawn of War 1 if you built up your base in a territory then when that territory was attacked you’d work from the base you’d established. (I think it was Dark Crusade I did this on, it was definitely removed from Soulstorm).

    I too think that idea is very interesting, but it’s difficult to balance. For example by crippling your enemy and then sitting back you could build up an impenetrable fortress to trivialize any and all further missions.

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  22. As somebody already posted, Warzone 2100, released about 1999 was a good example. You were given a starting location to build a base, then after a few missions the map would expand to incorporate new territory, and from time to time the player would be sent on away missions to recover technology, but were able to keep the factories in the main base running, as well as periodically fly in reinforcements.

    I found more modern games like Dawn of War 2 to be unsatisfying because it missed a lot of the things I enjoy from an RTS game. Squabbling over a handful of control points like a game of whack-a-mole just made the combat itself feel like a chore to me instead.

    I liked the Warzone 2100 model of game because it was possible to play a long game involving a lot of technology research leading to an arms race, which I felt brought pacing and tension to the game. Games which skip straight to the fighting miss out on that feeling. As a result, I am far more inclined to play a game like Supreme Commander, as I feel there's more at stake with huge armies and a vast industrial centre on the line than ten space marines and a glorified helipad.

    When I stop to think about why I enjoyed RTS games, it has always been the spectacle of watching my industry churning away to provide more tanks and turrets for my assaults. Without the "empire building" aspect of it for me, it's just a fast-paced action game, and I could get a faster-paced action experience loading up one of my FPS games.

    Sorry to pick on Dawn of War 2 again, but another bugbear I had with it was that you could queue units to be produced, but only if you had enough funds to actually produce them. Instead of putting a group of units into a build queue and waiting for it to be produced, you have to stare at your resource panel until you have enough funds and then build the unit. This is not more fun than putting down a factory and knowing if you come back later, the unit you ordered will be there. To me, it makes the game feel awkward and pedantic, since it is effectively telling you "you are 30 resources short, go away and come back later" instead of "yes sir, I'll build than when I can". It is filling the void of traditional resource management with a bizzarely nitpicking interface.

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  23. EndWar is a decent RTS without a base system. You gain reinforcement points (CPs, although for the life of me I can't think of what the acronym stands for). You gain CPs as time goes on, or by killing enemy units or capturing objectives. 4 CP buys you a new unit of any type. It's a much more tactical experience- You can only control 12 units (which are, themselves, 4 of that type- 1 transport unit is 4 transports).

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  24. The biggest problem is that buildings don't play much of a role in the gameplay. Essentially, they are divided into three groups: stationary unit/building spawners, stationary shooting units and tech boosts. They do not play any other role than that, they're the equivalent of grinding in an RPG to get better stats.

    I think it's healthy to take a step back and examine the function base building has in the game. What's it purpose in Warcraft or Command & Conquer? The base is merely a unit spawner it serves no other purpose. RTS games are stuck in the 90s, moreso than any other genre, still recycling the gameplay of its predecessors, rather than creating something new and revolutionary.


    I find it hard to phrase my thoughts on the matter, but consider giving the player a persistent primary base he develops as the game progresses and the ability to create field bases during the game, by adapting existing buildings or creating new ones from pre-fabricated parts. These building, rather than being merely unit spawners, would behave much like Dwarf Fortress' structures, enabling the player to unlock more features, but at the same time, he'd be limited by either the amount of tech crew he has on a given mission or the resorces available. In the end, each base would be different, tailored to the challenges of a particular battlefield. The player would have to think and adapt to the changing circumstances, making base building a little more involved each time he constructs them.

    Urban warfare? Build more barracks and quartermaster stockpiles, so that you can field more, better equipped infantry. You can also estabilish a makeshift command post in any of the abandoned buildings, which becomes a very defensive location, but at the expense of being more vulnerable to airstrikes and losing it at the end of the mission, as it's only temporary.

    Open area engagement? Build a vehicle workshop and maintenance facility, so that you can have more effective and durable tanks.

    Area with lots of water? Build air service auxiliaries barracks to boost aircraft performance or spysat uplinks and dry docks for a more effective navy.

    I think we should change the tech tree, so that instead of a pre-set universal path, the player can tailor his field base to the mission profile, while his primary base would affect the strength of his forces on a strategic level.

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  25. Making the base more mobile, while retaining base building might be a good approach.

    What I mean is that often you are tied to what areas have the resources your base collects. I would like to see the option to have mobile resource generators that can support small bases and defenses that help give the player a more offensive base building strategy.

    In addition to this, you could also have drop zones like in World in Conflict that your main base can manufacture units for and your air support can send in. The more you level your air support, then then more units you can drop. But of course you'll have to secure that drop site first to use it, and it could be anywhere on the map.

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  26. Persistence is a good idea, but it is more of a MP issue, I feel. SC2 did try to resolve some of the buildings are useless issue, for example, by including important functions to buildings other than military production, and its something that you will want in a battlefield. Like how the Terran bases were modular, and 'walling in' took only supply depots, and how the Planetary Fortress was in itself a powerful weapon that can hold a choke while still a resource processing facility. Protoss also had the same thing where its Pylons provided an area where reinforcements can be wrapped in instantly.

    Things that encourage some buildings on the battlefield with multiple functions looks like the way to go.

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  27. Reposting from the Base Aesthetics discussion at the CNC forums (found here: http://www.commandandconquer.com/forums/showthread.php?363-Base-Aesthetics )
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    I'd just like to see base layout as more of an actual game element, rather than a matter of cramming everything needed into the space available. If you look at TW and RA3, bases seem more like the result of a tetris session instead of efficient military outposts.
    On the design level, it'd be nice to see more "ambient" details, like lightposts, checkpoints etc. popping up between structures. Also, it'd be nice if structures were connected in some way when constructed close to each other, like the game automatically placing concrete around and between adjacent structures. Say on a buildgrid as in RA3 two structures are two cells apart, the game would automatically create a dirt road passing through the space between the two. If the base grew in tech, the road would become a paved road and ambient details like lightposts would be added. Such details have been around since early days of sims, it really wouldn't be much stress on system ressources.
    On the gameplay level, I'd like to see specific layouts grant bonuses to structures. For example, grouping Helipads together would reduce the time needed to reload/refuel aircraft due to the structures working together to reduce logistic strain. Placing Powerplants near other structures would for example increase the production speed on Warfactories, the sight range of Comm Centers or the RoF of defenses. This'd also open up more strategic/tactical variety, as players would have to weight the advantages of centralized base elements versus the added redundancy/failure resistance of spread out layouts. E.g. a 2x2 helipad cluster would give better reload speed, but a well placed strike could take them all out at once.
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    Automation would of course be very important for the purely aesthetic elements. As you said, CNC isn't a Sim City, so the "beautifications" should come naturally with the existing flow of base construction.
    Build placement bonuses would make base construction less of a chore as there'd be more choice and especially variety from map to map, so that's fine to leave in the players hand.

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  28. Warzone 2100 did the whole continual base that could be attacked and re-enforced, so did Earth 2150. Great games too :)

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