Like many of you, I've been playing RTS games from the start. Dune 2, C&C, Warcraft, Dark Reign, Total Annihilation, etc.
I loved Starcraft so much that I made one of the expansions to it (Starcraft: Retribution). Yep. that was me.
I was "this close" to licensing the Total Annihilation engine from GT Interactive (who gained the engine after Cavedog died).
I bring this up so that people who are hard core strategy gamers feel free to bring up other games into this discussion.
Now, in the Alpha (And sometimes people forget, this game is still not in beta) you win the game by cranking out a bunch of low level units to capture resources and repeat. Which is fine as far as it goes but not exactly deep strategy.What we need to do is make sure that there are multiple strategies and counter strategies that are valid depending on the circumstances.The purpose of this thread is to discuss features we, as a community, would like to see added to the game by 1.0 (ideally) or as future DLC.0.70: More Factory Types and the first OrbitalFor 0.70 (which comes out next week) we are doing two particular things:1. The Factory is being broken into a Frigate factory and a Cruiser factory. This way, players will have to start making some strategic decisions on which direction they want to go.2. The first Orbital will go in called the Orbital Fabricator. If you build this, you can two global abilities: Call down engineer (25 quanta base) and Incursion (100 quanta base). I say base because each time you use an ability, it costs a bit more to use it again.The player will start out with 100 quanta that you can use to increase your logistics right off. But another ineresting thing we've discovered in MP is that you can really punish someone who has spammed out engineers to capture lots of regions quickly. If you see your opponent spreading really quickly you know they are spread thin. So you can build the orbital fabricator and call down an incursion. An incursion can go anywhere you have vision. It beams in a Nemesis, a Zeus and some Archers and Brutes to the target location. Not enough to destroy their seed by any means but enough to ruin them if they've spread themselves too thin.The downside of this is that if you do this, you won't be building up a big conventional army early since you;ll have gone through your metal stores and the loss of quanta means you'll need to build up that quanta from relays.Strategic DirectionsThe above is one example of adding new strategic options for players. But there are plenty more we need to do and our tools come from structures (mostly the orbitals and the techs).In Starcraft, for example, at the start I can try harassment, I can try to fast expand, I can rush, I can try to tech up fast, etc.In SupCom, when you went for a T2 factory or a T2 metal extractor was a key skill.In our build (I'm not sure if it's in yours) we have the Power Amplifier which doubles a region's output. Super expensive, not an early game tool. Where I think we still have our work cut out for us is in the areas of Teching up (there is no research Stim equivalent in ashes) as well as developing viable unit composition differences.For instance, in Starcraft, you can have fast (bio) or slow mechanical. Do I go with MMM (marine, marauder, medvac) or do I go for siege tanks, liberators, and thors?What we want to do, especially for 1.0, is flesh out our units further to make them potentially do different things based on what you've invested in back at your base. Possible Feature discussionSince you guys joined early access, welcome to the sausage factory. We've spent years designing and making this game which means we've spent years playing it in various forms. As a result, we've had many ideas that looked good on paper but once in didn't seem as fun as we thought.Here are a few things that we're currently considering:Fixed artillery piece. Built by engineers. Expensive. Good for securing an area.Tech that allows Frigates (T1s) to ignore the engagement speed penalty.Tech that allows the Fury to hit ground targetsOrbital that lets me overcharge a power generator to quadruple its output for N seconds.Orbital that lets me order things constructed and have them appear at that orbital (proxy teleporter)T3 upgrade that lets units it orders to join it be teleported to its current locationYour turn.
Countermeasure systems.
You've said there wont be shield bubbles, which is fine, but there are no countermeasures for siege weaponry. One of the things that made Supreme Commander great was that attack and defense both had countermeasure capabilities, making extremely powerful long range weaponry balanced by inclusion of said countermeasures.
There is no counter to long range bombardment, you simply take it if a tier 3 siege ship starts bombarding you from outside range, your only possible response is to go on the offensive, or use your own tier 3 siege ship to combat it. As these ships rapidly destroy large masses of tier 1 ships, and even tier 2 ships, from outside their range, it makes them an extremely effective offensive and defensive unit so long as you keep radar coverage. Systems to mitigate the damage would greatly aid in preventing what would otherwise be ineffectually small numbers of units, from destroying massive quantities of opposing forces. The unit counter system, which should allow the other tier 3's to close ranks with and destroy the artillery ships, doesn't work because they either have to leave the safety of their repair bays to get to them, or attack into those repair bays. In either case, they take heavy losses outside of visual range, from ships that do their heaviest damage to the more powerful units, while still doing enough to rapidly mow down the tier 1's. They achieve visual range with their forces already decimated.
Some suggestions (Mostly for mid to late game strategy. Being a macro strategy oriented game, I think that late game strategic options are more important. For single player matches, most of the game players will not be concerned with options that let them save a minute or two on their first T2 unit):
- Transport options to get units to the front line faster. Either teleportation, specialized transport units, mobile factories etc. And there should be some way for the enemy to disrupt this too - shoot down the transporters, dstroy mobile factories etc. Using only orbitals makes it impossible for the other player to disrupt reinforcements.
- Some way to break through late game defenses that use a lot of sentinel turrets. A few sentinel turrets backed up by 1-2 repair bays are extremely hard right now to break through. Damage done by missiles is repaired by the drones quickly. And sending in appolos to take out the drones is tough since appolos fall in one hit from a sentinel. Maybe a late game orbital that fires an EMP burst would help.
- Dreadnought customization. Not for each individual dreadnought as that would get too complicated, but for each type. Maybe seige dreadnoughts can have tech upgrades to specialize in anti-unit or anti-building. And hyperions can become more offensive or have enhanced repair capabilities.
Artillery barrage. A prioritized area where any unit in range will shoot in priority any time a target shows up in it. It could have a cost to maintain and a bonus to accuracy.
It 'b be some kind of mobile static defense. Maybe extended to air forces with ground capabilities but only for one run so they don't fell into a trap.
- Intel as a resource: scouting and reacting to your opponent is one of the most important aspects of high level play. There should be a decision that you make in how much resources you spend on scouting vs the expected pay-off. For that matter, some way of defeating radar systems would greatly increase the need to scout.
- soft secondary win conditions: everyone loves to crush his opponent with an overwhelming force but for this to happen the losing opponent needs to stay in the game long enough.To keep the losing player in the game you need to give him an incentive or a sliver of hope. Dota does this by punishing an abandon. In starcraft there is always the possibility of a micro fail and a subsequent upset. In SupCom there are multiple targets in various stages of the game that are relatively undefended and function as secondary win conditions: ACU snipe, power snipe, anti-nuke snipe etc. In ashes right know you know that you are going to lose 20 minutes before the game is over but I dont feel like there's a possibility for a comeback or wacky scheme. As a result, you dont finish the game but end early, depriving the winning player of his wel earned moment of glory. Perhpas make certain critical structures volatie enough to not be placed in the main base and thus a possible target.
- Sim city defenses: its not my playing style, but i feel that the non-vocal majority of RTS players really enjoy just building up defenses and making an impregnable wall of different artillery etc. Could help sales to have this option open as a (non competitive)play style.
More tactical buildings are always welcome. Combining ranged attacks with elevation should be an important part: Using mountain "ranges" as barriers (delay an enemy raid against the artillery), and slopes as mechanisms to favor high altitudes over lower ones.
The first sounds somewhat shady (it's an "almost-hidden magical upgrade"), while the second sounds rather okay (still an "instant" upgrade, but very apparent/transparent).
Wouldn't these be VERY powerful? Building one such "proxy teleporter" somewhere on the map would then bring my entire production force to this location? Cruisers and dreadnoughts could be streaming out of there like nothing. Or will there be a "cost" per teleportation, or a limit?
-Its really important for me to secure an area after taking it, so its a must need to have some defenses, so make it ala COH, build the region amplifier and on top of it will get a defensive tower at least it need to take down a minimum of 6-T1 units or 1-T2 unit before it get destroyed.
-I think Tech in the game need to be very important and with a lot of research and addons to units and structures, that's what makes the game fun.
so you can play fast small map games with nearly no research by spawning default units or if you want to ca just start a big long game map, and start researching to be better and more powerful, and it may take you more then an hour to get all the Tech or advanced Tech out there on the map. 2 ways to play the game.
-Orbitals are really fun to use in big maps, so try to get at least 10 different fun Orbital powers, Buffs are ok but, try to give us some Offensive units, Defensive Structures, and new powers lie mini nukes, bombardment, some kind of an air support that comes from outside the time destroy a location and leave, there is a lot of RTS Games that use Some kind of orbital powers.I recommend having a Transporter Structure before enabling teleportation, and if you don't have it build then you units need to move to get to the meta Units. And give the teleporter some kind of timer and a max number of units to teleport.
Some times no need words, watch ...it says exacly what i feel and think about top strategy.
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