The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

Well, I've been at least mildly inspired by the recent discussions about Total Anihillation, so I've gone back to playing some of my old RTS games that have been lying about. In light of this, I figured I should throw this question out there:

Do a lot of you folks partake of the real time strategy genre? If so, what are your favorite titles? And are there any that simply turn you off from the whole affair?

I know I've been playing RTS games ever since Dune 2 essentially spawned the genre, way back in the early '90s, so I definitely have my favorites and my S-List. But I'd like to hear some other responses before I potentially color people's opinions with my own.

Total Annihilation - Yeah! 3d! Makeyourownunits! Yeehaw! Big battles! Woo! Kablamski!!
Starcraft - Arguably the best multiplayer implementation of an RTS game (WC3 excluded, that is).
Warcraft 3 - OH SHIT! LOTS OF ORCSES ON MY SCREEN! THERE GOES MY FRAMERATE!!!1
Dark Reign - Ever knew that this game -apart from some hilarious units- had a pretty neat tactics engine (which was actually called the Tactics Engine)? It was quite good, but way too hidden...
Dune 2 - click.. click.. click.. click.. click... click.. click.. Damn, first attack wave died already?

Not much besides that.. In my opinion, Starcraft and Warcraft > all. Note that I haven't really extensively explored RTSses after Starcraft came out... Blame my hardware.. >_<

I agree that StarCraft is expertly balanced, etc. I enjoyed it greatly... years ago.
Problem is, it gets sooo boring after a while. I can't believe my friends who are still playing it at LAN parties. I find no game as monotonous as StarCraft nowadays.

The only thing that provided limitless fun was the campaign editor to make scripted scenarios... but the Warcraft 3 world editor pwned StarCraft.

Wow, was that editor great. The cinematic scripting was amazing... I used to spend hours making pure cinematic levels (machinima). The sheer power of it was also incredible- I was working on making a strict recreation of warcraft 2 within warcraft 3 using the unit editor. I was nearly done, but I kind of abandoned it when I stopped playing WC3.

I think overall, I'm more into making content/levels for these types of games than actually playing them.

I think the worst I played was called Campaigh.
It was a WWII battle for Europe simulation. Slow
game play, poor graphics. The only good thing I can
say about it was driving the tanks around and
shooting stuff was fun.

I don't recall as I've ever played a _good_ RTS
game. No, wait, there was decent one called
Enemy Nations. Sort of Civilization in space. It
started out slow, but once you got going it
was a good challenge.

Starcraft was great, and Starcraft 2 (whenever they finally get around to it making it, those lazy bastards) will probably be much greater. There are just two things that prevent it from being completely perfect. First, the mineral resources were (very) limited, so too many matches end with a stalemate by starvation. The second reason, is it wasn't the almighty hybrid genre that has still not been developed much  at all (though it has so much potiental)-- Action/RTS.

Which brings me to the other best (but unsung) RTS (and Action) game so far, Battlezone 2. Sadly, BZ2 needed a little more developement time than it got, probably six months to a year. Then it would have launched the Action/RTS genre into stardom. Perhaps that is where the Battlefield '42 will eventually evolve to. One can always dream.

Yes! I loved the battlezone series.
Almost a masterpiece.

I might have guessed nearly everyone would talk about the Blizzard games. :P

I enjoyed Warcraft 2 and Starcraft in their time, but both got monotonous and dull really fast. I know exactly what stalemate by starvation is all about; this is how, after several grueling hours, my first last and only LAN Starcraft game turned out. After that, I decided to stick to single player mode exclusively.

Am I the only one who doesn't like Warcraft 3? I find the game is far too focused on heroes, and limits army size to a rediculous degree. The net effect is that you wind up playing a game of what I like to call "Diablocraft;" you take your hero(es) and a bunch of escort units, and go beat up the NPC monsters until you've gained enough skills to try to slay your enemy's hero(es). Once you manage that, steamrolling their base seems to be little trouble, because they're trying frantically to raise their heroes from the dead. The whole thing seems pretty silly to me; if I wanted to play Diablo, I have that game around somewhere, but I was expecting a game where you command an army, not a hero and a band of  "summons."

I'm sort of surprised that nobody has mentioned any of the Command & Conquer games yet. I have to say I've had the most fun with these in multiplayer. The Red Alert series is particularly good overall, and I personally find RA2 to be the most fun RTS to play; the game is reasonably well balanced, and the tech levels can be easily adjusted to remove the most crazy-powerful weapons from the game.

Honorable mention goes to Dune 2000. Dune 2 was the game that got me hooked on RTS games to begin with, but it had a distinct lack of mission variety and a notoriously awkward control scheme. These problems were solved in Dune 2000 using the C&C engine and mission design (though thankfully, without any of those totally obnoxious commando missions). While it doesn't retain the spirit of its predecessor *perfectly,* it's close enough to make me happy and feel some great degree of nostalgia.

"Yes! I loved the battlezone series.
Almost a masterpiece."

Do you still play BZ2 online?


"I know exactly what stalemate by starvation is all about; this is how, after several grueling hours, my first last and only LAN Starcraft game turned out."

They could fix this problem easily, by having mineral "mines" that SCVs go into and then come out of holding a few minerals, working the same way as the Vespane Refinery/Assimilator/Extractor.


"The net effect is that you wind up playing a game of what I like to call "Diablocraft;" you take your hero(es) and a bunch of escort units, and go beat up the NPC monsters until you've gained enough skills to try to slay your enemy's hero(es). Once you manage that, steamrolling their base seems to be little trouble, because they're trying frantically to raise their heroes from the dead."

I played a W3 demo for a short while, and that's how it seemed to go, though I didn't really get into it that much. I'm more of a Starcraft loyalist when it comes to blizzard games.

Urgh! How could I forget BZ2?
BZ2 is the Freespace 2 of RTSses... I still play it every now and then on the 'net...

And yes: Starcraft is indeed getting boring and dull fast, unless you play Use Map Settings maps (custom maps)... It's also a game that needs to be played in 'waves'.. Play it for a while, then stop for a long while, play again.... etc.

I found Dune2k to be fairly dull, actually...
Now there's one thing I'm still puzzled about: how the HELL did I manage to like Red Alert, and Red Alert 2 back in the days? I've tried playing RA a while ago, yet the interface and the horribleness of it all was quite irritating. Guess I got accustomized to the Starcraftian GUI or something (which we all have to agree is probably the best GUI in existance today.. Warcraft3ian GUI is slightly worse (mostly in graphics though).. A combined Startcraftian/Red-Alertian styled GUI, where you have shortcuts to building put at the right side of the screen, would probbably rock even more). Also, I tried doing a RA2 multiplayer a while ago, and that might've just been more irritating.. The units in RA2 act like morons, or even WORSE: 12-year old morons that are playing multiplayer CTF in any random FPS game... They were being insanely stupid, and it was also as if I could hear them sing: "Aidelaidelee, aidelaidelaa, we simply can't target buildings or not-shooting-at-us-enemy-units automatically because we're just stupid morons... aidleaidelee, aidelaidelaa..."


Now, probably the only RTS I'm currently waiting for with anticipation is Supreme Commander.... Massive battlefields and massive units... yum...

I guess I'm on dangerous ground here, but... I've never really liked ANY RTS games, mostly because I find the whole concept of these games to be quite tedious (a bit surprising, because I can take an interest in nearly anything). The only RTS game I've really enjoyed, was Dune 2, otherwise I can't be bothered.

Zipping up flame retardant suit now.

Pax Imperia. Only partially RTS -- it has a real-time empire building part and a real-time combat part, but the two don't mix.

The ship customization was nice, but a bit too abusable. Balance? Way off... some things just were never useful. Otherwise, an nice, intricate game.

Starcraft -- if your game was a stalemate, then neither of you knew how to form up an attack force or use abilities to defeat defenses... If one side is terran, at least, a forced stalemate is nearly impossible. That said, I prefer maps which delay contact a little, so there is opportunity for more variety in strategies.

Command and Conquer -- the original had some very imbalanced mechanics... My experience with Red Alert was better, but I didn't play it very much. Good marks.

I can understand where you're coming from, Void; I can't tolerate even my favorites in the genre for too long without a break. It's definitely the sort of thing that needs to be played in fits and starts for fans, so I can certainly see how you might not like it at all.

What can I say about that game of Starcraft? We were both first-timers for a net game. We took our favorites; I was Terran, he was Zerg. Nobody tried to rush, but by the time he built up a nasty attack force, I had sufficient defenses to hold him off... For a price. And vice versa on my counterstrikes. Neither of us could keep the damage under control well enough to really splurge on a decisive assault; I never managed to build a single Battlecruiser the entire game, and he only hit me with Guardians once. Before too long we were getting bored and low on resources, and just called it a draw. I think he played it online a bit more than that afterward (and I got to hear more about Korean Zerg Rushes than I ever wanted to know), and I pretty much gave multiplayer up entirely. Red Alert was way more fun to play against another person anyway.

Let's not talk about the first C&C, though. Worst job of balancing I've ever seen in any game, period.

I'm very selective about RTS games. I didn't like most of the mainstream ones. A few I like are:

TA (Waaay ahead of its time, and maybe still is ahead.)
DarkReign - Not that good but I liked something about it, maybe the atmosphere.
Utopia II - K240 - Kinda messy, but tons of potential, almost completely untapped genre.
Colonial Conquest - PD game for the Amiga, similar to K240 but more Civ-ish.
Utopia - Sim City-ish, isometric, I still play it. The combat part was very crude.

I believe the mother of RTS is not purely Dune II, but also Herzog Zweii and probably some other less known games.


I really disliked C&C... good god those crawling men WHY CAN'T I KILL THEM!!!??!

WC3 was pretty boring, too much micromanagement for my taste.

BZ2 was okay... but not fun on your own. I liked some of the designs. I recall putting 'stab' or something on the missile launchers, made them really good.

GroundControl... I played like 3 missions then I got bored... no basebuilding :(((

Earth 2***  I have some early version of this, but the lack of skirmish mode put it on the shelf quickly.

My Favorites:
TA SPRING (http://taspring.clan-sy.com/) - It beats the original TA.
DarkReign - The only game where artillery can be used as effective suppressing fire.

"if your game was a stalemate, then neither of you knew how to form up an attack force or use abilities to defeat defenses... If one side is terran, at least, a forced stalemate is nearly impossible."

Not if the two sides use their attack forces to try and counter each other (defensively). The problem is, if someone doesn't win after a few major battles, nobody will be strong enough to win. It's like WWI with aliens.


"BZ2 is the Freespace 2 of RTSses... I still play it every now and then on the 'net..."

Same here.


"I can understand where you're coming from, Void; I can't tolerate even my favorites in the genre for too long without a break."

Which is where the Action/RTS genre comes in. It has a break built in. Sadly, since BZ2, I haven't seen anything that follows in its footsteps. Have I missed anything?

Seems my login just disappeaared.

Supressing fire in DR. I remember building tons of those napalm... scarabs was it? I used them to cover narrow passages or just spew fire all around my base.

Tachyon tanks were pretty good if placed on auto patrols too, since they fired effectively while moving and not getting hit. I recall on the last level I used tons of sky fortresses and neutron towers around my base. Sadly the game got really bad with pathfinding when there was a lot of units... same with TA.


Didn't Space Rangers 2 have some RTS/FPS element? Is it any good?

Oh well, my password was saved in a form (asterixes), no clue what it is though. I wonder if there's some sort of "mail me my psw" function... couldn't find one but I'm tired and whimsical.

Anyways, doesn't this new X3 Reunion (http://www.x3resource.com/) game have some RTS apsects to it aswell? The trailers just show a lot of slow pans across spaceships so it's hard to tell.

Sure, right under the "Login" button in the password form.

If your enemy is really out of all resources, a single siege tank with a comstat to act as a spotter can probably clear out every building he owns. That's what D9 was probably saying. Also, see scout masses with corsair support, guardians, reaver drops...

Starcraft was Blizzard's best work. I hate World of Warcraft like I hate all MMORPGs. They're big, brain-dead time-sinks. Also, I hate being forced into team work with the average internet denizen. If people would stop playing that god-forsaken game we'd get a Starcraft II or the next Diablo equivalent out much sooner.

I wonder if blizzard is more than a little bit apprehensive about producing starcraft 2.
They will have a LOT of expectations to live up to.

Life should be so simple. As I said, I was Terrans, he was Zerg. For every one of my Siege Tanks, he had a Guardian. It really was a no-win situation. I think the problem was that we were both playing rather defensively, and we ran out of resources with "impenetrable fortresses" set up around our bases. Sure, I could have emptied my bunkers and sent all my defensive units on a suicide strike, but what good would it have done me? He had lots of defensive units hanging around as well, and neither of us was willing to make the first move in that situation. Stalemate.

Actually, I was thinking you should have begun using science vessels and Irradiate. It's almost impossible to counter and it will kill any zerg unit other than an ultralisk. If it hits a stack, the entire stack can bite the dust.

Zerg has counters to siege tanks -- to wit, the queen: BAM. No siege tank, and if you used multiple siege tanks near each other, then they cream each other trying to kill the broodlings.

Efficient micromanagers should be able to notice a broodling attack and convert their seige tanks to tank mode before it's too late.

Not if there are multiple fronts. Your first warning is a siege tank blowing up.

Sure, it's harder to do if you do it to the tank push they're paying attention to... but all it takes is one queen and you've just blown up one tank and taken the rest out of siege mode. Send in the zerglngs!

I'd like to add:

- Master of Orion (only the 1st)
- Imperium Galactica II
- star wars: galactic batttlegrounds

And of course I like(d) Total Annihilation and Star Craft :)

I must place myself in the underdog position while kinda AVOIDING the whole C&C series- since it became "red alert". earlier were nice. ever since this titles- it turned my off.
I liked the EARTH series, the first one (2140) the most, but also the following including the new 2160. it's much more proffesional and fun, while being unique and creatve in aspects that other games aren't really.. and y the way it did have skirmish mode all the way.
surely, StarCraft was proudly added with admiration- it is very good.

and finally if I may reffer to Turn Based Stratagy, well I'd say I'm a hardcore Heroes lover.

"Sure, it's harder to do if you do it to the tank push they're paying attention to... but all it takes is one queen and you've just blown up one tank and taken the rest out of siege mode. Send in the zerglngs!"

Hmm, smells like stone soup. You don't have minerals for zerglings, you are out of cash. That's the point, the game is superbly balanced, but when the resources run dry you too often end up in permanent stalemate.


I have a sub question, what is your favorite side (army) in each of your favorite RTS games. I've noticed that while some people like to switch around a lot, most end up sticking with one in particular for most conflicts.

Hmm, that's a toughie. Here's the ones I can remember, or at least definitively say:

Dune 2: The Harkonnen. Why F around with those weak trikes and infantry? And then there's Devastators and Death Heads near the end. What's not to love?
C&C original: GDI, no contest. I never played the game long enough to see what Nod had to use against GDI's Mammoth Tanks (probably because of that stupid commando mission... ARGH), but I think it was flame tanks... Gimmie a break. Most unbalanced forces ever.
C&C Red Alert: Tough to say. The game was really superbly balanced, if you ask me. I have a sweet spot for the allies, because I played them first, but I might be slightly more effective playing the Soviets.
C&C Tiberian Sun: GDI. Because Titans are cool. Unfortunately, this is another game where I find that only a limited selection of units are useful.
C&C Red Alert 2: Again, so tough to say. I enjoy playing Yuri's forces (from the expansion) for fun, just because I can mind control all sorts of wacky stuff: cars, bulldozers, monkeys, alligators... In a serious match, though, I'm not really sure.
Warcraft 2: Humans. Just because I like Paladin spells better than Ogre Mages, Straight damage on archers trumps the extremely slow troll regen, and I don't really use the advanced mages.
Starcraft: Terrans. Siege Tanks rule! Plus, I just like their general style of play better than the rush-prone Zerg or the never-enough-defenses-to-repel-an-attack Protoss.
Total Anihillation: ARM. They're almost identical in the long run in the basic game, really, but the ARM's early units easily outclass the CORE's.
Dune 2000: Atreides, and it's mainly because their build cost is so much lower than everyone else's. Relative effectiveness of individual units be damned, they're closely matched enough that 3 tanks against the enemy's 2 will always win... Though their late-game specialty units aren't that great.

Wait a moment. If you posess no troops whatsoever and he possesses siege tanks, then he wins (assuming he doesn't need to make a landing). End of story. If you have adequate defenses to hold off the siege tanks, and a queen, then the siege tanks slowly go down. You win. End of story.

The only exception is an island game in which you can't get to each other; and that is very unlikely to happen for Zerg.

Got it?

"Wait a moment. If you posess no troops whatsoever and he possesses siege tanks, then he wins (assuming he doesn't need to make a landing). End of story."

Not really, the queen(s) can pick off the tank(s) before they wipe out the entire zerg base. And since broodlings die after a short while (and don't have much of a bite,) they won't be able to destroy the terran base in time.


"If you have adequate defenses to hold off the siege tanks, and a queen, then the siege tanks slowly go down. You win. End of story."

The Zerglings could be blocked by a spider mine field, well placed around buildings. The 'lings can't kill the mines from a distance, and if they get close to the buildings, the mines attack. Or maybe there's a wraith hovering around, or a firebat in a bunker, etc.


This is all a very vague scenario, but the bottom line is there are many ways that two forces can each have the strength to defend themselves, but not to beat their opponent. You can easily have a stalemate, whether the two players have the combined IQ of a drone, or a Xel'Naga.

Two Xel-Naga (great players) would shift their build priorities to an end-game setup before it was too late.

In particular, as minerals get scarce, a good player will realize that at least gas never runs out, and focus on the gas-heavy/mineral-light units. Mostly, these are spellcasters.

Terrans will get science vessels for picking off the enemy, and ghosts (25 minerals cheap!)

Zerg will get queens and defilers. If the terrans are totally out of minerals, then explosive plague is a death knell, especially on buildings. If the terrans still have air power, then Scourge could be a good idea.

Protoss will forget about reavers and carriers, perhaps going for light templar, and both flavors of archon, and maybe an arbiter. Depends on the upgrades they already bought, I guess.

So, sure, a stalemate is possible... but it implies that both players lacked foresight.

Exercise: suppose you have 500 minerals left... and both players have large bases with passive defenses (colonies for the zerg, nearly-empty bunkers, and turrets for the terrans. The terrans have one medic). Everything is fully upgraded. Each side has three builders left, presently gathering gas (you have thousands upon thousands of gas). No one has attacked in a while, so you conclude that the other side is in a similar situation. The zerg have five overlords, two of them blinded; the terrans have two comsat stations. Spider-mines are an issue.

What do you do, given all the time you need to think about this? I can see potential strategies for each side... and it's unstable, so whichever one wins in the end is very likely going to take the whole thing... if they make the right build choices.

"Terrans will get science vessels for picking off the enemy, and ghosts (25 minerals cheap!)"

But what would they do against photon cannons?


"So, sure, a stalemate is possible... but it implies that both players lacked foresight."

And they should both suffer losses for their foolishness, but it is still boring if there is no chance to right this mistake. If there is no winner.

I don't mean that there should be a plethora of minerals poring in throughout the game, just that maybe there should be some trickle of minerals that can be tapped in later games, similar to how the depleted vespane geysers continue to supply gas, even if it just a quarter of what they used to output.

OK, kids. Since you really want to debate this very badly, apparently, here was the setup when we quit.

Starcraft Original only (this was before Brood War was out)
Reasonably big map
My base was defended by several bunkers full of marines, one turret and Siege Tank per bunker, and a small strike force of Wraiths for holding off the inevitable Guardian attacks. I also had a few Vultures (spider mines were still deployed in a couple of places, but most were gone already), and a Ghost or 2 (no nukes).
His base was loaded with colonies of both types, and backed up by Guardians and Hydralisks (buried, and far enough in so the trying to irradiate them would get a Science Vessel pelted by spores first). I imagine he also had at least one Defiler, though I had never seen him use it. I had been mercilessly killing his Queens as a matter of course, any time they tried to come after my tanks.
Nobody WANTS to make the first move; minerals are gone, vespene is coming in at a trickle, and a strike force would have to be taken from the defensive line

I'm sure there were viable strategies to avoid this situation, but neither of us were pros; In the long run, he was probably playing better, and I was much more on the defensive the whole game, but this is how it ended up anyway. So yeah, the game ended in a stalemate (and thus, failure for multiplayer, as far as we were concerned).

Part of this was our playing styles; he was determined to have a more interesting game than a typical Zerg Rush (kekeke), and I'm a defensive player by nature. So we ended up deadlocked. It happens, but it sours you opinion of the experience if the whole thing winds up devolving to that state after a few hours of play.

"So yeah, the game ended in a stalemate (and thus, failure for multiplayer, as far as we were concerned)."

Then the question for you is, would the game have succeeded in offering a challenging and rewarding experience if there was a renewable/non-terminating supply of minerals?

Science vessel Defensive matrixes a ghost, EMP's some cannons. The ghost walks into range, shoots until the player estimates the Matrix is about to wear off, then flees. Heal with medic, repeat.
Obviously, this isn't going to work if the enemy has troops left, or if you aren't playing Broodwar.
If you have two science vessels, this goes many times as fast (since three ghosts need only one EMP but three defensive matrices, and you can have each one retreat only as THEIR shield is about to wear out)

If the photon cannons are very dense, you won't get very far this way, it is true. You'd need two science vessels constantly replenishing the shield on one ghost to get him in.

Note that ghost is not preferable to a marine here, due to their concussive damage (though their superior range may help pick apart medium-density photon cannon arrays).

Note, I didn't say it wouldn't take a long time.


Maybe they'll take it as a learning experience.


SO: specific to your situation, Draxas!

Could you buy ANYTHING, or were you totally out? Was he?
The following assumes you were both totally broke.


So, let's look at this: your siege weapons have longer range and greater power.
His siege weapons can attack your siege weapons
You can attack and destroy his siege weapons fairly quickly with wraiths, if they come to counterattack.
If you use the full range of the siege tanks, the guardians will have to come out significantly past the spore colonies to return fire. This drastically exposes them to the wraiths.
Furhermore, if you strike first, the spore colonies might not even exist by the time the guardians get there.

Also remember, the wraiths are expendable IF you can with that sacrifice wipe out his last guardians.


Specifically what I would do is get all (perhaps excepting one, for reasons that will become clear later) of your siege tanks together where they can attack part of his base. Bring the wraiths in as close as they dare.
Then siege the tanks, with the wraiths as spotters (keep the tanks as FAR BACK AS POSSIBLE). If there are spore colonies near the border here, direct the tank fire to wipe them out as fast as possible. If you have at least 4 tanks, wiping out one spore colony won't take long, and it's likely that only one will be the closest to the tanks.
If you do wipe the nearest spore colony, then your wraiths can attack any counterattacking guardians unopposed by spore colonies, which would be a nice touch.

Make sure to stagger the siege tanks' entry into siege mode so that they won't waste shots simultaneously destroying the same target.

Next, it depends whether he responds with hydralisks or guardians or both. Hydralisks? Let the tanks chew on them. If he has too many hydralisks for tanks to beat back comfortably, then bring out the marines and bikes as additional cover (though this will make the operation more cumbersome, and the marines are more vulnerable to guardians, etc.)
Guardians? Wipe them with the wraiths. Shouldn't take long unless there are many of them.
Both? This is going to be ugly, but if you pull it off, you've won right there.

How should you proceed? Well, if you can wipe out his detection, then the wraiths become INVEENCIBLE!
This is cold comfort for the tanks left stranded, and they may be wiped out while the wraiths finish clobbering the guardians. Still, if you can clean out the guardians and get the hydralisks down to a moderate level, then you can finish the job with just one siege tank and a couple marines' support for what hydralisks may remain.

If you want to have a little more leeway, try landing some mobile buildings in the way to impede the progress of the hydralisks toward your line. Just set that engineering bay down right there, and it'll keep them from closing to point-blank range. There should be just enough room to fit one in outside the creep, if you're attacking north or south (though I won't swear to it, I've never tried). East-west attacks won't be so blessed.

Speaking of which, if he has queens, park the hovering buildings over your tanks to prevent them from being broodlinged.

Also, if there are multiple places you could be PUTTING the siege tanks (from the east or the south), then you can hover buildings over all the possible emplacements (whether occupied or not) so he might send the defenders in the wrong direction.

Now, this changes drastically for the better if you have a science vessel. Then all you need is to siege ONE tank and put a matrix on it. When he sends the response out, irradiate it and run away. You can use floating buildings even more productively here. Siege, fire one shot, and un-siege... all under a building. He won't necessarily know that you matrixed the tank, and he might not even realize that you un-sieged. Then you'll be all ready to run away without even waiting for the un-siegeing process.

Not gauranteed, but I think it's a good start. Certainly, if you have wraiths and his only siege equipment is guardians (i.e. no zergling or ultralisk hordes), it's your game to lose.

Suffice to say, we don't have the game saved... But still interesting strategy to read.

I can't provide details on each of out EXACT tactical situations, but I do remember that my strikes from land were limited to a single western approach. Not the best tactical situation, but meh. Also, by this time, he had so many Overlords around, that attempting to eliminate all his detectors before my Wraiths would have been picked apart would be foolhardy to even attempt, especially since I was down to a fairly small fleet of them.

I must say, I can't say whether or not a replenishing supply of minerals would have helped the game... By the time we hit stalemate, we were both already pretty bored, and maybe giving up on the game was a foregone conclusion either way. However, I also remember my first net-game of Red Alert against a different friend; we played for easily the same amount of time, and were deadlocked for most of that time there as well. But it still stayed fun and engaging throughout, possibly because every time one of our attacks failed, we could still rely on a trickly of minerals to eventually fund the next one... Not to mention that we were flinging nukes back & forth the entire game. ;D Maybe that's why I have a more favorable view of C&C vs. Starcraft, as far as multi goes; Every match of C&C I've played against a friend has been fun, no matter how frustrating (in the case of original; NEVER PLAY NOD!) the experience or embarassing the loss (that game I mentioned above in Red Alert ended with my friend working a line of Tesla Coils across the map until he was able to build them in the middle of my defensive line. I was powerless to stop him at that point).

"The ghost walks into range, shoots until the player estimates the Matrix is about to wear off, then flees. Heal with medic, repeat.
Obviously, this isn't going to work if the enemy has troops left, or if you aren't playing Broodwar."

You mentioned the zerg had queens and the protoss had archons. They would make short work of a single ghost, or even a squad of them, during a base assault. As a matter of fact, all the low mineral, high vespane units fall before the Dark Archon, which is possibly the only really unbalanced unit of the game.


"Maybe they'll take it as a learning experience."

The first time perhaps.


"If you want to have a little more leeway, try landing some mobile buildings in the way to impede the progress of the hydralisks toward your line. Just set that engineering bay down right there, and it'll keep them from closing to point-blank range."

"that game I mentioned above in Red Alert ended with my friend working a line of Tesla Coils across the map until he was able to build them in the middle of my defensive line. I was powerless to stop him at that point."

I'd completely forgotten about those tactics. No one can ever quite emotionally recover from lossing a battle to buildings.  ;)


"I must say, I can't say whether or not a replenishing supply of minerals would have helped the game... But it still stayed fun and engaging throughout, possibly because every time one of our attacks failed, we could still rely on a trickly of minerals to eventually fund the next one..."

Also, having an infinite supply (even if it has bottlenecks) keeps horders (like me) from winning too many of the long term games. It is also nice to be able to launch intermediate game attacks without completely ruining you chance of long term survival, should a battle or two go sour.

Okay, lots of overlords wandering around? If they're wandering around you can work on thinning their populations with the wraiths.

If you have science vessels, or even one, this gets easier. Just point and kill. But it seems you didn't.



You spoke of photon cannons, I gave a photon cannon solution. They're not going to be backed up by queens. Obviously, the units must be dealt with first.

Light archons can be dealt with easily with an EMP and then being shot by the ghosts.

And if the protoss have dark archons, it's THEIR game to win or lose.

But if it's zerg and they have queens, then irradiate the queen. A queen-for-ghost trade is heavily in favor of the terran.



if they take it as a learning experience, there won't be a second time.

"if they take it as a learning experience, there won't be a second time."

An interesting theory there, W.O.P.R., but online gaming (multiplayer) is not always that simple. :)

You are dealing with people, who both innovate and make mistakes. A balanced game means that, given two balanced players, battles ending in stalemate are not too unusual. But given the time, things will eventually swing one way and somebodies going to lose, just because of random chance mixed with the complicated nature of human minds. The question in starcraft is, will that happen before the resources really start to dwindle.

Do you think that Starcraft's winning formula would really be trashed by having some form of nonexpendable (think depleted vespane geysers) mineral resources?

What I meant was, if they get into some boring stalemate with neither player able to build at all at the end, then they will learn to avoid this very particular way of screwing themselves up.

Sure, the game is chaotic and unpredictable. But anyone can tell when they're running out of crystals, and act accordingly... regardless of the rest of the situation.

I'll play someone at Broodwar. I haven't played it in years so I'll probably lose badly, but who wants to go?

... I didn't bring my disk. How does wednesday evening sound?

er... time zone? I'm in US - eastern (GMT minus 5)

I played the god awful N64 version back in the day. I've got to sell it on eBay and then buy a copy of the battlechest before I'm ready for online matches in the good old Koprulu sector.

Ok.

... doh! Forgot my CD. How about Thursday instead.

At one minute short of midnight, GMT (that's 7:00 EST) sound good?
I'll start a game on battlenet, as Drachefly, entitled UQM-fans.

Will do. Wait - shouldn't you password that?

You can password a game? Cool!

Oh, and I'm a fool (hey, I rhyme) because I forgot my CD again. This is getting tiresome.

Password: FRUNGY

UPDATE:
I remembered the CD this time.

Okay, for the record now.

Shiver: 1
D9: 0
Computer: 0

"Shiver: 1
D9: 0
Computer: 0"

Did he run out of minerals? :)

Negative, that wasn't an issue this game.

Quite the opposite. I made a noob mistake -- over-micromanaging an offensive against the shared AI opponent, thus neglecting my economy and production.

It's been a while since I played online, it's very different than the campaigns.

REVIVING DEAD THREAD



I'm not a huge fan of real-time strategy, primarily because of the "real-time" element. There are too many demands on my attention in games like that, so many that I end up failing to do anything competently. I like to take my time in games when I can. That's not to say I don't enjoy them, I just greatly prefer turn-based strategy.

Man, Advance Wars DS really needs online support. Advance Wars By Web (http://awbw.amarriner.com/) is nice, but it could be so much better.

There was one RTS I came across that I enjoyed the hell out of, though. It was on a console, of all places. Ogre Battle 64. It was very slow-paced for a RTS, and all things considered it was really more of an RPG. But, it had units moving around on a map in something resembling real-time and you could only indirectly control the combat, and I guess that means it counts.

Have you heard of Wesnoth? That's not a bad turn based freeware strategy game. Could use some long ranged attacks though.

Wesnoth could NOT use long-ranged attacks. The basic mechanics are great as it is.

Yeah, I play Wesnoth.

"Wesnoth could NOT use long-ranged attacks. The basic mechanics are great as it is."

They are, but it just feels like there would be more dimension if they added this one little thing. Maybe make the chance of hitting over a number of tiles drop significantly from firing at close range. This makes perfect sense for bows, as they become very inaccurate once you stop direct firing.

I agree with the project's simple approach in most other areas, though instead of completely shooting down the "transport" unit idea, a mass teleporter one (think starcraft arbiter, not silver mage) could be really useful, especially for maps beyond 60 tiles on a side. Keeping with there super simple interface theme, you could have your teleporter unit just act to a normal unit, as a captured village does to a silver mage. Whenever you have a guy selected and ready to be moved, you'll have the option of select a tile, anywhere on the map, that is within walking distance from a teleporter unit. You balance this, by simply making the teleporter unit sufficiently weak in both attack and hitpoints (but still rather quick, and able to traverse all terrain types, deep water included.)

Building structures, dumb spell systems, endless XP levels, etc. are things I very much agree should be left out.

BTW, does Wesnoth have any real opensource/freeware competitors or is it the zenith of the open TBS games? Are there any good free RTS games yet?

I dunno about real-time, but for open-source TBS, there's Freeciv (http://www.freeciv.org/index.php/Freeciv), which is basically a clone of the Civilization series. People's Tactics (http://www.peoplestactics.com/) isn't open source, but it's still freeware, and it's pretty good.