Base-building in RTS - or not?

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Original post by Captain P A real-time strategy without base-building - doomed to be less popular?

Why do you want an RTS without base-building? Is it because you're trying to be different, or do you have a concrete vision for gameplay which does not include base building? Or is base-building simply an aspect of gameplay that you think could be done without?

I'm not trying to dissuade you - I have ideas for RTS games without base building myself - but answering that question might help you to answer your own.

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What I think is so strong about base-building is it's safety factor. A failed attack doesn't mean a failed mission. And often with these games resources like money, or power, are an important factor, which allows for different tactics like raiding some harvesters to block a players income, or blowing up power plants to shut down defenses.

I don't think this is true of most RTS games that I've played, unless by 'base-building' you mean 'turtling'.

Most decent players don't build a base because they like to feel safe; they do it because it determines how your economy develops, and thus the number and type of units you can bring into the game, which has a profound effect on what you can do. In fact, the majority of the 'strategy' comes from developing your economy in this manner; if you remove it you will need to pick up the slack elsewhere.

If we're talking about turtling though, you're right; that's nearly always a 'safety' thing. You have a large map, limited mobile units and a limited ability to control all your men. Lots of large, static, powerful, and tough objects like turrets are a very tempting way of 'protecting' a chunk of the map without having to expend much attention on it. However, few RTS games are really designed with turtling in mind, and it is very rarely a worthwhile tactic - it's expensive, slow, and inflexible. Turtles and turret farmers tend to lose badly to more aggressive players.

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Now my idea's for a non-base-building RTS are to allow the building of strongpoints using quick resources like sandbags and cammo netting, so defensive positions can be constructed and removed fast, to allow temporarily defensive positions.

I'm not sure if this achieves what you want; it seems to me that you lose all of the strategic options that come with the economy development side of base building, but retain the (generally undesirable) ability of players to turtle up.

Personally, I think if a non-base-building game is to work you need to make the most out of the terrain. Perhaps you can build certain defensive structures, but are limited in what you can build and where. You can't quickly build a dugout in the middle of a rocky plain because the ground is too hard. You can't build it in soft sand either, because it fills in faster than you can dig it. You can use sandbags anywhere, but sandbags are heavy so you're limited to using them in places near roads where your supply trucks can bring them. Otherwise, you have to use the features on the terrain. If you want a bunker, you'll have to locate one on the map and capture it.

Base building is there for two main purposes.
1. To allow the player to increase available tech during the mission.
2. To force the player to juggle several balls.

The first is fairly obvious. You need to get your tech up as quickly as possible to counter the enemy threat. The second is a little less so. By making you build a base, build units and wage war the game is forcing you to keep several balls in the air at once which adds a feeling of "almost panic" as you jump back to the base, then back to the front lines, then order more units, build a new building, launch a new attack. The early RTS games (Dune II, C&C, Warcraft) weren't really very strategic at all, they were excercises in multi-tasking.

So, base or no base? I guess in part that depends on what you are trying to achieve. If you want the pressure that comes from doing several things then have base building or find something else to replace it. If that isn't your intention then you could more easily dump it.

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Original post by Sandman Why do you want an RTS without base-building? Is it because you're trying to be different, or do you have a concrete vision for gameplay which does not include base building? Or is base-building simply an aspect of gameplay that you think could be done without?

I believe base-building doesn't reflect nowadays fast wars, where army's don't have time to construct whole facilities in order to fight, or where only small combat groups are sent into a hot zone, having to establish a base of operation before any other troops can come in.
The idea behind my ideas is to reflect real combat better, and emphasize on battlefield tactics rather than base-building and economics.
I see the being different here more as a problem than a novelty, simply because this different style seems to be less popular.

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Most decent players don't build a base because they like to feel safe; they do it because it determines how your economy develops, and thus the number and type of units you can bring into the game, which has a profound effect on what you can do. In fact, the majority of the 'strategy' comes from developing your economy in this manner; if you remove it you will need to pick up the slack elsewhere.

I'm planning on letting the player choose his units and tweak their equipment before a mission starts, but then there's indeed the problem that a player can't react to the enemy units if he chose the wrong units (say, no anti-tank units is a pain while fighting against a tank squadron).
To counter that, I want to give the player intelligence reports and maps beforehand so he can plan his unit choice better. I'm still thinking about a reinforcements system. Right now I haven't thought about it a lot but I might mix it up with ammunition and weapon supplies, so you can refit your troops during battle (this should be kept simple and fast to execute) and react to enemy decisions better. Perhaps changing this on a per-mission base, where defensive missions allow for reinforcements and all, and offensive missions, which are more on-the-move, have to do with limited reinforcements?

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If we're talking about turtling though, you're right; that's nearly always a 'safety' thing. You have a large map, limited mobile units and a limited ability to control all your men. Lots of large, static, powerful, and tough objects like turrets are a very tempting way of 'protecting' a chunk of the map without having to expend much attention on it. However, few RTS games are really designed with turtling in mind, and it is very rarely a worthwhile tactic - it's expensive, slow, and inflexible. Turtles and turret farmers tend to lose badly to more aggressive players.

I'm talking about the turtling indeed. I've learnt to play aggressive if I want to win, but naturally I like to play it safe. I like to build and design, too, so I got easily distracted by it. I guess it depends on the type of player but I'll assume I should strongly take aggressivenes into account when designing my game. In reality it's an important factor as well.

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I'm not sure if this achieves what you want; it seems to me that you lose all of the strategic options that come with the economy development side of base building, but retain the (generally undesirable) ability of players to turtle up.

Think of strongpoints here more as machinegun nests and other soft buildings like tents. I want to limit these, if not exclude, from offensive missions but for defensive missions, I think they can provide interesting options. My game idea emphasizes on cover for infantery (not getting hit is more important than the armor a unit has) so it's not like these strongpoints would be 'building' with a life-bar of their own so to say, but quickly built, protected area's for your units. So no automated turrets or defensive structures, but digging in troops.
Of course, these sandbags would need to get transported by trucks or other vehicles so their use is limited to certain places.

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Personally, I think if a non-base-building game is to work you need to make the most out of the terrain. Perhaps you can build certain defensive structures, but are limited in what you can build and where. You can't quickly build a dugout in the middle of a rocky plain because the ground is too hard. You can't build it in soft sand either, because it fills in faster than you can dig it. You can use sandbags anywhere, but sandbags are heavy so you're limited to using them in places near roads where your supply trucks can bring them. Otherwise, you have to use the features on the terrain. If you want a bunker, you'll have to locate one on the map and capture it.

Definitely. I want to use the terrain as more than just offering different routes and area's. Cover is important for units (they get easily killed once hit, cover and visibility makes them harder to hit) as well as visibility, so I want to include these things a lot into the maps. An open field could be turned into a killing zone with well-placed machinegun nests and mines, while these would be much less effective in a dense forest, for example.

Thanks for your thoughts, it's good feedback. :)

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Original post by Obscure Base building is there for two main purposes. 1. To allow the player to increase available tech during the mission. 2. To force the player to juggle several balls. The first is fairly obvious. You need to get your tech up as quickly as possible to counter the enemy threat. The second is a little less so. By making you build a base, build units and wage war the game is forcing you to keep several balls in the air at once which adds a feeling of "almost panic" as you jump back to the base, then back to the front lines, then order more units, build a new building, launch a new attack. The early RTS games (Dune II, C&C, Warcraft) weren't really very strategic at all, they were excercises in multi-tasking. So, base or no base? I guess in part that depends on what you are trying to achieve. If you want the pressure that comes from doing several things then have base building or find something else to replace it. If that isn't your intention then you could more easily dump it.

I plan on having this tech part being done outside of the actual gameplay - the story reveals new tech at certain points and you'll be given access to better equipment or larger arsenals while you progress through the game.

The juggling is another thing I want to do something about. The base-building often prevents me from executing broader tactics simply because units on themselves can't be trusted (in most games they still stay idle while being shot at from afar) and I can't do everything at the same time. By taking out the base-building, I think better tactics can be used because there's more time for managing them now.
Basically, more strategy and tactics, less plain multitasking.

Check out ground Control, (Free now)

Very fun game with a few plot holes. (If you can scan and tell you destoryed a building with cannons, but you couldn't see the buildings in the first place,... and then there is the fact that you have no orbial cannon strikes, even if we can have a drop ship land RIGHT where you call it,...)


I honestly HATE RT*S* that have you building a base and units in battle. Split time games like RomeTotalWar, and Lords of the Realm are MUCH more fun.

You have a few choices for not having bases. 1. Build bases, raise armies and use those armies to engage in battles. 2. The game simple gives you units in one way or another (something like you get credits in missions and can then buy more troops for your army, upgrade them, etc, or each mission you have access to so many units of the army.)

I'm sure there are other ideas, but those are the main 2. Could be others, but I gota go now.

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Original post by Talroth Check out ground Control, (Free now) Very fun game with a few plot holes. (If you can scan and tell you destoryed a building with cannons, but you couldn't see the buildings in the first place,... and then there is the fact that you have no orbial cannon strikes, even if we can have a drop ship land RIGHT where you call it,...)

I've got both Ground Control and Ground Control 2: Operation Exodus. Plus that GC add-on. Nice games but at times, they got a rough on the edges. Namely when you had to cross a large section of land with little action going on. The dropzone system in GC2 is nice but this also means there's a steady stream of units which comes down to gathering resources to obtain units, only slightly different this time.

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I honestly HATE RT*S* that have you building a base and units in battle. Split time games like RomeTotalWar, and Lords of the Realm are MUCH more fun. You have a few choices for not having bases. 1. Build bases, raise armies and use those armies to engage in battles. 2. The game simple gives you units in one way or another (something like you get credits in missions and can then buy more troops for your army, upgrade them, etc, or each mission you have access to so many units of the army.)

I definitely agree with the split time statement. I see base-building as something of a different time-scale than real-time battles. One of the reasons I want to take it out.
I've chosen the second way, by letting the player select his units before a mission starts. I'm probably keeping the units from the previous mission as a base for the next mission, similar to Codename Panzers, but I haven't decided about the how and what completely.

How do you build new units?

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Original post by Daniel Miller How do you build new units?

Basically, you don't build any new units. You compose your army before the mission starts based on information about the mission (sattelite maps, intelligence reports, things like that).

However, I'm thinking about a reinforcements system for defensive oriented missions that allows you to call in certain units, but haven't decided the exact dynamics of that system yet.
The idea right now is to give the player a certain amount of points before the mission starts, which he then can use to request new units, or he can save them to call in reinforcements during the mission.
But maybe it's a good thing to separate the two, so a player can always call in some reinforcements and doesn't have to worry about saving some points for during the mission? Or maybe it's a good thing to add a planning aspect into the game?

This really depends on how you do it. Here are some fun examples:

Starcraft/Warcraft3:
I think what bothered me the most about the "here is 6 units, get them from point A to B, and collect X hero" maps
was the fact that the game WAS base building, so those missions felt really out of place. More so in starcraft, where your units were weak and disposible in most mission. But, there seemed to be a decent story behind everything,
and the Blizzard team seemed to be more concerned with advancing that than making the levels "good".

Starship Troopers:
More like what has been mentioned. You go arround with 4 units to start, then gain more as the missions progress.
And you get to add new equipment and research to improve your team.
Overall this worked out to be a really fun game, but it got tiering at the endgame because the balancing of the heavy units vs bugs favored the human too much.
It just became borring never being touched by the enemy.

Syndicate/SyndicateWars:
You only have 4 team members, but add new weapons and improvements all the time.
There were only a few types of missions, but overall it worked really well. The balance in the game was great, since the enemy got similar improvements to you,
or better ones, that you got to steal. The BullFrog team was concerned with good gameplay more than having a story.


---So, the lesson? I think the games work if you can make a good game mechanic that keeps the player interested.
If you don't have a good story, you need something that chalanges the player at every turn.
Note that i think Non-base-building RTS tend to play more like RPG's than RTS games.
If you are really going for a RTS, something like Homeworld comes to mind. The base building part doesn't really show at all in the single player games.
The point of the single player being the production of a stable fleet that you can carry though till the end(minus lots of dead fighters).

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Original post by Captain P Basically, you don't build any new units. You compose your army before the mission starts based on information about the mission (sattelite maps, intelligence reports, things like that).

This will probably work reasonably well for a single player, mission based campaign, but what about multiplayer/skirmish? Bear in mind that the vast majority of RTS games are sold on the strength of their multiplayer and skirmish gameplay; many players don't even bother with the single player campaign at all.

Usually, base building is little more than a ball juggling experience. A good example are übermicro games, such as Warcraft III and StarCrap. A notable exception was Total Annihilation, which encouraged neither porc'ing up in a corner (you could get busted with long range artillery... I mean really long range, firing across a dozen screenwidths) nor rushing (defense units were somewhat toughter than offensive ones). At some point, building a bridgehead in enemy territory and managing this very bridgehead while it's under siege is became an epic experience in its own right. This is the kind of base building I want - no "I have a base back home" feeling, but instead a "my base is the location I choose to base my operations on. I can place it anywhere, depending solely on my strategy."

I'm honestly looking forward to Supreme Commander, the inofficial Total Annihilation sequel. Where the "S" really stands for Strategy, where being unseen is as important as deciding whether you want to cluster buildings or spread them out for safety at the cost of efficiency.

You could try deploying those reinforcements as a one-time Paratrooper drop that the player can select on the fly. This way no matter his loadout, he can always count on at least one group of units that he can adapt to the situation at hand. Or you could have resident commanders call in Off-Shore bombardments or Air-Strikes.

Alot of what your suggesting also reminds me alot of Close Combat 2: A Bridge To Far. You should consider checking it out if you haven't seen it already.

I don't particularly mind base building generally, but i perfer games that have a greater emphasis on the units rather than the buildings. As it is the value of a unit on the battlefield is relatively small compared to the buildings that produced them, a single marine in Starcraft won't save you worth a damn, but a barracks will only because it can produce more marines. I kindof liked aspects of WarWinds 2 dispite its other flaws because my buildings were ultimately expendable and couldn't produce units, only upgrade them into different types.

Ok, system for multiplayer without 'base building':

What if you can have 'bases' like they are in real life? Combat bases I mean, not a large base like found in the USA, more like what you would make when you enter a combat zone.

Before the game starts players 'set up' the war zone, and victory conditions. The war zone determins who has what in the area, and that in turn will change how many of what, and how often, you have ready to send into your battlefield.

Maybe you want both teams to be 'assulting' meaning they're moving foreward, and meet somewhere in the middle of the map. They could have limited reinforcements, but makes for a quick game.

You could have one team defending, and the other attacking. They agree how reinforcements can work before the battle starts, each unit can cost so many 'points' or something, so players could agree who gets how many points. They could be even, or one side could get a lot more. Have factors like "Reinforcement Wave Time" factor, or Wave Size factor. Changing these might mean it is more effective to have a few units entering the field close together, or with a cheap Wave size, and very costly Wave Time, all your reinforcements are going to be comming onto the field in one shot.


Now, as I was saying about bases. Bases could be limited to things like defensive bunkers, weapon/ammo stores, watch towers, stationary gun enplacements, medical centers (in single player, having and protecting your med center will mean you get a small portion of your 'killed' troops back later in the game if you can get hurt soldiers there)
Foxholes, trenches, and other things any soldier can build on the fly just before battle. Dragon's Teeth to stop tanks, barbed/razor wire to slow soldiers, land mines to both sides up, :P


In multiplayer (and single player even) you could earn more 'points' by killing the opponets troops, giving you access to more stuff from the 'higherups' in your army.
Also capturing stuff should allow you to increase your firepower. Why blow up that large ammo/fuel dump when you can capture it for yourself? (Fuel dumps also give you a 'fun' tatic of if you can spare the fuel, build a poorly protected dump, that would allow them to swing around your flank to take it, then blow it up yourself and watch the fire works!)
Group of tanks somewhere? Get some infantry units in the area, kill the drivers, and look, :) you have a new tank unit backed up with a partial infantry unit :P

Also, for reinforcements, when you go to call in reinforcements, on the screen you pick what you want and give orders for where they enter or whatever, you could have access to view the progress of the battles around yours. Calling in reinforcements means while YOUR battle might go well, you could lose many others around yours. You win the battle, and lose the war. That would keep people from just flooding their battle with EVERY unit they can get their hands on. Not only do you have to worry about YOUR fight, but the war in general.
The game then becomes, "who can win more effeciently?" If you FORCE your oppenet to call in more reinforcements, you might still lose on that field, but other fronts collapse and then the 'winner' finds he is out of reinfocements, and has enemies entering the field all around them.

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Original post by Thygrrr Usually, base building is little more than a ball juggling experience. A good example are übermicro games, such as Warcraft III and StarCrap. A notable exception was Total Annihilation, which encouraged neither porc'ing up in a corner (you could get busted with long range artillery... I mean really long range, firing across a dozen screenwidths) nor rushing (defense units were somewhat toughter than offensive ones). At some point, building a bridgehead in enemy territory and managing this very bridgehead while it's under siege is became an epic experience in its own right. This is the kind of base building I want - no "I have a base back home" feeling, but instead a "my base is the location I choose to base my operations on. I can place it anywhere, depending solely on my strategy." I'm honestly looking forward to Supreme Commander, the inofficial Total Annihilation sequel. Where the "S" really stands for Strategy, where being unseen is as important as deciding whether you want to cluster buildings or spread them out for safety at the cost of efficiency.

Considering the rest of your post, I don't see why you call Starcraft "StarCrap". Base layout and location are hugely important. Plus, there isn't simply a "home" base once the game has been going on for a while, because you have two or three equally-sized bases.

I rather like RTSs without base-building. To be precise, I rather like RTSs where you can't assemble a large concrete building, or grow and train a soldier, in a few minutes.

I like the ideal of ammunition conveys very much indeed. I would think that the effect of running out of ammo should depend upon the unit. A tank could still run over infantry, for example, and infantry could still engage in melee combat. But an unarmed tank vs. an artillery gun or unarmed infantry vs. armed infantry should be a forgone conclusion.

Presumably, more powerful units have more expensive and therefore scarcer ammo. I'd expect it to make for a style of play where the powerful units will be near the ammo store whilst the weaker units (or at least the units which are not as dependent upon ammo) can safely roam at a considerable distance.

You say no machine-gun turrets and suchlike, which I feel is unlikely: lots of combat takes place near heavily-defended strongly-built bases, simply because they are of strategic value. Unless you have a particular reason why it wouldn't happen, I would expect at least some missions to feature previously-constructed permanent installations.

Ammo drops are likely, if the circumstances merit it. Depending upon the nature of your military force, you might be able to buy ammo drops at will, given enough currency. If you have multiple human-playable sides in the game, this kind of thing might be a distinction between the two.

Infantry units should be able to take guns and ammo from defeated units, both your own and your enemy's.

Some well-trained units should be able to commandeer enemy vehicles. Failing that, they should be able to sabotage vehicles and their ammo.

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Original post by Daniel Miller Considering the rest of your post, I don't see why you call Starcraft "StarCrap". Base layout and location are hugely important. Plus, there isn't simply a "home" base once the game has been going on for a while, because you have two or three equally-sized bases.

Admittedly, I don't like SC for the weak UI (right click controls, very limited squad size), poor command queueing (at least in the initial release version - I never touched it afterwards, save for two mediocre games of Brood Wars).

I think SC lacks a lot. Units need to stop to fire, and if they do, they always hit. This nullifies a lot of the battle dynamics I love so much about the TA or C&C Series.

WarCraft and StarCraft rarely encourage you to build more than one base, and usually, there's a particular build of "defense towers, producion buildings, crucial buildings" from the edge towards the center". Since there are only two defense tower varieties (maybe three? anyway, Total Annihilation has well over a dozen different ones per faction, most of which have many uses), base defense is merely a density problem.

The game introduces "artificial" strategies through Templar Drops & whatnot, mostly because it fails to have a combat/ballistics system allowing to crack open a walled-up base or fend off an enemy charge in the open by using just the right units.

Yes, it's true, I'm siding for Total Annihilation in the epic TA vs. SC discussion :) But I'm not dumb, and StarCra(p/ft)'s success is certainly justified and it's a VERY good game. Still, TA is better (IMHO!), but it didn't become the grand success SC became because Cavedog did not have a cash cow like Diablo to fuel their advertising machinery like Blizzard did. Also, TA is more complex and has a much longer learning curve (with well over 150 different units with the expansion sets). TA's weakness was the absence of a good campaign, which was still an important feature back then (I think the success/failure of a game is solely decided by the popularity of its multi player part).

I didn't play it much, but weren't the old Cannon Fodder games basically an RTS without base-building? Or possibly even X-com 3?

Personally I think the game would need to be very different than just having a big army and no base. An attack in an RTS is norammly just something you do and then build up for another, or expand your base etc. Just having the attack optionmeans you need to make the units a lot more engaging to the player, so they are happy just to do unit-management the whole time.

To pilfer part of Thygrrr's post:

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Admittedly, I don't like SC for the weak UI (right click controls, very limited squad size), poor command queueing (at least in the initial release version - I never touched it afterwards, save for two mediocre games of Brood Wars). I think SC lacks a lot. Units need to stop to fire, and if they do, they always hit. This nullifies a lot of the battle dynamics I love so much about the TA or C&C Series. WarCraft and StarCraft rarely encourage you to build more than one base, and usually, there's a particular build of "defense towers, producion buildings, crucial buildings" from the edge towards the center". Since there are only two defense tower varieties (maybe three? anyway, Total Annihilation has well over a dozen different ones per faction, most of which have many uses), base defense is merely a density problem. ...

I like the UI a lot on BW. I can understand the frustration with 12-unit-selection rule (I bet every player feels that every game!), but it does make it more difficult to move incredible-sized armies arount the map. I'm 99% sure this wasn't the intended reason, but it's helped balance the game.

However, what's wrong with the right-click-to-move scheme? The earlier C&C games did the horribly, with the same button for selecting units and for moving them. It was impossible to play that game quickly, becuase your hand would slip, and instead of moving your units, you would deselect everything.

On your "stop to fire" point, this adds a lot to the game, in my opinion. It means that you can't quickly retreat while dealing damage, you can't easily dodge shots/spells while attacking, and you can't attack while setting up a stronger formation for your units.

Also, building other bases is absolutely needed. Many games end up with 3, 4 or 5 bases for each side. The major exception is when one player succumbs to a rush, but from my experience this isn't the norm.

[Edited by - Daniel Miller on November 25, 2005 3:48:57 PM]

I love this idea, but you can't simply make your game a standard RTS without any buildings.

Ultimately, the base building determines the quantity and the quality of the units you have available to fight. You destroy your enemy's base to cripple his access to these units. It might be a bit flawed and unrealistic, but it's reasonably good at its job! So you have to find a way to replace these mechanics.

The supply lines intrigue me. It's much better than the omni-present resources in most RTSs -- I always found it hard to believe that resources gathered in a distant base can be instantly used to build something in my main base.

Another flaw with this simplistic method is that it eliminates the strategy of surrounding the enemies until their resources are so limited that you can crush them easily (the exact word eludes me right now) -- a very useful strategy in real war, but not in RTSs.

Slowing down the rate of fire when low on ammo seems like an excellent option to me. You could explain it like they're not out of ammo, but rather using their emergency reserves of ammo.

But you can't just throw in supply units. Micro-managing supply lines could be very annoying. You need to streamline this feature. There could be a system of waypoints that the suppliers use to go to the battlefronts. They should also start moving around without you ordering them, and there could be the option to escort them, and do things like choosing a faster but more dangerous route, and stuff like that.