In defense of hard counters in real time strategy games(waywardstrategy.com)
waywardstrategy.com
In defense of hard counters in real time strategy games
https://waywardstrategy.com/2021/07/27/hard-counters/
193 comments
SupCom has remained interesting to RTS players long past its expiration date. The official servers have been down for years! Games are played on unofficial servers now.[0]
Real military strategy[a] is all hard counters. Anti-ship missiles barrages need only one to land to knock an aircraft carrier out. Stealth aircraft are sitting ducks over integrated anti-air defense, over blue water the stealthiest plane is invisible until it's on top of you. Infantry require air superiority to occupy a territory. War is extremely unforgiving. This translates well into a SupCom game mechanic.
[a] Technically tactics at the scale of SupCom
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbBQEPV_6qg
Real military strategy[a] is all hard counters. Anti-ship missiles barrages need only one to land to knock an aircraft carrier out. Stealth aircraft are sitting ducks over integrated anti-air defense, over blue water the stealthiest plane is invisible until it's on top of you. Infantry require air superiority to occupy a territory. War is extremely unforgiving. This translates well into a SupCom game mechanic.
[a] Technically tactics at the scale of SupCom
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbBQEPV_6qg
Not an expert, but urban warfare is more complicated and doesn't have as much 'hard counters'; they had to fight tooth and nail, door to door to (re)take cities in the middle-east.
Of course, if you take the gulf war you can see it in action, with most of Iraq's tanks and airplanes being taken out via airstrikes.
Of course, if you take the gulf war you can see it in action, with most of Iraq's tanks and airplanes being taken out via airstrikes.
Yes, it is perhaps at a level between the tactical and strategic that hard counters mostly exist. At the highest strategic level, hard counters are nonexistent in a game theory way. Institutions like the UN and the US military prevent much of anything significant happening at the greatest levels of geopolitics. This can be seen in the abundance of world wars in the early 20th century, and their absence in the late 20th and now 21st centuries. Then at the utmost tactical level it is truly man versus man. There are few, if any, hard counters for that.
It's interesting that you pick Cybran SACUs as your example; I think the Seraphim ACU/SACUs are more often held up as OP units. Do the Cybran SACUs have any anti-navy defenses? Also worth noting that the Monkeylord doesn't have any hard counters, since it is equipped with both torps and light AA.
Also FAF is amazing, if anyone reading this is interested I suggest you check out some replays on GyleCast:
https://www.youtube.com/user/felixlighta
Also FAF is amazing, if anyone reading this is interested I suggest you check out some replays on GyleCast:
https://www.youtube.com/user/felixlighta
>I think the Seraphim ACU/SACUs are more often held up as OP units.
It was less of a statement against how OP they are and more of a statement about how they seem to exist outside of the rock/paper/scissors mechanic that almost all other units are subject to. Seraphim SACUs can of course telesnipe and wreak havok, but would struggle against a swarm of gunships or bombers as they lack AA.
>Do the Cybran SACUs have any anti-navy defenses?
There's not a whole lot they can do against naval units (apart from set up shields and TMLs), but then again there's not a whole lot that naval units can do against them if they just walk away from the shore.
>Also worth noting that the Monkeylord doesn't have any hard counters, since it is equipped with both torps and light AA.
You're looking at 50DPS with the torps and 80DPS with the AA. Not exactly comparable to the 400DPS long-range bolters and 4000 DPS face laser!
In terms of hard counters:
- It would lose to two T3 heavy gunships (3k mass total).
- Naval-wise, a pair of Salems (4.5k mass total) could complete nullify its torps with anti-torps (4 torps/4s for the ML vs 2 anti-torps/3.8s per salem) and fire back at a combined 200DPS.
(For people unfamiliar with SupCom, a Monkeylord is a giant, late game unit that costs 20k mass.)
It was less of a statement against how OP they are and more of a statement about how they seem to exist outside of the rock/paper/scissors mechanic that almost all other units are subject to. Seraphim SACUs can of course telesnipe and wreak havok, but would struggle against a swarm of gunships or bombers as they lack AA.
>Do the Cybran SACUs have any anti-navy defenses?
There's not a whole lot they can do against naval units (apart from set up shields and TMLs), but then again there's not a whole lot that naval units can do against them if they just walk away from the shore.
>Also worth noting that the Monkeylord doesn't have any hard counters, since it is equipped with both torps and light AA.
You're looking at 50DPS with the torps and 80DPS with the AA. Not exactly comparable to the 400DPS long-range bolters and 4000 DPS face laser!
In terms of hard counters:
- It would lose to two T3 heavy gunships (3k mass total).
- Naval-wise, a pair of Salems (4.5k mass total) could complete nullify its torps with anti-torps (4 torps/4s for the ML vs 2 anti-torps/3.8s per salem) and fire back at a combined 200DPS.
(For people unfamiliar with SupCom, a Monkeylord is a giant, late game unit that costs 20k mass.)
I should get back on that one, I loved playing it at the time (against CPU, never a fan of online play), just building layers of defenses and have a constant stream of CPU forces get destroyed against it.
The one I'm thinking of had early support for multi-core and multi-screen, with the minimap / overview on the other screen. But it was still constrained; would have loved to test that defense of mine against all 7 other CPU players on a big map. Might try it again on my newer system.
The one I'm thinking of had early support for multi-core and multi-screen, with the minimap / overview on the other screen. But it was still constrained; would have loved to test that defense of mine against all 7 other CPU players on a big map. Might try it again on my newer system.
Yeah, loved doing that exact same thing too :-) Turtling was incredibly fascinating in SC for some reason. Especially once you built the Tier 4 infinite power generator from one of the races.
And yes, I tried it couple years ago and unfortunately I don't think it's that well optimized for multi-core CPUs, the game was massively slowing down for me, but my i7 was at like 50% usage at most.
And yes, I tried it couple years ago and unfortunately I don't think it's that well optimized for multi-core CPUs, the game was massively slowing down for me, but my i7 was at like 50% usage at most.
Just FYI, there is a fairly widespread issue with Nvidia drivers causing a slowdown (no matter how fast your PC). The game was basically unplayable for me until I found the solution.
The fix is to run 'd3d_windowscursor' in the game console.
See https://forum.faforever.com/topic/779/nvidia-driver-performa...
There is also a mod available through FaF that runs this automatically for you at the start of each game.
The fix is to run 'd3d_windowscursor' in the game console.
See https://forum.faforever.com/topic/779/nvidia-driver-performa...
There is also a mod available through FaF that runs this automatically for you at the start of each game.
> Turtling was incredibly fascinating in SC for some reason.
Well, surely the long-range artillery and shields have something to do with that ! ;)
Well, surely the long-range artillery and shields have something to do with that ! ;)
If you're playing against AI in SupCom, try the LOUD mod. I've been playing it for a year or two, and found it's much improved (CPU usage and tactics) over the stock AI.
https://www.moddb.com/mods/loud-ai-supreme-commander-forged-...
https://www.moddb.com/mods/loud-ai-supreme-commander-forged-...
This is the tldr of hard counter play in most RTS games. It’s fun for experienced players who understand the rules/decision tree and enjoy learning the tricks and edge cases - terrible for new players who just get crushed by rules they don’t know and can’t know without going online for 10 hours.
In many cases, the joy of RTS for new players is map control. Hard counters tend to break this gameplay loop for them as they don’t understand how they can lose when they had 80% of the map. Conversely pure map control games get boring for pros who get tired of “take more territory, get bigger units” play styles.
Iron harvest was a recent curious entrant to the RTS genre where the game depends heavily on positioning but doesn’t grant you large bonuses from controlling territory. They allocate just enough bonus to ensure the game ends eventually with a clear winner.
In many cases, the joy of RTS for new players is map control. Hard counters tend to break this gameplay loop for them as they don’t understand how they can lose when they had 80% of the map. Conversely pure map control games get boring for pros who get tired of “take more territory, get bigger units” play styles.
Iron harvest was a recent curious entrant to the RTS genre where the game depends heavily on positioning but doesn’t grant you large bonuses from controlling territory. They allocate just enough bonus to ensure the game ends eventually with a clear winner.
10 hours isn't much.
Also new players might still lose with 80% of the map because they might not know how to scale their economy properly, or, in RTSes, just lack the speed to execute that.
Also new players might still lose with 80% of the map because they might not know how to scale their economy properly, or, in RTSes, just lack the speed to execute that.
Considering a “long game” is in the 80 hour range of play time, 10 hours for startup can be somewhat excessive.
It’s true that new players may think they are in control when they are really not - but it’s easier to understand when the other side had larger/more units.
There is a reason why new players in RTS games tend to overbuild defenses - they’re default goal is to play for and secure the map.
It’s true that new players may think they are in control when they are really not - but it’s easier to understand when the other side had larger/more units.
There is a reason why new players in RTS games tend to overbuild defenses - they’re default goal is to play for and secure the map.
If only - defenses tend to be overbuilt in the main base, and expansion forgotten until they run out of resources...
I don't think you're right. Really good players will sometimes stop taking the game seriously after building a colossal economy, then they do stuff like build 1000 t1 bombers and try and win with that. It's usually horribly inefficient, but it's definitely possible to win with the wrong unit, if your economy is much larger than the other player's.
Not someone who played the game much, but a quick glance at the stats suggest that the size of a SACU death ball would be limited by a nuke? I also concede it'd be hard to build a nuke without other players noticing.
Nukes are fairly limited in their use.
The missiles are expensive and take a long time to build (I blieve around 8k vs 3.6k for an anti-nuke), and move across the map so slowly with such a huge warning (pulsating hazmat icon as a radar signature, plus a "strategic launch detected" blaring out the speakers of every player is a bit of a giveaway!) that they can't really hit anything except a stationary target.
Most successful strategies I've seen with them involve rushing T3 and firing a missile from a stationary launcher before the enemy can build antinukes, sabotaging the enemy's antinuke installations with a wave of strategic bombers, or using nuclear subs/Yolona Oss to surprise/overwhelm an enemy with antinukes very late game.
The missiles are expensive and take a long time to build (I blieve around 8k vs 3.6k for an anti-nuke), and move across the map so slowly with such a huge warning (pulsating hazmat icon as a radar signature, plus a "strategic launch detected" blaring out the speakers of every player is a bit of a giveaway!) that they can't really hit anything except a stationary target.
Most successful strategies I've seen with them involve rushing T3 and firing a missile from a stationary launcher before the enemy can build antinukes, sabotaging the enemy's antinuke installations with a wave of strategic bombers, or using nuclear subs/Yolona Oss to surprise/overwhelm an enemy with antinukes very late game.
I think its cool seeing what factors are considered in RTS balancing. I guess an equivalent for fighting games would be invincible vs non-invincible DPs or weird things like movement options.
In RTS games balancing seems a bit more quantifiable. In fighting games there is a lot of guessing at what actually counters what unless its extremely obvious. Its hard to tell if a matchup or strat is good/bad due to the character/move properties or if its because one player is way better.
In RTS games balancing seems a bit more quantifiable. In fighting games there is a lot of guessing at what actually counters what unless its extremely obvious. Its hard to tell if a matchup or strat is good/bad due to the character/move properties or if its because one player is way better.
Well, fighting games do offer high crush/low crush options, where hurtboxes (the vulnerable portion of your character) are shifted higher or lower, to make a move suited to cleanly beat either approaches from the air or sweeps. Beneficial properties like this can be balanced by a number of things -- speed, recovery time, damage, range, for a few examples!
I realise you may already be familiar, but I figured it'd be worth expanding a little for other readers.
I realise you may already be familiar, but I figured it'd be worth expanding a little for other readers.
High / Low options are rarely the option people think about at the high level. That's just a simple mixup (worst case scenario, you're forced to guess in case you can't react in time).
What he was talking about is the DP, the "Dragon Punch", also known as Shoryuken, that Ryu / Ken are famous for in Street Fighter.
The mindgame is that Shoryuken is 100% invincible: no matter what your opponent is doing, the Shoryuken / Dragon Punch will have infinite "priority" so to speak, it punches through all of your opponent's options because your hurtbox completely disappears during the move. That's right, your hurtbox is not merely "shifted", its gone. You're fully invincible.
Of course, for balancing purposes, the Shoryuken has high-cooldown and high-periods of counter-hit status. Which means that although the Shoryuken "beats" all other attacks in the game, it also loses to a simple block into counter-hit.
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So the mind game becomes one of timing. You approach the opponent, making them _THINK_ you're about to throw out an attack. They dragon-punch in response to your movement. But instead of attacking, you just block, and bam. You beat a player who spams dragon punch.
Because of this extremely heavy "Dragon Punch wins vs all attacks" mindgame, there's a rich strategy / dance involved called footsies where the two players try to get each other to push the attack button first (especially if in a mirror match, Ryu vs Ryu or Ken vs Ken). The 2nd one to attack wins, because of the strange property of invincibility.
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As far as Fighting Games go, the "Shoryuken" / Dragon punch is most similar to this "hard counter" found in RTS games. Shoryuken "hard counters" all other attacks in the game.
While "simply holding the blocking button" consistently beats Shoryuken. Its a hard counter, always going to win if and only if you know exactly what the opponent will do.
Because these options require understanding your opponent's mindset (when / timing of their use of Dragon Punches and/or blocking), they lead to incredibly fun mindgames.
What he was talking about is the DP, the "Dragon Punch", also known as Shoryuken, that Ryu / Ken are famous for in Street Fighter.
The mindgame is that Shoryuken is 100% invincible: no matter what your opponent is doing, the Shoryuken / Dragon Punch will have infinite "priority" so to speak, it punches through all of your opponent's options because your hurtbox completely disappears during the move. That's right, your hurtbox is not merely "shifted", its gone. You're fully invincible.
Of course, for balancing purposes, the Shoryuken has high-cooldown and high-periods of counter-hit status. Which means that although the Shoryuken "beats" all other attacks in the game, it also loses to a simple block into counter-hit.
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So the mind game becomes one of timing. You approach the opponent, making them _THINK_ you're about to throw out an attack. They dragon-punch in response to your movement. But instead of attacking, you just block, and bam. You beat a player who spams dragon punch.
Because of this extremely heavy "Dragon Punch wins vs all attacks" mindgame, there's a rich strategy / dance involved called footsies where the two players try to get each other to push the attack button first (especially if in a mirror match, Ryu vs Ryu or Ken vs Ken). The 2nd one to attack wins, because of the strange property of invincibility.
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As far as Fighting Games go, the "Shoryuken" / Dragon punch is most similar to this "hard counter" found in RTS games. Shoryuken "hard counters" all other attacks in the game.
While "simply holding the blocking button" consistently beats Shoryuken. Its a hard counter, always going to win if and only if you know exactly what the opponent will do.
Because these options require understanding your opponent's mindset (when / timing of their use of Dragon Punches and/or blocking), they lead to incredibly fun mindgames.
High/low crush is different than high/low options. He's talking about things like Street Fighter's Rose s.HK going over attacks that hit low or sliding attacks that duck under attacks that hit high.
Also people cannot SRK/DP on reaction to all attacks or the game would be completely broken so saying '2nd to attack wins' is a bit odd since it's only in the situation where both players use an invincible move.
Also people cannot SRK/DP on reaction to all attacks or the game would be completely broken so saying '2nd to attack wins' is a bit odd since it's only in the situation where both players use an invincible move.
I would argue that it's a bit different in RTS games because there are different unit types you can bring into a single battle.
In StarCraft 2 if your opponent builds one unit there's another unit that hard counters it but you rarely bring just one kind of unit into battle last the very early game. Early zerglings are countered by marines are countered by hellions are countered by roaches are countered by marauders are countered by flying mutalisks are countered by marines again...etc etc.
If you bring marines and marauders and some hellons with healing medivacs it becomes about numbers and engagement positions. Sometimes you have no chance of winning but you have a chance of getting an economical trade that will put you in a better position in the future - without the trade the next fight your opponent might have too many units for you to win.
I guess it depends on what game you're playing but in RTS there's the fight you're in, the economy, production,upgrades, as well as the overall balance of the current game that all can change the way the game is going.
In StarCraft 2 if your opponent builds one unit there's another unit that hard counters it but you rarely bring just one kind of unit into battle last the very early game. Early zerglings are countered by marines are countered by hellions are countered by roaches are countered by marauders are countered by flying mutalisks are countered by marines again...etc etc.
If you bring marines and marauders and some hellons with healing medivacs it becomes about numbers and engagement positions. Sometimes you have no chance of winning but you have a chance of getting an economical trade that will put you in a better position in the future - without the trade the next fight your opponent might have too many units for you to win.
I guess it depends on what game you're playing but in RTS there's the fight you're in, the economy, production,upgrades, as well as the overall balance of the current game that all can change the way the game is going.
StarCraft 2 doesn't seem to have hard counters aside from Immortals from earlier builds. (Zerglings beat Immortals. Immortals beat Roaches), back when the 10 dmg cap vs shields was a thing.
You have to play red alert to really know what the author is talking about. 50 riflemen probably loses to one flametank in command and conquer. Even the Immortal doesn't stand up to such odds and/or resource advantage. The flame tank isn't a capital ship either (not a battlecruiser or a mammoth tank in C&C world), it's just an anti-infantry tank that is highly effective at it's role.
That is, I'm pretty sure 50 Roaches beat one Immortal. And that's the closest thing to a hard counter I've seen from the StarCraft world.
You have to play red alert to really know what the author is talking about. 50 riflemen probably loses to one flametank in command and conquer. Even the Immortal doesn't stand up to such odds and/or resource advantage. The flame tank isn't a capital ship either (not a battlecruiser or a mammoth tank in C&C world), it's just an anti-infantry tank that is highly effective at it's role.
That is, I'm pretty sure 50 Roaches beat one Immortal. And that's the closest thing to a hard counter I've seen from the StarCraft world.
3 colossus and some zealots to slow advance vs 50 marines is a close fight and much cheaper on the Protoss side.
Dark Templar vs anything on the ground without detection? Burrowed investors against anything without detection?
Dark Templar vs anything on the ground without detection? Burrowed investors against anything without detection?
Colossus vs Marines is closer to the hard counter idea, but Flame Tank vs Riflemen makes the Colossus vs Marine fight look fair.
The "Stealth vs Detection" thing isn't quite the same. When you have a mixed-army (ex: Light Tanks + Flame Tanks) go up against another mixed army (ex: Riflemen + Rocket Launchers), the "Hard Counter" remains in fact, a hard counter.
No amount of "support" will allow those Riflemen to damage the Flametank in any reasonable manner. (And Light Tanks may not be able to damage Riflemen, but Riflemen can't damage Light tanks either). The few rocket soldiers you have allow some degree of DPS, but its just a matchup destined to lose no matter the support you put into the mix. In all situations in all manners of various support and/or mixed army compositions, the Riflemen will be useless against Flame Tanks.
Riflemen don't do much damage (maybe 1HP??) to Flame Tanks. Riflemen are slower than Flame Tanks, while Flame Tanks one-shot Riflemen with a large area-of-effect damage. Flame Tanks also kill Riflemen by movement (if you move into a squad of Riflemen, they all get squished before the flames even come out). The Riflemen have to constantly micro away from the Tank's movement to remain alive.
Effectively: imagine if those Colossus in SC2 had armor that only took 1-dmg from Marines, had special code to "step" on Marines to kill them (aka: instant-kill any marines that are under the Colossus), and had a movement speed roughly 2.5x faster than Marines. Also imagine that Marines didn't have stimpacks. Colossus retain the area-of-effect lasers, except the lasers one-shot marines. And you're beginning to see how hopeless Flametank vs Riflemen look like in C&C.
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In contrast, 12 Zealots will probably beat 12 Dark Templar (or roughly go even there-abouts) as long as detection is nearby. Its a very different mechanic from the C&C-style "Hard Counter".
A "Hard Counter" remains a counter, even in the presence of supporting units.
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Starcraft 1 / Starcraft 2 just aren't as "counter-heavy" as other RTS games. In Age of Empires: Scouts lose vs Pikemen. Archers lose against Scouts. Castles lose to Trebuchets.
Age of Empires 2 isn't as "hard counter" as C&C, but its closer to the spirit of C&C's hard counters than anything in the Starcraft / Starcraft 2 world.
Case in point: A 4800 HP Castle shoots 4-arrows of 11-damage against 35-HP Crossbowmen who shoot only 1-arrow of 1-damage back in the same time period. (The 8-damage a Crossbow normally deals is turned into only 1-damage vs stone-structures like Castles or Walls) The Castle "Hard Counters" Archers. There's no composition where an archer would ever be useful at anti-Castle warfare in Age of Empires 2.
(Castles don't truly "counter" Archers however, because Castles can't move. Within the scope of mobile armies, various units get random bonuses against each other however, which plays somewhere in between SC2's soft-counter style vs C&C's hard-counter style. Nonetheless, strong players will bring 20 villagers to combat if only to build a castle during a fight, because of the ability for a "pop-up Castle" to beat so many different kinds of units. Especially in the Castle Age... the "Hard Counters" for Castles is locked away in Imperial Age (Trebuchets and/or Bombard Cannons))
The "Stealth vs Detection" thing isn't quite the same. When you have a mixed-army (ex: Light Tanks + Flame Tanks) go up against another mixed army (ex: Riflemen + Rocket Launchers), the "Hard Counter" remains in fact, a hard counter.
No amount of "support" will allow those Riflemen to damage the Flametank in any reasonable manner. (And Light Tanks may not be able to damage Riflemen, but Riflemen can't damage Light tanks either). The few rocket soldiers you have allow some degree of DPS, but its just a matchup destined to lose no matter the support you put into the mix. In all situations in all manners of various support and/or mixed army compositions, the Riflemen will be useless against Flame Tanks.
Riflemen don't do much damage (maybe 1HP??) to Flame Tanks. Riflemen are slower than Flame Tanks, while Flame Tanks one-shot Riflemen with a large area-of-effect damage. Flame Tanks also kill Riflemen by movement (if you move into a squad of Riflemen, they all get squished before the flames even come out). The Riflemen have to constantly micro away from the Tank's movement to remain alive.
Effectively: imagine if those Colossus in SC2 had armor that only took 1-dmg from Marines, had special code to "step" on Marines to kill them (aka: instant-kill any marines that are under the Colossus), and had a movement speed roughly 2.5x faster than Marines. Also imagine that Marines didn't have stimpacks. Colossus retain the area-of-effect lasers, except the lasers one-shot marines. And you're beginning to see how hopeless Flametank vs Riflemen look like in C&C.
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In contrast, 12 Zealots will probably beat 12 Dark Templar (or roughly go even there-abouts) as long as detection is nearby. Its a very different mechanic from the C&C-style "Hard Counter".
A "Hard Counter" remains a counter, even in the presence of supporting units.
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Starcraft 1 / Starcraft 2 just aren't as "counter-heavy" as other RTS games. In Age of Empires: Scouts lose vs Pikemen. Archers lose against Scouts. Castles lose to Trebuchets.
Age of Empires 2 isn't as "hard counter" as C&C, but its closer to the spirit of C&C's hard counters than anything in the Starcraft / Starcraft 2 world.
Case in point: A 4800 HP Castle shoots 4-arrows of 11-damage against 35-HP Crossbowmen who shoot only 1-arrow of 1-damage back in the same time period. (The 8-damage a Crossbow normally deals is turned into only 1-damage vs stone-structures like Castles or Walls) The Castle "Hard Counters" Archers. There's no composition where an archer would ever be useful at anti-Castle warfare in Age of Empires 2.
(Castles don't truly "counter" Archers however, because Castles can't move. Within the scope of mobile armies, various units get random bonuses against each other however, which plays somewhere in between SC2's soft-counter style vs C&C's hard-counter style. Nonetheless, strong players will bring 20 villagers to combat if only to build a castle during a fight, because of the ability for a "pop-up Castle" to beat so many different kinds of units. Especially in the Castle Age... the "Hard Counters" for Castles is locked away in Imperial Age (Trebuchets and/or Bombard Cannons))
In sc2 it's sort of armor that makes that....I unupgraded marines against ultralisks maybe.
The HP & DPS explanation only goes so far :
Consider speed-UNupgraded Zealots vs stutter-stepped Vultures !
Zealots have a clear advantage in terms of HP an (most likely) DPS, and yet they lose badly...
Consider speed-UNupgraded Zealots vs stutter-stepped Vultures !
Zealots have a clear advantage in terms of HP an (most likely) DPS, and yet they lose badly...
Flametanks are faster than infantry in Command and Conquer. IIRC, Riflemen and Flametanks have roughly the same range as well.
Flametanks have pretty much every advantage over riflemen:
* Cost in terms of combat efficiency: one flametank can take out multiple dozens of riflemen.
* Flametanks have more speed.
* Flametanks require less micro / APM. To keep riflemen alive vs Flametanks, you need to constantly micro-them outside of the Flametank's movement (by default, riflemen sit still and shoot their rifles. As the flametank approaches, they get run over and instant-killed before the flametank even fires a shot).
APM-advantage, Movement advantage, cost-efficiency, DPS, armor. Everything. Everything about the Flame Tank beats Riflemen on every aspect you can possibly imagine.
Flametanks have pretty much every advantage over riflemen:
* Cost in terms of combat efficiency: one flametank can take out multiple dozens of riflemen.
* Flametanks have more speed.
* Flametanks require less micro / APM. To keep riflemen alive vs Flametanks, you need to constantly micro-them outside of the Flametank's movement (by default, riflemen sit still and shoot their rifles. As the flametank approaches, they get run over and instant-killed before the flametank even fires a shot).
APM-advantage, Movement advantage, cost-efficiency, DPS, armor. Everything. Everything about the Flame Tank beats Riflemen on every aspect you can possibly imagine.
I meant this about the article's HP&DPS being sufficient to explain a generalist unit's power, not this specific case where huge damage type bonuses and penalties are involved...
I know Apex Legends balancing is pretty aggregate stat based and with each release they monitor aggregate stats like what % of X character is on the winning team over all games or what % of X character killed Y character as well as different team compositions, along with similar stats for individual weapons, to try to balance the overall engagement statistics as much as possible.
Dota has an interesting approach. They collect tons of statistics, but ultimately the game design comes down to one person, and they complement the stats with a lot of interviews with top ranked players to get their subjective perspective.
The end result is the game has gotten better balanced continuously with time. There were a handful of patches that were a regression, but usually are on top of it pretty fast.
One of the more pernicious problems they've faced is the team that holds the base on the bottom half of the map has consistently had an advantage, as much as 5%. This appears to be related to the perspective being 3d in the shape of top down, vs a literal 2d top down view. They've tried a few different ways to balance this, but what's ended up working best is trading it off vs first pick in the lineup drafting phase of the game start.
Zynga was infamous for a stats driven approach, but there it was all about tricking people into maxing out the micro transactions :(
The end result is the game has gotten better balanced continuously with time. There were a handful of patches that were a regression, but usually are on top of it pretty fast.
One of the more pernicious problems they've faced is the team that holds the base on the bottom half of the map has consistently had an advantage, as much as 5%. This appears to be related to the perspective being 3d in the shape of top down, vs a literal 2d top down view. They've tried a few different ways to balance this, but what's ended up working best is trading it off vs first pick in the lineup drafting phase of the game start.
Zynga was infamous for a stats driven approach, but there it was all about tricking people into maxing out the micro transactions :(
I made a comment about trees, but the other issue is that the map is super asymmetric. The bottom half (radiant) has a generally safer jungle and a very difficult to contest small pull (always been this way. Camp has just changed over time). The top team (dire) has a worse jungle, but it is closer to Roshan. The problem is people don't know how to use Roshan well (either capturing it or using the aegis), so that advantage isn't realized unless the team is at the top levels of the game.
I think the perspective issue is there. But its not the entire 5%
I think the perspective issue is there. But its not the entire 5%
> One of the more pernicious problems they've faced is the team that holds the base on the bottom half of the map has consistently had an advantage, as much as 5%. This appears to be related to the perspective being 3d in the shape of top down, vs a literal 2d top down view. They've tried a few different ways to balance this, but what's ended up working best is trading it off vs first pick in the lineup drafting phase of the game start.
The opposite to "the enemy's gate is down"
The opposite to "the enemy's gate is down"
Exactly this - the ability to re-orient your view in a game (or in your mind in the case of the "enemy gate") can be a huge advantage. I personally play much better on bottom side in MOBA games and I have never understood why it can't be flipped. Even if the map is not 'symmetrical' the players could adapt to that change, rather than having to adapt to the change in side each game.
valve collects statistics, yes. Are they used? Who knows, there's hardly any transparency in the balancing process. I will say that Icefrog has (supposedly) been in charge since WC3, back when there was no conceivable way they could have collected meaningful statistics..
I also haven't seen definitive sources about consultations with top players. I've heard about bouncing ideas off pros in the distant past, but not with any regularity, and not recently.
"Better balanced continuously with time" is pretty subjective..
I also haven't seen definitive sources about consultations with top players. I've heard about bouncing ideas off pros in the distant past, but not with any regularity, and not recently.
"Better balanced continuously with time" is pretty subjective..
Did they try rotating the camera 180 degrees?
I can understand how this might be confusing. Like a mirror track in Mario Kart, it would make the map feel totally different.
I can understand how this might be confusing. Like a mirror track in Mario Kart, it would make the map feel totally different.
Its really difficult. The exact placement of individual trees in the game matters a lot and it affects line of sight, which is a key component to Dota. If you flipped the view, not only would it just be weird, but what is visible can change I think based on the camera position. A tree that blocks a path in one camera position doesn't block it in another. A single tree's position sounds trivial, but navigating them is crucial at mid and high levels of play.
This is really perceptive and on point. I think something a lot of casual observers miss about Dota is it's a game of momentum with very small edges that accumulate. Compared to the other MOBAs it's the game that punishes you for a single error far more harshly.
It certainly is confusing. I remember that someone once made a video with the flipped map and most of the comments were about how weird it appeared: https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/5rmbd3/
However, I wonder this is something that people would get used to, if they played it for a while. As far as I know, it was never seriously tried anywhere.
However, I wonder this is something that people would get used to, if they played it for a while. As far as I know, it was never seriously tried anywhere.
So, I suspect why they haven't gone with an approach like that is they want to preserve the layout for spectators. Dota is the biggest purse in all of esports, and they take the spectatorship quite seriously as a result.
as i recall, spectators receive game data, not a video stream. you can spectate in VR.
so during real tournaments they could just broadcast from a spectator in the “standard” view.
so during real tournaments they could just broadcast from a spectator in the “standard” view.
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This is really interesting - could you share a source on how Valve/Icefrog make balancing decisions?
Zero-K does it too for the different factory matchups :
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/278908415756206080/86...
(I assume this is for ranked 1vs1 rather than casual lobsterpot though ?)
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/278908415756206080/86...
(I assume this is for ranked 1vs1 rather than casual lobsterpot though ?)
I feel like there’s been little going on in RTS land. Did I miss any significant releases?
Maybe there's some underground scene for hardcore RTS players, but as a (formerly) casual follower of the Starcraft 2 pro scene, it seems like MOBAs ate their lunch.
It's really a shame, since there was nothing quite like the intensity of a 1v1 match between two players controlling an army with a nearly unlimited skill cap...
As much as I've tried, I simply cannot make any sense of the on-screen visual overload of MOBAs like DOTA or League of Legends. Why is it so much harder to find myself engaged by MOBA battles than RTS (mostly Starcraft) battles? I don't really know.
It's really a shame, since there was nothing quite like the intensity of a 1v1 match between two players controlling an army with a nearly unlimited skill cap...
As much as I've tried, I simply cannot make any sense of the on-screen visual overload of MOBAs like DOTA or League of Legends. Why is it so much harder to find myself engaged by MOBA battles than RTS (mostly Starcraft) battles? I don't really know.
MOBAs ate them because they have a lower skill floor.
If I understand 50% of how to play a MOBA, I can play the game and have fun. I am gorilla. I have 4 moves: punch, slam, eat banana, and my ultimate ability, get mad. They have cooldowns, but it doesn't matter, I just spam all my moves when I see a bad guy. If I don't see a bad guy, I can kill the enemy turrets and little cpu creatures. If I'm having trouble, I can follow one of my allies and often get into 2v1s which are easier to win. And oh look, he is playing Sword Guy, he's doing pretty well, maybe I should try Sword Guy next time.
If I only understand 50% of how to play an RTS, I'm screwed because I didn't realize that I needed to build a t2 bot factory with my t1 bots, which can then build tier 2 constructor bots which are required to build flak cannons which are the only viable defense against this specific type of gunship-based commander sniping.
I like RTS games better too, but I can see how it can be hard to get into an RTS without a really expensive-to-create campaign tutorial (e.g. Starcraft) and/or a huge time commitment. I bet I could download a MOBA I've never played before and have fun in my first match knowing nothing about how to play it (even the controls).
If I understand 50% of how to play a MOBA, I can play the game and have fun. I am gorilla. I have 4 moves: punch, slam, eat banana, and my ultimate ability, get mad. They have cooldowns, but it doesn't matter, I just spam all my moves when I see a bad guy. If I don't see a bad guy, I can kill the enemy turrets and little cpu creatures. If I'm having trouble, I can follow one of my allies and often get into 2v1s which are easier to win. And oh look, he is playing Sword Guy, he's doing pretty well, maybe I should try Sword Guy next time.
If I only understand 50% of how to play an RTS, I'm screwed because I didn't realize that I needed to build a t2 bot factory with my t1 bots, which can then build tier 2 constructor bots which are required to build flak cannons which are the only viable defense against this specific type of gunship-based commander sniping.
I like RTS games better too, but I can see how it can be hard to get into an RTS without a really expensive-to-create campaign tutorial (e.g. Starcraft) and/or a huge time commitment. I bet I could download a MOBA I've never played before and have fun in my first match knowing nothing about how to play it (even the controls).
I think one big reasons why RTS are having trouble is, that loosing in an RTS, as a new player, can be one of the worst experiences in gaming (not counting player toxicity): you just spend several minutes, maybe a lot of them, playing this game, you finally got your T2 fab, and then the enemy nukes you with his experimental artillery and you are just gone. No way to understand what exactly went wrong. To slow? Wrong build order? No clue!
Might you just mismanaged the harvester and you economy suffered early.
Compare that to a shooter, an (a)rpg or a racing game. They might be as hard to win, but at least you have a clear understanding of what happens. He saw you, he shot you. She just had the correct breaking point figured out and you hit the wall.
Ofc it’s not always that clear cut and there is a lot in between these examples. But in my experience, RTS and maybe strategy in general, can be really hard to understand what went wrong, even on a basic level.
MOBAs are, imho somewhere on between. High skillcap both in regards or game knowledge and strategy, but also in agility, but also somewhat readable. Sure, you might wonder why your gorillas punch did way less damage than their gorilla, but a look at the KDA or their gear might already give you a hint.
So I guess with the overall growth of the gaming market and games becoming more and more expensive, the small community that actually enjoys RTS isn’t really „worth“ that money.
Ofc it’s not always that clear cut and there is a lot in between these examples. But in my experience, RTS and maybe strategy in general, can be really hard to understand what went wrong, even on a basic level.
MOBAs are, imho somewhere on between. High skillcap both in regards or game knowledge and strategy, but also in agility, but also somewhat readable. Sure, you might wonder why your gorillas punch did way less damage than their gorilla, but a look at the KDA or their gear might already give you a hint.
So I guess with the overall growth of the gaming market and games becoming more and more expensive, the small community that actually enjoys RTS isn’t really „worth“ that money.
> Compare that to a shooter
I wouldn't claim they're quite so opaque, but Quakelike FPS games have a similar problem. They appear to be about shooting, but in fact at least 50% of the game is resource control (and even the combat itself is more nuanced than a new player realises). So when you're a new player losing to an experienced player, it can be super confusing and demoralising. Confusing because you probably don't realise why they are dominating you so hard and what you can do to stop it; demoralising because even if you persist and improve in one or two areas, it'll barely make a difference to the scoreboard. (You've improved your aim and learned to time items? Great, but the other guy knows the maps extremely well and can move around them far quicker than you, knows exactly how to position himself in a fight and when to use each weapon, dodges in unpredictable ways while predicting your own dodging and firing patterns, and so on. Meanwhile your newfound realisation that the armour and health items matter, and increasing ability to keep track of their timers, is making your routes through the map more predictable.)
I wouldn't claim they're quite so opaque, but Quakelike FPS games have a similar problem. They appear to be about shooting, but in fact at least 50% of the game is resource control (and even the combat itself is more nuanced than a new player realises). So when you're a new player losing to an experienced player, it can be super confusing and demoralising. Confusing because you probably don't realise why they are dominating you so hard and what you can do to stop it; demoralising because even if you persist and improve in one or two areas, it'll barely make a difference to the scoreboard. (You've improved your aim and learned to time items? Great, but the other guy knows the maps extremely well and can move around them far quicker than you, knows exactly how to position himself in a fight and when to use each weapon, dodges in unpredictable ways while predicting your own dodging and firing patterns, and so on. Meanwhile your newfound realisation that the armour and health items matter, and increasing ability to keep track of their timers, is making your routes through the map more predictable.)
I've definitely had similar feelings in Half Life 2: Deathmatch. I'm particularly fond of "low grav high kill" servers due to the fast pace (the low gravity enables a lot more movement around the map, and the "high kill" - i.e. weapons buffed / health nerfed such that getting hit by anything results in instant death or close to it - ups the stakes). Unfortunately, such servers often feature "sniper" maps, wherein players "in the know" will scramble to find the "hidey holes" and repeatedly slaughter any of us unfortunate schmucks.
It got to the point that on such servers I'd protest by refusing to use guns at all and used a crowbar and grenades exclusively. Not sure if anyone really took note of what I was protesting against, but it sure got me on top of some monthly crowbar kill leaderboards :)
It got to the point that on such servers I'd protest by refusing to use guns at all and used a crowbar and grenades exclusively. Not sure if anyone really took note of what I was protesting against, but it sure got me on top of some monthly crowbar kill leaderboards :)
Oh, tottaly! I was not trying to make a point that shooters do not have complexity at all. They do, even something as blut as CoD (I guess?). But especially for things Quakelikes or Team bases games like Rainbow 6 Siege theres a lot to be learned.
Also AFAIK shooters don't have full post-game replays ?
> I think one big reasons why RTS are having trouble is, that loosing in an RTS, as a new player, can be one of the worst experiences in gaming
Famously one of the Default Taunts on Age Of Empires 2[0] is *You played for two hours to die like this?*
[0] https://ageofempires.fandom.com/wiki/Taunts
But can't but agree with the general angle, MOBA's in general are less punishing to players at a deep psychological level, StarCraft 2 "suffered" from what the playerbase called "Ladder Anxiety", which was players simply unable to deal with loss and loss aversion as a consequence of them tying their own ego and self-worth to how well they fared playing StarCraft, to the level that Blizzard on one of the expansions had to release a mode where players simply would not lose MMR/ELO points from loses nor earn them on wins, a ranked-less mode and that alleviated a considerable amount of pressure
> So I guess with the overall growth of the gaming market and games becoming more and more expensive, the small community that actually enjoys RTS isn’t really „worth“ that money.
Yeah, this is very much the case, at least for large AAA productions and companies, tho AA studios such as KingArt Games or Sunspear Games have been making inroads into creating new RTS titles which make me very happy as an avid RTS fan
Famously one of the Default Taunts on Age Of Empires 2[0] is *You played for two hours to die like this?*
[0] https://ageofempires.fandom.com/wiki/Taunts
But can't but agree with the general angle, MOBA's in general are less punishing to players at a deep psychological level, StarCraft 2 "suffered" from what the playerbase called "Ladder Anxiety", which was players simply unable to deal with loss and loss aversion as a consequence of them tying their own ego and self-worth to how well they fared playing StarCraft, to the level that Blizzard on one of the expansions had to release a mode where players simply would not lose MMR/ELO points from loses nor earn them on wins, a ranked-less mode and that alleviated a considerable amount of pressure
> So I guess with the overall growth of the gaming market and games becoming more and more expensive, the small community that actually enjoys RTS isn’t really „worth“ that money.
Yeah, this is very much the case, at least for large AAA productions and companies, tho AA studios such as KingArt Games or Sunspear Games have been making inroads into creating new RTS titles which make me very happy as an avid RTS fan
> But can't but agree with the general angle, MOBA's in general are less punishing to players at a deep psychological level, StarCraft 2 "suffered" from what the playerbase called "Ladder Anxiety", which was players simply unable to deal with loss and loss aversion as a consequence of them tying their own ego and self-worth to how well they fared playing StarCraft, to the level that Blizzard on one of the expansions had to release a mode where players simply would not lose MMR/ELO points from loses nor earn them on wins, a ranked-less mode and that alleviated a considerable amount of pressure.
This doesn't sound like we disagree at all. Although I definitely felt that ladder anxiety in LoL, I never would have thought about playing SC2 or WC3 ladder. Even watching these games I dont feel like I understand whats going on in detail. For some reason that felt "better" for MOBAs. But that feeling might very well be biased cause I played more MOBAs then RTS in total hours.
> tho AA studios such as KingArt Games or Sunspear Games have been making inroads into creating new RTS titles which make me very happy as an avid RTS fan
Oh yeah, reminds me that I still need to play some Iron Harvest...
This doesn't sound like we disagree at all. Although I definitely felt that ladder anxiety in LoL, I never would have thought about playing SC2 or WC3 ladder. Even watching these games I dont feel like I understand whats going on in detail. For some reason that felt "better" for MOBAs. But that feeling might very well be biased cause I played more MOBAs then RTS in total hours.
> tho AA studios such as KingArt Games or Sunspear Games have been making inroads into creating new RTS titles which make me very happy as an avid RTS fan
Oh yeah, reminds me that I still need to play some Iron Harvest...
They could just have played team games only in RTS and achieved the same effect of being able to shift the blame onto their teammates ?
Can't speak for every RTS and MOBA, but losing in Dota takes 45-60 minutes (30 at best depending on the current game balance) and feels pretty horrible. And it typically takes hundreds of hours of gameplay to be good enough to even understand why you lost and what you could have done to fix it. Relying heavily on 4 teammates makes it that much more demoralizing, especially when you know that a "good" player probably could have won even with the 4 bad teammates.
Losing as a newbie in Starcraft and AoE feels way less bad.
Losing as a newbie in Starcraft and AoE feels way less bad.
Yeah, you are totally right, the time factor of losing in MOBAs (I persoanlly played a lot of LoL in the past, and tried some DotA and HotS) pretty much defies my argument in that regard.
But when I compare that to losing in Civ (not RTS, but strategy in general), I think I had a better feeling for why we lost.
And it kind of fits in the scheme, as MOBAs are, in a broader sense, at least partially, a game of strategy. Not nesassarily when you start as new player, but winnign consistenly also takes thinking ahead a lot. What risks to take, which weakness to exploit, what item to buy. Theres a lot of just in time decisions to make, while also keeping the bigger picture in mind.
Maybe MOBAs are just "direct action" enough to cater to a wider audiance, but strategy enough to share some of the same problems?
And it kind of fits in the scheme, as MOBAs are, in a broader sense, at least partially, a game of strategy. Not nesassarily when you start as new player, but winnign consistenly also takes thinking ahead a lot. What risks to take, which weakness to exploit, what item to buy. Theres a lot of just in time decisions to make, while also keeping the bigger picture in mind.
Maybe MOBAs are just "direct action" enough to cater to a wider audiance, but strategy enough to share some of the same problems?
I think another thing is that MOBA's have downtime. You need to walk to places, you need to back, buy items, etc, etc. It's been a while since I played Starcraft, but my memories of it were basically that if you weren't doing things at literally every moment, you were probably going to get beat. You could try and use better macro, and tactical understanding but you'd eventually run up against someone who was equivalent and had better micro/apm and just lose. Which meant that every match basically felt like a sprint from start to finish, which was exhausting. Eventually it got to a point where it was hard to jump into a match because I just wanted to game and not go all out. I had pre-emptive anxiety/exhaustion about the intensity of a match. A moba can still feed that competitive desire and has moments of intensity, but it feels much more balanced than RTS' ever did to me.
These were my exact thoughts about CS vs Quake back in the days. Quake had no downtime, all action while CS had time between rounds or just tense moments without anything actually happening. I think this dynamic was an important point behind the success of battle royal games too. An all action game is like an action movie without a moment's pause - it just doesn't work for most people.
Yup this is more important - in starcraft you will lose a game you almost completely won if you stop context switching for a few minutes.
On the other hand you can abandon starcraft game at any moment with no consequences and it doesn't last for 50 minutes. If you got toxic teammates in DOTA you are pretty much stuck with them for almost an hour.
On the other hand you can abandon starcraft game at any moment with no consequences and it doesn't last for 50 minutes. If you got toxic teammates in DOTA you are pretty much stuck with them for almost an hour.
I think this also plays into the human reward pathways. More variation in intensity means more spikes of adrenaline and dopamine.
I think the big problem here was with Starcraft 2's lack of UMS and chat room focus compared to Brood War. I played competitive 1v1 in both, and anecdotally I spent alot more time in Brood War, and much of that time was socializing, playing casual games, and UMS--largely with friends who didn't play competitively.
This community was completely destroyed by SC2, multiplayer really only appealed to serious competitive players. It sucked unless you only wanted to grind ladder. That community kept the game as a whole alive and acted as a gateway.
This community was completely destroyed by SC2, multiplayer really only appealed to serious competitive players. It sucked unless you only wanted to grind ladder. That community kept the game as a whole alive and acted as a gateway.
RTS originate from single player where you don't even need balancing: it's perfectly fine if there is a winning move, the joy lies in discovering that winning move and exploiting it until you happen upon a level that introduces a counter, providing you with the nice riddle of what the next winning move might be. The balanced multiplayer variations, though far more impactful once computers started to be connected, always seemed a bit "is that still fun?" to me.
I think this is a really important point. Solo RTS is very engaging even if you actually suck at it. The layers of complexity required to be good are basically unfathomable unless you grind against competitive players and understand the various local maxima of the metas.
Competitive RTS is very stressful. I would say, more stressful than other competitive games as mistakes, or rather, the absence of great moves, compounds quickly into a disadvantage.
Competitive RTS is very stressful. I would say, more stressful than other competitive games as mistakes, or rather, the absence of great moves, compounds quickly into a disadvantage.
You ignored itemization and counterpicking in MOBAs, which is like ignoring build orders, army composition and macro efficiency in starcraft and just focusing on microing your army :)
I was in the same camp when I only played RTS games, but after my friend got me into dota I have to admit there's a lot of depth there that I wasn't aware of.
Also the win conditions are much more obvious in RTS games, just after I switched I had no idea that pulling, stacking, wave cutting, denying was important. Also the vision battle is more involved in MOBAs.
I was in the same camp when I only played RTS games, but after my friend got me into dota I have to admit there's a lot of depth there that I wasn't aware of.
Also the win conditions are much more obvious in RTS games, just after I switched I had no idea that pulling, stacking, wave cutting, denying was important. Also the vision battle is more involved in MOBAs.
> after my friend got me into dota I have to admit there's a lot of depth there that I wasn't aware of.
But that's kind of the point: you don't have to be aware of it to have a good time. Sure, all of that stuff matters in competitive play, but it can still be fun to just run around killing things if you don't know what you're doing. On the other hand, seeing artillery blasting your base from afar and having no idea what to do about it is really demoralizing.
FWIW, I think this applies more to Dota 2 than it does to LoL. I haven't played the latter in many years, but I remember it being much more rigid and cookie-cutter strategy-wise than Dota, and the micro decisions mattered a lot more, which meant that sub-optimal play was more obvious. In Dota 2, your poor item build can still win the game with a single good team fight or just generally better awareness.
But that's kind of the point: you don't have to be aware of it to have a good time. Sure, all of that stuff matters in competitive play, but it can still be fun to just run around killing things if you don't know what you're doing. On the other hand, seeing artillery blasting your base from afar and having no idea what to do about it is really demoralizing.
FWIW, I think this applies more to Dota 2 than it does to LoL. I haven't played the latter in many years, but I remember it being much more rigid and cookie-cutter strategy-wise than Dota, and the micro decisions mattered a lot more, which meant that sub-optimal play was more obvious. In Dota 2, your poor item build can still win the game with a single good team fight or just generally better awareness.
I don’t think it’s just skill. They’re also primarily team based.
If you win, you can feel really good because you had a 17/2 K/D. If you lose, you can blame your teammates. You can also play with your friends. With starcaft even though team matches are supported, they are unpopular, and there’s no easy way to look at the stats for the game and feel like a badass if you win.
If you win, you can feel really good because you had a 17/2 K/D. If you lose, you can blame your teammates. You can also play with your friends. With starcaft even though team matches are supported, they are unpopular, and there’s no easy way to look at the stats for the game and feel like a badass if you win.
Team games are quite popular in StarCraft Brood War - not only 2 vs 2, but often 3 vs 3 or even 4 vs 4.
In fact the 3v3 and 4v4 games were usually played by lower skilled players, due to the relatively lower skill cap and relatively random results (at low skills win or lose depends more who you get on your team than your own actions).
Brood War also has custom maps with relatively crude, but still use programming (loops and triggers) that allowed players to build thousands of various custom maps. MOBA genere and (probably) tower defense comes from StarCraft Brood War custom maps. There were many other categories (e.g. bound maps, puzzle maps, control maps) that are poorly represented even nowadays.
Brood War also has custom maps with relatively crude, but still use programming (loops and triggers) that allowed players to build thousands of various custom maps. MOBA genere and (probably) tower defense comes from StarCraft Brood War custom maps. There were many other categories (e.g. bound maps, puzzle maps, control maps) that are poorly represented even nowadays.
In Zero-K big team games are called "lobsterpots". Also "big" starts around 5vs5 :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Al3jvLYsmHI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Al3jvLYsmHI
I really don't think the MOBA comment works for Dota 2. Its not really about the characters, its about the map, position, and timing (itemization + push timing). The characters are important, but frequently people pick meta characters and get bopped. This wouldn't be an issue if dota had new people playing the game, but I want to say that dota is at this point filled with people who have been playing for a long time. So, you'll see people who at low levels just destroy people with characters that are supposed to be bad because they just know where to stand and abuse the map or creep aggro. Its wild.
Just as a specific example. If you take two teams of equal MMR and one had all the character counters so they "should" win. If the team with the better characters doesn't know how to pull the safelane, they will just straight up lose. Full stop. They will get gold starved and unless the other team throws (which is very common lol) they should lose.
Also, losing like this in dota is anti-fun. Its really not a good time for like anybody, the winner of the loser. Its just one team dumpstering another and it happens at all levels.
Just as a specific example. If you take two teams of equal MMR and one had all the character counters so they "should" win. If the team with the better characters doesn't know how to pull the safelane, they will just straight up lose. Full stop. They will get gold starved and unless the other team throws (which is very common lol) they should lose.
Also, losing like this in dota is anti-fun. Its really not a good time for like anybody, the winner of the loser. Its just one team dumpstering another and it happens at all levels.
> specific type of gunship-based commander sniping
I see someone's played Supreme Commander. I love the game but it's the archetypal example of what you're talking about: winning depends on detailed knowledge of dozens of different units across four factions and simultaneous maximally-efficient economy building. Building a tutorial for it is impossible. It's only playable by the sort of people who will read wikis and watch videos and lose and lose and lose until they have some idea what's going on.
This causes the other problem with RTSes: the (small, dedicated) community has been running for fifteen years and is incredibly unfriendly to new players. Having less than ~150 hours playtime is often grounds for being kicked from games, which doesn't help expand the playerbase.
Unfortunately, RTSes simplified enough to avoid these problems aren't nearly as fun. The genre just works better as a community passion project than a commercial enterprise.
I see someone's played Supreme Commander. I love the game but it's the archetypal example of what you're talking about: winning depends on detailed knowledge of dozens of different units across four factions and simultaneous maximally-efficient economy building. Building a tutorial for it is impossible. It's only playable by the sort of people who will read wikis and watch videos and lose and lose and lose until they have some idea what's going on.
This causes the other problem with RTSes: the (small, dedicated) community has been running for fifteen years and is incredibly unfriendly to new players. Having less than ~150 hours playtime is often grounds for being kicked from games, which doesn't help expand the playerbase.
Unfortunately, RTSes simplified enough to avoid these problems aren't nearly as fun. The genre just works better as a community passion project than a commercial enterprise.
"I am gorilla. I have 4 moves: punch, slam, eat banana, and my ultimate ability, get mad."
One day maybe there'll be games with just one move... just to dumb games down to the lowest common denominator and not leave anyone out.
One day maybe there'll be games with just one move... just to dumb games down to the lowest common denominator and not leave anyone out.
Check out Divekick. It's a 1v1 fighting game with two moves: Dive and Kick. And it's got a very high skill ceiling. :)
This is just hungry hungry hippos.
As much as I loved it, Assassins Creed had a combat system like this.
We’re getting close! PSO2:NGS has a button for “Simplified Movement” which will trigger whatever attack it deems appropriate at the time.
Nidhogg and One Finger Death Punch come to mind
surprisingly a good amount of depth from just one move, if played right
surprisingly a good amount of depth from just one move, if played right
This is not necessarily a bad thing, there is beauty in simplicity. Take Downwell for example. It's surprisingly engaging for a mobile game with only 3 on screen buttons.
> I bet I could download a MOBA I've never played before and have fun in my first match knowing nothing about how to play it (even the controls).
Used to play DotA (as in, the custom WC3 map) and LoL. I downloaded Pokemon Unite last week. Instantly understood pretty much everything except the individual feel and tactics of each character.
Used to play DotA (as in, the custom WC3 map) and LoL. I downloaded Pokemon Unite last week. Instantly understood pretty much everything except the individual feel and tactics of each character.
Also, MOBAs give you that team play experience, which reduces the amount of weight/pressure on you as an individual. 1v1 ladder anxiety is a huge under-appreciated issue and one of the things RTS's can do to avoid it is a bigger focus on team PvP.
MOBAs are far from the first genre of video game that are easier to learn than RTS, so I’m not sure you’ve explained why MOBAs specifically have put competitive pressure on RTS. Is it just because MOBAs look very superficially like RTS games, with a top-down view of fighting units?
MOBAs were invented as RTS mods. For example, DOTA 2 is the successor to a Warcraft 3 mod.
I'll disagree with the other poster. MOBA games, particularly Dota, have a pretty high threshold of entry compared to RTS. You've got 100 something heros, each with 4+ abilities. Then you've got basically as many items, half of which have an active of some sort.
That's a big initial bite to get down.
I played Dota for at least a year until I finally felt like I even understood the baseline. The skill cap on say SC2 is indeed as high as you can take it, but learning the tech tree and counters is comparatively trivial. It's not that Dota is chess or such, there's just a huge volume of material to get through.
But that's also what makes it so rewarding. Dota is the only video game where I feel the same sense of accomplishment when winning as a game of go.
I think the world is wide open to a new awesome RTS game. Just, no one has thought up something good enough.
That's a big initial bite to get down.
I played Dota for at least a year until I finally felt like I even understood the baseline. The skill cap on say SC2 is indeed as high as you can take it, but learning the tech tree and counters is comparatively trivial. It's not that Dota is chess or such, there's just a huge volume of material to get through.
But that's also what makes it so rewarding. Dota is the only video game where I feel the same sense of accomplishment when winning as a game of go.
I think the world is wide open to a new awesome RTS game. Just, no one has thought up something good enough.
But you don't have to know any of that straight off the bat, because you have other players on a team to rely on. You can play with a friend who'll carry you if need be. SC2's relentless focus on 1v1 is a huge detriment, and it seems like the entire RTS genre has decided "well, that's what we do".
Yes, but the abilities and item actives are all quite similar in broad categories -- dash, stun, slow, etc. Same with items -- broad categories of damage, magic, health, armor, etc.
To OP's point, you don't have to know the entire 100 hero roster and all of their abilities to have fun, just the general things they can do "Oh I just got stunned by that ability, might want to dodge next time"...
Obviously to be good you need to know them all, but not to get started and have fun at lower levels of play.
To OP's point, you don't have to know the entire 100 hero roster and all of their abilities to have fun, just the general things they can do "Oh I just got stunned by that ability, might want to dodge next time"...
Obviously to be good you need to know them all, but not to get started and have fun at lower levels of play.
Yeah, there's some sparseness to it all that simplifies, but that's also offset by most abilities having a geometric component to how they're targeted or have area of effect.
Respectfully, OP doesn't know the game. You can indeed have fun playing casually like that, but your win rate will reflect the lack of what you don't know. You can't even see the game until you get some months under your belt, imo. Sound is another underrated aspect: you need to know exactly what spells are going off, how your allies or enemies will position them, based on nothing but hearing it and knowledge of the game.
There's no way I would have learned Dota without a friend to pull me along. It's a big problem with the genre as a whole. LoL is a bit more forgiving and ability spammy, but has all the same issues. And I say this as someone that got near the top of the 2v2 ladder in LoL beta (RIP original twitch malphite combo).
Respectfully, OP doesn't know the game. You can indeed have fun playing casually like that, but your win rate will reflect the lack of what you don't know. You can't even see the game until you get some months under your belt, imo. Sound is another underrated aspect: you need to know exactly what spells are going off, how your allies or enemies will position them, based on nothing but hearing it and knowledge of the game.
There's no way I would have learned Dota without a friend to pull me along. It's a big problem with the genre as a whole. LoL is a bit more forgiving and ability spammy, but has all the same issues. And I say this as someone that got near the top of the 2v2 ladder in LoL beta (RIP original twitch malphite combo).
> There's no way I would have learned Dota without a friend to pull me along
But that's something that MOBAs can do that RTS games can't. Which is another reason why MOBAs ate RTSs lunch. I'm not sure why you're focusing on win rate when there are plenty of people who play MOBAs who are quite frankly garbage at the game(s).
But that's something that MOBAs can do that RTS games can't. Which is another reason why MOBAs ate RTSs lunch. I'm not sure why you're focusing on win rate when there are plenty of people who play MOBAs who are quite frankly garbage at the game(s).
RTSs went off the deep end catering to competitive multiplayer, and that's where I stopped caring.
You can just play single-player Starcraft 1 or Age of Empires or Red Alert against the AI or the campaigns, and it's a fun little experience.
You can just play single-player Starcraft 1 or Age of Empires or Red Alert against the AI or the campaigns, and it's a fun little experience.
Yep, although there are now new games which kinda balk the trend - Iron Harvest has a pretty good SP campaign, Total War series is still going strong with its SP focus as well.
SC2’s co-op significantly extended the games popularity. It lacks much strategic depth, but it’s still surprisingly fun if repetitive.
MOBAs are almost impossible to get into if you're not starting with friend(s). Half the skill is in communication and coordination, and if you're playing solo with random people you'll almost never experience good teamplay. Toxicity is over the roof compared to 1v1 games like starcraft.
I stopped playing Starcraft 2 (or any Blizzard games) because of the Hong Kong controversy but I do miss some good multiplayer RTS. Preferably a little less APM-intensive than starcraft.
I stopped playing Starcraft 2 (or any Blizzard games) because of the Hong Kong controversy but I do miss some good multiplayer RTS. Preferably a little less APM-intensive than starcraft.
Zero-K is a surprisingly good free (open source), community driven RTS. When you look past the dated graphics, it gives you a deep TA style game that tries to also give a few quality of life features to reduce APM count a bit. It's not for everyone, but it can be a lot of fun.
Age of Empires II has an updated version (Definitive Edition) that I want to recommend, but I never played SC2 so I can’t compare the APM.
With a MOBA you’re relying on other players. If you lose at Starcraft, you only have yourself to blame, you can watch the replay and see exactly where you went wrong, and steadily improve.
> If you lose at Starcraft, you only have yourself to blame, you can watch the replay and see exactly where you went wrong, and steadily improve.
That's not really true. A typical player can watch the replay of their losing match and see the proximate cause of the failure ("my army got blown up"), but looking at the game analytically to find the ultimate cause is/was much more difficult. The art of doing so was a regular feature of the Day[9] daily videos.
That complexity is part of what makes strategy games (real time or otherwise) compelling: seemingly simple choices or optimizations compound into a much larger advantage later on. However, those small-scale advantages are rarely highlighted by the game itself as important, and optimization usually asks a lot of the players.
That's not really true. A typical player can watch the replay of their losing match and see the proximate cause of the failure ("my army got blown up"), but looking at the game analytically to find the ultimate cause is/was much more difficult. The art of doing so was a regular feature of the Day[9] daily videos.
That complexity is part of what makes strategy games (real time or otherwise) compelling: seemingly simple choices or optimizations compound into a much larger advantage later on. However, those small-scale advantages are rarely highlighted by the game itself as important, and optimization usually asks a lot of the players.
You can see what your opponent did. If you're new, this will probably be that the opponent did more things and did them faster, also their build order might be new to you or could be something new for you to scout for to counter.
I love team ladder in SC2. Somehow we tend to avoid blaming each other, rather we analyse our team games and see which plays worked well and which didn't. In 1v1 the road to improvement is usually macro, macro, scouting, and macro - in teams it's communication, communication, teamwork, and communication. 60% winrate last season :)
Also arranged teams have a very strong advantage over random teams, you can really punch above your weight if your teammates understand how to support you.
Also arranged teams have a very strong advantage over random teams, you can really punch above your weight if your teammates understand how to support you.
If you're interested, the age of empires 2 community has been growing over the past year with the release of the definitive edition
I watch both, and they definitely have different things going for them. I think something that is missed in appreciation of pro play is just how smoothly coordinated the players are. They make it look effortless, the same way high APM Starcraft2 players make things like fighting on multiple fronts while managing their macro look effortless. It can be really noticeable when a player gets swapped in the middle of a tournament run and the team doesn't quite gel back together right away.
I think the entropy curve of RTS games tend to be poor. The most addictive games have a random start with different elements and a fair bit of luck (think battle royale and roguelikes).
RTS games tend to have a standard opening minutes setup where you just do your own thing and then follow a flow chart of how to progress based on how things develop.
If you're playing someone decent, and are not a top tier player, you don't actually get to experiment and do interesting things so much as try to execute better on your original book of plays.
RTS games tend to have a standard opening minutes setup where you just do your own thing and then follow a flow chart of how to progress based on how things develop.
If you're playing someone decent, and are not a top tier player, you don't actually get to experiment and do interesting things so much as try to execute better on your original book of plays.
Yeah this is what killed my interest in the genre. Ultimately it seems that it comes down to learning the meta, and APM with strategy only superficially involved.
I do play some AoE3 still since they released the DE for that one and I will say there’s been one players running around pulling off victories that shatter the meta, and ofc the establishment players have referred to that as “toxic”.
I do play some AoE3 still since they released the DE for that one and I will say there’s been one players running around pulling off victories that shatter the meta, and ofc the establishment players have referred to that as “toxic”.
>
It's really a shame, since there was nothing quite like the intensity of a 1v1 match between two players controlling an army with a nearly unlimited skill cap...
This is precisely why RTS is dead. Every victory or defeat is solely in your hands. In the MOBA format, you can always get carried by your team/cuss out your team for being failures.
This is precisely why RTS is dead. Every victory or defeat is solely in your hands. In the MOBA format, you can always get carried by your team/cuss out your team for being failures.
The funnest starcraft games I ever played were 2v2 or 3v3 games with friends. 1 on 1 always seemed overly stressful and annoying.
Grey Goo: https://store.steampowered.com/app/290790/Grey_Goo/
Ashes of the Singluarity: https://www.ashesofthesingularity.com/
I haven't played them, but they are in my Steam backlog. I've heard jokingly that Ashes is mostly played by people doing benchmarks.
I have played Planetary Annihilation. It's like Total Annihilation or Supreme Commander (same people, different studio): https://planetaryannihilation.com/
Ashes of the Singluarity: https://www.ashesofthesingularity.com/
I haven't played them, but they are in my Steam backlog. I've heard jokingly that Ashes is mostly played by people doing benchmarks.
I have played Planetary Annihilation. It's like Total Annihilation or Supreme Commander (same people, different studio): https://planetaryannihilation.com/
Planetary Annihilation spherical maps are an interesting concept, but graphically kind of uninteresting to watch (and my necessity very small in actual build area).
It was certainly interesting though with the experience of not having anyway to "put your back against the wall" though.
It was certainly interesting though with the experience of not having anyway to "put your back against the wall" though.
You are the first person I've seen mentioning Ashes of the Singularity who wasn't doing a hardware review.
Planetary Annihilation was okay but didn’t really speak to me compared to SupCom/TA. I don’t know why, but I do feel like the planets are hard/annoying to navigate and don’t add anything. I really liked the TA/SupCom maps where there’s natural cover (water/walls) to navigate through, but with PA it’s just whatever since you can just launch some stuff from another planet.
GG is a good SC-alike and Annihilation is Annihilation. Both bring a lot to the table. Ashes just never ran properly so I gave up on it.
"Ashes of the Benchmark", if you will.
Not releases, but there have been some other significant developments:
* Ex blizzard RTS devs have gone to a few different studios. Frost Giant has the most hype, but there's also one of the Dream Haven studios IIRC, and Uncapped Games.
* A bunch of SC2 modders made a new studio, SunSpear, and their new RTS called Immortal: Gates of Pyre had a successful Kickstarter and has been getting a fair amount of hype from the StarCraft community.
* Ex blizzard RTS devs have gone to a few different studios. Frost Giant has the most hype, but there's also one of the Dream Haven studios IIRC, and Uncapped Games.
* A bunch of SC2 modders made a new studio, SunSpear, and their new RTS called Immortal: Gates of Pyre had a successful Kickstarter and has been getting a fair amount of hype from the StarCraft community.
Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition has a thriving pro level tournament scene and online multiplayer culture.
And Age of Empires 2 on Voobly is still active as well, with userpatch updates being released.
Then there is Age of Empires 4 that is nearing completion which might be an Age of Empires 2 DE contender or might be an AoE 3 dud.
Then there is Age of Empires 4 that is nearing completion which might be an Age of Empires 2 DE contender or might be an AoE 3 dud.
Unlikely. AoE4 looks more like a Civ competitor than AoE2, in that it'll look beautiful, have wildly divergent civs, and almost entirely be played SP long run.
AoE2 does so many things wrong by 'modern game' standards. The graphics are 2D. Pick any two civs, they're 80% identical. New, goofier mechanics (Flemish Revolution) are disliked by the players (although still used). It's still an incredible game.
AoE2 does so many things wrong by 'modern game' standards. The graphics are 2D. Pick any two civs, they're 80% identical. New, goofier mechanics (Flemish Revolution) are disliked by the players (although still used). It's still an incredible game.
Since nobody has figured out how to integrate loot boxes or gambling into RTS yet, other genres are currently much more profitable.
I'd love to see a competent PvE-oriented RTS with the MMO-lite treatment: co-op missions, entire campaigns, customizable armies, unlockable units, mission rewards, purchasable (with in-game currency) items, bigass raids, the whole shebang.
SC2 co-op mode took a big step in that direction, and it was well received and has become fairly popular...but a game built around that as its primary locus could be so much more.
I know many more traditional core gamers would practically vomit at this idea, but I think there's room for plenty of different styles under the RTS umbrella. And bringing in tons of money with one style might well benefit the others.
SC2 co-op mode took a big step in that direction, and it was well received and has become fairly popular...but a game built around that as its primary locus could be so much more.
I know many more traditional core gamers would practically vomit at this idea, but I think there's room for plenty of different styles under the RTS umbrella. And bringing in tons of money with one style might well benefit the others.
It’s far from what you asked for, but Mindustry is kinda PvE-RTS-like. It’s also open source, i’d recommend to give it a try. It’s an ugly game though, but I do like the concept.
Thanks for the interesting tip. I agree it needs polishing, though.
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Company of Heroes was an outstanding release, and its sequel is a good game with a still living, active community.
Company of Heroes 3 was recently announced, and its launch will probably get a lot of old players back into the multiplayer lobbies.
Company of Heroes 3 was recently announced, and its launch will probably get a lot of old players back into the multiplayer lobbies.
The CoH games are great small army RTS games, even if I think of them as Real Time Tactics games. But that really is the point for me. It seems that with the aging and seeming non-interest in RTS games like Starcraft, the market and those making products to serve that market have splintered a relatively homogeneous genre into a group of loosely similar niche genres where the differences between themselves and other games is seen as a dividing line instead of focusing on the commonalities involved to grow interest and increase player base amongst the larger game segment.
I see Warhammer 40k and Starcraft having much more in common with each other than either has with Halo, despite the very obvious surface level trappings. And I think X-com has more in common with CoH than either have in common with modern warfare or call of duty. I really despair for a broader grouping of strategy and tactics games, that may or may not exclude 4x games, in hopes that it could build a bridge between the various niche styles and cross promote the bigger genre.
I see Warhammer 40k and Starcraft having much more in common with each other than either has with Halo, despite the very obvious surface level trappings. And I think X-com has more in common with CoH than either have in common with modern warfare or call of duty. I really despair for a broader grouping of strategy and tactics games, that may or may not exclude 4x games, in hopes that it could build a bridge between the various niche styles and cross promote the bigger genre.
CoH is great, i’ve seen the CoH3 announcement! I’ll definitely give that one a try
AOE2 gets balance and content patches about once a month.
It's remarkable on its own that a 20 year old game is still getting balance patches. I suspect this is a due to a mix of evolving strategies, a changing skill-level distribution, and feedback loops from subtle changes, catalyzed by added units and civs.
It's remarkable on its own that a 20 year old game is still getting balance patches. I suspect this is a due to a mix of evolving strategies, a changing skill-level distribution, and feedback loops from subtle changes, catalyzed by added units and civs.
I am so disappointed this article didn't even touch on AoE2 - it has a pretty amazingly well tuned approach to this problem with extremely finely targeted (except back when camels were technically boats cough) bonus damage system. To compare it to SC2 is hilarious - SC2 has more hard counter systems than most games (both visibility and flight are common uncounterable attributes) and yet for all that countering tends just to be a question of how much and how wide the splash damage is when attacking tightly packed formations. High level SC2 eschews huge portions of the roster since they're essentially irrelevant - AOE2 definitely has strong preferences but most of those units get to see action pretty regularly... except the siege tower.
High end SC2 is really awesome to watch these days, most units get made and there are a lot of strategies available to either side. The balance team has done a great job making sure every unit has a role and is used.
The community staying very active has been the biggest factor here IMO. The predecessor to the current Definitive Edition, the rather disastrous (engine-wise, not content-wise) HD Edition, was created in part by co-opting community made mod content and hiring on some of the creators. This has continued for both the Definitive Edition and AOE 4.
Likewise, most of the biggest pros and casters started their careers 5-10+ years ago working on community tournaments and other grassroots events. Even though there's a lot more money now with investment from Microsoft, Red Bull and others, that grassroots core has stuck around and feels (at least to me) more fresh than the very corporate machinery around Blizzard RTSes. It's funny to think that the most anticipated LAN tournament is literally held in someone's apartment (https://www.ageofempires.com/news/nac3-tournament/)!
Likewise, most of the biggest pros and casters started their careers 5-10+ years ago working on community tournaments and other grassroots events. Even though there's a lot more money now with investment from Microsoft, Red Bull and others, that grassroots core has stuck around and feels (at least to me) more fresh than the very corporate machinery around Blizzard RTSes. It's funny to think that the most anticipated LAN tournament is literally held in someone's apartment (https://www.ageofempires.com/news/nac3-tournament/)!
If you are not familiar with it, OAD[0] is a fully open source RTS with an active community of developers that keep making it more and more polished at every release.
[0]: https://play0ad.com/
[0]: https://play0ad.com/
I haven’t played in too long, thanks for the reminder to jump back in.
To my knowledge, Supreme Commanders Forged Alliance Forever (FAF) community has been updating the game and has a fairly active community. It seems to be in a fairly good state, wish I was in the position in life to be able to relax and dump some hours into playing it. Was always a fun game.
FaF is great and basically the most modern RTS I regularly play. (Using FAF Forever or something) but technically it’s a buggy and slow mess that performs bad.
I was in the top20 worldwide ranking of the original Supreme Commander when I was a teenager, never got over the changes they did to the economy and gameplay on FA. The performance of the original was even worse, you had to apply a patch to get multithreading.
Found an SQL Injection too, reported it and got a license for Supreme Commander 2 as a bounty. That game was way worse than the original, too simplified but I guess it was the logical path as people complained about SupCom's difficulty/complexity.
Found an SQL Injection too, reported it and got a license for Supreme Commander 2 as a bounty. That game was way worse than the original, too simplified but I guess it was the logical path as people complained about SupCom's difficulty/complexity.
I found the SupCom 1 controls uncomfortable in the first 20 minutes of the tutorial, and chose not to continue. Life is too short to finish bad books or punishing games; however for me SupCom 2 was a huge ergonomic improvement and if not for that game I wouldn't be playing the series at all.
What was wrong with them? I found SupCom had some of the best controls in gaming; strategic zoom was a real game-changer (although many games have it now). I guess left- vs right-click for RTS is a big divisive one, but it doesn't take so long to get used to and there's nothing objective about which way is better.
>(although many games have it now).
IME very few games have a strategic view, or let you zoom out at all, what other games are doing this?
IME very few games have a strategic view, or let you zoom out at all, what other games are doing this?
That's something I didn't notice but I understand. As an Emacs user that had to end up using Vim mode (evil) due to such concerns.
As I said, spent a lot of effort getting good at SupCom and didn't feel like learning everything again for the expansion.. For me a perfect SupCom would be a SupCom 1 with better performance and graphics. Prefer games that are focused on economics and construction than rushing and getting some land resources, which was the focus in SupCom FA and I guess is better for most people. SupCom 2 I played like 5 hours so I don't even remember much other than I didn't like it.
Haven't played any games, other than VR, in years but I will install SupCom and play a few hours for the memories..
As I said, spent a lot of effort getting good at SupCom and didn't feel like learning everything again for the expansion.. For me a perfect SupCom would be a SupCom 1 with better performance and graphics. Prefer games that are focused on economics and construction than rushing and getting some land resources, which was the focus in SupCom FA and I guess is better for most people. SupCom 2 I played like 5 hours so I don't even remember much other than I didn't like it.
Haven't played any games, other than VR, in years but I will install SupCom and play a few hours for the memories..
There's a group of FAF dev's who are making a SupCom successor called "Ashes of the Singularity", and there express goal is basically to make a SupCom that's multithreaded with an efficient network model (Gyle did a cast to introduce it).
Haha. I completely forgot there was actual SupCom 2 and not straight to FA... yeah, it was bad.
In 2017 I overheard my physics TA who was like 6 years older than me mention SupCom to another TA during a lab. Was so weird to hear somebody mention it in the wild. I talked to him about it a bit, he ended up whizzing me straight thru all the labs the rest of the semester.
In 2017 I overheard my physics TA who was like 6 years older than me mention SupCom to another TA during a lab. Was so weird to hear somebody mention it in the wild. I talked to him about it a bit, he ended up whizzing me straight thru all the labs the rest of the semester.
Supreme Commander 2? I don’t recall that release, but there’s a black hole in my memory about some great disapointment
I was under the impression that with all they'd done to FaF performance was now mostly dependent on the least common denominator of whoever you're playing with's hardware (outside of a full game of setons with close to max units each or something) but I haven't actually checked in quite some time now. Sucks if it still does become a slow mess fairly quickly into a game.
There's also the LOUD mod: https://www.moddb.com/mods/loud-ai-supreme-commander-forged-...
I think there is a much going on as ever, but because RTS games tend to be on the more heavier side to get in to and get good enough at to really enjoy it, it isn't featured as much as any of the generic FPS/BR/DOTA style games.
While there might be less of an SC2 eSports bonanza going on right now, there is Age of Empires that is pretty active (as was posted here as well).
I think one of the major impacts to the 'visibility' is the fact that 'generic' or 'casual' games have social buy-in that is orders of magnitude bigger than what we used to think of when talking about 'big games' or 'big communities' or 'active genres'. 10000 players or even 100000 players used to be top-tier. Now that's less than 1% of any of the 'big' games out there right now.
While there might be less of an SC2 eSports bonanza going on right now, there is Age of Empires that is pretty active (as was posted here as well).
I think one of the major impacts to the 'visibility' is the fact that 'generic' or 'casual' games have social buy-in that is orders of magnitude bigger than what we used to think of when talking about 'big games' or 'big communities' or 'active genres'. 10000 players or even 100000 players used to be top-tier. Now that's less than 1% of any of the 'big' games out there right now.
Check out Zero-K if you haven't already. Open source RTS and arguably the best, but definitely has that lingering ol' open source taste to it.
Not a new release, but I've been enjoying Supreme Commander 2 on a modern gaming PC! The game is pretty cheap on Steam ($13)[1] but it scales very well with modern hardware, and the gameplay is far improved (IMHO) over SC1. (Another RTS series I'd like to replay on modern hardware is Homeworld[2]).
[1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/40100/Supreme_Commander_2...
[2] https://store.steampowered.com/app/244160/Homeworld_Remaster...
[1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/40100/Supreme_Commander_2...
[2] https://store.steampowered.com/app/244160/Homeworld_Remaster...
SupCom2 felt very tailored to consoles. It felt like a dumbed down version of SupCom1. Good fun and had some interesting research mechanics though.
My friendgroup did SupCom1+FA. Then SupCom2. Then botbashed SupCom1+FA+FAF for aaaaages. FAF is a community donation-ware client that adds mods/units/maps/multiplayer-options galore. Fantastic if you want to configure what you want exactly.
My friendgroup did SupCom1+FA. Then SupCom2. Then botbashed SupCom1+FA+FAF for aaaaages. FAF is a community donation-ware client that adds mods/units/maps/multiplayer-options galore. Fantastic if you want to configure what you want exactly.
Gray Goo was really really good but pretty much fizzled. Nobody has brought that kind of budget in since. Westwood[esc]cwPetroglyph subsequently made some very fun "8bit" styled RTSs with a more CnC flavor. We also just got a CnC/RA remaster, StarCraft Remaster, and WC3 remaster. So RTS almost feels more like a historical than a vital genre at this point. Which is a shame because it's imo more accessable than a MOBA (in which every match you must strap in, prepare to endure abuse if you suck, not surrender, and click really fast.)
Grey Goo had an absurdly awesome setting. About as close as I think you could get to making a wargame that contained "the Culture".
Age of Empires II Definitive Edition is getting new DLC recently, as well as new game modes (Campaign co-cop, Empire Wars).
Wargame Red Dragon announced a South Africa themed DLC.
Wargame Red Dragon announced a South Africa themed DLC.
I'm still playing relatively old ones with my friends:
* Supreme Commander & Planetary Annihilation
* Sins of a Solar Empire
* Zero-K
* Supreme Commander & Planetary Annihilation
* Sins of a Solar Empire
* Zero-K
Sins of a Solar Empire is such an underrated RTS in my opinion. Do you play the base game, or do you try out some the mods (Star Wars, Star Trek, etc.) as well?
Agreed, that's a personal favorite. We mostly play the base game (with all the DLC; one nice thing is that it's enough for the host to have them).
I've tried some mods, but Star wars Interregnum seems to crash for me after a while. I think it's a known issue on Linux: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/265#issuecomm...
These mods seem nice, but I am not so much into these other universes, and the base game is pretty solid already. I might try them again at some point for more variety, notably Sins of the Prophets.
I've tried some mods, but Star wars Interregnum seems to crash for me after a while. I think it's a known issue on Linux: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/265#issuecomm...
These mods seem nice, but I am not so much into these other universes, and the base game is pretty solid already. I might try them again at some point for more variety, notably Sins of the Prophets.
Sure feels like the genre is mostly dead. Kind of sad
Concentrated, rather than dead. SC2 and AoE2 are the only games still running strong. SC2 seems quite alive. I play AoE2 competitively, and it's stronger than ever.
In terms of new games, yeah it's pretty dead. AoE4 looks cool, but I'd be pleasantly surprised if its near as fun to play competitively as AoE2. Wacky civ specific strategies make games more predictable, and 2d is more ergonomic than 3d.
In terms of new games, yeah it's pretty dead. AoE4 looks cool, but I'd be pleasantly surprised if its near as fun to play competitively as AoE2. Wacky civ specific strategies make games more predictable, and 2d is more ergonomic than 3d.
I also will be pleasantly surprised if AOE4's online multi is anywhere close to AOE2's scene.
Definitely managing my expectations due to what I've seen graphically regarding the micro/non-intuitive unit design as well as potential balancing issues due to the vastly divergent civ play styles/age-up mechanics (e.g. Mongol nomad movement & the dynasty system).
Definitely managing my expectations due to what I've seen graphically regarding the micro/non-intuitive unit design as well as potential balancing issues due to the vastly divergent civ play styles/age-up mechanics (e.g. Mongol nomad movement & the dynasty system).
I've been having lots of fun playing (and collaborating a bit on) Beyond All Reason: https://beyondallreason.info/
It's an Open Source RTS heavily inspired in Total Annihilation, with nice graphics and great balance.
It's an Open Source RTS heavily inspired in Total Annihilation, with nice graphics and great balance.
Nope, feel like the last major release the masses played was Starcraft 2, and that's over 10 years old now.
Blizzard recently ended development on Starcraft 2. This prompted a lot of hand-wringing.
There’s also a few new studios cropped up that have announced intention to produce new, competitive RTS games in the Blizzard tradition (in contrast to models like Company of Heroes/Dawn of War, SupCom, or C&C).
These include: - Sunspear Games, which is making a game called Immortal: Gates or Pyre based in an SC2 mod called Vanguard that was well received by the pro scene.
- FrostGiant games, a new studio just set up by a bunch of SC2 team alumni
- A new studio by David Kim, head honcho of design and balance on SC2, being bankrolled by TenCent.
Over the next 2 to 3 years there’s going to be the biggest wave of new, competitive RTS releases since SC2 first launched.
There’s also a few new studios cropped up that have announced intention to produce new, competitive RTS games in the Blizzard tradition (in contrast to models like Company of Heroes/Dawn of War, SupCom, or C&C).
These include: - Sunspear Games, which is making a game called Immortal: Gates or Pyre based in an SC2 mod called Vanguard that was well received by the pro scene.
- FrostGiant games, a new studio just set up by a bunch of SC2 team alumni
- A new studio by David Kim, head honcho of design and balance on SC2, being bankrolled by TenCent.
Over the next 2 to 3 years there’s going to be the biggest wave of new, competitive RTS releases since SC2 first launched.
> competitive RTS games in the Blizzard tradition (in contrast to models like Company of Heroes/Dawn of War, SupCom, or C&C).
I don't know how to interpret this other than "it'll be a destroy-your-mouse high APM obsessed click-fest that will ignore all lessons and modern inventions in the RTS genre over the last 20 years."
IMO the worst thing that could happen for the industry is 5 more Starcraft remakes.
I don't know how to interpret this other than "it'll be a destroy-your-mouse high APM obsessed click-fest that will ignore all lessons and modern inventions in the RTS genre over the last 20 years."
IMO the worst thing that could happen for the industry is 5 more Starcraft remakes.
Even in SC2, click-speed is not a significant determinant of winning or losing for anyone below Diamond. It's simply not an issue for the vast majority of the player base (75% of players are Platinum league or below) so I don't know why so many people have fixated on that as the thing to blame problems on. It's like saying "basketball revolves around dunking" even though dunks are basically not an element of the game for anyone playing below the professional level.
Insofar as there are barriers to entry to the game at lower leagues, the challenge is more the mental challenge of keeping track of a bunch of different variables and keeping up with the multi-tasking. It's not nearly as execution dependent, at that level, as most fighting games or even a Soulsborne. It's a mental acuity and habit-formation challenge rather than a dexterity one. Better players will have more actions per minute (assuming they're not spamming), but it will be because they're making decisions more quickly, not because they have concert pianist fingers. I got up to Gold league playing mostly with a trackpad. I know someone who got to Diamond on a trackpad as well.
There's lots of problems with SC2's design, but they mostly center around a poor onboarding experience, doing a bad job of communicating the ripple effects of early decisions, a surfeit of high-lethality units that settle battles or games in a second, and the availability of multiple "cheese" strategies for each faction that are much much easier to execute than they are to defend against. But those are all addressable within the broader framework of a Blizzard-style RTS with better unit design, UI/UX, and tutorial or single player game modes.
Insofar as there are barriers to entry to the game at lower leagues, the challenge is more the mental challenge of keeping track of a bunch of different variables and keeping up with the multi-tasking. It's not nearly as execution dependent, at that level, as most fighting games or even a Soulsborne. It's a mental acuity and habit-formation challenge rather than a dexterity one. Better players will have more actions per minute (assuming they're not spamming), but it will be because they're making decisions more quickly, not because they have concert pianist fingers. I got up to Gold league playing mostly with a trackpad. I know someone who got to Diamond on a trackpad as well.
There's lots of problems with SC2's design, but they mostly center around a poor onboarding experience, doing a bad job of communicating the ripple effects of early decisions, a surfeit of high-lethality units that settle battles or games in a second, and the availability of multiple "cheese" strategies for each faction that are much much easier to execute than they are to defend against. But those are all addressable within the broader framework of a Blizzard-style RTS with better unit design, UI/UX, and tutorial or single player game modes.
I like the Eugen games, especially the wargame series
Surprised no one here has mentioned Sanctuary (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igGfuLXAB1o), an upcoming RTS made by several guys in the Supreme Commander/FAF community.
The Total War franchise is still going strong, especially nowadays with Warhammer releases. Mind you, it seems to be mostly PvE and includes a big Civilization-like aspect, and you have to be into the particular style of combat that Total War does.
Starcraft 2 is still the leader after like 10 years at this point
Check out They are Billions. It has an RTS-like feel, but the strategy is largely defensive.
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Keep your eye on Frost Giant.
There's a real world version of this, the DePuy Quantified Judgement Method.[1] It's fairly simple - weapons have a weight value (sword=1.0), you add that up for the forces committed,
there's a quality of troops multiplier for each side,
some adjustments for defensive preparations, and you get a measure of combat strength.
DePuy was a US. Army colonel, and the weights come from analysis of real-world battles. His observation is that the side with a 2x advantage almost always wins. If nobody has a 2x advantage, either side can win.
So, real-world war has a "hard counter".
DePuy was a US. Army colonel, and the weights come from analysis of real-world battles. His observation is that the side with a 2x advantage almost always wins. If nobody has a 2x advantage, either side can win.
So, real-world war has a "hard counter".
That smells like bullshit.
Asymmetric warfare ( or guerilla warfare) has been successful time and again since the Napoleonic wars, regardless of how overwhelming the enemy was. And Napoleon himself won multiple times against the odds ( so much so the Coalition made a deal to only attack when he isn't in command).
And there's the usual incompetence, bad luck, or tactical/strategic brilliance.
Just in the last century we have the Russians ( in Russo-Japanese war, WWI, Winter war, WWII), Austro-Hungarians, Italians, Ottomans, Americans ( multiple times), Arabs ( against Israel) fail miserably against a theoretically inferior in terms of size and weaponry enemy.
Asymmetric warfare ( or guerilla warfare) has been successful time and again since the Napoleonic wars, regardless of how overwhelming the enemy was. And Napoleon himself won multiple times against the odds ( so much so the Coalition made a deal to only attack when he isn't in command).
And there's the usual incompetence, bad luck, or tactical/strategic brilliance.
Just in the last century we have the Russians ( in Russo-Japanese war, WWI, Winter war, WWII), Austro-Hungarians, Italians, Ottomans, Americans ( multiple times), Arabs ( against Israel) fail miserably against a theoretically inferior in terms of size and weaponry enemy.
Except real-world doesn't have any counters at all but instead anything can happen at any time almost. The outcome of encounters in war is controlled by endless amount of parameters, just because someone has more swords than another doesn't mean they will almost always win. See Simo Häyhä, the Finnish sniper who killed ~500 Red Army soldiers during the Second World War as an example of this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simo_H%C3%A4yh%C3%A4
Your example of the most outlier sniper of all time doesn't really conflict with "advantaged side almost always wins".
They also lost the war
Can this line of reasoning be extended to poker?
I feel like nukes are a pretty hard counter.
In RTS terms this seems more like 'supply' or 'pop' count: a measure (often ingame) of the relative power (and cost) of each unit, such that equal supply counts of different units are in theory on the same footing (often with a hard cap to avoid game-breakingly large armies), absent any specific advantages or counters. Even small differences in supply can be extremely significant in most RTS: a 2x supply advantage is almost always overwhelming. Hard counters are exactly what would be a counterexample to that.
A hard counter in RTS parlance is a unit or tactic that will win a fight even even if they are grossly outnumbered. A classic example would be a ground unit that cannot hit air units. Any number of those ground units will die to a single air unit.
A phalanx armed with shields, swords and spears can't damage an A-10; the A-10 can shoot or bomb them into ineffectiveness. Hard counter.
A submarine is a hard counter to an aircraft carrier -- that's why we put sub-hunters on carriers and surround them with anti-sub ships.
A fusion-warhead ICBM is a hard counter to most things.
A submarine is a hard counter to an aircraft carrier -- that's why we put sub-hunters on carriers and surround them with anti-sub ships.
A fusion-warhead ICBM is a hard counter to most things.
> A submarine is a hard counter to an aircraft carrier -- that's why we put sub-hunters on carriers and surround them with anti-sub ships.
In video games that's true. But aircraft carriers can have sonar-equipped helicopters take out submarines.
Aircraft carriers are also faster than submarines, so in practice, I'm not sure if submarines can practically chase down an aircraft carrier and actually disable them.
Honestly, I'm willing to bet that most of those Destroyers in a Carrier-strike group are there to shoot down cruise missiles (which are probably a modern, hard counter to Carriers. Cruise missiles are very expensive, but Carriers are even more expensive).
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"Hard Counters" exist in the real world, and they're far simpler than you think.
A tank is the "Hard Counter" to small arms fire and even small-autocannon (30mm or less) fire. Modern tanks are immune to such weaponry. No matter how many AK-47s you send towards a tank, they will all die.
You need to switch out your infantry loadout: you need to start sending RPGs / Missiles / IEDs if you want your infantry to have a chance vs tanks.
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Historically, an A10 or Helicopter was the "Hard Counter" to a tank. Tank guns have extreme difficulty aiming that high (tanks are designed to take out ground targets), and a tank's 130mm cannons are powerful: but A10 / Helicopters will dodge most of those shots due to the low-rate of fire.
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The concept of "Hard Counters" leads to the modern battlefield concept of "Combined Arms". You should never send a platoon of tanks by themselves to face an enemy (they'd just die against their helicopters). You instead, combine different arms together to form one group: send a tank with infantry + AA guns, so that you can face all sorts of different enemies as a team.
With "combined arms", you negate your weaknesses somewhat.
In video games that's true. But aircraft carriers can have sonar-equipped helicopters take out submarines.
Aircraft carriers are also faster than submarines, so in practice, I'm not sure if submarines can practically chase down an aircraft carrier and actually disable them.
Honestly, I'm willing to bet that most of those Destroyers in a Carrier-strike group are there to shoot down cruise missiles (which are probably a modern, hard counter to Carriers. Cruise missiles are very expensive, but Carriers are even more expensive).
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"Hard Counters" exist in the real world, and they're far simpler than you think.
A tank is the "Hard Counter" to small arms fire and even small-autocannon (30mm or less) fire. Modern tanks are immune to such weaponry. No matter how many AK-47s you send towards a tank, they will all die.
You need to switch out your infantry loadout: you need to start sending RPGs / Missiles / IEDs if you want your infantry to have a chance vs tanks.
--------
Historically, an A10 or Helicopter was the "Hard Counter" to a tank. Tank guns have extreme difficulty aiming that high (tanks are designed to take out ground targets), and a tank's 130mm cannons are powerful: but A10 / Helicopters will dodge most of those shots due to the low-rate of fire.
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The concept of "Hard Counters" leads to the modern battlefield concept of "Combined Arms". You should never send a platoon of tanks by themselves to face an enemy (they'd just die against their helicopters). You instead, combine different arms together to form one group: send a tank with infantry + AA guns, so that you can face all sorts of different enemies as a team.
With "combined arms", you negate your weaknesses somewhat.
First half of the title got my hopes up as a Magic: the Gathering player, but alas, it was not an argument in defence of hard counters costing only two mana.
> The ground unit cannot hurt the air unit in any way, and the air unit can hurt the ground unit. This relationship is based on innate and immutable differences between the two unit types.
There are some ways in which ground unit can still win the game in this scenario. For example if you can flood the enemy with zerglings and kill his buildings just ignoring the air units slowly picking the zerglins apart.
So, in a way - there are no hard counters either :)
There are some ways in which ground unit can still win the game in this scenario. For example if you can flood the enemy with zerglings and kill his buildings just ignoring the air units slowly picking the zerglins apart.
So, in a way - there are no hard counters either :)
Generally a unit would only be considered a hard counter if it could destroy the other unit in a reasonable amount of time. If a swarm of zerglings can take continuous fire from some air units and still manage to destroy an entire base before being destroyed themselves, then the air units aren't much of a counter...
If you want to see really brutal hard counters try Clash Royale.
Game is really fun, and requires a lot of thinking but it's absolutely ruthless.
Every single unit has multiple hard counters. When it comes to combinations everything gets more messy and fun.
Game is really fun, and requires a lot of thinking but it's absolutely ruthless.
Every single unit has multiple hard counters. When it comes to combinations everything gets more messy and fun.
One of the games I used to play that wasn't reviewed very well was Tom Clancy's End War (the online multiplayer died pretty quick). It was the one with the gimmick / sometimes really useful attribute of being purely controllable via speech recognition.
It was certainly more forgiving of casual players - you could only have 12 "addressable" units in the game at a given time. A unit was 4 vehicles or 4 groups of 5 infantry. Rather than having to produce one soldier or vehicle at a time, they'd deploy in their groups. "Healing" them could be achieved by evacuating the unit off the map, which would return half the unit's deployment cost. They could then be redeployed later at full health. Infantry units could be evacuated by air, vehicles had to drive off the map's boundary.
There was a fairly simple circle of vehicle hard counters - Helicopters were highly effective against Tanks, which were highly effective against IFVs (infantry fighting vehicles), which where highly effective against Helicopters, etc.
There were two types of infantry units - rifleman and combat engineers, and were vulnerable to everything, but could be placed in cover to drastically increase their defense stat. Rifleman (in cover) were highly effective against other infantry units and combat engineers (in cover) were highly effective against all vehicles. Rifleman could capture control points / forward deployment points faster than combat engineers.
IFVs could be used to move infantry units quickly around the map, and rifleman could be redeployed by air at the cost of some deployment points.
Artillery was effective against everything but helicopters (which were highly effective against them), whether units where in cover or not. Downside was that it was vulnerable to everything, but this rarely mattered because they could engage from half the map away.
There was also a command vehicle which could manufacture robots. You had a UAV for spotting and guard robots which would be tasked to guard a control point or a unit.
Match start had you select 3 units to deploy first. A common strategy was to start with a command vehicle, an artillery unit, and a rifleman unit. You'd immediately send the rifleman unit to capture the nearest control point, and by the time they finished you'd have had enough time to get an IFV unit in to pick them up.
You'd deploy your UAV to the enemy's side of the map to see what they were up to, and have the command unit build defense robots for the artillery to cover for their extreme vulnerability to air units.
I had fun with it anyways.
It was certainly more forgiving of casual players - you could only have 12 "addressable" units in the game at a given time. A unit was 4 vehicles or 4 groups of 5 infantry. Rather than having to produce one soldier or vehicle at a time, they'd deploy in their groups. "Healing" them could be achieved by evacuating the unit off the map, which would return half the unit's deployment cost. They could then be redeployed later at full health. Infantry units could be evacuated by air, vehicles had to drive off the map's boundary.
There was a fairly simple circle of vehicle hard counters - Helicopters were highly effective against Tanks, which were highly effective against IFVs (infantry fighting vehicles), which where highly effective against Helicopters, etc.
There were two types of infantry units - rifleman and combat engineers, and were vulnerable to everything, but could be placed in cover to drastically increase their defense stat. Rifleman (in cover) were highly effective against other infantry units and combat engineers (in cover) were highly effective against all vehicles. Rifleman could capture control points / forward deployment points faster than combat engineers.
IFVs could be used to move infantry units quickly around the map, and rifleman could be redeployed by air at the cost of some deployment points.
Artillery was effective against everything but helicopters (which were highly effective against them), whether units where in cover or not. Downside was that it was vulnerable to everything, but this rarely mattered because they could engage from half the map away.
There was also a command vehicle which could manufacture robots. You had a UAV for spotting and guard robots which would be tasked to guard a control point or a unit.
Match start had you select 3 units to deploy first. A common strategy was to start with a command vehicle, an artillery unit, and a rifleman unit. You'd immediately send the rifleman unit to capture the nearest control point, and by the time they finished you'd have had enough time to get an IFV unit in to pick them up.
You'd deploy your UAV to the enemy's side of the map to see what they were up to, and have the command unit build defense robots for the artillery to cover for their extreme vulnerability to air units.
I had fun with it anyways.
I think the big issue with soft counters is rather that attention and APM is very scarce. Spamming a well rounded unit means you can spend your attention on other stuff.
If each side had a team of people controlling their units then you could imagine one guy could focus on the economy another on producing the right units and a third on combat micro. This could make soft counters become more important.
If each side had a team of people controlling their units then you could imagine one guy could focus on the economy another on producing the right units and a third on combat micro. This could make soft counters become more important.
I like the 5 heroes v 5 heroes aspect of MOBAs, but I wish they kept the entire RTS part of it.
Hmm, kind of reads like a worse Rock Paper Scissors - A Method for Competitive Game Play Design ?
https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/130150/rock_paper_sci...
(Mostly worse because he's offering multiple, somewhat idiosyncratic, contradictory and incoherent definitions of "hard" and "soft" counters ?)
https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/130150/rock_paper_sci...
(Mostly worse because he's offering multiple, somewhat idiosyncratic, contradictory and incoherent definitions of "hard" and "soft" counters ?)
I had so much fun reading this! Brought back my star craft and CandC days.
Hell I even have a Nod tattoo.
(Long live Kane!)
(Long live Kane!)
The gameplay is deep and revolves around scouting and predicting what the enemy will do and when they'll do it. It's still very active today, through to a mod called FAF.
[1]The exception to this is the Cybran SACU, which I believe has no true counter once you take into account the gun, EMP and SAM upgrades.
Mass for mass, they beat just about every land unit including Percivals, GCs, Monkeylords and Ilshavohs.
They hard counter all air units, even T3 bombers, as their SAML can fire while (rapidly) constructing and/or fortifying an ED4 which they can then reclaim afterwards.
I just wish I had the skill to deploy them in a real setting!