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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   1680 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for March 28, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Just wanted to highlight the essays written by the Zero-K devs about RTS game design. Surprisingly thoughtful and interesting stuff:

https://zero-k.info/mediawiki/Cold_Takes/11_-_The_Atomic_Solution_to_Monospam

https://zero-k.info/mediawiki/Cold_Takes/16_-_Aim_and_Fire

One of the most important corollaries of the process is that weapon behaviour cannot depend on the existence of a target. This is known as the No Void Ray rule, as it was developed back when Starcraft 2 had a unit that gained damage the longer it fired. The unit was redesigned in the first expansion, probably because shooting your own stuff is allowed in Starcraft, but incentivising players to do it looked a bit silly. In any case, Void Ray would not even make it into Zero-K, since there would be nothing stopping it shooting into the sky when idle. Maintaining its damage bonus is smart, so we could not in good conscience prevent it from doing so. This would make the mechanic pointless, so we would avoid adding it in the first place.

OK, now that the site is working and I can actually read it, I can say that I really disagree with that person's opinions on RTS games. To me, they feel like the sort of opinions people have from thinking about RTS games and making them, but not so much actually playing them. Judging by this: https://zero-k.info/mediawiki/Cold_Takes/3_-_Fight_your_opponent,_not_the_UI it seems like he wants to make a game that's slower and more thoughtful. But that's just not how RTS games work... the strategy comes from which things you focus your limited attention and focus on. If you make everything too convenient and automated, there's nothing left for the player to do, and all games go the same way.

It's funny to me that he complains in that article about how much busywork is in the macro of Starcraft2. One of the big changes in that game compared to the original was that they greatly eased the task of macro, by adding automine and multiple building select. Lots of us complained about that change, and I still think we were right... the beauty of original Starcraft is that your opponent is constantly distracted with those macro tasks, so there's lots of opportunities to attack and win battles even when you're outnumbered. There was a glut of games from the 2000s that tried to "fix" RTS by automating things, including Total Annihilation (which I guess this game is a mod of?) and there's just no staying power to any of those games. Once you figure out the meta build, that's it, there's nothing left to do in them. Meanwhile, original Starcraft is still going strong after all these years with an active community of both pros and casual players.

I've never even heard the term "monospam." In what game was that a problem? I guess Total Annihilation? It was never an issue in starcraft or AOE2, since it's natural to want a combination of units unless you're doing a very early rush. If anything, noobs tended to build too many different types of units, and you have to learn as you get better to just focus on a few that share upgrades and buidings.

Still, well-written and thoughtful, so thanks for sharing it.

Zero-K is somewhat difficult to play and niche, personally I prefer Supreme Commander Forged Alliance (which has been taken over, updated regularly and sustained wholly by fans after the official servers shut down over a decade ago). There is absolutely staying power in the concept.

It's really aiming for RTS elitists, a much higher level of complexity than Starcraft. In Zero-K there are maybe 8x more units than Starcraft, there might be 5 different kinds of air to ground bombers, not to mention the gunships. You can fight on water and beneath the water, you can terraform the ground, you're commanding armies with maybe 5-10x more units in them fighting on multiple fronts, you're managing large-scale radar networks, building tactical missile defence, upgrading your command unit, managing an entire minigame of power/mass generation. Your wind power plants are actually more effective if you build them on a higher plateau!

There is no clear meta build, Supreme Commander certainly hasn't been solved and Zero K is even more complicated. It's certainly not a popular way to make a game though.

I never really liked the "tier 1-3 units" thing in supcom. Just seems like complexity for complexity's sake. I know StarCraft has unit tiers too, but they're implemented elegantly and your late game composition will always include "tier 1" trash units like zerglings and zealots.
"Lurker 'ling defiler" is a base of low and mid tier units that synergize with the high tier one.

Ignore marines ofc.

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