With Apologies to Blizzard, OR, Starcraft 2 Out
Lo, and did Blizzard get off their lazy rears after a decade of waiting and make Starcraft 2, and did they release it on July 27
So this would probably be a horrible time to discuss any other RTS. Which is why I’m doing exactly that.
The one I have in mind is Command and Conquer 4. I heard about it from a friend, who is a big fan of the C&C series but hated that game on sight. His biggest gripe with it was its MMO-like format. As you play online, you gain experience points, which you spend on an upgrade tree of sorts. He knew he hated it just for the MMO part. When I found out more recently that C&C 4 did away with resource gathering (Tiberium can now either be used as a bomb or redeemed for upgrade points), and that your main base, a mobile crawler, respawns if killed. From what I gleaned off the Wikipedia article, the win condition isn’t army annihilation, but keeping control of a number of control nodes.
While I agree with my friend that combining an MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) with an RTS (Real Time Strategy) isn’t a good idea, and I agree with other people that respawning in an RTS just feels wrong, I think the idea of a mobile headquarters has promise.
When compared to a traditional RTS, a mobile base would bring drastically different gameplay. I’ll be using Starcraft: Brood War as a basis for comparison. A mobile base would do away with resource gathering by necessity of map design; having resource deposits everywhere would clog the map. You’ll only have one base, so there would be no point in moving it to a new location until your current resources run out.
A mobile base RTS would bring more focus on scouting, map control, and army composition. In Starcraft, once you locate an opponent’s main base, you could generally keep tabs on them by hovering an observer (cloaked scouting unit) over his base or using a comsat (radar) scan every once in a while. Of course, there are some exceptions. You’ll have to keep tabs on where your opponent is expanding by periodically running a fast unit around the map. A Protoss or Terran player can hide a tech building in some corner of the map, hoping to catch the opponent by surprise. A Zerg can put a building at a less-defended expansion, where it serves a dual purpose of hiding the tech and possibly clogging an entrance into the base.
In contrast, against a mobile base, you can’t get complacent about your scouting. After you’ve seen the opponent’s base, he can pack up and travel across the map, and you’ll be left in the dark if you just go back to the same spot.
Balance will be difficult, but that’s something that playtesters or developers can work out.
I plan to make some sort of RTS like this as a summer project, or at least once I’m done with college apps. For now, I’ll be coming on to post more concrete ideas I’ve had that I’ll probably wind up implementing.