Long time RTS player. Ideas that I have always wished for.

[KickAHobo]

Subject:
[A really short introduction of your idea, like the subject field of an email!]

Description:
I have been loving RTS's for many years. there are several problems that every RTS seems to have.

1. Useless units. I don't need 50 different units that are difficult to organize and control when the best strategy is to rush with dozens of a single unit type.

2. No strategy required. (see 1). Also there is not enough depth to the game. If I had to keep my troops supplied it would be more realistic and more interesting. such as keeping a tanker in the air so that patrolling aircraft have a place to refuel instead of returning to base. Using ships to ferry troops and supplies. (Not having to conserve fuel makes transports unnecessary.)

3. To much micromanagement, the player needs to be able to group units into combat units that will cooperate with each other without player interaction and be given assignments that they will carry out autonomously. Also units should be able to request help and the player can either simply grant whatever the unit requests or do something else. (scout platoon taking fire requests helo casevac. the player could just click the grant button and the army does the rest or the player actually sends another platoon to rescue the scouts or gives the scout platoon control of the artillery platoon or takes control of the arty platoon himself and takes out the enemy.

4. Units need experience. In my mind unit persistence is very important. It is important to have a reason not to send wave after wave of riflemen to their deaths. getting a soldier to the battle is only have of the strategy how will you return him to his wife and kids. when can he retire with full benefits. if he dies just before he goes home that is a loss of morale. you have to weigh the benefits of loosing the man with his value as a soldier. furthermore, a great amount of challenge and strategy and fun can be had trying to rescue a valuable downed pilot or highly skilled infantry squad.

5. Strong continuity. EVE online (MMORPG) has the worst continuity of any game and i cant play it for that reason. (among others.)

Positive Effect:
All of these ideas will bring a great amount of replay-ability, strategy and fun to the players experience.

Negative Effect:
The size of the game would necessarily be very large. Many of these concepts might not be appealing to some people. Perhaps you could add options to suspend some concepts.

there are some games that do scratch the surface of what i mean: Full Spectrum Warrior, Sins of a solar empire, Homeworld 2, World in Conflict.

[Plrsvek]

Subject:
[A really short introduction of your idea, like the subject field of an email!]

Description:
I have been loving RTS's for many years. there are several problems that every RTS seems to have.

1. Useless units. I don't need 50 different units that are difficult to organize and control when the best strategy is to rush with dozens of a single unit type.

Agreed, the first tier should have a reasonable amount of units. I think most C&C games have it, C&C4 did it quite well. But instead of every unit build from the Crawler, they should stick with the different buildings. In the first tier you have infantry, in the later ones vehicels.

2. No strategy required. (see 1). Also there is not enough depth to the game. If I had to keep my troops supplied it would be more realistic and more interesting. such as keeping a tanker in the air so that patrolling aircraft have a place to refuel instead of returning to base. Using ships to ferry troops and supplies. (Not having to conserve fuel makes transports unnecessary.)

Strategies like Rush should be doable but also easily countered, so it shouldn't get used a lot imo. I'd like to see more strategies where the player atleast takes some time to build his base. Every infantry is fully supplied when they are made out of their barracks, realistic wise they should run out of bullets, but it kinda takes away the fun imo. Having small buildings to restore air fuel sounds like a good idea to me, but air has to return after they bombed things anyway.

3. To much micromanagement, the player needs to be able to group units into combat units that will cooperate with each other without player interaction and be given assignments that they will carry out autonomously. Also units should be able to request help and the player can either simply grant whatever the unit requests or do something else. (scout platoon taking fire requests helo casevac. the player could just click the grant button and the army does the rest or the player actually sends another platoon to rescue the scouts or gives the scout platoon control of the artillery platoon or takes control of the arty platoon himself and takes out the enemy.

I agree that units should be able to help each other out if they are near. If they get attacked, they MUST attack back, even if the player is not ordering it. ''Epic'' units like Tanya and Natasha can cry for help like they did in RA3, but for normal infantry I don't see it neccesary. It would just spam the game a lot of those sound files.

4. Units need experience. In my mind unit persistence is very important. It is important to have a reason not to send wave after wave of riflemen to their deaths. getting a soldier to the battle is only have of the strategy how will you return him to his wife and kids. when can he retire with full benefits. if he dies just before he goes home that is a loss of morale. you have to weigh the benefits of loosing the man with his value as a soldier. furthermore, a great amount of challenge and strategy and fun can be had trying to rescue a valuable downed pilot or highly skilled infantry squad.

Units will get a rank up if they fought well in battle, having killed enough enemies. They will have more hp, attack faster and at max rank they will heal themselves over time. Your opponent may want to kill the ranked units as fast as possible.

5. Strong continuity. EVE online (MMORPG) has the worst continuity of any game and i cant play it for that reason. (among others.)

I don't think I quite understand this one, I never played EVE online. If you mean more reasons to replay the campaign after your finished, they can still add some more challenges, achievements, trophies or other kind of rewards. And lets not forget co-op mode, they could give it an entirely new experience.

Positive Effect:
All of these ideas will bring a great amount of replay-ability, strategy and fun to the players experience.

Negative Effect:
The size of the game would necessarily be very large. Many of these concepts might not be appealing to some people. Perhaps you could add options to suspend some concepts.

there are some games that do scratch the surface of what i mean: Full Spectrum Warrior, Sins of a solar empire, Homeworld 2, World in Conflict.

My contribution is in red

[DethBringa]

1) I agree with Plrsvek on this point
2) I like the original style of aircraft with a runway. They takeoff complete their mission and return to refuel/rearm. All aircraft should have a similar mechanic. If you made 6 heli's and target an enemy building they all go off and attack, if the building is still standing when they run out of ammo then they return, rearm and head back to the fight automaticly. This would be great.
3) Starcraft is the king of micromanagement. I would hate to see C&C follow suit and try to take over the SC strength. To me C&C was always superior to SC due to this reason. Not everyone can have an APM of 300-600 if they did they would already be SC players. C&C rules strategy without need for destroying your body trying to micro as fast as possible.
4) Experience for units was one of the best things ever introduced to the C&C series. I love it.
5) I actually like the style of the C&C5 community. The only downside was that every time someone joins the chat the list of people auto scrolls to the top. This is highly frustrating when looking for a friends name to add. Also the chat autoscrolling when new text is added can be annoying too. Autoscrolling text is good for when you are scrolled all the way down to the bottom but when you are scrolling up through the text to see what you missed in the conversation when you had a bathroom break is really frustrating.

I think the C&C team need to go back to the roots. Spend some time playing RA95 and RA2. In my opinion these were the best C&C games. C&C3 was also very good but I preferred the RA units, tech and weapons. I was not a fan of RA3, it had some great ideas (building an entire base on water, hybrid amphibious vehicles were cool. The micromanagement (for me) was a bit of a downer and the game was all about the rush tactic.

[GeneralSGJist]

Agree with all, but idk about 5, since I never played the game.

[Stammer6-2]

1. I like how Red Alert 3 did it. The balance of some units may be a little off, but you'd be hard-pressed to find a single unit in that game that didn't have at least some use in the game.

2. Would be interesting to see stuff like plane-refuellers, tankers, ammunition, and stuff. It would be nice if games required more commitment to strategies.

3. Micromanagement adds a level of skill and reflexes to an otherwise strategy-exclusive game. Micromanagement allows the player with the same faction and same strategy to have a little bit of an edge. I don't think it has to be ridiculous, but I think it is important to have in your game.

4. Depends on the game, but I do agree that it would be nicer if the game took each unit as an individually important character.

5. Say wha--?

[Kane_J]

True, the game would lag a lot if you make the game that big but I think it is good enough to just have the normal RTS gameplays

[Kane_J]

You actually DO need a strategy in some games. Like RA 3. When you face off brutal enemys, it's almost impossible to rush it with your billions of conscripts or what so ever.

[m4dn3ss]

Part of C&C has always been its simplicity
Also you seem to contradict yourself, first you say there's no strategy required in most RTSs but then you say there's too much micromanagement

[Golan2781]

Micromanagement is mostly tactics. Strategy is mostly macro.

[GeneralAtrox]

I think the refueling option should be a toggle option which can be set before a game starts or even during!

I personally dislike the idea, but theres no harm in enabling it for other people. Multiplayer would provide many conflicts so you would have to decide if you want it on or not.