Balancing Infantry and Armor in an RTS

Assuming non-multiplayer...

• Ideal "quick skirmish" should be 15 minutes or less depending on size of the map. 5 minutes or less should actually be possible on the smallest maps if the player is quick enough.
• Ideal "average skirmish" should be 15-60 minutes depending on size of the map and number of opponents.
• As long as is possible. Don't let the AI let up assuming the AI is simply not cheating.
• Addendum: The average firefight e.g. when two armies meet each other should last approximately 180 seconds or less when unit counts are below 36 for either side.

Well, I'm not talking about a production building with unlocks, I mean the ability to produce a "mechanized infantry" unit where it comes with both an armored unit and infantry you can deploy. Or if I wanted to, an artillery unit where it comes with both the artillery itself and some sniper/ranger/whatever units to scout with. That's one of the ideas I liked about EAW, although the implementation was kind of lame. I never liked the Rebels sniper unit, sniper units should be able to wipe an infantry unit if the infantry doesn't have a positional advantage.

I've got Forces of Corruption.

Tom said it pretty well. A short skirmish map should last less than fifteen minutes if both players are aggressive or one player is really crappy. About fifteen to thirty minutes if both are content to sit back and build up a little and fiddles with their builds before charging in. If both of them tacitly agree, it should make it to the late game, or if one turtles really well and the other doesn't attack well it should last up to an hour for a skirmish style.

Campaigns I'm not going to give an estimate on since those tend to be a "how long do you want it to be?" type of affair.

One idea I had was to make it so that all the buildings have basic defenses integrated from the beginning. While they wouldn't stand up to a tank, a single dude alone should not be able to wipe a military base (baring a Hero Unit) because everyone on that base should have a weapon, even if they aren't as good.

I personally prefer a longer match and find the very notion of a quick rush/skirmish uninteresting. Basically, I want to play with all my "toys", not just the very bottom of the tech tree.

I'd like simply the option of playing with every toy from lowly grunts to mighty land battleships and everything in between. Mix things up.

Besides it makes sense from a tactical point of view. Are you going to do a tide of tanks in a dense urban area defended by anti-tank infantry? Or will you storm the city with infantry and support vehicles with long range artillery or air support? In such a map you can do either although the tide of tanks may take several (often suicidal for each group) attacks and literally flattening every building to do so.

Agreed on the bottom of the tech tree not being as fun. Which is why I like the idea of buildings that can defend themselves from small amounts of low level enemies. You can jockey for position out in the map, but you can't just charge in and rape their economy at the beginning because somebody built their barracks two ticks earlier.

Well, you can avert that by giving worker units enough combat capabilities to withstand a scouting force. Also, it's less getting it built first as much as it is what you do after that.

How do you do that without making them an actually effective combat unit?

Who knows, maybe you do, at least to some extent. I think SC II does it well. A single marine, zealot, or a few 'lings will not do significant damage.

Enough to tip the early game into the rusher's favor. However if the rusher fails to do enough damage or focus on keeping the pressure up then the rush itself fails in the long run.

Which is what annoys me. I dislike how easy it is to make an early game ending gamble.

And I disagree. Sometimes it's very fun to do that 5 minute or less win on a tiny map.

An asshole player who does nothing but rush is just that, an asshole. It is not indicative of bad gameplay or bad design on the part of the game or developers.

It can be fun sometimes, but it seems that games have a tendency to devolve into consisting mostly of that and maps that facilitate it.

Re: Workers fighting: I don't think workers should be able to fight. To make them (help) counter an early infantry rush, I'd like do something like give them an armour type that is extremely favourable against the attacks of basic infantry, enough speed to run them down and squish them (incidentally, I favour using vehicles for builders when possible/plausible), and a substantial amount of hitpoints. Where such isn't plausible, buildings that can defend themselves are a nice idea, though how about being able to garrison the workers to at least slightly increase the defensive firepower?

Other ideas: I don't think you should be able to break down walls without bringing heavy firepower. Nothing smaller than a catapult or tank should be able to destroy (most) walls.

Late to the conversation, but in real life tanks and infantry typically work side by side, because of anti tank infantry tactics (which are best countered using anti anti tank infantry). The notion of tanks beings unstoppable killing machines died out in World War II rather quickly once folks figured out how to trap tanks with mines or take them down with rocket propelled grenades.

One way to balance the two in an RTS would be to either go the route of having a rock paper scissors balance between tanks, anti tank infantry, and regular infantry (regular infantry get mowed down by tanks, anti tank infantry destroys tanks, and regular infantry destroys anti tank infantry), or if you want to avoid having too many units you could give the tanks some kind of a weakness that, with skill, players can exploit.

For instance, in Command And Conquer tanks can run over infantry, but learning how to do so takes some skill and practice, and if you mess up your aim it is possible for infantry to exploit it by swarming your tank. In Star Craft, the Siege Tank is relatively slow moving and weak when in its regular mode, but can essentially transform into a powerful turret when it enters siege mode - sacrificing mobility for devastating area of effect attacks. The catch is that the siege tank can only attack things that are in melee range when it is in its weaker mobile form, so one strategy that the Zerg employ is to try and rush the tank with large numbers of cheap units, such that a few will get into melee range even if the tank picks off most from a distance. This forces the tank to enter its weaker mobile form, and makes it easier to take down.

Your description of the Siege Tank is a bit off. A Siege Tank is fully capable for engaging in melee combat while deployed. However, the splash damage may kill itself and its allies.

However, early game rushes (assuming by rush, you mean early all-in or close) often simply are not feasible with the units that can be produced within the short time-frame. Therefore, i think that workers should have some combat capabilities. Not effective ones- a worker should EXTREMELY rarely, if not never, win a battle one-on-one with any other unit. However, workers should make at least serviceable combat units en masse.

Warcraft 3 did a great job of giving you at least some basic anti-rush mechanics - humans could temporarily arm their peasants with the militia ability, orcs could hide their peons in burrows which then fired spears at enemies, undead had cheap basic units in the ghoul that they could hopefully mass more of than their enemy, and night elves had a powerful heal in their moonwells that kept the few units that they had alive. It wasn't perfect, mind you (humans and orcs could "hero" rush a base, either by building their altar faster or using the blademaster's windwalk ability), but it was something.

As for the siege tank thing, I'm pretty sure things have changed between the first Star Craft and the sequel, because I recall siege tanks being helpless if swarmed in melee, and players having to deploy several of them at once so that they could cover each other, or hide the siege tanks behind structures to keep the hordes of incoming lings at pay while the siege tank picked them off. I could be wrong though, and if it works like how you describe, its still a viable tactics for melee units to take them down (hoisted by their own petard, as it were).

However, it can be taken too far. For example, the infamous SCV rush, in which the Terran workers were strong enough to take on tier 1 zerg units, and often terran players would just pump out workers and send them off to wipe out a zerg base.

edited 29th Feb '12 2:35:07 PM by MyGodItsFullofStars

Actually they died out as being a sole force in a mechanized offensive some time in the 1960s to early 1970s. Mainly because of a little thing being deployed called the AT-3 "Sagger" Anti-Tank Guided Missile (ATGM).

In 1973 the thought of a classic 1944 Eastern Front tank charge died at the hands of Egyptian and Syrian Sagger teams in the Golan Heights and Sinai Peninsula against the Israeli Defense Forces. (Who had themselves at the time relied on such tactics since it was so effective in 1967 and before.) The thought had died out in the US and USSR owing to having developed things like attack helicopters and ATGM's themselves. TOW missiles in Vietnam claimed dozens of NVA armored vehicles and the US military quickly realized a tank blitz unsupported by infantry and other vehicles would be slaughtered by the Soviets' equivalent weapons then growing in popularity.

While's that's true to some extent, SC Vs must have a significant number advantage, something they will NOT build up if they move out fast enough to beat Zerg unit production. Considering the reinforcement distance (the SC Vs must travel across teh whole map, while drones and/or zergling spawn right in the base) alone, a SCV-only rush will not work against anyone even half-decent. Even if the Zerg player 15 Hatch'es, they will still be pumping drones all the time while the SC Vs march.

Yup, "leapfrogging" Seige Tanks still remains.

Fun Fact: The undeployed siege tank has higher DPS against a single target than while sieged.

edited 29th Feb '12 6:59:38 PM by MetaSkipper

However, you can generally deal more damage to a single melee target charging you, I believe. You get more shots off because of the increased range.

I like the idea of garrison-able buildings and found such things interesting, particularly the way that the Armory was the healing facility in C&C Tiberium 3(whatever the fuck its real name was). I personally think that garrison mechanics should be improved rather than simplified.

I disagree on the wall thing. While I think making them really tough is a good idea, I'm okay with a tank being able to knock them down, or a special thermobaric missile or something as a special ability for a missile trooper being a good way to use it. Or a demo guy as a specialist.

Thought on a mechanic. Instead of building structures from the ground up, the default is the ability to garrison and convert civilian buildings in a city (as almost all valuable things will be part of a city) and building a building from the ground up is more expensive but is a tougher/better building. As a result, one of the things you have to secure is building types as a hotel might make a good infantry hold out, but it makes a poor motor pool.

Another mechanic I thought of by stealing it from World Of Tanks. Say you use the same basic damage/module mechanics as that (hp damage is permanent, module/hardpoint repairs to a high percentage of initial performance), a good anti armor strat would be to use marksmen with AM rifles disable tracks and then call in artillery strikes.

No.

Tanks count as heavy firepower. The point is more that no number of generic dudes with machine guns should be able to take apart defensive walls (ie. those seen in C&C through RA2) with their guns. Anti-tank infantry should be able to switch from HEAT to HEDP to sacrifice anti-tank performance to boost anti-structure performance (anti-light vehicle performance ought to remain roughly constant, and it should probably still be less effective against walls than bringing in tanks or artillery). Basically, if it doesn't go boom or pew pew (provided that going pew pew is not the norm. If it is, you should need the big pew pew lasers), it probably shouldn't be bringing down proper defensive walls.

Similarly, in a medieval setting, you should not be able to bring down walls without bringing a siege engine of some sort, though archers could perhaps be allowed to suppress defensive towers. Swords and arrows should not be able to bring down towers and walls (if memory serves, Stronghold and Age Of Empires both let you pull this bollocks).

re: permanent HP damage: Fuck no. That's already the worst thing about playing as the Protoss in Star Craft (everyone else can fully heal their units, but the Protoss can only fix shield damage and that's kind of bullshit). It's frustrating and annoying there and it's frustrating and annoying everywhere else.

edited 1st Mar '12 7:53:44 AM by Balmung

A palisade-type wall could theoretically be brought down by swords, if the swordsmen are given enough time to hack through the wooden stakes and provided the stakes aren't made of huge-ass tree trunks.

In both series, most walls are stone, though, and swords are quite ill suited for hacking through wood. You'd have better luck sending civvie lumberjacks to destroy the wall (and I seem to remember that the palisades you can built in Stronghold look like they're made sharpened huge-ass tree trunks.)

Ahh, Stronghold. Played the original. Knights were so OP.

I'm okay with permanent HP damage. It's a mechanic. It's part of a game if it is in it. You can't heal damage, adapt.

edited 1st Mar '12 8:14:33 AM by MetaSkipper

That doesn't make it a good mechanic.

If part of preparing for a full attack even might involve killing my own units because they're already damaged and there's a unit cap, something's probably not as well designed as it could be.

edited 1st Mar '12 8:52:41 AM by Balmung

Well, I'm okay with it. I'm not some who really calls specific mechanics "good" or "bad."

In this case, a damaged unit is still a unit. I'd rather have a damaged unit that no unit at all. Even in the case where, for example, workers are sacrificed in order to produce more units, [something here].

edited 1st Mar '12 12:02:04 PM by MetaSkipper