RTS Building I

Finals are awful. I mean, easy and stuff, but still irrationally stressful. Anyway, over the next few days, I’m going to avenge all the lost time you guys have had with my blog by building an entire RTS. Maybe more than one. Not necessarily innovative or brilliant ones in terms of gameplay, but at least cool, interesting ones. And when I say “entire,” I mean ENTIRE. I’m going to give it tech trees, units and all. Everything short of desiging maps and a campaign for it.

So here goes. My RTS, part one. First, we need some races.

Race One: These guys are plants. They’re ambulatory vegetation. They have a collective nervous center (not a hive mind), which, when linked to, allows them to move and think on their own. However, it has a certain range, and therefore requires a lot of “routers.” These are buildings which connect to it via roots and allow it to control stuff in the far-flung areas of its empire. The nervous center, obviously, is the main building. The resources they harvest (every side has different resources, but they can overlap) are gas and water. They use these to exaggerate photosynthesis and build things faster. If they have none, which doesn’t ever happen, their buildings will not build, and the higher it gets, to an extent, the faster things will build. However, the speed does decrease over time. They have no food system, since all units produce their own food. However, there is a limit to the minds the central system can support.

Race Two: The control group. Humans. Good old humans. Just for the sake of difference, these are weird humans. I’ll make them druidic and mysterious, like the elves. So they have big mystical spires and temples and sacrifices. They’re fairly low-tech, so they have axes and swords and not much beyond, but they have magic, too. They have extremely good close-range combat. Their resources are ore and lumber, Warcraft-style, which is just straight currency and depletes as they build buildings. They have a food limit, but it isn’t stable. It can be driven up or down based on how many troop upgrades they’ve gotten.

Race Three: Artificial life forms. Robots. These guys are like Mechs, except they’re old-school steampunk-style clockwork. Various units have buildings that they can turn into, basically making them mobile watchtowers and troop production. One more thing about them is that their main base is unimportant. The central building only produces workers, who produce different buildings and some units. Troop production places, on the other hand, are extremely important, because without them you can’t get any advanced combat unit. Their resources are ore, like the humans, and water, like the plants. All units with hands can repair other units and buildings. Their unit limit is limited by their resources, because they aren’t consuming anything. Water is constantly being depleted, because of steam. However, certain buildings can convert steam to water, although it takes a while.

Race Four: Incredibly pissed nonhumans. Cthulhoid gentic mutants that have been oppressed by the humans for generations and are now rising up. Many of them have godlike telekinetic powers, and the others have big teeth. However, there aren’t very many of them. Their buildings can only be built along ley lines of energy along the map, and their huge, well-armored main building can only be built on a node, where at least two ley lines meet. As such, energy is one of their resources. Their units also function more effectively along ley lines, getting weaker and weaker as they move away. They won’t die of distance poisoning, but they will become more susceptible to attack. Their resources are energy, from the ley lines, which constantly fills up, and gas, which has to harvested from deposits.

There’s one other resource, wealth, which all the sides share. This is actual monetary wealth. This grows at a fixed rate, but increases with ransom (the capture of an important enemy unit) payment. Also, trade is encouraged between players and neutral cities.

This is fun. I’m going to do more tomorrow, and then finals will be over. See you soon.

~ by pieboy on January 24, 2007.