- Joined
- Apr 1, 2019
Something I was thinking about was a way to have deep action, and RPG aspects in a RTS game. This has been tried before, but a lot of times it either leads to a hard to manage clusterfuck, or a RTS, with some very light RPG elements. Fall out 4 saw a merger of base building, a common element in RTS games, with their main element being action/RPG. This kind of ended up just being a nuisance, which left the player who was ostensibly "the general" in a situation where they didn't really do much other than respond to meaningless attacks, that didn't really change much if you lost, or won. Likewise, a lot of RTS games have had elements to where individual units can become stronger with combat experience, but half the time, you just lose those units in later engagements, so they end up having little to no impact on the game play.
A potential method I've thought might be able to streamline this is to simply treat individual NPCs, as individuals when they are solo, but to treat them as part of a unit when grouped. So basically something like this. Let's say you have five NPC allies in a squad which follow you around. You would command them similar to what you would in a game like Ghost Recon, but if you have more than that, you can form them into a unit where you would give them more generalized commands. So let's say you have recruited 50 NPCs. What you would do in this set up is to take a certain number of those which you prefer directly under your control, and then place the rest of them in a unit. The individual NPCs would have have the same individual stats, and gear like what they would if they were un-grouped, but instead you would command them as if they were a singular entity. Likewise, rather than having bases which you micromanage every aspect of, you could instead build a base, and then set NPCs to garrison it. How loot would be handled is that if lets say you order a unit to loot a building, after they were finished, and found everything they could find, they would give you a summary of the operation. In the summary, you would get a run down of casualties, and any, and all loot found. If you marked a loot item for "personal use" it would be added to your personal stash, which you could collect at any location which had access. After you have done this, you can either order the unit to divvy up the loot, which would cause the NPCs to select the best items for their class, and then add the rest to inventory, or you could order them to hold all. If you ordered them to hold all, you could then order them to "dump" the items into the inventories of whatever base you sent them to after the operation. After they do this, you could tell the garrison units to divvy up the stock, which would allow them to take the optimal gear.
TLDR: The basic command scheme is this
I have units: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOP
Rather than give them individual orders, I put {EFGHIJKLMNOP} into groups. So Group 1 is {KLMNOP}, which I treat as a singular entity. Group 2 is {EFGHIJ}, which is likewise treated as a singular entity. For whatever reason, I wanted units ABCD to follow my player character around, and do various things. So really, outside of those NPCs I picked to follow me, I'm only commanding two units, which makes things a lot more straight forward.
A potential method I've thought might be able to streamline this is to simply treat individual NPCs, as individuals when they are solo, but to treat them as part of a unit when grouped. So basically something like this. Let's say you have five NPC allies in a squad which follow you around. You would command them similar to what you would in a game like Ghost Recon, but if you have more than that, you can form them into a unit where you would give them more generalized commands. So let's say you have recruited 50 NPCs. What you would do in this set up is to take a certain number of those which you prefer directly under your control, and then place the rest of them in a unit. The individual NPCs would have have the same individual stats, and gear like what they would if they were un-grouped, but instead you would command them as if they were a singular entity. Likewise, rather than having bases which you micromanage every aspect of, you could instead build a base, and then set NPCs to garrison it. How loot would be handled is that if lets say you order a unit to loot a building, after they were finished, and found everything they could find, they would give you a summary of the operation. In the summary, you would get a run down of casualties, and any, and all loot found. If you marked a loot item for "personal use" it would be added to your personal stash, which you could collect at any location which had access. After you have done this, you can either order the unit to divvy up the loot, which would cause the NPCs to select the best items for their class, and then add the rest to inventory, or you could order them to hold all. If you ordered them to hold all, you could then order them to "dump" the items into the inventories of whatever base you sent them to after the operation. After they do this, you could tell the garrison units to divvy up the stock, which would allow them to take the optimal gear.
TLDR: The basic command scheme is this
I have units: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOP
Rather than give them individual orders, I put {EFGHIJKLMNOP} into groups. So Group 1 is {KLMNOP}, which I treat as a singular entity. Group 2 is {EFGHIJ}, which is likewise treated as a singular entity. For whatever reason, I wanted units ABCD to follow my player character around, and do various things. So really, outside of those NPCs I picked to follow me, I'm only commanding two units, which makes things a lot more straight forward.
