I want to make a MMORTS

The time has come..

Published on January 16, 2005 By Draginol In PC Gaming

As I look at Stardock's massive IT infrastructure I realize something - we are well suited to make a massively multiplayer online real time strategy game.

The problem with RTS's done as massively multiplayer has always been the persistent world. That is, what happens to your empire when you're not playing? There is also quite a bit more involved in keeping the world compelling and interesting over time.

Most game developers would have to build an awful lot of tools to make a persistent RTS world. A lot of non-game tools to solve some of the issues that come into play when you sit down and try to seriously think out how an RTS would be done if it were persistent and massively multplayer. That's something Stardock has in abundance. After all, Stardock.net's infrastructure, already today handles roughly 100,000 unique users per day.

And with some of the talent we now have, we can do this. The time has come for us to make a MMORTS. Details will follow once we have more code in place. We have a really cool design and we have the infrastructure..

Comments (Page 2)

JeremyG

on Jan 17, 2005

The future is in combining play types.

A game like Battlefield 2 which combines FPS games with 1 person on each teaming being the "general" who views it like an RTS.

Frogboy

on Jan 17, 2005

Yellow - my problem with most RTS's is tha tthey're not RTSses but should be called RTT (real time tactical).

Kobrano

on Jan 17, 2005

The future is in combining play types. A game like Battlefield 2 which combines FPS games with 1 person on each teaming being the "general" who views it like an RTS.

Yup, and one of my favorite games of all time, even now, is Savage, which is a RTS-FPS combo game, and it does it perfectly..

Link

Rich

on Jan 18, 2005

Shattered Galaxy was alright... and there was a feature, where the longer you played, the higher up you went.
World War II Online is a FPS shooter, which is somewhat tactical, since you must get troops in location.

How do you deal with the world when you are not online in a RTS, well, that is where AI and what you setup the environment to do for you. Of course, the AI will never, or at least not soon, be good enough to defeat a human. This has been tried to some degree with Heat.net's game: 10Six

Of course, the comment about RTS out there are more RT Tactical is true!

jeblackstar

on Jan 18, 2005

This is something that I've been thinking about since I first played Mircoprose's Lightspeed, there was an awesome game, and it could be played on my 8086. Swirve.com has two sort of MMORTS's, Earth 2020 and Utopia, both allow you to build defenses against attacks when you were offline, and if the universe were big enough, say 100 million, or more, stars, it should be possible to prevent bigger empires from crushing littler ones, or some kind of "defense" for little empires could be put in to place that would prevent large empires from annihilating little ones.

Just some ideas I've been kicking around for about 12 years.

Cheers

Rich

on Jan 18, 2005

Helix the II:
"Over-come that and you're in business."

Except that you don't have to overcome this to be in business nor do you have to go beyond it to make a profit, else you wouldn't see so many MMO games out there. Now go beyond this and just maybe, given the right circumstance and a bit of marketing and luck, perhaps you can surpase EQ, EQII, SW:galixies and The SIMS, but don't bet on it. You can make a profit though, which sustains a business.

Lord_StarPilot

on Jan 19, 2005

So, what you need, is a system that lets you take all your resources "offline" with you. That is actually doable. Pretty easy to make PvP or just P killing time and collecting more resources, as well.

How about a system where each player puts up X amount of resources, and then they duke it out on a randomly generated battlefields? Winner takes the purse. You could have have team and clan events then...

Humm... Players could earn (and trade) special unit designs. Or you could tag in RPG elements, so that improved or uber units would become available to the players after they've won X amount of resources or won certain X SP scenarios. However, to keep SOME balance between the Super Vets and newer players, players would have to put up a certain level purse to have those units enabled. This way, you cannot use your Uber Drakanian Marines against a newbie that has just mastered the basics. You play for peanuts, you use peanut units. Notice: In a major event, you'd pony up peanuts, and as you got further advanced, your pot at risk would slowly raise so that you could start breaking out the mid and high level units.

I could see a Science Fantasy realm, allowing that. Sort of a, "The Realm of Aries" ('Halls of Valhalla"?), where players are effectively bored gods, who gain and lose material resource reserves, which they can use to create units to battle each other.

That, I think I could get into, occasionally.

Provided the RTS itself is well done. Of course, to keep it fresh for the old players, SD would have to occasionally shake up the scenarios, host/sponsor (online of course) tourneys that only allow certain type units, etc etc etc.

Players would never be stuck at zero... if they were to lose everything, they'd just have to beat on the AI in SP versus AI. No funds to risk, then it's an idiot. But you keep the yeild low, to keep players from "farming" the give me. Or, you just just have them automatically accumulate X number of points a day. Or both. But again, neither should be significant source... you should make your big lump of resources playing others.

What do you think? It allows for the essence of RTS (playing out a whole game in short time, finding "pickup games" online), while preserving the MMO aspects (carrying forward what you've won) and avoiding some of the worse aspects of MMO (getting everything stolen while you were away sleeping or worse yet, dealing with RL).

The big trouble with any MMO is the exploits. They tend to ruin the honest player's fun, at least from my experience.

Kelgon

on Jan 27, 2005

i would have liked to see sort of a mix between warcraft 3 and shattered galaxy, where you chose your team, say elf, and you fought over different areas on a world map, each game would be decentralized, so one of the players involved in the battle would be the server, resulting in very low stress on the central server, when the battle finishes, the remote player server would upload the stats of the game to the central server which would update the world map accordingly, eg, say the night elves win, then they will control that area. each area could have different resources and those resources benefit your nation... anyway, you get the idea......

delaron

on Jan 28, 2005

After reading this, I can think of plenty of things that could be blended into a persistant world, be at its core one thing, yet blend a few things from other sources....For Instance..

You want a RTS...You want 2 or more sides, preferably more than 2 Id say.
You have Savage and a few other games of the same type where you have RTS blended with RPG
Now Stick in the MMOG and Muds, and heres what I think you could get...

(for lack of name, ill use style of game as its name) Start with a persistant Savage world. In each world, your character, when created, gets a patch of land somewhere on the perimeter of wherever. You get standard buildings that are your own. You are ruler of your own patch of land, have a Major Domo to see over your 1 acre while your away (or you just start out as a mercenary, then build up enough resources to purchase your 1 acre) Now for sake of Growth, this world is ever growing, the world itself Expands to fit its occupants. As you gain in power, your landsize grows, you buy/build more buildings, gain more 'abilities/resources' to draw upon. Bring in the Mechwarrior Mercenaries/Freelancer type of game, where you can become a gun for hire against the other side, or become the boss who hires (probly you start out a merc, then you hire as you get more powerful etc.) You buy weapons, you outfit a company of 'hired goons (live or monsters) and run your scenerio into the other sides areas.

Now theres a few ways it can split from here, your lands generate income/resources, and also have debts to pay, so theres one limiting factor of certain things. You can go on quests for items/resources/heros or hire someone to do management, gain benefits/disadvantages to fit within your own kingdom. You buy Defenses, bodyguards, town guards, police, boarder patrols, outposts, etc as you get bigger and need it. Your town in essence will become a 'zone' like in any MMOG for the other side to come raid and pillage.

There are a few problems with this of course, but they could be worked out, lets just think of the framework.

Now, magically, your area may switch places as you become more powerful/large area or some other system, perhaps they all become islands that move, who knows.

Now for the RTS part when people are away. Your town is already a defensive keep, with the ability to hire people for missions or maintain a standing army. the other aspect is buying buildings that spawn units that rush at the other sides boarder (collective boarder, however you do a PvP boarder) which has defenses built up with money from the side as a whole, from conquests from the one side, from beating back the enemy and having monsters loot the treasure from the attackers. I can envision a maelstrom constantly in play in the center if sides are even in strength, and one side getting stronger due to players being crafty or helping out, or just making a better strategy of units, and packs of spawns.

So, you have the center battle, you have ways to get around that battle and infiltrate the other side, and sabatage stuff (either permanently, or temporarily depending on whatever it is they sabatage) the posibilities are endless, people have to pay to repair, or can get other players to help repair, and players could be the repair people in game, charging for services, etc...Bang, in game economy, with shops that build the upgrades, the buildings, the repairs etc...

The limiting factor for making one side have more people than another could be one of the larger one side is, magically its harder to plant a plot of land there because of crowding, but if theres symetry in the magical planes, getting into one side or the other is simple, but if one side has 1000 players, and the other 500, you hit a brick wall of force that wont let you go to the 1000, but will easly allow you entry into the magical world of 500...

I can envision defense systems that limit magical power on items entry into thier domain, I can imagine magical or mechanical ways to subvert those protections, I can imagine alot of stuff in this persistant world...It could also have a 'goes till one side wins', but is geared for a game that lasts for at least a year due to the population limiter stuff etc...or with the ole 'cornered cat kicks 2x arse' play...

So, it is definitely dooable I think in the terms that would make it successfull....

Oh, and I copyright, and trademark, and whatever else my ideas may catch on in a game as a whole, so if you want to work with it, be cool and get me involved *grin*

krashi

on Feb 05, 2005

www.projectvisitor.com

enough said

SiNNiC

on Feb 06, 2005

well Draginol. I'm wondering what your basic idea is. I'm in the works of another MMORTS in a galaxy format. It has 2 or 3 things no other MMORTS game has. So if you wanna see my design doc ask for it at tbrown_7@msn.com. Oh and just to mention my design doc is all ready in a patent just to comment on it.

Dread

on Feb 22, 2005

I am interested i a mmorts too, you could do sooo much in it, adn another general suggestion, you could enter the playing world through teleports that log you in or out of the game.

Welcome Guest! Please take the time to register with us.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:

Richer content, access to many features that are disabled for guests like commenting on the forums.
Access to a great community, with a massive database of many, many areas of interest.
Access to contests & subscription offers like exclusive emails.
It's simple, and FREE!