Must-play RTS games

Associate
Joined
10 Jan 2006
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1,785
Location
Scotland
Reading the replies, it just goes to show there aren't many new (read: good) RTS games out there recently. It seems this genre is overlooked nowadays, yet it's one of the main reasons I still have a PC.

That because only one company actually has any vested interest in a pure RTS, and that is Blizzard (sadly Blizzard Activision now). Starcraft 2 is doing pretty well, all things considered, particularly with F2P. Warcraft 3 is being remastered this year and will no doubt do pretty well. It takes an awful lot of resources to make a balanced RTS at the level of SC2 and I just cant see any other company having the incentive to do so, Blizzard do it because of the heritage of Starcraft in esports. With the recent goings on at Blizzard though who knows, Starcraft has been confirmed for this year in terms of esports investment, and the warchests (paid cosmetic content) that they sell continues to sell out every time, but the reality is that whilst it is the pinnacle of a genre it doesnt make the kind of money that they could make by diverting those resources into some other area *cough Battle Royale*.

The Diablo mobile guff was just a small taste of what is to come in all likelyhood, but here's hoping that RTS's can hang on somehow as they are a founding pillar of PC gaming, and even more so, esports gaming.
 
Soldato
Joined
5 Dec 2008
Posts
17,283
I wish did a come back as a genre I had some great lan parts playing command and conquer games.

I'd love to play starcraft2 online regularly enough to become good but I just don't have he time, shame as its great game
 
Soldato
Joined
15 Dec 2002
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23,299
Location
In a cowfield, London, UK
Just bumping this for the Forged Alliance fans out there.

Over the past week I've been playing the LOUD project mod and just wanted to share some thoughts on it because it really does change the way the game works. It comes in a single installer and is separate from your FA install.

https://www.moddb.com/mods/loud-ai-...alliance/features/what-is-the-loud-ai-project
https://www.moddb.com/mods/loud-ai-supreme-commander-forged-alliance

"Developed over the last 6 years, the LOUD Project is a complete reworking of the core code for Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance. Focusing specifically on improving not only the AI, but overall game performance - LOUD can now easily run games with 5000+ units, at normal speed, on 40k and larger maps. The package includes subsets of many of the most popular mods, adapted specifically for use with the LOUD project, and an entire collection of updated maps specifically marked to optimize performance with the LOUD project."

So as said. I've been playing a few maps here and there. My normal map would be Setons 20x20 with 2x Sorian Adaptive AI's and whilst there would be mass carnage, the AI just throws units at you and doesn't make good use of T4 Experimentals.

LOUD really messes you up. It isn't as aggressive as I'd like - infact the bugger has no interest in your base from the start. It takes just over 1 HOUR to really build up it's base and then he'll start messing you about. If you are a rusher than this tactic will still overwhelm the AI as it hasn't the time to build up defences - there's no fun in that though.

Due to the game being reworked, a lot has changed and T3 AA placements are less powerful (imo) so you need to watch out as it uses Transports to drop units behind your lines. It'll effectively poke and prod your defences to find ways through it and you'll see this. It is horribly clever - at one point I sent a TON of T4's at its two bases only to see it drop a ton of T3 units in an undefended spot behind my base! If you defeat it's early T2 unit attacks, it returns with those units and a sodding shield unit to protect them.

LOUD comes complete with a host of mods like BlackOP's and TotalMayhem, and a few smaller ones that offer quality of life ie a Storage mod that removes the requirement to build Mass Storage structures on every damn extractor. Instead the extractor can be upgraded to act as storage - same goes for Power Gens.

Deffo changed the way I play the game and 20x20 maps with 3k of units hasn't a single hint of slowdown with 2x Alx LOUD AI's. That said, games are much longer, my average game length is about 2hrs now vs 2 AI's.
 
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