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Here you can post your ideas for the official game which will be built with this engine, for testing and promotion.

Well, you'd want to look at a few things:

Setting (modern, sci-fi, historical, fantasy)

Speed (slow empire builder, or fast-paced arcade, or somewhere in between)

Scale (big battles and massive scale, or small battles with more individuality for units)

I think if you can get everyone on one page on these three, then ideas can start being generated.  Otherwise, two people could be talking about two great, yet mutually exclusive, game concepts.


I'm a fantasy guy personally, and I like my games a little on the arcade side, but with a robust economy and infrastructure.  I prefer large scale battles, but I do like some individuality with hero units and such [but not overpowering or defining the behavior of armies themselves as seems to be the trend in recent games].  That's just my preference, though.

[With avatar]

Ok, let's keep this simple:
Setting: historical/fantasy

Speed: Somewhere in between slow empire building and fast paced arcade

Scale: Small battles, with more focus on invidual units

Avatar: With avatar \ without avatar

Balance: rock-paper-scissors \ Realistic

I prefer games with a setting around the early middle ages, at least before gun powder came into it.
A bit of magic is fine, but it shouldn't be the main focus.

Scale, hmm... numbers aren't everything. I guess I could live with big battles, but I prefer having a smaller team.

Avatar, I like some custom unit in the game, to allow for more personal tactics.

Balance... please, no more rock-paper-scissor...

Solinx

Edit: Moved discussion about rushing to this topic:
Rushing and "peace time"

Any further discussion about rushing in this topic will be moved.

I agree, pre-gunpowder and keeping magic from dominating the setting are important.  I feel that recently fantasy has really been "overdoing" it with ridiculous setups.  While I don't mind a little technology, I think steam punk is a travesty.

As far as balance goes, I love a system which gives everything a role, but not necessarily X counter Y.  If swordsmen can't get into the melee, archers should decimate them.  If they do get into the melee, the archers get slaughtered.  The idea is that everything has a role, and will defeat something else under certain conditions, but you'll need to bring about those conditions and understand the battlefield in a little more depth.

I personally like large scale battles where the individual is expendable.  Experience plays an important part, but I'd prefer it to be represented in the leadership and heroes (especially important in a fantasy setting) and less on the individual soldier.  I wouldn't want anything more in depth that battle for middle earth, where groups of units gain experience from being involved in battles and gain generic buffs.  With that said, if you can get a large scale command system in place, a "promotion" system like in Civilization IV that would allow a group of battallions to share a specialized experience-based boost would be really cool, but that's getting a little ahead ^_^

Anyways, I'm fine for a realistic fantasy setting with light magic.  Maybe the occasional dragon and powerful wizard, but nothing obscene like in Warcraft.

As I said before: We'll get along nicely Darvin

I would prefer small scale battles, trying to lose as few men as possible, but with the current set up for the factions, I'm good with it.

Solinx

whether there'll be small or large scale battles should depend on the map i think. or if not, small scale battles should be dominant in the beginning, and large scale battles later on

it's a pity that ambushes (like the rangers vs haradrim in ithilien) are hardly seen in RTS games. i would really like to have those in the game

The reason ambushes are rarely seen is that in almost every RTS to date decisive force is what wins the game.  If you split up to make defensive ambushes, you'll vulnerable to getting steamrolled by a decisive force.  Equally, a decisive force is much too large to ambush effectively.

What we need to do is establish incentives for each faction to split up.  We need to force people to split up or be destroyed.  Once their army is split up, that's where ambushes start becoming important.  We need to add strategy of divide and conquer versus decisive action.  There has rarely been an RTS where decisive action has not been the hands down gamewinning strategy, and we need to change that.  I think by raising the scope of the map (like maybe 5 minutes for a slow unit to walk from one end to the other, with a zoom-out much like SupCom) we could partially achieve this, since moving your units about the map would take so long that a decisive force could NEVER defend more than one or two resource points effectively, meaning you wouldn't have a decisive force at all.

I like the idea on the not so decisive force, but about ambushes never being used... well, landscape hasn't exactly been used either, nor are units confused/surprised when they are ambushed, which are key elements for ambushes in my opinion. Ambushes have their advantages in real life, the games just never simulated these advantages, which resulted in sheer power winning the day, unless poorly led.

Solinx

As I see it, we need to establish gameplay that does not favour decisive action before ambushes can even be considered.  Essentially, the way I want to design it is that if you try to be decisive, you'll win your battles, but you'll lose the war, because everywhere your army isn't the enemy now controls by default.  Decisive action will always have its place, we just need to limit it.

Once that's established, working and fine-tuning ambushes won't be so hard.  Enemies will have to juggle units across the map, and attacking smaller forces as they move to reinforce a specific location will be the focus of the ambush.  In fact, with the game mechanics I've described, I'd actually wait to see how ambushes turned out before taking further action.

Well, even with your changes, I think ambushes wouldn't really be succesful without having the biggest force. The only change would be that these forces would be smaller, but it would still be a shootout between two parties, without giving the ambusher any real advantage of using an ambush tactic.

Solinx

ambushes could really work if we implemented the surprise/confusion element. i don't think that would be too hard

Not necessarily; troop placement is a huge thing we should be looking at, hence getting ambushed when your troops are in a march formation rather than in a combat one will put you at a severe disadvantage.

Which is somewhat a translation of taking the opposing forces by surprise.

Solinx

Ambushes could be simulated by realistic line of sight. If trees and bushes blocked LOS (to certain extents) this would be more viable, as an attack could truly be hidden from view. It would be important to note that if a unit's projectile passes into the LOS of the target, the unit attacking would not be revealed until the target turns and "sees" him.

This leads me into a concept that I was thinking about for BFME3 (if EA made it). Essentially, units would not operate as battalions or squads; instead, they would be individuals. However, players could make a battalion out of a group of units if they wished, the benefit being that the units would be easier to manage and would be able to use battalion based attacks (a.k.a a battle charge or something like that). Of course, this would also generate weaknesses. As stated before, the battalion's members could be "aggravated", causing them to split and operate without orders given the right circumstances.

The thing about creating your own squads would be that it's too high management.  Going for low management, it's best to say that a squad is just a squad.

Now, as far as ambushes go, each unit will have a very long line of sight, especially if they're on high ground.  However, certain conditions will make it so that you cannot see enemies within your full line of sight.  Units which are still, units in high grass or forest, units which have the stealth capability; these are all examples of things that will make units invisible along the fringe of your line of sight.  If you stack up all of those advantages, it may be you're in attacking range before you can see them.  Once they open fire, however, a stealthed unit's position is exposed, he must retreat to the edge of your line of sight (how close to the edge is determined by the stealth factor again) to go back into stealth mode.

Line of sight will be 360 degrees again for simplicity reasons; it would get very annoying management-wise if you were against a stealth oriented faction like Caeluin and had to keep rearranging squads so you have line of sight in every direction.

Units which are still, units in high grass or forest, units which have the stealth capability; these are all examples of things that will make units invisible along the fringe of your line of sight.

don't forget units behind walls, units behind hills, etc.

That's different than stealth; that's actually blocked from sight.  Thick forests could also do that, I suppose.


Stealth, under the definitions I'm going with, is a property where even though a unit is within the line of sight of an enemy, it is not perceived.  Something behind a hill, a wall, or heavy trees is not within line of sight, hence it isn't necessarily stealthed even though it isn't perceived.

Yes of course, I didn't read properly

I think Darvin hits the nail on the head again. It is important that we make it so that the ambusher actually gains more than a "first shot" advantage; I think maybe an "instant kill" for at least 1 squad member. That would make ambushing very dangerous.

if it's doable, ambushes should create a kind of unorganised, panicky chaos among the attacked