Epic RTS Game?

Pivo504

2[H]4U
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Will we ever see another epic RTS game? With how accelerated PCs have become we have yet to see anyone really push the envelope in this arena..I think this is one of the arenas that PC gaming will always rule unlike FPS. The last RTS that tried to was Supreme Commander. But then that pile of crap SC2 came out & the vision was ruined...But anyways it seems RTS games have not changed much besides what Chris Taylor did with the First Supcom & Forged Alliance...
 
Company of Heroes is in my opinion the best RTS. It looks pretty godd even when you zom in really close. And of course the gameplay is great.
 
The best bet would be from an indie developer and Kickstarter. "Epic" RTS tend to be very complex, and games like that don't usually sell enough to interest bigger developers and publishers since most people's attention span is shorter than a nano tube. We really need more companies who are willing to push creative ideas instead of chasing every last cent.
 
I'd have to agree with Company of Heroes being the best RTS. SC2 is more of an arcade styled game than strategy game.
 
I tried COH but didnt like it..I like the supreme commander style RTS the best..Where you have total control over the entire battlefield & have many different types of war machines..I think Chris Taylor was on the right track with supreme commander and FA and even his new fantasy RTS was looking like it was on the right track but Im not sure if itll ever see the light of day. I totally agree with you SicKlown. That is why supreme commander did not sell as well as C&C and Starcraft..Its very complex game...
 
IMO, even SupCom didn't equal the near-perfection that was Total Annihilation. For me, the perfect RTS would be Total Annihilation gameplay with modern graphics and SupCom's strategic zoom-out view.
 
I agree drako! TA was amazing..but what was so much better about the gameplay? They were very similar minus the lag that supcom had bc of the steep PC power it needed to run. I still own the soundtrack & listen to it lol I would even put the soundtrack on while playing supcom lol But anyways supcom was the closest thing we will ever see to TA or the advancement of RTS gaming..I still have fun playing FA on the new FA Forever servers since GPG is down..I hope CT & his new Company go back to their roots & show us a true sequel to TA one day...
 
TA was an amazing game that was limited by technical issues. I'd love to see it revisited. I don't know what they hell they were thinking for SupCom 2. What was that?
 
I agree drako! TA was amazing..but what was so much better about the gameplay? They were very similar minus the lag that supcom had bc of the steep PC power it needed to run. I still own the soundtrack & listen to it lol I would even put the soundtrack on while playing supcom lol But anyways supcom was the closest thing we will ever see to TA or the advancement of RTS gaming..I still have fun playing FA on the new FA Forever servers since GPG is down..I hope CT & his new Company go back to their roots & show us a true sequel to TA one day...
It's hard for me to put my finger on what felt better in TA. My biggest issue with SupCom is that the z-axis seemed ignored in the game. I remember having a huge advantage in both LOS and range when on ridges in TA, but I didn't notice much of an effect in SC. Also, seemingly every ridge/mountain was traversable by most units in SC. In TA, the terrain actually shaped routes, whether it be hills or forest. In SC, the only terrain that really seemed to matter was coastlines.

That's all from my SC noob perspective though.
 
Ahhh RTS - outside of DOOM I remember being blown away by Command & Conquer. Full motion video on a Packard Bell 66Mhz machine - mmm turbo button.

I was very big into total annihilation - loved supreme commander. Maybe I'm missing it but what exactly is the reason everyone bitches about Supreme Commander 2? I will admit it was pretty much the same game just more story wasn't ground breaking but was great to see them continuing work on the series.

Total annihilation still was better though -- maybe it was the artwork or the unit design but at least in that game I could tell what the different units were by their highly varied design. Maybe I'm getting old (30) but all the units look the same across sides in Supreme Commander.

Too bad the Command & Conquer game has been raped beyond recognition, even if given a 4th chance they'd never find a way to get the magic back they once had. Westwood was the only studio that KNEW how to do a C&C game.
 
I'd love to see a new Dune RTS, played the hell out of Dune II back in the day. Although I'm pretty sure EA holds the license, and after seeing what they've done to C&C maybe it's best to let sleeping dogs lie.
 
I think a new Company of Heroes is on the horizon. I also enjoyed World in Conflict, take a look at that if you get a chance.
 
Searching for a nice deal on the "Complete" Company of Heroes. Looks like there have been some amazing deals that I've missed. Looks like it's been available for $9 or so.

Steam want's $49.97 for the complete pack.....for a 5 year old game....
 
You'll never see an Epic RTS. Whatever Epic was in 99 , is no more. They are a console pleasing game factory. They finally ended the Gears trilogy and what's the next big game they announce? Another Gears game...

Its clear that Epic's path is no longer anything really involving the PC unless its a forgettable port (Bulletstorm anyone?).
 
You'll never see an Epic RTS. Whatever Epic was in 99 , is no more. They are a console pleasing game factory. They finally ended the Gears trilogy and what's the next big game they announce? Another Gears game...

Its clear that Epic's path is no longer anything really involving the PC unless its a forgettable port (Bulletstorm anyone?).

They're not talking about the company Epic, but using it as a term to describe massive and complex RTS games.
 
You'll never see an Epic RTS. Whatever Epic was in 99 , is no more. They are a console pleasing game factory. They finally ended the Gears trilogy and what's the next big game they announce? Another Gears game...

Its clear that Epic's path is no longer anything really involving the PC unless its a forgettable port (Bulletstorm anyone?).

pretty much, supreme commander was the end of true RTS games given that the game originally should of come out in 1999. now its pretty much consolized arcade style rts games.

personally i was never really a fan of company of heroes.
 
Basically the three teams that started the epic 3d RTS are the only ones who were still making them, but not anymore.
Massive Entertainment - Ground Control / World in Conflict got sold by Blizzard to Ubisoft who turned them into generic studio #546 who made AC: Revelations and is making Farcry 3??
Chris Taylor's team - Made TA and SupCom (Dungeon Siege as well) and then made SupCom 2 and Dungeon Siege 3.

So the only developer left is Relic who of course is responsible for Homeworld, CoH and WH40K and is working on CoH2. Of course Homeworld 3 is always rumored to be in development too.
 
Every time I read this I think that the OP was about to announce unreal RTS or something. UnrealCraft III
 
Your right drako it was the terrain. Supcom would have been a lot diff had terrain given you an advatange & disadvantage in battle..To this date though no game has come as close in terms of advancing RTS gaming as did TA & supcom..I still am curious how the new fantasy RTS CT was working on would come out...There are so many cool things that can be done with both a futuristic style RTS like supcom & also a fantasy RTS like Warcraft...Seems Ill have to stick to Starcraft 2 expansions for my RTS fill...oh well

BTW I meant epic as in when you play it for the first time its just got that epic feeling like this game is AWESOME..You guys who played Total Annihilation for the first time know exactly what I am talking about..Even the First Starcraft..I always loved the Warcraft & starcraft series but mainly due to the amazing story lines & characters..But anyways my point is there are really no epic RTS on the horizon...
 
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I really liked World in Conflict. Haven't played Company of Heroes, but I definitely liked it more than Supreme Commander and Starcraft.
 
Instantly thought about Total Annihilation. Still play it every so often to this day, very fun and epic game.

IMO, even SupCom didn't equal the near-perfection that was Total Annihilation. For me, the perfect RTS would be Total Annihilation gameplay with modern graphics and SupCom's strategic zoom-out view.

Hell yeah man
 
I think the mod community could do a lot more with supcom...Im hoping Fa Forever is going to do just that bc I miss the days of epic RTS games that leave you on the edge of your seat!!!
 
Sins of a Solar Empire Rebellion is out. It doesn't get any more epic than that in terms of number of units, degree of difficulty and learning curve.
 
Awesome genre, I really wish these kinds of games would get back into the spotlight. I've been doing a lot of small LANs with AoE2, going to be adding AoE3, RoN, WC3, SupCom, and a few others hopefully in the next couple weeks. Great times, but playing a whole game can take 3+ hrs sometimes
 
Awesome genre, I really wish these kinds of games would get back into the spotlight. I've been doing a lot of small LANs with AoE2, going to be adding AoE3, RoN, WC3, SupCom, and a few others hopefully in the next couple weeks. Great times, but playing a whole game can take 3+ hrs sometimes

Be careful with AoE3 and SupCom; I've had quite a few LANs with those two games with 4-6 players. They will both get bogged down. AoE3 will just lock up; this is caused by one computer being a bottle neck with particles. I had to modify one of the game files to limit the number of particles for network traffic. It becomes playable for 8 players only if you lower it. I played with systems in the sig plus an Athlon64 6000+ chip with 4GB memory. That computer was the bottleneck. Also there's another mod that allows you to zoom out farther which is excellent for higher resolutions but framerates drop off a cliff at a certain elevation. I thought I posted this info in the past, but I couldn't find it so if I remember I can post details later.

SupCom is particularly bad because the game just slows to a crawl and I couldn't find a way to fix it. There are multiple reports of this if you search for it. Generally, limit your games to 4 people and you'll be okay as long as your games don't reach 90+ mins. It's a memory issue IIRC. Basically Supcom AI for all units (not just co-op vs. AI) remembers all pathing even for units destroyed. It doesn't eat up all your ram, but I think it only allocates so much memory and starts using virtual memory at which point the game slows down.

They're both awesome games for LAN, but keep it small. AoE3 is viable for 8 players with the tweak for particles and it's a blast.
 
I don't think anything will ever quite match Total Annihilation in my mind.

Personally, I like both SupCom and SupCom 2, though.

I get that SupCom 2 was not like the first one in a lot of ways, but it's still a fun game for what it is. I actually just played a good 4Pv4AI match on Saturday, and you can get HUGE armies built up for massive battles. Only problem is, after a certain point, the game starts to lag heavily due to all the units, or AI, or whatnot...not really sure. C&C Generals had the same problem, even over a LAN. So 48 minutes of "in-game" time was actually like 2 hours.

EDIT: Basically like what J Macker said above regarding the slowdown issues.

In the in-game chat for SupCom 2 while we were playing, we were just talking about how we'd love to see a SupCom 3, and that no RTS today really matches what the TA/SupCom series did.
 
Personally, I Wish we'd get an RTS game that focuses PURELY on combat/story and 0 on "Base building" and making new units.


To me, the most memorable, most rewarding, and most FUN RTS game I ever played was Myth I and myth II from Bungie back in the day.

They didn't have any base building, no resource gathering, it was simply a storyline, with levels where you had a set number of units and you had objectives to do and battles to fight . You had to be SMART and use tactics to win, know your units well and how to use them with the environment. Terrain, weather, all o fit made a difference and could change how you played a battle. Even vs a huge number of enemies you could play smart an ddevastate them, or make a mistake and lose horribly.

Sadly after Myth II Bungie sold the IP rights, now Take2 (of rockstar fame) owns it and will probably never ever use it aigain or make a new Myth game.

Myth was "epic" not because it had millions of units on the screen or a ton of things going on at once causing you to micromanage, but because the story was epic, the combat was brutal and fun, environments were great and varied/detailed (especially for a 1998 game).

One of the few RTS games where you'd have a battle, and when it was over with the battlefield actually....looked like a battlefield. Bodies all over the ground, bloody/dismembered. Explosions left craters and fire left scorches (you could even burn grass with fire). They even had physics (one of the first games to use physics IIRC, well before Half life 2) where gibs/blood would roll down hills and things.

On top of this the MP was so much fun. You had everything from CTF, King of the hill, to Myth things like "Steal the bacon" and all kinds of off the wall game modes and more normal ones. Then you had a TON of maps, conversions (from the old west, to Vietname, etc. It was the "half life" of the rts world back in the day.

Here's a video showing a King of the hill mp match (the team who controls the hill for the most time during the match wins). It was always fun and you'd get these huge multi-team battles to take it over.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niLBL44VOxc
 
Company of Heroes is in my opinion the best RTS. It looks pretty godd even when you zom in really close. And of course the gameplay is great.

you need the "camera.lua" mod so you can zoom out enough...I just cannot stand the claustrophobic stock FOV
 
Personally, I Wish we'd get an RTS game that focuses PURELY on combat/story and 0 on "Base building" and making new units.

See, whereas I prefer the base building and massive unit armies to micro-management in stuff like Starcraft or CoH. Different strokes for different folks I guess.
 
Homeworld series was the best, IMO.

100% true all 3D play, along with the fact that every single unit lost in battle stung because you always started a mission with the same ships you had at the finish of the previous mission.
 
Men Of War was as close as I have found since TA.

IMHO, TA was and still is the best game ever made.
 
I think CT was on the right track with Supcom...I just wish he didnt fall prey to consolization & streamlining crap...It seems like every single game is getting dumbed down so any idiot can play...Just like with all the crappy buy your items/weapons games & become a god...games today require little skill that is why I dont care for any games since Supcom FA..EA destroyed the C&C franchise...Hoping some new developer can break new ground in the genre but it doesnt seem likely with shitty PC sales & consoles taking over the world... I remember when petrograph tried to make a Star wars RTS..It could have been epic but they failed bigtime bc it wasnt real time like Supreme commander. Also the LOTR RTS wasnt too bad...

J Macker have you played FA FOREVER? I played a 6on6 & it was damn EPIC. It was a total nuclear holocaust of a war lol I guess everyone in the game had good PCs & connections bc it ran well until the end! BlackOPs is a fun mod with tons of additional units that make the game play different. FA forever is patched up & diff from GPG & Supcom FA could be why.

I think with some work from mods/community Supcom FA could become a lot better than TA...It basically has everything TA(Minus the DGUN =( ) had but on a much larger scale & to me the units look more realistic. TA units look goofy lol for their day they looked great but I like how different the factions look in Supcom.
 
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See, whereas I prefer the base building and massive unit armies to micro-management in stuff like Starcraft or CoH. Different strokes for different folks I guess.

Yea, cept you actually get plenty of those games.

Name me one game like Myth? Where you focus purely on combat, have a finite amount of units, can't make more units nor build bases/resources, just your units and combat?

There aren't a lot of those, if any really at all these days.
 
Dawn of War II

Fun game, but you still cap points and pump out new units/upgrades a la company of heroes.

In Myth you had only the units you had, you couldn't "make more" an dthus you had to make excellent use of them and wisely, you couldn't just throw them away or do something stupid.
 
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