GeekNights 20100518 - Real Time Strategy Games

Apreche

Tonight on GeekNights we discuss the genre of video game at which we suck most, real time strategy. In the news Kojima coming to NYC, and Facebook and Farmville fight and make up.

lackofcheese

Your linked episode seems to be the wrong one (Twitter and a Tangent). The link on the main site is the same.

The episode clearly exists when you manually go to 20100518.mp3, though.

Sova

thanks, was wondering what the number was.

Void Dragon

I think the big newses in RTS right now would be Starcraft 2 and Achron. In past news C&C4 is crap as EA kills off an otherwise excellent franchise and Supreme Commander 2 is outdone by the game that it is the sequel of.

Pegu

iTunes has the audio file for twitter and a tangent listed as this episode.

lackofcheese

Poor audio quality for Scott around the 21 minute mark.

trogdor9

thanks, was wondering what the number was.

Um, it's YYYYMMDD.mp3. Always.

Vhdblood

Yeah, iTunes picked up the Twitter and a Tangent also.

Pegu

iTunes has the audio file for twitter and a tangent listed as this episode.

Yeah, iTunes picked up the Twitter and a Tangent also.

Please read the comments before adding your own, at least to a reasonable extent. I don't expect you to read everything in the thing of the day thread to make sure yours hasn't already been posted, but c'mon, this thread has <10 posts and you are reporting a problem.

Andrew

Please read the comments before adding your own, at least to a reasonable extent. I don't expect you to read everything in the thing of the day thread to make sure yours hasn't already been posted.

Please read the rules before making up your own.

Only moderators are responsible for enforcing the rules of the forum. If you are not a moderator, you should not take it upon yourself to inform other users of their forum-related transgressions.

Vhdblood

Please read the comments before adding your own, at least to a reasonable extent. I don't expect you to read everything in the thing of the day thread to make sure yours hasn't already been posted, but c'mon, this thread has <10 posts and you are reporting a problem.</p>

My bad, Captain Douchenozzle. Is it really that big of a deal?

Pegu

My bad, Captain Douchenozzle. Is it really that big of a deal?

Great name. Sorry if I appeared excessively worried about it.

Pegu

Please read the comments before adding your own, at least to a reasonable extent. I don't expect you to read everything in the thing of the day thread to make sure yours hasn't already been posted.

Please read the rules before making up your own.

Only moderators are responsible for enforcing the rules of the forum. If you are not a moderator, you should not take it upon yourself to inform other users of their forum-related transgressions.

I never said it was a rule. It was only a request.

Sova

thanks, was wondering what the number was.

Um, it's YYYYMMDD.mp3. Always.

I suppose that makes sense considering that the days change more often than the years and months. Convention forces my brain to think in DD/MM/YYYY format normally, and especially recently with the tons of military paperwork I've had to fill out.

Apreche

Fixed the numbers. Should be good now.

And YYYY-MM-DD is ISO 8601.

lackofcheese

You should fix the link in the first post in this thread as well.

Apreche

You should fix the link in the first post in this thread as well.

ok

Omnutia

And then I discovered that you can't delete and re-download podcasts in iTunes unless you got them from the iTunes podcast directory.

lackofcheese

Wow, epic arguing in this episode.

Omnutia

I just went and played AOE2 with all things revealed on easy and looking at the AI base, the number of farms they have active and will have to maintain by repeatedly telling villagers to revive them when they run out made me quit then and there. If I have to spend that much time clicking on stuff as fast as I can, how am I going to get any strategy done?

Apreche

I just went and played AOE2 with all things revealed on easy and looking at the AI base, the number of farms they have active and will have to maintain by repeatedly telling villagers to revive them when they run out made me quit then and there. If I have to spend that much time clicking on stuff as fast as I can, how am I going to get any strategy done?

Yep.

Two games I would have mentioned had Rym not extended my tutorial gripe tangent, are Multiwinia and Defcon. Introversion has at least tried to make real time strategy games that don't have the same problems of the Starcrafts and AOEs of the world. The thing is that while they succeeded in certain areas, they failed in other critical ways. So close, yet so far.

MrRoboto

I just went and played AOE2 with all things revealed on easy and looking at the AI base, the number of farms they have active and will have to maintain by repeatedly telling villagers to revive them when they run out made me quit then and there. If I have to spend that much time clicking on stuff as fast as I can, how am I going to get any strategy done?

You can queue the farm re-spawn at the mill, and if you know the keyboard shortcuts, it's even easier.

Turn based is where is at, just like all the great board strategy games.

Rym

ntroversion has at least tried to make real time strategy games that don't have the same problems of the Starcrafts and AOEs of the world. The thing is that while they succeeded in certain areas, they failed in other critical ways. So close, yet so far.

Yeap. Multiwinia has terrible, unconfigurable controls, and DEFCon forced micromanagement of the missile silos.

You can queue the farm re-spawn at the mill

If there's really no situation where you wouldn't want to do that, why not just make it automatic from the start? Or, at worst, automatic-but-cancelable.

Omnutia

You can queue the farm re-spawn at the mill, and if you know the keyboard shortcuts, it's even easier.

Ah, looks like that's only in the Conquerors.

Mills in Age of Empires II are used for villagers to deposit the food they have collected. They are also used to research some technologies and, in The Conquerors expansion, are used to queue farms.

Omnutia

Here's my thoughts on one of the big things that's stopping real strategy (Flanking, surprise attacks, etc..) being possible in video games and it boils down to this:

Real world: Most units pack a destructive power far in excess of what they themselves can take.
RTS: Units sit there firing at each other until one of the units, regardless of who shot first and from where, falls over.

Result: Size of force and choosing the right side of the RPS triangle is all you need to win. How you utilize your units doesn't matter so much.

Luke Burrage

Right click on a podcast in iTunes, and select "show all available episodes." It'll download the latest podcast again after you delete the old one.

Techparadox

Result: Size of force and choosing the right side of the RPS triangle is all you need to win. How you utilize your units doesn't matter so much.

This. Haven't finished listening to the episode yet, but I definitely wanted to comment on the 39 minutes I've heard so far [1]. Most RTS games these days boil down to a game of Rock-Paper-Scissors with the added need for speed being a huge factor. That's why in SC and SC2 you send in one of your collector drones to scout the opponent [2] - if you don't know what the enemy is building and what the counter for it is, you're screwed. It also reinforces the need to learn the hot-keys for commands so you're not spending the entire game wasting clicks and scrolling around. I'm by no means a SC guru, but I've had my ass handed to me enough times online to know that if you go in without a build order in mind and don't have half a clue as to how to quick-select the units and set hot-keys for groups then you'd just as well let your opponent roll over you and go practice skirmish mode before coming back.

[1] Which is about all I can get in during my morning commute. By the by, what the hell is up with Scott's audio in this episode? As mentioned before it starts going to shit right around the 21 minute mark and cuts in and out after that. I'm hoping it clears up later in the ep. because it's pretty jarring.
[2] Scouting being a valid military tactic and whatnot.

Kiey

I've been playing Farmville for a few weeks to figure out what the deal with it is. To correct what you said they don't sell ads, all their money is made through micro-transactions. You can buy coins or Farmville dollars with real money. Coins are what you earn normally through playing, and can be used on a limited number of things in the Farmville store. Mostly seeds for new plants, a few buildings and decorations, and a few vehicles. The Farmville dollars (you get one per level,) and are used for the majority of other things in the Farmville store (basically all the cool looking things.) It should be noted that what you spend the Farmville dollars (and thus real money,) on are not essential things for playing the game. Essential stuff tends to be sold in coins, but then different versions (like if you want a pink tractor or a barn painted like a cow,) you need to spent the Farmville dollars.

I've found the only reason it seems to work is basically, how it was described in that SUNY Buffalo paper, that its about social obligation. It basically preys on you wanting to be a good friend to keep you playing, but I also think that there is social capital aspects to it along with the social obligation. What I mean is that they want you to build up a cool looking farm to show off to others, especially when you have rare items or buildings on your farm that you had to spend real money to get. This then entices your friends to want to have a cool looking farm too, and thus require them to spend money to do so.

Churba

I've been playing Farmville for a few weeks to figure out what the deal with it is. To correct what you said they don't sell ads, all their money is made through micro-transactions. You can buy coins or Farmville dollars with real money. Coins are what you earn normally through playing, and can be used on a limited number of things in the Farmville store. Mostly seeds for new plants, a few buildings and decorations, and a few vehicles. The Farmville dollars (you get one per level,) and are used for the majority of other things in the Farmville store (basically all the cool looking things.) It should be noted that what you spend the Farmville dollars (and thus real money,) on are not essential things for playing the game. Essential stuff tends to be sold in coins, but then different versions (like if you want a pink tractor or a barn painted like a cow,) you need to spent the Farmville dollars.

I've found the only reason it seems to work is basically, how it was described in thatSUNY Buffalo paper,that its about social obligation. It basically preys on you wanting to be a good friend to keep you playing, but I also think that there is social capital aspects to it along with the social obligation. What I mean is that they want you to build up a cool looking farm to show off to others, especially when you have rare items or buildings on your farm that you had to spend real money to get. This then entices your friends to want to have a cool looking farm too, and thus require them to spend money to do so.

I think We Rule is better for that - It's the same social obligation bullshit, and they show you the occasional ad in the menus and such, but it's non-obtrusive, and while you can buy Mojo - the equivalent of Farmville dollars - all it really does is make your crops grow instantly, or buildings get built instantly.

Kiey

I think We Rule is better for that - It's the same social obligation bullshit, and they show you the occasional ad in the menus and such, but it's non-obtrusive, and while you can buy Mojo - the equivalent of Farmville dollars - all it really does is make your crops grow instantly, or buildings get built instantly.

Yes, I agree that We Rule is better. Mainly because they don't lock anything off from you, but also I think the concept works better. Building a city and seeing it grow, and the people walking around is more enjoyable then having a farm where nothing is really going on. I was expecting the animals to walk around or something, but they don't. I think I just wish it was more like SimFarm+Social Network.

But on We Rule, they kind of broke that game with the addition of the cauliflower. They also don't add enough content to the game frequently enough.

Matt

One of the interesting things about the SC2 beta is that they really are not debugging SC2 itself. With the exception of minor balance corrections, the major goal of this beta was to test the new Battle.Net infrastructure, which is a big part of why this beta has gotten so large. I have been in the beta since very early on (I won one of the keys in the first round through random selection of Blizzard's twitter followers), and have gotten up near the top of the Bronze ladder. This means that I know what I'm talking about, but that there are several ladders full of people above me who could ritually stomp my ass into the ground.

Here is my recommendation for a successful beginning to a Terran game. The numbers I am using here reference the amount of supply your units are currently taking up. Every time you build an SCV, or marine, etc., you are raising the amount of supply you use by 1, and that will trigger the next step.
- Start pumping SCVs
- Once you are using 9 supply, have one SCV build a depot
- At 12, build a barracks
- At 14, start collecting gas
- At 15, build a second depot
- At 16, start collecting from the other gas geyser as well
- At 18, upgrade your command center to an Orbital Command, and build a Factory

A special note here is that your two supply depots as a Terran should be built right at your choke point, blocking it off from enemy advancement. In SC2, you can choose to flatten your own Depots into the ground, allowing units to pass over them. It is akin to lowering a drawbridge to let your troops out and then raising it again to prevent enemy intrusion. You can toss a bunker right behind the depots to gun down anything trying to break through the depots.

Throughout this whole beginning, be pumping SCVs the entire time. Once you have completed all of the steps above, keep pumping SCVs, and build depots as needed to raise your supply cap, but then make sure you are also pumping offensive units out as well. If you have more than 100-200 leftover of either minerals or gas, at any time, you are not spending fast enough. Tweak your build order so that you are spending as soon as you get it.

As Techparadox began to outline in his post, you can win at SC2 by doing the following:
- Knowing what units are best versus what other units
- Effectively scouting out the opposing player so you now know what to build
- Being efficient in your actions so you do not waste time and/or resources building the wrong units, or worse, building nothing at all

As for being efficient, hotkeys play a big part in this. Use the mouse to click the buildings, but then press the appropriate key to make it build what you want. Click units, press a key for instruction, and click again to tell them where to execute said instruction. This will help a lot with managing several things at once. You can also assign a building to a hotkey, and use that key to check back on it even when it's not visible on screen (you are viewing an expansion halfway across the map, and it would be a bitch to scroll over to your main base). This allows you to make sure you are still spending your resources on more offense, say, while your attack is taking place. You will have reinforcements building with a few simple keystrokes, as opposed to someone who stops building when its time to attack because it's too much effort to scroll back to main base and do all that clicking.

Scott, at some point in the podcast you described an exercise in telling an aircraft to drop bombs, and they would drop them directly on a spot. Effectively, the control you had over the units was too granular. I don't believe this is actually how it works. You can't force a unit in SC or SC2 to attack empty space, even if you click attack, and then that space. If you do select a unit to attack an empty space, it will move towards that space and then attack whatever it encounters in that general direction. You do not need to control individual units unless you are playing at an elite level.

As for the tutorial part, yes you are right there is no full lesson on how to play Starcraft 2, but if you dig in the menus, there is a help section that fully explains the technology tree for each race, and provides basic statistics for each unit. It even goes as far to tell you the top 2 or 3 units that unit is particularly strong against, and the top 2 or 3 units it will get stomped by. When I get home I will boot up SC2 and try to direct you to this area in the menu system.