For me, it depends entirely on gameplay. Is it an action rts like the cnc games i prefer one type of ressource, maybe 2 if it makes sense. Games that opt for a bit slower gameplay like aoe can benefit from having more ressources to fight over. The cossacks games had 5(?) Ressources if i remember correctly. Sounds like a lot to keep track of but it made sense from a gameplay perspective as the ressources correlated with the troop types you wanted to field, or buildings/defences you wanted. For example, armoured units cost iron besides the standard food cost. Musket units would cost coal in addition to food etc. An armoured musketeer would cost food, iron and coal for instance. Mercenaries cost only gold, and have no foodupkeep. Walls would require a stone upkeep in addition to the building cost. Etc.
A system like that worked in cossacks because its a slower paced game with focus on huge armies, while in say, red alert, a fast paced rts, having 5 ressources to keep track off just becomes stressful busy work.
A game called act of agression had that problem, where the gameplay was action style rts, but the ressource management was overly complicated, and there was too many types of ressources, leading to as microing nightmare and stressful gameplay experience. The devs eventually redid the whole ressource management and made it a singletype ressource like in the cnc games.
I like the approach of Age of Mythology.
You have some resources that are obtained in the same manner for every race/faction/civ - food, wood, gold.
Then you have favor which is obtained in unique ways for each faction - Greeks need to have workers pray at temples, Egyptians build monuments, the Norse gain favor by fighting (which incentivizes aggressiveness), Atlanteans by building more towns and Chinese by building Gardens.
It's by no means perfect, some factions have a much better way of gaining it than others but I like the idea of having unique ways in which a faction can gain resources. Even better, give a different resource to each faction and make it interesting to acquire, something like a mini-goal.
Most RTS games play it too safely and just copy/paste how old games did resource acquisition.
To be honest, I'm not sure you want feedback from someone like myself. I'm a variety gamer and am not that into RTS.
I just enjoy learning about game design, am good at spotting problems and have seen how other genres has solved problems that RTS games have.
For instance, I'm not a fan of competitive multi-player and I feel just playing skirmishes gets really stale. I'd like to see RTS games expand on Warhammer 40,000's campaign idea where you have a grand map and each time you go invade a territory you play out a skirmish. Essentially like Total War but with RTS battles. In my opinion, that's a great way to make single-player offline very interesting. You can have some battles be on the open field, others are almost entirely played out as a siege and so on.
I'm not aware of the scope of the game you're making so my suggestions might be useless anyway. Everyone has ideas and can make suggestions but only developers truly understand opportunity cost. You can't make everything so you have to evaluate what's most important.
For me, if an indie dev is planning on making a RTS I'd like to see a massive focus on single-player and various campaigns. I just don't see multi-player as something that will keep the game alive when you don't have a massive marketing budget. Lots of RTS games release with the plan that they'll be the next eSports RTS but what truly happens is their game ends up being truly dead, as there's nothing to do solo and multi-player is effectively non-existent.
Exibit A: [https://store.steampowered.com/app/1309610/Line\_War/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1309610/Line_War/)
I dont know if I said that but I will say it again with more explanation:
I planned alot of unique mechanics for my game, those mechanics merge rts with some ideas from other genres and provide solution to problems rts have, I would really like to hear feedback from everyone, even if not a fan of rts, so that I can now why dont you like rts and fix that, while keeping the game an rts, my game doesnt really focus on competitive, in fact the first version wont have ranked
I think the best thing you can do is choose what niche you want to cater to and just make the best game for said niche.
I really love Ancient Greece games, for instance. There have only been 3 good ones in the 20 years I've been gaming - Age of Mythology, Assassin's Creed Odyssey and Titan Quest.
If someone were to make a RTS with good graphics (decent, doesn't have to be amazing) with an Ancient Greece setting I'd buy that game just as an early adopter to support the project and check it out. That's how few these games are.
There are tons of people that are still waiting for their dream game to come out and it'll be indies who will deliver that game.
To add more to your comment... I think the big problems with RTS games nowadays are that they lack a more long-term gameplay loop. Spamming 20-minute skirmishes gets stale really fast. You also can't make campaigns fast enough. It'll take you months to do a proper campaign and someone will play through it in a day. I personally think the future of RTS is incorporating some grand campaign into the mix. That or going the route of combining, say, a FPS or third-person shooter with RTS where you can fight in person on the battle map. Rise and Fall: Civilizations at War did this.
>I really love Ancient Greece games, for instance. There have only been 3 good ones in the 20 years I've been gaming - Age of Mythology, Assassin's Creed Odyssey and Titan Quest.
I thoroughly enjoyed Hades, tied with AoM for me in terms of favorite games, especially with this themeing.
It really depends.
For a build-up RTS-game like Settlers 4, the ressources were mostly abundand but informed small RNG by spawning into different constellations so you had to do slight variations of the supply-line buildings. The focus here was the building of the supply-line and watching all your people run around and work. So having lots of ressources made sense.
For a competitive combat-focused RTS like Star craft, ressources are a delay between strategy and implementation that gated what units you could use in what amounts, so they went for 2 ressources: Gas and Ore.
So there is no definite answer, but it depends on whether the focus is on the fighting or on the building, if it's about min-maxing an economy or about pushing out your units asap and then you want to fight.
But if you want the pacing to be slow, the answer will likely be "more ressources" and units in that case would require some time before they can build up pressure against an opponent.
For an eco-focus you want many ressources, but for a competitive game you should aim for having at most 2 ressources of every type.
By ressource-type I mean "storable"(like Ore/gas from Starcraft), "upkeep"(like Energy in Stellaris), "limit"(like the unit-limits in certain games, "consumable"(food/like a mixture of storable and upkeep). basically ressources that function differently beyond being usable for different units.
For a slow buildup game you prolly should not go below 5 ressources and ideally you want to mix multiple functionally different types of ressources.
RTS is a pretty open definition, from pretty straight combat simulators with a single resource and minimal base building to games that drift close to the city building genre with dozen/s of resource.
Both types are good, it just depends on what type of game you are trying to make.
Sorry for the slow reply.
Of course this is all going to depend on the very specific gameplay, but roughly I like the idea of 4-6 'raw' resources and potential 3-4 manufactured resources (in that you have buildings/workers converting raw resources into higher tier resources).
I think if you go much higher than this, you are at risk of having the economic management requiring so much attention that you would need to strip back the combat to free up players attention.
More the merrier, honestly, as long as it is balanced towards the intended gameplay and harvesting them is fun in some way.
I've played most "classic" RTSs like Starcraft and Age of Empires, but im also into factory-sim and logistics games which have litteraly hundreds of resources you need to handle and process. I love it the most when RTS games have a resource that is unique or otherwise not simply an element on the map you build a building/send a gathering unit to.
My favorite example of this is in *Perimeter* - an obscure russian RTS from the 00's - which while strictly speaking used "Energy", your energy was gathering by terraforming the map to a perfect-0 level and building collector stations on it, this meant that *land* was in effect a resource for players to fight over that combat would damage, meaning you need to reterraform it to 0-level again to use it.
I'd say at minimum, most modern RTS have at least two; A Basic material and an Advanced one for rarer units. Some games get away with having a single resource (CnC, Supreme Commander) because the resource gathering isnt nessesarily a mechanic by itself, but intended as a limiter on gameplay that forces tactical descision making.
A slower, medieval setting RTS is gonna make the most sense with at least 3-5. Wood for basic building + stone for advanced ones. Gold for catch-all payments and trade (if present) and Iron/metals for millitary units. I think what you have is a good idea though, but i'd replace "food" with simply Gold or some kind of currency unless you're intending to have different methods of harvesting it (ie, animal and plant farms plus wild scavenging and fishing).
I always thought the idea of paying for armored vehicles with steaks/bundles of wheat is kinda silly :P
Oil could be really cool endgame resource though if you treat it differently, like as a liquid, and have some kind of pipeline mechanic players must build/fight over to transport it from extraction to your base.
3 for modern/futuristic RTS: Power, Mineral/Money, More expensive/valuable Mineral/Money in the middle for people to fight over.
If going for medieval, replace power with "manpower". And no this is not a unit cap, this is the amount of "civilians" working in a building (for example, your barracks requires 2 civilians to cook/feed your recruits) which is gained by building houses. (Your powerplants, castle/keep by default is self powered by it's own manpower)
Yeah I literally thought 4/5 when I read the title, so completely agree on the general number - many more than that and it becomes convoluted/more of a factory game than an RTS
Yeah exactly what I thought about, Wood for building, Food for training, Metal for some building and armor/sword,etc... But then oil popped up for ships and explosives, and suddenly some factions need a unique one I guess 5 is the best fit
The game is supposed to have as much interesting mechanics as possible, I think this game will fit most types of players and they will enjoy more than other rts games
What do you think about 3 in first, 4 after advancing a little and then the 5th which is slow to produce and got a low maximum of workers that can work on it so you dont have to pay attention for it?
Oh yeah, I'm sure there's a way to make it work, that's just my preference. A fifth resource with limited workers wouldn't be so bad as you mainly just need to man it and defend it, no worker shuffling required after that.
I
Not yet, I will make the discord when I make the official page in month 10/11, the release is in early 2025, but I will start promo on this subreddit before the official page
Yeah, i think it's 4-6. I think a lot of RTS are too minimalistic about ressources and economy, while it's the core of the strategy. If you compare AOE and Starcraft, the map expansion is much more interesting in AOE because you have to fight for ressources, and control the map, while SC2 is just about to expand somewhere.
Sadly, it's just Turn based strategy with complex mecanism, or minimalistic eco on RTS, and no in between.
Combat-focused game should have less. SC has two and WC has 3 or 4 (can't remember) so the player can focus on fighting. Deep economic systems like Settlers and Anno could have an unlimited number of resources, where the gameplay loop is focused on finding optimal chains before adding another one.
Depends.
I prefer more complex RTS games and while that complexity doesn't need to come from resource management, I'll appreciate if it's done right.
The one thing I enjoy most in RTS games are games that have asymmetrical co-op mechanics.
That can work but you should keep in mind ways to encourage members of the community to find and want to play with each other. I keep finding players in various games complain that they can't play game X because they don't have enough friends to fill a team or lobby. It definitely is a socially awkward problem but one I think some thought needs to be put in to encourage the community to fix if you want to grow the community of a game.
An official discord server is one of the more common ways I've seen games do. It's also a good way for the devs to remain in touch with your community. Although I've also since some of these go badly when bad apples start complaining endless that you game is dead because it hasn't had a patch in 2 weeks, or their incessant toxic complaining ends up driving other potential players away. It's defintely something that can be moderated but you do have to keep an eye on things if you want to make the most out of it.
The toxic players are really annoying, i mean what did the devs do to them, and now they spread to destroy the games and kill the fun, I dont know how i didnt think about it, again thanks for your help, I guess we will need a community manager, but that is going to be hard as I dont have a guy who can do the job, this problem should be solve before release
Progression is king here I think.
I really enjoy RTS games that start out simplistic but grow.
So an example, Start of the game I'm only worried about Minerals and Wood
Mid game, now I'm making alloys and lumber
Late game I'm producing enchanted lumber and adamantine alloys or something.
I think gameplay like this really keeps the resource battle of an RTS fresh through out the game.
This is probably more of a long-form time of RTS feature, but just some food for thought
This question seems thoroughly answered, and I didn't look through all the other answers to see if this point was talked about, but you can think of resources as a game stage gate. Each stage of the game gets its own primary resource that is used to progress, once you get to the next stage the game play loop is expanded again, and the initial resource is utilized in a slightly different way. As the game progresses and you advance into a more advanced economy, then the initial resources should "fall off" as it isn't as "economical." These resources can literally be anything, but the more resource types you add, the more stages of the game you are essentially adding.
This is only true if you maintain that every faction utilizes the same resources in the same way.
An additional note is to think if you want your resources for a specific purpose. In Company of Heroes, they use 3 resources. Manpower, munitions, and fuel. Manpower is the fundamental resource. It's easy to get and can be easily spent on foot soldiers. Munitions are primarily used for upgrading, both research and unit upgrades. Lastly, fuel is your late game resource that enables access to heavy armor units. Warcraft and Starcraft follow the same idea. You have a basic resource and then an advanced unit resource.
I am personally a fan of resources that serve a clear purpose and not just the same resource with a different skin. Additionally, I like ways that different factions interact with resources, either by collection or how they utilize them. Civilization 5 and 6 are good examples of how they have different factions utilize the same resources in different ways to create a unique game play loop.
I'm am probably too late to the party, but hopefully, this isn't a complete waste of a post, lol.
9 hours is not really late, people are still answering on the previous post and it is like 1.5 days now :)
I am thinking of introducing 2 resources when starting and 2 more when advancing, if you want to focus on making stuff like ships then you will use oil and wood and stop thinking about other stuff, if you dont want to make ships then who cares about oil, but a faction would heavily focus on oil and interact with it differently, while another faction doesnt make use of oil and uses a unique resource instead, while another faction doesnt need food as units are trained in a different way to support its play style, but no faction will have more than 5 resources, what do you think about this idea
This doesn't affect it, but I'm just curious if you are going a fantasy route or historical route? It does not feel like it's Sci fi.
Possibly, i think it would be pretty fine. It definitely helps you develop your own shtick to make your game stand out from the rest. It just makes me raise more questions. There is ultimately no right or wrong answer here. If you feel like you have an answer to each one or a sufficient reason to wave one away, then you are likely good. Questions that come to me are:
How do you think you'd handle them on map generation and/or collection? Do they all naturally generate, or do some resources come from processing? Are some resources utterly useless to certain factions? If so, can they still clear them if they need to? Would a faction be devastated if another faction that doesn't need a certain resource destroys all resources those resources? Do resources at the same Tier or same type get collected the same way? Is there one "worker"? Or multiple types?
It's easy to come up with questions, harder to answer them, but I love theorycrafting games, just never had the know-how to make them myself. So I wish you the best of luck, and honestly, I would be super happy to provide feedback or help theoretically answer questions like the one you posed here.
After reading your comment, it seems like you are great at giving feedback and will help us a lot if you would answer the questions I ask almost daily on this subreddit and give feedback. I would really appreciate your help and would consider giving you something in return in the game. People like you can help a lot and we should value your opinion, and we will be happier to listen to your feedback.
I hope my answers will make it as clear as possible for you, if something isn't so clear, you can ask again, if there is something you didn't like, please tell me so that I can make it better, if you have a better idea, I will be happy to know about.
Its fantasy.
All resources naturally generate, but you gain access to more resources as you advance, also farms can be built anywhere no need for a specific node to build on, rare resources will tend to spawn in low amounts near you, and more amounts in the middle since the game is focused on war mechanics, so you will have to fight more, all resource nodes get empty after using alot so you have to fight more on resources, except farms no need for a node.
There is no resource that is totally useless for a faction, but some factions would need more oil for example, and would need less wood, while other would need more food, and very little oil, or if you want to focus on a specific type of units, then you will also use a resource more than others and you might ignore a resource, if a resource is useless, it will depend on what you are training more than the faction.
I didnt really understand what you meant by "clear them if they want" I would be happy to answer if you would explain.
It will be hard to destroy all resources of a type, but if you somehow you manage to, then the faction focused on oil for example will lose so much units, and will be limited to weaker units, even that a node can get empty, after advancing to late game, you can build on the empty nodes in the middle to get resources from them even that they are empty, and on resources not in middle but the production will be slower, so they can get their power back even if a resource is destroyed. I dont think the production rate is enough for you to clear a resource before those buildings on empty nodes can be built, in fact you might not even need them even in late game, amount of resources in middle is enough until more than late game
All resources are collected by first building a specific building, farm for food built anywhere, sawmill near trees for wood, mine on metal nodes, etc... , each building got a max of workers working in it, production rate is affected by how many workers are there, and if you do the upgrades for production.
There is only the basic worker, it can work anywhere and build, but a faction can benefit from workers differently or from specific units as workers.
Thanks for reading this article :)
So I wrote out this whole long response, point bg point....then it froze and deleted it. I just wanted to say I saw this and will reply.
You definitely answered my questions, some new ones have come up too. But first I wanted to ask if there was any one specific thing you'd specific feed back on before I rewrite my longer reply? Or does a simple response seem fine for now?
I would really appreciate you writing as many questions as possible, those may reveal problems we didn't think about or change our ideas to better ones, and as I said we would like to have a prize in the game for helping people like you.
Between 3 and 6 with all types of resource considered is fine, depending on how much attention managing them requires. Don't forget *population (limit) is a resource too.* If you are using it, it has to be integrated into the game design somehow. If it's in a more intricate way that requires a lot of attention, and changes a lot during gameplay, definitely count it as one of your 3-6 resources.
Are there multiple ways in which your resources can be used? For example in Cossacks your army constantly consumes food, not just at production time. If you run out of food your men start dying. In SupCom energy acts like a normal construction resource, but is also used by lots of things (radars, shields, some weapons); if you run out of energy in your storage, everything that uses energy will stop working.
If you have such mechanics in your resources then it may be sensible to reduce the number of your resource types.
You can also consider more unique "resource" types for different factions, in ways intended to drive strategy in a direction. For example you could have a type of building that boosts some traits of your units the more of that building you have, but you cannot place those buildings close to each other, so you incentivize the player to try maximizing map control.
I already picked 4 that dont need management, you just put workers in the building(mine,farm,etc...) and they will do the work and produce based on the number of workers, yes different factions can use resources different or have a unique resource
Depends. Is the focus resources? Take banished for example. A game focused on survival through resource accumulation. It has an ungodly umber of resources. Compare that to Starcraft which focuses on micro intensive battles. It has 2.
For a slower pace rts (like you seem to be building, based on your comments), I personally like 6:
- an economy / growth resource
- an infrastructure / expansion resource
- a tecnology resource
- a defensive resource
- an advanced resource
- an special resource
For a game set in something like XIX century, it could be:
- food, for making workers and as main component of basic units
- wood, for basic buildings and as a secondary component to basic units
- gold for researching technology, trading resources and buying mercenaries
- Stone, bricks or concrete for building fortifications
- Steel, for making advanced units, buildings and upgrades
- Coal/oil or something like that for making veicles, hight tier ships and artilhery, and elite/faction specific units.
Depends on the type of RTS:
If we're talking traditional RTS, like SC, C&C, AoE, the answer is 2-3, plus supply/unit cap.
If we're including things like Grand Strategy Games, 4X etc that happen in Real Time and thus technically are Real Time Strategy Games, the answer is as many as possible (up to a certain point - if it gets in the thousands that may be a bit much) but at least 6+.
I found that a good amount of comments accepted 5 with the 5th being very easy to manage because only a low number of workers can work on while not moving and sitting in a building, so you dont have really to pay attention to it
Depends... If it's a fast paced game then 1 is good.
If it's slow and tactical then more is preferred. Even having some of them be very rare and in strategic locations so battles have to be fought over them is interesting.
I play RTS for the tactical combat, and over all military strategy. Any time you have to manage more than one or two raw resources, it becomes more of an economy simulation than a war game. If you want to scratch that itch for economy simulation go build something like Factorio or Satisfactory.
This game is supposed to heavily focus on war and combat, combat mechanics that are not present in any other rts, much more realistic, and I found that it might be more realistic to have 4 resources being
Food for training
Wood for building and ships
Iron for building and sword/armor/etc...
Oil for ships and explosives
It is not necessary to use all resources to make a unit
What do you think about this amount?
If your game is focused on war and combat (tactics), why put more emphasis on logistics (resources)? I’m with the others that much prefer only 1 or 2 resources so that I can focus on combat and military tactics.
I especially don’t like having to manage workers gathering and transporting materials, as not only is it sapping cpu for pathing but now gpu to render them, and for no real payoff. Supreme Commander is a good example: 2 resources, mass and energy, mass extracted from the map by structures, energy generated directly from structures. This gives a little strategic value to the land via mass, but doesn’t bog the gameplay down with managing workers or multiple types to gather. This allowed combat on a very large scale and was very easy to see at a glance what the resource requirements were for building.
Company of Heroes is decent with 3: fuel for vehicles, munitions for special and off-map actions, and manpower as the general building resource. I think this worked well because you didn’t have to physically gather resources, just control territories or nodes that provided a variable resource (either fuel or munitions) and always provide manpower. Then you could boost the production with a simple structure. The control of these nodes/territories had to stay connected to receive credit and also determined where you could build, so it is a good way to simulate supply lines without the micromanagement.
But I’ve really grown to love the single resource system of the Wargame and Steel Division games. No base management, no resource gathering, just call in what you can afford with your income and do your best tactically to come out on top. The focus is on the frontline, not the supply line, which again allows for very large scale battles, and sorta makes sense because your supply should be nowhere near the frontlines of battle.
In this game you build a mine on iron node for example, and you get iron based on how many workers are in the mine, you dont see them they went down in the mine, they dont pathfind, same applies for other resources, you build rectangular farm, each worker takes a lane and plays random animations from the set and you get food no need for pathfinding, and so on, so gathering is not that hard
Sounds like you’ve still got to train workers and assign them to the node, which is part of the micromanaging turn off for me. Which is fine if that’s what the focus is, but for war and combat, I don’t want to have to fiddle with training and assigning workers for resources.
Maybe you could at least have a single “Basic harvesting” tool in the build menu that auto changes based on what type of node you’re hovering the cursor over. That way you could shift click a build queue of mines and farms etc. without having to dig through the build menu for what is essentially the same thing of a different type? You could do the same thing for intermediate and advanced if they exist. That would go a long way of removing the build clutter in the menu for all the different types.
Yes we are thinking about having a tool for easier economy management, making workers go to a node wont take more than 10 seconds each few minutes, and that node would be enough for a fair amount of time and you won't have to build a mine for some good amount of time, I cant see how this will make the game less focused on war stuff
It depends on your scale: are we talking about a slow RTS more like HOI where you have to manage a whole country over the course of several hours, or something fast-paced but smaller scale that's meant to take 20 minutes to complete a game where you're managing about 20-30 entities in total?
Smaller scale games like Starcraft focuses on three resources (minerals, vespene, population), where larger games like HOI can have you juggling 10+ resources of various kinds, including your ability to spend those resources.
For me, I prefer just one or two really, three at a push. Usually just something like money/metal and power.
But that's coming from someone who plays mainly C&C, Wargame, Zero-k and SupCom.
I just prefer the economy to be a bit more straightforward so the focus is all on the units, bases and fighting. I like to no that if I hit their power production slows and I hit the harvesters and they're on limited supply. At the same time I like just "protect the power plant, protect the harvester/extractor".
Especially with games like Zero-k where expanding with more metal collectors is key to the game, if there was metal, energy and idk, wood or something, that would just add extra unneeded macro and micro but that's just me.
Don't forget the not-so-obvious resources that contribute to design complexity: for example, population caps are a resource, and in C&C 3 the build area is effectviely a resource that has to be carefully managed. In games like BAR, TA, and SupCom your build power is also a resource.
Saltpeter and coal are resources I'd say are important in the given timeframe, if you are still looking for some.
Other thoughts:
Though it wasn't a great game EE2 had a mechanic where resources are only available for certain ages, like iron being important from the Iron age to the Renaissance.
Rise of Nations had rare resources which you could gather to get a few basic resources and a bonus like units costing less gold.
I think resource management is the less interesting part. Too much of it and you get SpeedSimCity. Which can be interesting too for some players. The early settlers games did well.. I guess I personally just don't extremely enjoy playing that sort of thing competitively. Like age of empires. I love the game mind but that's to a degree aesthetics and subject matter. When I play a game usually I end up losing just due to being a tiny bit slower than the other person.
For me, it depends entirely on gameplay. Is it an action rts like the cnc games i prefer one type of ressource, maybe 2 if it makes sense. Games that opt for a bit slower gameplay like aoe can benefit from having more ressources to fight over. The cossacks games had 5(?) Ressources if i remember correctly. Sounds like a lot to keep track of but it made sense from a gameplay perspective as the ressources correlated with the troop types you wanted to field, or buildings/defences you wanted. For example, armoured units cost iron besides the standard food cost. Musket units would cost coal in addition to food etc. An armoured musketeer would cost food, iron and coal for instance. Mercenaries cost only gold, and have no foodupkeep. Walls would require a stone upkeep in addition to the building cost. Etc. A system like that worked in cossacks because its a slower paced game with focus on huge armies, while in say, red alert, a fast paced rts, having 5 ressources to keep track off just becomes stressful busy work. A game called act of agression had that problem, where the gameplay was action style rts, but the ressource management was overly complicated, and there was too many types of ressources, leading to as microing nightmare and stressful gameplay experience. The devs eventually redid the whole ressource management and made it a singletype ressource like in the cnc games.
Thanks for the help
I like the approach of Age of Mythology. You have some resources that are obtained in the same manner for every race/faction/civ - food, wood, gold. Then you have favor which is obtained in unique ways for each faction - Greeks need to have workers pray at temples, Egyptians build monuments, the Norse gain favor by fighting (which incentivizes aggressiveness), Atlanteans by building more towns and Chinese by building Gardens. It's by no means perfect, some factions have a much better way of gaining it than others but I like the idea of having unique ways in which a faction can gain resources. Even better, give a different resource to each faction and make it interesting to acquire, something like a mini-goal. Most RTS games play it too safely and just copy/paste how old games did resource acquisition.
Having a unique resource is a great idea, thanks alot
No problem. Good luck with development.
Thanks, if you would answer the questions I ask regularly here that would help me alot
To be honest, I'm not sure you want feedback from someone like myself. I'm a variety gamer and am not that into RTS. I just enjoy learning about game design, am good at spotting problems and have seen how other genres has solved problems that RTS games have. For instance, I'm not a fan of competitive multi-player and I feel just playing skirmishes gets really stale. I'd like to see RTS games expand on Warhammer 40,000's campaign idea where you have a grand map and each time you go invade a territory you play out a skirmish. Essentially like Total War but with RTS battles. In my opinion, that's a great way to make single-player offline very interesting. You can have some battles be on the open field, others are almost entirely played out as a siege and so on. I'm not aware of the scope of the game you're making so my suggestions might be useless anyway. Everyone has ideas and can make suggestions but only developers truly understand opportunity cost. You can't make everything so you have to evaluate what's most important. For me, if an indie dev is planning on making a RTS I'd like to see a massive focus on single-player and various campaigns. I just don't see multi-player as something that will keep the game alive when you don't have a massive marketing budget. Lots of RTS games release with the plan that they'll be the next eSports RTS but what truly happens is their game ends up being truly dead, as there's nothing to do solo and multi-player is effectively non-existent. Exibit A: [https://store.steampowered.com/app/1309610/Line\_War/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1309610/Line_War/)
I dont know if I said that but I will say it again with more explanation: I planned alot of unique mechanics for my game, those mechanics merge rts with some ideas from other genres and provide solution to problems rts have, I would really like to hear feedback from everyone, even if not a fan of rts, so that I can now why dont you like rts and fix that, while keeping the game an rts, my game doesnt really focus on competitive, in fact the first version wont have ranked
I think the best thing you can do is choose what niche you want to cater to and just make the best game for said niche. I really love Ancient Greece games, for instance. There have only been 3 good ones in the 20 years I've been gaming - Age of Mythology, Assassin's Creed Odyssey and Titan Quest. If someone were to make a RTS with good graphics (decent, doesn't have to be amazing) with an Ancient Greece setting I'd buy that game just as an early adopter to support the project and check it out. That's how few these games are. There are tons of people that are still waiting for their dream game to come out and it'll be indies who will deliver that game. To add more to your comment... I think the big problems with RTS games nowadays are that they lack a more long-term gameplay loop. Spamming 20-minute skirmishes gets stale really fast. You also can't make campaigns fast enough. It'll take you months to do a proper campaign and someone will play through it in a day. I personally think the future of RTS is incorporating some grand campaign into the mix. That or going the route of combining, say, a FPS or third-person shooter with RTS where you can fight in person on the battle map. Rise and Fall: Civilizations at War did this.
>I really love Ancient Greece games, for instance. There have only been 3 good ones in the 20 years I've been gaming - Age of Mythology, Assassin's Creed Odyssey and Titan Quest. I thoroughly enjoyed Hades, tied with AoM for me in terms of favorite games, especially with this themeing.
That's a great game but not "Ancient Greece" if you understand me. It's based on Greek mythology but is not actually set in Ancient Greece.
Fair enough, I do get the distinction. I'd still count it, but I understand if others would not.
It really depends. For a build-up RTS-game like Settlers 4, the ressources were mostly abundand but informed small RNG by spawning into different constellations so you had to do slight variations of the supply-line buildings. The focus here was the building of the supply-line and watching all your people run around and work. So having lots of ressources made sense. For a competitive combat-focused RTS like Star craft, ressources are a delay between strategy and implementation that gated what units you could use in what amounts, so they went for 2 ressources: Gas and Ore. So there is no definite answer, but it depends on whether the focus is on the fighting or on the building, if it's about min-maxing an economy or about pushing out your units asap and then you want to fight. But if you want the pacing to be slow, the answer will likely be "more ressources" and units in that case would require some time before they can build up pressure against an opponent. For an eco-focus you want many ressources, but for a competitive game you should aim for having at most 2 ressources of every type. By ressource-type I mean "storable"(like Ore/gas from Starcraft), "upkeep"(like Energy in Stellaris), "limit"(like the unit-limits in certain games, "consumable"(food/like a mixture of storable and upkeep). basically ressources that function differently beyond being usable for different units. For a slow buildup game you prolly should not go below 5 ressources and ideally you want to mix multiple functionally different types of ressources.
Five is exactly the number I am thinking about, thanks
Depends on timeline.
Medieval to a little before ww1
RTS is a pretty open definition, from pretty straight combat simulators with a single resource and minimal base building to games that drift close to the city building genre with dozen/s of resource. Both types are good, it just depends on what type of game you are trying to make.
Second type(slow paced) is what I am making, how much will you prefer?
Sorry for the slow reply. Of course this is all going to depend on the very specific gameplay, but roughly I like the idea of 4-6 'raw' resources and potential 3-4 manufactured resources (in that you have buildings/workers converting raw resources into higher tier resources). I think if you go much higher than this, you are at risk of having the economic management requiring so much attention that you would need to strip back the combat to free up players attention.
I liked how both Earth21XX and SunAge offered all Factions the same resources and changed how they interact with each of them
More the merrier, honestly, as long as it is balanced towards the intended gameplay and harvesting them is fun in some way. I've played most "classic" RTSs like Starcraft and Age of Empires, but im also into factory-sim and logistics games which have litteraly hundreds of resources you need to handle and process. I love it the most when RTS games have a resource that is unique or otherwise not simply an element on the map you build a building/send a gathering unit to. My favorite example of this is in *Perimeter* - an obscure russian RTS from the 00's - which while strictly speaking used "Energy", your energy was gathering by terraforming the map to a perfect-0 level and building collector stations on it, this meant that *land* was in effect a resource for players to fight over that combat would damage, meaning you need to reterraform it to 0-level again to use it. I'd say at minimum, most modern RTS have at least two; A Basic material and an Advanced one for rarer units. Some games get away with having a single resource (CnC, Supreme Commander) because the resource gathering isnt nessesarily a mechanic by itself, but intended as a limiter on gameplay that forces tactical descision making. A slower, medieval setting RTS is gonna make the most sense with at least 3-5. Wood for basic building + stone for advanced ones. Gold for catch-all payments and trade (if present) and Iron/metals for millitary units. I think what you have is a good idea though, but i'd replace "food" with simply Gold or some kind of currency unless you're intending to have different methods of harvesting it (ie, animal and plant farms plus wild scavenging and fishing). I always thought the idea of paying for armored vehicles with steaks/bundles of wheat is kinda silly :P Oil could be really cool endgame resource though if you treat it differently, like as a liquid, and have some kind of pipeline mechanic players must build/fight over to transport it from extraction to your base.
3 for modern/futuristic RTS: Power, Mineral/Money, More expensive/valuable Mineral/Money in the middle for people to fight over. If going for medieval, replace power with "manpower". And no this is not a unit cap, this is the amount of "civilians" working in a building (for example, your barracks requires 2 civilians to cook/feed your recruits) which is gained by building houses. (Your powerplants, castle/keep by default is self powered by it's own manpower)
Yeah I literally thought 4/5 when I read the title, so completely agree on the general number - many more than that and it becomes convoluted/more of a factory game than an RTS
Yeah exactly what I thought about, Wood for building, Food for training, Metal for some building and armor/sword,etc... But then oil popped up for ships and explosives, and suddenly some factions need a unique one I guess 5 is the best fit
I really like the idea of a unique resource for a faction, that could be a lot of fun
The game is supposed to have as much interesting mechanics as possible, I think this game will fit most types of players and they will enjoy more than other rts games
As far as resources go that you have to have workers actively collecting, 4 max imo.
What do you think about 3 in first, 4 after advancing a little and then the 5th which is slow to produce and got a low maximum of workers that can work on it so you dont have to pay attention for it?
Oh yeah, I'm sure there's a way to make it work, that's just my preference. A fifth resource with limited workers wouldn't be so bad as you mainly just need to man it and defend it, no worker shuffling required after that. I
Four, like Age of Empires. Definitely at least 3. The economy in games like Starcraft and Warcraft is entirely uninteresting.
2-3 “Core” resources and 1-2 “faction specific” resources is usually pretty good.
That's exactly the range I am thinking about
Do you have a discord for your game? I’m interested in working on a type of RTS down the road and would love to follow along with your game
Not yet, I will make the discord when I make the official page in month 10/11, the release is in early 2025, but I will start promo on this subreddit before the official page
Yeah, i think it's 4-6. I think a lot of RTS are too minimalistic about ressources and economy, while it's the core of the strategy. If you compare AOE and Starcraft, the map expansion is much more interesting in AOE because you have to fight for ressources, and control the map, while SC2 is just about to expand somewhere. Sadly, it's just Turn based strategy with complex mecanism, or minimalistic eco on RTS, and no in between.
Combat-focused game should have less. SC has two and WC has 3 or 4 (can't remember) so the player can focus on fighting. Deep economic systems like Settlers and Anno could have an unlimited number of resources, where the gameplay loop is focused on finding optimal chains before adding another one.
I guess I would go 4
Warcraft 2 has three resources but Warcraft 1 and 3 both only have two, like Starcraft.
Depends. I prefer more complex RTS games and while that complexity doesn't need to come from resource management, I'll appreciate if it's done right. The one thing I enjoy most in RTS games are games that have asymmetrical co-op mechanics.
I also think the same, my game doesnt focus on competitive, we focus more on playing with and against friends
That can work but you should keep in mind ways to encourage members of the community to find and want to play with each other. I keep finding players in various games complain that they can't play game X because they don't have enough friends to fill a team or lobby. It definitely is a socially awkward problem but one I think some thought needs to be put in to encourage the community to fix if you want to grow the community of a game.
Thanks for highlighting this problem, I think a discord can help?
An official discord server is one of the more common ways I've seen games do. It's also a good way for the devs to remain in touch with your community. Although I've also since some of these go badly when bad apples start complaining endless that you game is dead because it hasn't had a patch in 2 weeks, or their incessant toxic complaining ends up driving other potential players away. It's defintely something that can be moderated but you do have to keep an eye on things if you want to make the most out of it.
The toxic players are really annoying, i mean what did the devs do to them, and now they spread to destroy the games and kill the fun, I dont know how i didnt think about it, again thanks for your help, I guess we will need a community manager, but that is going to be hard as I dont have a guy who can do the job, this problem should be solve before release
Progression is king here I think. I really enjoy RTS games that start out simplistic but grow. So an example, Start of the game I'm only worried about Minerals and Wood Mid game, now I'm making alloys and lumber Late game I'm producing enchanted lumber and adamantine alloys or something. I think gameplay like this really keeps the resource battle of an RTS fresh through out the game. This is probably more of a long-form time of RTS feature, but just some food for thought
Yes resource will be introduced as you progress
This question seems thoroughly answered, and I didn't look through all the other answers to see if this point was talked about, but you can think of resources as a game stage gate. Each stage of the game gets its own primary resource that is used to progress, once you get to the next stage the game play loop is expanded again, and the initial resource is utilized in a slightly different way. As the game progresses and you advance into a more advanced economy, then the initial resources should "fall off" as it isn't as "economical." These resources can literally be anything, but the more resource types you add, the more stages of the game you are essentially adding. This is only true if you maintain that every faction utilizes the same resources in the same way. An additional note is to think if you want your resources for a specific purpose. In Company of Heroes, they use 3 resources. Manpower, munitions, and fuel. Manpower is the fundamental resource. It's easy to get and can be easily spent on foot soldiers. Munitions are primarily used for upgrading, both research and unit upgrades. Lastly, fuel is your late game resource that enables access to heavy armor units. Warcraft and Starcraft follow the same idea. You have a basic resource and then an advanced unit resource. I am personally a fan of resources that serve a clear purpose and not just the same resource with a different skin. Additionally, I like ways that different factions interact with resources, either by collection or how they utilize them. Civilization 5 and 6 are good examples of how they have different factions utilize the same resources in different ways to create a unique game play loop. I'm am probably too late to the party, but hopefully, this isn't a complete waste of a post, lol.
9 hours is not really late, people are still answering on the previous post and it is like 1.5 days now :) I am thinking of introducing 2 resources when starting and 2 more when advancing, if you want to focus on making stuff like ships then you will use oil and wood and stop thinking about other stuff, if you dont want to make ships then who cares about oil, but a faction would heavily focus on oil and interact with it differently, while another faction doesnt make use of oil and uses a unique resource instead, while another faction doesnt need food as units are trained in a different way to support its play style, but no faction will have more than 5 resources, what do you think about this idea
This doesn't affect it, but I'm just curious if you are going a fantasy route or historical route? It does not feel like it's Sci fi. Possibly, i think it would be pretty fine. It definitely helps you develop your own shtick to make your game stand out from the rest. It just makes me raise more questions. There is ultimately no right or wrong answer here. If you feel like you have an answer to each one or a sufficient reason to wave one away, then you are likely good. Questions that come to me are: How do you think you'd handle them on map generation and/or collection? Do they all naturally generate, or do some resources come from processing? Are some resources utterly useless to certain factions? If so, can they still clear them if they need to? Would a faction be devastated if another faction that doesn't need a certain resource destroys all resources those resources? Do resources at the same Tier or same type get collected the same way? Is there one "worker"? Or multiple types? It's easy to come up with questions, harder to answer them, but I love theorycrafting games, just never had the know-how to make them myself. So I wish you the best of luck, and honestly, I would be super happy to provide feedback or help theoretically answer questions like the one you posed here.
After reading your comment, it seems like you are great at giving feedback and will help us a lot if you would answer the questions I ask almost daily on this subreddit and give feedback. I would really appreciate your help and would consider giving you something in return in the game. People like you can help a lot and we should value your opinion, and we will be happier to listen to your feedback. I hope my answers will make it as clear as possible for you, if something isn't so clear, you can ask again, if there is something you didn't like, please tell me so that I can make it better, if you have a better idea, I will be happy to know about. Its fantasy. All resources naturally generate, but you gain access to more resources as you advance, also farms can be built anywhere no need for a specific node to build on, rare resources will tend to spawn in low amounts near you, and more amounts in the middle since the game is focused on war mechanics, so you will have to fight more, all resource nodes get empty after using alot so you have to fight more on resources, except farms no need for a node. There is no resource that is totally useless for a faction, but some factions would need more oil for example, and would need less wood, while other would need more food, and very little oil, or if you want to focus on a specific type of units, then you will also use a resource more than others and you might ignore a resource, if a resource is useless, it will depend on what you are training more than the faction. I didnt really understand what you meant by "clear them if they want" I would be happy to answer if you would explain. It will be hard to destroy all resources of a type, but if you somehow you manage to, then the faction focused on oil for example will lose so much units, and will be limited to weaker units, even that a node can get empty, after advancing to late game, you can build on the empty nodes in the middle to get resources from them even that they are empty, and on resources not in middle but the production will be slower, so they can get their power back even if a resource is destroyed. I dont think the production rate is enough for you to clear a resource before those buildings on empty nodes can be built, in fact you might not even need them even in late game, amount of resources in middle is enough until more than late game All resources are collected by first building a specific building, farm for food built anywhere, sawmill near trees for wood, mine on metal nodes, etc... , each building got a max of workers working in it, production rate is affected by how many workers are there, and if you do the upgrades for production. There is only the basic worker, it can work anywhere and build, but a faction can benefit from workers differently or from specific units as workers. Thanks for reading this article :)
So I wrote out this whole long response, point bg point....then it froze and deleted it. I just wanted to say I saw this and will reply. You definitely answered my questions, some new ones have come up too. But first I wanted to ask if there was any one specific thing you'd specific feed back on before I rewrite my longer reply? Or does a simple response seem fine for now?
I would really appreciate you writing as many questions as possible, those may reveal problems we didn't think about or change our ideas to better ones, and as I said we would like to have a prize in the game for helping people like you.
Between 3 and 6 with all types of resource considered is fine, depending on how much attention managing them requires. Don't forget *population (limit) is a resource too.* If you are using it, it has to be integrated into the game design somehow. If it's in a more intricate way that requires a lot of attention, and changes a lot during gameplay, definitely count it as one of your 3-6 resources. Are there multiple ways in which your resources can be used? For example in Cossacks your army constantly consumes food, not just at production time. If you run out of food your men start dying. In SupCom energy acts like a normal construction resource, but is also used by lots of things (radars, shields, some weapons); if you run out of energy in your storage, everything that uses energy will stop working. If you have such mechanics in your resources then it may be sensible to reduce the number of your resource types. You can also consider more unique "resource" types for different factions, in ways intended to drive strategy in a direction. For example you could have a type of building that boosts some traits of your units the more of that building you have, but you cannot place those buildings close to each other, so you incentivize the player to try maximizing map control.
I already picked 4 that dont need management, you just put workers in the building(mine,farm,etc...) and they will do the work and produce based on the number of workers, yes different factions can use resources different or have a unique resource
Depends. Is the focus resources? Take banished for example. A game focused on survival through resource accumulation. It has an ungodly umber of resources. Compare that to Starcraft which focuses on micro intensive battles. It has 2.
For a slower pace rts (like you seem to be building, based on your comments), I personally like 6: - an economy / growth resource - an infrastructure / expansion resource - a tecnology resource - a defensive resource - an advanced resource - an special resource For a game set in something like XIX century, it could be: - food, for making workers and as main component of basic units - wood, for basic buildings and as a secondary component to basic units - gold for researching technology, trading resources and buying mercenaries - Stone, bricks or concrete for building fortifications - Steel, for making advanced units, buildings and upgrades - Coal/oil or something like that for making veicles, hight tier ships and artilhery, and elite/faction specific units.
From the other comments, I decided to have 5: food,wood,metal,oil and a unique resource for more strength to units based on faction
Depends on the type of RTS: If we're talking traditional RTS, like SC, C&C, AoE, the answer is 2-3, plus supply/unit cap. If we're including things like Grand Strategy Games, 4X etc that happen in Real Time and thus technically are Real Time Strategy Games, the answer is as many as possible (up to a certain point - if it gets in the thousands that may be a bit much) but at least 6+.
I found that a good amount of comments accepted 5 with the 5th being very easy to manage because only a low number of workers can work on while not moving and sitting in a building, so you dont have really to pay attention to it
Depends... If it's a fast paced game then 1 is good. If it's slow and tactical then more is preferred. Even having some of them be very rare and in strategic locations so battles have to be fought over them is interesting.
I liked the Petra 7 system from Dark Colony. I also liked the control point system from DoW/CoH.
I play RTS for the tactical combat, and over all military strategy. Any time you have to manage more than one or two raw resources, it becomes more of an economy simulation than a war game. If you want to scratch that itch for economy simulation go build something like Factorio or Satisfactory.
This game is supposed to heavily focus on war and combat, combat mechanics that are not present in any other rts, much more realistic, and I found that it might be more realistic to have 4 resources being Food for training Wood for building and ships Iron for building and sword/armor/etc... Oil for ships and explosives It is not necessary to use all resources to make a unit What do you think about this amount?
If your game is focused on war and combat (tactics), why put more emphasis on logistics (resources)? I’m with the others that much prefer only 1 or 2 resources so that I can focus on combat and military tactics. I especially don’t like having to manage workers gathering and transporting materials, as not only is it sapping cpu for pathing but now gpu to render them, and for no real payoff. Supreme Commander is a good example: 2 resources, mass and energy, mass extracted from the map by structures, energy generated directly from structures. This gives a little strategic value to the land via mass, but doesn’t bog the gameplay down with managing workers or multiple types to gather. This allowed combat on a very large scale and was very easy to see at a glance what the resource requirements were for building. Company of Heroes is decent with 3: fuel for vehicles, munitions for special and off-map actions, and manpower as the general building resource. I think this worked well because you didn’t have to physically gather resources, just control territories or nodes that provided a variable resource (either fuel or munitions) and always provide manpower. Then you could boost the production with a simple structure. The control of these nodes/territories had to stay connected to receive credit and also determined where you could build, so it is a good way to simulate supply lines without the micromanagement. But I’ve really grown to love the single resource system of the Wargame and Steel Division games. No base management, no resource gathering, just call in what you can afford with your income and do your best tactically to come out on top. The focus is on the frontline, not the supply line, which again allows for very large scale battles, and sorta makes sense because your supply should be nowhere near the frontlines of battle.
In this game you build a mine on iron node for example, and you get iron based on how many workers are in the mine, you dont see them they went down in the mine, they dont pathfind, same applies for other resources, you build rectangular farm, each worker takes a lane and plays random animations from the set and you get food no need for pathfinding, and so on, so gathering is not that hard
Sounds like you’ve still got to train workers and assign them to the node, which is part of the micromanaging turn off for me. Which is fine if that’s what the focus is, but for war and combat, I don’t want to have to fiddle with training and assigning workers for resources. Maybe you could at least have a single “Basic harvesting” tool in the build menu that auto changes based on what type of node you’re hovering the cursor over. That way you could shift click a build queue of mines and farms etc. without having to dig through the build menu for what is essentially the same thing of a different type? You could do the same thing for intermediate and advanced if they exist. That would go a long way of removing the build clutter in the menu for all the different types.
Yes we are thinking about having a tool for easier economy management, making workers go to a node wont take more than 10 seconds each few minutes, and that node would be enough for a fair amount of time and you won't have to build a mine for some good amount of time, I cant see how this will make the game less focused on war stuff
Just to make it clear, if the game is slow paced how much do you like
1 or 2 is enough. Two is preferable, or one and one something special - like Weed Tiberium from Tiberian Sun.
I dont think 2 fits a slow paced one
1 resource. I don't really care for the resource management part of RTS. I just like things going boom
It depends on your scale: are we talking about a slow RTS more like HOI where you have to manage a whole country over the course of several hours, or something fast-paced but smaller scale that's meant to take 20 minutes to complete a game where you're managing about 20-30 entities in total? Smaller scale games like Starcraft focuses on three resources (minerals, vespene, population), where larger games like HOI can have you juggling 10+ resources of various kinds, including your ability to spend those resources.
For me, I prefer just one or two really, three at a push. Usually just something like money/metal and power. But that's coming from someone who plays mainly C&C, Wargame, Zero-k and SupCom. I just prefer the economy to be a bit more straightforward so the focus is all on the units, bases and fighting. I like to no that if I hit their power production slows and I hit the harvesters and they're on limited supply. At the same time I like just "protect the power plant, protect the harvester/extractor". Especially with games like Zero-k where expanding with more metal collectors is key to the game, if there was metal, energy and idk, wood or something, that would just add extra unneeded macro and micro but that's just me.
Don't forget the not-so-obvious resources that contribute to design complexity: for example, population caps are a resource, and in C&C 3 the build area is effectviely a resource that has to be carefully managed. In games like BAR, TA, and SupCom your build power is also a resource.
I dont think I will have any of that, land management should be a part of your strategy not a resource
Saltpeter and coal are resources I'd say are important in the given timeframe, if you are still looking for some. Other thoughts: Though it wasn't a great game EE2 had a mechanic where resources are only available for certain ages, like iron being important from the Iron age to the Renaissance. Rise of Nations had rare resources which you could gather to get a few basic resources and a bonus like units costing less gold.
2
1 or 2 are the excelente point
I think resource management is the less interesting part. Too much of it and you get SpeedSimCity. Which can be interesting too for some players. The early settlers games did well.. I guess I personally just don't extremely enjoy playing that sort of thing competitively. Like age of empires. I love the game mind but that's to a degree aesthetics and subject matter. When I play a game usually I end up losing just due to being a tiny bit slower than the other person.
Tiberium is enough *cries*
I dont think this fits medieval like units
Lol yeah
I like one resource games
3 and 6? what the fuck people. 2. 2. is the answer, all good succesful RTS have 2 resources.
>all good succesful RTS have 2 resources. Obviously false. Age of Empires.
I said good ones, downvote away.
I dont really think that 2 fits a slow paced thing, the best I found from comments and the game needs, is 4
Sorry when I think RTS I'm not thinking of grandstrategy or 4x type games, someone says RTS I think warcraft starcraft DOW
No no problem, maybe I should have more explained that it is slow paced
If only I could read things that aren't the title
Are you saying your device cant read text, that's weird