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Crimguy -> (8/20/2003 5:18:29 AM)
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I have to disagree with you. Right now I'm not too fond of RTS games save one (AoE put me to sleep). IMHO, RTS is very important for a couple of reasons.
1) It can make an entertaining game. I'm not just talking about strategy games like KP, but in general. Before RTS, there existed a bit of a void between pure shoot-em-ups like Doom (Marathon on the Mac was my favorite!) and turn-based war games like V for Victory. This includes games like Wizardry, which was essentially a turn based game.
Real-time Strategy has and is changing that. Now we have a sort of "wargaming-lite" with games like Close Combat and AoE/Cossaks/Warcraft III/etc. While I liked Close Combat, it suffered from lousy ai that could only defend. I never was a big fan of the real time Civ games, and I thought Cossaks was horrible.
2) RTS has the potential to change wargaming for the better, in a way that would please even the most die-hard grogs out there. I think the Close Combat series is wargaming RTS in its' infancy. Imagine it with a 3d battlefield and quality AI. As we get more powerful systems, I think it's quite inevitable that true RTS war simulations at the battalion level and higher will appear, with high-quality ai and good graphics that depict a more detailed view of the landscape we're fighting on - not just abstracted hexes representing 10 or so terrain types. It might be zoomable from the division level all the way into the platoon level- who knows? What's important is that the CPU power exist to make the game a challenge without a cheating ai.
I'm not a programmer, but I imagine the consensus is that were not quite at that computational threshhold yet.
On the fantasy front, Games like Neverwinter Nights in some ways owe a bit to the RTS genre.
In short, some big-brained developer will come out with a true battlefield environment with no abstractions, with events occurring in real time (perhaps with time compression?), all at the resolution you want. Wouldn't that kick ***? I think so, and I think we have RTS to thank for it.
BTW, we have evidence of this right now, and right here at Matrix. It's the Airborne Assault series and it is IMHO a very nice gaming system. Game speed can be varied, or paused if you wish to take more time to give orders, or if things start happening too fast. For some reason this is like the 3rd time I've brought this game up in a week, and I didn't really like the game as much as KP - not because of the real-time element mind you ;)
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