RTS Mechanic Ideas for future stages

Future Game Industrial Stage
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So according to the thrive wiki and other sources upon reaching awakening stage you faff around for a bit to unlock stuff from the secret tech tree until you discover cooperation which unlocks strategy mode enabling you to go RTS. But how would potential Combat mechanics work in these RTS times?

Awakening - Early parts

In the early parts you’ll probably have shelter and guys with wooden and stone minecraft tools
Command of them will be each Member of your “Tribe” would be its own individual unit as you haven’t gotten squads yet, Combat would be consist of Individual members being controlled as a group, likely with a drag square, and be issued to attack mechanics like feeding them, rest, morale and willingness to follow would effect your military power. Each unit could be equipped with armour and Weapons acquired from certain buildings you have made in your Tribal village and can thus customize the equipment each unit carries (a suggestion would be to save templates so that when you want to make your next soldier guy who just tell him to do the template and he will equip himself automatically)

Society Stage - Early to Mid

I’m still not entirely sure what the Early society stage Analogue would be but if i were to guess based on information given it’d be somewhere within Egyptian / Greek times

Now your dudes can be equipped with swords and what not and although i failed to mention this in the previous page ranged bows perhaps even crossbows to add variety still somewhat the same as Early Awakening mentioned before except you may have chariots as war vehicles, Siege weapons may exist

Society Stage - Mid to Early Late

Probably within medieval times till Whatever you’d call that period where everyone had muskets and cannons

So theres a very high likely hood the Squad editor is available by now so there will be squads I’d like to treat squads the same way they are treated in RTS games Warhammer 40K dawn of war and Company of heroes where in:

They all have a Morale Bar which is affected by how many times they’ve seen combat often as well as weapons which would be feared such as a flamethrower ( which shouldn’t be a concern during this period) is morale is completely depleted it makes sense for them to run around like idiots or run home

Like in those games you should have the ability to equip squads with new weapons if needed like a portable minigun for when there is lots of infantry to deal with or a double axe combo if you want to run into battle hacking plantimal hybrids, aswell as the ability to attach certain individual units to a squad for benefits

there are other features i can list inspired by these games which i’ll get to later

Once muskets are introduced nows the time i take other features from those two relic entertainment games because they’re genuine good features

Gun combat should have different factors such as range accuracy and cover (some of which would be affected by stuff you built)

Cover can be used by ordering a squad of musket men or soldiers to move to a wall or stone and wooden fence, similarly to the company of heroes game there could be a yellow indicator showing which areas each squad member would take whilst in cover (to avoid them simply going on the wrong side resulting in reverse cover) Cover would provide some bonuses for damage reduction

Range would affect accuracy which is why your guys who are 20 meters away from the guys they’re shooting at would miss

Industrial - Early

Similar to last one but with more guns being further developed anti gun armor would be developed as in helmets and stuff (remember Industrial is supposed to be the industrial revolution which took place in the 1700’s so there couldn’t be any tanks which were first used in combat in 1910’s for WW1 )

Industrial - Mid
WW1 / WW2 era analogue

Automatic / Semi automatic firearms would be used
Tanks would be introduced as a vehicle type which could use similar armor systems as company of Heroes I.E front and sides of tank are well armored but back is slightly weaker meaning rockets should be aimed there
Soldiers now equipped with helmets and fighter planes can be used

I was going to say more company of heroes / W40KDOW ideas but i’m just going to save it for after this post is complete

(also not really a suggestion per se but i feel as though there should be a good likelyhood of global war breaking out during this point in time because either you are hitler or some other scmuck on your planet is hitler )

Industrial - Late
About Modern era Fighter jets drones chemical warfare the usual and well known

Space Age -

Just make it like homeworld and the ground combat like starcraft IDK

CRITICIZE ME AS MUCH AS YOU WANT

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IIRC early awakening will be very similar to late aware, (goes for all stages, the goal is to have as little abrupt transitions (like in Spore) as possible,) it isn’t until you unlock a specific tech that the RTS part would fully open up. (Maybe have some earlier versions, such as first a pack that just shares food, to a squad system where parts of your pack actively follow you when you tell them to (comparable to Spore’s pack system, but only for your own race), to being able to give simple orders to your pack, to actual RTS)

Society stage ends with the industrial revolution, (so around the development of either the steam engine or the conveyor belt) where machines start happening, which is a couple centuries after the renaissance on Earth’s timeline.

Well to be honest WWII happened mostly because of WWI, while WWI happened for a big reason because of humans. I feel like it should not be too difficult to use the power of intelligent design to create a species which does not participate in wars at such a scale that entire continents are in a state of total war. (Then again, an important goal to properly expand to space is unification of Earth, so maybe you would have to go full civ-late-game and steamroll the rest of the world if diplomacy isn’t working)

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You have my hopes up.

Well, I guess it depends upon how their brains work, but I think they would act similarly as hoomans since most lifeforms are generally violent. Not saying it’s impossible, though.

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We will start with a really simple system that can be expanded upon. Not having any combat is obviously a huge drawback, so some needs to be added ASAP. It will probably initially be like a big chess pieces with some stats like the number of troops it represents. That you can then make move over to enemy pieces, and when they hit they fight by making the opponent lose troops. Once an army reaches 0 troops it’s removed from the game. Really simple stuff like that will kickstart development and ideas towrads more complex combat.

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Except that you would be able to move multiple units at the same time.

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Yeah. But wouldn’t the environment and other factors come into play? Such as ambush from above etc.?

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“Ambush” could be a generic tactic, which could represent hiding from above, behind cover, or even from below. Of course, this would depend on the environment and how it can be manipulated, or even structures like scaffolds and tunnels.
As with all media made for humans, we have trouble thinking in three dimensions. This could get tricky when having to order around a race of monkeys or mole-men, but I’d say strategy would be more important than tactics in this kinda game. Over long distances, the field of play is effectively 2D.

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Honestly i just made this thread because i was bored one day and realised nobody else made a thread like this

also i just wanted to casually mention company of heroes in the vain hopes i can do Goliath army in Thrive (if you are confused at the latter part look up valefisk company of heroes goliath)

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This is only tangentially relevant, but I wanted to mention it anyway.

I am uncertain how the planet’s surface will be represented, but I hope it is not like the provinces of the Paradox games. Those are static, while borders in reality changed quite a lot for various reasons. I think Supreme Ruler’s system is better. In that game, the world is divided into many hexagons, each representing an equal number of square kilometers. Very small hexes can be used like pixels to draw mountains, deserts, etc. The hexes could have different properties according to the terrain. For example, a mountain hex would be difficult to cross, and a mountain hex covered in jungle would be even more difficult (think New Guinea). Political boundaries in Supreme Ruler tend to form on natural barriers, as armies have difficulty crossing them. This makes sense and is not scripted, so the player is not bound to follow this rule.

Of course, I still dislike the idea of specifically coded terrain types. I would prefer that all the land in the game is treated the same way, and different properties dynamically produce different results. For example, a hex could have an “elevation” property which represents how far above sea level it is. This might be connected to temperature, for example, which then affects many other factors. A web of properties would be much more interesting than something like in the Paradox games, where every mountain province is the same. This also allows the hexes to change due to having fickle properties, so an ice age could turn a forest into a tundra or even a glacier. Maybe some hexes could become a new island after a volcanic eruption, or maybe a tsunami could obliterate an island. This would be much better than static tiles or provinces.

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I’m pretty sure you’re thinking on a far too small scale here. Even in the early society stage wars are usually a matter of hundreds to thousands of people fighting at once. You can hardly expect players to micromanage things like range and cover for every fighter individually. Instead I’d expect the player to manage tactical decisions more generally; modify the doctrine, not the tactics so to speak.

As for the WWII thing, the world wars in Europe had all sorts of causes ranging from culture to geography. If a relatively minor difference in cultural or geographical circumstances could have changed the course of history, do you really think that events like these are set in stone, even for completely alien societies? Besides, having events follow a predictable path every play through would kind of kill the fun of making your own society, wouldn’t it?

Perhaps this could tie into the patch system from previous stages.

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