A timely editorial...

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Homeworld is one of the greatest games of all time.

[Phoenix-D]

Starfury is NOT a RTS. RTS games involve at the minimum more than one unit. Call it an RTS and you might as well call Baulder's Gate or Morrowind an RTS. (or Asteroids, for that matter..)

[Ed Kolis]

Well SF does have fighter management...

[Rasorow]

Starfury is an RPG - it is a real time RPG but still an RPG. Just like Privateer was a RPG.

I do not buy that an RTS can be as good and deep in thought as a turned based system. I have yet to see a RTS that allows the control that is present in a turned based system. You cannot issue standing orders. You cannot assign ships specific jobs in specific situations as you would with an actual fleet. You can control that in turn based.

Homeworld did come close and hats of to it for that. Yet Homeworlds interface was not the best and you could easily lose the battle simply because you couldnt move around in the program fast enough.

There was at one point the idea of phased turns was used. You programed the moves that you would make and when everything was done in order with factors such as speed, surprise, initiative (random sometimes stat based), and tatical advantage (terrain normally) were calculated to determine order of execution. I only saw a couple of games use this a long time ago.

Don't mistake, RTS can be great for a quick fix. I have played Ceasar III, Age of Empires, Homeworld 1 and 2, Rebellion, Sim City 2000 and 3000, and others and had fun. None of them comes close to the complexity and challenge of Dominions II, Space Empires II (for its time), III, or IV, Stars!, Master of Orion (for its time).

As far as the 3D thing goes... there is a huge interface problem to overcome. Homeworld was close but it needs to be better. Though Homeworld as a turn-based game interface might of worked well enough.

Rasorow

[Fyron]

SE5 will not under any circumstances be a RTS game! It will _never_ be comparable to Age of Empires, Starcraft, Warcraft, etc. It will be a turn based strategy game. It will just have real time combat. Just like Dominions... Many games have successfully pulled this off. Many turn based strategy games have had combat systems that were not real time, but essentially tried to emulate real time execution with constructs such as issuing orders, then watching the units act for a round without intervention. Real time with pausing is just a smoother, cleaner way of doing that...

Further, as it stands now, Aaron Hall is against the idea of 3D combat. Combat is currently slated to be 2D just as in SE4. It will have 3D graphics, but will still be on a single 2D plane. It will not be like Homeworld at all. Again, it will be just like Dominions, except with spaceships instead of soldiers/monsters.

[Possum]

Phoenix-D said:
Starfury is NOT a RTS. RTS games involve at the minimum more than one unit. Call it an RTS and you might as well call Baulder's Gate or Morrowind an RTS. (or Asteroids, for that matter..)

Says who?

Where is this defined?

[Possum]

BTW, the editorial has now been moved here, as it's no longer the current one

[Fyron]

Possum said:

Says who?

Where is this defined?

Many places. It is not a strategy game, it is an adventure game. RTS means Real Time Strategy. There is no way you can classify Starfury as a strategy game. It has none of the essential elements of a strategy game. It would be like calling SE4 a card game...

[Ed Kolis]

Erm, since when does Dominions have real-time combat, Fyron???

(It just LOOKS real-time because the units on a side move all at once, not one at a time like in SE4 ... but each side still takes its turn moving and attacking, then the other side moves and attacks, ad infinitum... or maybe ad nihilo if you have too many units and it crashes the game )

[Fyron]

Oh. So it is one of those pseudo-real time combat systems? I never looked too closely at it...