User:LionsPhil/QuestRTS

This is general derpan about a hypothetical quest RTS for the sake of an academic high-level design exercise. It'll never get made. (These notes are slightly trimmed and reformatted from Phil's copy.)

Rough idea is something Age of Empires-ish, with a to-CBSF-ish era progression. Try to improve the tactical side somewhat, though; in particular terrain effects, especially forests, which should be infantry-navigable. Resources are actually stored in-world in warehouses, although any one warehouse has unlimited capacity since "silos needed" has never been fun gameplay. This makes it possible to raid and lose them. Workers need to actually access appropriate stocks: think Settlers.

Faction design

Gameplay-oriented to encourage a different, fluff-appropriate playstyle for each.

Cutebolds

Theme: hiding/evasive stealth

At the low tech levels, they are very vulnerable, but camoflaged, decentralised, and numerous. They simply cannot win any head-on fight and are forced to hide, flee, and make sacrificial feints to keep attackers occupied. There is no single, expensive HQ structure, so as long as one puppyhead survives, they are not out of the game (their stockpiles are free, although the resources they've been scrabbling together may have been lost to raids). Dragonbolds are the closest they have to offensive units and can only hope to win en-masse; trapping the surrounding area is their best chance to delay an attacker long enough to flee with all they can carry.

However, once cutebolds reach high tech levels (via the mid-level help of gobbo tinkerers, but mid-level cutebolds are still pathetically weak), they hit the CBSF era, and can field a powerful, cost-effective, mechanised force. Suddenly the scattered enclaves of largely defenceless bolds are an army ready to roll across the map. Letting a cutebold player hit high tech should be like letting a Core player build a Krogoth back in TA. This encourages people to continually harass the bolds during their vulnerable stage and ensure their life is appropriately harsh.

Sergals

Theme: raiding/hit and run/mobility

Glass cannons. Do high initial damage, but cannot keep up a sustained battle—if drawn into a slugging match, they are weak and will lose badly. Some degree of regen/easy healing when out of combat. Can capture and escape with resources easily. Encourages hit-and-run (raiding) tactics.

Sergals become outclassed as other races tech up, forcing them to hit hard and fast at every early opportunity. They need to be constantly aggressive and keep their opponents weakened because if pressed onto the back foot they will lose in the long run.

Dwarves

Theme: turtling

Dwarves are a semi-underground race, and can gain resources by sinking mines within their own territory, reducing the need to expand. Much of their infrastructure is contained in an upgradable HQ 'building' which is a heavily reinforced underground fortress entrance with huge garrisoning capability to protect workers. As tech levels progress, they can counterattack besieging forces with increasingly potent weaponry, from siege crossbows up to magma floods, making the fortress very hard to crack. Even at low levels an attacking force may find itself disrupted by traps and barricades before it can approach combat range.

While individual dwarves are potent combatants, they slowly suffer continual sun damage when not near their fortress, and heal other damage slowly, limiting their offensive stamina. Instead the danger of a dwarf player is the construction of megaprojects such as huge, long range magma cannons or mobile engines of war which can support an expeditionary force. Think SupComm's Fatboy and top-tier TA artillery. As long as a surface carrier is in operation, dwarves can recruit from a limited pool of curious Lohrkes, who have the same weaknesses but bring heavy infantry firepower.

Splinter

Theme: hedgehogging/territorial control

Splinter are hard-hitters, with fewer, more expensive units that can absorb a reasonable amount of punishment when dug in and return even more: they outclass even top-tier Cutebold units, but are far more costly. Forces are often supported by minefields, close air support, and suppressive artillery fire. They are not that comparatively fast or maneuverable, but where-ever their forces are on the map, everyone else's soon won't be one way or another. Splinter forces are well-suited to maintaining a 'walking' defensive perimeter, but must balance their stationary advantages with the need to expand to satisfy an insatiable hunger for resources.

At higher tech levels they gain the ability to command (expensive) orbital strikes and perform sub-orbital insertions, allowing them to prepare a more sudden strike at even the most well-defended target, albeit with no fast escape route.

Hat'kal/Lazurek

Theme: offensive stealth/alternate territory

The Lazurek component of this faction consists primarily of the subjugated jungle subspecies, and is thus the only faction which can build in forests, offering themselves excellent cover from detection. Their wood-harvesting acts like temporary, regenerating damage on trees, allowing them to collect resources proportional to their controlled territory without destroying it. Their infantry, both Hat'kal and Lazurek, move faster and hit harder in this home terrain. High-end Hat'kal warriors are powerful units which are naturally camouflaged, although slowly lose health and non-stationary-camouflage when roaming outside of their forest habitat, and do so much faster while losing camouflage entirely in sandy or snowy terrain.

The faction lacks any ability to engage in ranged combat, requiring it to rely upon ambushing tactics. Attacks on other factions far from forested terrain depend on stealthed Lazurek assassins, thieves, and saboteurs. At high tech levels they are completely undetectable beyond point-blank range and until beginning their attack, forcing other factions to have to take the fight to the Hat'kal to stop the losses of valuable units, resources, and buildings.

Scellor

Theme: manipulation/subversion

Scellor are not particularly capable in a stand-up fight when put alongside the likes of Splinter, but a stand-up fight is not what they seek to engage in. The main Scellor offensive capability is to mentally weaken enemies, subverting them to serve as allies. To assist this, other types of Scellor can apply temporary effects to terrain, forming barriers and movement effects to isolate valuable or vulnerable targets from their support, and allow the attacker to close in. To counter a force a Scellor player must make combined use of these terrain-control capabilities and sow chaos amongst their opponent with a well-placed turncoat rather than attack head-on.

Scellor have no unit veterancy and no tech level, with the Undermind preventing experience from ever being truly lost; instead their units must be upgraded by expending resources to refine psykonium. Captured foreign units are always at at a fixed veterancy, and thus more expendable. The scale of Scellor upgrades is far greater than veterancy: a high-level unit may cost as much to reach as other races would expend on a top-tech superunit, but would be comparably dangerous. The base Scellor units are drones of each caste, although pre-upgraded ones can be ordered for an upfront cost to avoid tedious individual upgrading (e.g. a squad of lightly upgraded morale-immune Niiar). Getting the point of being able to refine psykonium requires bootstrapping an economy from Praal drones.

Inappropriate factions

• Blockheads (cutebolds without ever being capable)
• Bite Quest wizards (overpowered, even if the mass units are snikts etc.)
• Lohrkes (too much like Dorfs, but less militarised and surface-capable; merged)
• Nedynvor (don't tend to leave Great Sky Dragon, not very killy)
• Engsami (seem to be nomadic/raiderish; niche taken by Sergals)
• Gnolls (raiders; niche taken by Sergals)
• Goblins (low-tier; merged into cutebolds)
• Voltos (ruling class, cannot ever see them in a serious war)
• The Alliance(Qal/Shirm/Delter) (unsure how they'd play; quest is space war-level)
• Astranians (unsure how they'd play if not high-tech, which is Splinter's niche)
  • Vulnerable to surprise attacks; depend on heavy short-term shields being up
  • Implies a possible micro-heavy playstyle, but that is not really a good one

Possibly stick in other raider types as a "wild animal"-esque AI map hazard.

Special events

Some kind of mechanism to deploy a special effect on the battlefield, which allows representation of quests which are not suitable as a playable race.

Tozol Mercenaries

Dropship of Tozols lands, a small team of them wreck everything nearby, then dust off again. Tozols are ridiculously overpowered compared even to top-tier Splinter stuff and unlikely to be destroyed before they can do serious damage, making them useful to breaking an impenetrable dwarven defence, or shattering a grouped army.

Drawmobile

Drops off a friendly, skilled builder unit from a complementary different faction. Enjoy mixing the strengths of two different tech trees.

Doobies

A group of Doobies congregate into the area and stall all nearby forces for some time through a mixture of getting in the way and demonstrating their expertise of the performing arts. Doobies are immune to all damage and will only dispel when they get bored of distracting the lesser races. Even other specials like Tozols are not immune to their enchanting call.