Welcome to Thunderdome

Posted: **Thu Dec 27, 2007 8:48 pm**

This RTS game is pretty much "Red Dawn," but without the high schools kids stopping the red army in Nebraska (?) all by themselves. It's 1989 and the Soviets just landed in Seattle...

I got the collector's edition, which is pretty much the neatest CE of a game I've seen so far. Contains:

- The game on DVD
- Another DVD of the game w/a 10-day key for a friend to try out
- "Making of" DVD
- DVD of History Channel's "Modern Marvels" episode on The Berlin Wall
- An actual piece of the Berlin Wall, with certificate of authenticity. (Supposedly, of course). My piece has spraypaint on it.

I've played through the first mission, and so far it's pretty neat. The camera system is a little hard to get used to as you need to use a combination of mouse and keyboard keys to make things happen... that's new, to me. The gameplay, so far, is bringing nothing new to the table, but that's all right. The RTS system is pretty much established. The army's comm chatter is hit and miss for authenticity, for me. I guess considering that these are mainly Washington National Guard troops I've seen so far makes it a little easier to swallow, professionalism-wise.

But the part that really draws me in to this story are the exposition scenes between missions... they are done like a Civil War documentary, with oil paintings and a narrator (Alec Baldwin, of all people) moving the story along, and it has the same tone as a documentary of a war long past, using actual words of soldiers who were there. Except instead of a painting of a Confederate General leading a charge into a massive Union cannonade, it is an Abrams tank and a Gunship trying to defend the Seattle superdome full of civilians from a massive incoming Soviet armored column.

Trying.

Pretty neat. Thumbs up so far.

Even though my system can't handle full graphical detail.

Edited By GORDON on 1198852506

Posted: **Mon Feb 18, 2008 10:06 am**

I'm bumping this for Leisher who missed it the first time.

Posted: **Mon Feb 18, 2008 10:51 am**

Yes I did, as I was offering you my 10 day trial key.

I like it this game a lot, particularly the story.

Although, I will say that I've had it with all these RTSs and their ridiculously increasing demands in terms of micromanagement. I think they're on the brink of having to admit that to continue growing the genre, they're going to need to go back to turn based gameplay. I'm sorry, but I'm fighting battles on multiple fronts with dozens of units, I should not have to tell an individual Humvee unit to fire it's tow missle or pop smoke to prevent enemy units from easily spotting them.

I think it's time that the RTS makers stop trying to increase what units are capable of, but rather focus on unit AI to reduce micromanagement. Fine, my Humvee can fire off a tow missile to damage enemy tanks, then shouldn't he do that if fighting enemy tanks???

This is not a game I'd recommend to RTS newbies.

Posted: **Mon Feb 18, 2008 1:00 pm**

Good AI is a bitch to develop. Particularly for RTS shyte. & I been advocating turn-based RTS for over two decades now. I don't want to have to command my legions of death personally. That's why I pay my officers, goddamnit.

Posted: **Mon Feb 18, 2008 1:33 pm**

Exactly.

CO: "You men go south by the bridge."
30 seconds later...
CO:"What the hell are you doing? Fortify your position!"
30 seconds later...
CO: "What the fuck!? Shoot at the damn enemy!"
30 seconds later...
CO: "Why are you shooting tanks with machine guns? Use your damn tow missles!"

Some developers would argue that the "Pause" feature that is so prominent in a lot of these games helps get around such micromanagement issues. I say bullshit. First of all, pausing the game makes it turn based, only not as good. Secondly, what about multiplay?

Posted: **Mon Feb 18, 2008 4:40 pm**

The problem with writing AI is that, once the script gets reverse engineered, it's usually easy to come up w\ ways to exploit things.

So maybe you think setting the tank AI to go track & kill foot soldiers is a good idea. How about when one human-controlled grunt pulls your entire tank battalion into an ambush cos the AI decided to go chase shit? The AI doesn't remember that the last fifty times that dude has shown up, you mysteriously lost a hundred tanks shortly thereafter.

So you set a flag to make it stay put or only chase to a certain distance. Soon as I figure out that border, I'm going to abuse the fuck out of it.

I always shied away from RTS cos if I can't see my entire world from my screen, I might need to scroll & then I'm not paying attention to everything. That's bullshit. Were I actually waging war on someone, I fucking guarantee you I would know all the shit going on everywhere to the best of my ability. I don't do that all by myself obviously. I hire underlings. Competent underlings. In theory, a prepared human brain is there to respond to any bad shit. If I have to control everyone directly, it is not possible to respond to a dozen different events at once. I never thought RTS was possible if there was more than one avatar per live human. Something like Fallout Tactics would be alright (one Brother per participant), but bigger things ain't. The more control I entrust to deterministic AI, the more vulnerable I am.

Posted: **Mon Feb 18, 2008 4:45 pm**

Malcolm wrote:So you set a flag to make it stay put or only chase to a certain distance. Soon as I figure out that border, I'm going to abuse the fuck out of it.

Eh, easily overcome. Just need to add a bit of randomness. In one occurrence out of RND(X), they will ignore the guy. Or call in an air strike on the guy. Or send one tank to go unlimited distance, but leave the rest of the battalion behind Or send in the entire battalion. Or ignore him. Or turn the entire tank BN around because they suspect a trap.

Whatever.

A little bit of randomization goes a long way.

Posted: **Mon Feb 18, 2008 6:31 pm**

I like my AI to have predictable, intelligent behaviour. However, successful warfare is based on deception. The AI needs to be able to call bluffs or act intelligently. People do not have set strategies that they must stick to all the time. Even using a "bad" tactic could be considered a bonus if the enemy isn't expecting it. Ain't that how that one Union officer held that hill at Gettysburg? He used a maneuver so archaic that it worked?

The point being that, as soon as you give your unit a predictable behaviour, I can probably find ways to exploit it. I do not believe that machine learning has advanced to the point where AIs can provide sufficient competition for people in terms of adaptability. That's why games in which you shoot bots generally have multiplayer modes. A human brain has the potential to outdo whatever AI algorithm one can muster because the human brain can do very, very creative things.

Welcome to Thunderdome

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