Phalanx's Daily #55: Musings, the deathball.

One of the thoughts I had while doing stuff today was on the development of the death ball. Especially for the protoss race, the death ball really is the best way in which you can engage an army. Deathballs are, in nature, boring to watch. Everybody hates them because they're boring! Even the micro possibilities are truly limited by the way the death ball works since you ideally want to keep everything together. Imagine if every match you watched had tons of small battles, like in the trailers. Units positioned all the fuck around the place, fighting a flock of mutas here, a group of marines there, a bunch of OP-mines to the side. Not to say that such situations don't arise in pro-level games, but even for pros it really isn't "encouraged" to fight small engagements.

* Disclaimer*
Although this may have relavence to sc2, it's not like i'm trying to make some enlightening suggestion to blizzard to change the game. This is really more of a designer perspective, since I've had fantasies of making my own RTS for a while (it has an amazing twist to the game play that I can't reveal though o.O).

To figure out how to, on a sense of game design, get rid of the deathball, I first thought up why the deathball comes to be. It's pretty straight forward to think of. If you have 20 marines vs 20 marines, what's the best way to fight? Marines are stronger in numbers due to the simple fact that there's more firepower, making anything other than sending in all your marines at once (ignoring positional factors for now) much less efficient, leading to the player who kept his marines together for fights coming out on top compared to a player who sent in waves of 10 marines at a time. Part of the problem is that there isn't enough micro potential to change the simple math of 20>10.

Now, since the deathball is ez and for nubs, how can it be eradicated?

The best idea that I've had, mostly to encourage small engagements, was to make units not shoot above each other. What does this do? It, in effect, makes units less effective as they're greater in number. If you have 20 marines but you were in a spot such that only 6 could shoot at once (for example(not just talking range here, it's hypotheticals so think that there's only surface area for 6 marines to shoot)) then smaller forces stand more of a chance. In sc2, if you have 10 marines vs 20 marines, the 20 marines will always come out on top unless the 10 have god like micro (maybe not even then). The concept of making units weaker in numbers is central to my idea of how to design a new-age RTS game.

Don't get all up on me if all the ideas i throw out are already implemented by some RTS by the way, i don't play too many games .

Another design factor that could make units weaker in numbers is splash damage. In sc2, splash damage is pretty good at accomplishing this as well, although only to a certain extent. If you see a baneling, you split your marines. If you see a tank, you.... flank it? idk tanks are too smart-fire for as much splitting, but you get the point. With ample splash damage enemies are punished for having a larger group of units. The only problem with splash damage units is that there is the potential for them to be unstoppable in large numbers (kill masses AND kill small groups) so that's something that would need very careful design. If anything, very strong splash damage but extremely slow reload might be good.

Making units less effective in larger groups gives way to another good mechanic; the ability for a player to actually make a comeback. In sc2, comebacks are very, very rare. If 2 players are at "equal" skill levels, then whichever one lost a few more units at any point in the game will lost. If a protoss loses a few HT before an attack, they lose. If the terran is up by 1 base and manages to keep it secured, you lose. It's very easy to see who's in the lead and who will win in most games of sc2. The reason for this stems back to the deathball; more units = better. 20 > 10. If such a change is made so that 20 =ish 10, then a player who is behind still can come back. It may be harder, of course, but they still will have more of a chance.

Basic recap of what I thought could be better in the design of an RTS game;
-Splash damage, to discourage unit clumps even further
-Deterioration of power as numbers grow, rather than increase (the deterioration is not meaning that 2<1, but more that each 1 is slightly less effective, so what would be 2 in sc2 would instead be 1.8. As numbers increase, each 1 is less and less powerful, so that 20 -> 12.5 or something. Don't trust the math, I didn't think this all out)
-The ability to come back from a situation in which you are slightly behind (due to aforementioned design aspects)

Totally have no idea what this rant/muse even ended up being about, maybe it's what I think could have been better about sc2, maybe it's just personal ideas I had about my own RTS game.