Anti-Tank Gun RTS Design

Anti-tank guns in the real world allow infantry to destroy armored vehicles from a greater distance and relatively greater safety than molotov cocktails, grenades, and most anti-tank rocket systems allow. They are most effective when used defensively, as they can be concealed and fire at the weaker side or rear armor of enemy tanks as they unknowingly drive past. Their main weaknesses are their lack of mobility and armor. The crew is extremely vulnerable to enemy infantry and the gun itself can easily be destroyed by a hit from almost any enemy tank.


You have to duck pretty low for that gun shield to deflect a bullet coming at you.

With these strengths and weaknesses in mind, what is the best way to design an anti-tank gun for the purposes of a real-time strategy game? Let's first look at how a couple of games have implemented them and then see how they should ideally be used in a game.

Codename: Panzers
The World War II RTS Codename: Panzers has quite a few anti-tank guns available for each side. The game employs a currency system that uses prestige for purchasing units. Between each battle or before starting a multiplayer game, players can choose what units they wish to buy within the prestige limit allowed. Anti-tank guns cost considerably less than tanks, usually 1/4 or less of the prestige cost of a self-propelled vehicle. They tend to have about the same range as the tanks in the game and deal a similar amount of damage.

However, they have several major weaknesses that limit their usefulness. The first is that their seemingly low prestige cost ignores a couple of additional costs. They have to be manned by an infantry unit in order to fire, which is not included in their price. Additionally, they are extremely slow when moved by this infantry unit alone so you will probably have to pay for a truck to hitch them up to.


Flak-88 towed by a German truck.

Some irritating interface issues make the process of towing an anti-tank gun with a truck a real hassle. When you start a game, your AT-gun will be lying unmanned on the battlefield. So, you probably want to hitch it to a truck. Click on the truck, tell it to pick up the AT gun. Then click on whichever infantry squad you want to man the gun and place them in the truck as well. Then, when you wish to deploy the anti-tank gun, you have to click on the truck, click on the unhitch button, then click on the infantry in the truck to get them out, click on the infantry who are outside the truck, then click on the unhitched AT-gun to get them to man it. By the time this process is complete, any tank driving by will have long bypassed the position you wished to deploy your AT gun in and you will have to try again later. Or it will have driven up and blown up the AT gun, truck, and machine gunned all of your infantry down.


The anti-tank gun in the middle is the least valuable part of this entire force.

The worst part is that there is no way to get around this process, you can't have the infantry, truck, and AT gun be considered as one unit at all. The control groups get messed up when you place the infantry in the truck and the AT-gun gets lost as well when it is hitched up.

The final glaring weakness of anti-tank guns is that they are extremely vulnerable to everything else in the game. Enemy infantry units, particularly snipers, can kill the crew in a few moments if they get close. Tanks can blow up most of the AT-guns in three to four hits from their main gun, while it takes an AT-gun more than ten hits to kill even the weakest tanks.

The only time they are useful is when you have multiple infantry units facing an unexpected armored vehicle and there happens to be an abandoned AT-gun nearby. In that case, it's great to have one infantry squad grab it and start firing at enemy tanks in the area. For any offensive purpose they are completely useless. Unfortunately, for most of the campaign you are supposed to be the aggressor so there isn't much use for a unit that is only moderately valuable in defensive positions. I never buy them during the campaign, you're always better off buying tanks.


How I leave anti-tank guns in Codename: Panzers-unmanned and idle.

Company of Heroes
Company of Heroes, also a World War II RTS, does a much better job of providing a useful anti-tank gun. The original two factions of the game, the Americans and the Wehrmacht, both have an anti-tank gun that can be built early in the game. They cost less manpower and have no fuel cost, so they are a lot cheaper than a tank. They differ significantly from those in Codename: Panzers.


German Pak-38 in Company of Heroes.

The anti-tank guns are both manned by a three man crew that comes with the gun's purchase cost. There is no need to buy an extra infantry unit just to use the gun. Two men are required to move the weapon about and fire it, the extra man fires his pistol or carbine at enemy infantry within range until one of the other crewmen die and he is needed to take their place. If two crewmen die, the third crewman automatically dies and the gun becomes abandoned for any infantry unit to pick up. The crew is extremely vulnerable to any enemy infantry in the area. A sniper can wipe out the crew with two shots, making it critically important to keep them safe from enemy soldiers.

This makes them sound less useful than the Codename: Panzer version, but they make up for their relative weakness against infantry by being much more useful against tanks. They have a longer range than tanks and also have special abilities that allow them to do more damage than tanks are able to inflict in return. The German Pak-38 can camouflage itself to save its shots for the vulnerable side and rear armor of American tanks. The American 57mm gun can fire armor-piercing shells that do much more damage and also penetrate the thickest armored German tanks like the Tiger and Panther. Most importantly, the anti-tank guns in Company of Heroes can kill most enemy tanks in a few hits instead of taking ten or more like in Codename: Panzers.


American 57mm anti-tank gun.

They are also much stronger defensively against tanks than their Codename: Panzers counterparts. Tanks usually target the crew manning the gun instead of the gun itself, and they tend to miss when doing so. This gives anti-tank guns a lot more survivability against armor. They can be vulnerable when tanks get close, as some of the faster tanks can easily get behind the AT-gun and fire on the exposed crew that way, but that's only an issue when the AT-gun is in the field alone without any support. With infantry with anti-tank capabilities or other tanks in the area of an anti-tank gun, it's very risky to try and get behind an anti-tank gun to kill the crew.


This anti-tank gun needs some additional support if it wants to survive an enemy armored assault.

The one problem with anti-tank guns in Company of Heroes is that they are great for most 1v1 maps but not maneuverable enough on the larger maps. They take forever to move from the base where they are built to the combat areas that tend to be around the middle of the map. There is no way to hitch them up to a half-track or other vehicle to get them into action faster.

Conclusion
Although the Codename: Panzers version of an anti-tank gun is a lot more realistic, the Company of Heroes version is a lot more desirable for the purposes of a RTS game. However, the ability to attach the gun to a truck to move it faster is a great addition to how they are treated in Company of Heroes. So, an ideal anti-tank gun in a RTS should have these characteristics to be useful for players:

-Less expensive than armored vehicles
-Much slower and less maneuverable than vehicles
-Vulnerable to enemy infantry, particularly snipers
-Greater range and good damage against vehicles
-Need to be treated as one cohesive unit-not as a combined infantry, truck, and gun that is an interface nightmare
-Should be able to be attached to vehicles to move into combat faster if needed

Any AT gun that meets those requirement will be a great strategic addition to a RTS game featuring tanks.


Although guns like this might be a little too large to move around the battlefield easily.

Take Some Cover! Garrisons in RTS Games-Part One

Many RTS games allow the player to put infantry into buildings on the map to give them some additional protection from enemy fire and occasionally some combat bonuses such as faster firing times or additional range. Some games are more successful at making buildings a useful strategic element than others. This article will take a look through some of the efforts to make neutral buildings into a tactical choice and see which methods are the most effective.

Age of Empires II
Although probably not the first game to allow the player to garrison units, it is the first I played with the option. Every player starts the game with a Town Center, the basic core of your base that produces the workers needed to gather resources and construct other buildings. When an enemy attacks, the player can sound the alarm at the town center and all nearby workers will enter it to take cover. Additionally, they will fire arrows at enemy units in the area.


A garrisoned town center, indicated by the flag on top.

This is a clever way to prevent one problem that irks many players, the rush. Rushing is when one player produces a large number of a basic combat unit and attacks the other player as soon as possible in the game. If the other player has not invested sufficient resources in his own military, they will either lose everything or lose most of their workers and production capabilities, giving the rushing player an easy win. For instance, one all-in strategy for Warcraft II was to build a barracks as close as possible to the other player's base and produce a couple basic infantry units to kill all of their workers in the first few minutes of the game.

With the ability to garrison the town center, it is much more difficult to achieve an all-out victory with a rush in Age of Empires II. While the workers are still quite vulnerable, the town center itself is extremely difficult to destroy without siege weapons or overwhelming numbers, which are impossible to acquire in the early game. An attempt to destroy the town center with militia-the most basic infantry unit of Age of Empires II-will only result in a large number of arrow riddled corpses outside the building.

However, only workers can attack from the town center. All other infantry units can be garrisoned but they cannot attack while inside buildings. This means that if a player chooses to protect his workers in the town center they will not be harvesting resources. This can put a player at a long term resource disadvantage that will eventually lead to a loss.

Red Alert II
Red Alert II added neutral buildings on the map that could be garrisoned by basic infantry units: the GI for the Allies, Conscript for the Soviets, and Initiate for the Yuri faction added in the expansion. This causes the building to be covered in barbed wire and to take the player's color, allowing the opposing player to know that it is garrisoned. When not inside a building, these units are fairly weak and vulnerable. They don't do great damage, die fairly easily, and can be run over by tanks and other heavy vehicles.


Any of these white buildings can be garrisoned.

When placed inside a building they are immune to enemy fire, the only way to kill them is to destroy the building entirely. Additionally, they do additional damage and fire more rapidly. This bolsters these humble units to the point that they can defeat enemy tanks and throw back enemy assaults. The opposing player also does not know how many infantry units are in the building without attacking it. Some buildings can hold ten or more troops inside but whether there is one or ten inside it will look the same to the enemy player. The only way to learn how many troops are actually occupying it is to move a unit within firing range and see how much fire it takes.


A building garrisoned by GIs-note that it is blue to denote that the allied player has troops inside.

A couple fully garrisoned buildings in the right location can make a direct attack impossible without heavy casualties. This can allow a player to build a few cheap infantry units to protect their base while they focus all of their resources on building more advanced units, such as heavy tanks, aircraft, or superweapons. The only reliable ways to attack garrisoned buildings are with air units and long range weapons. These can attack and eventually destroy the building without taking any damage.


Burning building-the external indicator that it has taken damage.

Once destroyed, the building is gone forever and cannot be rebuilt. This means that if a player allows the enemy to destroy the neutral buildings around their base they lose that source of defense forever. Buildings can be repaired back to full health by the engineer unit if they are reached before they are destroyed though.

The Yuri's Revenge expansion also offers one new garrison feature for the Yuri faction-the tank bunker. These allow the tanks of the Yuri faction to be placed inside a thick shell which can absorb a ton of damage and can also be repaired while it is under attack. As the main tanks of Yuri's faction are weaker than their Allied and Soviet counterparts, this can help them stand up to an enemy tank assault.


This may be an excessive use of tank bunkers.

It is interesting to note that Red Alert II has many more infantry units available, including snipers, anti-aircraft troops, and hero units, but only the basic infantry troops can be garrisoned. This may have been a balance choice or a problem of programming different types of units attacking from the buildings.

Command and Conquer Generals
Command and Conquer Generals adds a few new features to the Red Alert II system. All types of infantry units can be garrisoned, not just basic infantry. As every side has access to rocket infantry this greatly improves the ability of buildings to hold off tank assaults.


US rangers making a chopper-borne assault on an enemy garrisoned building.

This is blunted somewhat by a great versatility of counters to infantry in buildings. Each side has access to at least one method that kills garrisoned troops easily. China has access to dragon tanks, which have a flamethrower that will instantly kill all troops in a building. The Global Liberation Army has toxin tractors that shoot out anthrax sprays that have a similar effect. The United States can upgrade their rangers to shoot flashbang grenades, which also instantly kill garrisoned troops they hit. Rangers can also be placed in Chinook helicopters to conduct airborne assaults, as pictured earlier.


Rangers firing flashbangs at an enemy angry mob.

These additions make the choice to garrison buildings a little more difficult for players. Garrisoning makes troops invulnerable to damage from conventional weapons until the building is destroyed but it also adds the risk of being instantly killed by the correct counter weapons. This gives the option a bit more depth than Age of Empires or Red Alert, as it is not always a great idea to place your infantry in nearby buildings. Unless, of course, you want them burnt to death.

Continue to Part Two, which discusses Company of Heroes.

When Your Ally Quits

When someone on your team quits or has his internet connection drop in a RTS game, it reduces your chances of victory dramatically. You only have a limited amount of concentration available and when the units you have to control suddenly double you will not be anywhere near as effective a commander. Resources to build troops won't be harvested as efficiently, units won't be built in sufficient numbers, and your army won't be managed as effectively in combat.

Unfortunately, many RTS games add even more penalties to a player when their teammate quits. There is usually a limit to how many troops you can have at a time. For example, in Company of Heroes, you can only have a certain population number worth of units fielded at once. As you take territory on the map, this number rises a bit, allowing you to build more troops. Different units also have different population values. A squad of pioneers, the basic worker unit for the Wehrmacht faction, takes up 2 population. A Panther heavy tank, in comparison, takes up 12 population.


In the German army, pioneers were the rough equivalent of combat engineers, not these guys.

In team games, each player can field the same population of units based on how much of the map your team controls. However, if one of your allies quits the game, the maximum population of units you can build does not go up. This basically means that if you were playing a 2v2, you now have to fight their combined force of units with half the number of troops. Additionally, you may be stuck with some of your population tied up in units you don't want, such as pioneer squads, which prevent you from building better troops. This is not a recipe for success. If an ally quits the game you should still be able to build as many troops as you could when he was still playing, otherwise the contest is completely unfair.


You get very little out of losing an unequal battle as well. Unlike the Alamo, no one will want to paint a heroic scene of your outnumbered last stand in Starcraft.

Another major problem in some titles is that when your ally leaves you no longer have access to his resources so you're forced to use your own resources to build troops from his buildings. This is a huge problem if your ally had been hoarding resources the whole game, as his reserves of gold, lumber, and other items are not available for your use ever again. This poses an imbalance wherein your opponents now have more resources than you and can thus outnumber you easily by building more soldiers.


Breaking open his bank to get his resources is rarely an option.

The worst error a game can make is that when a teammate quits, their units and buildings aren't transferred over to their team's control. They just stand around wherever they were when he quit for the remainder of the game. They don't even attack their former enemy if they are in range. This means that you are definitely left facing multiple opponents at a huge disadvantage as you're now one army short whenever battle occurs.

Warcraft 3, in comparison, does things the right way. When an ally quits the rest of the team is granted control of their remaining units. They preserve their resources and population, allowing the remaining teammates to use their resources to build troops from their buildings. The team is still at a disadvantage by losing one player's concentration and skill, but they have a much more fair shot at winning. It is inexcusable for any RTS game to use a different model.

Company of Heroes-Force Multipliers

This is an article I wrote a couple years ago about the RTS game Company of Heroes. One of the most interesting game concepts found in Company of Heroes is the presence of units that can turn the tide of battle against a much larger army. In most other RTS games, this sort of mechanism is accomplished through a rigid counter system, such as a spearman unit that can kill two light cavalry units, or an archer that can kill two spearman units. Company of Heroes has a much more interesting take on this, where support units like HMGs, buildings, and the map’s terrain itself serve to let a skilled player take advantage of this force multiplication concept. However, you can use the strategies in this article and apply them to almost any game, you just have to look at what methods you can use to defeat a numerically superior force.

HMGs: Heavy machine guns, such as the Wehrmacht MG42 and American .30 cal, are one of the most obvious tools that enable a smaller army to beat a larger one. They get accuracy bonuses against larger groups of troops and can suppress the enemy. This causes troops to crawl around on the ground, lowering their movement speed and making them more susceptible to the firepower of your main infantry, such as Grenadiers. Soon after becoming suppressed, those troops then become pinned, completely unable to fire or move. A well placed MG can stop a large infantry-based attack in its tracks.


MG-42 forcing British infantry to retreat


A 260 manpower brings 2000 manpower in British troops to a halt

Though MGs lose some effectiveness as the game progresses due to the increased availability of indirect fire weapons, such as mortars, howitzers, and doctrine based artillery call-ins, their suppression effect can still be very effective throughout an entire match. A well supported MG can be one of the best tools for stopping the current mainstream tactic of ‘blobbing.’

Tanks: With complete invulnerability to small arms fire and a powerful main gun (and potentially even an upgradeable turret-mounted HMG,) tanks serve as an extremely potent force multiplier for your army. Tanks that have heavier frontal armor, such as Tigers, StuGs, StuHs, and Hetzers, can laugh as weaker projectiles, like bazookas, bounce right off their hood.


A Hetzer watches as a bazooka round bounces off its hull, no penetration achieved


Riflemen and Rangers are forced to retreat with heavy casualties, Hetzer suffered no damage

A tank with infantry support can dish out a lot of damage, while any damage it suffers (short of death) does not cost any resources to repair - it only requires some of your repair crew’s time. In comparison, every soldier your tank kills will cost your opponent Manpower to replace. It’s important to keep in mind that you need to have infantry support with your tank for it to be truly effective and game changing. If you send in a tank solo, it will tend to die unless it is facing inferior forces.

Cover: This is easily the most available and widely used method of force multiplication. Yellow cover is frequently present all over a map in the form of small trees and brush dotted along the ground. Yellow cover gives your forces a moderate amount of protection from gunfire, allowing your squad to take fewer casualties as it faces off against a squad not in cover. Green cover, usually seen in the form of stone fences or hay piles, offers considerably greater benefits. If you have two Grenadier squads in green cover behind a stone wall, they can defeat three charging Riflemen squads. Obviously, the more cover you utilize, the better.


These grenadiers would be in trouble in the open


But behind their heavy cover they defeat these riflemen with ease

However, there are also ways to use the negative cover on the map (which causes soldiers to take additional damage) to your benefit as well. On maps like Semois and Angoville, the roads are common retreat routes. If you position some troops or a MG along these routes, you can easily get a squad kill as your opponent is attempting to flee.

Buildable defenses: Unless you’re playing as British, these tend to be forgotten in terms of improving your position on the map. A well thought out system of fortifications can make your opponent hemmed into a tiny area of the map, losing precious Manpower every time he attempts to leave that area. Each type of defense has advantages that merit individual discussion:

Barbed Wire: Currently, this isn’t used anymore due to the crappy wiring AI of the game, but I hear that this is fixed in the beta so it merits a mention. The point of barbed wire is to deny your opponent easy access to an area, because only weaker units, like Engineers and Pioneers, are able to cut it in the early game, and they suffer increased vulnerability to enemy fire as they do so. It can be built for free and VERY quickly by a variety of units from each side.

If you have secured an important area of the map, you can use these idle troops to sculpt the terrain to your advantage for when your opponent inevitably returns to contest your holdings. You can wire off some of the entrance routes to the area, button-holing him into only one access point, which leaves him as easy prey to a HMG team. You can also take advantage of negative cover on the maps and wire off access to heavy or yellow cover, forcing his infantry to walk down the main road and take additional damage from any troops you have in the area. The infamous ‘Semois Pin’ involved significant use of barbed wire to leave an opponent stuck in his base, unable to do anything of value.

Sandbags: These provide the bonuses of green cover to wherever you choose to build them. They allow for you to fortify open areas of the map, such as the left side of Angoville or many areas of Langres, giving your troops a great deal of protection from enemy fire. Another creative use that players have come up with is to build sandbags at small entrance paths to key areas, such as the high fuel on Sturzdorf. This allows it to function like barbed wire, except that it cannot be cut. In either case, they can allow your army to win against technically superior forces by providing a powerful cover bonus.


Sandbags buy time for this grenadier squad to upgrade a panzerschrek, so they can damage the armored car

Tank Traps: Basically the same as barbed wire, except it is used against vehicles. They are difficult to destroy and allow you to hem your opponent’s vehicles into your anti-tank weapons' kill zones.

Land Mines: These are the buildable defense that I see most often in 1v1 play. They only cost 25 Munitions and have a lot of power for their price - it’s highly recommended to use extra munitions you have on these! Many players do not choose to buy minesweepers, so they continually step on these. There are several varieties in the game - Panzer Elite Tellermines that only trigger on vehicles; regular land mines that trigger on anything and can be built by Sappers, Engineers, and Pioneers; and the more powerful M8 land mines that also trigger on anything.


This sniper took one step too far


Hetzer receives a damaged engine from rolling over a mine. It would now be easy prey for any enemy tanks or anti-tank infantry to destroy

Against Infantry: Mines suppress the squad temporarily, deal a bunch of damage (usually killing at least one squad member) and generally can stop an opponent in his tracks. Mines function as a force multiplier simply because they kill enemy troops as they walk around on the map, but they can be used in support of your troops to work even more effectively. For example, you can put a mine on the obvious flanking route to your MG position, resulting in your opponent’s troops blowing up as they get ready to throw a grenade. They can also be put on critical points, such as the +16 fuel points or the connecting strategic points on Angoville, Victory Points, or on major roads to give you a warning about what your opponent is doing.

Against Vehicles: Land mines do a significant amount of damage to vehicles and also frequently cause engine damage, slowing your opponent’s vehicle to a crawl. This makes them easy prey for a nearby AT gun, Panzerschreck-equipped unit, or a tank of your own. At best, when used with support it can almost guarantee the destruction of that vehicle. At worst, it still puts your opponent’s vehicle out of the fight for a significant amount of time, as he has to move a repair squad out to fix the crippled vehicle.

Buildings: Lastly, I am going to discuss the use of the buildings that are typically spread throughout each map. Though they are frequently used merely to stick a MG in (to provide a more secure base of fire for it,) they have a great deal of value for your ordinary infantry as well. They provide a significant amount of cover that can allow your squad to defeat larger numbers or superior quality opponents.


Out in the open, this rifle squad would be no match for the panzer grenadiers. As it is fortified in a building, the grenadiers must bypass that point to avoid losing men


These volksgrenadiers would normally die in seconds to these infantry squads. Within the building, they can hold out for reinforcements

Also, some squads, such as MP40-equipped Volks and Assault Grenadiers, are devastating to face in the open but do very poor damage to troops in buildings. When you run into these types of troops, you can garrison a nearby building with a Rifle squad or Infantry Section, easily winning the day.

If you approach your CoH game with these ideas of how to make your army work more efficiently to defeat your opponent, your victories will come much easier than they might have otherwise. When using all of these ideas to maximum effect, you will inflict considerable casualties on your opponent while suffering few with your own army. This will drain your opponent of Manpower while preserving your own for teching, purchasing upgrades, or training more soldiers to overwhelm him in later encounters.

Developer Focus: Single Player or Multi Player

After playing through the single player campaign of Starcraft II, one of the best RTS campaigns I've ever played, I had to think about whether it's worth it for developers to invest so much energy into the single player components of their games. All of the cut scenes, movies, voice actors, different maps, special units, and other material that's needed can eat up a huge portion of development time and money for a project. In a developer that isn't Blizzard, this may lead to an issue where there isn't sufficient time spent on the multi player and single player portions of the game to make them both enjoyable for players.

The problem is usually most obvious in the multi player portion of the game, as the single player is the most played part of a game, with only a small portion of the community continuing to play online. There may be gigantic balance issues in the game where one faction or strategy is basically impossible to beat. Support to fix these problems is also frequently lacking. Many developers take months to put out a balance patch, and even when it comes it may not be tested properly, causing more problems than it solves. This leads to an irate community and a hemorrhage of players until the problems are fixed, assuming they are at some point.

The problem is certainly not limited to RTS games, FPS titles and any other game that includes a online component as well. Many feature a superficial online system that minimal effort was put into, including a couple popular modes like team deathmatch and free for all, and that's about it. The real development effort was put into the game's single player mode. Sadly, in many cases the single player mode is also forgettable. I haven't finished a single player campaign for a FPS in an extremely long time and I have never played them more than once.

This begs the question, should developers continue to funnel ever larger amounts of money into creating a single player experience that most players will only complete maybe once or should it instead be invested into the multi player component, which may build a community that lasts for years, building a loyal community to the title?

The biggest barrier to the creation of games that focus exclusively on the multi player content is that most people who buy games do so for the single player. Many players simply don't feel comfortable with playing online because of many factors. They don't like to lose, the rudeness of other members of the community, latency issues, poor interface design of the online features, etc. Most players are unwilling to get their ass kicked by better players for the required number of games to develop enough talent to win.

Fortunately, many of these barriers are not insurmountable. Starcraft II introduced a lot of features that could potentially make new online players feel comfortable playing. There is the option to play a number of unranked games before diving into ranked play using special maps. These maps feature rock barriers at the ramps to the base, allowing a player to have some protection from attack so that they can develop some comfort with how the game works and how to build their army. Additionally, the first 5 games are played in a placement mode, placing the player in a league appropriate to their skill level. The interface is well designed to make it easy to figure out how to start games and get into the action. The map editor is great, giving mapmakers a lot of options for creating unique scenarios, such as tower defenses, adding custom maps to the community. In Warcraft III these custom maps became a large part of the online population, especially Defense of the Ancients, a custom map that developed its own tournaments! Lastly, the addition of achievements to the game allows players, even bad players, to feel that they are accomplishing something when they get new portraits they can use in multi player.

Although it is still unfeasible to expect developers to be able to focus exclusively on multi player content, if steps are taken to make the online experience more friendly to new players, it may be possible in the future. It will be interesting to see the data on the online player base for Starcraft II to see if these steps encouraged more people to play online or not. If they did, it seems like every developer who wants an online component should take similar initiative to get more people playing the multi player part of the game.

Competitive Game Balance-unlockables

My background as a gamer primarily comes from RTS games. One of the first games I played was Warcraft II. I've played Warcraft III, Company of Heroes, Dawn of War II, and Starcraft II on the ranked ladder system, as an above average player of all of those games, though certainly nowhere near the top. However, from a RTS player's perspective, whenever I play a recent first person shooter I have to say that there's one element that turns me off from them as a competitive game-unlockable content.

In a RTS game, you always have access to all of the units of whichever side you command from the start of any multiplayer game. It wouldn't be fair if, say, you had to play 500 games before you were allowed to build siege tanks in Starcraft. This is crucial because building units that counter your opponent is a critical part of any RTS title, it wouldn't make any sense for those units not to be available. Players who played more games than others would have a huge advantage because they had access to more options in gameplay.

I've already talked about this to some extent in my post about FPS weapon choices, but I'm coming at it from a slightly different angle here. These unlockables aren't just annoying to gain access to and frequently duplicates of other weapons, they are clearly detrimental to game balance. In any public server you will have a range of players, from people who are just starting to rank up to players at the top rank. The players at the bottom rank are obviously at a competitive disadvantage because they do not have access to the same tools as those at the top.

In Modern Warfare II, a level 1 player is stuck with one of three default classes available, all of which have somewhat suboptimal equipment. They do not have access to any of the game changing killstreaks, such as calling in assault helicopters. This makes it so public servers are a joke in terms of offering fair competition, the players are obviously not on the same level playing field. There is some compensation for this fact in that the lethality of everything is so high in MWII-so even bad weapons will end up killing enemies in a few hits-but it still is a widespread problem of the game.

There is one RTS game that had a similar phenomenon, Age of Empires III. In that game, your faction had a default set of units, but you also could purchase cards that allowed you to call in special units, upgrades, and buildings from your home city. In order to access these cards, you had to play the game and gain experience to unlock the cards. You could then assemble your deck of cards for a game based on the ones you had earned. The problem is that unless both players had the same home city level, the player with a higher home city had an advantage in that he has access to more powerful cards. For instance, there are cards that allow a player to build a factory that constantly produces resources or heavy artillery units and another to build a powerful defensive fort that can also produce units. If you do not have access to either of those cards, you are at a huge disadvantage against a player whose deck does contain those cards.

I can see why these unlockables are so popular in new games though, simply because of the achievement systems that are running rampant through every game now. The little emotional boosts granted by getting new weapons and equipment help keep players happy and feel like they are progressing in the game, even if they are getting constantly creamed by better players online.

Another important difference between the genres is that FPS games do not typically have a ladder whereas RTS games have one that ranks players worldwide against each other. Therefore, you could treat non-tournament play in a FPS as completely irrelevant and thus there is no need for it to be balanced. After all, in FPS tournaments there are frequently restrictions on what you can use, so the massive number of unlockables are reduced to a few choices that can be considered fair to all teams.

Still, for a game to be taken seriously online every player needs to have access to the same tools and options, meaning they need to have access to everything that is available in the game that affects the outcome. If you want an achievement system in your game, you can still do that without limiting access to weaponry. Starcraft II is an example of a game that does achievements well. The campaign has a ton of achievements for achieving challenging feats and there are a lot of achievements for winning certain numbers of games. If you accomplish these you gain access to new portraits that can be used for your avatar in the loading screen of the game. This still gives that same feeling of accomplishment to players granted by unlockables, but the balance of the game is not affected at all. For FPS games you could add different costumes, emblems, and other such cosmetic changes to players and it would give that distinction between players without requiring the fairness of the game to be changed.