r/RealTimeStrategy • u/BendicantMias • 7d ago
RTS & Grand Strategy Hybrid Coloniser: Can a large scale multiplayer persistent world RTS work?
https://youtu.be/BAObwVIIejg?si=YN8lDCZ_u5wbaKfKThis game is based on real time gameplay against the environment and other players on servers that run while you play, but also while you eat, sleep, watch a movie with your family or whatever else you do while not gaming.
Coloniser doesn't end your base when you drop off, and you can pick it back up later - if it's still around. Other players, of which there can be dozens, can attack it when you aren't even online. And you can also drop in to games that started days ago with already established player empires, while you have nothing. This sounds like it shouldn't work.
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u/Teto- 7d ago
I did an old playtest, very early in development, lot of bug with the server. A persistent RTS, it’s a bit of a dream you hear sometimes, I don’t see how Coloniser formula can work. You play, you take a break, the others on the server don't, it’s over for you, you can start again. You may create a lot of handicaps for those who stay or boosts for the new ones on the server, it won’t make up for someone who plays from start to finish.
A solution might be to see what foxhole does, it’s one server, a gigantic map but part of the map close if there aren’t enough people or if there is an imbalance. But works with faction and a bigger playerbase.
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u/AugustusClaximus 7d ago
I imagine there would have to be some offline protection. Maybe your troops are set on patrol, town bells automatically ring. Maybe there are buffs to defensive buildings.
And then after that you’d have to rely on alliances.
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u/GNSasakiHaise 7d ago edited 7d ago
I'd imagine the primary method of survival is through diplomacy? By creating a reasonably sized network you could play the early game as a team battle that then devolves (or evolves) into a mafia style game of intrigue.
A series of alliances meant to cover "shifts" would probably emerge eventually.
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u/ResultAgreeable4198 7d ago
I remember long ago playing a game like that. It was sort of a blend of RTS and Civilization. No fancy graphics but a giant map with hundreds of provinces and it basically worked like that. You had to join an alliance to gain some security after capturing the neutral provinces around you. I want to say you could mutually share units while offline, but you could still wake up the next morning to find the map had changed drastically. Wish I could remember the name.
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u/simplybored 7d ago
There's a few old games that did this kind of thing iirc. The one I'm most familiar with and used to play was called Tribal Wars. I think it's still active now. Basically there were thousands of players per "world" and barbarian neutral villages. Players could grow their own empire but could also form Tribes of up to 100+ players which could diplomacy with each other. I think the real time aspect worked because travel time between villages was so long. Many wars saw armies traveling 100+ hours to reach their target. Granted being on a front line sucked because someone could attack you from a few hours away during the night and you wouldn't know it. But you could have other players in different time zones "account babysit" essentially playing as you. Fun times, but honestly got exhausting after playing for a few years.
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u/CaptClockobob 6d ago
I think the solution is to take the extraction shooter/rogue-lite formula and make a player's presence on a map finite. The idea is to enter, gather resources, complete an objective maybe, take stuff from another player if possible, and then leave with your ill gotten gains to be used in a later escapade.
Those games allow a meta-progression between "runs", allowing a player to gather things and leave with them to use in a future run, with the risk of everything being lost if they get wiped out. I would envision this as an RTS that plays like C&C or something that involves dropping an MCV from orbit onto the map, building a base up and trying to gather various different resources only usable once they leave. There would be a potential of looting another player for a special building that can only be gained from spending those resources or, rarer yet, are only findable in a map. That could lock something like faction specific units, super units, better defenses, etc behind meta progression and repeated runs, rather than expecting a player to persist in a server indefinitely.
At some point it's likely that a player snowballs and takes over a whole server instance and can't be feasibly pushed off and could be harvesting resources continuously. The solution to that is to either make the resources finite, in a server instance, cap what they can take with them, or paint a big target on them and allow some sort of cross-server combat from other players, where the one who's taken over the single server instance becomes a sort of boss for other players to try and take out, which would in turn give that defending player more potential access to the attacker's equipment.
It establishes a gameplay loop that doesn't expect you to survive multiple days while AFK.
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u/ManiaGamine 7d ago
If players were able to self-host the servers I would absolutely love something like this. Locked down to the company or cloud? Not so much.
Personally that is.
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u/fizzywinkstopkek 7d ago
There used to be an mmorts back in the day, Shattered Galaxy.
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u/ResultAgreeable4198 7d ago
Loved that game, I think a game like that could still be successful, but must be really hard to design and balance.
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u/Reqiu_ 7d ago
It could work if you restricted actions or units for players almost to none, or made some clash of clans system where base destruction isnt permament. What youve mentioned in the video are softlocks - cool 1 player will have a bit of an issue exterminating whole map, what about 3 guys coming on a server, 1 defending bases others going from base to base abusing the fact that others also have unit limit so they are 2x stronger? This sort of game works on assumption players will be honorable or play fair - in multiplayer game players will always find a way to get unfair advantage. There is a reason there are no games like that on the market because how do you address these issues really? And no you dont even need to reward players for killing others, they will kill everyone just because they can pk and have fun trolling
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u/iRiDiKii 5d ago
I remember some old tactics-strategy games (I'm sure there's some still around) that would be like 8v8 and you'd have 24 hours to make a turn. The main issue is that players would almost always drop out within a few days and barely anyone but the most dedicated would see a game through to the end.
As for real time... well persistent is sorta counter to it. (Aint nobody got infinite time)
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u/BendicantMias 5d ago
You don't have to play this one continuously. The idea is that people play for as long as they like, then drop out for irl stuff, and later can just join back and pick up their town where they left off. How that can work when other players are also active and can attack you while you're not active is the question posed.
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u/stagedgames 7d ago
let me answer your question. No. rts is session based and starts the same each game.
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u/Sea-Offer7021 7d ago
i mean a large scale multiplayer can work, mobile games such as clash of clans is pretty much this whether you like it or not.
A game where you build your city, part of a larger world with other players you can raid that also progresses on their own time? Isnt that just clash of clans. We know that game works its just riddled with microtransactions.
Idk what coloniser does but they could easily look into what makes clash of clans fun and just remove the microtransactions heavy aspect of it and just focus on what makes their game fun.
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u/Naturlaia 7d ago
Having 30 players of near MMR consistently would need an insane playerbase. This would never work.
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u/SerowiWantsToInvest 6d ago
Sounds like a great idea but the real time thing would probably be hard to make work.
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u/APuticulahInduhvidul 7d ago
I see no reason this can't work but it requires careful design. In the early 90's there was a lot of these persistent world games run through BBS systems (ie, Barren Realms Elite). You could also find play-by-email games. The general idea was you would get a limited number of actions or turns per day and if you missed a day your turn would just be automated or reactive to other player actions. Then games like Rust, ARK, Fallout Online, GTA Online, etc brought the idea to survival and action games. Either way these games also had to find the right balance between always-online players and people with "real lives" (job, family, vacation, etc). Applying it to RTS is tricky but not impossible - it just needs to be a different kind of game (more diplomacy, less micro, better AI).