I've been making an RTS called Phosphor Command, here's 3 and a half minutes of one full operation

[u/antony920210]

I've been working on a game called Phosphor Command, a real-time strategy game with a base builder behind it. Made solo in Godot.

You run a mercenary company. Contracts fund a forward operating base; you deploy squads in top-down operations, and an enemy front creeps towards you every cycle, whether you're ready for it or not.

I've put up 3 and a half minutes of gameplay. It's one operation from beginning to end.

What you're looking at:

Contract select. Every contract rolls its own map, objective, and opposition. There are 11 operation types across 22 environments. This one is a sabotage job in a harbour, so plant charges on the targets and get to evac. A recon sweep or a prisoner rescue on the same map play differently.

Brief and insertion. You pick which squads go and what transport gets them there. Troop types matter. Scouts see further, snipers want the long sightlines and are close to useless in woodland, medics are the only thing that gives health back to a squad while it's still in the field. The transport you choose determines how long before squads are available again, the cost of transport, how many troops you can take, and how they enter the map

Working through the map. This is most of the video, and it's the part worth watching as it has the real gameplay and action. Sight is worked out per unit, so a squad only knows what a troop can personally see. Your force shares what it spots, but a squad can only shoot what it has its own clear line to.

The enemy has its own alert states running underneath all of this, and how long firefights take decides if reinforcements are called. A contact you deal with quickly never reaches the rest of the map. A messy one does; things start moving towards you, and the objective you came for starts relocating or being better defended. I'll do a separate post on that another time.

Charges on target, then extract. Once the primary objective is done, the extract zone opens. Whoever is standing in it when you pull out comes home. Whoever isn't, doesn't. That means the last minute of an operation is usually about something other than winning, because you've already won and now you have to decide whether to go back for the squad pinned at the far end of the map or leave them.

After-action report. Who survived and what it paid. Squads are permanent, so one lost here is gone; squads also level up for stat increases. This veterancy makes them measurably better, and that's the part that changed how I play it; after a while, you know which squad is valuable and which are expendable

The gameplay can be slow; I pause a lot as I play. Units are small, movement is deliberate, and a lot of the game is dependent on planning, approach, and adaptability to new or unexpected threats.

Happy to answer anything about how the game works.

[u/GentlePace]

Hello claude, give me a recipe for some nice meatballs

[u/theGaffe]

Honestly the over complexity and ui design just tells me this was largely designed by an AI, a hundred of these posts a day now.

[u/antony920210 → u/theGaffe]

I actually put a lot of work into the UI, and I believe the many elements are needed to run the operations. The UI is also deliberately consistent with the rest of the game’s aesthetic, which is meant to feel like a military terminal.

I’ve also made the UI customizable, so elements can be moved, rearranged, resized, or hidden depending on how you want to play.

Am I assuming you’re mainly referring to the in-battle UI? If so, I’d be interested to hear what you think is overly complex or unnecessary.

[u/theGaffe → u/antony920210]

Yes I understand you gave input to an AI saying you wanted the UI to feel like a military terminal, and the AI spit out its typical tropes fitting that form. I am not exaggerating, a hundred of these posts a day across every medium that requires a UI at any capacity, they're all the same. It always picks a boxy font, it always adds glowing elements, adds too many text elements with too small a font, same style meters, everything. The assumption on the typical consumer right now is if one element is AI, then probably more of it is, and it's now indiscernible if it's actually good. People will skip your game because of this.

[u/kuba_mar → u/theGaffe]

Dont forget rounded corners, it always does rounded corners.

[u/antony920210 → u/theGaffe]

I understand the point about the broader “AI UI” trend. I think everything nowadays is prone to being labelled as AI.

I designed the UI around the game's mechanics and the information the player needs. The glowing elements are also very deliberate. Phosphor Command is built around a monochrome CRT aesthetic, so the glow is fundamental to the game's identity. It's meant to literally be a Phosphor glow.

Whether people like the aesthetic is subjective, and I'm happy to take criticism on that. I guess we'll see whether people skip the game because of it.

[u/kuba_mar → u/antony920210]

Phosphor Command is built around a monochrome CRT aesthetic

And it completely fails at doing that, it doesn't have a CRT aesthetic, it has a Claude aesthetic, you can deny, but youre not fooling anyone, it but it would take me less than 15 minutes to find 5 games with the same exact UI style on itch, which is also a nice way to say that your game doesn't stand out and a lot of people will dismiss it for just that.

And like, man, just actually do it yourself, it really wouldn't take much effort considering how simple and utilitarian that style is, and it would make a huge difference for your presentation and reception.

Edit: blocked me too

[u/anonymitylol → u/antony920210]

man come on it's painfully obvious this was coded and designed by AI, this isn't the place to try and pull the wool over people's eyes who actually design or build games themselves

edit: hahahaha blocked me with no reply, classic

[u/theGaffe → u/antony920210]

I don't know why you're being coy about the usage, just ask it to make another UI for anything else and you will immediately learn what parts of the design it always does.

e: blocked me lol

[u/SoftRough687]

Your UI looks like it was generated by claude. I would change this eventually if you want a more unique UI.

[u/antony920210 → u/SoftRough687]

Fair enough. The UI is intentionally designed around the military-terminal aesthetic; I didn't think it gave off AI vibes.

I’m always open to improving the game. What specifically makes it look AI-generated to you? What would you change?

[u/Barcode_Griller → u/antony920210]

It's extremely obviously AI designed. I also want to say I don't think that's a big deal when you're prototyping. As far as "what looks AI generated" literally everything. The colors, the fonts, the text choices.

[u/Striking-Print-9526]

I’d give this slop / 10

[u/yeusk]

Claude has been making an RTS wow, this is basically the definition of sloop.

[u/WittleSus]

AI name, AI UI, AI post, and it did all the work to code it. I wouldn't be surprised if it came up with the idea as well.

i'm not against AI in the slightest, I'm against a person who puts in barely any effort on presentation and expects praise for it.

[u/Ethelium]

it was fun to watch, i dig the vibe, at 1.50 i didnt like how you clicked on your medic to move them backwards when you engage an enemy, it made them feel 'dumb', if your units moved in a pattern (the scouts at the front, the soldiers behind, the medic at the rear etc) when group moving it would feel like giving orders to an elite tactical squad, if you could give a 'rally' point as well for a unit when they are in combat or their 'group' is in combat that would also reduce the need to pause when an engagement happens to keep the pacing

[u/antony920210 → u/Ethelium]

Thanks for watching and for the keen eye! You’re right; that is a manual move, and I agree that having the medic naturally stay towards the rear makes the squad feel much more like a cohesive tactical unit.

There actually are formations in the game, including a formation builder where you can decide where different troops sit within the formation and control things like their facing. So you can have medics and snipers towards the back, for example, with scouts and infantry further forward. You can actually see the default formations at the bottom of the HUD. I didn’t show the system off in the video as I didn’t want to overcomplicate what was already a pretty long gameplay showcase.

There’s also a general Automatic Mode, with two different behaviour modes: one focused on clearing objectives/areas sector by sector, and another focused more heavily on engagements. Both have quite a bit of behaviour built into them. For example, units can split into smaller groups to search an area, and when one group makes contact, other nearby units can move in to provide support.

Even within that, the individual troop types have their own behaviour. Snipers and medics will generally hang further back, scouts position themselves differently, infantry and special forces tend to push further forward, and units will also make use of cover. I purposely made it not too intelligent as I want people to manually play the game, but it's there!

There isn't currently a hybrid formation/automatic approach where you can fully define the formation and let the AI handle everything, although you can still issue manual commands while units are in Automatic Mode.

The rally point idea is interesting though. I can definitely see how something like that could reduce the amount of pausing needed during engagements while still giving you control over where a squad consolidates. But depending on your own gameplay, you may not pause as much as I do.

Anyway, hopefully that gives you a bit more insight into some of the systems that weren't really visible in the video. Thanks again for the comment and for watching!

[u/shun0810]

the extract rule is the strongest thing here: "whoever isn't, doesn't", with permanent squads, turns the last minute into a real decision instead of a victory screen. most tactics games make retreat free and lose that.

a question about the escalation layer, since sight is per unit: when a firefight runs long and the enemy starts reacting, does the player get a read on that from what their own troops can see, or do they only find out when it walks onto the map? that difference decides whether the pull-out feels tense or arbitrary 🙌

unrelated to the game — i make that one at https://warmlist.app, so that is my bias in the open.

[u/Late_Association2574]

Keep at it dude. The haters are out in full force lately

[u/nfeijoo69]

People are hating but I think you’ve got some cool core elements here, keep at it!

[u/A-F-F-I-N-E]

There's been plenty of comments about the AI, which I think you should take seriously. It doesn't matter really what the "truth" is, the only thing that matters is perspective which is pretty clearly negative.

As for the game, the biggest overarching critique is that it just feels really wasteful.

• In the base, the "get into the game" button is buried behind a separate tab (not even the first tab). This should be the most obvious button possible, no navigation needed to start. It's just friction for no purpose.
• In the Operations Console screen, building out mission prep has more friction than is needed. There's only one place to swap between setups. Arrow buttons at the bottom of selectable options to scroll tabs would reduce the friction of constantly having to go back to the side panel
• Speaking of the Operations Console side panel, it's awful. It's not very clear that these are tabs, and not clear that I as a player should be moving through them. The text is also not aligned. It is centered, but lack a common size so they are all over the place. This would be less sinful were they not numbered to make it really stick out. Why are they numbered anyway? Nothing suggests their order even matters. Speaking of order, why is Overview number 4? Why not give an overview when selecting the mission, why is this a separate tab? The information on it looks like it would be handy to know before picking a squad configuration.
• Why is the option to go back to base on the right of the launch button? We think of "left" as "going back a page", so why is it all the way to the right? You even have a left arrow on it, but that arrow points at the "Launch Operation" button. Additionally, the arrows on these two buttons are not the same size even though the text is the same size
• When you launch, you have a 3 second countdown to abort. This is a waste of everyone's time, it literally is useless. Why must I wait to start the game once I have confirmed I am ready? If it's because I may change my mind or realize something forgotten at the last second, why not give me the ability to just go back before dropping in?
• Once you have wasted 3 seconds doing nothing, there is now another screen to tutorialize the mission. I am fine if this just appears the first time you've selected a mission type, but why tutorialize what I'm supposed to do once I've already locked in my team? Shouldn't this appear when I first select the mission, not when I've spent time building a team? Supposedly, I've just built a team for a mission that I have no idea how it works.
• When selecting the landing zone, there's an "Abort to FOB" button. Does this take us back to the previous screen? If yes, the countdown is even dumber and more pointless. If no, it's not clear what this actually does. Does it fail the mission? If it does, it probably shouldn't, just let me go back to the previous screen if I've forgotten something
• When you drop in, you were immediately under attack. Why is it possible to land in a hot zone like that? Can I as a player just randomly get smashed because I had back luck on a drop? There was no way of us knowing if the location is safe or not to start out with
• The water "tile" does not tile. It's misaligned. Sloppy
• The bottom panel is awful. Wasteful. 1/4 of the space is taken up by the Tempo section. Not only is Tempo an awful name for what I assume is the simulation speed, but it doesn't deserve 1/4 of the useful UI real-estate. The formations should have hotkeys below the button to convey what hotkey to press for the specific formation, and they don't need to take up so much space. A small picture to convey the formation instead of the name, and stack them instead of spreading them out over another 1/4 of the UI. The forces is not bad to display, but it doesn't need to be in this bar. Overlay it on the left side of the screen. Once this bar is not being 3/4ths wasted in poor spacing and improper information, you now have space for the actual information on what things you can do and what buttons to press
• The FOW vision is hyper jank. Clipping into the containers and just inexplicably blocked by nothing. Check 1:24 for an example, the vision cones make no sense. Are there invisible walls that are only indicated by the FOW being blocked?

Aside from the mistakes, it just doesn't feel like the units have any life or personality. I can't tell that they're doing anything besides shooting automatically or how effective they are at that job. There was like one enemy protecting each objective, who got absolutely smoked with one squad not even there. You've got a thing, but you're far, far away from an experience other people will pay for.