Larian Studios Forums Dragon Commander Dragon Commander - General The RTS part, how does it work?

After watching the GOG/Larian preview for Dragon Commander I was left a bit puzzled about one potential gameplay issue. I feel there may be a kind of disjunction between the strategy (board game) level and the RTS level of the game, which is unrealistic and immersion-breaking.

Let me illustrate with an example (a simplistic one):

1. On the board game level I attack with 10 units, battle sarts.
2. During the battle I create additonal 20 units.
3. 15 units die during the battle.
4. Profit! I now have 15 units!

There are two problems with that:
1. I have now more units than I had before the battle. How does that work? Usually troops are destroyed in battle, not multiplied.
2. How is that realistic time-wise? RTS-Style instant unit creation does not really fit into a turn-based strategy where You have to manage resources long-term and plan in advance. Doesn't this disjunction make the strategy layer unit creation rather irrelevant? If I'm good with the RTS part, why wouldn't I attack an area with 3 units and have 30 units after the battle?

Maybe I'm missing something obvious here. If so, please tell me. So, how does it work?

I don't think that is quite how it works. In any case, in battle you are not just making more units but are actively recruiting local manpower into your army. The implications are not.... pleasent.

You are essentially racing your opponent to conscript as many men near the war zone as possible, tearing them away from their families to force them to fight in your army after a crash training course in whatever mech, tank, or vessel you need them to pilot. Then of course you could well have them fighting their friends, neighbors and even brothers who would have been recruited by the opposing side...

However, the units you start out with on the Board Map merely represent the units you will pop into battle with. Like those mercenaries you could hire in Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty. They allow you to get a foothold and start the match off with a few advantages. A particularly large force might even be able to end the battle quickly but I doubt that.

How they manage everything after that? I have no idea.

The current system (anything is open to change if it turns out too many ways to exploit it are found in beta):

You bring 10 troopers.
You build another 20 troopers.
You now have 30 troopers.
You lose 15 troopers.
You end the fight with 15 troopers.

Trooper survival rate of 50%.

Now that percentage is placed on the units you brought: 50% of 10 tanks = 5 tanks left on the (turn-based) strategy map.

This way you can never have more units left after the battle than you had before. The best you can do is 100% survival rate, which means all the units you brought survived and all the units you built survived.

Extra note: There is a survival rate per unit type. So you can lose all your troopers, keep half your hunters and have zero casualties on your juggernauts.

Seems good system and one that will be easy to tweak for balance. Btw (not worthy of another thread) can you pause the game or slow down the RTS action so things move slower ?

Oh, I'm sorry - I was going on assumptions about the system. My bad.

Thanks for the explanation, Greever. That makes much more sense.

That's an interesting way of doing it, definitely harder to game than most approaches but not impossible. For instance, it may be profitable to intentionally draw out a fight (after having pinned down the enemy so they can't effectively fight back) in order to produce additional units and lower your casualty rate.



Oh, this one looks interesting. For unit-types that have a high casualty rate, it would make a lot of sense to bring few (if any) from strategy mode and build lots of them in RTS mode. Because their casualties in RTS would inflict relatively few casualties in strategy mode, they can be used in a much more disposable manner.