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Comment by zwirbl | Hacker News Reader

One might assume that and it is mostly true for round based games, but for real-time you just cannot achieve the actions per minute needed on touch. A game like Starcraft or similar is barely playable

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I’d love to see an RTS that broke out of those constraints, mostly because I find the whole APM heavy approach to them kind of boring. It’s not strategy, it’s clicking fast, and while I recognise the skill involved it bears little relation to actual strategy.

My ideal RTS would support delegation of armies, and giving broad stroke orders (hold that area, attack this base, provide air cover), with either AI or human players picking up those responsibilities.

Sure, my remark was about controlling, how the game is designed is another matter.

Yeah there’s so much skepticism but you’re right on that this genre can thrive on mobile. It’s a way more natural fit than FPS for example.

Hardcore “competitive” RTS (StarCraft/Age of Empires) can’t since it’s not competitive enough if you can’t hit a meaningful 300+ actions per minute, which is impossible without hotkeys. Even IF they could, I am skeptical you’d get converts. Even IF all of them converted, hardcore RTS is not thriving right now. You’d have to create the perfect game and you’d be rewarded with less players than a Minecraft clone.

Some numbers: AoE players 16k https://steamcharts.com/app/813780 SC2 players ~100k https://www.rankedftw.com/stats/population/1v1/#v=2&r=-2&sy=... Minecraft ~178M https://activeplayer.io/minecraft/

You're comparing apples to oranges.

StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty sold 6 million, but only small fraction of the playerbase is interested in competitve aspect.

Minecraft is just an online sandbox. Most people will play it like that.

Plus a gamedev doesn't need to take into account what sells, but what kind of competition you have. How will your Minecraft clone exist in market with Minecraft vs how will your M RTS live in a market with StarCraft 2.

Naturally I wasn't talking about competitive esports on a phone or tablet.

There are plenty of people that are happy to play games without having the dream of becoming an esports player as career.

DOTA, Rocket League, CSGO, etc. are e-sports friendly but don’t have this population problem. It’s not about being “hardcore”; it’s about having broad appeal to hit a wide market segment. RTS has struggled with that historically. Tower defense and MOBA are two examples where RTS was simplified to a broader appeal game.

Controls essentially define game design.

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