전략 시뮬레이션 게임의 역사 3-2

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The History of Real Time Strategy, Part 3.2

January 7th, 2007

Part 1 | Part 2.1 | Part 2.2 | Part 3.1 | Part 3.2

Homeworld

Developer: Relic Entertainment
Publisher: Sierra Entertainment
Release Date: November 15, 1999

In 1997, Relic Entertainment was founded in Vancouver, British Columbia. Two years later, they left their mark on the RTS genre by releasing their revolutionary first title: Homeworld. Homeworld was the first fully three-dimensional RTS game to be released. While there may be a debate over which RTS game first introduced 3D elements, none offered the full 3D movement and environment that are found in Homeworld.

Homeworld became well known for its storytelling. Through the use of a unique “hand drawn” movie style, in-game cut scenes, and mood setting music, the player is drawn into the epic storyline. The story in Homeworld starts off by describing the known history of the Kushan race. The Kushan live on a planet named Kharak and are divided into numerous clans across the planet. But when an ancient artifact is found buried in the desert, the tribes unite to build a mothership to find their true home. After sixty years, the enormous ship is completed and the player gains control of the ship as it leaves the shipyard. After a test run, you return to Kharak, only to find that it has been destroyed by the Taiidan Empire. You are now all that remains of the Kushan race and your journey to find Hiigara (“Home”) has only begun.

The game's unique art style immediately catches your eye.

While Total Annihilation made use of true 3D elevation in a RTS game first, the battlefield of Homeworld was light years ahead of its time because every battle took place in space. In fact, the only limitation placed on a player's movement is an invisible boundary sphere the surrounding the map. Players control a camera that can be moved in all directions, zoomed in and out, and focused on an individual ship or a group of ships. Ships can also be moved in all directions. Movement is implemented by pressing the movement key (M), which brings up a large disk in the x-y plane. Moving the mouse and clicking a location sets the lateral destination, while holding the shift key and dragging the mouse up or down sets the vertical direction.

Lateral movement

Vertical movement

These movement characteristics allow for strategic ship formations that can be incorporated in various scenarios. For example, a squadron of strike craft can form a “claw” formation, and can pounce on a single target causing heavy damage. You can even form your own custom formations as well.

The single player campaign in Homeworld introduces another unique concept to the RTS genre: persistence. In other words, the ships and resources you have carry on to the next mission. This can be good or it can be bad, depending on the situation. For example, a player may build a fleet of assault frigates for their current mission and carry them into the next. However, the next mission may require ion cannon frigates. This can force the player to replay through the prior mission in order to properly prepare for the next. On the positive side, if you can capture enemy ships with salvage corvettes, those ships can stay with you through the campaign, thus making subsequent missions easier. Salvaging enemy units is particularly attractive as it allows you to control more ships than the default unit cap. The idea of persistence piqued the interests of other RTS developers and soon found its way into other, more traditional RTS games, such as the Battle for Middle Earth 2, Rise of Legends, and Empire at War.

Homeworld features many common elements of RTS games. Just as in any other RTS, players must harvest resources in order to build ships. Typically, the resources are in the form of asteroids, but may also be found as gas clouds. Resource collectors must be built, and it is usually in the player's best interest to also build mobile refineries to speed up the collection process. Because of the tactical nature of the battles, control groups play an important role in Homeworld. For every ship, there is an effective counter. A balanced fleet will consist of various control groups, with each group consisting of different ships with a different formation and tactical assignments (evasive, neutral, or aggressive). For example, a group of frigates are susceptible to bombers, so it is important for the frigates to be escorted with a squad of interceptors or corvettes. In order to get more advanced ships, the player usually must research new technologies. For example, players must research the capital ship chassis and various weapons before getting access to larger capital class ships. The same idea applies to strike craft, frigates, and non-combat class ships.

For the most part, Homeworld has a rock-paper-scissors setup, meaning most units of the Kushan fleet have an effective counter in the Taiidan fleet, and vice versa. However, to maintain uniqueness among races (besides the obvious differences in ship style), each possesses a couple of unique units and abilities. For example, the Kushan have cloaking fighters and drone frigates, which release a sphere of armed drones. The Taiidan have defense fighters and defense field frigates, which are capable of absorbing incoming enemy fire.

There are several different classes of ships in Homeworld and each class serves a different purpose. Strike craft such as scouts, interceptors, and bombers are the most nimble, yet most fragile of all combat class ships. Interceptors serve as anti-strike craft ships. Bombers are useful against frigates and, to a lesser extent, against capital ships. Because of their small size, strike craft are required to refuel on a regular basis. Corvettes are larger and have stronger armor than strike craft. There are several types of corvettes, such as the salvage corvette, repair corvette and minelayer corvette. Frigates, such as assault frigates and ion cannon frigates, are much larger and more heavily armored than strike craft, but are much slower as a consequence. Destroyers, the second largest class of ships, are effective against frigates and can be used against super capital ships if needed. The super capital ships, the carrier and the heavy cruiser, are the largest class of ships and can potentially be game-ending weapons, although they are major investments. The Mothership and carriers are capable of producing ships, though the largest ships a carrier can produce are frigate class ships.

The Mothership. To get an idea of its size, the ships on the left are resource collectors.

Homeworld was truly a revolutionary RTS and still holds a place among the most visionary RTS titles. It introduced an increasingly repetitive RTS genre with both new ideas and heavily modified old ones, including unit persistence, a fully 3D environment, fuel management, and epic, atmospheric storytelling. Homeworld was successful enough to spawn several popular modifications and the expansion pack Homeworld: Cataclysm. With the effective use of cinematic storytelling and creative gameplay, Homeworld is the game that put Relic Entertainment on the map and set the stage for the company's future success with Homeworld 2, Dawn of War, and Company of Heroes.

Written by UTNemesis

Conquest: Frontier Wars

Developer: Fever Pitch
Publisher: Ubisoft
Released: August 14, 2001

The best RTS that nobody played?

Conquest: Frontier Wars (Conquest) was released late in the Summer of 2001 with little fanfare. It didn't stray too far from the StarCraft model: three unique factions, higher level units require higher level structures, higher level structures are dependent on lower level structures, weapons and armor can be generically upgraded, fog of war is present, and special abilities must be researched and deployed manually. However, what it lacked in originality it made up for in execution, epic scope, and a few new features that added a lot of strategic depth and controllability.

Four years in the making, Conquest had a storied pedigree. Developer Fever Pitch was made of former Digital Anvil (of Starlancer and Freelancer fame) developers and was initially designed and produced by Wing Commander creators Chris and Erin Roberts. It was released to good reviews and little competition. Gamespot rated it 8.2 out of 10, while IGN rated it 8.8 out of 10, and Computer Gaming World rated it 4 out of 5. And in a year dominated by turned based strategy games (Civilization III, Europa Universalis II) a good RTS was hard to come by. However, the game never took off.

The game's main menu

Like StarCraft, the game features three completely different playable races with completely different sets of units: the Celareon, elite alien energy beings who produce only capital ships (think Protoss), the Mantis, the insectoid race whose ships are mostly carriers with swarms of fighters (think Zerg), and the Terrans, humans who field a mix of capital ships and carriers (think, um, Terran). Although there is only a singleplayer campaign for the Terrans, the other races can be played in skirmish and multiplayer modes. The story is a good one, though, with rendered cut scenes and in-game video transmissions that move it along.

The game has three resource types: crew, ore, and gas. Ore and gas can both be mined from nebulae and asteroid fields as well as extracted from planets. Crew is obtained only from planets, but it replenishes. Each of the three factions is slightly more dependent on one of the three resources than the others, but they all need to collect all three resources to function. Resources are finite, so the player is forced to expand beyond the home system, meaning that "turtling" is a less viable strategy. Structures can only be placed around planets, and slots fill up quickly. This also forces players to expand in order to find enough real estate to create all the necessary structures that will produce a good economy and war machine.

A Terran fleet jumps into a wormhole. The area is saturated with nebulae.

The AI is predictable, though solid. It expands ruthlessly, mines continuously, sets up defenses, and uses all weapons at its disposal, including the destructive special weapons. It also has an uncanny knack for assaulting you with a new fleet just as you're about to launch an assault on it, delaying your plans.

The game engine rendered units and planets in 3D, although the playing field and "terrain" were 2D. This simplification might have sacrificed a small amount of authenticity, but it more than made up for it by making unit control much easier. In fact, the exact same approach would be used by Petroglyph five years later in Star Wars: Empire at War for the very same reasons. The 2D playing field was especially necessary in Conquest because keeping track of multiple solar systems at once was critical. Each solar system was a map in its own right, with unique type and placement of planets, asteroid fields, and nebulae. The graphics of Conquest were good for their time, if a bit understated. The engine had the ability to display dozens of 3D capital ships and scores of fighters, missiles, and lasers on screen while keeping the frame rate up on machines of the time. Travel between systems was accomplished via wormholes, which provided natural choke points. However, most systems contained three to five wormholes, so it was impossible to blockade them all.

A damaged Terran dreadnought returns to port. The central map displays the current system, while the rightmost map displays the currently selected system and allows the player to easily switch systems. Systems ringed in red are reporting enemy activity.

Gameplay is standard RTS fare: build a base, gather resources, build and group units, and attack and destroy the enemy base while protecting your own. There are a couple of new features that added freshness and depth to the genre: fleets and supply.

A Terran fleet engages the Mantis. As a dozen Terran missiles (yellow trails) seek their targets, the Mantis respond with a score of fighters (green trails).

Fleets
Fleets are created when you "research" any of six admirals and group the admiral with a set of ships. Each admiral adds bonuses to all ships in his fleet. Different admirals give different bonuses: some are good against specific races while others give superb bonuses to certain classes of ships, like battleships or carriers. Having an admiral control a fleet also grants access to the admiral control screen, which lets the player give one-click orders to the fleet, like "resupply" or "use special attack X" which otherwise would require multiple clicks to accomplish. Due to their controllability, fleets make it easy to manage multiple battles in multiple systems at the same time. Admirals are expensive to build, so you'll want to choose the one that offers the best bonuses, considering which opponent you're facing and which ships you have already built the most of. Also, Admirals are unique and if you let one die, he is gone forever, so they must be protected.

The Terran fleet pursues a Mantis hive carrier. The fleet control panel is on the lower left, currently showing Admiral Halsey's fleet and which options are available.

Supply
Each ship in Conquest has limited ammunition, and some ships run out quite quickly. Ships must be replenished at either stationary supply depots or by supply ships, who themselves must resupply at supply depots. Orbital stations in other solar systems must also be kept "in supply" or they won't function. This can be accomplished either by building a hideously expensive HQ in each system, or by connecting the system to a system with an HQ via a cheap jumpgate on the wormhole. Jumpgates have the added advantage of only allowing the builder's ships through the wormhole.

Supply adds both tactical and strategic depth to the game. A common tactic when encountering an enemy fleet is to attack the supply ships first, since some ships will run out of ammo before the battle is complete. It's also a good strategy to attack HQs and jumpgates when first jumping into a system, cutting off supplies and starving the enemy economy without having to take the time to destroy every building in the system. This also allows you to deploy troopships and capture the now dormant enemy structures.

The green circle shows the range of the supply ship escorting this fleet. As long as the ships remain within range, they'll continue to replenish their ammunition until the supply ship runs out.

It's surprising that Conquest: Frontier Wars was not more popular, and it seems as if there were hundreds of thousands of unsold copies. Original boxes can be easily found in bargain bins all over the place for anywhere from two to ten dollars (US) per copy. With its epic scope and new features, it took RTS gaming in a new direction, adding some interesting new features and depth to the traditional WarCraft/C&C mold while retaining the essence of classic RTS gameplay. There is a sequel in the works and this game still has an active fan base, going on six years now. Perhaps the game's obscurity is a result of it being overshadowed by Homeworld. Perhaps it was simply too different to appeal to most RTS gamers. Most likely though, its obscurity is an indicator that modern RTS games, without a big name or a big budget, simply can't compete as well as they could in the early days of the RTS genre.

Written by Arclite

WarCraft III: Reign of Chaos

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Developer: Blizzard
Publishers: Blizzard (US), Sierra Entertainment (EU), Capcom (Japan)
Release date (Reign of Chaos): July 3, 2002
Release date (The Frozen Throne): July 1, 2003

The original concept behind WarCraft III was to have a new revolutionary kind of RTS. Blizzard called this new kind of RTS an RPS (role playing strategy). The units in WarCraft III were supposed to be commanded by a special unit—the hero. The units were not supposed to be able to move around without the hero (much like real time Heroes of Might and Magic). Buildings wouldn't be built by the player, instead they would already be on the map and the player could purchase units from them. Resources would be different for different races; for example, the Undead would use corpses as a resource. The expected number of races was six.

However Blizzard are not known to be the most innovative company. They've always taken the best from a genre and created the most polished game in that genre, but never risked innovating on a grand scale. So they just moved to the more traditional type of RTS. The number of races was reduced to four—Humans, Orcs, Night Elves, and Undead. They were quite different from each other, though not as different as in StarCraft. For example, every race had three clear tiers in its tech tree which could be reached after upgrading the town hall. The player can build buildings, train units, gather gold, and harvest lumber in the traditional way. The units could move and fight on their own, but the heroes were still there.

Heroes are a very important part of WarCraft III.

And this is where WarCraft III gets different. It is the first major RTS title to introduce hero-based gameplay later used in Age of Mythology, the Battle for Middle Earth games, and others. While prior RTS games had used the concept of hero units, WarCraft III was the first game actually built around them. Heroes in WarCraft III are different from regular units because they can gain experience and carry items. Usually the heroes (a player can have up to 3) are more powerful than the rest of the player's army. A dead hero could be resurrected at a special building called the Altar. In order to get experience and items, the player could kill creatures, called creeps, scattered around the map. The actual process of killing these creeps was not-so-surprisingly known as “creeping.” The creeps often guard some key location such as a shop for items or a fountain of health. The player also receives gold from killing them.

Creeping is a major focus in the early game.

Aside from heroes and creeping, WarCraft III is essentially a traditional StarCraft-like RTS. The main difference is the upkeep system, which reduces the gold income as the population reaches some level. For example, if the population is above 50, for every 10 pieces of gold taken out of a mine the player will receive only 7. That is why aggressive expansion is not a popular strategy in WarCraft III. In fact, it is incredibly rare to see a player with more than three working expansions (most commonly two or even one) because the population taken up by the workers will increase the upkeep, meaning that there will be no additional income.

Like StarCraft, WarCraft III implements a soft counter system loosely based on a “rock, paper, scisssors” style system of weapons and armor, but, while StarCraft only has three types of weapons and three types of armor, WarCraft III has six types of armor and six types of weapons.. To make things even more interesting, every unit has a special ability (sometimes a passive one), which means that low tier units usually do not become useless when a player techs up to a more powerful unit.

Because of the number of special skills, the heroes, and the game's relatively small number of units, the game requires heavy micromanagement. However, WarCraft III's interface is well-designed and more than sufficient to meet the game's micromanagement demands. The interface was the first to allow players to use “subgroups” within groups of units. For example, a subgroup composed of a single type of unit could be ordered to cast a specific spell without having to create an entirely new group for just that unit type and without having to remove that unit type from the main group! WarCraft III, taking a page out of Total Annihilation's book, incorporated a limited degree of automation. Whereas Total Annihilation automated unit production, WarCraft III was the first to automate unit functions by allowing certain spells to be set to an autocast mode, preventing the player from having to manually order a unit to cast every single spell. Using this feature, a player could automatically debuff enemy units on sight or buff friendly units as soon as they engaged in battle.

The game's single player campaigns are good for learning as they introduce the units really well, but what is really notable about WarCraft III is the storyline, which is as good or better than what you can read in most fantasy bestsellers. The Orc leader Thrall attempts to bring peace to his people, but this proves difficult as they have been a war-driven community for generations and are not easy to re-educate. Arthas, the prince of the humans, is so eager to fight the evil which plagues his father's land that he will eventually become part of the very evil he fights against and lead the Undead campaign. In the Night Elf campaign you'll encounter a love triangle that has lasted for thousands of years. WarCraft III is the first game (except for the canceled WarCraft Adventures) in the WarCraft universe to expand and deepen the traditionally simple storyline, which in previous WarCraft titles was basically explained as “the evil Orcs decided to fight the good humans.” Additionally the game's storyline is deep and extensive enough that it provides a base for World of WarCraft's storyline and a few books in the WarCraft universe.

The game formed a competitive community faster than any other RTS game because many of StarCraft's high level players moved to WarCraft III. At first, multiplayer games were a far cry from the classic aggressive StarCraft gameplay because players would tend to avoid each other while creeping and teching up. The focus of the game soon became building strategies for more effective creeping. However, Blizzard was aware of this problem and the expansion, The Frozen Throne, remedied this issue. The amount of experience and gold gained from creeps were reduced and the items they dropped were changed to less powerful ones, encouraging players to fight. Today WarCraft III is the most played competitive RTS worldwide (excluding Korea, which alone would turn the tide in favor of StarCraft) and is included in most major tournaments like the World Cyber Games and the Electronic Sports World Cup. The game's success as a multiplayer sport has been made possible largely because of the new ladder system Blizzard implemented for the game. Instead of sticking with the old peer to peer connection model, the new system used a client/server model for ranked games, eliminating most lag. The ladder system is also one of the first to consistently match players of equal skill and to have arranged team matches, both of which are at the top of any competitive RTS player's wish list. The game's longevity has been greatly aided by the powerful map editor included with the game. The most notable custom map is Defense of the Ancients (DotA) which has an immense popularity and is one of the most popular custom maps in any RTS game.

WarCraft III has left an unforgettable mark on the RTS genre. The game, along with Total Annihilation, revived the old idea of a player having a presence on the battlefield by making players identify with their heroes in a way that had not been done since Herzog Zwei. It has proved that RTS games can succeed as a competitive worldwide sport and has set a new standard for competitive RTS gaming. It, like StarCraft, proved that a RTS game can have both great singleplayer and multiplayer experiences. Without WarCraft III it is likely that the real time strategy genre would not still be taken seriously as a competitive medium and that StarCraft's success as a competitive RTS would have been discounted as a fluke.

Written by Eirenarch

Homeworld 2

Developer: Relic Entertainment
Publisher: Sierra Entertainment
Release Date: September 16, 2003

When Relic announced Homeworld 2, many fans wondered how the new developer could possibly top the success of its first game. However, Relic did not attempt to fix what wasn't broken. Instead, the company focused on evolving the successful formula of Homeworld while improving in two important areas: graphics and control.

In the first Homeworld, you led what was left of the Kushan race back to their true home and defeated the Taiidan. It made for a memorable and immersive story, but the sequel needed a tale which could match the greatness of the original. So, in Homeworld 2, one hundred years have passed and the Kushan (who are now called the Hiigarans) have recovered from their oppression. However, a new threat has emerged. A renegade clan known as the Vaygr have begun an onslaught against the Hiigaran empire. Karan S'jet returns as the leader of the Mothership in a journey to eliminate the new threat. This sequel uses the same formula of movies, in-game cut scenes, unique art, and music to set the mood of the game and to tell the story. However, this time around, the graphics have been significantly beefed up and the level of detail is noticeably higher than in Relic's first RTS, which made for an even more engrossing experience, visually speaking.

The improved graphics made space combat much more believable.

Aside from the new story, Homeworld 2 built upon the original with new ships, new features, and a polished user interface. Movement was handled just as in Homeworld, although camera movement was improved and was more convenient than before, permitting players even more control. The new user interface allowed players to quickly build, research, launch ships, and more. One of the most significant control improvements came about as a result of building small ships in squads. The first Homeworld game often made it rather difficult to locate and control a single fighter in the vastness of space. Relic's decision to add squads into Homeworld 2, a move which would be repeated in their future RTS titles, made this less of a nuisance. Homeworld 2 went a step further by adopting aspects of other modern (for the time) interfaces, such as that of Emperor: Battle for Dune. The game allowed you to easily display different types of information without losing sight of your fleet, or to minimize the entire interface if you wanted a better view of the battlefield. This was a huge improvement over the interface in Homeworld, where ordering research or new units forced the player to temporarily leave battles unattended.

The new interface. More info, less trouble.

The Hiigarans and the new Vaygr are significantly different when compared to the two races found in the original Homeworld. Each race has something to perform each rudimentary function, but they usually differ in their execution. For example, the Vaygr battle cruiser has a stronger weapon than the Hiigaran. However, it can only fire its main weapon in the direction it's pointing. The Hiigaran battle cruiser has less firepower, but has moving turrets that make it more flexible. Lance fighters are unique to the Vaygr, and ion cannon frigates are unique to the Hiigarans.

Homeworld 2 introduces the idea of modules and sub-systems. Sub-systems include engines on frigates and capital ships, fighter production facilities, corvette production facilities, frigate production facilities, and capital class ship production facilities. Modules serve as additions to a ship. For example, if a hyperspace module were built on a carrier, the carrier would then be able to move itself and ships in a close proximity via hyperspace. Other modules include an advanced research module, a hyperspace inhibitor module, and the advanced sensors array module. Modules and sub-systems can be placed in various configurations on the Mothership, carriers, the ship yard, and even the battle cruiser. Modules and sub-systems can be targeted to weaken the enemy. For example, destroying the engines on a capital class ship severely hinders its movement, leaving it susceptible to attack. Destroying the frigate production facility on a carrier would prevent the carrier from producing those ships until a new facility was built. Therefore, many players will first focus on specific sub-systems before attempting to completely destroy a large ship. The idea of subsystems and modules suited the nature of space combat quite well, and a similar system would later be incorporated in Star Wars: Empire at War.

A research module on the mothership

Relic made many small changes to the original Homeworld formula that added depth to Homeworld 2 and shook things up. For example, in Homeworld 2, the resource collectors are more versatile than before and can be used to heal ships. Resources were made more available because they could be harvested from asteroids and debris from destroyed capital ships. Additionally, when a player finished a mission he didn't have to worry about all the uncollected resources he left. To save time, all resources remaining in a map are automatically collected at the end of a mission. This eliminated the need to stall the end of a mission just to finish collecting resources, far from the most exciting task in the game.

Relic also tweaked the combat system in Homeworld 2. Since salvage corvettes were absent from the game, capturing enemy ships was done via marine frigates. These frigates would latch themselves onto enemy craft and a new progress bar would appear, representing the status of the takeover. If the marine frigate survived long enough, the enemy ship would be captured. Also, strike craft in Homeworld 2 no longer needed to stop and refuel as they did in the original game. This eliminated an unnecessary burden on the player and prevented trivial logistical concerns from distracting the player from the action.

Homeworld 2 combined the successful components of the first game as well as lessons learned to create a worthy sequel to the revolutionary game. While the chances of another sequel may be slim, there have been rumors that Relic has reacquired the rights to the game after having disputes with Vivendi. Regardless, the Homeworld series has left its mark on the genre and will go down in gaming history as a milestone to remember. Indeed, by the time Homeworld 2 had been released, the age of the fully 3D RTS had been transformed from a dream into a reality. For the first time, developers were able to create games that convincingly imitated reality and engaged the player in a way never before possible. However, the greatest tragedy of the era of the first 3D RTS games was that so many games failed to use this new opportunity as the Homeworld series did and, as a result, many games ended up pretty on the outside, but hollow on the inside.

Written by UTNemesis