Introduction to this blog and the RTSmod mod

I thought I'd start this blog to give people insight into what I was thinking when I was creating this mod in my head. It also makes me seem a little more like a pretentious berk, particularly when I talk about a lot of this stuff.

However, hopefully you, the reader, will find it interesting enough.

This mod is a sort of conglomeration of various ideas I've had in the past for total conversions, minor mods and so on, but never really got around to doing. When I get around to posting another post next Wednesday, I will likely go through the history of the ideas explored in the post.

Eventually, all these ideas came together when I decided to do a slightly more humorous mod, with each team being named for its playstyle. Since then, I've been thinking a fair amount about how it should work, and have changed quite a lot of things.

The three teams are based on the three major playstyles of RTS games that occur. Well, these are the archetypes as I see them.

Rush is the most common archetype in competitive online gaming. Attacks happen fast, and often, primarily to disable the enemy's prospect of building up or perhaps even destroying them entirely. However, this team isn't just about attacking early. It's also about keeping your opponent on the back foot for as much of the game as possible with large numbers of light vehicles, and map control.
Turtle is more common in casual gaming circles and in singleplayer. Because AI doesn't adapt very well, turtling is quite easy, but obviously much more difficult against an imaginative and competent human player. However, this team is not just destined to lose against a Rush player. It is also the steam-roll faction, and has some advantages over Rush in early game. It has more defined map control as its goals, and is also the only team with damaging support abilities, base defences, and a superweapon-esque building.
Stealth is the last team, and while it isn't as widely played as the other two, it still exists as a playstyle. Basically, the team is designed to be sneaky, and is supposed to win without the opponent knowing it. Analogous situations include sneaking large numbers of shadow teams into the enemy base without them knowing, or chronosphering a tanya in an IFV into their base. Probably the most micro-heavy faction, they must always keep their opponent's guessing, and hide, and not be afraid to abandon a position if it is overrun.

Each of these teams have their own economy model, their own method of teching up and so on. They are entirely unique in this mod, although you will definitely see concepts taken from other games. These will be explained further in future blog posts.

Next week: A summary of the Rush faction.