I admit I never played MP, but usually MP is even more dedicated to tactics only than SP. That's why I don't play it.

see the world before you start talking about it.

and aside from the limited choice of *how* you attack your enemy, no, SP has no other form of strategy

but you haven't seen multiplayer, so your missing half of the game. you need to play it if you want to tell us whether or not the game has strategy

In Homeworld, I'm sure you're well aware that the more units you have after each battle dictates how many units there are in the next? That each battle, while pre-defined, does not affect how many units of each appear in the next mission? In addition, you're free to capture and reshape your entire fleet at any point, correct?

I've spent days pondering how to rearrange my fleet, constructing and retiring units so that they'd be fit for the current mission, only to be ousted in the next and return to the mission before and start anew. I'm not sure why this would not count as strategy.

In fact, the only way to do incredibly well, mission after mission, is to plan for all the missions before hand. After Mission 02, for example, you want this many salvage corvettes to capture ships. Immediately after you want to expand more salvage corvettes for ships in the next mission, while increasingy your anti-fighter capabilities. Directly after you're forced to engage a fleet of capital ships, in which your anti-fighter force can be toned down in favor of a larger anti-capital ship force.

I've only done so well after I've beaten the original blindly.

To me, a good RTS combines many different strategies. You have to be thinking and reacting to what is happening to your civilization every second. Your units and formations can be countered and you need to respond quickly or risk their demise. The unfortunate reality is that this tends to degenerate into rigid build orders and micro-management (a click-fest). I have enjoyed many RTS games (currently playing Rise of Legends )but they all end up with me getting beaten by a youngster with better mousing skills....
What I am hoping for with this game is more thinking through the possible strategic paths and less "if he built zerglings, I should have built firebats".

... come back once you've won a match of MP (not if you've gotten beaten, or lost by a huge margin) and surely you'll understand. I'm not taking time to explain to you something that you aren't going to believe anyway.

You know you have no arguments. Stop trying to make a valid point without actually explaining it. You're just making an arse out of yourself.

You know you have no arguments

no... I have a wide and very complex arguement that I'm too damn lazy to bother with

kid SEE THE WORLD FIRST, dont start talking about something that you PURPOSELY AVOID.

You're just making an arse out of yourself.

wow, way to start being hostile
I'm sorry that it feels like talking to a noob here... it just really does.

let me put it this way: taking a mindset from SP in HW or HW2 and bringing it over to MP will see you dead in under 3 minutes, even if your in a 3v3

go ahead! prove me right! I'm waiting.

This is a silly disagreement... the distinction between tactics and strategy is scale.


I'm happy to grant that the HW games didn't have strategy if the TBS people will grant that most of their games don't have any tactics. Tactics are often as deep and complex as most strategies. They're typically on a smaller scale and over a shorter period of time. But the nature of what is being done is very similar.

What's more, planning tactics isn't any easier then planning strategy. They are slightly different skills but similiar.


The primary distinction at the end of the day is that strategy can be reasoned out in a single game if you take your time. Tactics have to be trained and trained and trained. In most RTS games you don't have time to think. So your play style is the product of dozens or hundreds of games in which you've learned what should be done when.

You then react automatically when the enemy comes at you a certain way. You reteat, counter attack, bring down heavy artillary on them, or do something more complex like retreating in two different directions and then counter attacking from them... thus pinning the enemy between your attack groups.


It's automatic and spontanious. Good RTS players are good at thinking on their feet like that or they die. Good strategy players however, know to take their time on each move. They have to think what the enemy will do three or more moves ahead at least. And plan out any flaw in their strategy.

The one thing I will leave you with, is that there are far fewer "moves" in any turn based strategy game then there are in an RTS game. This is part of the reason why computers are good at strategy games. There are fewer moves and fewer options. Solutions are more obvious so long as you're being very logical about the whole thing. Where as in RTS games there are so many options and so many possibilities that only humans really play them well.

exactly lizard

the choice to hyperspace in w/ your ships was tactics (exploiting a formational weakness) whereas the choice to attack their ships was strategy (exploiting a weekness in infrastructure)

sounded like an awesome battle there mate.

no... I have a wide and very complex arguement that I'm too damn lazy to bother with kid SEE THE WORLD FIRST, dont start talking about something that you PURPOSELY AVOID.

I still see no arguments. I hope you find some.

I'd go for tactical RTS. sounds silly, but something like MOO3.
The decision to move your fleets and which worlds to hold and which to bombard was strategical. Once you chose what to do, you actually got down to HOW to do it. that's tactics.
Take WWII and battle at coral sea. Tactically Japan won that engagement. they inflicted heavier losses to USA. However, strategically, USA stopped Japanes advancment into to south asia. That was tremendous strategic victory for USA.

I still see no arguments. I hope you find some.

ok, your now just acting stubborn.
you've just been called a noob by more people than I care to count, and you still think there is an arguement to hold DESPITE not experiencing the game enough to know.

this pathetic arguement of yours is void.

Will you be able to pause the game in Sins?

One thing I really liked about the Baulder's Gate series is that it was real time but you could also pause the game to take a breath if you wanted to. Dungeon Seige was that way as well. More like a real time but with a pause. Now being role playing games both allowed you to give new orders to your characters while in pause so you could simulate a turn based game in that way.

Anyway, a pause button, even if you can't give out new orders or change things, would be nice to have to take a breath.