~My Dad"There you go again, thinking logically."
He says that to me all the time when I deploy my logic in nonsensical situations.
I've been doing that my whole life, and RTS feature requests are among the oldest manifestations of this higher order error.
RTS isn't actually about strategy. Especially at these levels of technology. High skill, obviously, hence the sometimes boot-camp level of training endured, but strategy? No, not really.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbpCLqryN-Q
Does that mean this game sucks? No. The opposite really. I love this game, but I need to stop thinking strategically when I play it. I need to stop comparing it to actual war or reality to any degree. I need to stop thinking like a general and weapons designer and start thinking like a gamer.
This game isn't about strategy. It's about hiding paper rock scissors (maybe checkers, at best, definitely not chess/go) behind a twitch mechanic and calling it cerebral when in point of fact it's physical.
This particular type of RTS fills a similar niche as disaster and apocalypse movies. To compliment the competitive player's intelligence with diminished cause. To give them an arena to haze and be bullies in that they can be proud of instead of feel guilty for. To reward time investment and physical training as if it's an intellectual activity and a birth talent as opposed to a honed thoughtless "in the zone" skill that boils down to who has spent more time and who best absorbs received learning. That sounds overly harsh but it isn't really because it's just a game. It's no more harmful to be the douchbag I just described here the it is to be a mass murderer in GTA. It's a game. If being a royal prick here is fun for you, awesome. That's what a game is about really, freedom. Including the freedom to be annoying and arrogant
To win, you copy what the top players do, while ignoring what they say. (That's the path to victory in most contexts actually.)
It's really just a race game when you get down to it. But it's still damn fun even so. I've just given up hoping it turns into something more. There will probably be no more suggestions from me. I'm just going to chalk up absurdities to intentional arbitrary game rules because it's ultimately pointless to ask for pawns being given the right to attack like kings, even if it does make more logical sense.
Asking an RTS game to be more realistic about military delegation of duty for example, especially in the deep future, is begging it to stop even having land war and start looking like sins of solar empire or gal civ.
These ground fights are absurd from a spacefaring strategic/physical law standpoint. Nothing on the ground could withstand high velocity tungsten rods.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment
And don't even get me started on missing existing technology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prompt_Global_Strike
Where are the cruise missiles and suicide bombers? Why can't AA fire at ground targets? Why can't I crash aircraft into anything? Why can't aircraft collide? Where are my von neumann war machines and grey goo? Why even bother with factories? Where are my tunneling machines? They are absent because they have to be. The horsey doesn't move that way
War at this level of technology wouldn't exist for long. But this isn't war, it's fun
"World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." ~Albert Einstein
