The Everyday Guide to Real Time Strategy
RTSC tends to look better under Netscape 4.7x, Mozilla 1.5+, or IE 5.x and later.

Unreal Tournament epitomises the basic principles of a typical First Person (FPS) or 3D Shooter on the PC. Premise: run around like silly buggers, blowing up everything that moves. Score points for the team. Get as many frags as you can. Its fast and furious, and only stops when everyone's hands cramp up. Great for your lizard brain, but the rest of your starved cerebellum misses out.

Well, no one read it for a start. It was wild watching those Gods of PC gaming suddenly turn into complete noobs when it came to building a base and getting a few units out on the field. All of a sudden they had no more concept of what was going on than, say, my mum. There's a fair bit to learn with an RTS, and far too much to pick up cold for a one off event. With an action game, you install it, run it and off you go! There's about a ten second learning curve - mouse skills and motion sickness notwithstanding. For very little effort you get Instant Gratification: immersive environments, the buzz of a non-contact gladiatorial blood sport... thrills and spills galore! Where else can you jump off tall towers into lava or get blown into small giblets and come out smiling? About the only challenging thing is working out the game's keyboard shortcuts and your graphic card settings; the rest is just practice.

2D Strategy: In StarCraft you're given a scrolling window on a giant isometric map. Everything here is abstract, almost cartoonish. Units and buildings are iconic like playing counters, and you play on an animated board game where the game rules are often very arbitrary.

But even worse, you have to build this force of yours up from scratch, and with all those different units and weapons, its tricky to know what to build, when and why. All those different units behave differently, fill different roles, have different strengths and weaknesses, and many have lots of specialised menus and commands. Not much is self explanatory, unless you've played them before. Armies don't run on nothing, not even RTS ones. Not only do you have to build everything, you have to develop and grow an economy to support and feed it.

2 1/2D Strategy: In Total Annihilation you get a 3D world, but its still presented as a top down, scrolling map view in 2D. In 3D, things are a little more literal and "realistic". 3D games use crude physics models to work out trajectories of artillery shells or movement of vehicles over uneven ground to calculate the outcomes of battles. The shape of the terrain can now be used creatively by the player.

So its not hard to see why trying to get a one off strategy LAN off the ground. Laziness aside, Real Time doesn't give beginners the luxury of long, considered turns, or just running around blowing stuff up. Experienced but unscrupulous strategy players will massacre beginners purely on the basis that they know where everything is. (This is known as bottom feeding in some RTS circles) Any differences in players' abilities quickly translates into lopsided routs that are just no fun for anybody. And all of this is before you can think up a strategy of your own to stay in the game long enough to enjoy yourself.

3D strategy: In Homeworld you can move in, out, around and through the action. Strategies rely on thinking outside a flat plane and making use of all angles. 3D strategy games are VERY different to 2D ones, although some things still stay the same. The behaviour of the units and use of physics becomes all important. Depth changes everything.

Put another way, RTSC's basic premise is this: you certainly have to put a lot more effort into an RTS game, but you'll get much more out of it as a result. When you claim victory or defeat in RTS its almost entirely your own work - or fault. You can play a hundred Counter-Strike games in a single night and then not remember a single one; but many RTS skirmishes evolve and mutate in surprising ways, and individual games can become memorable ripping yarns. The closest 3D shooters get to this is the excellent Battlefield series. And unlike 3D shooters, you can't buy yourself an unfair advantage with the best PC or graphics card or cable connection. In RTS, even the laggiest player can blast the biggest spenders off the map if their strategy and tactics prove to be the right ones.

For all you backyard footy players, this also makes a big point of including custom mods. All good shooter fans know how great mods can be, and RTS is no different. Many RTS games now sport custom modifications and total conversions built by the technical "hard core" of gamers that spice up play no end, and many developers have twigged to the perks of life after their game's initial release. Not all of these mods are balanced for equitable gameplay, but they're fabulous for anyone keen to "Sandbox" their game on the side. Aside from social multiplayer, there's doodling around in the shed, too.