To clarify, ZK doesn't population caps like e.g. Starcraft. The actual limit is actually the CPU/GPU (and maybe your bandwidth too). ZK's 16vs16 host, the "lobster pot" as they call it, can barely be playable if your rig is too weak.
Popcap is one of the simplest and most effective "anti-snowballing" mechanisms. Once you're "maxed out", you cannot get further ahead - you must attack and trade to build new stuff. If you can just keep making stuff without ever being forced to trade, whoever gets ahead first, eventually wins.
Supply also serves as a comeback mechanic - you were even, but took one bad fight, so you can immediately spend all your money to get a new army. Meanwhile your opponent must construct additional pylons before they can get much further ahead - they grow stronger slower than you regrow the lost limbs.
Popcap is just one of the ways to design an RTS, there are others.
Zero-K solves the problems solved by popcap in other ways. Income tracks map control, and controlling more of the map is hard, so players that are ahead don't have the freedom to sit back and build up an overwhelming army. Armies are fighting or jockeying for position throughout the game and army size and composition keeps escalating. Defenders advantage shifts to attackers advantage as things escalate, so people can't just sit in their base. The overall effect is that, while there is a pop cap at the technical level, it is 10x higher than the unit counts that even the largest battles tend to equilibrate to.
Talking about the lack of popcap is a bit backwards in a way. There are just so many subtle things that mean the question of popcap never has to come up. Maps are pretty open, units don't fire through each other, AoE exists... the list goes on. A better question might be why games with a popcap couldn't be designed away from the failure mode of people sitting in their base making larger and larger armies. Having to put a hard cap on army sizes, that people regularly reach, is sort of a drastic measure.
On supply, I'd say what you said about supply is pretty important. But the aspect of it you bring up isn't limited to popcap. Eg C&C games have power plants that act as construction supply. Rebuilding your base is easier the second time around, as long as you keep your power plants. There is something similar in Zero-K with energy. Metal comes from points around the map while energy can be built in your base, and both resources are used for construction. When you take more metal spots you also need more energy, and the energy is nowhere near as vulnerable. That is the main supply-like comeback mechanic, which works since part of your economy is always vulnerable. Reclaiming wrecks for metal is another comeback mechanic.
There's a lot of truth to what you're saying, but it's interesting to solve that problem other ways. For example, a high tech unit that can kill hundreds of spam units, or just making more expensive units more economical and better to build than endless spam.
That said, BAR is trying to balance the game to reduce spam currently. Having an endless stream of trash units charging ahead is great for scouting, even if they don't do much damage.
Screw that, everyone is afraid of 1000 vs 1000 unit battles. This is what I want!
Total Annihilation and its ilk balance that by having the commander unit, which is game-over if lost. There are a lot of really underhanded tactics one can employ to sneak a win here. (My favorite is picking up the enemy commander with a transport and then scuttling the transport...) Plus the large army size means the player likely has exploitable gaps in their defenses as their attention is split so many more ways.
Oh well I guess that depends on the win condition, and yes I can imagine 1000v1000 units can be fun (myself am an avid enjoyer of 4v4 in SC2). But especially as the number of players go up, I think the popcap should be going down. I've played a couple custom 2v2 games in SC2 with a reduced popcap (100 instead of 200) and the games were wiiiiiiiild: you have very little economy and turtling is just impossible, so the games end up being constant and insane back&forth to claw an advantage.
I guess what I really don't like in RTSs is turtling. If I wanted to play SimCity, I'd be playing SimCity.
Not sure why you would expect that turtling (porc(upine)ing) would work in a competitive game with 2 teams, the opponnents will just take the rest of the map and then crush you using these extra resources. And a lower population cap would make it easier to turtle, not harder, so I'm kind of confused as to how it worked in your example ?
"Playing Sim City" is a common insult thrown at team mates BTW in TA-derived games (too).
> Not sure why you would expect that turtling (porc(upine)ing) would work in a competitive game with 2 teams, the opponnents will just take the rest of the map and then crush you using these extra resources.
That's exactly the issue, when playing in a random team. Matchmaking can be a real dice roll in a small playerbase (which SC2 4v4 is). Sometimes I get teammates 500MMR below me, where the metagame is almost always turtling to T3 behind infinite static defense.
Being the only aggressive player in a game with 7 turtles feels extremely unrewarding. Sure I can go expand first into 80+ workers before making a single army unit. I just think games like this suck.
Even if you execute your initial greed correctly, you're still vulnerable because they've been building T3 units, you have more places to defend, and a bigger part of your popcap is taken by the workers. Maybe it would actually be good here if SC2 didn't have a popcap (so that you continue to capitalize on your initial greed for the rest of the game), but that would make Zerg incredibly broken - they make more stuff (including workers) faster than any other faction.
> And a lower population cap would make it easier to turtle, not harder, so I'm kind of confused as to how it worked in your example ?
Lower popcap means you don't get to continue building an even bigger, more unbeatable army behind a wall of turrets or cannons. Static defense doesn't really help against armies (only deters harassment), because siege weapons. Sitting on a maxed army is throwing away a temporary advantage. It incentivizes to attack first, because even if the opponent is maxed too, any time you take an even fight near an enemy base, you get to deal a little bit of damage to their eco or production (the win condition is to destroy all enemy structures).
SC2 recently rotated the entire team map pool; many maps now have very few bases and a very short rush distance. Some people still try to turtle, but it's difficult as attacking early is so much stronger. The average quality of the games has IMHO gone way up.
I love turtling. I hate that the prevailing strategy seems to be always be on the offense and micro eighty million stupid little things. esports and APS have ruined competitive RTS play.
Turtling lets me build up my base and economy and nurture a curbstomping offense after which I can overwhelm my opponents. If I wanted to play a tactical RTS there are a million options out there that limit you with horse-blinders
So your preferred balance is that both players build and nurture a base until one goes an overwhelms and "curbstomps" the other? That doesn't sound satisfying. Remember, 50% of the time you need to be the one getting curbstomped. Just imagine that base you nurtured getting rolled over and there's not much you can do; is that fun?
It's easy to be too optimistic when balancing a game. It's easy to imagine "oh, this unit will be nearly indestructible, and I can watch it destroy my opponents and their bases". But what really happens is "my opponent destroyed me, I tried everything I could but his unit was nearly indestructible".
(This is why we need strong AI for RTS games. First, we get strong AI, then we find ways of dumbing it down in fun ways. In the end we have a creative AI that offers a few surprises, but is content to let the human player win 95% of the time.)
Again, that's why you need the one-unit-that-loses-you-the-game-if-it-dies.
> there's not much you can do; is that fun?
since when is losing supposed to be fun? I don't want to give my opponent chances at a reversal. I want to win, reliably and assuredly.
I don't know what the 'indestructible' unit has to do with any of this, even the most impenetrable fortress has weaknesses. You have to declaw a turtle slowly and methodically, or just straight up overwhelm their defensive lines. A turtling player cannot be everywhere at once, they have weaknesses.
I assume you're talking about competitive play, since you mentioned it, and lamented that competitive RTS play is ruined.
> since when is losing supposed to be fun? I don't want to give my opponent chances at a reversal. I want to win, reliably and assuredly.
This comment explains why this theoretical opponent of yours doesn't exist. You want to play against another human who you can defeat reliably, and who has no fun being defeated. Why would anyone ever want to be your opponent? It's not fun for them, and they have little chance of winning. This is why, as you observed, there's many tactical RTS games that people are playing, but nobody plays games like you imagine.
there are a lot of games where turtling is a viable strat, just not for the entire game. a game without a counter to turtling only ends when one side gets bored.
the fact that any popular game attracts a bunch of sweaty gamers that want to optimize every little thing is not related to the viability of turtling.
I haven't really seen it to be an issue in TA-derived games.
I guess because economy still requires territory control, and a bigger territory is harder to defend ?
Also it's probably not a coincidence that these games have a lot of units dealing area damage, and most importantly, units cannot shoot through each other, and when they try it can often end in friendly fire, which makes snowballing weaker ?
Anyway, desperate situations where the underdog eventually manages to turn the tide are not uncommon. I even recently seen it happen in an AI vs AI match !
Snowballing also happens a lot in SC2, and also even in Chess. That's simply the normal way to win, even if on the other side it feels bad when you get steamrolled by overwhelming forces.
Comebacks in high-level SC2 games don't usually happen as you say. More often, the losing party relies on their opponent overlooking some peculiar tactic like using DTs (for those who are not familiar with SC: invisible units that can only be detected with specific means). Otherwise a bad engagement very often means defeat in short/mid/long term.
Finally, ZK does have very long range static weapons that can hardly be countered (unless you destroy them). If the opponent "camps" in their base, you just start to build one that will either vaporize their army or buildings, or slowly wear them down. But really, camping is usually newbie-level strategy.
