Are they? A traditional RTS like Age of Empires 2 or a Starcraft requires quite a lot of accuracy in quick-selection and movement orders, it would drive me nuts to try and do that on a mobile screen with no mouse. I know MOBA-style games are popular on mobile, but there's only one unit to control there.

The only non-keyboard-and-mouse RTS I can think of is Tooth and Tail[0], designed to play nicely with controllers (in a similar way that that Halo Wars was back in 2009), and while I'm sure high-level play in those games was indeed very high-level, the whole experience nonetheless just doesn't work for me, it feels 'dumbed down' still.

[0] - https://store.steampowered.com/app/286000/Tooth_and_Tail/

Game design is the key here.

Could you expand? I'm a video game designer myself, so I enjoy thinking about these things - how can you get around the hunt-and-peck nature of a mobile phone screen, where your thumb or finger covers up the unit you're selecting? And then how do you ensure accuracy in the exact spot they move to?

One way is to decrease the granularity possible, so a finger can easily pick the “exact spot”. Basically make movement discrete (maybe not the animation, but the locations you can be at from a game logic perspective).

Ok but you're losing complexity, and still need accuracy in that case. I think your suggestion would work for a turn-based game, I just don't think mobile is a good media for RTS.

Yes if you presuppose that mobile isn’t good for RTS then it’s not good for RTS.

Obviously an online RTS where some folks are on desktop and others on mobile may not be competitive. Fucking duh.

I don't think the poster was suggesting porting Starcraft to a touchscreen. It's a design challenge to figure out what changes need to be made to accommodate the genre for touchscreens. It's not obvious because people haven't put in the work yet.

It was a also a design challenge to make the genre work in the first place for mouse and keyboard.

I would argue you cannot port any RTS game, not just Starcraft. Mouse and keyboard are not a constraint, they are excellent for RTS, which is why the genre is also not so strong in consoles.

You can play Doom on your phone as well. That's not an argument that it is a suitable media for FPS.

And none of us are saying anything about "porting" we are talking about adapting the medium to a new format, but you seem convinced the only way to see it is exactly how it was designed in the 90s.

Downvote is supposed to indicate low quality, not disagreement, this is not a low quality comment.

Check out Line War, fwiw

Tooth and Tail really did it for me. The granularity of eco vs army, and the targeting micro, added up to a perfect mini-RTS imo.

I guess 40K Dawn of War–style squad-based RTS would work decently with touch, as there are no individual units to select (with few exceptions, but e.g. Ork builder is also a squad), and there's way less micro compared to e.g. Starcraft.

That said, I'd still prefer keyboard and mouse over a touch screen.

One might assume that and it is mostly true for round based games, but for real-time you just cannot achieve the actions per minute needed on touch. A game like Starcraft or similar is barely playable

Sure, my remark was about controlling, how the game is designed is another matter.

Yeah there’s so much skepticism but you’re right on that this genre can thrive on mobile. It’s a way more natural fit than FPS for example.

Hardcore “competitive” RTS (StarCraft/Age of Empires) can’t since it’s not competitive enough if you can’t hit a meaningful 300+ actions per minute, which is impossible without hotkeys. Even IF they could, I am skeptical you’d get converts. Even IF all of them converted, hardcore RTS is not thriving right now. You’d have to create the perfect game and you’d be rewarded with less players than a Minecraft clone.

You're comparing apples to oranges.

StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty sold 6 million, but only small fraction of the playerbase is interested in competitve aspect.

Minecraft is just an online sandbox. Most people will play it like that.

Plus a gamedev doesn't need to take into account what sells, but what kind of competition you have. How will your Minecraft clone exist in market with Minecraft vs how will your M RTS live in a market with StarCraft 2.

Naturally I wasn't talking about competitive esports on a phone or tablet.

There are plenty of people that are happy to play games without having the dream of becoming an esports player as career.

DOTA, Rocket League, CSGO, etc. are e-sports friendly but don’t have this population problem. It’s not about being “hardcore”; it’s about having broad appeal to hit a wide market segment. RTS has struggled with that historically. Tower defense and MOBA are two examples where RTS was simplified to a broader appeal game.

Controls essentially define game design.

I’d love to see an RTS that broke out of those constraints, mostly because I find the whole APM heavy approach to them kind of boring. It’s not strategy, it’s clicking fast, and while I recognise the skill involved it bears little relation to actual strategy.

My ideal RTS would support delegation of armies, and giving broad stroke orders (hold that area, attack this base, provide air cover), with either AI or human players picking up those responsibilities.

I could see a casual RTS working, one where you select groups of soldiers rather than individual units.

Company of Heroes works like that and it's on iPad.

I do not think that is the case for traditional RTS games. At first glance, sure you touch the unit you want and you touch where you want them to go. But there is a reason why single button mouse to two button mouse was a huge improvement for RTS. You don't always want to do one thing or have it be context aware. The other is that RTS games typically involve you dealing with hundreds of units, all across a map, so things like hot keys to build additional units, or control groups to manage different unit groups is critical. Mobile seems like it could work for some casual RTS games, with small numbers of units. But not for a traditional RTS.

The best game I've ever played on mobile is Eufloria, which is an RTS. I wish there were more games like it.

Isn't Eufloria just a GalCon clone? There are a bunch of games like that, albeit without the plant theme.

It's true, but Eufloria looks better to the point that I'd prefer it for the style alone