I recently checked out BAR and liked it. I don’t like micro in RTS games, because I always think “a computer can do this better than I could”, so it’s nice that they’ve got good unit automations available.
It just means having to micromanage a particular unit’s actions. I like it more when I can say “patrol this area, return fire and advance a bit if necessary, but no further than this”, instead of having to flip back to those units constantly to manage them. IMO it’s more thematic anyways for a sci fi game, you’re probably going to have units with a basic AI in them in-universe.
Micro is a RTS term for how well you control your units. In starcraft for example you have the unit “stalker”, which can teleport. Professional players with very good micro can use that teleport to always teleport out a Stalker just before it would die. This means because of good micro they don’t lose their units.
The opposite is macro, which mainly talks about how good a player is in managing the game on a grander scheme like managing their resources and having an overview over the whole map
(I hope my example is still accurate it has been years, that I watched an rts game)
I would like to take this for a spin although I see two install methods, flatpak and appimage? Any recommendations here? Seems like both are on par as far as versions go
I like DualShock 4. It should be cheaper now, that DualSense is out, gyro is a great thing in case you decide to play some shooters or space sims. Steam supports it out of the box
As for dongle, I’ve used the cheapest BT5 I’ve found and did not have issues
I’m not 100% sure if this meets any of your requirements but I always enjoyed homeworld can’t remember if I’ve ever run it on Linux since switching tho.
As to the other requirements, I don’t think I found it that easy to get into as it took a while to get into the whole 3D map thing, and the graphics may have aged
I’m not saying that it’s a bad game, but that game is absolutely ancient, and he has “Relatively modern with decent graphics (something that looks nice)”.
Check out the definitive Edition then which was released in 2019, the latest DLC with new civilizations was added a week ago. It’s a fantastic game with a large active community around it.
I don’t know how it runs on Linux, but as a casual AoE fan it’s in my opinion the best AoE game. It stays true to its roots, but basically does almost everything just better. Units can stand on walls, civs all play different, graphics are fine, and it maintains the AoE feeling that made all the older games good.
Since some other good recommendations were already made, I’m gonna put something a bit different here: Tooth and Tail. It’s not a classic RTS, and you can’t really micro your units like in other RTS games, but it’s fun and fast paced. Games only last 15-ish minutes at most and the gameplay is relatively simple. It’s 2D so it probably also runs on anything from smart toaster to supercomputer.
Starcraft 2 is the solid bet, the campaign teaches you a lot.
But Supreme commander forged alliance for just a crazy amount of fun, almost 20 year old game and still has the game play to keep you landed, and they have YouTube games online.
As a casual RTS player I never really liked SC2 too much, at least in multiplayer. It’s one of those games where you get instantly punished when you don’t play optimally. In AoE or Supreme Commander or something I can at least build a base in peace for a while before I get absolutely destroyed.
Edit: I agree with forged alliance though. It runs on Linux and is an awesome game. Great sense of scale, and also nice for casual play
I’m almost positive I have 40k somewhere but last time I looked at some gameplay, it seemed very overwhelming
Edit: my apologies, it looks like I got Total War: Warhammer confused with Warhammer 40k. Total War: Warhammer 3 is the one I have and it seemed huge in scale and very overwhelming
Hey there, thank you for the feedback! The whole tournament will be broadcasted live on our website and as part of the www.tux-tage.de with german commentary. We will also upload the Stream on our website for those who want to watch it later.
StarCraft II. It’s on Battle.Net though so you’ll have to download it through Lutris.
The first campaign is free and there’s a coop mode for casual players. Entirely free except for cosmetics, some coop commanders, and the other campaign episodes. It’s easy to pick up IMO but VERY HARD to master. Graphics still hold up better than a lot of games despite being 13 years old. Despite its age, I believe it’s the peak of the RTS genre. There’s are a lot of community-made mods/maps that you can play for free. You can even play a remake of the WarCraft III campaign there.
Other RTS games that I like:
Age of Empires II (Steam). Graphics look decent enough for the remastered version on Steam. Complex economy system and slow rock-paper-scissors combat. Very slow-paced.
StarCraft Broodwar (Battle.Net). Remastered graphics also look decent enough. Unit pathing might still have annoying quirks like the original. Slightly slower-paced than StarCraft II.
Northgard (Steam). Beautiful game with a unique event-type economy system. Slower-paced than StarCraft II with some colony-building elements.
Not really an RTS game but I’ve been putting so many hours into RimWorld (Steam, native) this year. At its core, it’s a colony-building game but it does have some RTS elements to it (economy, combat, and unit management). Lots of mods available.
Upvote for SC2. People always talk about it being difficult, but that’s only the competitive ladder. There’s so much single player campaign, challenges, co op, and arcade custom map modes that you can play for ages and never even feel the need to touch competitive play.
I always liked planetary annihilation. It is really easy, looks decent, and has a native Linux version. That it’s placed in a planet system makes it different to many other RTS.
PA is very cool when you find players matching your skills. I have good memories of 4V4 games, when both teams synchronise to puts players with the same level at the same starting location so everyone have fun.
It does not have that much soul, IMHO, and performance problems when games stands too long on multiplanetary systems.
It also probably also packages spring, an RTS engine – originally TA Spring, based on Total Annihilation, and it looks like it’s also on Steam. Can play a couple of RTSes that use it, like Zero-K, which is similar to Total Annihilation.
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