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Good Evening everyone. I have a legit question I've been thinking about recently. More often then not, there seems to not be a lot of RTS Games coming out or at least any of particular interest to me. It could possibly be that I have not been looking or paying to much attention but I've also been stuck on the old school ones as well. In my theory, RTS games have come down to Twitch/Competitive Gaming type games which means the quality has been drastically decreased to the point of the story being non-existent, horrid or irrelevant. I also believe that It can be agreed that 1995-2006 was a really good golden decade for RTS games in general. With this said I want to know which RTS game is the best, examining not just the game but a lot of other things such as What makes a great RTS game? Total Annihilation Company of Hero's Starcraft I have never played this and I’m sorry. It is good and popular enough that I’ve put it on this list. I am sure someone can vouch for it Command and Conquer (Any game) Star Wars Empire at War (w/ expansions included) I understand obviously there may be other titles that I may have missed out but these are what I found to be the best and that I have played so far. If your choice is not listed on here then feel free to comment your favorite RTS game and what makes it so special!

>All those people not voting for Command and Conquer on a CnC forum. You're all heretics.

An old abandoned game with a loyal player base and unique gameplay? (APB) Nothing wrong with that!

I have a spare summer hat pikachu, but still not enough candy to evolve any of my pikachu

I would also add NETSTORM: Islands at War to the list - even though it's not as known as other titles since it's quite old and activision buried its legacy, though it was heavily played mostly during the dawn of the new millennium (1997-2004), before the official server shutdown. If it wasn't for the great old NSHQ community, keeping it alive and updating it, it would be long forgotten too. With a history of patches and community events, the game was still quite popular for a decade that followed. It's still played to this day on community run server and updated with new features. You may ask what makes NS so special, well, the first thing that makes Netstorm stand out is that it doesn't follow the casual model of Dune/C&C RTS clones but still has the same classic RTS excitement included. This strategy game literary reaches new heights and remains above all - and it's pretty much the only original and one of it's kind. For me it was the first online experience back in the '97 and the intro above which I saw first time when playing a demo changed the way I used to think about RTS games. Back when Age of Empires started to shine, as well as the dawn of C&C and its clones as well and later one of my favorites, Total Annihilation and KKnD, this was a nice refreshing change and I kinda got stuck to it for the next 15 years or so. For those who don't know, Netstorm is a very unique RTS game where you don't spam units and rush enemy with them like in every other game on the list, but instead, you have to build your way through enemy defenses and network of bridges and islands in the skies of Nimbus. To do that, you have to build your own bridge network between the sky islands, secure resources in form of storm geysers, and build workshops to gain access to one of the four technologies of sun, wind, rain and thunder. Your war machine consists of several types of contraptions, towers, barricades, cannons and bases for aerial attackers. Each has its purpose, line of fire, range. Positioning and rotation of the unit is the key, so the game plays as a tower defense yet you also need to attack so it's a complicated game of chess (the way the building units work), tetris (bridging in sky and connecting to islands) and RTS (collecting resources, building bases, securing islands, spells, capturing enemy High Priests). Below is a nice letsplay introduction one of the vets made recently: The most interesting part of Netstorm was its unique multiplayer. The best thing of Netstorm multiplayer is that each battle is different, as the maps are created per random procedural generator, and you can set the parameters in the battle ring as Battlemaster for other players who join. The below pic is an old SS of me when I hosted the Netstorm Tournaments: Players gather in a lobby, join a zone (different lobbies used to be popular back then when clans and tournaments were a thing), and then find a match in one of the Rings floating in Serenisphere. Each player is represented by their home island, which is their base of operations and it's the only island that is same (unless they change their island, or "fort" later when joining multiplayer server). Once the battle starts, all islands join the battle in the same position they joined the ring, so players can make interesting battles as 1s, 2s, 3s, each team opposite to each other, fighting for the middle (which is the part that is generated randomly, such as neutral islands and resources). Fight for the middle islands can turn into a complicated mess where each click, bridge or unit placement matters: Learning Netstorm is quite easy when you play the tutorial and play few campaign missions but mastering Netstorm in multiplayer is a different story. The idea behind multiplayer was that each time you sacrifice an enemy priest, you get to choose a new technology, and once you have learned all the technologies (and units) in the game, you get to upgrade your rank and start over with just basic technology. Although all players play now with full leveled forts (LVL 43), where rank no longer means anything, the game is played to see who is the faster bridger, better tactician, or who is that sneaky bastard having an airship ready to capture your own priest - especially when you're not looking and then quickly sacrificing him on the Altar of the storm gods before they attack your island... NetStorm Online is also quite different from any other RTS game, since you are thrown directly into action - you don't have to wait several minutes to get your base built and ready your armies, you don't have to micromanage your units. All your units engage the enemy automatically. You just need to think the best approach - how and where to bridge, where to build your first outpost, which resources to secure, where to attack your enemy. This way some battles can last less than five minutes, while others can last for an hour... Although Netstorm is now considered abandonware, you can still play it online due to the community keeping it alive (I'm part of it). If you want to try and play Netstorm online let me know if you need help, the game can be downloaded on several places but the most recent updates are now informed on discord. Although there used to be many attempts to make a new shiny game and to be the next NetStorm successor, many projects failed to do so (we think there is some curse following the original downfall of Titanic Entertainment which ironically sunk to the bottom when Activision decided that it's time to release Netstorm unpolished with many bugs and a loophole to convert a free demo to a full working version - although the bugs and loopholes were fixed it led to the original studio going bankrupt). However, there's a new Netstorm project which keeps resurrecting once in a while with the blessing of the original devs, under the wings of a talented friend named Nathan Hunt who is trying to recreate the spirit of Netstorm in new 3d setting. First it was a Unity project called Netstorm II Rising Storm, now known as Stratus: Battle For The Sky (early access version available on Steam). I've made a topic to support his kickstarter project a while ago where you can learn more about it, back then the project's name was Disciples of the Storm.

Are you ok?

Missing a few options there; like Dawn of War, Halo Wars, Supreme Commander etc. But C&C is there so why would you vote for anything else.

Right, I've got you covered Category 5.

Go Dragonair!

rip unrip

Back on-line

Now that my entire family knows I'll announce it here. If all goes as well, in January of 2018 an AkheroMini shall greet this world. This is my first, so naturally I'm nervous, happy, scared shitless, excited, etc. Any 'veterans' out there have any advise for a first time daddy? :)

Not to phoenix down, but since I know I don't have all of you on facebook - introducing Emberlyn

make sure apb is the first game they play

"Affirmative!" "Attack the baby shops!" "Bolster our father duties!" "Building needs cleaning!" "That's a diaper, ignore it!"

Considering that those dissolve into your total rank/stats after the end of a game and thus can't be tracked individually, yeah. Back at BHP, oxi removed the KD and deaths columns from the rank stats amidst concerns of toxic players hiding from big matches so that they can instead camp newbies to death in small games to selfishly preserve and build their own KD at the expense of a bunch of newer players deciding to never play the game again because of what they saw in their first experience with the game. Maybe it's time for that to return so the KD whores have less excuse to ragequit or force newbies to ragequit? @triattack @moonsense715

rage is the essence of apb