Games - Real-time tactics

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	Games - Real-time tactics

Real-time tactics (RTT) games simulate the considerations and circumstances of operational warfare and the operational ("military tactical") aspects of battles. Though real-time tactical games are often sorted under computer strategy wargames and frequently, erroniously confused with the highly popular real-time strategy (RTS) genre, they are fundamentally different and belong to the tactical wargame category.

Defining Real-time Tactical Computer Games

Real-time tactical computer games are war games of military tactics and military operations. The focus and goal of RTT games is to conquer the field of immediate conflict through offensive and defensive utilization of extant resources, like in Chess, but in real time. Thus, unlike conventional turn-based strategy video or board games, RTT games do not have "turns," where players can take as long as they want to make a move. Rather, game time progresses in "real time"; that is, it is continuous rather than turn-by-turn.

:See also :*Turn-based tactics
:*Turn-based strategy
:*Strategy game

RTT versus RTS games

Real-time tactics games are often misnomerically denominated as "real-time strategy" (RTS) games. This is due to the prevalence of RTS titles and a popular predisposition to categorize virtually anything militarily angled from a bird's eye view as a "RTS" game (in fact, this goes for many other genres, too; SimCity, for instance, can be seen referred to as RTS, etc., due to the top-down camera angle), as well as due to the widespread confusion of the terms "tactical" and "strategic."

RTT games are fundamentally different and distinguished from RTS games by not featuring base-building or economic management, at least not in the battle moments of the game, instead principally focusing on the operational aspects of conflict. In typical RTT games, the player is expected to finish the battle with a given amount of troops and resources (some games allow limited resources to be purchased throughout a level), which tends to create radically different gameplay from RTS titles. Where RTS titles generally encourage the player to focus on logistics and production and feature very limited tactical options, RTT titles are devoid of resource-gathering, production, and base-building, and tend to focus more on commando-like operational aspects of warfare, like unit formations or exploitation of terrain for tactical advantage.

Brief history and background

Wargaming with items or figurines representing soldiers or units for training or enterntainment has been common for as long as organised conflicts: Chess, for example, is based on essentialised battlefield movements of medieval unit types and, beyond the diversion, is intended to instill in players a rudimentary sense of battlefield tactics. Today, miniature wargaming, where players mount armies of miniature figurines to battle each other, has become popular (e.g., see Warhammer Fantasy Battle and Warhammer 40000). Though similar to conventional modern board wargames, like Axis & Allies, in the sense of simulating war and being turn-based, the rules for miniature wargames tend to attempt to recreate the minutiae of military combat rather than the strategic scale. Though popular as table-top games, tactical wargames were relatively late in coming to computers, probably because the game mechanics—games featuring often massive amounts of units and individual soldiers as well as advanced rules—would have required hardware capacities and advanced interface designs, thus making demands available hardware or software design idioms couldn't fullfill. Also, since most extant rule sets were for turn-based table-top games, the conceptual leap to translate these categories to real-time might have needed time to gestate. Free Fall Associates' Archon from 1983 can be considered an early computer tactical game built upon Chess, but including real-time battle sequences. Archon was highly influential, and for instance, Silicon Knights, Inc.'s 1994 game/ Dark Legions was virtually identical to it, only adding to Archons concept that the player, as in many table-top wargames, purchases his army before committing to battle. Nonetheless, by 1994 there were still few, if any, purely real-time tactical games.
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