The Information, or "How about an aural RTS?"

I was thinking about time and space and especially information in RTSes, because it was Wednesday.  

Quickly--RTSes are real-time strategy games.  The genre is based on the tension between how resources are spent (defense, economy, and offense), and take place on a relatively large map to highlight the importance of territory control.  Basically, workers collect resources, build a base, and the buildings create an army, and you have to attack your opponent in an attempt to destroy his army, his base, and his economy so that he's out of options.  Because of the extensive options available to players and the multitude of decisions they must make in a game, the genre is also about optimizing players' attentions--there's too much to do, and not enough time to do it (strategy + real-time = RTS).  Some examples are Starcraft, Warcraft (not World of Warcraft), Company of Heroes, and Dawn of War.  

Point being, I was thinking about how you always have information about your troops' surroundings at all times.  I thought about this because how much do we think about this?  Never.  This isn't how reality works, I'm afraid, but it's certainly a conceit that makes the games more approachable.  It simplifies how you keep track of your troops' circumstances and determine whether to push or pull back.  Basically, you can tell how you should play because you can see what's happening to your troops, which is essentially the entire game.  That information matters more than anything else.  

But reality, by no means, always makes games better.  How realistic is it that a single marine has the time to tell anyone that a dozen zealots, fifteen stalkers, four colossi, and a mothership are coming at him?  Not at all.  It'd be more like, "Hey!"  [Horrible death].  

So, what if you no longer knew what was happening to your troops?  At least not all of them.  What if you would send troops out on specific missions, but wouldn't know how they were doing, where exactly they were, or even whether they were alive?  

That's pretty much what the military's had to contend with forever.  Would that make for compelling gameplay?  

No.  It'd be awful, because games are about simplifying systems and letting people make informed decisions to maximize their benefits in the game world.  Not knowing what happened is... pretty awful.  

Radios, though!  Radios are cool.  So what if there were troops that had radios, and if they were with other troops, you would receive information about how they were doing?  They'd tell you they were under attack, by how many troops, and what they were going to do about it--and you could tell them how they should respond.  

If troops with radios are expensive, then you can't afford to always send squads into battle with radios--or else you need to send out fewer squads, which has its own opportunity costs.  

And then--what if your radios only communicate with you, and your opponent's radios only communicate with them... but when a radio operator is killed, the opponent gets access to that radio?  Now you're receiving information from the front lines... but you're not sure you can trust that information.  It could be the opponent sending lies back to you, which would mean you're operating under false pretenses, and could sway the game.  This wouldn't work very well as a top-down game any longer--sure, there'd be a map and territory, but you wouldn't be looking at what you knew--you'd be looking at what you thought was likely the game state.  It would be about receiving audio feedback from squads of troops, then deciding how to respond to these new circumstances.  

This is less of an evolution of the RTS genre, though, than approaching it from the angle of psychological thriller.  It's Fox Mulder commanding an army--he wants to believe, but he's just not sure who he can trust.  

(no one)

(obv)

But it felt like an interesting way to highlight the importance of information in RTSes, so I wrote about it.  Bam.