I recently discovered Beyond All Reason, a spiritual successor to Total Annihilation. There have been several of these, but I think BAR is by far the best. It's open source, but looks nice and is polished. It has amazing quality-of-life features I haven't seen in any other RTS. And it supports insanely huge battles with hundreds of players and tens of thousands of units.

150-player match: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQJujiZ-oz0

https://www.beyondallreason.info/

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Lucasoato 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Yeah, let me add that it’s a wonderful community. They won’t flame you for failing the frontline because your opponent has been playing the game since day 1.

If you just started, just stay in the backlines and do “eco”, people will be ok with that.

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nylonstrung 9 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

The sarcasm isn't warranted

It's very much a game of team coordination where the power curve is exponential but also can have huge turnarounds since buildings are fragile but drive the economy entirely

So naturally you have to know how to play your specific role or it can throw the game for everyone else

It's not casual like Command and Conquer or something, but nor is it incredibly sweaty like StarCraft or DOTA

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techjamie 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That's pretty good to hear. I've taken interest in it from time to time, and downloaded it at one point to spectate matches. It seemed really intimidating to my extremely casual RTS playing self with how much is happening.

Maybe I'll give it another look.

	▲	modeless 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		There are some single-player missions and modes that you can play to try it out. And I heard there's going to be a commercial release with a full single-player campaign coming out eventually. https://www.beyondallreason.info/news/beyond-all-reason-and-...

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thebluegecko 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This experience might uh, might not be universal. I found the 8v8 community unhappy when I accidentally threw games while trying to learn. I will say the 1v1 community is very relaxed though. Starting 1v1s or vs bots might lead to a better experience.

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searealist an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

As someone who has played BAR, it's hard to read this as not being maximally sarcastic.

	▲	Lucasoato 18 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Man, I got flamed hard even for losing against one of the game developers, the community is cooked.
	▲	dgently7 28 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		ya, this drips with the common noob complaint that people flame you for being a noob. unfortunately that is a totally fair assessment. its a deep and detailed game with lots of units, commands, mechanics and a few maps that have extremely developed meta. this is only a problem if you think you can drop into multiplayer on literal day 1 without even doing any of the local/non ai learning options the game provides and expect your team to just deal with you not even knowing the basics. And even then if you start in "noob" lobbies people are pretty helpful, to the extent that they are trying to play the game and give you tips and can only do/type so much. so its simple... 1. play the scenerios/vs to learn the basics. also watch some yt basics guides 2. join noob lobbies. 3. when people try to help you and they sound mad/terse/short it helps to assume they are just busy with their own match and are doing their best to play and help you learn. if they give you advice try to take it. 4. do your best and ping out when things are going bad in your lane. the community on there really is very much "nicer" to noobs that many games, especially ones that are co-op team based. but you do need to have realistic expectations. people will get upset if you mess up their games bc you havent at least tried to learn how to play at all.

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reactordev an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Can confirm, BAR is what you want...

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thaumasiotes an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I was struck by something else about Beyond All Reason.

There's a popular Starcraft 2 commentary-and-gameplay streamer, Winter, who spent some time posting commentated BAR games. Videos from this period include direct pleas to his audience to take more of an interest because it's a better game with a better development model.

Then he took BAR off of his main youtube channel because that didn't work. He now seems to operate a separate variety channel with some BAR content.

I think about what this says about the role that marketing plays in people-in-general's choice of pastimes.

	▲	Havoc 22 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Also bunch of vids by a guy called drongo. Haven't seen any recently (7 months) though

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lloydatkinson 33 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

I keep meaning to try this game when I see it mentioned. It looks fun!