[DizzyDoo]

Are they? A traditional RTS like Age of Empires 2 or a Starcraft requires quite a lot of accuracy in quick-selection and movement orders, it would drive me nuts to try and do that on a mobile screen with no mouse. I know MOBA-style games are popular on mobile, but there's only one unit to control there.

The only non-keyboard-and-mouse RTS I can think of is Tooth and Tail[0], designed to play nicely with controllers (in a similar way that that Halo Wars was back in 2009), and while I'm sure high-level play in those games was indeed very high-level, the whole experience nonetheless just doesn't work for me, it feels 'dumbed down' still.

[0] - https://store.steampowered.com/app/286000/Tooth_and_Tail/

[animuchan]

I guess 40K Dawn of War–style squad-based RTS would work decently with touch, as there are no individual units to select (with few exceptions, but e.g. Ork builder is also a squad), and there's way less micro compared to e.g. Starcraft.

That said, I'd still prefer keyboard and mouse over a touch screen.

[sdwr]

Tooth and Tail really did it for me. The granularity of eco vs army, and the targeting micro, added up to a perfect mini-RTS imo.

[pjmlp]

Game design is the key here.

[DizzyDoo]

Could you expand? I'm a video game designer myself, so I enjoy thinking about these things - how can you get around the hunt-and-peck nature of a mobile phone screen, where your thumb or finger covers up the unit you're selecting? And then how do you ensure accuracy in the exact spot they move to?

[thanks4tip]

One way is to decrease the granularity possible, so a finger can easily pick the “exact spot”. Basically make movement discrete (maybe not the animation, but the locations you can be at from a game logic perspective).

[epups]

Ok but you're losing complexity, and still need accuracy in that case. I think your suggestion would work for a turn-based game, I just don't think mobile is a good media for RTS.

[citizen_friend]

I don't think the poster was suggesting porting Starcraft to a touchscreen. It's a design challenge to figure out what changes need to be made to accommodate the genre for touchscreens. It's not obvious because people haven't put in the work yet.

It was a also a design challenge to make the genre work in the first place for mouse and keyboard.

[epups]

I would argue you cannot port any RTS game, not just Starcraft. Mouse and keyboard are not a constraint, they are excellent for RTS, which is why the genre is also not so strong in consoles.

[Nahtnah]

Check out Line War, fwiw