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[Mechanoid]

How is this a problem with the OP's idea?

Imagine an RTS map with no collectable resources... Or enemies to fight. Eventually, that's not gonna be fun to play any more.

[Halindir]

How is this a problem with the OP's idea?

Imagine an RTS map with no collectable resources... Or enemies to fight. Eventually, that's not gonna be fun to play any more.

*New Game*

[darius]

How is this a problem with the OP's idea?

Imagine an RTS map with no collectable resources... Or enemies to fight. Eventually, that's not gonna be fun to play any more.

Renewable resources FTW, dig deeper and balancing is the answer.

but its not about RTS it's about roguelikes (unless you make a RTSroguelike)

[Grakelin]

In order for us to destroy the environment, we would have to, you know, destroy the environment. It's not like the game would say "whoops, Human beings" and self-destruct the world. In fact, in an empire building game (like, say, Civilization), this would be a pretty interesting angle.

I do not see how it would effect gameplay in an RTS. What RTS are you playing which takes so long to play that the natural resources have time to wither and die? Starcraft and Warcraft both have limited numbers of vespene gas and gold, you'll recall. And if there's only a limited amount of oil (or whatever) on the map, that will just make capturing it even more intense. Maybe even throw in the risk of your enemy burning it all in one fell swoop just to keep it out of your hands. But wait, you can pack it up in barrels and hide it in your base! And then the enemy starts hijacking your shipments!

But oil isn't a resource that a closed ecosystem provides, is it? What resource do RTSes use, exactly? Isn't it trees? I've never played an RTS where the trees actually come back, so a working ecosystem would actually allow longer play over just clear-cutting the entire forest.

[Stargrasper]

My big point was that creating a stable ecosystem is hard WITHOUT extremely destructive forces (like disasters and humans) around.  Add them in and a LOT of bad things will all but assuredly happen.  Particularly is the ecosystem is accurately modelled.

Renewable resources don't necessarily cut it depending on modelling and player style.  I can still extinct the animal with infinite food supplies without much effort.  I mentioned simLife last time...I decided to launch it...  A very strong ecosystem nearly collapsed (91% of all animal life died out in about a game week...which is more like 5 seconds at the speed I was running) because I introduced 5 sharks.  Ecosystems are sensitive.  It doesn't take much to break them.  Humans usually aren't subtle.

[tylor]

Ecosystems tend to be very unstable, when population numbers are low.

[Stargrasper]

Ecosystems tend to be very unstable, when population numbers are low.

My numbers weren't exactly what you'd call small.  I think I picked too aggressive a predator for the ecosystem.  DF can't hope to model the number of creatures I had, so I imagine any other rougelike would have a hard time with it.  But even larger ecologies can be very sensitive to change.  It may not collapse when the player hunts every wolf to extinction for eating his cattle...but it's going to take quite a blow.

[Supermikhail]

I'd play a game where ecosystems collapse and the world eventually turns into an uninhabitable rock. My pessimism and misanthropy would draw exquisite pleasure from it... Hm. Well, otherwise I'm a really nice guy.
Edit: collapse due to human misbehaviour.

[tylor]

But even larger ecologies can be very sensitive to change.  It may not collapse when the player hunts every wolf to extinction for eating his cattle...but it's going to take quite a blow.

If there are really lots of wolves, they can breed so fast, they will not even notice player killing some of them. AFAIK, in real world, some speciaes can be wiped, but as long as there is still some fertile soil available, there will likely by lots of animals available. THey will just be not so diverce.

[Grakelin]

Good luck hunting every member of a species alone, too. You can sit on the shore and catch a hundred fish, and it won't annihilate the salmon population. To do that, you need to catch tens of thousands of fish per day.

[Eagleon]

Good luck hunting every member of a species alone, too. You can sit on the shore and catch a hundred fish, and it won't annihilate the salmon population. To do that, you need to catch tens of thousands of fish per day.

Well, there is such a thing as disruption without annihilation. You wouldn't have to catch the fish to kill them all, just stop them from breeding. This is a common fallacy for anti-environmentalists - ecologies are complex critters, mostly robust but prone to failure from seemingly silly and small things like twenty-foot dams and insect repellant. There's something similar to herd immunity that may also disrupt breeding of a species, where enough have been hunted that mate selection drops to create a genetic bottleneck between two breeding populations. Very harmful from a relatively small change, though yeah, still something that would be difficult if not impossible in most cases for one person to try. Large predators will obviously be the most vulnerable to this pressure.

Your best bet here is an island/oasis ecology. Isolated/semi-isolated chunks of stable biodiversity do exist in the real world, they just have some quirks like insular dwarfism. Weirdly enough this is exactly what I was considering today for something of my own... Economies can be simulated with similar concepts as ecology. It doesn't have to be crazy realistic, just fun and interesting.

[atomfullerene]

I think this idea has a lot of potential.  In fact, the goal of the game could be to keep your little ecosystem running well enough to preserve your own life (with other goals possible as well).  But it oughta simulate more than just the lifeforms, as the OP mentioned there's a lot you could do with tracking economy, geology, and the like.

[Grakelin]

I remember in Tom Stoppard's Arcadia, Valentine says that everything ultimately works in predictable patterns, including the economy and the ecology. This was 17 years ago, I am not sure if this still applies to the scientific community.

[Stargrasper]

But even larger ecologies can be very sensitive to change.  It may not collapse when the player hunts every wolf to extinction for eating his cattle...but it's going to take quite a blow.

If there are really lots of wolves, they can breed so fast, they will not even notice player killing some of them. AFAIK, in real world, some speciaes can be wiped, but as long as there is still some fertile soil available, there will likely by lots of animals available. THey will just be not so diverce.

Because humankind has never caused an extinction before. </sarcasm>

Seriously, as described by Eagleon, there's more than one way to whip out a species.  And more than one way to kill an ecology.  Also consider that in a game world as originally described, there's no possible way anything short of a supercomputer can handle large enough populations for losses to not be noticed.  Most animals don't breed half as quickly as you seem to think.  And if it has a lot of babies, there's a reason; usually that the mortality rate is so horrendously bad already.  Just because's there's free land around, that doesn't automatically mean there's an animal population.  Very small things can and do cause massive ecologies to collapse.

[Supermikhail]

It seems to me that by ecological collapse you mean some species' extinction. But I've heard that's actually how evolution works. Some small thing happens. Some species adapt to it, and some go extinct. And the ecosystem becomes something different. On the other hand, to cause an ecosystem to turn into lifeless waste, a small thing won't be enough (well, a nuclear bomb is a small thing, but only before it explodes<-a hyperbole contained).
However, rabbits in Australia... Well, it's so-so. If they eat all vegetation, they are going to go extinct, without food. And then the ecology is going to regenerate. If there was something like it that didn't have an efficient predator in the whole world, then the humanity would be screwed.