Zero-K

A very solid free(!) and still supported RTS that stands out by several aspects: - no Tiers in the usual sense. You can build top units at the start of the game. The trick is, your economy won't allow you to have enough. - terraforming. Dig holes, erect mountains or simple walls. - the best unit manipulation toolset I ever saw: we can add commands to queue from both sides (to the end of it using Shift and in front of the current order using Space), every unit tries to dodge projectiles automatically (no need to micromanage reactions for every shot), you can order an army to march keeping the formation and at the speed of the slowest unit, etc. - different branches of units to counter/dominate different strategies (e.g. spiders crawl on any angle of surface, jetpacks just jumping - a good counters for terraforming; tanks are slow but powerful and armored, rovers are fast and the best flankers etc.) So the main con is: - steep learning curve (campaign does not help much, but makes it somehow easier). Be ready to read wiki to trully understand the game

This game has the most important feature to come from the ancient halls of SpringRTS and it's lineage. Simple framework, and ever advancing units of scale. On a surface level, this is amass waves of units and send them to fight and die. Defense tech needs some early work, as you can probably not build enough defenses against a early rush unless you have unit to unit counters for it. Number tuning will take forever or at very least some interesting compromises once the math is ground out in testing. I can assure though despite the shell, this game is a good breach back into Total Annihilation style RTS.

Extremely terrible "free" RTS. "Free" game doesn't mean it's a "good game". Plenty of bad ones. This is one of the bad ones. But WHYYY? The game runs slow as heck. From menus, to actual gameplay. It shouldn't be this way or this complicated. I still have Total Annihilation and recall play TA: Spring back in the day. You load it up. It worked. (of course, it's unstable, and CTDs now). I've also played Beyond All Reason, which is very close but is greatly lacking and clumsy. (Enemy commander kills himself and you win the game shortly after match starts. The tech/build menu is convoluted. The maps are waaay to fricken small, hence no strategy, and can bum-rush the AI and win in just a few minutes. Ugh.) I heard of Zero-K being an offshoot of the TA:Spring like B.A.R. is, so gave it whirl. Slow to load, the main menu is sloooow. Unresponsive at times. It's like its mining crypto or something behind the scenes or trying to scan entire drive. FFS, it's just a UI/menu screen. This should not have any issues whatsoever. The game translates into the actual gameplay. It's very much like B.A.R., clunky, slow, responsiveness issues, slow, dragging, turtling, SLOW. How complicated is this ga…

its pretty ok

An enjoyable and unique take on RTS, even within the Total Annihilation like games. I recommend RTS enjoyers give it a shot, if only for the unique perspective and mechanics.

A very deep, complex, fun RTS in the style of Supreme Commander. And it's fully free and still being actively update!