RTS — squad tactics for Minecraft

A real-time tactics game inside Minecraft, built on the ideas of Company of Heroes 2: squads instead of single mobs, directional cover, suppression, territory control, angled vehicle armour and a true-sight fog of war. It is a strategy game played from an overhead camera, with its own lobby, matches and bots. It is not a port of CoH2.

⚠️ Alpha / playtest build. Expect bugs, missing balance and changes between versions. Please report problems with F7 in a match (see Feedback below).

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What you get

Squads, not mobs

• You command squads. Every soldier is a real entity, and the squad obeys as one: move, attack-move, retreat, reinforce, garrison, crew a gun.
• Directional cover. Walls, hedges, sandbags, craters and ruins protect from the side they face. Open ground and fords leave men exposed.
• Suppression and pinning. Machine guns pin infantry, and pinned squads fight worse and can be flanked.
• Firing arcs. Emplacements and team weapons have firing arcs; flank them.
• Veterancy, retreat, reinforcement, mines, repairs, engineers.

Vehicles that behave like vehicles

• Each vehicle has armour plates: front, side and rear, each with its own thickness and angle.
• Penetration, ricochet and angle of impact are worked out from the geometry when the shell hits.
• Crews are real soldiers. Lose the driver or the gunner, and the vehicle feels it.

Fog of war with true sight

• Vision follows line of sight. Buildings, woods and hills cast real shadows.
• Smoke and camouflage hide units.
• Enemies outside your team's sight are never sent to your client.

Five factions, doctrines and abilities

• Wehrmacht, OKW, Soviets, US Forces, British. Any faction can play on either side.
• Doctrines (commanders) unlock abilities as the match goes on:
  • artillery, airborne drops and recon flights;
  • strafing runs that fly in along the line you draw, so enemy anti-aircraft can shoot the plane down.
• Every ability and upgrade has a tooltip with its real numbers.

Territory and economy

• Capture strategic, fuel and munitions points.
• Connected sectors give income.
• Win by victory points or by annihilation.
• Seasons are a match setting, including winter with deep snow and ice.

Bots

• Five levels: easy, medium, hard, expert and adaptive.
• Bots play through the same orders as players and see only their own team's fog. They do not cheat.
• They build a base, take and fortify points, scout and attack in waves.
• If a player drops out of a match, a bot takes over their army until they come back.

Multiplayer

• Up to 12 players per match (6v6), on a dedicated server or a LAN / VPN game straight from the RTS menu.
• Several matches and lobbies can run at once. Players outside a match play normal Minecraft and notice nothing.
• Each match is played on a copy of the map in its own dimension.
• Your normal game is safe. Your inventory, position and game mode are saved before the match and given back after it, even after a crash.
• Tactical board: draw arrows and circles for your team in the lobby and on the minimap.

Maps

• 36 built-in maps for 1v1 to 4v4:
  • 19 community maps adapted with their authors' permission (Two Towns, Venice, Lenin, Bottlenacken, Warzone, The Oder and others). Authors are credited in the lobby and on the loading screen.
  • 3 real places built from OpenStreetMap and open elevation data: Vossenack, the Seelow Heights and Remagen.
  • 14 maps of our own: rivers and bridges, villages, forests and chokepoints.
• The terrain cannot be destroyed. Map objects can: houses you can garrison, bridges, fences, trees, hedges, fortifications.

Tools

• In-game map editor (GUI) with versioned publishing.
• Admin panel (GUI): matches, lobbies, rules, logs and cleanup.
• Data-driven. Squads, weapons, vehicles, buildings, factions, doctrines and upgrades are all JSON in a datapack. New units need no Java code.
• Server rules can be layered and patched per map and per lobby.
• Each match writes a log (orders, bot decisions with their reasons, kills, economy) for review in the admin panel.

Languages

• English and Ukrainian. The RTS interface language is its own setting, separate from Minecraft's.

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How to play

1. Install Minecraft 1.20.1 and Forge 47.4.28 (or newer 47.x).
2. Put the mod .jar into mods. Every player and the server need the same version.
3. On the title screen, press RTS:
   • Create game hosts a lobby. It is open to your network, and the lobby chat shows the address friends join.
   • Find on network joins a friend's game. Over the internet, use a virtual LAN (Radmin VPN, ZeroTier) and Direct Connection.
4. In the lobby, pick a map, your faction and doctrine, and add bots. Then press Ready and Start.

Main controls:

• Camera: arrows or the screen edge; Alt + mouse rotates.
• Selection: left click or drag a box.
• Orders: right click; A attack-move, T retreat, G fire at ground.
• Building: B builds with engineers; F1–F5 select your buildings.
• Menu: Esc.
• Key list: RTS keys in the match menu.

Requirements

• Minecraft Java 1.20.1, Forge 47.4.28+.
• The mod is required on both the client and the server.
• Memory: 4 GB for Minecraft, 6 GB for large maps.
• Recommended: Embeddium. Oculus works without shader packs; shaders are not supported.
• Whoever hosts a LAN game runs both the server with all the bots and their own client, so the strongest PC should host.

Known limitations (alpha)

• Bot strength and the balance are still being tuned.
• Maps are 2.5D: one walkable surface per column.
• Pathfinding and the network traffic of large matches are still being improved.

Feedback

In a match, press F7. It saves your note, the moment in the match and a screenshot into rtsplaytest/ in the host's game folder. Logs are in logs/latest.log, and match logs are in rtslogs/. Please attach them to bug reports.

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Credits

• Community maps: adapted with permission. Each map shows its author(s) in the lobby and on the loading screen.
• Real-place maps: map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database License (ODbL). Elevation from the open terrain models of the German states (NRW, Brandenburg, Rhineland-Palatinate).
• Gameplay reference: the mechanics follow CoH2 and the community balance mod New Balance by Deputat.
• All models, textures and sounds in this mod are original. No assets from Company of Heroes 2 are included.

This is a fan-made project. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by SEGA, Relic Entertainment or Mojang. "Company of Heroes" is a trademark of its respective owner.