A little bit ago, I stumbled across a "game" called The Linear RPG.  I thought this was hilarious: it had the essense of the gameplay for most J-RPG's in the form of guiding a stick-figure person on a line.  I started thinking: how could other game genres be simplified to this form.  The other day, I was chatting with a friend about my thoughts of RTS's.  Here is what I came up with:

First, here is my definition of the "Starcraft Model": the game gets super-popular and people spend so much time playing that they come up with an optimal build order that soon everyone is using.  Following this model, we would say that pretty much everyone knows the optimal way to generate resources, so they'll be generating resources at the same rate.

So, what is the purpose of resource generation?  It's to limit production of units, because units have a cost.  What is the purpose of research?  It's to slow down generation of super-powerful units.  So, let's have resources coming in at the same rate for each player.  We can have it displayed at the top of the screen.  Research can be one way to spend the resources (we can have a "do research" button that is grayed out if you don't have enough resources).

The core of the game, then, is units attacking other units.  So, we can have a line.  My units go from left to right, my opponent goes from right to left.  They hit in the middle.  In that case, who wins?  Well, we have three basic unit types: rock, paper, and scissors.  Take a wild guess how victory conditions are figured out there.  For tie situations, that's where research comes in to play.  If I've researched to level 2 and you've researched to level "1", all things considered equal my "rock" will beat your "rock".  Creating units involves having three buttons, one for each unit type.  The buttons are grayed out if there are not enough resources.  As you research to higher levels, units take more resources to build.  Whoo hoo, as you can guess this game will be a graphical powerhouse! 

Now comes that "Rush beats boom, boom beats turtle, turtle beats rush" bit.  How do I create rushing, turtling, and booming?  Booming, if I understand correctly, would be clicking on the "research" button.  Rushing would be clicking on the unit buttons.  But what about turtling?  There would need to be a fourth unit type, a "defense".  It costs a bit, but it strengthens your base for when your enemy's troops reach your end of the line.

I'm thinking I will go ahead and write this, mainly as a joke.  Graphics will be very simple, there's not a whole lot of artwork, and the AI can be very simple.  But, for those of you that enjoy RTS games: did I miss anything important in this?