Large Scale Combat System - RTS Sieges

Large Scale Combat System

Command entire armies, not individual soldiers. LSCS is a complete RTS battle framework for Unity, built for field battles and siege warfare in the tradition of Total War.

• Try the playable demo: Download
• Support, questions and integrations: Discord
• Setup videos: Playlist

What you get

The player commands Formations rather than single soldiers. Under that sit four things you would otherwise have to build yourself: player controls with drag-to-position and drag-to-widen, a modular tactical AI, a combat model with counters and morale, and a set of job-based managers that keep the frame rate stable when the unit count climbs.

Everything is configured through ScriptableObjects. Units, damage tables, weapons, AI personalities and combat rules are all assets you edit in the Inspector, so you can build a full army roster without opening a script.

Vertex GPU Instancing

This system comes with a complete GPU Instancing system that bakes your Animations into textures for better Performance. You can also use this in other projects

Combat

• Unit types: melee infantry, foot archers, musketeers, cavalry, horse archers and elephants, each with its own combat behaviour asset.
• Cavalry charges: knockback with configurable force, duration, damage multiplier and impact mode (single target or area), plus a timed charge damage bonus on contact.
• Flanking and elevation: attacks from the side or rear bypass shields and defence skill. High ground and low ground apply their own modifiers.
• Two damage models: a standard HP system, or a Rome 1 style two-roll system where most blows are parried and morale decides the battle. Switching between them is one drag-and-drop field, with no changes to your unit data.
• Morale and generals: generals radiate morale effects to nearby formations. Losses, flanking, arrow fire and the death of a general all feed into morale, and a formation that breaks routs to the nearest map exit.
• Orders during combat: pull formations out of a fight to retreat, reposition or feint.
• Attack anything: gates, barricades and your own destructible objectives are valid targets alongside enemy units.
• Unit Variations: Melee, Archers, Musketeers, Elephants, Horse Archers, Cavalry are all premade in the demo
• Damage Modifiers: Setup how Damage works in detail against other units (eg Archers do 2x Damage against Elephants, 1.5x Damage against Cavalry, 0.8x Damage against Melee)
• Pre game deployment: Setup the formations how you like them in the deployment phase within a adjustable area before starting the match

Siege warfare

• Destructible gates that carve the NavMesh while standing and reopen the path when destroyed.
• Walkable walls with snap-to-wall placement, so archers can man the battlements and stairs connect the levels correctly.
• Capture zones with capture timers, priorities, choke points and a tug-of-war score.
• Siege AI that picks which gate to break, mans threatened walls first, and pushes for capture points once a breach opens.
• Threat sensors that raise the priority of a wall segment as enemies approach it, so defenders shift to answer the real attack instead of holding an empty section.

Tactical AI

The Commander AI is assembled from Strategies and Tactics, both ScriptableObjects. Each tactic scores itself against the current battlefield and the highest scorers get the troops.

Included tactics cover forming and charging a battle line, holding a reserve that answers flank attacks, cavalry flanking runs, horse archer kiting, archer target selection, and the full siege set for attacker and defender. Writing your own means inheriting one class and implementing two methods.

An optional BattleGrid influence map lets the AI read danger and opportunity across the field, so cavalry gives spear formations a wide berth while riding straight through arrow fire to reach the archers behind them. It is currently used in field battles (Battlegrid for Sieges is in work).

AI can also play against AI, in field battles and sieges alike, which makes autobattles and balance testing straightforward.

Presentation

• Formation flags showing health bars and status indicators for engaged, walking, shooting, flanked and charging.
• Minimap displaying units, gates and capture zones, with live ownership colours and custom icons per object type.
• In-game visualisers for paths, detection areas, firing arcs and general auras.
• Full mobile input support through a dedicated touch input manager as Prefab.

Performance

Movement, cohesion, rotation and target acquisition run through Unity's C# Job System and the Burst Compiler.

For the unit counts that make this genre work, the included Vertex instancing system replaces SkinnedMeshRenderers with vertex-baked meshes drawn by GPU instancing. A hybrid LOD mode keeps real Animators on units near the camera and switches to baked meshes further out, so close-up soldiers keep full Mecanim quality while the rest of the army costs a fraction of it.

Your FPS will depend on unit count, model complexity and how you configure the LOD distances, and the baked animation path is what makes the large counts practical. If you want to check before buying, the playable demo linked above is the same scene.

Requirements

• Unity 6.3 or newer (6.4 prefered)
• The new Input System (set Active Input Handling to Both if your project still uses the old one)
• A baked NavMesh in every battle scene

Documentation and support

Written documentation covers unit setup, formation building, the AI system and the siege components, with a troubleshooting chapter for the mistakes that catch people out. Setup videos are linked above. For anything else, the Discord is the fastest way to reach me, and I answer publisher emails.

Please note: the characters, environments and animations shown in the screenshots and video are for demonstration only and are not included. A separate demo scene is included.