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ok, my idea for an RTS is based around a few features that I would like to see implemented in RTS Games right now, and how to incorporatethose features into sometihng that really rocks and makes for deeper and more realistic gameplay.

Voice Chat

multiple players per faction

terrain modification and manipulation.

human resource gathering

over maps and battle maps

infrastucture

these are major features, small things that change things subtly can be expected, but these are the drastic changes you would encounter.
first, let me introduce you to the setting of my game. the game would take place during the Cold War. scenarios and story elements are of little matter here,as a story can be fleshed out later and right now the concept is important. So basically you are going to have realitic units and such,but you ARE going to have some upgrading and techonlgy and such. the sides are pobably going to be the soviets vs the allies, prettybasic story line (a little too close to Red Alert, but it IS a good scenario) the allies will usually have more high-tech units and weapons,while the soviets will rely on brute force (as was shown in history) basically you have four branches of the military, the Army,the Marines, Air Force, and Navy. there's also Special Ops and such.

ok, each faction has certain pools of recources that they can draw from, the resources include Mineral Ore, for building machinery and weapons,food, which is brought to the front to support soldiers, and manpower. man-power comes in two flavors, soldier, and homeland. soldier manpower is the population of your country that is able to be trained as soldiers.you can set the requierments for soldiers,the tighter the requirements the better soldiers you get, but the less you getthe opposite is true by lowering the requirements. it is useful to control this dependign on how you do, if you are getting into dire straights and need soldiers you can lower it to pretty much anyone who can hold a gun and use them. homeland manpower is the percent of people that dont fit into the soldier percentile, and they are involved in the manufacturing part of your infastructure.the more of these people have the faster vehicles and weapons are built. by striking a balance between your population's jobs, you can producean effective military.
the battle is mixed into your local and regional maps. in an individual mission, you have the regional area at your disposal. the region is displayedby an overmap, and by moving around this map you select one of the areas on the overmap and can move your camera around the area and put up bases and such. you can move units and such from area to area via roads, and it usually taks a little while to get from one to the other. as you upgrade technology you can upgrade your infastructure for higher bandwidth, lol.

terrain modification is something lightly covered in most other RTS games. usually you can maybie blast away some rocks or trees to open a path. in my idea, you have the ability to use various terraforming machines to alter the local terrain to your need,s although the cost can be high and itcan take a while to get a large area pushed the way you want.basically, you have dredgers to deepen the water for ships, a bulldozer unit that can push rocks and other debris like destroyed vehicles and buildings.there are also digger tools that can lower terrain and dump truck tools that can fill in water with dirt. with these tools you can dig deep trenches, for moving units while being covered from enemy fire, you can widen or lengthen, then deepen a river to allow ships to get from one body of water to another.you could make hills to allow for transport up steep cliffs and such. you could also fill in water to allow for extra land, or dig out for extra ocean front.you can also take down mountains and subtly change theterrain to provide for better tactics.

for multiplayer I think that there needs to be two additions.

first, multipe player factions.

with this you either have a few players work cooperatively with one army and pool of resources to construct a vast military, but have the advantage of extra people to multitask, or have one person assigned to one or two branchs, airforce, marines, navy, army ect. each would share the same basic units like
transist vehicles, light tanks, and the basic infatrymen, but the meat of the units is based on each branche's specialty.

second voice chat.

by having voice chat you basically leave your hands free to work on your military. in the heat of battle, having to reach over and ask for reinforcements can sometimes turn the battle into your opponent's favor. if you have voice, it allows quicker communication, and more fluid work, and it's much better. it also allows for more opportunities to gameplay. I'll give an example:

say that communication between each military branch would be handled through wireless "relay posts" and also hard-wired from 'command posts' wireless signals would instantly set up a radius of communication, , but it would be interceptable by enemy units. the talk would be generic chatter if the enemies hear it normally, but if they invest in a code breaker research facility then that would allow them to eventually translate your garble into normal feed. if they have a comms relay post inside your relay post's range, then that would mean that they would have better ability to intercept your transmissions. I also think it would be cool to have spy units that could set up recievers which would be rather small boxes that would pick up any signal it's range is in. command posts (construction yards) would have communications via hard lines that must be planted by a machine. Earliest tech levels would have shallow lines that are bearly concealed. a Spy could plant a wire tap on any part and pick up the communications that way. However, each bug has a small listening range and thus a spy or listening post would have to be rather close. also, the lines are hard to find except by using certain units or something that can detect them. the upgrades would make the hard line stronger and shielded against bugs better, but upgraded spies would have stronger bugs that would be able to tap through the shielding, and have longer ranges. then I guess that the third upgrade to the hard line would actually be a satellite that would send and recieve signals from upgraded relay posts and command centers with satellites.

I'll have updates with units, structures, and such, but right now I'm just gonna get the idea itself to you