If you've ever tried building a real-time strategy game on the platform, you've probably realized that finding a solid roblox command and conquer script is basically the holy grail of development. It's one thing to make a character jump around and hit things with a sword, but it's an entirely different beast to manage dozens of units, a base-building system, and a functional economy all at once.
The Command and Conquer series defined a specific era of RTS gaming. It wasn't just about clicking; it was about the "sidebar," the heavy industrial aesthetic, and the way units felt like they had weight. Bringing that vibe into Roblox requires more than just a simple "MoveTo" command. You need a cohesive system that handles selection, pathfinding, and combat logic without making the server explode.
The Core Logic of Unit Selection
The first hurdle you'll hit when writing a roblox command and conquer script is the selection box. You know the one—you click and drag your mouse, and a transparent green square appears, highlighting all your units. In Roblox, this is surprisingly tricky because the mouse is moving in 2D screen space, but your units are in 3D world space.
To make this work, you usually have to use the WorldToViewportPoint function. You're essentially taking every unit owned by the player and checking if their current position on the screen falls within the coordinates of that dragged box. It's a bit of math, and if you have a hundred units on the map, doing this every single frame can get laggy. A good tip is to only run the heavy calculation when the player actually releases the mouse button, rather than constantly checking while they're dragging.
Once you've got those units selected, you need a way to show it. A simple SelectionBox object or a circular BillboardGui at the feet of the units usually does the trick. It's a small detail, but it's what makes it feel like a real RTS.
Handling Movement and Pathfinding
So, you've selected your army of tanks and soldiers. Now you need to tell them where to go. This is where most scripts fall apart. If you just tell fifty units to move to the exact same Vector3 position, they're going to clip into each other, get stuck on corners, or form a weird, jittery pile of parts.
Using Roblox's PathfindingService is the standard way to go, but you have to be smart about it. If you trigger a new path calculation for every single unit individually every time you click, you're going to hit the service limits pretty fast.
A better approach I've seen involves a "group lead" logic. You calculate one main path for the center of the group and have the individual units offset themselves around that point. It looks way more natural and keeps the performance high. Plus, adding a bit of "flocking" behavior makes the units look like a coordinated platoon rather than a bunch of lost NPCs.
The Base Building Sidebar
What really sets a roblox command and conquer script apart from a generic RTS is the construction method. In games like StarCraft, you have workers go out and physically build structures. In C&C, you click a button in a sidebar, wait for a progress bar, and then "plop" the finished building onto the map.
Coding this requires a solid UI-to-Server communication line. You need a local script handling the UI clicks and the ghost-building (that transparent version of the building that follows your mouse). Then, once the player clicks to place it, the server has to verify if they have enough credits and if the spot is actually clear.
Don't forget the "Build Radius" check! Classic C&C wouldn't let you just drop a Tesla Coil in the middle of the enemy base; you had to build near your existing structures. Adding a simple distance check between the new building's position and your nearest existing building is a quick way to replicate that classic feel.
Resource Management and Harvesters
We can't talk about this without mentioning the economy. Whether it's Tiberium or just "Gold," your script needs to handle the lifecycle of a resource. This means creating a harvester unit that can recognize a resource node, "mine" it for a set amount of time, and then find its way back to a refinery.
This is a great place to use State Machines. Your harvester script should basically have a few modes: Idle, MovingToResource, Mining, and Returning. By switching between these states, the logic stays clean and you won't end up with harvesters just standing around confused because they forgot what they were doing.
Combat and Targeting Systems
Combat in an RTS is all about priorities. If you just let your units fire at whatever is closest, they might end up shooting a wall while a massive tank obliterates them. A sophisticated roblox command and conquer script usually includes a basic "aggro" system.
Units should have a detection range (usually a Magnitude check against other units). If an enemy enters that range, the unit switches to an attacking state. But you also want the player to be able to override this by right-clicking a specific target. Implementing a "Target" variable in your unit's script that defaults to nil but can be set by the player is the easiest way to handle this.
For the actual projectiles, don't use high-physics objects if you can avoid it. Using FastCast or simple Raycasting for bullets and shells is much easier on the engine than spawning hundreds of physical spheres with velocity.
Optimizing for Large Armies
Roblox is great, but it has its limits. If you want a full-scale war with hundreds of units, you have to be ruthless with optimization. One trick is to handle all the visual stuff (like health bars and selection rings) on the client side. The server shouldn't care what color a health bar is; it only needs to know the unit's health is 50/100.
Also, consider using BulkMoveTo if you're updating a lot of unit positions at once. It's a specialized function that's way faster than setting the CFrame of fifty different models individually. Every millisecond of server heart-time you save is more room for more explosions.
Security and Script Integrity
If you're looking for a pre-made roblox command and conquer script on public forums or "leak" sites, be extremely careful. RTS scripts are complex, which makes them perfect hiding spots for backdoors or malicious code that can ruin your game or get it deleted.
Always read through the code. If you see something like require(123456789), and that ID points to a private module, delete it immediately. It's almost always a virus. Building your own system from the ground up—even if you're using tutorials for the individual parts—is always the safer and more rewarding route. Plus, when things inevitably break, you'll actually know how to fix them because you wrote the logic yourself.
Final Thoughts on RTS Development
Creating a functional Command and Conquer style game on Roblox is a huge undertaking, but it's honestly one of the most rewarding genres to work in. There's something so satisfying about watching a script you wrote take a bunch of individual parts and turn them into a disciplined army that follows your every command.
It takes a lot of trial and error. You'll spend hours wondering why your tanks are spinning in circles or why your sidebar won't stop spawning power plants for free. But once you get that core loop of "Select, Move, Build, Attack" working, you've got the foundation for something really special. Just keep the code clean, keep the performance in mind, and don't be afraid to dive deep into the math of selection boxes. It's worth it in the end.