Well, aside from the fact that the base class could build/upgrade tons of structures and were limited by the resources the team has gathered much like the aliens... erm, oh, wait, are you saying the aliens aren't RTS in any way?
A game that did "real" RTS/FPS hybrid before NS was Giants: Citizen Kabuto. The Marines had to build a functioning base with denfenses and factories which they upgraded and bought weapons in, just like in NS. That game came out around the time of the GeForce2 GTS and was the first game to make good use of the T&L engine.
Now, about porting NS to another engine... that would be great, eventhough I don't see it being done because there's so much work done. I would, however, like to "vote" for the SS engine. While it's true that its MAIN strength is large outdoor areas and many enemies, it's not the ONLY strength. To begin with, instead of having many enemies, you can have few, incredibly detailed enemies and reach the same effect. Polys are polys, after all. Also, the SS engine has some really cool and useful effects. A few examples:
1: Very nice fog. Imagine a skulk or fade hiding in densely fogged corridor, not being clearly visible until a marine practically steps on it. Major tensionbuilder.
2: Nice teleporter/camera combos that could be used by the aliens for a new twist on the hive mind and give them even more mobility. It's kind of a drain on the comp though.
3: Gravity effects grande! SS has an extremely advanced gravity system. You can bend and twist gravity almost any way you want, which fits perfectly in spaceships/stations. There could be levels that are supposed to be rotating spacestations where "down" is always "outwards". Would give gameplay a new twist.
4: Space warping. The SS engine can warp distances and directions in weird ways - I think it's linked to the gravity system. This could be used as alien abilites. Take Blink for example: instead of simply teleporting the Fade, it might be possible to make it shrink the length of the corridor its in - or stretch it out. Picture a marine running from a Fade, only to see the corridor in front of him streeeeetch out, enabling the Fade to catch up with him even easier. Not sure it can be done completely dynamically but if not, it could be used in tandem with level design.
Another strength of the SS engine is that so far, it has been almost completely backwards compatible. It was upgraded between SS1 and SS2, but the code interface remained the same and most mods still worked as they should. It's likely that the same will be true for SS3, so there's a future for the engine.
Comments
A game that did "real" RTS/FPS hybrid before NS was Giants: Citizen Kabuto. The Marines had to build a functioning base with denfenses and factories which they upgraded and bought weapons in, just like in NS. That game came out around the time of the GeForce2 GTS and was the first game to make good use of the T&L engine.
Now, about porting NS to another engine... that would be great, eventhough I don't see it being done because there's so much work done. I would, however, like to "vote" for the SS engine. While it's true that its MAIN strength is large outdoor areas and many enemies, it's not the ONLY strength. To begin with, instead of having many enemies, you can have few, incredibly detailed enemies and reach the same effect. Polys are polys, after all. Also, the SS engine has some really cool and useful effects. A few examples:
1: Very nice fog. Imagine a skulk or fade hiding in densely fogged corridor, not being clearly visible until a marine practically steps on it. Major tensionbuilder.
2: Nice teleporter/camera combos that could be used by the aliens for a new twist on the hive mind and give them even more mobility. It's kind of a drain on the comp though.
3: Gravity effects grande! SS has an extremely advanced gravity system. You can bend and twist gravity almost any way you want, which fits perfectly in spaceships/stations. There could be levels that are supposed to be rotating spacestations where "down" is always "outwards". Would give gameplay a new twist.
4: Space warping. The SS engine can warp distances and directions in weird ways - I think it's linked to the gravity system. This could be used as alien abilites. Take Blink for example: instead of simply teleporting the Fade, it might be possible to make it shrink the length of the corridor its in - or stretch it out. Picture a marine running from a Fade, only to see the corridor in front of him streeeeetch out, enabling the Fade to catch up with him even easier. Not sure it can be done completely dynamically but if not, it could be used in tandem with level design.
Another strength of the SS engine is that so far, it has been almost completely backwards compatible. It was upgraded between SS1 and SS2, but the code interface remained the same and most mods still worked as they should. It's likely that the same will be true for SS3, so there's a future for the engine.