Well hello everyone, my name's Jake and I have a quick question for the classy community of GOG. I've been a hardcore PC gamer for some time now, though I've ignored an important factor in PC gaming itself: RTS games. I've played games throughout the years, RPGs and Turn-Based Strategies to name a few. Browsing through my collection of games, I realized that I'd never actually played a RTS game before, and need advice. I'm a quick learner (I taught myself Visual Basic) and am looking for a good RTS to start out with. Is Starcraft good to start with, or something newer?
Thanks,
Jake

I had the same problem before. The way I fixed it is by getting free RTS games or buying cheap ones just to start out. I grabbed the cheapest ones there were with terrible graphics just so I could get an overall look of RTS games. From there I have been getting really expensive RTS games and now I can't stop. This will work extremely well for you since you are a quick learner. Also, you should look at different types of RTS games such as militaristic (that's what I am hooked on) or mythical/fiction.

C&C is free, did I mention that?
Its also not just a mob-rush game, that CAN work but its likely to be costly and lacks elegance, you really do get out what you put in. You can successfully mob-rush with any and every RTS if you do it right (with the possible exception of supreme commander), even starcraft and thats apparently the holy grail of super balance.
I still say go with C&C, almost every RTS is based on it, C&C was based on Dune 2 but it was the first to really nail the formula (like how halo/goldeneye wasn't the first console FPS, it was just the first to get it right)