Res changed

glimmerman

The changes to res in 161 make it almost impossible to win as a comm.

plasma is absolutely useless so I don't even know why it is in for a comm. The old res system was much better and actually had a use for it. I constantly find myself out of res and by then the aliens have raped based because I can't afford any defences.

Please change it back :/

RUben1

I agree, the alliens still have gorges which can place hydras using their carbon. Should be the same for marines.

twiliteblue

What has changed? I was comm for a few minutes, and I noticed the following:

Sentries now cost 20 Carbon (Ouch, this really hurts marine early game defense. But later on, Sentries are not as spammable, which is good). Since Sentry push has been one of the Marine's main strategy, I can't imagine carbon being useless at all.

Ammo and Medpack drops still cost Plasma, so you can use your excess Plasma to pave a way to the Hive with Medpacks.

Heroman117

I don't get what your saying at all, you need carbon to do ANYTHING, i think its plasma that is now useless since as a commander the only thing that still costs plasma are ammo and med packs. I now find myself hurting for carbon the entire game unless there is a marine/alien stalemate that drags on for a very long game, while at the same time i have about 150 plasma, even after i can spam medpacks and ammo packs even easier now that plasma is much less valuable. Now instead of 1 turret which costs a large amount of res to spam, you can spam 10 medkits or ammo packs. They really need to change it back to turrets costing plasma because although the rifle is more effective now early base defense is now very tricky, and sparing 20 res on a turret early game is a waste, you could have bought 2 armories, layed down a command console, build a res node and then later upgrade it, the value per resources doesn't pan out, 1 single turret is not as valuable as any of these things. Either make turrets cheaper or make them cost plasma, i actually liked that way that any marine who had some spare plasma could contribute to base defense as a commander and i was surprised that it was taken out.

Runteh

Eh?

Glimmerman is right, and just played on the server with him.

For Marines nothing costs Carbon, everything requires plasma. It basically leave the team completely under resourced.

Also, sentries have been costing 20 Carbon since 160, and maybe even before.

I have been commanding for the past few builds (primarily) and now it is impossible to win an even skilled game. Aliens get Fades very quickly, and Marines are struggling to get beyond Tier 1 Tech.

Align

No, carbon is the team resource, plasma is personal.
It's really easy to remember: carbon is hard, solid, and used for big things that are going to be around for a long time, like armouries or extractors. Plasma is more ethereal, viscous, and used for temporary things like weapons that you lose on death, or medpacks.

Runteh

That may be true, but not on the servers. Everything costs plasma.

Go to the buy menu as commander, every building costs plasma. This is not my 'opinion' this is how it is.

I'm not talking about what the players buy at the armour, i'm talking about costs to commander.

Quovatis

Sentries costing carbon is fairly balanced for tram, since marines get a lot of resources on that map. It doesn't work so well on Rockdown, but it's not an official map anyway. Maybe reduce the cost to 10 carbon and it will be fine.

Runteh

Ah, I do mean Carbon... But anyway, plasma (is that the blue one?) is useless now.

Seriously, why on earth do you have blue and green symbols that look exactly the same?

Surely green should be plasma, and blue should be Carbon. Carbon is a lot colder and harder than plasma, and the eye is more susceptible to greens and yellows in the spectrum. They look warmer (hotter).

Quovatis

Don't forget the new (purple) energy symbol that looks exactly like the others as well.

Anyway, I like to change to Carbon. It keeps the sentry spam to a minimum. However, 20 carbon is too expensive for a sentry. I should be 5 or 10 carbon. 20 plasma is a good number if you go back to plasma, however.

Deadzone

<!--quoteo(post=1823651:date=Jan 12 2011, 03:35 PM:name=Runteh)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Runteh @ Jan 12 2011, 03:35 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1823651"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Surely green should be plasma, and blue should be Carbon. Carbon is a lot colder and harder than plasma, and the eye is more susceptible to greens and yellows in the spectrum. They look warmer (hotter).<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Sure, but Carbon is "organic" since most life is carbon based. organic = green?

I can understand a request for making them distinct symbols beyond color difference, but specific color requests are silly :P The devs could make carbon "rainbow" and the game would work fine.

Runteh

The first way that the eye recognises things is based on silhouette. I am not the only one getting confused over the symbols. I know it sounds silly, and i'm not some moronic idiot. But two circles that looks exactly the same, but with a different colour. It is a UI nightmare.

Also, Carbon is probably one of the most abundant elements in the universe.

Having these symbols stay as is will be problematic, and remember that this is selling to different cultures and languages as well - the translations will be messy.

Deadzone

Hmm you actually made me think of another issue that I could understand the problem of color - colorblindness.

I said I agreed with you about different symbols, though. Read stuff closely :) I just commented that asking for "carbon has to be blue" is kinda....

Rulgrok

The sentries costing 20 carbon makes them almost useless. Carbon starting off with one resource takes 10 seconds to acquire 1 carbon, that means it take approximately 3+ minutes to achieve 20 carbon. An as carbon are used on the precious marine armories, IPs, weapon/armor upgrades, weapons and everything else that does make balancing resources to use sentrys as a method of base protection worthless seeing that 3 minutes of your time can be killed in a skulk in less than 1 minute if its not covered.

Sentrys should either cost plasma or a much smaller carbon cost. Simply by putting them as carbon you've decreased how often they will be used because the general goal for a marine right now is to acquire a second cc, armory w/ upgrade, and flamethrowers. Thats 20 for the cc, 20 for the armory, 20 the cc upgrade, 20 for the advanced armory, 20 for the weapons module, and 20 for the flamethrowers itself. Making it about 120 carbon being 6x as much as 20 being almost 18+ minutes of resources! Certainly by acquiring more rts the time is cut in half but this just goes to show the extreme dependence of the marine team on being able to acquire rts and keep them covered... and seeing that turrets cost carbon instead of plasma manpower would most likely ended up being the ones deployed to guard the precious rts which will end up leaving the marines most often in a losing battle.

uffo

I've changed my icons, not so confusing anymore. Didn't change the colors, so I'll get used to them.
Personally I think that the carbon should come first as it is the resource that's most often needed.

<img src="http://ameba.lpt.fi/~kallleo/roskat/ns2_res.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />

gorge.ous

It doesn't have to be that simplistic but the current system is to confusing. The symbols look very similar (Use simple symbols like the good old ACDC bolt for energy) and the colors kina too (maybe play with saturation a bit?.

Align

A step in the right direction would be to just make them different shapes. Square for carbon, Circle for plasma, Triangle for energy.

Plasma

+1000

Also confusing why there is purple plasma or carbon (forget whats what heh) when the other icon is green.

Please try making turrets really cheap (like 5) or put it back to personal res for turrets (although thats confusing as), they're unusable at the moment :(

kingmob

Yes something does have to be done to make these different things pop out besides color.
Shapes is an excellent choice.

I would vote for a hexagon for carbon.
A hexagon with little circles on the joints.

It is one of the more common arrangements of carbon within complex molecules.
Even in diamond and graphite it forms hexagons.
<a href="http://www.edinformatics.com/interactive_molecules/diamond.htm" target="_blank">http://www.edinformatics.com/interactive_m...les/diamond.htm</a>

For energy a big lightning bolt ot a sun symbol are both popular
<a href="http://www.google.com/images?q=energy+icon&hl=en&prmd=ivns&source=lnms&tbs=isch:1&ei=6DIuTa6SBJC-sQOLhqCpBw&sa=X&oi=mode_link&ct=mode&ved=0CAsQ_AU&biw=1440&bih=785" target="_blank">http://www.google.com/images?q=energy+icon...440&bih=785</a>

Plasma could stay as a ball or be blobby like.
<a href="http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&biw=1440&bih=785&tbs=isch:1&sa=1&q=plasma&aq=f&aqi=g10&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=" target="_blank">http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&biw...q=&gs_rfai=</a>

glimmerman

yes i seem to have gotten my resources mixed up but my point still stands. PLASMA is now useless and carbon is in severe shortage. Especially on rockdown where securing a second tech point is very difficult because of the relatively large distances marines have to walk to get to anything.

Sehzade

I personally don't find the symbols confusing. I only recognize the color. So I know green=carbon, blue=plasma, purple=energy

as comm I now support my marines ALOT more because I have so much plasma..I like that.

and until late game I spend all my carbon on tech etc. So it's indeed pretty hard to get sentry defense set up. Only in the late game you can spare carbon.
(first you need more res, armory, expansion, upgrades, more res, 2nd IP, frontline armory etc. (btw: not a fix builorder at all)) no way I would waste precious carbon on static defenses. imagine they take out a turret...I would weep for days!!!

broadband

what was wrong with just having res? why do we have to over complicate everything?

Feha

I like the fact that there is plasma and carbon now, altough they might want to think about other names, preferably some that make players understand that their difference is that 1 is personal, the other is team.

Also, at the guy saying plasma should be green because of it being a warmer color than blue... You do know that usually blue is warmer right?

I guess carbon could be made black though, as thats usually how it looks when its pure (graphite that is, diamonds is not very black, but transparent icons are often very bad ;D). Also like the idea about changing icon to a hexagon or something, or maybe a nanotube seeing as nanites have a major role in the ns2 universe. Plasma could stay the same it is now.
Another idea for resource icons, is that maybe it should be P (blue?) for placma and C (green?) for carbon?

NurEinMensch

<!--quoteo(post=1823786:date=Jan 13 2011, 03:03 AM:name=broadband)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (broadband @ Jan 13 2011, 03:03 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1823786"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->what was wrong with just having res? why do we have to over complicate everything?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->


In NS1 aliens only had personal res (now plasma), and marines only had team res (now carbon). The problem with that is that's impossible to properly balance it with different team sizes. A unified res model (both sides using personal and team res) scales much better and allows the devs to balance the game for small and big teams.

broadband

<!--quoteo(post=1823802:date=Jan 12 2011, 09:34 PM:name=NurEinMensch)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (NurEinMensch @ Jan 12 2011, 09:34 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1823802"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->In NS1 aliens only had personal res (now plasma), and marines only had team res (now carbon). The problem with that is that's impossible to properly balance it with different team sizes. A unified res model (both sides using personal and team res) scales much better and allows the devs to balance the game for small and big teams.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

i played the game, i was talking about the name not the system. resources > cobalt diamond sapphire +4 str stam beltz

Harimau

On a related note, I've been looking through the code, and although I can find how each resource type is <b>spent</b>, as well as the tooltips and the numbered costs (irrespective of type), I can't actually find where [resource type (Carbon)] or [action type (Build)] (which determine expenditure from whichever resource pool) is <b>specified</b> for an [item (Sentry)] in the tech tree. It utterly eludes me.

Heroman117

<!--quoteo(post=1823779:date=Jan 12 2011, 06:41 PM:name=glimmerman)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (glimmerman @ Jan 12 2011, 06:41 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1823779"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->yes i seem to have gotten my resources mixed up but my point still stands. PLASMA is now useless and carbon is in severe shortage. Especially on rockdown where securing a second tech point is very difficult because of the relatively large distances marines have to walk to get to anything.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

At the moment i agree with you, before turrets cost plasma, which was actually really nice and i liked the system of spending carbon to build the critical team structures and then using the personal res out of your own pocket to put in additional base defense or to spam med packs or ammo packs. However now that turrets cost plasma EVERYTHING changed, now getting turrets early game is entirely out of the question, the cost does not justify the product, asking 20 carbon for a single sentry is completely out of proportion, they die easily and unless you have a lot of them, they don't even defend the base very effectively, maybe if they had a 360 degree firing angle and much higher range and damage the cost might be justified but the way the turret has been designed to be its not. Sentries should be very expendable, not twice as valuable as 2 armory's, or a command console, or an infantry portal, that just doesn't pan out. Really all they need to do is make sentries cost plasma and people will find much more use of plasma like they did in build 160 and prior. As for rockdown securing a second tech point yes it is a very difficult task if your playing against a competent alien team, however with teammate and commander cooperation with med pack spam and sneaky use of macs, its not too hard to clear out an alien tech point early in the game.

Quovatis

<!--quoteo(post=1823845:date=Jan 12 2011, 10:11 PM:name=Harimau)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Harimau @ Jan 12 2011, 10:11 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1823845"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->On a related note, I've been looking through the code, and although I can find how each resource type is <b>spent</b>, as well as the tooltips and the numbered costs (irrespective of type), I can't actually find where [resource type (Carbon)] or [action type (Build)] (which determine expenditure from whichever resource pool) is <b>specified</b> for an [item (Sentry)] in the tech tree. It utterly eludes me.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Under "Balance" I see "kSentryCost = 5". Maybe they meant for it to be 5 carbon but there's a bug somewhere? 5 carbon would be perfect. But yeah, I can't find where it's carbon or plasma.

twiliteblue

Although 20 carbon for a Sentry is quite expensive IMO, they do deal quite a lot of damage, especially to Skulks (it takes a Sentry only about 1 second to kill a Skulk). I think 10 Carbon per Sentry is good value.

As for Plasma, I think the income rate is currently too high. Putting a cap on the maximum Plasma will certainly help make it a more strategic resource.

Harimau

<!--quoteo(post=1823850:date=Jan 13 2011, 01:58 PM:name=Quovatis)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Quovatis @ Jan 13 2011, 01:58 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1823850"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Under "Balance" I see "kSentryCost = 5". Maybe they meant for it to be 5 carbon but there's a bug somewhere? 5 carbon would be perfect. But yeah, I can't find where it's carbon or plasma.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Nah, that's:
<!--c1--><div class='codetop'>CODE</div><div class='codemain'><!--ec1-->kSentryCost = 20    
kSentryTechCost = 5<!--c2--></div><!--ec2-->
It costs 5 "something" for the sentry "tech" (tech = research? what sentry research is this?), and 20 "something" for the actual sentry.
I've narrowed the possibilities down to resource type (whatever your resource <b>is</b>) and action type (buy, build, manufacture, energybuild, etc. - determines what resource type <b>is used</b> for this action). I cannot find where either of these things are specified for an item like a MAC (energy / energybuild), a Sentry (carbon / build; <b>imo</b> should be plasma / buy), or anything.

Squeal_Like_A_Pig

Regarding the names and symbols for Carbon and Plasma:

They will be changing. We've been talking for some time about ditching the "carbon" and "plasma" naming convention, and just going with Personal Resources and Team Resources. Not fancy, but a lot more straightforward. Not sure what the final symbols will be yet, though or when they will be implemented on the UI.

--Cory