Donation of Personal Resources

twiliteblue · February 2011

<div class="IPBDescription">Will it be viable in NS2?</div>Resource trading and pooling has been an important feature in RTS games such as the Warcraft series, Starcraft series, and Age of Empires series. If I remember correctly, it was also in the Natural Selection mod for a while, before it was removed.

Now in NS2, resources have been split into two seperate pools, pooling <b>personal resources</b> could well be a viable game feature.

The Marines would be able to donate to the commander, so he can continue dropping medpacks and ammo even if his own personal resources run out, without the need to switch commander.
For the aliens, it could make pushing out the first Lerk, Fade or Onos faster, or pool extra resources to the Gorge to set up more Hydras. Because of the tiered tech system, there is very little chance of imbalanced game play being created (advanced weapons/lifeforms cannot be purchased until the technology has been researched).

Most importantly, Personal resource donation would create new strategies, by allowing teams on low resource incomes to buy strategic weapons/lifeforms faster.
For instance, If two aliens players both have 30 resources, they would have the option of:
1. Both evolving to Lerk
2. If Tier 2 is available, one can donate 20 of his personal resources to the other, so they have a Fade and a Skulk/Gorge.
3. Pool all 60 resources to one Gorge, and build Hydras for defense.
and so on.

Comments/Suggestions?

Zuriki · February 2011

I think implementing it into a logical system would be difficult. Are you also suggesting that PRes can be donated as TRes (Plasma => Carbon) if so, that might be a bit silly. The Com usually stacks a lot of PRes and could easily convert all of it to TRes and pretty much sentry spam or build a load of structures really quickly depending on his needs.

Personally I think how the resources are split works fine as-is. If you need more hydras, ask someone with high PRes to evolve to Gorge and plant some hydras. If you want to rush the marine base, ask them to buy lerk and spore the base to death, maybe get a fade in there to do some heavy structure damage.

spellman23 · February 2011

Being able to donate PRes is a bad idea, as shown in NS1 when Aliens could instantly build a Hive and have a Onos at game start.

twiliteblue · February 2011

What I meant was literally the transfer/donation of person res, NOT the conversion of personal res into team res, or vice versa.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>Being able to donate PRes is a bad idea, as shown in NS1 when Aliens could instantly build a Hive and have a Onos at game start.</div>
Your example was from NS1. In NS2, you cannot evolve to Onos unless your team has Hive Colony researched. Have you really played NS2?

spellman23 · February 2011

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (twiliteblue @ Feb 24 2011, 09:47 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1834907"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'>Your example was from NS1. In NS2, you cannot evolve to Onos unless your team has Hive Colony researched. Have you really played NS2?</div>

Yes, I have.

However, PRes donation tends to cause more problems than its worth. Since Aliens use it to buy lifeforms and Marines weapons now, you can shuffle all your PRes to your best players and completely alter the game flow. While blocking lifeforms and weapons behind certain techs slows things down from the imba brokenness of res donation in NS1, it's still possible.

And really, it's not fun. "Hey guys, so and so is leading the scoreboard, everyone keep donating or else we lose!!!!" is not a fun game mechanic. It marginalizes the weaker players to just pump their PRes to the "pros" so that they can always have the best lifeforms. There should be a penalty for cleverly trapping their best player and killing them, removing their advanced purchases from the game until they can secure more. With Res Donations, it's just Res taken out of the pool, and they can just get more instantly and come out swinging again.

If anything, I would make it a mod.

Harimau · February 2011

Well... if marines can drop weapons that other players can pick up (this is not yet in, but it might go in!) then something like this will be necessary to balance it.

twiliteblue · February 2011

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Harimau @ Feb 25 2011, 05:16 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1834940"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'>Well... if marines can drop weapons that other players can pick up (this is not yet in, but it might go in!) then something like this will be necessary to balance it.</div>
I was just thinking about that 5 minutes ago while I was in the shower (great place for contemplation).

It should be a viable strategy, (in an extreme scenario) if the aliens are pushed back to their last hive (which is a Hive Colony), and are all low on personal (under 20), to pool their resources for an Onos, and a Lerk or two for one final showdown (or possibly a comeback), rather than all turn into Gorges as an act of futile defiance.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>And really, it's not fun. "Hey guys, so and so is leading the scoreboard, everyone keep donating or else we lose!!!!" is not a fun game mechanic. It marginalizes the weaker players to just pump their PRes to the "pros" so that they can always have the best lifeforms. There should be a penalty for cleverly trapping their best player and killing them, removing their advanced purchases from the game until they can secure more. With Res Donations, it's just Res taken out of the pool, and they can just get more instantly and come out swinging again.</div>
In the case I presented above, would you prefer to see a team of Skulks and Gorges, or the possibility of a comeback for the aliens? Don't forget that marine weapons are generally much more accessible to the individual (<=30 p.res). In contrast, an alien cannot evolve to Fade even if he has 49 res, or an Onos even if he has 74 res, severely limiting their options. If the team's res income was suddenly cut off, the alien team is horribly punished, and may never recover (exacerbated by the lack of building recycling feature).

I agree that the pressure on inexperienced players to donate to the 1337 players might be unpleasant, and even borderline on bullying. On the other hand, I believe in a competitive setting, res donation would create much more diverse gameplay.

A professional player would also know better than to waste his resources repeatedly for little gain, and ask for more. After all, it would be very detrimental to the team to pool all the resources for just one Fade, or Onos, but to have nothing but Skulks to support it.

Bacillus · February 2011

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (twiliteblue @ Feb 25 2011, 02:49 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1834944"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'>On the other hand, I believe in a competitive setting, res donation would create much more diverse gameplay.</div>
It's not as simple as that. Good system needs both limitations and possibilities. Which one functions better here depends on the rest of the system built around the res model itself, but in general I think a carefully limited resoucre system gives better grasp for strategical play.

Papayas · March 2011

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Harimau @ Feb 25 2011, 01:16 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1834940"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'>Well... if marines can drop weapons that other players can pick up (this is not yet in, but it might go in!) then something like this will be necessary to balance it.</div>

I think they have just added this into the game :D

<span style="color:#00FF00">
+1</span> for the main idea from the creator of this topic.

It is good for defenses as I could definitely do with a bit more PRes when I am buffy up my first hive :P

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (spellman23 @ Feb 25 2011, 03:26 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1834886"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'>Being able to donate PRes is a bad idea, as shown in NS1 when Aliens could instantly build a Hive and have a Onos at game start.</div>

You are wrong. Firstly, you need a Hive Colony before you can get an Onos and by this time of the game I will probably have enough PRes to become Onos anyway.

Anyway, if the Onos is going to be as good as they say then everyone will want to be the Onos themselves so they won't donate their own PRes to the other people.

They should NOT be able to turn PRes (Personnal Resources) into TRes (Team Resources). I don't think anyone said this as an idea but I would still like to get my view of out there right now so no one gets any ideas.

Align · March 2011

You can't work under the assumption that everyone will be selfish. And not just because some people are less dumb than that, but also because there's the whole competitive side of playing where people work together at all times.

spellman23 · March 2011

Thank you Papayas for failing to read whole thread.

@Align, while I will concede in higher level play this could be interesting, I'd rather build for safety in the "normal" case and in fear of devolution of players to basic silliness.

Res moving works really well in RTS games because often time your team is small or well-designed to begin with. So, I agree to go all Zerglings and shift my gas to my Terran buddy. Great! I love it!

However, in NS2, I'm hoping we'll have at least 6 players on each side, and the work to optimize it well without resorting to simple "dogpile res to playerX" is much more difficult. Not saying it's impossible, but all you need is a few random "pros" and you can really ruin the game experience with their entitlement issues.

Bacillus · March 2011

Btw, has there been any talk of avoiding the equipment/lifeform bursts now that the res models are both more individualistic and also less res spent on building stuff? By bursts I mean that the whole team either hits a specific res count for something right at the same time or the whole team buys a newly unlocked tech right at the same moment.

NS1 kind of avoided all that since there was RFK and some people had to build RTs and chambers, but it could have still been quite bad on bigger teams if fades weren't so inaccessible for a lot of players. Without that much res spent on building or RFK unevening the res counts I could see even a 6 player team having 2 lerks and 3 fades right when they're avaible. I guess small investment single lifetime personal upgrades do some mixing, but is it enough?

I doubt donations are exactly the way to go, but there might be at least some thoughts floating around.

Harimau · March 2011

I wonder if these bursts are necessarily a bad thing. Expenditure followed by death will of course always lead to resource-unevening. Then again, if all of your players go a certain class and dominate, or all of your plays go a certain class then die, the resources will still be even and there will still be team upgrade bursts.

One way to create resource-unevening might be to, rather than gain resource upon kill, lose res upon death... It creates a similar effect to RFK (those who survive have more res), but is the very opposite, resource cannot be gained, only lost; this will also address personal resource abundancy - and players will necessarily play more carefully, so that they don't lose resources for their target upgrade. One issue that could be encouraged is turtling... and then it's really about which team turtles best; which is the opposite to headlong rushing, which is encouraged by RFK. Both are problems.