Diminishing Return Res Towers
l3lessed
Join Date: 2010-06-07 Member: 71977Members
Join Date: 2010-06-07 Member: 71977Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Possible Solution for Tech Points debate</div>So first off, I'll say I'm happy Charlie is going the way he is with tech points because of the numerous bad game mechanics people have mentioned with tying tech to territory control. However, people are worried it will lead and encourage to turtling. I don't think this will be a problem once all the features are in, costs adjusted, and game play balanced.
But, I was thinking what do other RTS games use to help encourage expansion and territory control. The major thing is the diminishing and ultimate depletion of original resources making it required to expand sooner or later. So my thought was to have res points provide diminishing returns over a long period of time. This means at the beginning of the game, the res point will provide a nice steady income, but as the game wears on it will slowly produce less and less income until it reaches a balanced plato where it produces a small amount of res, but not enough to easily run a single base or team off of. This will force teams over the period of a game to insure expansion and territory control. One, you won't want to let the other team tap res nodes out before you, and two you know by the end of the game you'll need multiple res nodes to support your team and the expensive tech you'll need to win.
But, I was thinking what do other RTS games use to help encourage expansion and territory control. The major thing is the diminishing and ultimate depletion of original resources making it required to expand sooner or later. So my thought was to have res points provide diminishing returns over a long period of time. This means at the beginning of the game, the res point will provide a nice steady income, but as the game wears on it will slowly produce less and less income until it reaches a balanced plato where it produces a small amount of res, but not enough to easily run a single base or team off of. This will force teams over the period of a game to insure expansion and territory control. One, you won't want to let the other team tap res nodes out before you, and two you know by the end of the game you'll need multiple res nodes to support your team and the expensive tech you'll need to win.
Comments
It would do the economy some good and put a fire under Commander's asses if T.Res were limited. Not sure about P.Res, however; I foresee too many people screaming about this.
If you read my post, I'm not proposing res towers completely stop generating res. I'm proposing that they generate less res over time to encourage territory control. If they loose a tower or two they still get resources from previous towers, but at a slower pace. It allows teams to at the beginning of the game either invest in teching up for early combat advantage or expanding out, but it stops teams from being allowed to completely turtle off for a whole game on just two res nodes.
It also encourages teams to expand out and hold new res points so they can get the early res boost an untapped node brings.
If res stays at a constant intake, there is a point when you only need so many res towers to support your team depending on its size because you can only spend so much res at a time. In strategies, extra resources equals a bad and usually dead player. It's the basic mechanics of any hardcore RTS player. You try and always insure res coming in = res going out. It normal games this is accomplished by building more unit producing builds in order to build more units. However, in this game there is no huge production mechanism for a commander. He gets an army for free as long as he has an IP or two. and players can only spend so much res really. So like right now, as an example, you only really need two res nodes as a marine to support your team while continually upgrading. There is no real reason to expand and get more nodes.
If you read my post, I'm not proposing res towers completely stop generating res. I'm proposing that they generate less res over time to encourage territory control. If they loose a tower or two they still get resources from previous towers, but at a slower pace. It allows teams to at the beginning of the game either invest in teching up for early combat advantage or expanding out, but it stops teams from being allowed to completely turtle off for a whole game on just two res nodes.
It also encourages teams to expand out and hold new res points so they can get the early res boost an untapped node brings.
If res stays at a constant intake, there is a point when you only need so many res towers to support your team depending on its size because you can only spend so much res at a time. In strategies, extra resources equals a bad and usually dead player. It's the basic mechanics of any hardcore RTS player. You try and always insure res coming in = res going out. It normal games this is accomplished by building more unit producing builds in order to build more units. However, in this game there is no huge production mechanism for a commander. He gets an army for free as long as he has an IP or two. and players can only spend so much res really. So like right now, as an example, you only really need two res nodes as a marine to support your team while continually upgrading. There is no real reason to expand and get more nodes.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Sure, they'd still be getting some resources and could theoretically make a comeback. However, as a practical matter, you'd have to drop the res flow rate to almost nothing to make this a worthwhile incentive to expand. The end result would be almost the same as having no RTs.
The current problem with expanding is that the costs of expansion (direct TRes expenditure vs indirect opportunity cost of not researching better tech) is generally greater than the benefit of expansion (which include getting more res, denying the enemy res, better spawning locations, and more resilience to loss), though more so for the marine than the aliens. For example, unlocking the current highest alien tech (fades) costs the 40 TRes (2nd Hive: 20, Upg to lvl2 hive: 20) as compared to the cost of 105 TRes (2nd CS: 20, CF: 20, Armory: 10, Upg Armory: 15, Weapons Module: 20, FT: 20) to get flamethrower for marines, so TRes spent on capturing more tech/res nodes is more costly for marines than aliens. However, the cost of expansion for both sides is expensive enough that expanding is generally not the greatest idea.