Resource Towers And Game Structure
Freemantle
Join Date: 2002-06-16 Member: 783Members
Join Date: 2002-06-16 Member: 783Members
<div class="IPBDescription">General thoughts (long)</div> It has become very apparent that the PTs and Vets have a deep seated dislike for <i>Resource Tower Hoarding</i>, a typical action in which each team scrambles to cap resources nodes and fortify them, thusly cutting off that nozzle from the opposing team throughout the early and midgame. Here are what I see as the major points.
<b><u>Marines:</b></u>
-More coordinated placement of Resource Towers
-Electrification provides easy protection.
-The individual Marine sacrifices no offensive power in the action of Resource Tower Whoring
-The Marine team suffers a slow early game in favor of a resource rich mid game
-Resource Tower Whoring ecourages marines to leave the base, but all combat will be vanilla
<b><u>Aliens:</b></u>
-Lose offensive power in the early game (consumption of resources, and evolving into a formidable, but not spectacular gorge)
-Need slight upkeep to protect their resource towers (as in offence chambers, or skulk supervision).
-Encourages aliens to be less aggressive as compared to 1.04 standards.
<b>The Problem:</b>
Resource Tower Hoarding is not really a tactic, per se, but rather an opening sequence (much like clearing your pawns out of the way in a game of chess to allow your bishops to move). That has its own merit, in the fact that a good opening game should set you up for further victories, but why can't another sequence be viable (moving out with knights to pressure unprotected officer-pieces)?
It is becoming apparent that if a team does not Hoard, the game will fall sour for them. Without resources for higher evolutions, chambers and hives, the alien team will fall. Without HMG and upgrades, the marine team will fall to the rampant Onos and Fade.
It is unrealistic to say that a team that dosen't Hoard should win the mid-game. It is just unrealistic. The advantages of having greater Resources in the midgame <i>should</i> tip the game on your favor.
If a team applies their efforts in another direction, it should be to make sure that the midgame <b>never occours</b>.
I have a feeling Flayra already saw this, and implemented the delay in actual resource harvest. This turned the mass investment in towers fruitless for a couple minutes, giving the opposing team an advantage if their points were spent elsewhere. Unfortunatly, this actually slows down the game, a direction I though NS was trying to escape. After the grace period (90 seconds now I believe) expired, the game slowly tipped in the Hoarding teams favor. There is precious little incentive to not Hoard.
Why should a team be penalized for making a positive decision? The investing team should see some sort of positive feedback from the towers immediatly, as to not slow down the game any further. Though Flayra's poll indicated that many people thought the game was fast and liked the new pace, there was a counter-thread of many people who thought the game was too slow and did not have that option in the poll. The solution is not to hinder the advancing team.
<b>Possible Solution:</b> Make hunting down and destroying nodes a good investment. Rather than putting a harvest lag on all Resource towers, put a bounty on the killing of a Resource tower. A team bounty in either case. Somthing in the order of 25 resource points to the marine team, and 10 resource points to the <i>entire</i> alien team seems in order. This way, early game combat will be more viable, and intense. The drive to kill enemy towers (built or uncompleted) has a big priority in the eyes of each player, beyond temporarily shutting off resources. Hoarding will meet stern opposition.
The removal of harvest lag will also do wonders to the speed of the game, placing more importance on securing nodes in the mid and late game. For the marine and alien team, the destruction of an enemy resource tower either almost or completely covers the cost of placing one of their own towers on the freshly cleared nozzle, bringing up the percent of captured resource nozzles on a map upward.
This also gives the option for a push tactic. In desperation in the face of losing, a team coordinates a strike on all enemy held nozzles, to gain the resource boost for destroying them, and possibly having a fatty (gorge for the neublets) come by to capture and reinforce them; In the marine case, the commander could set up new, fortified positions. The resource boost obtained from killing multiple enemy towers is similar to the infamous "f4" trick of old, a shot of nitrous oxide into the resource pool of the attacking team.
I believe this would promote more conflict, and possibly more volitile games. Neither I can see as being negative in the Natural Selection experience.
<i>edit: The swear filter dosen't seem to like the word ****. Replaced all instances with Hoard and Hoarding.</i>
<b><u>Marines:</b></u>
-More coordinated placement of Resource Towers
-Electrification provides easy protection.
-The individual Marine sacrifices no offensive power in the action of Resource Tower Whoring
-The Marine team suffers a slow early game in favor of a resource rich mid game
-Resource Tower Whoring ecourages marines to leave the base, but all combat will be vanilla
<b><u>Aliens:</b></u>
-Lose offensive power in the early game (consumption of resources, and evolving into a formidable, but not spectacular gorge)
-Need slight upkeep to protect their resource towers (as in offence chambers, or skulk supervision).
-Encourages aliens to be less aggressive as compared to 1.04 standards.
<b>The Problem:</b>
Resource Tower Hoarding is not really a tactic, per se, but rather an opening sequence (much like clearing your pawns out of the way in a game of chess to allow your bishops to move). That has its own merit, in the fact that a good opening game should set you up for further victories, but why can't another sequence be viable (moving out with knights to pressure unprotected officer-pieces)?
It is becoming apparent that if a team does not Hoard, the game will fall sour for them. Without resources for higher evolutions, chambers and hives, the alien team will fall. Without HMG and upgrades, the marine team will fall to the rampant Onos and Fade.
It is unrealistic to say that a team that dosen't Hoard should win the mid-game. It is just unrealistic. The advantages of having greater Resources in the midgame <i>should</i> tip the game on your favor.
If a team applies their efforts in another direction, it should be to make sure that the midgame <b>never occours</b>.
I have a feeling Flayra already saw this, and implemented the delay in actual resource harvest. This turned the mass investment in towers fruitless for a couple minutes, giving the opposing team an advantage if their points were spent elsewhere. Unfortunatly, this actually slows down the game, a direction I though NS was trying to escape. After the grace period (90 seconds now I believe) expired, the game slowly tipped in the Hoarding teams favor. There is precious little incentive to not Hoard.
Why should a team be penalized for making a positive decision? The investing team should see some sort of positive feedback from the towers immediatly, as to not slow down the game any further. Though Flayra's poll indicated that many people thought the game was fast and liked the new pace, there was a counter-thread of many people who thought the game was too slow and did not have that option in the poll. The solution is not to hinder the advancing team.
<b>Possible Solution:</b> Make hunting down and destroying nodes a good investment. Rather than putting a harvest lag on all Resource towers, put a bounty on the killing of a Resource tower. A team bounty in either case. Somthing in the order of 25 resource points to the marine team, and 10 resource points to the <i>entire</i> alien team seems in order. This way, early game combat will be more viable, and intense. The drive to kill enemy towers (built or uncompleted) has a big priority in the eyes of each player, beyond temporarily shutting off resources. Hoarding will meet stern opposition.
The removal of harvest lag will also do wonders to the speed of the game, placing more importance on securing nodes in the mid and late game. For the marine and alien team, the destruction of an enemy resource tower either almost or completely covers the cost of placing one of their own towers on the freshly cleared nozzle, bringing up the percent of captured resource nozzles on a map upward.
This also gives the option for a push tactic. In desperation in the face of losing, a team coordinates a strike on all enemy held nozzles, to gain the resource boost for destroying them, and possibly having a fatty (gorge for the neublets) come by to capture and reinforce them; In the marine case, the commander could set up new, fortified positions. The resource boost obtained from killing multiple enemy towers is similar to the infamous "f4" trick of old, a shot of nitrous oxide into the resource pool of the attacking team.
I believe this would promote more conflict, and possibly more volitile games. Neither I can see as being negative in the Natural Selection experience.
<i>edit: The swear filter dosen't seem to like the word ****. Replaced all instances with Hoard and Hoarding.</i>
Comments
The rsr wait on towers was implamented to stop HUGE rsr expansions by the aliens that we expierenced during beta testing. The aliens could expand at such a rate the marines had no chance to contain them.
I understand that a team that does not expand will have an early game advantage, but will a team that only mildly expand or not expand at all have a chance at countering a majority Resource Tower or majority Gorge play by the opposite team? Will they be able to clench victory by trapping the opposing team in their Hoarding? Or at least severly cripple the efforts of the Hoarding team?
I can understand why aliens would expand faster, but shouldn't a majority gorge team fall faster than a team with a nice skulk to gorge ratio? I can not understand from my 1.04 point of view, why it isn't fesable for a marine team to systematically take down alien Towers and Gorges. If what you say is true, some sort of counter device should be implemented to facilitate and encourage the routing of alien hoarders. Perhaps you could make the towers build like hives. Put up the tower and it immediatly starts harvesting resources, but it has to slowly regenerate up to full health. Or you could not allow it to regenerate to full health, but rather force the gorge to healspray the tower until it is at an acceptable level. It dosen't slow down alien resource flow, but it keeps the explosive expansion down.
Hoarding can be dealt with in other ways. I think the key is to have a SUSTAINABLE resource system instead of who grabs the most res towers in the first 2 minutes wins.
Regards,
Savant
I understand that Flayra says that the timer is needed, and I concur that <i>somthing</i> is needed, but not necesarily(sp) that. I still believe that making the alien resource towers build up health will stunt alien growth, while leaving their resources to be claimed.
In an earlier thread, I introduced an idea about marine resource towers. What if the tower could be "stunned" out of collecting resources when they are attacked by the alien team? Make the stun last 10 seconds. A persistant and organized alien team should be able to shunt marine power-teching.
Before, due to the easy with which you can drop a RT and the relatively short time it took to make a profit, there just wasn't any reason not to do it. With the new solution it's only reasonable to build a RT if you think you can hold it for n+90 seconds, instead of just n seconds. This seems logical, it seems to be working and it's according to Flayra not going to change.
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->What if killing aliens and alien structures REDUCES ALIEN res instead of INCREASING MARINE res? Killing an alien would reduce res for that alien only. Killing a structure would reduce res for all aliens proportional to the cost of the structure. It's far more intuitive than the current (1.1) kill->res system and still discourages marines from just sitting in their bases twiddling their thumbs.
Killing OCs does not affect alien res, because OCs are meant to be killed <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif'><!--endemo--> So now, aliens, especially gorges, should defend their structures or risk losing res.
Backstory: An alien stores its res in its body, so when it die, it leaks some res. The rest is absorbed back into the hive via bacterium for another lucky alien to receive (the same player respawning). As for alien structures causing all aliens to lose res, something along the lines of borrowing res from aliens via bacterium due to panic would do.
If an alien would reach negative res, it should bump back to 0 res. Why? Reason 1: Flayra won't have to worry about making room for a negative sign. Reason 2: Newbies would hate the game (at least on the aliens side).
The amount of res lost shouldn't be huge - unless an alien dies every 15 seconds, that alien should still net positive res over time. You don't want to frustrate newbies too much.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I think this would be an effective solution on the marine side, since aliens can't risk leaving undefended RTs. It also has the added bonus of making marines more unique from aliens <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
For aliens: increase electrifying cost. This would encourage the commander to leave a few RTs un-electrified. It would be an effective nerf.
Rather, you should award the <i>marine</i> for being pro-active and getting out there to fight the gorge off. If you penalize the aggressive team, we will see more games were one side builds up excessivly until they have no doubt of their win, which is also a direction NS is trying to get <i>away</i> from.
I agree with Stoneburg that the delay is <i>a</i> solution, but hopefully not <i>the</i> solution. Eventually we should peel the duct-tape-solution off of this problem and caulk it up properly.
The similarities between NS and SC are that you lose early-game superiority but <i>if</i> you live you gain the upper hand in mid-game. In NS if you res node hoard on marines you stay vanilla for awhile, and if you nes node hoard on aliens the majority of the alien team will be out and try to defend the un-taken nodes or munch on marine's res nodes.
In SC however, resource hoarding is suicidal, since the enemy will be either some or all of the below:
<ul>
<li>Be stronger than your units
<li>Have more units than you
<li>Possibly rush you early on
</ul>
The first point is a yes in NS, since the other non-res hoarding team will be stronger than your units (carapace or weapons upgrades)
The second point is a no in NS, since the amount of units stays the same; only their <i>type</i> changes.
The third is a yes for the marines, since the aliens (with the exception of the gorge[s]) WILL rush you to see if they can kill your spawns. as aliens however, this is unlikely unless the comm pings each hive early on or a scouting marine tells his team.
Sadly, res node hoarding isn't as "suicidal" as it is in SC, which means that each team can do it with realative impunity in NS. One thing you dont see in SC though is a great deal of resources on the "exterior" of the maps or high-trafic/high-combat areas. The majority of the resources are contained to each player's base, unless it has a theme going with the map (few res in base, conquer the middle to get more, etc) but this is not the case in NS.
In NS there's litterally a resource node at every turn, and with 6-9 <b>or more</b> in each map. its no wonder the team who resource node hoards will gain the upper hand, since they control so many more than the other player. What i suggest is that the amount of nodes get reduced in the radius of eachother.
I am by no means suggesting that we remove nodes, i'm just saying we should move them around so that there is a fair distance between each node. for example, in the map with refinery, feedwater, and engine room there are 5(!) resource nodes very close to the marine start. One in marine start, head down to atmos (20-40 seconds) and cap 2 nodes while a second group goes through the rotating door to cap the node there (10-50 seconds, stupid door! grah! <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo--> ) and when thats done go into engine and see if:
A. the node is free B. There's a hive there. the marines now have 5 easilly defendable nodes AND a hive, which severly sets back the aliens since they can no longer get: A. One new upgrade B. Onos (1.04) C. The last-hive ability
if a node in atmos was moved and the node closest to the rotating door was also moved the marines would have 2 res nodes less, and possibly give the aliens 2 res nodes more. I say that nodes shouldn't be overly-easy to defend, but still vulnerable enough to take once defended. Electifying a node is a investment to keep the aliens at bay until they get a ranged attacker in there; electriying a node can easilly let you defend a node w/o the use of turrets or marine sentries; and if you're using a marine sentry that marine can go off and build another node. Having two nodes close together in one place like atmos can be too easy to defend, as 1.04 has shown us with the relocation strategy.
Basically what im trying to say is SPACE EM OUT. make it so that there are nodes moderatly easy to defend near the base, but not too many to give a advantage, and if the team wants more they will have to travel (and not "jump" from node to node) to the next area; which, coincedantally, is more difficult to defend. as it stands now either team can just run around and cap like a mad hatter, but if they (the nodes) were spaced far apart and clumped between 2/3 rooms with 1 in each the team would say "this is not enough nodes. prepare to move out!" and cap the more difficult to defend ones; while actually the aliens could have a easy or equally hard time defending the same clump. If the nodes can run-out of resources, the team would suffer from "running dry" if they didn't move quickly and secure one of the fresher but more dangerous nodes.
Risk and Gain should be equal. Currently the risk is far too low for the huge amount of gain; or vice-versa <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo-->
...more to come.
Trying not to be offensive but i seriously doubt you can make such assumptions/observations from what you read on the forums only, having joined the veterans program about a month ago, i can assure you theres no way you can understand how the game works until you try it. Although some of what you said is very correct, i suggest you wait until you get to try it before making such sweeping assumptions. I hope i have answered some of your concerns anyway, res whoring is not the only viable strategy, its just the one thats used the most at the moment, and remember its still in testing, theres plenty of changes to come i'm sure. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->what if you are going out on a limb and "ninja-gorge" a nozzle close to the marine base? Should you be penalized if that structure is destroyed, beyond than the resource investment into the structure itself?
Rather, you should award the marine for being pro-active and getting out there to fight the gorge off. If you penalize the aggressive team, we will see more games were one side builds up excessivly until they have no doubt of their win, which is also a direction NS is trying to get away from.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Freemantle, I'm not quite sure what you're talking about here. If you're saying that waiting to kill the RT is better than killing the gorge - I'm not so sure about that. The RT is cheap to build and will when destroyed, will waste maybe around 10 res (totalling 10 res). Killing the gorge, in a way, wastes 20 res PLUS the around 5 res the gorge loses to dying. It about evens out, and preventing the gorge from getting there is less risky.
My main concern is that people will be turned off by the current solution. I will certianly try it with an open mind, but it just dosen't sound like the right solution.
<!--QuoteBegin--N1ght+Jul 5 2003, 09:19 PM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (N1ght @ Jul 5 2003, 09:19 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->easy and safe choice is obviously to just get as many of their own res towers as they can, especially when you do not know the players on your team<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Pub play is what makes or breaks this game. Do matter what people say, Natural Selection is a <b>much</b> better game with Friendly Fire on. Playing with friendly fire on is the only real reason I enjoyed playing for cX. When my computer stopped liking commander-mode, I had no choice but to step out of the clan.
In short, the counters should be easier. You cant expect to drop 3 shotguns and instruct your team to "go hunt fatties". There are just too many X factors.
<!--QuoteBegin--Maian+Jul 5 2003, 09:19 PM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Maian @ Jul 5 2003, 09:19 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Freemantle, I'm not quite sure what you're talking about here. If you're saying that waiting to ...<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
What I am saying is, penalizing the gorge beyond the loss of his life, evolution investment, and building cost is rather silly. If a team should recieve a consequence, let it be a boon for the marine team that made the kill, not the alien team that risked to place a "bucket" of sensories, or an advance resource tower. Let the players set the pace, rather than force the pace on the players.
Excellent responses from all the Forumers (esp. PTs and Vets). This proves that people play with an open mind and a clear vision. There is not too much more I can suggest without <i>feeling</i> the current state of gameflow. I know Flayra will only do what is best for Natural Selection.
Why is it silly? I consider marine res-for-kills just as silly. In both cases, there is risk. This is simply an alternative idea that would help differentiate aliens from marines more. Like you said, we don't know how 2.0 "feels" right now, so it's invalid to say that the difference in risk is so great.