Rfk Discussion
taboofires
Join Date: 2002-11-24 Member: 9853Members
Join Date: 2002-11-24 Member: 9853Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Please, let's keep it all in one place.</div> Arguably the biggest resource system change in 2.0 is the Res for Kills system. Mention of its effects are all over the forums, both positive and negative. Still, the question looms: does RfK bring more to NS than it disrupts, and can we work around the issues that RfK creates?
Let me try and paint a picture of 1.0x gameplay, before RfK; skulks and la/lmg marines sacrificed themselves constantly in an effort to gain ground. Fear of death is minimal, as the only goal of the weaker life forms/less armed marines is to do enough damage to make your death worthwhile. Early game suicide rushes are common, which either slaughter an unprepared team or incur very little damage to the expecting. Tech buildup is either slow and steady while building an economy or rapid while sacrificing the economy in hopes of an early victory. Even if an onos was available at one hive, players wouldn't be able to afford it. Endgame usually consists of either well armed marines tearing through hives, a tense siege, or two-going-on-three hive aliens bombarding res-starved marines in their base until their structures fail. Two hives built is virtually impossible to recover from, as acid rockets and webbing heavily constricts marine movements.
Now, a parallel 2.0 picture: The fear of death is paramount, as a death that doesn't mean its share of damage only bolsters the other team. The first moments of the game usually consist of building and expanding for both sides, with few large-scale confrontations. Suicide rushes are discouraged, and teamwork is rewarded twice: victory in the skirmish and extra res. While res income from nozzles is fairly minimal, the few top skulks will be swimming in res after a few minutes. Some will evolve into higher lifeforms very early in the game, and often much of that res gets diverted into hive building. Weapons dropped by marines pay for themselves quickly, both in terms of marine survival (less kharaa bonus res) and extra marine kills, so dropping weapons doesn't really provide a sacrifice. Teching either crawls, when supplied only by res towers, or flies when RfK income is high. Endgame for marine victory is usually either an early slaughter or occurs with large amounts of secured res income, allowing constant attacks by hefty forces. Alien victory usually consists of a long, drawn-out clearing of a fortified marine base. Two hives is quite manageable for marines, so long as they keep an eye out for bile bombs (note that a second hive usually comes earlier than in 1.04, as well). Three hives usually spells defeat, as webs prevent expansion and xenocide is almost impossible to defend against, but destroys HA and structures with a little persistence.
By all means, please add to the picture.
So, I ask you: Which of these changes are because of RfK, are those changes for the better, and, overall, does the benefits of RfK outweigh the problems it causes?
Let me try and paint a picture of 1.0x gameplay, before RfK; skulks and la/lmg marines sacrificed themselves constantly in an effort to gain ground. Fear of death is minimal, as the only goal of the weaker life forms/less armed marines is to do enough damage to make your death worthwhile. Early game suicide rushes are common, which either slaughter an unprepared team or incur very little damage to the expecting. Tech buildup is either slow and steady while building an economy or rapid while sacrificing the economy in hopes of an early victory. Even if an onos was available at one hive, players wouldn't be able to afford it. Endgame usually consists of either well armed marines tearing through hives, a tense siege, or two-going-on-three hive aliens bombarding res-starved marines in their base until their structures fail. Two hives built is virtually impossible to recover from, as acid rockets and webbing heavily constricts marine movements.
Now, a parallel 2.0 picture: The fear of death is paramount, as a death that doesn't mean its share of damage only bolsters the other team. The first moments of the game usually consist of building and expanding for both sides, with few large-scale confrontations. Suicide rushes are discouraged, and teamwork is rewarded twice: victory in the skirmish and extra res. While res income from nozzles is fairly minimal, the few top skulks will be swimming in res after a few minutes. Some will evolve into higher lifeforms very early in the game, and often much of that res gets diverted into hive building. Weapons dropped by marines pay for themselves quickly, both in terms of marine survival (less kharaa bonus res) and extra marine kills, so dropping weapons doesn't really provide a sacrifice. Teching either crawls, when supplied only by res towers, or flies when RfK income is high. Endgame for marine victory is usually either an early slaughter or occurs with large amounts of secured res income, allowing constant attacks by hefty forces. Alien victory usually consists of a long, drawn-out clearing of a fortified marine base. Two hives is quite manageable for marines, so long as they keep an eye out for bile bombs (note that a second hive usually comes earlier than in 1.04, as well). Three hives usually spells defeat, as webs prevent expansion and xenocide is almost impossible to defend against, but destroys HA and structures with a little persistence.
By all means, please add to the picture.
So, I ask you: Which of these changes are because of RfK, are those changes for the better, and, overall, does the benefits of RfK outweigh the problems it causes?
Comments
The only thing I dislike about RFk is that it doesn't quite work for me as part of the story, but hey, I can get over that!
Well, you asked for it. Quoted from <a href='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?act=ST&f=1&t=41573' target='_blank'>here,</a> of myself.
<!--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-->The main flaw lies in that 1 alien res is worth much much much more than 1 marine res, and how easily the alien?s higher form of res can be aquired.
Lets say you have 5 aliens on a team. How long does it take to get 3 res at just one node?
Since you have 5 aliens and res goes to one alien every 5 seconds, or a tick, this means it takes 5 ticks to get just one res on a five alien team. This is actually 25 seconds. This means it takes 75 seconds to get 3 res as just one alien at one node.
How much does the marine team get in 75 seconds in on just one node? Remember, it's 1 res every 5 seconds... so that means 15 res for the marines. On a five alien team, 3 res = 15 res for the marines.
If an alien kills a marine and gets 3 res, he effectivly got 15 res on just a 5v5 game. :/ On larger games, this number grows: 3 alien res is worth 30 marine res on a 10v10, and so on. This inprotional value of the res is made balanced by the fact that there are more marines to kill on larger servers. So while the res nodes themselves will not rake in much res, killing will, by a large and far amount.
This means that if a skulk kills a marine and the marine's teammate kills the skulk, the skulk gets a much better deal in the long run. The marines are left with up to 3 res, which to be blunt, is jack crap. It is nowhere near equal to what the skulk got.
However, marine's have a shared pool; it makes sense for them to aquire res slower when killing aliens.
If 6 marines kill 6 skulks, one thing happens: They get up to 18 addition res.
If 6 skulks kill 6 marines, two things can happen, one being bad, the other being really damn good:
a.) All the skulks each get up to 3 res. (Bad, but balanced. It's obvious to see that res for kills on aliens was made intentionally so that aliens could still tech up with even a slow res model.)
b.) One skulk aquires up to 18 res. If this skulk has 25 res to start with, he could be at 43 res, a short hop, jump, and skip away from a fade or a hive. This is overkill. This is where the imbalance lies.
However, to be practical, we can't assume they each get 3 res per kill. The average is obvsiously 2 res per kill, so lets say the marine team gets 12 res, and the lone skulk gets 12 res.
The marine team could buy a shotgun. Woohoo!
That skulk could get a second hive. He has 37 res. Again, fairly short distance from a hive.
Since each game has more than one fight in it, this basically puts a limit to how many 'lives' a marine team can lose before the alien team pwns them with abilities their tech was nowhere near ready to deal with. A "Super Skulk" who nabs the majority of the res imbalances this so much it's not even funny.
On the other hand, games where there are no ?Super Skulks? you don?t see this type of fast domination; it is indeed a very balanced game of what I expected NS to be. However, this is extremely unlikely; certain skulks are more skilled than others, and some skulks could just get plain old lucky. This upgrade time is far faster than whatever the marines can muster.
What needs to be done to fix this is a system where skulks cannot horde res. This is simply the only real fix to a major problem.
In small games(say 4v4 or less), skulk hording is the norm, generally in a small game the more skilled skulk will eat more marines easily, and on larger games(8v8 or more) good skulks have plenty to feed off of resulting in a quick alien dominance if the aliens are efficient biters.
To fix skulk hording I propose a system where the skulk who made the kill gets the primary reward, but his teammates benefit also.
It goes like this:
When a skulk kills a marine, he randomly gets 1-3 res. However, only one of those res goes directly to him. The other res go to his teammates on a sequential order.
In these next examples, I made it so all skulks get 3 res per kill for demonstrations sake. Keep in mind that it would really be random in-game.
For example, say you have 5 skulks. Skulk5 gets a kill. The first res goes right to his own pool.
The next to res goes to skulk1, and skulk2.
Then, all of the sudden, skulk5 gets another kill. Skulk3 gets one res, and skulk4 does too.
Because skulk5 is owning, he gets yet another kill. This sequence restarts, skulk1 gets one res and skulk2 gets a res also.
Remember, in this sequence, the skulk who made the kill is never counted.
Keep in mind that it ended at skulk2. Now, because skulk3 was jealous of skulk5?s raw pwnage, he goes out and nabs a kill. Skulk4 then gets one res, and skulk 5 does also.
Not to be outdone, skulk2 gets two kills in a row. Skulk1 is next on the sequence, and he gets a res, and then skulk3 does also, followed by skulk4 and skulk5.
Is this system understood now? The skulk who makes the kill automatically gets 1 res for every kill, and all the res extra from the kill spills over to the other teammates in a sequential order, however, this order will always skip the skulk who made the kill if he?s next in line.
As for coding this in, it would take a good set of flags to make sure it worked properly, but I?m sure it?s nothing Flay can?t handle based off of what I?ve seen him do.
Anyhow, what my system will do is keep aliens from hording res and stopping an uneven tech progression on the alien team.
Currently, on the average game of NS, the res distrubition on a team is like this(for both pub and clan matches :/):
Every row is an alien resource pool. The longer their line is, the more res the alien has. (For better detail of this diagram, check my attachment.)
2.0 Games without my system:
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2.0 Games with my system:
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Notice how games in 2.0, you see the better skulks way ahead of the lesser ones, resulting in fragmented tech and generally unprepared marines, while in my system you see a pretty damn steady progression of alien resource pools, which means aliens would tech slower and more in pace with marines, yet they also would keep just as much res from the kills as in the old system.
Basically, with my system, one of the instinct reactions of marines should be when they see a fade:
?Okay, a fade, well, our lv. 2 weapons and lv. 1 armor should be enough to handle them, but be careful team, pretty soon their entire team will be able to go fade.?
As opposed to:
?****! A Fade already!?! Our two marines out on the field grabbing res can no way stand up to that force! We need to kill it or else it?s going to cost us!! Quick! Maybe we should rush some shotguns!?
In the old system, marines would generally be more unprepared. In the proposed system, marines would be right on par providing they had equal res nodes and weren?t getting totally owned in combat.
Still, even if my system was never used, one of the main problems of NS right now is alien res hoarding. It can really screw over a game. It absolutely needs to be addressed.
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Distributing RfK to the entire alien team would even out the tech speed of the two sides. As it stands, the alien economy is just too inconsistent to really balance.
Distributing RfK to the entire alien team would even out the tech speed of the two sides. As it stands, the alien economy is just too inconsistent to really balance. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
This of course isn't the entire story, RFK is only a small part of the problem. An alien team can be completely dominated by marines in terms of kills/deaths, and still win quite easily.
This is because the marine RFK doesn't go nearly as far as the alien RFK. The marines could still dominate the K/D by about 4-to-1, but the alien RFK is 5 times more effective because of the cheap structures.
Alien RFK is more important because of this...
Let's say we have 8 aliens, 8 marines. Marines have 4-1 ratio. However, one alien is really good, and he has three fourth of his team's kills (happens all the time on pubs). For solid numbers, let's say marines have 40 kills total, which gives our superstar about 15 kills, aka 30 extra res. Assuming, say, 4 res towers, I believe (if my memory on res production rate is right) that that's about 4 minutes worth of resource tower production... This means a star player can accelerate time to x by 4 minutes, and marines, out of all of this, get 80 res, aka 2.5 heavies.
Balanced or not, I won't deal with, but alien RFK is definitely of greater value than the marine equivalent (thus why uber marines still lose).
for every kill an alien gets, he gets 1.5 res ([or maybe 1.25]where the .5[.25] won't show), and all the other aliens get 1. that way, the killer alien (hehe) will get his reward for killing, but the other aliens will also benefit. (or other aliens get .75 res or less, cuz 1 might be a little too much)
but then again, an alien hoarding all the res is because he's good (or dumb opponents), but then it destroys the much of the teamwork for aliens, and there will be MUCH flaming for (OMG U STOLE MY KILL U LITTLE PIECE OF *&#$ *** @$$)
wtvr, think about it <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
It basically changes two things: fear of death and rewarding skill.
I don't even think the fear of death is something we should consider positive. If anything, it just encourages the mentality that many pub marines have of not wanting to leave the base, but instead bask in the safety of your turret farm while the kharaa do whatever they like. Tell me, what does fearing for your virtual life really add to the game? As much as a little atmosphere is nice, does it make the game more fun?
Rewarding skill is nice and all, but NS is really a team game. Both sides can only yield a truly great force by working together. Marines are exponentially more powerful and effective the larger the group (barring overkill), and even the formidable onos is much more potent with a lerk and gorge backing him up. That said, how does RfK encourage teamwork? Obviously it rewards you for not dying, but does that always lead to teamwork? Does it reward the player who camps somewhere cloaked and devours marines as they walk past and then runs away more than he would be rewarded for destroying an entire marine base? Since the onos could very well get 0 res for clearing a turret farm, certainly RfK doesn't always reward doing what's best for the team. What about other instances where success isn't measured in kills? Going gorge to drop a hive rather than go onos is usually better for the team, yet which is more rewarded by RfK?
RfK certainly changes the gameplay of NS. What good does it achieve that we cannot do without it?
Actually, the problem with RFK is early game, where a good alien can get either a hive or evol too fast. Whether it's really an rfk problem, I leave it up to you... I'm trying to remain more neutral than I have in the past.
Usually when the game starts, I go out to get some kills because I know I can get some extra res. When I get enough res, I usually gorge to drop a hive and/or other structures, mostly because I don't like to evovle to a higher form without good upgrades. I don't like to Fade, and I always feel that my res is better spent putting up a hive and 3 upgrade chambers, and some OCs or a couple RTs, rather than saving up for an onos. I feel better knowing that I am helping the team as a whole, although I am discouraged by those who Fade as soon as they can, then sit there "Gorg get d chamz up now !!! OMG U NOOB HURRY!!!"
People think the problem is that aliens are dropping resource towers too soon. This is likely what Flayra thought when he made it so you have to gorge at the hive and walk across the map to cap a node (2.01c).
Truth is, most aliens are saving for a higher lifeform in >>PUBS<<... That's a viable strat... the problem is, with just a few kills you can get any lifeform you want. One early lerk or fade is quite effective at stopping marines... and it only takes a skulk a few kills to get this lifeform. >> <b>The skulks are getting resources from RFK too fast</b><<.
<b>A skulk who drops a RT is not nearly as effective at getting higher lifeforms as one who doesn't.</b>
a) The aliens have to protect the RT. This could cost extra res if you go the way of chamber defense.
b) The res splits between aliens, meaning it generally takes a LOT longer to get 3 res from it than, say killing a marine.
b) The alien would be set back 25 res... thus delaying his evolution
<b>Compare this to not dropping a RT</b>
a) 25 Extra resources towards your lifeform
b) No vunerable time as gorge
c) Your resource production is almost gauranteed. Your res is your teeth. Its alot harder for a marine to kill you, than a resource tower. If you die, 0 res lost. If your RT dies, 25 res lost (assuming u have to go gorge again to make it). The RT might not have even lived long enough to pay for itself... meaning you could be at a LOSS! Not possible if you only cap completely safe nodes and use RFK as your primary earner.
You get ~2 res for a kill, so 6-8 kills along with the res gained from your initial res tower and u can go fade.
<b>The marines simply can't compete.</b>
BUT - Don't get nerf happy and give skulks less health or tie higher lifeforms to hives or something. The RFK is the problem, not some other random factor.
>><b>Make skulks get less personal RFK... in someway or another</b><<. Forlorn's idea would work, but I'd say it's too complicated and hard to remember (Not much KISSing involved). I'd be happy with just lowering the amount of res gained from a kill... or giving the res to the team instead of the skulk. Giving the skulk 1 res, and the rest split evenly among the team sounds good... and simple too. Then it'd take ~20 kills along with your starting RT res to go fade, instead of only ~8 kills.
Just make sure you nerf the right thing.
I have allways though of alien res as weaker simple becuase say, 60 res divided amogst 6 aleins is 10 res which really does nothing for you. 60 for marines thoguh basicly buys a AdvArmoury and a lev1 upgrade or lev1 and lev2 upgrages or 3 HMG etc etc.
Resnodes allso are much more effective at supling marines then aliens. Lets say for a 6on6; 6 res nodes gives the com 72 res per minute (RpM). 6 alien Resnodes would give each player 12 RpM. Now 72 res is a pretty usefull amount of res. You could start a modest turret farm. Build and upgrade some structures. Out fit a few marines etc. 12 res for an alien is basicly usless. Your are probly going to use at least 2 per minute rebuying upgrades (something rines dont have to worry about). Now lets say your a true bad **** and can rack up 25 odd kills in the 1st 5 minutes, well cool you will be able to go onos. You probly wont have any upgrades and only lev1 abilities which is why 90% of fast rush Oni die without doing any real damage.
All the while though the Marine Com is getting RfK for ALL of his boys kills which means if there a decent team he is going to be swiming is res quickly.
When I lead teams of mariens I seem to have no problems expanding like mad (yes even out pacing the dread team gorge creep) Marine structure greatly outclass there alien counter parts when you compare res-power levels and 20 res spent on upgrades gives EVERY MARINE its benifit for the entire game. Further more when a marine gets taken down hit buddy can pick up the 20 res HMG "upgrade" and use it.