What to do with Energy - Page 2

What to do with Energy

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Pxtl
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Re: What to do with Energy

Post by Pxtl »

Single-resource works for the C&C/Dune series. I mean, those games have power-plants, but they don't really do much other than keep your buildings running so that's pretty dull.
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smoth
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Re: What to do with Energy

Post by smoth »

SanadaUjiosan wrote: Sadly it's not something we can easily "try out", since all +100 units have some kind of energy cost.
you can edit unitdefspost to strip off the energy cost of all units.
Google_Frog
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Re: What to do with Energy

Post by Google_Frog »

Eliminating energy all together is certainly still an option. And an easy one. But I still feel a single resource would be too simple.
There isn't a single resource, you have build power. Factories are static, can be built anywhere and allow you to spend metal. How is that different to energy?
Sadly it's not something we can easily "try out", since all +100 units have some kind of energy cost.
Are your units written in lua?
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oksnoop2
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Re: What to do with Energy

Post by oksnoop2 »

Yes they are all lua.
Google_Frog
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Re: What to do with Energy

Post by Google_Frog »

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SanadaUjiosan
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Re: What to do with Energy

Post by SanadaUjiosan »

Google_Frog wrote:
Eliminating energy all together is certainly still an option. And an easy one. But I still feel a single resource would be too simple.
There isn't a single resource, you have build power. Factories are static, can be built anywhere and allow you to spend metal. How is that different to energy?
I'm not following you.
Google_Frog
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Re: What to do with Energy

Post by Google_Frog »

As in what does energy do when it is a requirement for construction? It allows you to spend your metal.

If your metal income increases you also need to make energy or you stall energy and excess metal.

Factories do exactly the same thing, they have bp that allow you to spend metal. The point is if your sources of bp are expensive enough you do not need energy as the cost of bp alone acts as a limiter.
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oksnoop2
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Re: What to do with Energy

Post by oksnoop2 »

Google_Frog wrote:http://trac.caspring.org/browser/trunk/ ... ingModEdit

Batch unitdef editor.

I did not understand how to use that. Do you have a tutorial?
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Re: What to do with Energy

Post by Google_Frog »

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knorke
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Re: What to do with Energy

Post by knorke »

You can use a Lua to set unit cost of every unit to 0 to see how it plays. Might be better than to have huge batch edits.

Anyway, at the moment both official CT maps have many reclaimable features on them, one being worth 500 metal. Also many trees for 25 energy or so.
So players basically get 1000 to 1500 free metal each game, added to this the 2000 lolz metal of cruiser wrecks.
So just keep that in mind maybe...
Pxtl wrote:Single-resource works for the C&C/Dune series. I mean, those games have power-plants, but they don't really do much other than keep your buildings running so that's pretty dull.
C&C: no energy -> everything goes down, factories build very slow, no turrets fire
Spring: no energy -> everything just stalls a bit
So one could say in C&C energy eco is even less forgiving (at least i would not call it dull)
Also in C&C each powerplant is an investment while in Spring you spam cheap windmills.
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oksnoop2
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Re: What to do with Energy

Post by oksnoop2 »

knorke wrote:added to this the 2000 lolz metal of cruiser wrecks.
I thought this was fixed.
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PicassoCT
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Re: What to do with Energy

Post by PicassoCT »

How about over-charging energy beeing used to melt the enemys metallressources? Just imagine the energy storage of you and your opponent connected, and once there is more then enough, the e-stuff goes away to hurt your enemines. As long as there is overcharge energy on the other side, the both effects cancel each other out, but once one player falls short on energy, the enemys Big E is marching in, melting away the metall.
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knorke
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Re: What to do with Energy

Post by knorke »

oksnoop2 wrote:
knorke wrote:added to this the 2000 lolz metal of cruiser wrecks.
I thought this was fixed.
opening a random cruiser unitdef:
adv air cruiser:
http://code.google.com/p/conflictterra/ ... ruiser.lua
buildCostMetal = 800,
DEAD = {...
metal = 2000,

mech cruiser:
http://code.google.com/p/conflictterra/ ... ruiser.lua
buildCostMetal = 400,
DEAD = {
...
metal = 2000,
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SanadaUjiosan
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Re: What to do with Energy

Post by SanadaUjiosan »

I've been pondering this energy issue, and I've come to a few conclusions and started thinking about new things. Thought I'd throw them out here.

I decided I want one of two things from energy. Either:

* Take it out completely.
* Keep it as it is essentially, that is, a resource used for building units.

The first options is pretty humdrum and straight forward.

The second options has a lot of ways to fork off in potentially interesting and potentially overly complicated ways.

First idea I had was to make energy cost for most units be the same as the metal cost. But, for fancy units, or really strong units (example: Honda Assault Mech or Uesugi Battle Cruiser) make the energy cost be a lot more, so that if you want to build one, you're going to have to invest in either a ton of little power plants, or one of the bigger plants that takes longer to build. I feel this could be an effective control over the powerful units.

My brain then jumped to eliminating energy cost for most units, and then making the same fancy or strong units require energy to build. That way, you only have to build the power plants if you're going to go all out with powerful units.

Then I thought, maybe make T1 not require energy to build, but make T2 require energy.

And then I thought, maybe make only buildings require energy to build. The way the game currently is, that would mean practically only turrets. At that point I'd probably also make the cruisers require energy to build, as they're practically buildings most of the time. So you'd need some energy to set up a static base. But because the main reason to even have turrets would be to protect static buildings, aka the energy buildings, it would be kind of pointless, so maybe make the turrets a bit beefier.

The problem with a lot of these ideas would be the confusing nature of it. Players would have to pay attention to what requires energy and what doesn't. The goal of course would be to make it intuitive, like "Only t2 requires energy" or "Only turrets require energy." I don't think something like "This mech and that mech require energy, but those don't" would not be well received by people.

So those are some of my ideas, thoughts?
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Pxtl
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Re: What to do with Energy

Post by Pxtl »

Imho, blocking access to high-level units is better done by the existing approach: making L2/L3 constructors/buildpower expensive. Or the Starcraft style of unlocking-buildings. Same thing, really. After all, once you build a fusion plant, you're going to be spamming your high level units anyways with nothing else to spend the E on.

If you're going to include E, I'd keep it as a resource needed to support existing constructs and execute actions rather than one used to build stuff.
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AF
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Re: What to do with Energy

Post by AF »

Starcraft and warcraft get away fine with different resources for different unit types, eg vesphene gas on some but not all units
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Pxtl
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Re: What to do with Energy

Post by Pxtl »

Starcraft and Warcraft also have a pay-up-front economy and a short unit list, two things that keep you acutely aware of the cost of each unit.
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SanadaUjiosan
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Re: What to do with Energy

Post by SanadaUjiosan »

Just an update or heads up I guess, I decided to simply keep energy as it was, a resource to be used to build units of all kinds.

Energy and metal costs will be the same value for most units, if not all. Only real situation where energy will be different is for "special" units (in T2) that would have a higher energy cost. Since T2 balancing will come later (probably a bit later), this is of course subject to change.

Still experimenting with this, but energy will be needed to morph the factory cruisers between factory and cruiser mode. It's not a lot (100 at the moment), and is meant as a check to keep players from using the cruisers too offensively. Only one test game has had this so far, and I have yet to go back and observe any effects that may have had.

Changed some of the mechanics of energy acquisition too. Changed energy storage to always be 1000 for a player, so it is no longer bound to your flagship. That means that if you lose your flagship, you're suddenly not relying on a max of 20 energy to rebuild. With that, I removed energy income from the miners (each was producing 0.25, as a rebuilding mechanism) and worked on the income values for generators. Might cut out the nuclear generator (it is a TA-ism after-all.)

Have not thought a ton about this, but I thought of keeping the storage cap for energy be 1000. That is, remove energy storage. With the absence of metal storage, it seems lonely and kind of pointless. Perhaps allow for the ability to build a single upgrade building to boost it to 2000, or another number? I'm actually a bit fond of that idea (just thought it up while typing this, haha)

But yeah, that's the position on energy.
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knorke
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Re: What to do with Energy

Post by knorke »

but energy will be needed to morph the factory cruisers between factory and cruiser mode. It's not a lot (100 at the moment), and is meant as a check to keep players from using the cruisers too offensively.
100 energy is not much so I doubt that has any effects if you have one or two powerplants. Only time when it might matter is when all your powerplants are destroyed. When Factory Cruisers were used offensivly they never were morphed back and forth anyway, they stay in flight mode. Only with the flagship it makes sense to morph alot, to use its flak.
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Echo419
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Re: What to do with Energy

Post by Echo419 »

*blink* *blink*

its something phenomenally easy to test out.

Set the cruisers and cruisers base energy output to +999999 or something ridiculous.

its a hamfisted approach to making an example of a "no energy economy" but it would work for an example.
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