Chicken faction

[CarRepairer]

Discuss and make suggestions for chicken faction here. Some issues that need to be addressed are:

Resource system and expansion
Balance
Nuke protection

[CarRepairer]

Anti nuke idea:

Allow all or most chickens to burrow into the ground, becoming immobile, which gives them strong resistance with damagemod. This is exactly what was done with Crabe for a brief time. (Although it got complaints that the animation was ugly, this cannot be fixed easily.)

Nukes launched at a spot will cause nearby chickens to automatically take cover. This would be a free ability but not fool proof as robot's antinuke missile since they take some damage.


Resources:
Currently, nests must be built on metal spots and inherit builtpower based on the metal extraction value. Two problems.

1. No economical expansion beyond metal spots capped.
2. You can't concentrate your resources into higher priority projects.

I suggest we add small structure that increases buildpower of nearby nests. This is not a perfect solution to both issues but might work.

[Pxtl]

Finishing the Chicken faction only makes sense for special gametypes - using it in the main game is just wrong since it's impossible to balance against the main factions in any meaningful way - there simply aren't enough units on the Chicken faction.

So really, it's better to think of what special gametypes are there that could use the Chickens (hence it being brought up in the Mercenaries concept) and what units it needs to complete that role, since giving it the role of "another Arm/Core" just seams unattainable.

[lurker]

Has the issue of the metal use being invisible been addressed?

[Google_Frog]

I don't think chickens can fit into CA properly. It would feel like one of those showdown mods. To properly put chickens in chickens would lose most of the interesting uniqueness that comes from mex = factory, they'd need lots of ways to deal with all the other factions things which wouldn't really fit (eg antinuke, radar, overdrive...) and burrowing has no place in CA.

It's much more worthwhile making chickens into a mini-mod and use the mex = factory dynamic and burrowing to make something different instead of trying to fit it into the current game.

[Licho]

Thats why i wanted full redesign of chickens to convert them to cabbage eating slugs. Effectively replicating normal economy in different way. (Cabbage grows around mex spots after being planted)

[Pxtl]

Thats why i wanted full redesign of chickens to convert them to cabbage eating slugs. Effectively replicating normal economy in different way. (Cabbage grows around mex spots after being planted)

Actually, that would be fun if the chickens were just creeps, whether human-controlled or not - grow cabbage around every mex either way, so the creeps have an objective (they're looking for cabbage).

[CarRepairer]

Cabbage gives you the farts.

[1v0ry_k1ng]

the big spore launching mantis thing dishes out waay too much damage compared to other chickens

[Saktoth]

The major unit hole in chickens is a fast attack unit. They essentially have no raiders which makes them very vulnerable to skirms and ranged weapons.

The brood queen is capable of assisting nests, which actually makes producing larger units quite viable, though most nests will probably be spamming swarmers, pigeons or skirms. The major problem with the eco is how bloody hard it is to manage. The other is lack of overdrive but you could probably impliment it relatively easily if you give chickens an e structure.

In the current setup, nukes arent a problem for chickens. They are totally decentralized and have no e or factories to kill- a nuke will never even make cost unless he is epicly porcing or massing units. Unless you are playing vs pure chickens (or chicken 1v1, in which case the chance of nukes is very low), he will have an ally capable of building antis anyway.

[1v0ry_k1ng]

just tie their degree of overdrive to somthing like damage dealt/minute, then chicken players have an incentive to be constantly attacking

GENIUS

[CarRepairer]

Latest news:

Chicken tube makes 1e. Chicken nests will now suck energy to increase their bp for one second, at a rate of 10e/1bp. This is like a metalmaker economy.

Even if it will be replaced eventually, I want something playable. Just for fun once in a while (even if what googlefrog says is the case).

[lurker]

And can you turn this on and off on the nests?

[CarRepairer]

Yes and no. You can use the wait command on nests to keep them from sucking your energy but that's about it.

Also, canceling a partially constructed unit means the energy you used to build it is wasted, so avoid doing that.

I'm not gonna put too much effort into it to because it's just an ad-hoc thing I threw together to make it possible to expand your econ after securing all possible metal spots - just for playability's sake. Maybe if it became popular somehow.

[lurker]

If I hit wait I waste the metal!

[CarRepairer]

If I hit wait I waste the metal!

Good point. What do you suggest instead? That's what this thread is for.

Edit: wait, I know, don't say it Diminishing returns for each nest sucking E. In other words back to overdrive.

[lurker]

Why would you want diminishing returns on the consumers?

I want an on/off switch on each nest to decide if it pulls in energy, so I can have most of my nests running on base metal and one or two important ones at full throttle.

[CarRepairer]

That's simple enough. Will do.

[Pxtl]

If there is no diminishing returns on manufacture-overdrive, then won't players simply turn "off" every factory but the one closest to the front lines? Thus, all the other factories produce at the default rate, and only the frontline fac gets the boost.

Sounds like factory-overdrive is what will end up happening.