Boost Rushing

[Pxtl]

Okay, time to dust off an old idea I had - research.

http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.ph ... 0&#p408500

Move the dangerous rush stuff out of the starting buildlist and require players to build research to unlock those units. This also lets you push the late-game n00btraps out of the starting buildlist.

It seems drastic, but a big component of RTS games is branching complexity. Eventually the number of avenues and options becomes so large that it's impossible to counter every approach. CA is front-loaded as complex. Putting in a barrier to the high-level strategies early on will make the game simpler for most players.

The big problem is that research can't be normal CA buildings/units, because reclaiming them and transferring them to allies would be tedious. You'd want it auto-shared with allies, and if destroyed/reclaimed the resoruces are lost.

[Edible]

This doesn't change without boost. You are able to spend the same amount of resources while he is rushing e.g. jack. If boost or not, you have same build power + resources. In fact, due to reduced build power (no boost, normal res) and same move speed at the time the jack is at your base you have spend less resources compared to a boosted start base (EDIT: this only counts for boost left at the time jack is finished).

You are able to spend the same amount of res, but assuming he just builds a few winds and immediately gets fac, and you get mexes a radar a MT and some solars and such you are behind on boost. The thing boost changes is on a midsized map it takes time for scouts to reach them, and for that time boost speeds everything up. It takes a bit of res and time to counter a rush (and something like a BD can just see you have defense and move on to allies) and boost cuts the timeframe you have to react.

^ What he said. There is no reason you shouldn't be able to boost a scout faster than he can boost a can/bd/whatever.

The issue being discussed about boost is the instant-antiswarms in enemy bases.

The main reason I bought up other rushes was because yes antiswarm boost drop is easily counterable if you know its coming, but scouting takes a little time and there are many different types of rushes and its difficult to be prepared/react to all.

[Edible]

Did some fairly basic (unscientific but it gives a decent idea) timing, using tabula.

From top left spot:

It takes 1min to flea scout top middle on the other side (assuming a fac is built first, and flea is boosted).

40s to comdrop on top other side (assuming you make nothing on your side bar fac) (same amount of time to get 1 MT 2 solar 3 mex, 1 fac 1 flea).

You can make a jack in 25s but it will only reach top middle in 2 mins 30s

You can get a black dawn 75% done in 25s but it takes forever to finish alone (leeching off communism makes this viable).

In short jack rush without an ally airlifiting it is kinda crap on decent sized maps though with communism dawn rush should be viable before scouted, and so is comdrop.

[Kenku]

Does scouting really matter here? I mean, if they are trying to go for the direct punch, they either have to be very sneaky in there entry path, or hope that the enemy doesn't have radar and isn't looking at their base., or else the entire ruse will fail as the enemy spots the transports exaust trails.

In the end, I think the no com transporting on lights may be an idea, although a question...if your com is in the base, how hard is it to preventing him from stalling the rusher and wasting his boost?

[Edible]

@kenku
The point is the rusher will immediately boost an antiswarm or two beside your com and fac, almost definitely killing them. Then they may stall E yes, but they can just make a nano and use the reclaim of your base.

In regards to scouting, that is more important for dealing with jack/BD/Other rushes.

[Google_Frog]

I really do not want any extra plop or limted boost added to the start. I dislike weighting the start towards any strategy in such a ham fisted way. Any limited boost or plopped units are messy. Facplop is no exception, I dislike the messyness of it. I have already said elsewhere why I think facplop is required and I have not seen any better solution to the problem facplop fixes.

The only suggestion* here I am happy with is replace boost with starting resources. As has been said this makes cheese take longer. I like that cheese is still possible. If you started with 500 resources you could spend them in 27 seconds after the factory is constructed as you have 18bp.

• Jack takes 36 seconds to build from factory placement and would requite about 60 resources shared from allies (with 500 resource start).
• Blackdawn takes 30 seconds to build from factory placement if 2 commanders help out.

Transport still takes less than 7 seconds to build but I do not see that as a problem as the main power of commdrop is boosted defence. The 30 seconds to build the average cheese rush would provide plenty of time for scouting.

Removal of boost would make economic starts a little more powerful because of the reduced power of rushes. A lot of the power of cheeserushes is that after boost players have very little resources stopping them from quickly producing the counter. An economic start with 500 resource start would be expected to have some resources in storage even as far as a minute into the game due to the income from the produced economy. If a Blackdawn is spotted a commander takes 23 seconds to make a Packo.

So in short I like the 'solution' because it makes cheese still possible and scouting still important but provides other starts with more reaction time which will hopefully balance the cheese starts. There is a factory plop only option in CA so test it out.

Also note that 500 resources is an arbitrary number, any could be used. I chose 500 as it is what the starting resources used to be and it fits nicely with the storage sizes.

*Although if people think the problem is only commdrop disabling comm transport is ok too.

[SirMaverick]

You are able to spend the same amount of res, but assuming he just builds a few winds and immediately gets fac, and you get mexes a radar a MT and some solars and such you are behind on boost.

Same amount of resources are spend, with or without boost. (if both use same build order in both situations)

The thing boost changes is on a midsized map it takes time for scouts to reach them, and for that time boost speeds everything up. It takes a bit of res and time to counter a rush (and something like a BD can just see you have defense and move on to allies) and boost cuts the timeframe you have to react.

With boost, time between finished scout and BD (or whatever) is lower. But unit move speed is the same (also for your scouts). When unit is finished you have same time to react.
(If you scout the BD being build in a factory there are chances that they change strategy.)

[JohannesH]

You are able to spend the same amount of res, but assuming he just builds a few winds and immediately gets fac, and you get mexes a radar a MT and some solars and such you are behind on boost.

Same amount of resources are spend, with or without boost. (if both use same build order in both situations)

The thing boost changes is on a midsized map it takes time for scouts to reach them, and for that time boost speeds everything up. It takes a bit of res and time to counter a rush (and something like a BD can just see you have defense and move on to allies) and boost cuts the timeframe you have to react.

With boost, time between finished scout and BD (or whatever) is lower. But unit move speed is the same (also for your scouts). When unit is finished you have same time to react.
(If you scout the BD being build in a factory there are chances that they change strategy.)

Contradiction much?

[SirMaverick]

With boost, time between finished scout and BD (or whatever) is lower. But unit move speed is the same (also for your scouts). When unit is finished you have same time to react.
(If you scout the BD being build in a factory there are chances that they change strategy.)

Contradiction much?

"When unit [...]" - second sentence has a condition.

My test said: plop fac + boosting BD: 31 secs; plop fac + 2 coms build BD: 39 secs. Assuming there is res no stall. BD arrives at around 1:25 at other side of map (not diagonal). Are you really saying that 8 seconds difference in 1:25 makes it harder to counter?

[SirMaverick]

Additionally the rush start can happen anywhere - you are not "restricted" to mex spots like normal starts. So to find the BD starter you need more scouts and more time to check whole enemy start box.

EDIT: Tested on tabula: spamming fleas, boost has almost no difference. First flea arrives at ~50 seconds at enemy base. Spamming 20 fleas + good micro + not a single defender, llt, commander and you need around 1:10 to 1:20 to scout most of enemy start box.
EDIT2: weasel is faster 45 seconds and 1:10

[Pxtl]

@Google_Frog

I think plopping a nanotower or two wouldn't be bad - just a way to speed up the start by giving you more buildpower for your initial build. That's not the same as plopping a prescriptive list of 3 mex, 3 solar, llt, etc.

But it may have the same flaw as the boost.

[JohannesH]

With boost, time between finished scout and BD (or whatever) is lower. But unit move speed is the same (also for your scouts). When unit is finished you have same time to react.
(If you scout the BD being build in a factory there are chances that they change strategy.)

Contradiction much?

"When unit [...]" - second sentence has a condition.

My test said: plop fac + boosting BD: 31 secs; plop fac + 2 coms build BD: 39 secs. Assuming there is res no stall. BD arrives at around 1:25 at other side of map (not diagonal). Are you really saying that 8 seconds difference in 1:25 makes it harder to counter?

Im no expert in CA timings, but surely 8 seconds is a big difference for a rush timing in any RTS pretty much

[luckywaldo7]

Stop going offtopic, this is about rushing statics in bases, not units.

For starting resources, I want to try 1000 because it means you can put more units on the field before you start stalling com+factory, which I hope would lead to more territory contesting early game and less compush-to-middle-while-spam-llt.

I know storage was reduced to 500 to make overdriving faster, but if you go an economic build and make enough energy to output roughly double energy value compared to metal production, you will still have around 500 energy stockpiled when you start stalling metal. Also it would be very nice if manual overdrive functionality was re-added.

[SirMaverick]

I know storage was reduced to 500 to make overdriving faster, but if you go an economic build and make enough energy to output roughly double energy value compared to metal production, you will still have around 500 energy stockpiled when you start stalling metal. Also it would be very nice if manual overdrive functionality was re-added.

Yeah. http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.ph ... 51#p440151

[scifi]

Stop going offtopic, this is about rushing statics in bases, not units.

For starting resources, I want to try 1000 because it means you can put more units on the field before you start stalling com+factory, which I hope would lead to more territory contesting early game and less compush-to-middle-while-spam-llt.

I know storage was reduced to 500 to make overdriving faster, but if you go an economic build and make enough energy to output roughly double energy value compared to metal production, you will still have around 500 energy stockpiled when you start stalling metal. Also it would be very nice if manual overdrive functionality was re-added.

I agree with you, id like more early expantion than just rush a hlt at center choke , or def rush e.t.c....

remenber boost is already half of what it was.

Comunism screwed individual expantions in team games.
i recall a time when only 30% iirc of player income was shared not entire income. This is way better imo.

It would prevent a player with 2 mexes have the same income as a player with 24 mexes, would fix static def rush, plus only 1 player expanding in team games.

[hoijui]

what if you could choose at game start, whom to share with (default, share with all)?

[SirMaverick]

This thread is about boost. There is a separate thread about Communism.

what if you could choose at game start, whom to share with (default, share with all)?

Coop.

[Saktoth]

Nano-plops or other such change the game too much necessarily, as google said. Better would be to just have the com get 3x build speed for ~40 seconds, but then that punishes players who dont burn through all their resources in those 40 seconds, so give them 3x buildspeed for ~600 resources... wait, now you have boost.

I dont like boost at all as a mechanic, and it adds a bunch of messy complications but the game starts too slowly without it.

The most elegant solution (for all that it breaks 1-1-1) is to reduce the BT on facs. However, the game will still start fairly slowly and it would make factories reclaim and facswapping really fast.

The decaying boost idea has been thrown around a lot, but it would add another mechanic on top of something already messy, and may lead to you losing resources permanently. The decaying extra BT would be good if it can be configured so even slower starts will rip through your starting resources.

I think removing atlas com is probably the best solution to the specific problem here, but the otherwise rather minor problems boost creates (and the larger counter-intuitive factor) will remain.

[Gota]

Make labs build faster but reclaim at the same speed as they do now or slower.
all these excpetions are a bitch but as long as u don't actually have any gameplay issues it doesnt matter.
Newbies wont know anything or care about any of this anyway and the players who play for years will have no trouble learning this little detail.

The only problems in in your perfectionist mind IMO,as far as adding a few exceptions here and there.
The fact that rps is so accentuated contributes to more fac swapping and the desire to allow many unit types be viable on many maps(it could not be so and the game would still be fun to play)is also a factor in the same problem.
You can just allow for a slightly longer start as well It's not it's the end of the world.

[Google_Frog]

I dont like boost at all as a mechanic, and it adds a bunch of messy complications but the game starts too slowly without it.

The most elegant solution (for all that it breaks 1-1-1) is to reduce the BT on facs. However, the game will still start fairly slowly and it would make factories reclaim and facswapping really fast.

AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGHH!!!!!!!

For the last 10 months I have said that facplop has a much greater purpose than to speed up the start. It fixes a seperate problem! I even said this recently

I have already said elsewhere why I think facplop is required and I have not seen any better solution to the problem facplop fixes.

This was then followed by me saying the initial 500 resources would be spent with 18 BP (comm + factory) in 28 seconds. I don't think this is too long.

Gota: Is there extreme RPS in land? Where and do you know that we are not trying to accentuate it?

Stop going offtopic, this is about rushing statics in bases, not units.

You cannot discuss something that happens at the start without discussing everything else that happens at the start.

For starting resources, I want to try 1000 because it means you can put more units on the field before you start stalling com+factory, which I hope would lead to more territory contesting early game and less compush-to-middle-while-spam-llt.

Is this with facplop or without? Higher start resources create a bit more blind RPS as more can be built before good scouting is achieved. If you take comm income into account you do not stall for 33 seconds if spending with the comm and factory, I think this is a good period of time. Lots of start resource amounts can be tried as tests to see what works well.