Instead of building tons of separate builders, you might want to just push a button that makes the lab build units faster?
So, the idea is: every lab would have some bar which defines how fast it will build the units.
And of course there is always a trick: that higher you set the building speed, that more energy it will cost.
Example: If the normal building speed is 1 M/s and 50 E/s, when you set it to build 100% faster, it would use 2 M/s and 200 E/s. So energy use increases by 200%.
But energy cost grow shouldnt be linear, because then you cant just make it faster and faster too easy. So when you put it to build 10 M/s it would cost 2000 E/s, or something like that.
Of course all this would be mod defined. (includes the energy cost multiplier too).
What you think? Good? Bad? Why? Possible to make it work well?
Building power possible to change?
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Foxomaniac
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SSFLSuperNoob
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Well, faster building was kinda a part of it, was it not? More resource usage would also be an obvious part... the "building gets damaged over time" thing would add a good drawback, but maybe after a certain amount of increase?Faster Building + More Res Usage + Building Gets Damaged overtime or something
Also, would you still be able to use con. units to speed up building even more?
Last edited by SSFLSuperNoob on 15 Jul 2007, 22:11, edited 2 times in total.
How about fast built units are weaker - and need time to recover. Have i already told you the halfbuildpewee-forgetting-his-weapons- Joke ?
How about the Chance of a random Missconstruct (percent) - the faster the Factory goes - and while the Factory is disambling the Wreck again....
How about a Building or Unit of the Enemy - that is (cloaked) able stealing Nanolith , during the Buildprocess of a Overcharged Factory ?
How about the Chance of a random Missconstruct (percent) - the faster the Factory goes - and while the Factory is disambling the Wreck again....
How about a Building or Unit of the Enemy - that is (cloaked) able stealing Nanolith , during the Buildprocess of a Overcharged Factory ?
Theese things could be done with an 'ability' system that I suggested here
When activated, an ability called 'overload' would increase the workertime (factory)/energy make (powerplant), during a limited time. Of course we couls add some 'negative effects', like a negative healtime (can this damage the unit, really ?), or a critical-malfunction-big-boom-chance[/list]
When activated, an ability called 'overload' would increase the workertime (factory)/energy make (powerplant), during a limited time. Of course we couls add some 'negative effects', like a negative healtime (can this damage the unit, really ?), or a critical-malfunction-big-boom-chance[/list]
Upgrades that can be build inside the Factorys to Upgrade them.. that way the Factory is busy for a certain time - so this is something you can just allow, if you have the Honey(Metall/Energy) and the Money (a Opponent, that hands over some time) - the Upgrades could be used to overcharge, but could selfdestroy them, if they do that to long, this would allow, wave production - just hit the overcharge button for a huge Army, wait till this Things recharge - and then the Same Game again, with diffrent units..
I hate the ideas. The beauty of TA is that it had none of this upgrade gimmick, it was all simple, clear, and visual. You had an armlab, it was an armlab. Every armlab look the same, so every armlab performs the same.
You don't have to look at figure in its character sheet to know if it's a level 17 lab with +5 build speed, +3 armor bonus, and a ring of lesser metal consumption. You just look at the very lab itself, you see immediadly if it's a level 1 lab or a level 2 lab.
You want it to build faster? Fine, guard it with Farks. Again, a simple glance on the screen tell you how many cons are helping, instead of having to look up some abstract number or power bar.
You want to upgrade to next tech level? Fine, you just build a level 2 lab next to it. Anyway, it's not like you'd have time to care about each of your dozen kbot labs, they're just expendable metal machinery, not individual you'd cherish and upgrade with love one by one.
Then there's also the whole versatility of it: If you have a fully upgraded kbot factorys, and realise that you now need plane fast, well, you're stuck. On the other hand, with the current system, you just take all your farks and redirect them on the plane factory. Think about it: It has the same effect that you want, allowing the player to boost some factories. It doesnt have the ugly side-effect of having every player reaching the same uprade level at the same time in competitive games, or else they'll lose. And mostly, it allow for a much more fluid and reactive gameplay than the upgrade system.
I'll stress those points again:
- Everything must be visual. The player shouldn't have to look up bars and charts to know what the state of his unit is. For instance, in TA, to know how much constructed a unit is, instead of having a progress bar, you'd simply look at much the nanoframe is filled. No figures, no abstract sheet and bars, it's all shown via details on the world on the main screen. Simple, intuitive, beautiful.
- Spring is about removing the micro, to focus on the macro. The whole upgrade concept goes against this philosophy. For instance you can queue three factories in the build queue of cons, then forget about it, and when you'll be back, they'll be ready to use. Unlike those RTS where you have to come back and click every 30s to keep your factory fully upgraded and busy.
- Spring is all about large scale, great numbers of units, whole screen of structures being blown off and reconstructed in matter of minutes. It's not about winning the game with one hero factory, telling it every second to drink its vial of faster nanolathe, cast its aura of friendly heal, etc...
As for random missconstruct... do I really have to explain why the idea would result in awful gameplay, anger and resent from the players, turn Spring into dice game, etc..?
And no, stop rejoicing at every stupidity. Not all ideas are good. Some are appalling.
You don't have to look at figure in its character sheet to know if it's a level 17 lab with +5 build speed, +3 armor bonus, and a ring of lesser metal consumption. You just look at the very lab itself, you see immediadly if it's a level 1 lab or a level 2 lab.
You want it to build faster? Fine, guard it with Farks. Again, a simple glance on the screen tell you how many cons are helping, instead of having to look up some abstract number or power bar.
You want to upgrade to next tech level? Fine, you just build a level 2 lab next to it. Anyway, it's not like you'd have time to care about each of your dozen kbot labs, they're just expendable metal machinery, not individual you'd cherish and upgrade with love one by one.
Then there's also the whole versatility of it: If you have a fully upgraded kbot factorys, and realise that you now need plane fast, well, you're stuck. On the other hand, with the current system, you just take all your farks and redirect them on the plane factory. Think about it: It has the same effect that you want, allowing the player to boost some factories. It doesnt have the ugly side-effect of having every player reaching the same uprade level at the same time in competitive games, or else they'll lose. And mostly, it allow for a much more fluid and reactive gameplay than the upgrade system.
I'll stress those points again:
- Everything must be visual. The player shouldn't have to look up bars and charts to know what the state of his unit is. For instance, in TA, to know how much constructed a unit is, instead of having a progress bar, you'd simply look at much the nanoframe is filled. No figures, no abstract sheet and bars, it's all shown via details on the world on the main screen. Simple, intuitive, beautiful.
- Spring is about removing the micro, to focus on the macro. The whole upgrade concept goes against this philosophy. For instance you can queue three factories in the build queue of cons, then forget about it, and when you'll be back, they'll be ready to use. Unlike those RTS where you have to come back and click every 30s to keep your factory fully upgraded and busy.
- Spring is all about large scale, great numbers of units, whole screen of structures being blown off and reconstructed in matter of minutes. It's not about winning the game with one hero factory, telling it every second to drink its vial of faster nanolathe, cast its aura of friendly heal, etc...
As for random missconstruct... do I really have to explain why the idea would result in awful gameplay, anger and resent from the players, turn Spring into dice game, etc..?
And no, stop rejoicing at every stupidity. Not all ideas are good. Some are appalling.
Well, you dont need to play that mod where it would be used... And i wasnt actually talking about OTA or any modifications of it.
It was just suggestion to keep mind open for new things. There is never too many ideas to make Spring better.
If we want to make more different mods, we need a LOT of new ideas.
And why i got this idea: tons of builders feels so rigid to use, also slows down the game a bit if you have much them. Of course we could make another labs, but that is rigid too...
In the game that building power thing could be some button near the other commands with 5-8 different building speed values, which you can click with mouse.
Just like when you put metal makers off, you just make one click. I dont see it harder than that.
It was just suggestion to keep mind open for new things. There is never too many ideas to make Spring better.
If we want to make more different mods, we need a LOT of new ideas.
And why i got this idea: tons of builders feels so rigid to use, also slows down the game a bit if you have much them. Of course we could make another labs, but that is rigid too...
In the game that building power thing could be some button near the other commands with 5-8 different building speed values, which you can click with mouse.
Just like when you put metal makers off, you just make one click. I dont see it harder than that.
There are always too few devs to implement ideas. The more **** ideas gets in Spring, the less coding time they have for actually useful fixes.TradeMark wrote:There is never too many ideas to make Spring better.
More different as in more similar to every other RTS out there?If we want to make more different mods
I just explained you how tons of helper and tons of labs is less rigid than upgradeable labs:And why i got this idea: tons of builders feels so rigid to use, also slows down the game a bit if you have much them. Of course we could make another labs, but that is rigid too...
- Once you spend an upgrade on a lab, you can't take it out and give it to another lab. That is rigid.
- When a fully upgraded lab is lost, you have to restart the building-a-lab-and-upgrading-it-till-it-is-useable process from the beginning. That is rigid.
- To the contrary, helper cons can be reassigned factory, spread amongst factories, moved into safety during attack, used for other purpose (reclaming wreck, healing armies, ...), at will. That is fluid.
- Tons of factories mean that you can recover from losing half of them, that you can diversify your production alot. That is fluid.
More interface clutter = bad!some button near the other commands
Why not 3, or 9? That 5-8 is rigid! With helper cons, the only limit is how many you can physically fit around the factory. It all depends on the footprint size and builddistance the modder used, no arbitraty limit. It's something real in the virtual world, you can see with one glance the number of fark, you can feel that more and it'll be too crowed for some to reach the factory, it makes sense, it's intuitive, physcial, visual etc... It's not arbitrary numbers on the interface. Do you get what I mean?with 5-8 different building speed values
For macro with upgradable buildings/units you could add a small line of icons representing the different upgrade states of the building along the bottom of the build button (e.g. the factory button has three levels of upgrades -> you get small buttons 1, 2 and 3) which would normally select/queue the building for construction but its queue would automatically contain the upgrades you wanted.
Of course we're back at the upgrade system request with that... The easiest way to implement upgrades is to simply allow the unit to replace itself with another one (metamorphosis, often requested as well), of course that'll still not work well for units with multiple systems that can be upgraded (e.g. turrets). But that can wait, metamorphosis would already work for many of the things we want upgrades to do.
Of course we're back at the upgrade system request with that... The easiest way to implement upgrades is to simply allow the unit to replace itself with another one (metamorphosis, often requested as well), of course that'll still not work well for units with multiple systems that can be upgraded (e.g. turrets). But that can wait, metamorphosis would already work for many of the things we want upgrades to do.
What... every lab would have the option to change the building speed, so it doesnt matter if you start using another lab. Just one click and then its making units in full power.zwzsg wrote:I just explained you how tons of helper and tons of labs is less rigid than upgradeable labs:
- Once you spend an upgrade on a lab, you can't take it out and give it to another lab. That is rigid.
My idea wasnt about upgradeable labs
I wasnt talking about upgraded labs, you misunderstanded the thing, its not about upgrading, its just one click which defines how fast the lab will build.zwzsg wrote:- When a fully upgraded lab is lost, you have to restart the building-a-lab-and-upgrading-it-till-it-is-useable process from the beginning. That is rigid.
You could also use this building speed feature to separate builders, if that makes problems in the gameplay.zwzsg wrote:- To the contrary, helper cons can be reassigned factory, spread amongst factories, moved into safety during attack, used for other purpose (reclaming wreck, healing armies, ...), at will. That is fluid.
Well you dont need to build only one factory, you can still build multiple factories, nobody stops you building more factories.zwzsg wrote:- Tons of factories mean that you can recover from losing half of them, that you can diversify your production alot. That is fluid.
If that is so hard, then you should stop using metal makers too...zwzsg wrote:More interface clutter = bad!some button near the other commands
That was just a thought how it would look like in the game, there could also be more values if you want so, but i thought less = easier.zwzsg wrote:Why not 3, or 9? That 5-8 is rigid! With helper cons, the only limit is how many you can physically fit around the factory. It all depends on the footprint size and builddistance the modder used, no arbitraty limit. It's something real in the virtual world, you can see with one glance the number of fark, you can feel that more and it'll be too crowed for some to reach the factory, it makes sense, it's intuitive, physcial, visual etc... It's not arbitrary numbers on the interface. Do you get what I mean?with 5-8 different building speed values
And i see those con units really rigid, they sometimes bugs the factory, and prevents units coming out, etc.
You missed the point of this idea: this wasnt a replacement for construction units, it would be just improvement, which would reduce the need of tons of builders.
Anyways, this could be implemented really easy, its just one value switch to another, that variable is named as WorkerTime in FBI files.
I think your idea could work with a minworkertime and a maxworkertime tag with a slider attached to it so you could e.g. throttle construction of less important units. It also gives more modder freedom, some oppose build assist while others might not want to introduce mobile repair units that could assist building.