Construct additional pylons! - Page 8

Construct additional pylons!

A dynamic game undergoing constant development and refinement, that attempts to balance playability with fresh and innovative features.

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Saktoth
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Re: Construct additional pylons!

Post by Saktoth »

Google_Frog wrote:Why not base OD off total mex income instead of the current complex system of mex count + mex metal.
That will still re-enforce the benefits of having extra mexes, though probably less? To what degree less?

I still think valuing your 3 starting mexes (ish) somewhat more in some way, through mohos, pylons or some other mechanic, would be the preferred option here. I just cant really think of a way to do it which isnt artificially flat out saying 'You get more income from your starting mexes'.

We could, of course, make OD effiency reduce with pylon count, so you only really want one early on, then make that one cheap. That still feels artificial to me though.
Google_Frog
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Re: Construct additional pylons!

Post by Google_Frog »

I just cant really think of a way to do it which isnt artificially flat out saying 'You get more income from your starting mexes'.
(Team metal income from land) = (Team mex income)^x where x is in the range (0,1).
Income/new mex decreases as you have more mexes. This is quite an organic way of doing it. Your early mexes have effectively given you more income.
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Licho
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Re: Construct additional pylons!

Post by Licho »

However if OD is based on your total m income it just multiplies land difference,I want to reduce its effect, not multiply.

So OD conversion must depend on mex count only partially. If you just multiply current metal income, you will get worse effect than with old overdrive.
Google_Frog
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Re: Construct additional pylons!

Post by Google_Frog »

However if OD is based on your total m income it just multiplies land difference,I want to reduce its effect, not multiply.
Firstly normal OD increases income with mexes, there is no reason this cannot be done with other OD. Secondly by the time OD really kicks in a bit of land difference multiplication is a good thing.
So OD conversion must depend on mex count only partially. If you just multiply current metal income, you will get worse effect than with old overdrive.
I never said simple multiplication.

If you assume all mexes make set, equal metal (eg +2.2) you can take mex count out of the current OD equation. It should be possible to create an equation that acts equally for a system that overdrives individual mexes of 2.2 income and a system that applies OD to an entire income in one go.

This equation can be used for corruption. More mexes would always be good as the equation would not care how many mexes are contributing.
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Pxtl
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Re: Construct additional pylons!

Post by Pxtl »

In any system with special preference given to starting mexes, it's important to keep teamplay in mind. Right now in CA, the only difference between a 3-player team and a 4-player team is the comm and starting resources + plop. After 10 minutes of play or so the difference is minimal, since the smaller team has more resources per-player. I mean, in reality more players means more micro which means the bigger team wins, generally... but it sure as heck isn't a given.

Having a special, fixed-amount of OD eliminates this. It means that an alliance has more resources for having more players. It means that losing a player can be a game-ender.

Another approach I was thinking about was a pylon-like system that seriously encourages interconnecting pylons. More than now, where you just hook the energy in. Each player gets one "Prime" pylon and has to chain out to hook in the other metal extractors, so pylon-islands are useless? They get fault-tolerance if they hook up to other players, so if a "Prime" is destroyed the transmission pylons still work. Each team is allowed one (dropped teammates transfer their prime pylon limit), and can morph any transmission pylon into the prime for cheap (previous prime pylons revert to transmission pylon). Just a thought.

Maybe the current pylon system is best. It encourages only overdriving in *bases* and not bothering with isolated mexes.
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Yogzototh
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Re: Construct additional pylons!

Post by Yogzototh »

Well, here are my thoughts, in random order.
  • No "One mex in x minutes levels up", if i have 6 mexes it is 100% fucking logical that they should upgrade twice as fast than if i had only 3.
  • No mex upgrading over time. It sounds like a nice idea, but the pylons are aldready there and thats exactly what they do. And i like the pylons idea much better. I have played alot of starcraft lately so i couldnt care less about that "micro intensive" bullshit, compared to SC on the level people play it at the moment, its child games.
  • To increase the importance of the 3 starting mexes, id agree with the idea of making com a walking OD pylon. Or just adding a pylon plop to the fac plop.
  • Also, it would be interesting to try making OD pylons more explosive, i mean, like alot more, maybe 2x-3x than the current stardust. That way it can fuck up your defence line if you put it there. The main problem there is that it will also make raids die after they kill the first pylon, but if the explosion also makes units leave no m corpses it would probably be ok.
  • Oh, and ive been saying it for ages, the OD equation should have sqrt replaced with log. Sqrt just doesnt diminish enough on high levels.
  • Also, another neat idea: chain reactions. When you destroy an OD Pylon, it also Destroys/EMP's all pylons connected directly to it. The destroying variant would need some kind of limiter though to avoid possibility of total collapse because of 1 pylon. Or maybe like that: every destroyed pylon damages all pylons connected to it by X HP. OD pylons gave 1,5X hp so they dont get destroyed. But killing an OD pylon would cause a chain reaction and make all transmit pylons up the the next OD pylon collapse.
Last edited by Yogzototh on 28 Apr 2010, 02:03, edited 2 times in total.
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Licho
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Re: Construct additional pylons!

Post by Licho »

You have to solve differential equations for optimal energy distribution between mexes with log instead of sqrt. Im not sure it will allow as simple distribution as current basemetal^2 based.
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Pxtl
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Re: Construct additional pylons!

Post by Pxtl »

Really, the OD pylons seem to work best with the BA-style metal layout where a home-base is always 3 metal-patches close to each other. Really that's what you're shooting for, isn't it? Encouraging players to, rather than simply expand over the whole map, take, hold, develop, and porc the base-points and similar dense sites, leaving the peripheral mexes to be of lesser importance.

I'm not sure that the xmission pylons contribute much, but otherwise it seems like the only simpler approach is just good old fashioned mex-morphing. I do think that pylon-plop would help.
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Licho
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Re: Construct additional pylons!

Post by Licho »

Test CA now contains experimental change - pylons are gone and each energy source acts as a pylon.
(Bigger source - more range).
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Pxtl
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Re: Construct additional pylons!

Post by Pxtl »

@Licho

Is there any transmission?
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CarRepairer
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Re: Construct additional pylons!

Post by CarRepairer »

Licho wrote:Test CA now contains experimental change - pylons are gone and each energy source acts as a pylon.
(Bigger source - more range).
Thank you for this change. It sounds a lot easier to manage because I don't have to think about pylons, and if something is off the grid I drop a solar near it.
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Yogzototh
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Re: Construct additional pylons!

Post by Yogzototh »

CarRepairer wrote:
Licho wrote:Test CA now contains experimental change - pylons are gone and each energy source acts as a pylon.
(Bigger source - more range).
Thank you for this change. It sounds a lot easier to manage because I don't have to think about pylons, and if something is off the grid I drop a solar near it.
You need to make a wall of solars to actually make it connect to your other E producing structures. The lines are removed to avoid linespam, but they are still there, every E structure is an OD pylon, transmission pylons are removed altogether.
So now OD system is about building walls of solars or a fusion next to each mex.

Fucking sucks.
I love how the devs are working so hard to avoid the steamrolls and slippery slope that they are forgetting that the whole point of the game is fighting for the mexes, not spamming the fucking OD. And there is no point in fighting for mid mexes if they are pain in the ass to OD, and your mexes in the base produce 3x more M each anyway.
Feels like the fucking BA, where 80% of M is produced at the main base and peripherial mexes become unneeded after the first 5 minutes.
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Pxtl
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Re: Construct additional pylons!

Post by Pxtl »

Wait, what? Transmission is by touch? Huh?
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Yogzototh
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Re: Construct additional pylons!

Post by Yogzototh »

Pxtl wrote:Wait, what? Transmission is by touch? Huh?
Only for windmills and solars, because they have, like, 0 radius.
Your other choice is to build transmission fusions at the same distances as old transmission pylons. But its kinda expensive, you know.
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Pxtl
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Re: Construct additional pylons!

Post by Pxtl »

@Yog

Triple-output mexes cost about 1 fusion per mex in E, if I remember correctly. Squeezing an extra multiplier out of those mexes will require an extra fusion per-mex, so 3X is really the functional limit. So BA-style base-porcing isn't really a good move - peripheral mexes aren't game-deciders, but they will help. Sharing 1 fus between 2 mexes will get you double output from those 2 mexes - so if there are 2 metal patches close to each other it is worthwhile to plonk a fus next to them.
Google_Frog
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Re: Construct additional pylons!

Post by Google_Frog »

The aim is to make the base mexes more important than the middle mexes. The game was a steamroll due to territory too early. As the game progresses more area will be overdriven so the team with less territory will not be able to indefinatly hold on with less territory. Hopefully this system of OD starting at bases (without the high investment step of pylons) will create a portion of the game where the team with less area has a decent chance to fight back.

I like the energy as pylon system except for the large amount of micro it may require. Though the gadget took minimal time to modify so my question is why not just try this?

And it's 12e per mex to produce 2x. This shouldn't be too extreme.
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Licho
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Re: Construct additional pylons!

Post by Licho »

I think we should change commander E back and probably storage back to 500 too.
You now have to fill 1000 which takes very long time - it takes minutes before you start getting any OD bonus.
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Yogzototh
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Re: Construct additional pylons!

Post by Yogzototh »

The com Energy doesnt really matter, having slightly less of it just makes you build a few more solars on start, and that just delays yout build by 5-10 seconds.

And can you make up your fucking mind on what is the aim of the new OD system. Is it promoting raiding or fighting the slippery slope?
Because these 2 things need completely opposite solutions, which also makes them quite uncompatible.
At the moment there are 2 OD systems.
The first one is expensive OD+cheap transmission, the old one. This one promotes raiding as you are forced to put 600m OD pylon by your mexes. And it doesnt help much against slippery slope because players with more territory and mexes need to spend just 600m on OD pylon + a little m for transfer ones.
The current one is complete opposite - cheap OD+expensive transmission. As such, distant mexes are almost never overdriven because to transmit to them you either need solawalls which impede passage of your vehicles, or fusions, which are fucking expensive.
As result, it should be obvious that adding some sort of specialised cheap E transfer pylon to the second variant wouldnt be a good idea, as it simply would return CA to the old "cheap universal OD" with some micromonagement needed to set everything up.

Personally, i would prefer the opposite expensive/expensive system, which has only OD pylons with rather large radius and no mex limit and no transfer pylons at all. Since the players usually have 3 mexes on start, it is probably worth it putting 1 OD pylon to cover them all. But away from the base, where the mexes are away form each other, the cost to OD a mex increases alot not only because OD pylon itself is expensive, but also because you need to build a whole line of them to the mex.
And please, dont give me the bullshit about noobtraps, its the noobs' fucking fault for having no idea what to do, and its up to them to fucking learn the game.
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Mav
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Re: Construct additional pylons!

Post by Mav »

I'm going to state the obvious:
This is a "cool feature" that adds nothing to gameplay. The system is simply too complex and unwieldy at the moment.

Complexity does not always equal fun.

/off to play Tetris
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Yogzototh
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Re: Construct additional pylons!

Post by Yogzototh »

Mav wrote:adds nothing to gameplay.
Hm, i wish there was a stat tool which would tell how much metal has each player obtained through regular mexes, through OD and through reclaim.
That would quickly tell how true your statement is.
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