Discussion about a silly gameplay idea

[Torrasque]

I had an idea. I know it would not implemented, because it's perhaps a silly idea, and it will confuse all player, and need a lot of tweaking on buildtime.

But I would like to know what do you think about it ,and how do you think it could affect the gamplay.

Firstly I'm must admit, i'm not keen of everlasting games, I prefer fast and dynamic game on small maps.

Here is the idea : only allow the commander to help build building.

Your commander will become very important...and you will have to choose where you want to have a boost : on a stategic defence chunk, or on expanding your ressource/producion...

Defance of high buildtime building would be very important, because they cannot be build in 30 sec with 10 fark.

But number of units will rise a lot, with a lot of groups, because you can only spend your excess on it. (helping building unit is not restricted)
Yeah, I don't like when games have more defence structure than units

I know that a lot of players will hate this idea..it's just about speaking of a differant way to see the game. So please don't only say "It sucks :)"

edit : shit, i posted it in developement, can a moderator move this in the right section?

[IMSabbel]

The idea isnt silly.

Right now, building time in mid/endgame isnt depending on factory numbers et all, just how many farks you get there and how many ressources you can amass.

In OTA, this was at least limited a bit because you could only place so many constructors within nano-range (excluding gay swarms of construction aircraft, but to those later).

But with ultra-farks and necros this is really a problem. You can build krogoths in 18 seconds (sustained). Its no problem building an advanced shipyard close to shore and guard it with 15 necros and pump out warlords as fast as they can leave the factory... which is a _bit_ extreme, imho.

Also, i REALLY have a problem with those construction aircraft swarms. And its a practical problem.
They SLOW the game DOWN. A LOT. Whenever a game is running really slowly, i can find in the review that someone has a lvl1 aircraft plant on fire-and-forget modus (produced aircraft guard factory, which is on repeat. The perverse thing is that those things are self-sustained, because the 20energy and 0.5 metal per const. plane is more than they use to build. So they easily get 100 or so, which slows down the game even on a a64.
People bitch about the unit limit, but i noticed that even a large scale battle doesnt slow it as much as those damn constrution planes....

(so case in point: i would like option for the host to limit the number of construction airplanes to something reasonable, like 20 or so)

[Min3mat]

yeah instead of the ban screen it is a limit screen, you set the max amount of each unit (eg. Krogoths 1) per player (with 0 meaning none allowed)
that would be awesome if you could implement it SYs! :) or should i be adressing betalord? :)

[SinbadEV]

The reason we build swarm with adv con planes is because it works... I know that it chugs out the game so I have been trying to re-adjust my strategy to accomodate FARKs/NECROs instead... but I wonder if it's one of those glitches that could be fixed by someone reworking the source a bit...

anyways... I like your plan... it's a different game but if no-one else can spam-build... then I don't HAVE to spam build... right?

[SinbadEV]

yeah instead of the ban screen it is a limit screen, you set the max amount of each unit (eg. Krogoths 1) per player (with 0 meaning none allowed)
that would be awesome if you could implement it SYs! :) or should i be adressing betalord? :)

Yeah... the real TA game had that kind of control... would be nice to have back...

[FizWizz]

I like the idea of restricting build-assist capability to the Commander (and maybe a few other untis, like lvl 1 ground units). That'd be a cool thing to have as a game-option.

[Torrasque]

yeah instead of the ban screen it is a limit screen, you set the max amount of each unit (eg. Krogoths 1) per player (with 0 meaning none allowed)
that would be awesome if you could implement it SYs! :) or should i be adressing betalord? :)

Yeah... the real TA game had that kind of control... would be nice to have back...

You can do in in script.txt. It just lobby wich don't allow it I think (but I never tested it)


In OTA, the problem is less crucial because builder were often stuck and cannot help.
If builder eaten permanently some energy, it could solve some spam builder behavior...

I don't want Spring to become a SimCity^^

[IMSabbel]

The reason we build swarm with adv con planes is because it works... I know that it chugs out the game so I have been trying to re-adjust my strategy to accomodate FARKs/NECROs instead... but I wonder if it's one of those glitches that could be fixed by someone reworking the source a bit...

anyways... I like your plan... it's a different game but if no-one else can spam-build... then I don't HAVE to spam build... right?

Well, i KNOW it works, and i wouldnt care if it didnt affect gamespeed the way it does...

[GrOuNd_ZeRo]

IMSabbel, your first post was quite entertaining, made me snicker a few times, I do agree though.

Mass-guarding plants cause alot of strain on processor speed, I think one of the things to blaim is the bounding sphere's collision detection,

BTW, I really think that OTA style firing through units should become the case in spring as well so it will limit friendly fire accidents, esspecially missile units have this problem, units being able to damage them self is ok with their splash damage though.

[cain]

the construction plane slowdown is casued by the nanolathe particle effect, not by the plane number itself (the physics is the same of brawlers & co).

TA used to have a nanolathe particle limit, so you have only
a thousand or so slot and new particles removed the old ones
in a round-robin scheme to prevent this.

I wonder if spring will show the same brawler performance issue
of it's father...

[SinbadEV]

yeah.. I doubt it's the particle effect cause FARKs don't have the same effect...

[GrOuNd_ZeRo]

con aircraft are clustered closer together than brawlers...so they have less conllisons happening.

[Doomweaver]

Personally I think XTA and in fact most TA mods need to be rebalanced so that factories make more sense to build, and contruction units less.

Make it so that factories can build about 30% faster, and cost about 30% less metal to build. But to slow down the game a bit, so players don't go strait for the advanced facilities, and also to slow down rushing, maybe factories should take 40% longer to build.

Perhaps these changes are too drastic, but some changes along these lines would really improve the game imo.

[Weaver]

Alternatively have a max build rate for all units, irrespective of the number of helpers. The value could be calculated from existing tags.

[IMSabbel]

Its definitively NOT the nanolathe particles that slow down the game...
those can be limited in the config, and a few 1000 particles doesnt slow a computer down.
I just tried following example: Game in small devide, commanders script, build only a aircraft plant and const. aircraft.
Cpu load on a A64 3000+ on speed=1, WHILE building:

Code: Select all

planes           simtime+unithandler   .info %
0                   <1%                          1%
10                  2-3%                        2%
25                  5-7%                        4%
50                  8-12%                      6%
100               20-25%                     12%
200               40-50%                     25%           

Notable things:

1. CPU load scaled lineary with number of planes. with >400 construction planes in a game, it wont be able to run at speed 1 on a a64 even without anything else running
2. CPU load not because of particles: Load differences dont vary with planes visible/non-visible. (maybe minimap rendering of particles plays a role?)
3. Collision detection doesnt matter much. When NOT building, it was close to zero, and while building it only reached 5-7% with 200 planes.
4. Dominating time-sinks were simtime and unithandler. At 200 planes, those were hovering at 20 and 30% repectively, EVEN when NOT building. Just having them stay in the air around factory has 50% cpu load.
5. LOS calculation was in the same ballpark as collisions, (4-5% with 200% planes).

Total time spend during that test (from 0-200 planes):
Collisions 6s
Projectile handler: 12s (nanolathe particles ?)
Simtime 90s
Unithandler 70s
slow unitupdate 10s

[IMSabbel]

Personally I think XTA and in fact most TA mods need to be rebalanced so that factories make more sense to build, and contruction units less.

Make it so that factories can build about 30% faster, and cost about 30% less metal to build. But to slow down the game a bit, so players don't go strait for the advanced facilities, and also to slow down rushing, maybe factories should take 40% longer to build.

Perhaps these changes are too drastic, but some changes along these lines would really improve the game imo.

One idea would be: external helpers could increase resource consumption.
(like boosting speed== less efficiency)
A 1000 metal unit for example could cost 1000m when build by a factory alone, but when a constructor with the same buildtime than the factory assists, it will cost 500+(500*penality_factor)

[Min3mat]

yeah maybe every new builder trying to speed things up uses 5-10% more resources than it does atm? that would be quite cool

[PauloMorfeo]

...
Here is the idea : only allow the commander to help build building.
...

I am somewhat divide on what to think of it.

It is true that the build time costs become somewhat irrelevant while the game progresses into mid/late-game mostly because of the Farks/Necros.
But i don't want to lose the ability to help the things i need the most.

I think i would prefer:

Personally I think XTA and in fact most TA mods need to be rebalanced so that factories make more sense to build, and contruction units less.
...

For start, i really think that the Necros/Farks are too powerfull (independantly of having balanced cost or not). Ressurection should be exclusive to the comander (which you can only ever have 1) and they shouldn't have to much Build Time.

Then, if all units Build Time costs would be doubled/tripled and all factories Build Time would also be Doubled/Tripled, helping factories would be less productive and units would still be produced at the same speeds as before.

[PauloMorfeo]

I also like the idea of helping using up more resources, although that would be harder to control.

Imagine you have a low builder building a costly building. Then a Fark comes to help. Who will be considered the ones that's helping? Probably the Fark but we would want the other way around because the Fark is using more resources and, so, having it waste resources is more wastefull.

[zwzsg]

In TA:Kindgoms, only the Monarch (think Commander) was able to help build anything. Other unit could only help only what themsevles could already build.

In TA:Kindgoms, each unit could have a number limit. For instance only one Dragon per side could be built (unless you get ahold of the buildtree of other sides and built the dragons of each race).

TA:Kindgoms was loathed and despised by TA fans.

I really like having construction unit able to lend their building power to factories. It is one of those features that makes TA stand apart of the hordes of other RTS. It like it because it makes gameplay more dynamic. Instead of having a fixed buildtime, the player get to choose which factory is prioritary and which isn't. The game accelerate as time pass, for instance the first fusion, which is always an important step in TA (not XTA), can take long to build, but the others get build much faster thx to having more helper. Also, it's easier to change strats in mid-game if you can simply redirect all the helpers on another factory instead of building a dozen new factories. It allows for a more dynamic gameplay, with much more versatility, and were being able to adapte quickly becomes more important that making the correct choice in the initial build orer.

As for no limit on the number of super unit, it's also one of the strong point of TA compared to other RTS. In TA, in most game were fought on level 1, and krogoth were nearly never built, but once in while, or under special condition, a long game would stand out, in which the war escalation knew now end. First one krogoth, then two, then three, then a dozen, then three dozen. I like that feeling of unlimitness. /me wanders off singing 2 Unlimited.






Oh, and if Spring+XTA really turn The Balance upside down when it comes to helpers, just make planes unstackable and reduce nano range a bit instead of pushing forward your drastic solutions.