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[Warlord Zsinj]

 

That was 5 days before I left for Europe, I was really trying to get something out before I left :/ I'm still trying to pull things together over here, but I mentioned that there were plans to delegate the balance work if I can't sort out enough free time to get it done.

[1v0ry_k1ng]

how long does it take to change a few fbis, crank it into 7zip and upload? 20 minutes? Starcraft II will be finished at this rate!

[1v0ry_k1ng]

I was thinking about the problems with the flag upgrades, especially the economic upgrades:

1) imp military flag upgrades are too expensive in comparison to the area they project force into to be useful in most games

2) the most valuable resource in expanding to economic upgrades is always energy, not territory. you can often only afford to run 3-4 eco upgrades on a lategame economy, and these all snuggly fit onto the starting mexes, making economic expansion much too defensisible, reducing the impact of territory and raiding, and making for stalemates when neither player can really hurt the other without fighting all the way into their base

Proposed solutions:

1)
Give the weapon on the imp flag upgrade a slightly larger range and a much lower RoF/DPS (and slightly less HP). Aim to make it valued at approximately half the price (350m or thereabouts) while applying force to a slightly larger amount of territory. greater reliance upon garrisoning it and HP sink for speedbumping raiding, rather than itself as a defensive unit. Remove all economc benefit (see part 2)

2)
+ make the energy consumption of a t1 econimuc flag much lower- maybe 35e?
+ make the increase in metal production over a vanilla flag also much lower - a 50% increase??
+ keep the metal cost at around 150m

by making them easily produced (and indivudually less productive + energy consumptive) players can and will build them much more incrementally and you get a smoother curve of esculation. much lower efficency also means players need more of them lategame, so it will be quite common to upgrade many or all of your flags midgame rather than just one or two (lower efficency should mean economys still scale at about the same speed as before though). this makes upgraded flags much more common, and strongly linked to territory, and makes lategame raiding with vehicles, ulavs, air much useful since flags away from defended bases will still need to be upgraded for a good economy. it also makes defensive military flags more of a tough decision if you are imp, and should hopefully mean the long period of esculation required atm when one player has won but needs to build up and economy superiortiy for the final push, wont take as long.

thoughts?

[Warlord Zsinj]

Possibly, but I don't recall only being able to afford only 4 in the late game - I found that I was expanding, at least on smaller maps once my economy started to compound - once you've got a few econ upgrades up it's very easy to get more up. In that way, I think it would be possible to make them cheaper to upgrade - but that also reduces their significance as a risk - and also in a way prevents escalation (by making the upgrades on a scale relative to T1 rather then a springboard for T2)

[1v0ry_k1ng]

Ok tl;dr warning, but srsly

My logic:

Rebel Fusion:

Cost: 210m
Produces: 65e

From this we could deduce -1 persistant ecost is the equivalent of an additional 3.2 metal on its metal cost
210/65=3.2

So,

Econ Flag:
Cost: 150m
Uses: -100e
Extraction: 300%

In addition to costing 150m, the Econ flag has a persistant E use of 95 (100 - 5 that a default flag requires), the equivalent of 304m sunk into energy production.
95x3.2

This gives an overall cost of 150 + 304 = 454m per functioning Econ Flag

Of this, 67% of the mcost is the sunk into energy structures; 33% into the flag itself.

We make 2 assumptions at this point:
Note: Raid = attacking somthing undefended

1) Energy structures cannot be raided (energy structures are in bases where troops are constantly produced and imperial gaurd lurk)

2) The first three econ flags will be built on the 3 starting metal extractors within your base; these are also essentially unraidable.

if you build your said 4 econ flags with the current economy, you are investing 454x4= 1816m into your economy (which is huge.)

of this, one econ flag will be outside your base and raidable. 150m of a 1816m economy investment being raidable means that as long as your base holds, you keep 3/4 econ flags and all of your energy production: 1666m of your economy defended, 150m, or just 8% of your t2 economy able to be destroyed without you also losing your base.

in other words, t2 economy is not vunreble! t2 economy is safe within your base, and even when you have lost most the map you can make your 3 flags count for 9 and hold out against someone who rushed expansion for a disproportionate amount of time until they either make economy themselves or just hold more equivalent flags than you and actually remove you from the game- and this is especially prevalent with imperials and their well defended base. to get more than your base trio of mex upgraded requires a vast investment of metal that requires a very long game, and once you have the energy capability to run lots of t2, losing the mexes out in the field is fairly inconsiquntial because most of their expense is vested in energy, unraidable, and at 300% extraction they pay for themselves extremely quickly.

I put this down to one of the reasons long games tend to stagnate.

My suggestion to remedy this (if you consider it a flaw that is. I think it is) is as follows:

1) make the persistant e-cost expense and M expense of an econ flag the same.
150m of mcost
+
150m of persistant e
150/3.2 = -46.8e usage

A default flag uses 5e, so add that on for -51.8e use

Round that down to -50e use for neatness

This makes the total cost of a functioning t2 flag 300m; 150m and 150 persistant e use mcost

a default 454m has a + 200% extraction rate

if you keep the relationship between expense and extraction rate:
454 = 300
300 = 300/454 = 66%
66% of 200 =  132%, which I would round down to 125% for a + 225% extraction rate

if you wanted to neaten that down to 200%, you would end up with an overall 267-->265m cost for setup.
make that 150m for the extractor and 115m for persistant ecost and you would end up with -36e + -5e = -41
neaten that to -40e usage for an expansion.

TL;DR CONCLUSION
That is probably how I would go about it:
Econ flags cost 150m, use -40e and extract at 200% for a total expense of 265m for the extra 100%

That is comparable cost efficency to 454m for 300%; slightly cheaper, but offset by the increased vunrebility of a more dispersed economy:
just of the 265m expense, 56% is in the extractor itself; 44% grounded in energy.
you now need more extractors to acheive the same extraction rates.

in your 4 econ flag example - 1816m invested into economy, 8% of it raidable.

you would now have 7 flags, with 600m exposed to raids- approximately a third of the investment- making porcing in the base less possible and protecting territory from raiders, ulavs, air, more important.

hehe, a wall of text worthy of argh

[Warlord Zsinj]

wait; are you referring to only the imperials here? Or Imps and Rebels? Because if you change the rebels, I don't know if that logic applies - the rebels, do have easily raidable energy supplies, and a change like this could also ruin the 'econ comm upgrade' build strat. (Which is not necessarily bad, but it will happen)

[1v0ry_k1ng]

both, also how will it ruin the econ comm upgrade strat in any way?

[1v0ry_k1ng]

Two months later,

[Warlord Zsinj]

  interim crits next week

[Warlord Zsinj]

ok, sorry it took so long to get back to you. Here are my criticisms with your logic.

- You make a fair point that the initial expansion is unraidable, althought I would say that this only applies to the Imperials - I can't count the amount of times I've picked off an unguarded rebel econ upgrade with an ATRT because their comm has gone wandering. Your system is a universal one but it is based on a logic derived only for the Imperials.

- Further, to an extent one could argue that the initial 'expansion' is not really that at all, more like a throttle for teching - you have the option of upgrading your points for a safe return, or you can use your military might to capture three points, with out the resource investment, but with increased territory to defend, etc.

- If I understand what you're saying correctly, you suggest dropping the energy output of a flag upgrade to ~200% rather than 300% of original flag production. The 300% value is reasonably important ratio of the worth of an upgrade relative to the worth of capturing territory. I think if it was at a 1:2 ratio, then you would be a lot more hard pressed to make the decision process involved difficult enough to be significant.

- Another difficulty of reducing the output of the econ upgraded flags is that it changes the escalation curve (makes it shallower), and that it ultimately reduces the total metal available on any given map.

I'm not saying these are all bad things - perhaps the escalation curve needs to be lowered, or that maps can be too metal heavy after upgrades are completed - but a change like this has quite large ramifications that don't appear to have been totally considered.

[1v0ry_k1ng]

- You make a fair point that the initial expansion is unraidable, althought I would say that this only applies to the Imperials - I can't count the amount of times I've picked off an unguarded rebel econ upgrade with an ATRT because their comm has gone wandering. Your system is a universal one but it is based on a logic derived only for the Imperials.

yeah, but my point was that the econ upgrades themselves represent a much smaller and easily replaceable investment than the energy structures needed to power them. once you have the energy structures, replacing the econ upgrades is trivial and they pay for themselves extremely fast.

- Further, to an extent one could argue that the initial 'expansion' is not really that at all, more like a throttle for teching - you have the option of upgrading your points for a safe return, or you can use your military might to capture three points, with out the resource investment, but with increased territory to defend, etc.

that would still be the case with slightly less powerful econ flags, except
1) you could upgrade earlier and quicker, for less return
2) players ability to do ol imperial' surviving forever building from your hq and barracks from the starting flags econ metal.'

- If I understand what you're saying correctly, you suggest dropping the energy output of a flag upgrade to ~200% rather than 300% of original flag production. The 300% value is reasonably important ratio of the worth of an upgrade relative to the worth of capturing territory. I think if it was at a 1:2 ratio, then you would be a lot more hard pressed to make the decision process involved difficult enough to be significant.

I realise it was a tl;dr post
what I suggested is

1) keeping the [Metal invested into econ flags+energy structures : Increase in extraction] ratio the same but reducing individual output.

2) Changing the ratio of [Cost of Econ flag: Cost of constant energy requirement] in favour of the econ flags, so
   + Raiding econ flags hurt more (greater proportion of the set up cost)
   + Less fusion spam (seeing fields of fusions spammed at the back of base all game was sort of lame)

- Another difficulty of reducing the output of the econ upgraded flags is that it changes the escalation curve (makes it shallower), and that it ultimately reduces the total metal available on any given map.

Well, no, because while I suggested dropping the extraction rate 300%--200%, It was alongside a change in cost that makes the ratio of [Metal Invested: Economic Return] virtually the same- just less centralised (more but cheaper to run econ flags)

Given that, the esculation curve would be virtually identical in every way, just a bit smoother (you would build more econ flags so the interval between economy upgrades would be smaller).

What I am trying to do, in effect, is make players upgrade a larger number of flags-and making those flags more valuable- while otherwise keeping the economic investment:return ratio the same. once a high proportion of flags are upgraded, raiding from non-infantry units- vehicles, walkers, droids- becomes a great deal more relavent.

[Warlord Zsinj]

Will have time to put out a build in 1 week.

[1v0ry_k1ng]

Wish List

+ ATRT op at killing infantry, ATRT rush v hard to counter, needs to no longer target speeder bikes or have a slower turret traverse ('I also noticed that when facing the right way, it infallably one-shots incoming speeder bikes.')

+ t1A's missile weapon is exploding before it can hit targets. Should match inf AA at least

+ Faster anti tank projectiles all round

+ Commandos sort of rubbish

+ Mobile Arty overpriced

+ New AT rocket

+ Giving speeders some kind of regen

+ T1b main gun needs to not shoot at air, it is much much too effective

+ scout trooper range incease to almost normal inf

+ fix slope tolerances for all vehicles + reb com (reffer to ba-ish slope tolerance for map compatability imo)

+ ulav no longer targetting air ('ulav weapon clips up through the model to target air units')

+ New Airspeeder

+ correlian transport hp boost ('the rebel air vehicle transporter is disgustingly fragile for unit of its size of hitsphere, suggest significant hp boost')

+ boost probedroid weapon a little ('might be interesting to boost the probedroid units weapon a bit so they can harass reb fusions etc bit better')

+ Nerf eweb significantly ('you need 3 assault squads just to get the damage output of an eweb squad, and the ewebs put out their damage at long range with decent AoE that multiplies said DPS vs groups')

+ infantry no longer repairable ('all infantry need to be non-repairable, atm reb com repairing makes compush compulsory in 1v1')

+ New Wookie

+ Remove the e-costs for upgrading the imperial HQ (since you lose the +125e production it is already v. v. expensive energy wise compared to reb upgrades)

+ insert those ion nade troopers

+ nerfing the royal gaurd to make imp games more fun- less of them and no more shooting down planes)

+ making pillboxes useful

+ economy changes

+ new icon for droids that is much more distinguished from infantry (a different shape ideally, like an octagon)

***********

do you want the stuff i did for making speeder bikes behave better?

[1v0ry_k1ng]

Will have time to put out a build in 1 week.

08.04.2010

[Warlord Zsinj]

I'm working on it byatch, I just happen to also have the plague

[Warlord Zsinj]

Also, yes, please do send that speeder bike stuff.

"+ New Wookie" ?

[1v0ry_k1ng]

http://forums.imperialwinter.com/index.php?topic=303.0

[1v0ry_k1ng]

urgh they still fly off the edge of the map

im sure that must be fixable

[Warlord Zsinj]

I'm not totally sure what the voodoo was that fixed it (reasonably well), but it was largely to do with the acceleration value, from memory...

Grounded in stockholm due to volcano, but I was making progress on the build before I left...

[1v0ry_k1ng]

Three months later,

[ez_jamin]

Cmon man, He got stuck by the Volcano... Give him a bit.

[Warlord Zsinj]

Yeah, I'm back now (36 hour trip back from stockholm, including a bus, ferry and about 5 trains instead of a 2 hour flight... lovely), but I'm trying to catch up on all the work I missed while I was marooned/in transit. I'm trying to get stuff out.

[Warlord Zsinj]

Now I'm in rome for a few days, but I swear this is my last trip for a while... Largely due to the fact that I'll be broke at the end of it

Oh, and May the Fourth be with you all

[1v0ry_k1ng]

yo dawg

[Warlord Zsinj]

Ivory try to catch me on IRC sometime...

irc.gamesurge.net #swiw

[1v0ry_k1ng]

opposite timezones make that somewhat difficult

[1v0ry_k1ng]

No.

[Google Frog]

Just idle there.