Resources Feedback

[Ishq]

I have made some more changes to the resources server. Now...it is no longer an unlimited BP server :) I'd appreciate if you guys would take some time and play on it the server again and give some feedback so I can get some more work in before our next release.

[kharnov]

I'd like to stress the importance of giving feedback on the resources system. This is the backbone of our future gameplay changes. If you want to see cool things like new gameplay elements, we need to resolve this first. The faster we get resources to a good state, the sooner we can get to the fun stuff.

[JOURNEYMAN]

BP generation was painfully slow. Don't know if the BP generation rate was changed or not but before the update, I was able to get 999+ BPs with only three drills or leeches within a few minutes. Now it takes much longer to get even 8 BPs than it takes to build a turret with multiple drills. I space out the drills and leeches similar distance as the repeaters.

Not having some spare BPs in the beginning and not being able to recover the lost BP is quite devastating, especially during the beginning of the game.

When I build something within a repeater's power field and then mark that structure and try to build something else in RC or another repeater's power field, I get no power remaining message as if there are no more BP left. Previously, I was able to mark and build a structure within any power field. Now it seems that the BP can't be transferred between different power fields. (Didn't test this with alien building.)

[Ishq]

Yeah, I noticed this as well. The rate is supposed to give 10 BP / min / leech or mine for the first few minutes. It will decay exponentially such that every 10 min, the mine rate will be halved. I'm thinking of keeping a similarly low regeneration rate, but give a small pool of resources. Maybe 50 bp at the beginning to get the teams started.

[ViruS]

Can you make the rc generate its own resources as well, maybe initially like you said, 10bp/min but each mine/leech after that initially adds 5 bp/min. I also like the exponential decay idea.

With some advance coding, maybe it's possible to make the resources' get speed depend on its x/y location, where 100 units squared (10x10 units) would equal to a possible of 2 bp let's say, and the maximum area the mine/leech can gather these from is dependant upon it's range.

For example i have a bunch of 'X's for "available", "0" for "unavailable/used" and "R" for resource building.
It gathers the resources slowly, and the further away it is from the buildable, the slower it approaches the buildable.
If you build the resource buildable in the middle of this resource field:
[X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X]
[X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X]
[X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X]
[X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X]
[X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X]
[X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X]
[X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X]
It becomes
[X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X]
[X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X]
[X][X][X][X][X][X][O][X][X][X][X][X][X]
[X][X][X][X][X][O][R][O][X][X][X][X][X]
[X][X][X][X][X][X][O][X][X][X][X][X][X]
[X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X]
[X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X]
and over time
[X][X][X][X][X][X][O][X][X][X][X][X][X]
[X][X][X][X][O][O][O][O][O][X][X][X][X]
[X][X][X][O][O][O][O][O][O][O][X][X][X]
[X][X][X][O][O][O][R][O][O][O][X][X][X]
[X][X][X][O][O][O][O][O][O][O][X][X][X]
[X][X][X][X]O][O][O][O][O][X][X][X][X]
[X][X][X][X][X][X][O][X][X][X][X][X][X]
And once all the 'X's are gone from that field, the resource buildable becomes useless, causing teams to strive for map area.
As for exponential decay, well you will always get bp as long as you have spammed leaches and drills all over the map.

We can also do cubic units to solve the problem of tower maps, but that would involve more coding i guess.

This method could also screw up server RAM as well so this may not be a good idea, but it's just an idea.

[JOURNEYMAN]

I just tested the Dev server as alien and the BPs are transferred between different creeps. I don't know if this difference was intentional or not but this will give aliens a significant advantage over humans. As I mentioned above, the human BPs cannot be transferred between different power fields. I would say this is quite devastating to the humans as humans have to wait for the BPs to be generated rather than utilizing structures from other repeaters to build forward bases or build up main base.

[Ishq]

Really? I thought I removed all that code. Interesting.

[JOURNEYMAN]

Just tested the Dev server as human again. The BPs definitely don't transfer between different power fields.

[JOURNEYMAN]

It appears that the BP generation rate is significantly reduced when RC or OM is moved to new location.

[Ishq]

This is very odd. I cannot seem to replicate any of this locally.