Resources Idea

Request new features or present your ideas.
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seana11
Tyrant
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Joined: Tue Jun 19, 2012 2:00 pm UTC
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Resources Idea

Post by seana11 »

Request for comments:

http://tinyurl.com/nysrcnm

Please read the whole article before commenting.

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CocaneStyle
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Joined: Tue Aug 13, 2013 10:30 pm UTC

Re: Resources Idea

Post by CocaneStyle »

I find these ideas and implementations for resources to be convoluted and out of scope, for the amount of complexity they bring they add very little depth.

Honestly I think you guys are dooming yourselves by trying to reducing camping as much as possible, because nearly all aspects of the game encourage no necessitate humans camping at one point or another, unlike aliens which are the opposite.

Instead of working against the game, how about you accept camping as a legitimate strategy and just balance it?
Also have you experimented with teams staging up differently from each other, what about intentional imbalance?

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Viech
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Re: Resources Idea

Post by Viech »

seana11, as I told you on IRC I think that our current approach can be fixed with regards to the issues you outlined:

The system is highly complex, to the point that it is unintuitive what actions are beneficial to the team at what points on the game

Assuming that you talk about the resource system, I disagree. It is a rather simple system with no exceptions to the ruleset. The fact that cluttering RGS in one place will make their efficiency go to zero is indeed counterintuitive but we can improve the situation either by reworking the algorithm or by displaying a more detailed preview of what will happen when you place a drill/leech.
If you are really talking about the confidence system: Your statement is true and to be honest we are heading towards an even more complex system where the internals are hidden behind the graphical representation. This can work because we will aim to make rewards as intuitive as possible, so that you will get the confidence you would expect for your actions.

There is no visual representation of the system, resulting in new players making poor choices

Agreed. We have some basic mine rate display for the RGS and your team's totals but we will need to improve this further.

It introduces a new vital building that must be maintained for a base to be successful. This makes it even harder for a builder to defend against an attack

I disagree. RGS are not vital to your base – if they get destroyed your base remains fully functional. I recently added a minimum mine rate of 50% provided by the main buildable, so that you don't have to replace vital structures with drills/leeches in early game (in late game, consider it a soft sudden death).

Aliens tend to be very easy to play as they can move around the map easier to place leeches in better places.

We are aware of the aliens greater mobility and we will attempt to balance this with the human team. Not just because of the current implementation of the resource/confidence system but also because the teams should have equal strength (but possibly different approaches) when it comes to map control. Balancing the fact that grangers seldomly endanger themselves when moving around the map will be tough but I guess we can make human builders stronger (alternative secondary gun) or allow armed humans to carry a small construction kit.

Aliens leeches tend to be easier to defend because they need a spawn near them to function

Not really true. An attacker will stand on the egg to prevent aliens from spawning. Both egg and leech can be destroyed from a distance.

This tends to result in the same slippery slope as tremulous, where a team that gets ahead (this time in map control, not credits) tends to stay ahead.

I don't see how the issues you outlined result in a slippery slope. Anyway, stability will be one of our main concerns for public match design (we didn't really encounter significant instability in the tournament matches).

Let's get to your resource system idea. Quite frankly, we don't have a reason to replace the current resource system with something completely different. It fits quite well in the big picture of gameplay and doesn't really has many unsolved issues attached to it. One could argue that our resource system alone doesn't change the game significantly enough but it certainly has the potential to do so, when other limiting factors have been dealt with (currently it is just not fun to control multiple outposts, no matter what incentive we give to do so).

Your idea could serve as a basis for an alternatve game mode. Unfortunately, our engine currently lacks the abstraction to easily switch between game modes and we want to focus on creating the main gameplay first, so your best bet might be creating a mod for now.

I guess what you propose can work since the semantics of your approach are not unlike the current system. If you think of the robots as a visualization of the mining process of RGS, the one big difference is the fact that resource generation can be prevented by controlling the area around the enemy base. This sounds fun but you should be aware that some of the issues you outlined, namely the slippery slope and the mobility difference, will most likely get worse and not better by that. If camping does not only pose the risk of losing structures but also makes you unable to build new ones, your chances of leaving the weak base are even lower (I have to somewhat agree with CocaneStyle here, even though this should better be discussed elsewhere to keep this thread on topic).

I'm sure that a lot of problems will become apparent when you attempt an implementation. The fact that robots are NPCs will limit the viable spots for a mining forward significantly. You already mentioned the fact that bots behaving suboptimal can be a source of frustration. Compared to the current RGS, the freedom of players is likely to decrease because there are less viable base locations and many of them will require players to babysit the robot on its way to resources (especially when the room that contains the actual base is small).

Responsible for: Arch Linux package & torrent distribution, Parpax (map), Chameleon (map texture editor), Sloth (material file generator), gameplay design & programming, artistic direction

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