Good economy: if the human team is weaker, trying to attack, even alone, should prolong the game and be self-sustaining (no need to turn to camping when you run out of credits) while camping should lead to loss of equipment and a swift defeat. Or at lest not force humans to camp all the time.
Current economy: if the human team is weaker, trying to attack will feed the aliens and cost you credits while camping prolongs the game.
And if the camping human team is not (much) weaker and still chooses to camp, then, you know. Impossible to do anything.
Reward sources:
Good economy: rewards player for pursuing the game objectives.
Current economy: pursuing game objectives (killing the enemy base) costs you credits and earns you only some momentum.
Reward flexibility:
Good economy: trying to do something that contributes to reaching the game objectives and failing still earns you a partial reward.
Current economy: only finished kills count. If you go out, damage an enemy but die in the process, you get no momentum and no credits until that enemy is killed.
I think UNV should looks more closely how other successful FPS/RTS games managed these issues. For example Savage2 is/was an extremely well done game in regards to game-economy and balancing.
For the specific issues mentioned by Lamefun: maybe a stealth unit that could take out critical points in the enemies base-setup while the rest of the weaker team defends could be a good and fun way to be able to turn a game around?
Another fun mechanic are the Hellshrines in Savage2, i.e. extremely powerful but difficult to capture and hold locations on the map, that with some smart strategy can be used by the weaker team to turn a game around.
pursuing game objectives (killing the enemy base) costs you credits and earns you only some momentum.
What else would you want to trade your credits for than for both destruction of parts of the enemy base and team progress?
lamefun wrote:
only finished kills count. If you go out, damage an enemy but die in the process, you get no momentum and no credits until that enemy is killed.
That's true but not easy to change. Right now (or prior to Norf's experiments, though the claim holds for these, too), personal credit gain through killing is balanced by design. The average credits any player on either team has will converge to 400 credits (4 morph points). This is worth a lot. It's something we don't need to worry about ever again, we just need to worry about an n morph point alien form being balanced against a 100n credit equipped human. If we change according to your proposal, then the equation breaks as aliens and humans have different properties when it comes to regeneration. Faster/more regeneration would mean giving more credits to the enemy within a lifetime.
Id like to start by agreeing almost completely with Viech. If the game is balanced to the point that the basic unit for both teams could solo a slightly strong version of alien or human (IE mantis/light armour) then there is no problem keeping the game balanced where kills = reward and partial kills /=/ reward. Here's my reasoning:
Full kills are funner in small games and help the game go faster as one team can get a clear advantage as the teams consecutive kills rise. This promotes teamwork, finishing up of kills, and care with your life - which is reasonable to an extent.
Partial credit for KILLS gives people a reason to go out with the tyrant even though they know that they wont likely get the kill.
lamefun wrote:
Reward sources:
Good economy: rewards player for pursuing the game objectives.
Current economy: pursuing game objectives (killing the enemy base) costs you credits and earns you only some momentum.
If you do it right you will end the game with even a slight resource advantage.
