Political Economy / Tax Rate Mod

null_pointer_exception

Simple idea that could mix things up a bit and make the game even less predictable.

At the beginning of the round, commander would choose / players would vote to select:

1. Normal
2. Capitalism - resource distribution weighted towards players
3. Communism - resource distribution weighted towards the commander

How much weighting? Well as a probably terrible example...

Normal (http://wiki.unknownworlds.com/ns2/Resource_Model):
Team Res: 1 every 6 seconds
Player Res: 0.1 every 6 seconds

Capitalism:
Team Res: 0.50 every 6 seconds
Player Res: 0.15 every 6 seconds

Communism:
Team Res: 1.5 every 6 seconds
Player Res: 0.05 every 6 seconds

Something to keep in mind is that larger teams would benefit from capitalism since they would be given more total resources. This is true and already broken normally, but it would become even more obvious.

How it would play:

1. It would be tough to hurt the res of team under communism since the commander could just keep placing resource towers.
2. Alien capitalism would see lots of early, un-upgraded fades / lerks.
3. Communist team could ensure best players always good weapons / life forms
4. Strategy would revolve around what economy you think the other team chose. Not seeing many mini-bases? Snipe their resource nodes.
5. Players who max out on resources under communism would have all their extra sent to the Kremlin.
6. Communism would favor marines (phase gates, upgrades), Capitalism would favor aliens (tunnels, fades)

Note: I don't think the weighting could be too extreme, because heavily capitalistic aliens would flood the game with higher lifeforms, and communist marines would get to level 3 upgrades pretty fast. I think it's a neat idea, though. Think of it like the corporation tax rate in EVE Online.

Modders who are familiar with the lua interface, please advise on how hard this would be to implement? Maybe point me in the right direction if no one else is interesting in doing it?

CCTEE

Nice idea but I doubt that alien-communism would be viable. Higher lifeforms are so crucial..
Maybe if communism:
-get extra eggs
-skulks also spawn faster and are automatically upgraded (commander set's the traits ofcourse, no free choice under communism).

null_pointer_exception

CCTEE wrote: »

Nice idea but I doubt that alien-communism would be viable. Higher lifeforms are so crucial..
Maybe if communism:
-get extra eggs
-skulks also spawn faster and are automatically upgraded (commander set's the traits ofcourse, no free choice under communism).

That's a good point. The thing is, the more stuff you introduce, the more stuff has to be tweaked for balance. You may be right that aliens would have trouble with less p-res, but don't forget that the commander could easily cover the map with crags early game.

If the commander gets 1.5 res / 6 seconds, that's 15 res per minute per harvester. 3 harvesters is 45 res per minute (compared with 30 normally). 2 minutes would be 90 res.

Cost of upgrading celerity all the way: 10 + 20 + 20 + 20 = 70.

So before 3 minutes of having 3 rts, the comm could drop a lerk egg that could upgrade to full celerity or put a crag in several rooms for full-celerity skulks.



Also, 0.05 res per 6 seconds is 0.5 res per minute per rt. 3 rts would be 1.5 res per minute for players. So 5-7 minutes into the game, players could afford lerks on their own. fade and onos would not be seen until end-game, I guess, which would change things considerably. Shotguns might tough to deal with.

I'd like to see it played before assuming it would hurt aliens that much. I think it's hard to say.

Soul_Rider

As a point of interest, why not make the choice for Marines regular or capitalist, and Aliens regular or communist. This way, Marine teams can be more like NS1, more under comm control, and Aliens can be more independent of their comm for their personal lifeforms. Or you could just enforce both ideas on the teams to make it more NS1 like.

Nordic

I don't see any reason for kharra to not go capitalism and marines to go communism or regular every time.

Soul_Rider

I got that the wrong way round, Marin Communist and Alien Cpaitalist..

Regnareb

Well, you switched Communism and Capitalism in your main post so, it is not surprising if we got confused

NS1 is a very good example, Communism for the aliens, and Capitalism for the Marines.

Therius

Marines will always prefer tres and aliens will always prefer pres, so the only thing this would create is a new resource model that will always be chosen no matter what, and the game would have to be rebalanced around this new model. tl;dr: there is no point.

You wouldn't be creating new strategies and choices, you'd be giving players the equivalent of a choice between a rifle that deals 10 damage per bullet and one that deals 15 damage per bullet. That is no choice.

meatmachine

Interesting idea even with it's flaws. You should make a server mod for it

coolitic

Not too bad, but one flaw is pretty much what therius said, aliens would use capitalism most of the time and marines would usually choose communism.

Not bad idea, but needs refinement and maybe new features.