TRes cap per RT?
Zuriki
Join Date: 2010-11-20 Member: 75105Members
I was thinking about how TRes just stacks and stacks and in some long games teams can end up with 100/200 TRes and nothing to spend it on.
Perhaps having a TRes cap per RT (resource tower) could help limit how much TRes can be stacked whilst not being to harsh if an RT is lost. Essentially, each RT can stack 30 TRes and each TP (tech point) can stack another 20.
If you start with a default of 50 carbon you're at max capacity. Taking the natural expansion opens up another 20 (giving a total of 70, but the 20 cost for a CC means the expansion area is 40). Taking another RT gives a max TRes of 100. No TRes will be lost if you loose an RT except if you are above the next lowest "ceiling" of TRes, then you loose all overflow*
<i>*Better explanation: You have 2 TPs and 2RTs giving you a max TRes of 100, which you've stacked to capacity. You loose 1 RT, your TRes capacity drops to 70, the 30 TRes overflow is lost.</i>
<b>Benefits/Real-world Effects</b>
How does this improve gameplay? Well, having additional RTs brings in more TRes p/s but it also raises the cap, meaning you need to grab more RTs if you want to stack your TRes for base defenses and contingency if you loose a TP or RT.
Also it means that taking out RTs has a much greater impact on the teams progression rather than just a minor inconvenience.
Plus, with the numbers I have provided, given a team has more than 20 TRes, loosing all RTs and all but 1 TPs will still allow the team to make a recovery by constructing an RT.
If they have more than 1 TP and more than 40 TRes, they can make an even quicker recovery - giving an incentive to keep TPs; which I noticed Marines don't really do currently (they build, upgrade main CC then sell the 2nd CC for res).
<b>Thanks for reading, tell me what you think and give some suggestions on how it could be improved or problems you see.</b>
Perhaps having a TRes cap per RT (resource tower) could help limit how much TRes can be stacked whilst not being to harsh if an RT is lost. Essentially, each RT can stack 30 TRes and each TP (tech point) can stack another 20.
If you start with a default of 50 carbon you're at max capacity. Taking the natural expansion opens up another 20 (giving a total of 70, but the 20 cost for a CC means the expansion area is 40). Taking another RT gives a max TRes of 100. No TRes will be lost if you loose an RT except if you are above the next lowest "ceiling" of TRes, then you loose all overflow*
<i>*Better explanation: You have 2 TPs and 2RTs giving you a max TRes of 100, which you've stacked to capacity. You loose 1 RT, your TRes capacity drops to 70, the 30 TRes overflow is lost.</i>
<b>Benefits/Real-world Effects</b>
How does this improve gameplay? Well, having additional RTs brings in more TRes p/s but it also raises the cap, meaning you need to grab more RTs if you want to stack your TRes for base defenses and contingency if you loose a TP or RT.
Also it means that taking out RTs has a much greater impact on the teams progression rather than just a minor inconvenience.
Plus, with the numbers I have provided, given a team has more than 20 TRes, loosing all RTs and all but 1 TPs will still allow the team to make a recovery by constructing an RT.
If they have more than 1 TP and more than 40 TRes, they can make an even quicker recovery - giving an incentive to keep TPs; which I noticed Marines don't really do currently (they build, upgrade main CC then sell the 2nd CC for res).
<b>Thanks for reading, tell me what you think and give some suggestions on how it could be improved or problems you see.</b>
Comments
you cant have enough res lol. fast expand at alien expansion with new cc armory and stuff easily cost 50 res or more so at the end of the game you should have much res to attack effectively.
IMHO...
I feel that's what commanders do anyway. So really, it would limit their spamming. Plus you wouldn't want to spend all your TRes only to loose all your RTs and then be stuck without RTs or Res and thus irrecoverable.
Actually, you want to keep your TRes as close to 0 as possible for as much of the game as possible. This is a core principle of good RTS play. Accumulating resources is basically being wasteful with them. TRes is more valuable as structures and upgrades then as the number at the top of your screen.
Also, the only times I see teams accumulate TRes is when
1.) There is no comm or
2.) The comm is new or bad and doesn't know what he is doing
I don't see how a cap would stop spamming in either situation. All it would do is penalize the team with no comm or a bad comm further.
If spam is a problem then item cost needs to adjusted or counters added to other team. If a team saves up a ######load of resources to be able to offensively spam turrets/w/e then good for them. Its a tactic, if its OP nerf through costs or counters not some lame artificial caps.
I don't really have anything to add to what everyone else said.
Good commanders should be using their TRes as it comes in. Similar to SC2 macro. Good players keep as little as possible in the bank (storing up for big jumps obviously proper strategy as well). Bad commanders will let it stockpile and go to waste.
This
Maybe in the way Zuriki described.
So the team would actually care if I tell 'em that a RT is under attack .. and maybe follow my order to protect it.
But there is no need to cap Carbon imho.
Well, to be nitpicky, for Aliens you want to keep it as close to 15 as possible. Dipping below that opens you up to harvester suicide rushes. Just sayin'.
I do agree with a personal res cap though. Whatever the highest personal expenditure is in the game, e.g. buying onos (75) - maybe double that (150), and that should be the cap.
<b>One</b> <u>fully upgraded</u> resource tower will yield 10 resources a minute (2 every 12 seconds), so it will take 15 minutes to hit the cap without spending anything with just one tower.
It would mean that if the enemy team does a coordinated attack to all enemy res nodes (think of a 16v16 server) and manages to get them all, that would mean the res for that team drops to 0 - 20, if I understood your suggestion. Why I don't like that is that you wouldn't be able to have 30 res in store to build 2 harvesters, for example, to get the economy running again.
There should be no res caps. If you're not using your res, whether carbon or plasma, you're just a bad player.
From the title of the topic I first thought you were suggesting there to be a limit how much resources total can you harvest from a RT before it depletes, but that wouldn't work too well for the marines I guess.
Rushing in a couple of times with a shotgun and killing a res tower/some other towers, I wouldn't say is a waste of resources. It's an appropriate sacrifice despite you die a couple of times and lose your personal res.
The main distinguishing factor is points, rather than PRes or deaths.
I don't think we should bind it to number of res towers though. Just adds an extra unnecessary layer of complexity.