The Value of Supply Limits
Wisp
Join Date: 2007-12-18 Member: 63211Members, Reinforced - Diamond
Join Date: 2007-12-18 Member: 63211Members, Reinforced - Diamond
The more I play the Beta, the more I feel the game design necessitates a supply limit. Most of the players on these forums seem to agree that a critical issue with the game is the tendency for matches to end in a stalemate. Often, you will see each side fortified with an endless number of Hydras, Whips, Crags, Sentries, ARCs, etc. so that neither side can advance. I feel that this is the result of a lack of meaningful choices for the commanders. The current winning tactic appears to be "build as much as possible so the enemy can't get into our base", when it should be "choose between attacking and defending at the right time to give my team the advantage". If Starcraft is the model for good strategic gameplay, then perhaps Natural Selection should once again borrow from it.
In Starcraft, you are limited by a supply that can be increased by constructing a new building or unit, eventually capping out at a fixed number. This curbs the growth of armies and makes choice important. A commander cannot build everything, they must decide to prioritize one unit. In Natural Selection, the marines and aliens "supply" is up to the server. But the commander can still build offensive structures and should have to make important choices in order to preserve the strategy of the game.
I propose that there be a supply limit on Whips, Crags, ARCs and Sentries (or any building that contributes directly to combat) so that commanders cannot build a limitless number. Hydras are a little different because they are build by Gorges, so perhaps there should be a fixed number per player. I would also propose that the supply limit can be increased through expansion. Additional hives and command chairs would increase the supply limit. This also presents a meaningful choices to commanders. Do you invest resources in building and defending an expansion in order to build a larger force of structures or do you conserve resources, but be forced to work with a smaller force of structures? Managing this risk and reward is an important aspect of strategy in Starcraft. In Natural Selection 2, expansion is merely part of the never ending growth process that limitless supply allows for.
Choosing the right supply limit per base is not easy, but through testing I'm sure a solid middle ground could be found. A proper limit would not hamper the commander's ability to be an effective asset to his team, nor would it allow the commander to create an impenetrable wall of defenses.
What do you guys think?
In Starcraft, you are limited by a supply that can be increased by constructing a new building or unit, eventually capping out at a fixed number. This curbs the growth of armies and makes choice important. A commander cannot build everything, they must decide to prioritize one unit. In Natural Selection, the marines and aliens "supply" is up to the server. But the commander can still build offensive structures and should have to make important choices in order to preserve the strategy of the game.
I propose that there be a supply limit on Whips, Crags, ARCs and Sentries (or any building that contributes directly to combat) so that commanders cannot build a limitless number. Hydras are a little different because they are build by Gorges, so perhaps there should be a fixed number per player. I would also propose that the supply limit can be increased through expansion. Additional hives and command chairs would increase the supply limit. This also presents a meaningful choices to commanders. Do you invest resources in building and defending an expansion in order to build a larger force of structures or do you conserve resources, but be forced to work with a smaller force of structures? Managing this risk and reward is an important aspect of strategy in Starcraft. In Natural Selection 2, expansion is merely part of the never ending growth process that limitless supply allows for.
Choosing the right supply limit per base is not easy, but through testing I'm sure a solid middle ground could be found. A proper limit would not hamper the commander's ability to be an effective asset to his team, nor would it allow the commander to create an impenetrable wall of defenses.
What do you guys think?
Comments
Instead of restricting commanders from building defenses, I'd rather give opponents more ways to counter or circumvent those defenses; once DI starts shutting down power, Kharaa will have their answer to sentry-spam. Bile Bombs are at the moment a sort of counter to them as it is.
I also don't think just building a ton of ARCs and rolling them out is very interesting. The game just evolves into a spam war between the teams. Where is the strategy?
I think defending and escorting ARCs is quite interesting personally; there's a lot of stake for both sides to do their best. The Comm shouldn't just be throwing out an ARC whenever resources permit; he should be arming and gathering his team, collecting resources, then making a coordinated push to recapture territory. At least, that's what I think.
I know one of the most intense times I had a Gorge was when marines started bombing my garden from spawn; I had to keep healing my Hydras if I wanted them to stay alive, but I could see flamers pushing closer and closer to my weakened front; there was a lot of Kharaa/Marine clash there; not just some "first in room, first to keep" rushes that a lot of my games devolve into.
Granted, I lost my plants, went Fade, and blew up the ARC in 5 seconds because my incompetent teammates had been ignoring it, but the enjoyable clash of the sides was still there for that period before we won.
They could also do something like make the upgrades require a constant stream of res. If you go below that then you lose the upgrade. That would stop team res from piling up later on. It would also require the commander to choose between certain upgrades at certain times all depending on map control etc.
The spamming defensive buildings doesen benefit anyone.
The stalemate games are:
Boring as ####.
Laggy as ####.
Takes hours to solve.
Strategy games usually have supply limits so it wouldent be that far fetched.
FTFY. NS2 has a pretty steep learning curve for non NS players and it's not entirely obvious what a primary target should be at times, especially if it has not been encountered before for them.
- No late game tech for either team yet
- Team resources are not used after all upgrades are complete -> turtling :(
- Medpacks, ammo or weapons don't cost team res.
And yes static warfare is boring, its like siege maps.
I remember a game, where you could place a refinery on a gas mound, and that gas would have a finite amount of resources(2000 or so). And once the resources ran out, the refinery continued to gather resources, but at a much reduced rate.
So, my idea is to have the resource nodes, and limit the amount of RES you can get out of them, heres some detail on how it could work.
Each res node has 200 resources. When a team builds an extractor or harvester onto the node, they begin gathering resources at the current rate(1 per 8 seconds I believe). The 200 resources goes down by 1 for every member on the team and the commander (so if there are 6 players, then 7 resources disappear every 8 seconds from the node).
Once the 200 Resources reaches zero, the node swaps to emergency reserves, which is an extra 100 resources, but is gathered much slower.
The rate of resource gathering from an emergency reserve node is 1 res every 16 seconds.
Once that runs dry, the node then gives out a measly 1 res every 30 seconds.
I propose this system, because it does two things:
1 - it forces players and commanders to choose carefully when building units and buildings
2 - it allows a regular game to play out at the same rate, but prevents the late game turtling that occurs due to one team controlling all the res points and simply shoving turrets everywhere.
Another possible solution would be this: each res node has 50 resources, if one team (aliens for example) noms all those resources up, they swap over for the marine team to use. So when the marine team captures that node, they then get 100 Resources to nom, which then converts back into alien yum yums.
The alternate solution with the swapping resources would also swap down to 1 res every 30 seconds.
NOTE: each node would have an individual counter for both situations to prevent confusion and possible griefing.
Aliens it should be something like the more structures you have the less healing each of your structures and/or players receive while on the croach.
Although it's done right now to make up for the less-than-ideal conditions of servers due to the netcode or w/e not being complete as of yet.
Im sure the same will come for turret spam.
Once ARCs are less glitchy, hydra spam will be even less of a problem.
Once Onos, shift, shade are in, there be more ways to counter turrets and deter their overuse.
I would wait for a more finalized res model, and all late game tech before considering supply limits as solutions to problems.
I doubt "Ignorant" is correct. I spent about 10 minutes telling everyone the Marines had an ARC up inside spawn hitting our structures, and that we needed to phase in there and take it out. It was immediately evident upon blinking into the room that the ARC (which I'd never seen before myself) was unprotected, firing at our territory, and prime for destruction.
Marines can just ARC through the walls, easy peasy.
Then you must be playing on/against some pretty terrible alien teams because the current B179 only show marine win at 32% (http://unknownworldsstats.appspot.com/displayendgamestats?version=179).
I've always thought that structure supply limits would work well in NS2 at promoting smart and strategic structure placement rather than spam. That's pretty much what they are good at in traditional RTSs, although we have to remember that supply limits in RTSs are applied to units rather than structures (i.e. limiting the number of zerglings in SC2 rather than the number of spine crawlers).
However, for this to work on the alien side, they would need the ability to recycle structures, else they will hit their limit and be unable to do anything about it.
Wow, 80/20 in favour of aliens. I'm not sure if that's correct. Doesn't seem to be what I've experienced.
Btw, do you have links to more stats pages?
Btw, do you have links to more stats pages?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<a href="http://ns2.sorcerer.de/stats/" target="_blank">http://ns2.sorcerer.de/stats/</a>
Gives some nice graphs based on beta version and maps (you have to click the icons at the bottom)
Also, if you want to see the win statistics of previous versions all you have to do is change the version number at the end. For example,
B179 = <a href="http://unknownworldsstats.appspot.com/displayendgamestats?version=179" target="_blank">http://unknownworldsstats.appspot.com/disp...ats?version=179</a>
B178 = <a href="http://unknownworldsstats.appspot.com/displayendgamestats?version=178" target="_blank">http://unknownworldsstats.appspot.com/disp...ats?version=178</a>
B177 = <a href="http://unknownworldsstats.appspot.com/displayendgamestats?version=177" target="_blank">http://unknownworldsstats.appspot.com/disp...ats?version=177</a>
and so on.
I believe this is data collected from all NS2 servers by UWE, but I'm not totally sure about that.
I'm still not sure about that stat. I think it might be more related to how easily the marine base can be taken down rather than the aliens winning in direct combat. If the aliens push early they can take down the IP and end the game quickly, but the marines can't do that. It's really hard to take down the hive like this early because they eggs keep skulks spawning continually. Unless you get a big group of marines and a couple focus on shooting the eggs then it's probably not going to happen.
In most games I've played the marines have needed to get ARCs in order to take the hive down and it can take ages especially since their pathing is buggy. I've been in plenty of games though where 3-4 skulks have rushed the marine base and won the game easily.
After playing for a while I actually feel like the aliens need more features in general. The marines have all these weapons and cool toys but the aliens feel pretty basic at the moment.
Can we track win ratio as a factor of game length (aliens winning most games under 5 minutes, marines winning most games over an hour, etc)?