Weapons and Armour Level Upgrades take too long
profjekyll
Join Date: 2012-04-07 Member: 150070Members
Join Date: 2012-04-07 Member: 150070Members
As a comm, it feels like level 2 armour / weapons take way too long to research. There are usually more than enough fades on the other side before you get these researched, even if you have the resource to do it. The option of building a second arms lab seems a bit excessive to me...
Comments
Either you research both on the same arms lab, but get them slower
or..
you build 2 armslab and get the upg. faster, but it'll be more expensive.
It makes for some stragetic decisions :)
Edit:
Agree with Chris
Nothing worse than comming marines only to see fades dominating your troops when you have the res to support them with upgrades.
Ridiculous to think you have to buy 2 arms labs to achieve this... and if you have the money to do that you probably are close to sealing the match anyway.
Arms labs aren't that expensive.
<!--c1--><div class='codetop'>CODE</div><div class='codemain'><!--ec1-->Weapons1 : 60
Weapons2 : 90
Weapons3 : 120
Armor1 : 60
Armor2 : 90
Armor3 : 120<!--c2--></div><!--ec2-->
Let's take Laosh'Ra's post a bit further by considering the resource costs and the number of extractors required to be resource neutral:
Armour 1 costs 20 resources and is therefore 20 resources per minute.
Armour 2 costs 30 resources in 1.5 minutes and A3 costs 40 res in 2 minutes, so they all use 20 resources per minute.
An extractor produces 7.5 resources per minute, so you need to dedicate 2.7 extractors to feeding a single arms lab, and you need to do that for 9 minutes to max out tech research.
Summit has 9 resource points. If marines are doing roughly as well as the aliens they will probably hold 4 extractors for that critical part of the game. So in any proper game there really is no case for making the research faster.
Perhaps the 'time to research' isn't really the issue you're trying to get at? You kind of suggested that the problem is the aliens get fades faster than marines can counter with shotguns and some upgrades. Well, I think this is mostly a problem with commander strategies going wrong. I see a lot of marine commanders going for early phase gates. In b203, I usually try and get tech 2 research and shotguns up before going for phase gates or arcs. Usually. Also I hold off on AA & GL research until it's demonstrably necessary.
I'm against speeding up tech though, don't need to make the game even faster paced, it's already a little too much at times. I'd much rather have it slowed down than sped up. (Marines easily run through all tech in 20 - 30 min if they have 4 extractors, though that may largely be due to features still being missing)
As for marines. I find i sacrifice one upgrade for another. If my team is dying a lot i will jump from armor 1 to armor 2 without even touching weapons 1. Vice Verse if i am having to problem with RTs and my team can handle them selves. The issues comes when i want an AA/advanced weapons or phasetech/forward base/turrets. There is a scary middle ground when your decisions means the teams win or lose.
I had a comm go for all upgrades and didnt touch phase gates. You could tell he upgraded weap/armor first before all else. He got an obs but decided to waste money on forward turrets without phase support. The game was awful running everywhere and he didnt have a mic (Mute comms suck). This strat is silly imo but can be managed if your marines are doing well and organised. All in how you comm and let your guys know what you are doing.
Armour 1 costs 20 resources and is therefore 20 resources per minute.
Armour 2 costs 30 resources in 1.5 minutes and A3 costs 40 res in 2 minutes, so they all use 20 resources per minute.
An extractor produces 7.5 resources per minute, so you need to dedicate 2.7 extractors to feeding a single arms lab, and you need to do that for 9 minutes to max out tech research.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I don't really have an opinion on this topic yet, but you need more extractors to feed that arms lab. The issue is that you don't spend the resources over time. You can't start A3 without already having the 40 res needed. (assuming you want to max out tech as fast as possible)
Assuming you already have 20 res to start A1, you will need about 30 res per minute to start the next research as soon as possible (average ~28, but you need 30 in the first minute to start A2), which equals 4 extractors.
Assuming you research weapons and armor upgrades in an alternating manner, the limiting research is the first second level upgrade, which will need 30 res after 2 minutes, or 70 res in total (minus 20 you already have at t=0). This equals 25 res per minute or 3.3~ extractors. (22 rpm or 3 extractors if you average out)
Of course, this all depends on how much resources you already have ready after building the arms lab. If you have 30 res, you only need to hold 3 extractors in the alternating research scenario.
This is all highly theoretical, but at least a bit more correct than your resource over time model.
*groan* I knew somebody would pull me up on this. It's particularly funny given your profile picture.
<!--quoteo(post=1923788:date=Apr 11 2012, 12:19 AM:name=Dghelneshi)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Dghelneshi @ Apr 11 2012, 12:19 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1923788"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Assuming you already have 20 res to start A1...<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You're playing numerical funny buggers by ignoring the time it took to aquire the starting 20 res (and arguably fairly writing off the trailing research time). Here's another way of looking at it: If you start with 40 res, you'll only need 20 res per minute and you'll end up on 40 res after 9 minutes of research. I find this a much more satisfactory way of evaluating tech research against the commander's other options. Opportunity cost, if you will.
If you don't start with 40 res, yes, you'll need a higher rate of income to sustain the arms lab. In practice what we do as commanders is save up to those thresholds. That pratical act is similar to the theoretical trick of putting all that waiting time at the start, which funny enough at a rate of 20/min amounts to the same time you wrote off for the last research to complete!
Another way of looking at it is that the flag-fall cost occurs at the end of the resource cycle and you don't benefit from the results of the research for a further 1-2 minutes.
Either way, you're just reinforcing my point that the resource income is a bigger limiting factor than the tech research time.
When I comm it's a choice between phase gates or upgrades, can't get both before they get fades. marines also always want shotguns for the fades also, mines, if our base was hit they want welders too, etcetc
The best overall assumption would probably be 3 extractors and 30 starting res after arms lab.
In a perfect world, you'd have 50 starting res, two extractor drops, an IP, armory and obs drop and the two extractors built after about 30sec.
It would take about two additional minutes to get to the 30 res after arms lab drop and to start researching. Adding the research time to that, all upgrades would be ready at 11.5 minutes into the game and you'd end up with a surplus of 26 res. Reducing the research time and using the res surplus would at best reduce the total time to about 10 minutes.
This is an ideal scenario with no extractor redrops, no shotguns, no nothing.
In a realistic game with more than just arms lab upgrades, with extractor redrops, welders, etc. you'd need absurd res income to max out the arms lab in terms of speed. If you do have more res than you can spend on weapons/armor upgrades, why not spend it on weapons or even jetpacks?
For example, if you're seeing a lot of lerks early in the match, you can go for more weapon upgrades, as armor 2 won't be needed for a while against swarms of fades. Alternatively, if the enemy team focuses on mostly skulks, you may want to focus on armor 2 to get ready for fades. Sure, you'll have more trouble killing them, but you'll be able to push more effectively with people not getting two-shotted.
Think of a SC2 match, it isn't rediculous to build 2 evolution chambers (Zerg) and start 2 upgrades.. it's part of your (valid) strategy if you choose to do so.