This is how the resource system should be.
Anti94
Join Date: 2013-07-31 Member: 186489Members, Reinforced - Shadow
Join Date: 2013-07-31 Member: 186489Members, Reinforced - Shadow
Hi,
I have played NS2 for more than 350 hours and I have also spent countless hours on NS1.
I love this game but in my opinion the current resource system is not optimal because it heavily relies on map control.
Your team's res flow is indeed directly proportional to map control. Hence, the very first minutes of the game are of paramount importance and one can usually tell in less than 5 minutes which team is going to win just by looking at the map. To me it's a pity that the only possible strategy in this game is to dominate as much territory as possible. Don't read me wrong, I find it normal that map dominance gives your team the upper hand. However I find this excessive in NS2. Losing early engagements is unforgiving and comebacks are very rare because of this.
I have played a couple of RTS games in my life and in all of them you just need a main base to have an acceptable res flow:
-In Starcraft, you have enough res in your base to give your opponent a good fight even if your are dominated.
-In Age of Empires, there is enough room and resources in your base to get a good res flow (food, wood, gold, etc)
-In Company of Heroes, the 'manpower' resource flow is constant and doesn't depend on map control at all.
Of course, in the above-mentioned games, having map control yields bonus resources but it's less important than in NS2. Resource flow is never directly proportional to your map control.
Here I suggest an alternative resource flow model that is inspired by other RTS games and reduces the dependance on map control. I believe that this new system is very easy to implement.
Here is how it works:
Aliens and marines have a basic res flow equivalent to 3.2 extractors/harvesters of the current system. This res flow is guaranteed even if your team loses all its extractors/harvesters. However, building an extractor/harvesters increases your team's income by 12%.
The formula of the proposed system is as follows:
ResFlow = (3.2*RTResFlow) * 1.12^n
with 'n' the number of extractors/harvesters and 'RTResFlow' the resource flow provided by one resource tower in the current system.
(Current system is: ResFlow = RTResFlow * n )
I crunched the numbers and here is a chart comparing the current model and the proposed model.
http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/6300/5ina.png
To compensate the early game relative increase in res flow, one has just to reduce the starting res (t.res down from 65 to something like 35-40 and p.res down from 20 to about 15).
As the resource towers are less important in the proposed model, I also suggest to reduce their cost from 10 to somewhere between 5 and 8 and to reduce their health/armor and building time accordingly.
As you can notice on the chart, the res flow of the proposed model is almost identical to the current system if your team has 6 or more extractors/harvesters. However it is higher if your team has 5 or less.
Now imagine a couple of scenarios:
Scenario1 : both teams control half the map. 5RT/5RT scenario.
In this scenario both teams quickly take control of 5RT each (this usually happens in less than 4 of 5 minutes in most of the games I have played). The reduced starting res perfectly compensate for the increased res flow in the very first minutes. Their res flow is now equivalent to 5.5RT of the current system. This is indeed slightly more than in the current system, yet it doesn't screw up the global res flow and there is no need to adjust the cost of all the upgrades and stuff.
Scenario 2: one team gets dominated. 8RT/2RT scenario.
Now imagine that after 5 of 10 minutes, one team gets dominated and is reduced to 2RTs (main base RT + adjacent RT or main base RT + secondary base RT). In this scenario and with the current system there is a 4 to 1 difference between the res flow of the two teams. This means that the dominating team gets 4 times more res than the dominated one. Needless to say that the dominated team has little chance to come back. This situation often leads to rage quits and/or surrenders. This is frustrating.
Yet, with the proposed system, there would be only a 2 to 1 difference in res flow. The dominating team would still get the equivalent of 8 current RTs. However, the dominated team would get the equivalent of 4 RTs of the current system. They would still have a chance to come back but if the dominating team is really better they would eventually win the game.
In conclusion, I really believe that this new resource model would change the game for the better by reducing the dependance on map control. Even though I have no experience in modding, I also believe that this is easy to implement and test.
PS: Sorry for the English but it is not my native language.
PPS: My first post! :-)
I have played NS2 for more than 350 hours and I have also spent countless hours on NS1.
I love this game but in my opinion the current resource system is not optimal because it heavily relies on map control.
Your team's res flow is indeed directly proportional to map control. Hence, the very first minutes of the game are of paramount importance and one can usually tell in less than 5 minutes which team is going to win just by looking at the map. To me it's a pity that the only possible strategy in this game is to dominate as much territory as possible. Don't read me wrong, I find it normal that map dominance gives your team the upper hand. However I find this excessive in NS2. Losing early engagements is unforgiving and comebacks are very rare because of this.
I have played a couple of RTS games in my life and in all of them you just need a main base to have an acceptable res flow:
-In Starcraft, you have enough res in your base to give your opponent a good fight even if your are dominated.
-In Age of Empires, there is enough room and resources in your base to get a good res flow (food, wood, gold, etc)
-In Company of Heroes, the 'manpower' resource flow is constant and doesn't depend on map control at all.
Of course, in the above-mentioned games, having map control yields bonus resources but it's less important than in NS2. Resource flow is never directly proportional to your map control.
Here I suggest an alternative resource flow model that is inspired by other RTS games and reduces the dependance on map control. I believe that this new system is very easy to implement.
Here is how it works:
Aliens and marines have a basic res flow equivalent to 3.2 extractors/harvesters of the current system. This res flow is guaranteed even if your team loses all its extractors/harvesters. However, building an extractor/harvesters increases your team's income by 12%.
The formula of the proposed system is as follows:
ResFlow = (3.2*RTResFlow) * 1.12^n
with 'n' the number of extractors/harvesters and 'RTResFlow' the resource flow provided by one resource tower in the current system.
(Current system is: ResFlow = RTResFlow * n )
I crunched the numbers and here is a chart comparing the current model and the proposed model.
http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/6300/5ina.png
To compensate the early game relative increase in res flow, one has just to reduce the starting res (t.res down from 65 to something like 35-40 and p.res down from 20 to about 15).
As the resource towers are less important in the proposed model, I also suggest to reduce their cost from 10 to somewhere between 5 and 8 and to reduce their health/armor and building time accordingly.
As you can notice on the chart, the res flow of the proposed model is almost identical to the current system if your team has 6 or more extractors/harvesters. However it is higher if your team has 5 or less.
Now imagine a couple of scenarios:
Scenario1 : both teams control half the map. 5RT/5RT scenario.
In this scenario both teams quickly take control of 5RT each (this usually happens in less than 4 of 5 minutes in most of the games I have played). The reduced starting res perfectly compensate for the increased res flow in the very first minutes. Their res flow is now equivalent to 5.5RT of the current system. This is indeed slightly more than in the current system, yet it doesn't screw up the global res flow and there is no need to adjust the cost of all the upgrades and stuff.
Scenario 2: one team gets dominated. 8RT/2RT scenario.
Now imagine that after 5 of 10 minutes, one team gets dominated and is reduced to 2RTs (main base RT + adjacent RT or main base RT + secondary base RT). In this scenario and with the current system there is a 4 to 1 difference between the res flow of the two teams. This means that the dominating team gets 4 times more res than the dominated one. Needless to say that the dominated team has little chance to come back. This situation often leads to rage quits and/or surrenders. This is frustrating.
Yet, with the proposed system, there would be only a 2 to 1 difference in res flow. The dominating team would still get the equivalent of 8 current RTs. However, the dominated team would get the equivalent of 4 RTs of the current system. They would still have a chance to come back but if the dominating team is really better they would eventually win the game.
In conclusion, I really believe that this new resource model would change the game for the better by reducing the dependance on map control. Even though I have no experience in modding, I also believe that this is easy to implement and test.
PS: Sorry for the English but it is not my native language.
PPS: My first post! :-)
Comments
Map control is the point of every RTS game. What I am saying is that it is clearly excessive in NS2. With the proposed system, map control is still very important.
It is true that NS2 has sometimes turtling issues, especially when the aliens are dominating. However this problem is not caused by the res flow system. It is a different problem that requires a different solution. Do not mix the problems.
I don't think that the proposed system would change anything to turtling. On the contrary, it could possibly turn some of the turtlings into comebacks.
This would mean that marines would only need 1 pg and base rt to pump into full 2/2 jps in 15min. They wouldn't even need to go capping. Also they wouldn't want to push out because the fades will come anyway even if they kill every rt.
Basically the game would turn into marines getting fast gate, holding the pg till 3min fades, fades roll the pg down, marines turtle in base trying to kill the fades.
Hyper-accelerated snowball mechanics continue in NS2.
You are pointing out the results here: Early game lasts about 1-2 minutes and you can have all the tech @ minute 10 if you got 2 super pro players that just lock the enemy team in their base by covering the 2 exits. No comeback's possible, another snorefest down the drain.
In StarCraft, you have to calculate if you can afford to drop the 500 ore for a fast expansion, BUT there is a trade-off. If your enemy is good at scouting, sees you and quickly decides to put all his money in offense and comes around while you are still expanding, you will lose that game. If you are not discovered or somehow manage to hold him at bay while expanding, you have a clear income advantage and will receive a nice pay-off later on when you can build much more units than he does.
If I play commander in NS2, there is no thinking required if I should or should not drop a RT; they are dirt cheap (think 10 or 8 res in NS2 vs. 400 ore + workers in SC2). There is no risk in dropping RTs because they just need to run a couple of seconds to pay for themselves. If they keep running even longer the light speed snowball effect kicks in...
Defending those outlying RTs depends completely on your team and if you got a nice stack going, you don't have to worry about anything (i.e. you can have your cake and eat it too) because the other team will never make it past 3 RTs (if they even keep 2)... That means you can expand without any risk and win the offensive at the same time thanks to completely unbalanced teams or stacking against 5 greens...
Stack + Snowball = Snorefest³
I think that crazy all-over-the-map expansion should be risky and costly. There should be a risk if it doesn't work and the RTs get discovered and attacked. Right now, they are so cheap than you can have 6-7 RTs running at minute 2...
Destroying RTs becomes a game of whack-a-mole - except that they can be replaced faster than you can whack them...
RTs should cost more. So much that you have to weigh the risk and costs if you REALLY can afford to drop one at that specific moment.
In DOTA2, in every third of fourth game, there was a exciting/spectacular comeback from the team that had fallen behind - in NS2 you can play a whole month and there might be one comeback (if you are lucky...)
90% of the time it's clear who'll win by looking at the map @ minute 3...
1. Because of the fact that each tower would give less res, i foresee the map-control actually getting even "worse". Teams wouldn't want to settle with having just four or five towers as that's not enough to gain a large financial advantage over the other team's 3-4 towers. And if you'd lower the health of the towers you'd need to defend/re-build them even more than before. Thus making the map-control so frantic you'd have even less time for other things. The only way that you'd have less obsession with map-control as before is if the other team would be similarly careless of building towers and would have a mutual acceptance of simply fighting in i.e. hub until they'd automatically gain enough res to upgrade anyway. This would of course be more fun for us who enjoy combat, but it's not exactly a safe bet during competitions.
2. Every weapon/evolution would be within reach even sooner, even if you'd start with 20 Tres and 10 Pres, as a single tower equals to the res-flow of four.
3. If the marine team would go the route of not even building a single tower, they could go for an insanely fast shotgun-rush while still managing to have enough res to survive if they'd all somehow fail.
4. UWE would need to make everything more expensive, which would make your proposed economy-changes kind of obsolete anyway, or more sensitive, which would drive people mad.
Anyhow, since i still think that it's commendable of you wanting to make changes that could make the game more focused on actual fighting as opposed to defending/destroying towers, i guess we could talk about how this could be implemented in other ways.
One idea i've had for a while is to make the towers rather large projects. If they took a long time to build, were extremely durable, and maybe even had some sort of basic offensive protection, it would A) have be done much less often as once a tower is finished, it'll last a long time, and
I think you did not read my post correctly. I said that the starting resources should be decreased to compensate the high res income of the very first minutes of the game. After about 4 minutes the res income would be similar to what it is currently. Advanced lifeforms and technologies do not enter onto the scene any sooner nor later.
I am talking about toning down the importance of map control to something more reasonable, something closer to other RTS games. Again, do not mix the problems. I never said that this new resource model would solve all the issues with NS2.
This new model still strongly encourages to cap resource points. Stop caricaturaturing things.
if i get 3,2*0.125/6=0,0666 pres each second without any towers. I need 25 res for fade so it will take me 6.25 min without any res towers capped and somehow miracleously losing the 1st rt. With 3 nodes that aliens usually get it comes down to 4.44 minutes. So yes i overdid it.
That's way faster than the current 6-8min cap if aliens don't lose nodes and extend hard.
With your system the fades will come out no matter what in about 6 min and killing 2 harvesters would only slow the inevitable doom of fadeball by 1 minute. That really encourages to kill res towers and hold your positions.
This would make reskilling just a hobby.
Also, one thing that is wrong about your graph is that at 0 towers you get .5 resources a tick.
I think the main problem with OPs system is that each tower makes relatively little difference to res flow at all tower counts, both low and high. Most RTSs have res flow be linear up until the point where players do not take any more income because they do not want to spend the unit supply on worker units. I think we could simulate that effect in NS2 by making the res equation be based on a log (esk) function instead of an exponential function. In other words, the res flow increase from each tower would be high for low tower counts, but low for high tower counts. For example: Base rate 0.5, One tower 2.0 (+1.5), Two towers 3.0 (+1), Three towers 3.75 (+.75), Four towers 4.25 (+.5), Five towers, 4.5 (+.25), and so on. You can see how the res flow is plateauing at around 4+ RTs.
I think this would encourage teams to get and hold about 4 or 5 towers and then focus on other things such as setting up strategic bases or assaulting tech. It would also make placing res a non-obvious choice for the commander. "Do I really want to place that sixth RT for only +.2 income, or would I rather be that much closer to weapons 2?"
I specifically designed this new res model so that the game should require minimal re-design.
1. It is easy to tweak the numbers in my formula in order to change the shape of the curve.
The formula in my original post was:
ResFlow = (3.2*RTResFlow) * 1.12^n
You can change it, for instance, to:
ResFlow = (2.5*RTResFlow) * 1.15^n
It makes it closer to the blue curve.
Anyway, the point is that you can easily tweak the numbers and implement this system in the game rather fast. I would make a mod by myself but I never did this before. I just tried the modding tutorial. Maybe if someone points me in the right direction and shows me in what files I should make the modifications...
Indeed it may not be necessary to decrease the extractor's/harvester's HP/armor and buiding time. Yet I still think its cost should be reduced to 5-8. I wish I could test that.
I also foresee that it would shift the fights towards the techpoints (that would not be such a bad thing in my opinion) but I am not sure to what extend. I don't think it would change that much. Let's not caricaturate.
2. No, weapons/evolutions would not be within reach sooner if the numbers are set correctly. I don't know how many Tres/minute and Pres/minute gives a RT in the current build and I can't run NS2 on my computer right now but if someone could give me this information I could calculate more precisely the new starting Tres and Pres based on some fair assumptions.
3. You said that my new system would open new possibilities early game. It is actually good news. A 2 minute game is rarely a good game. If the shotgun-rush fails, the marines could still survive. (Maybe not.) The game goes on. We might see a marine come back later in the game. Maybe not. What's wrong with that ? At least you can try something different than the traditional 'spread out and cap res asap' tactic. It makes the game more diversified and more forgiving (thus more noob friendly). It encourages more risky tactics.
4. Once again, if the numbers are set correctly, UWE would not need to change anything. It would not drive people mad.
I like what you said about towers being large projects and being more important (dota like). But I think that it's not adapted to maps with 10 res nodes. This could definitely work with less. Tech points are already large projects and you can't have so many large projects with so few players on a server. Moreover, it would not change the fact that you could know which team is going to win just by looking at the map at the 5 minute mark. This is an other discussion.
I also think that the early game phase is too short in NS2. Yet, this is an other debate. I designed this new res model so that it reduces the map control importance, nothing more.
Whatever the resource system, if you have 2 super pro players in your team, you are going to win the game. It is a team stacking issue, not a resource system issue.
I disagree, a well executed Rush adds variety to the game, and an All in Strategy should be punished with a quick loss. If anything there should be more consequences for a repelled Shotgun Rush or a Repelled Skulk Rush. As you have said these are different points unrelated to resources.
I don't think your argument that turtling is unrelated is valid though. Part of the strategy of breaking a Late Game Turtle involves wearing out the enemy resources. Focusing down their higher life forms/teched up players. Sending the whole team in and focusing the Exo, etc... It is a war of attrition, hard fought and sometimes tedious. But that isn't an option if Marines get the Equivalent of 4 RTs just for staying in Base. Turtling is limited right now by resource consumption.
Yes there are mechanics and changes that can be made that reduce the efficacy of Turtling but just like your proposed changes for Early Game, these late game changes would no doubt effect other sources.
In concept I think reducing dependence on Map Control is a mistake in general. As much as I hate playing whack-a-skulk, sometimes when you are out classed in direct combat attacking their supply lines is the only option. I like that without effort and planning no part of the map can be considered controlled.
This is also an example of a hidden modifier that makes understanding the basic mechanics of the game difficult (which is a big problem as it is). If you want to decrease the importance of the first few minutes of combat, what about a modifier to spawn speed based on number of extractors controlled... For example Time to spawn = 3 Seconds + (# of extractors*.5 Seconds) or whatever. It is arguably just as arbitrary and will also hurt turtling late game but you don't seem to worry about that.
You misunderstood. Map control is still important. People would not go straight for the base.
Yes, you get res with 0 tower. This is intended. In the current system you also get res with 0 tower.
Yes, my argument is valid. With the current system you often see the marines turtling for long minutes with only 1 RT whilst the aliens have 9RT. Even with a ridiculous 9 to 1 ratio difference in res flow aliens can't finish the game easily. This is because aliens require more coordination than the marines for base attack + aliens lack siege weapons. You could give 99RT to the aliens, this fact would not change. Yes, the aliens eventually win but as you said it is long and tedious, it is boring and frustrating. It must be changed. Hopefully UWE implemented a concede vote option so that we usually don't suffer this boring phase of the game. It is yet a very poor solution to the problem. From a marine's perpective it is not interresting to play a game that you know for sure is going to be lost. This is what I usually see: one team starts to get the upper hand => the other team realises that this is game over => massive quits => automatic game balance (very frustrating for the players who can't spawn) => game concede. I like this game very much but I hate concedes. I hate when I know for sure which team in going to win 10 or 15 minutes in advance.
Reducing dependance on map control is what NS2 needs right now. Not a single RTS in the world has so much dependance on map control as NS2. Attacking supply lines is still an efficient option with the proposed system.
I am not trying to reduce the importance of the first minutes of combat. I don't understand why you are saying this. This is not true.
You are, again, mixing the resource problem with the turtling problem.
It would not make the games shorter. They would be longer, but more importantly, they would be much more interesting and less predictable.
You still need to build rt's. This is still a very important part of the game. Thus it does not especially promotes base rush.
But then I has "voila" moment: if you made PRes flow completely dependent on additional RTs, then people have a reason to push out.
Yeah your Commander can research Jet Packs quickly on 0 RTs... but what if you can't afford to buy one?
You would also find, the "wearing down of enemy resources" method of breaking a turtle would still apply... come a point, the Commander can't research/build anything else!
Could make for an interesting mechanic.
I did take the ability to change the original curve into consideration when i made my first reply. Regardless of how small a change you would make in the beginning, it would have an enormous impact on many parts of the game. UWE have many times proved how a tiny balance change can change the game entirely. To give the teams more resources in the beginning is a much bigger deal than you seem to understand.
The thing is, your system may work alright for casual games filled with rookies as they don't really know what is the most important thing in this game anyways (map-control and towers), but even then, if the whole team would gain access to everything they needed without having to build any towers it would still just result in people waiting for the best weapons/evolutions anyway. The game wouldn't be as much about towers in the beginning anymore in these servers, but you have to consider that the game necessarily doesn't stay balanced or get more fun just because the variety of activities widen when you take away the need to build towers. Maybe it's worth a shot, but here's another thing to consider: what's the point of getting new players used to a more forgiving game-play when they eventually would have to get used to the brutal reality that is regular NS2 once they got off the rookie servers?
I myself am among the clan-war players, thus i don't care about the casual scene or know how the recent game-changes are affecting casual matches. In other words; i'm cynical towards your changes as i do know how they would affect the competitive matches. As i said in my first post, i believe your changes would have devastating effects on the game. What i meant was for the competitive NS2 scene, and this is why: NS2 isn't varied enough in itself to become more varied even if you'd give both teams access to unlimited resources so they could do whatever they wanted. People would still only go for the most efficient tactic 95% of the time, because there's no longer any need to fight for map-control and see how the early game turns out. The shotgun rush is extremely efficient and would most likely work most of the time, and so is early fades. Competitive matches are about a constant status-quo; once one team goes on route, all you can do is counter with something at least as powerful. A competitive match with unlimited resources would mean two things: shotgun-jetpackers and fades. That's all there is. Once that happens the game is all about destroying bases, which needs to happen regardless of how the resource-model looks like. If we'd get rid of the need for map-control, people would simply go for the bases even sooner, which would make the games even less varied and over much quicker. That's hardly more fun, is it? Maybe these changes would work for a game with extreme variation, like Battlefield 3. But this is about as far away from a game like that as you can come within the same genre. NS2 isn't about variation, i'm afraid. It's about who can get the best weapons first and keep the resources flowing thanks to good map-control. That's all this game is.
There is no such thing as variation in the freedom that the teams would get if they didn't need to focus as much on towers. We like variation as much as you do, but once you've learned what the most effective tactics are in this game and how effective they really are there's only one thing left that decides the variation, and that is the map-control. The only time your team has to change their original plan (which often consist of one or two different plans carved in stone for each map) is when the enemy team gets control over a part of the map that you intended to keep them from in the beginning. If you want to keep map-control you have to work for it, but it pays off. Map-control is the only thing that actually provides variation, and that's not even because you want it, but because you're forced into it.
About point 3; the marines aren't supposed to survive after an early shotgun rush. It would be mighty unfair if they would, because then they would always go for a shotgun rush as it's extremely efficient, which equals to no variation. Similarly the alien team shouldn't be able to survive after they've lost all their fades without having a mighty fine map-control and thus resource flow. Naturally there are a few variations you can do in the actual attacks. You could bring a gorge and a lerk with the fades, or a flamethrower and a grenade launcher with the shotgun-jetpackers. But that's about it when it comes to variation. The real variation actually lies within the map-control itself in NS2, i'm afraid. You're supposed to lose if you can't keep the status quo of map-control. If you can still survive without caring about that, Natural Selection 2 would turn into Wild West 2. Might be more fun for casuals, but oh so stiff in competition.
With all this said i would like to ask you this as i still don't understand your view on it: what do you actually think this game is about? What do you believe that the developers intend for you to go through when you play this game?
I'm not asking in an offensive or sarcastic manner. I'm asking out of real curiosity as i can't fathom how a person with 350 hours would want to remove the need to build towers from a game that only really have three things: resource-towers, map-control structures and bases. Why would removing one of them, which incidentally makes another one of them rather unnecessary, be a good thing? If you don't have the chase for resources, how is this going to make the game longer or better when the only remaining thing to do is to simply go attack the other team's base right away? The game would be all about harassing bases until you get your most powerful weapon after five minutes and then it would be all about half the team standing around in the base defending and the other trying to destroy the other team's base. How is that more varied?
What i suggest is that you start playing servers with the Combat mod. Then resource-gathering and upgrades is all about you and your team's effectiveness in damaging your opponents and gaining points. No map-control necessary whatsoever. I love Combat mod myself as i'm used to the stiffness that is competitive play in NS2.
So you wouldn't want the team that hasn't managed to keep a single tower to lose? That's like saying that you wouldn't want the chess-player with only the king left to lose against an opponent with all of his pieces left. Or like saying that you wouldn't want the last cookie you took from a jar to mean that you couldn't have any more cookies. It makes no sense at all.
Seriously, if you have a problem with the idea that the team that has no resources in a games like NS2 still is supposed to be able to defend themselves and even win against a team that has unlimited resources you are truly playing the wrong game. It's like playing chess and complaining about how your final piece (the king) doesn't have lasers coming out of its eyes. The developers can't let teams with zero skill win just to please the losers. The teams with zero skill are supposed to lose so that they can improve their skills and become better like every single person who ever played an online shooter. If you took away they superiority of having the majority of resources you'd take away the purpose of resources in general. This is a competitive game. It's about fighting for what you get. If you suck at fighting, you're not getting squat.
I don't have time to fully answer right now but I will respond point by point to all your comments.
What I can say now is that you are completely exagerating and caricaturing everything I said, up to a point where I am wondering if you are serious or if you are just trolling me. You are accusing me of intentions that are not mine.
And since both teams get this increased low-RT res flow, all it does is help speed up teching and prolong the end game. Changing start pres/tres doesn't matter, as the effect from changing these 2 applies separately regardless of the RT model.
Please do. I'm interested in what you have to say. I'm certainly not trolling. I'm interested in the subject and in your view on this.
As a continuation to my question to you about what you believe this game is actually about, i think you probably could make others understand what you're actually thinking if you'd go through an example match. Just type out a match from start to finish and explain just how you believe your changes would affect it. You seem to be losing most of us as you haven't really been able to convince us what good would actually come from this other than the losing team has got it easier to stay alive, which you yourself in a way have admitted would only lead to turtling and making it impossible for the aliens to defeat the marines during the siege of the last base regardless of their superiority. How would your changes fix the problem that you yourself have complained about?
Re-read my statement again mate, you didn't take it in the first time. I don't think there should be a concede button in NS2 period, I want people to go down fighting, but if you have no chance in winning then what is the point in fighting? Most Teams who have no hope of defending or winning, simply quit the game or vote concede and if you are on the team who is winning because you fought so well as a team its very frustrating to see the enemy team just give up ... but then again who can blame them if they have no hope ....
I think your way of winning is very cheap and doesn't really count as a win, I prefer Teams to stick in the game and still be given a small chance of winning (though it would be incredibly unlikely) than for them to just give up. I personally like the turtling approach as it means everyone has to push much harder for that final victory and at the end of the match it feels like we really earned it. You didn't earn your victory by the enemy team just giving up, where is the fun? Its not fun for the winners or the other team ... seriously everyone should want each match to last a long while each round and everyone should want the matches to be hard fought every round, as win or loose it doesn't mater in those matches, people simply had fun playing. Its a shame those rounds are few and far between though.
How many hours have you spent in NS2?
The ability to concede is a vital aspect in any game, in my opinion. I would even suggest that the ability to concede is a natural right that participants of any game have. Look at it this way: If a concede button by voting button wasn't available, people might just leave the game anyway (this still happens even with a concede option), and then the other team gets stuck with a nasty team balance restriction.
Conceding allows one team to admit defeat so that they can start a new game, which will hopefully be more interesting than a 20 minute siege on a marine base.
Now consider this in the light of your proposed res system. Bringing the enemy down from 4 to 1 res nodes would only reduce their resflow from 5 (x current 1RT) to 3,5. Bringing the enemy down from 5 to 1 res nodes would only reduce their resflow from 5,75 to 3,5. Bringing the enemy's economy (in way of resnodes controlled) down 75% or 80% is amazing and difficult to pull off and should cause your opponents to cry themselves to sleep. In your system, the damage caused is a nuisance at best. Bringing the alien resflow down by 30% with the heroic deed of killing 75% of their harvesters is not worth the effort, and effort would be directed into doing something that actually matters, i.e. killing hives and lifeforms. In effect, you would be creating a combat mod where tech flows steadily and where almost all emphasis is on base rushes and combat.
You can deny this all you want, but when you make the importance of killing (and conversely, capping) restowers less than half of what it is now, people just won't bother. Marines won't bother recapping because it's not worth the manpower. Both marines and aliens won't bother hunting enemy RTs because the effort would be better placed elsewhere. Map control doesn't matter as much and the game boils down to who fights better or does the sneakiest baserushes.
I like that you identified a problem and then went about solving it. However, if you think that's a problem I would have to say you don't understand NS2 yet. You're at the point where you can correctly identify which team will win at the 4 min mark, and what caused it. The mistake you're making is trying to alter the game rules to carry the losing team. If you want a round to be undecided at the 4min mark you simply need balanced teams.
Next, I would like you to understand NS2 isn't an RTS first and an FPS second. What I'm saying here is that comparing NS2's RTS elements directly to other purely RTS games is non-equivalent. Most importantly, the core of the game is built around map control. Phase tech, wall jump, celerity, gorge tunnels, sprint, beacon, jetpacks, blink, infestation, power nodes, sentries - all features in service of map control. Map control is what stimulates the FPS conflict. By design the FPS conflict needs to be urgent all the time so that players on the ground don't get bored. So don't try and redesign the game to undermine the need for map control, it's folly.
Some specific examples of why your idea is problematic:
- completely collapses the early and mid game.
- Marine turtling is already a problem, this would bring it to new heights. Armour 2 Exos could appear at ~4m30.
- Building extractors/harvesters would not be cost effective because of the likelihood they would be destroyed before they repaid their cost. (currently 1m, blows out to 2m36s)
(FWIW I'm at ~1300h in NS2 and I've played all the RTS games you listed and more, going back to C&C1 and Warcraft 1.)
The first sentence of the second paragraph here just made me think... What if Alien Harvesters had like, way less armour when they are building? What if they only started developing armour once they were 100% built? Has this been tried before? It can be rather difficult taking down a harvester that's not even built, yet has full HP etc.
i have felt for a long time that the marine RT game is too difficult - On top of hard-to-kill harvester, many marine teams fall into the trap "OMG XXX RT IS GOING DOWN SOMEBODY BACKTRACK AND SAVE IT" ...
The intuitive thing to do as marines is stay on the back foot, because it simply feels nigh on impossible and futile to pressure alien harvesters. Of course good players can do this, but it's not obvious in the slightest.
If harvesters were weak as shit until fully constructed it might increase the incentive for marines to go and USE the tech they've accumulated to hurt the aliens rather than play a game of whack-a-skulk (until the fades roll out because the aliens haven't lost an RT)
^ What I'm saying here is supposed to be mainly pertainent to pubs/ making the gameplay between pubs/comps more consistent.