twilitebluebug stalkerJoin Date: 2003-02-04Member: 13116Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
edited May 2015
I'm not a big fan of increasing RT armor, unless it's just a small increase, without hidden mechanisms.
Attacking RT is already a very tedious task, and from the discussion so far, it seems like decaying armor would introduce complexities with very little benefit.
It would be simpler to reduce Welder cost, so marines can afford to use Cluster/Pulse grenades to defend their RTs, and Gas Grenades to soften alien RTs as they were meant to.
Infestation structural armor corrosion could be significantly increased (doubled to 30/second), for it to become a real threat to undefended marine structures.
I like the idea of armor decaying over time as its far more intuitive than the original reverse maturity + nano shield concept.
The feedback about things like fades gaining a buff against old RTs are interesting and not something I had considered.
At every point in the game you want it to feel interesting. I think you want each "act" of the game to give an advantage/disadvantage moving into the next act, rather than it determining the next act.
At the start of the game you want the following.
1. You don't want the early game to be too decisive.
- Bad experience for the losing side,
- Takes away from the mid game
2. You don't want the early game to be irrelevant.
- If you can easily undo mistakes from the early game during the mid game then it devalues the point of trying hard at the start.
What about the mid game though?
1. The mid game could be highly decisive, so long as the end game is over with very quickly.
or
2. The mid game could just be setting up some advantages for the end game, but be far from decisive, in which case the game is determined more by end game tech.
I think those last two describes a lot of opinions, either make game finishers stronger, or make it so that both sides are still "in the game" for a longer duration of a game.
The armor reduction idea is enticing.
1. Improves stability in the early game, as new stronger RTs will die less often.
2. Still retains the importance of the early game as if you do take that RT down it still presses an advantage.
3. Any early game advantage has more opportunity to be eliminated during the mid game. As you can destroy the winning teams RTs faster (as they will be older). Keep in mind that if the enemy had double the RTs you had, and you equalise the RT count then the enemy still retains the advantage they gained from the res earned during that time (Pres/Tres on upgrades/More medpacks and drifter ability usage). So in this way its not overpowered or a "gg" mechanic for the losing side.
Building a new tower would be more expensive and having a player in the room to build would be better spent with a cheap pres welder to repair it.
Still not sure if marine extractors should even have decay, since it would buff fades unnecessarily, as nachos pointed out..
Unless it was both HP and armor.. but then you couldn't let extractors just automatically self destruct - that'd just be annoying instead of creating a counter-able vulnerability - so then the extractors would only drop to a certain % of eHP ... and that'd be opposite of an intuitive design, imo.
Just an idea I am throwing out there, but what if resource towers did self destruct over a certain time. Not at a flat rate, like about 70 armor every 10 seconds as my example above, but at an exponential decline. You could make -1 hp an asymptotic or something, and they degrade faster at the beginning but slower as time goes on.
Here is a picture example I found searching for exponential decline. This is just one curve, but we could potentially find a more suitable decline for ns2.
You could set the point where it finally reaches 0 eHP at 15 minutes if untouched. That way the first 5 minutes or so act as you were describing @ironhorse, but from there it still declines but at a much slower rate. Marines could weld them back up to a certain point at the expense of the being offensive. 15 minutes might even be too short.
This would make the winning or offensive team weaker as time goes on. It could lead to longer games which could be good or bad. Might make marines too defensive require buffs in other areas.
I haven't put to much thought into this. Expand on it, or dismiss it. I would like to others thought on this.
Keep in mind that if the enemy had double the RTs you had, and you equalise the RT count then the enemy still retains the advantage they gained from the res earned during that time (Pres/Tres on upgrades/More medpacks and drifter ability usage). So in this way its not overpowered or a "gg" mechanic for the losing side.
Precisely why I like it.
It's a counter-able mid game vulnerability that no one would attest is "cheap", considering it's based on continuing doing what you're already supposed to be doing in order to properly play / win... and because a hard fight still must occur between the teams that could go either way.
Sometimes the available tech is good enough to adequately contend the loss of your weakened RTs (fades).
It should also appeal to those who like faster endings.
In the scenario that a losing team still can't get behind the enemy to their old RTs, and they cannot defend (win engagements) nor upkeep their own old RTs' eHP... well then they've lost in at least 3 different ways already and therefore if the winning team takes advantage of their weakened RTs it just helps to end a game sooner, which was already over.
@Nordic
I've considered it and I think it messes with the strategy a bit regarding predictable stages of the game or timings.
It's nice to know the increased risk that occurs beyond 7 minutes with no A2 or Shotguns - good comms track these timings - having something that isn't consistent or easy to track sort of hampers strategies.
Aside from that, wouldn't you want an exponential behavior to be inverse from that? Stay stronger for longer in the early game and become weaker faster towards mid game?
@Nordic
I've considered it and I think it messes with the strategy a bit regarding predictable stages of the game or timings.
It's nice to know the increased risk that occurs beyond 7 minutes with no A2 or Shotguns - good comms track these timings - having something that isn't consistent or easy to track sort of hampers strategies.
I don't think it would be that difficult to keep track of really. It requires a slightly different mindset than keeping track of a linear de/progression, but you simply keep some benchmarks in mind. For example; after 1 minute X amount of eHP has been lost, 2 minutes Y amount of eHP has been lost, at time = A all the armor has been lost.
I mean, you don't need to do any math on the fly or anything, these values are easy enough to memorize I think.
In case you were talking from the marines perspective, the solution is even easier; have the commander click the RT and read the armor count.
That being said, I'm pretty sceptical that players will actually use these values to coordinate attacks - in my experience, strong alien players simply attack the RT's literally any time they find an opening. Nobody is going to say; "Wait that RT is brand new, I'm gonna leave it and let its armor corrode a little bit".
So when you talk about 'added risk' I gather that you are talking about the risk that the rt dies, but the risk of the rt being attacked is the same I think - so I think with or without this mechanic the responses from the players are going to be largely the same. There might be instances where a marine commander will say; "let the rt die, we can't save it". But I think that is true with exponential curves and linear curves.
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
edited May 2015
@SantaClaws Fair enough
And i agree regarding strong players simply attacking RTs literally any time they find an opening - and I think it helps RT decay work seamlessly.
So let me ask: what is the benefit to a non linear progression of decay @Nordic ?
Edit:
Also what does anyone think about a 22% decay in eHP for RTs, both armor and health, for both teams? This would be in lieu of armor decay exclusively, in order to prevent unforeseen buffs like fades etc.
Extractors have 22% of their eHP as armor, and Harvesters have 21.8% - so it's close enough to just equally damage both health and armor for either team - but what would be the downside to this approach besides being less visually clear where it will cease decaying?
@SantaClaws Fair enough
And i agree regarding strong players simply attacking RTs literally any time they find an opening - and I think it helps RT decay work seamlessly.
So let me ask: what is the benefit to a non linear progression of decay @Nordic ?
I will explain my thought process of how I came to that idea.
Building a new tower would be more expensive and having a player in the room to build would be better spent with a cheap pres welder to repair it.
Still not sure if marine extractors should even have decay, since it would buff fades unnecessarily, as nachos pointed out..
Unless it was both HP and armor.. but then you couldn't let extractors just automatically self destruct - that'd just be annoying instead of creating a counter-able vulnerability - so then the extractors would only drop to a certain % of eHP ... and that'd be opposite of an intuitive design, imo.
When you said this, specifically "but then you couldn't let extractors just automatically self destruct" it made me think what if they did. How could that possibly work? Well it could not work linearly because they would die too quick.
If eHP declined with an exponential decay you could set an arbitrarily high eHP number at the start, making it so it really would be near fruitless to attack it at the start. It would decline quickly so that the eHP and timing is the same as you mentioned earlier.
[quote="Nordic;2240165"
I think 5 minutes is a fair amount of time to at least start testing with.
Assuming a typical pub build time for naturals, that'd put them in a vulnerable position roughly before the mid-game begins with the earliest possible timing for fades.
An additional 5 minutes later (if they were destroyed and replaced around when they hit 0% armor) would again roughly fall just before Onos timing / late game. @Benson At 10 tres cost per extractor, 1 tres accrued per 6 seconds, It takes 60 seconds to earn its cost in Tres. I think that's an adequate timeframe to be back at a typical level of armor, so if 100% of armor is lost by 5 minutes in, then a 20% increase in armor would match typical armor levels exactly when it earns its cost in Tres.
Essentially this would create a vulnerability just before certain stages / tech explosions occur, to create a bit more tension through decision making and allow full exploitation of this mechanic before the tech can contest it.
Of course that's all in a vacuum, though.. it would need seriously thorough testing as you suggested @Nordic . I am much more concerned about 16-24 playercount as a sample compared to top tier though.. not because both wouldn't be valuable data, just that that level of player playing competitively at that low of a player count, already has more of an ability to create a high tension game that is ripe for comebacks. They may not see it is as needed, per se, and thus in all likelihood would not make it into their official version of the game, the comp mod. I wouldn't blame them, said playercounts are much more fun.
So those timings as described would potentially be the same with an exponential decay in eHP. So if nothing has really changed from this model, what does? Well the whole point of having exponential decay is it would allow rt's to die over time at a slow rate. I will use 10 minutes for an example.
Most rt's will die long before 10 minutes. Each minute that goes on the rt gets weaker but an a slower rate every minute, increasing the likelihood the enemy team can get in their and kill it. Overtime this would make it even easier to crush the winning teams economy.
Basically it takes the decaying armor idea and exaggerates it to the extreme. If not a real viable solution it at least could show some potential weaknesses with the decaying armor idea.
So what happens at about the 9 minute mark? If a single skulk can get behind enemy lines he can wreck the economy. What happens at the 10 minute mark? The economy starts to collapse.
So what does a collapse of the economy do? Well it could potentially happen to both teams. The winning team would have to make a big move before this, because they will have to fall back and rebuild. This would give the losing team, which should have newer rt's, an opportunity to gain some map control.
I do see flaws with this though. It would also have a larger affect on the marine team since they have to build the rt's. Fades would be buffed even further because they have more health combined with speed to easier get behind enemy lines where potentially there are rt's without armor.
In what kind of game would one team's rt's not be killed for 10 minutes? A stacked game. The biggest issue I see with this is it could potentially lengthen unfun stacked games which should just end as quick as possible.
The decay, either linear or exponential, does not have to be at the same rate for both teams. They could stagger to coincidence with predictable stages of the game.
I think this is a great idea but mabey reducing the player damage even more
So it's like when a gorge is going to rush he needs to be very very sneaky otherwise he almost sertenly will die.
I suggested this that I believe would make it far more challenging for aliens to drop tunnels behind marine lines, but would still punish marines for not holding lanes.
FrozenNew York, NYJoin Date: 2010-07-02Member: 72228Members, Constellation
I like that, but have no issue with anything else evolving off infestation. And I only have a problem with gorges doing it for tunnels. But they should still be able to do it for new hives I think
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
Fragility assists with comeback opportunities.
While I agree Marines need more help in regards to comeback methods, I don't think we should take away possibilities from one team to justify giving it to the other.
I think it's safe to say your average Alien player largely will only target a powernode first when it's Marine start - simply due to amount and importance of structures in it, and considering the time it takes to down a structure vs a node - and considering that their starting room is not considered "territory", I'd say that losing other powernodes implies that the territory was going to be lost anyways.
Said another way : Powernodes aren't a primary cause for losing or regaining territory, imho.
Now if you just meant the time it takes to repair a node without a welder, I'd agree, but at the same time ask you why you didn't have a welder?
(I'm all for matching repairing time with the build time, so long as the delay until you can begin repairing it is increased to preserve the same fragility for when it matters.)
I still don't see how removing cysts assists in Marine comebacks, tho?
I suggested this that I believe would make it far more challenging for aliens to drop tunnels behind marine lines, but would still punish marines for not holding lanes.
NO NO NO NO NO NO NO.
If I can't sneak into the back of biodome/veil rine start, evolve gorge, and drop a tunnel right under their noses - the game will simply no longer be worth playing. Don't take away my stupid shenanigans :P
I'm still yet to properly pull off the fabled "dope avalanche". In which I go gorge on the rafters in shipping on ns2_tram, place a bunch of clogs above the command station (with hydras one heal away from being built) connected to the ceiling above by a single clog, bait the commander out of the chair by spitting it, and drop the clogs right inside the open command station, forcing the comm to kill me and clear the clogs/hydras before he can get back in.
I've kinda done it twice. But one occasion the game was literally just about to be won by the marines, so it didn't matter. And on another, I messed it up by doing it during a respawn, and couldn't take down both the comm and the spawner even with my hydras + no meds.
It simply doesn't count unless it wins the game, or at the very least, sets them back a large amount. So I am yet to be truly successful. Thus, the dope avalanche remains a myth. A legend of a strategy that is simply too ridiculous to be real. And it always will be but a myth if such a feature was implemented.
@Frozen How does re-purposing cysts and powernodes aid in marine comebacks again?..
Laboriously rebuilding destroyed power is one of the main things that prevents Marines from successfully retaking territory IMHO.
Wut? It takes less time to rebuild a powernode with a welder than it does to build an observatory. By about 5 seconds.
Even so, aliens retake territory faster than they take it because some part of the cyst chain remains nearby. Marines retake territory slower than they take it because rebuilding power is slower than building it. I think this is a big part of why a lost marine game feels more hopeless than a lost alien game.
Comments
Attacking RT is already a very tedious task, and from the discussion so far, it seems like decaying armor would introduce complexities with very little benefit.
It would be simpler to reduce Welder cost, so marines can afford to use Cluster/Pulse grenades to defend their RTs, and Gas Grenades to soften alien RTs as they were meant to.
Infestation structural armor corrosion could be significantly increased (doubled to 30/second), for it to become a real threat to undefended marine structures.
The feedback about things like fades gaining a buff against old RTs are interesting and not something I had considered.
At every point in the game you want it to feel interesting. I think you want each "act" of the game to give an advantage/disadvantage moving into the next act, rather than it determining the next act.
At the start of the game you want the following.
1. You don't want the early game to be too decisive.
- Bad experience for the losing side,
- Takes away from the mid game
2. You don't want the early game to be irrelevant.
- If you can easily undo mistakes from the early game during the mid game then it devalues the point of trying hard at the start.
What about the mid game though?
1. The mid game could be highly decisive, so long as the end game is over with very quickly.
or
2. The mid game could just be setting up some advantages for the end game, but be far from decisive, in which case the game is determined more by end game tech.
I think those last two describes a lot of opinions, either make game finishers stronger, or make it so that both sides are still "in the game" for a longer duration of a game.
The armor reduction idea is enticing.
1. Improves stability in the early game, as new stronger RTs will die less often.
2. Still retains the importance of the early game as if you do take that RT down it still presses an advantage.
3. Any early game advantage has more opportunity to be eliminated during the mid game. As you can destroy the winning teams RTs faster (as they will be older). Keep in mind that if the enemy had double the RTs you had, and you equalise the RT count then the enemy still retains the advantage they gained from the res earned during that time (Pres/Tres on upgrades/More medpacks and drifter ability usage). So in this way its not overpowered or a "gg" mechanic for the losing side.
Here is a picture example I found searching for exponential decline. This is just one curve, but we could potentially find a more suitable decline for ns2.
You could set the point where it finally reaches 0 eHP at 15 minutes if untouched. That way the first 5 minutes or so act as you were describing @ironhorse, but from there it still declines but at a much slower rate. Marines could weld them back up to a certain point at the expense of the being offensive. 15 minutes might even be too short.
This would make the winning or offensive team weaker as time goes on. It could lead to longer games which could be good or bad. Might make marines too defensive require buffs in other areas.
I haven't put to much thought into this. Expand on it, or dismiss it. I would like to others thought on this.
Precisely why I like it.
It's a counter-able mid game vulnerability that no one would attest is "cheap", considering it's based on continuing doing what you're already supposed to be doing in order to properly play / win... and because a hard fight still must occur between the teams that could go either way.
Sometimes the available tech is good enough to adequately contend the loss of your weakened RTs (fades).
It should also appeal to those who like faster endings.
In the scenario that a losing team still can't get behind the enemy to their old RTs, and they cannot defend (win engagements) nor upkeep their own old RTs' eHP... well then they've lost in at least 3 different ways already and therefore if the winning team takes advantage of their weakened RTs it just helps to end a game sooner, which was already over.
@Nordic
I've considered it and I think it messes with the strategy a bit regarding predictable stages of the game or timings.
It's nice to know the increased risk that occurs beyond 7 minutes with no A2 or Shotguns - good comms track these timings - having something that isn't consistent or easy to track sort of hampers strategies.
Aside from that, wouldn't you want an exponential behavior to be inverse from that? Stay stronger for longer in the early game and become weaker faster towards mid game?
I mean, you don't need to do any math on the fly or anything, these values are easy enough to memorize I think.
In case you were talking from the marines perspective, the solution is even easier; have the commander click the RT and read the armor count.
That being said, I'm pretty sceptical that players will actually use these values to coordinate attacks - in my experience, strong alien players simply attack the RT's literally any time they find an opening. Nobody is going to say; "Wait that RT is brand new, I'm gonna leave it and let its armor corrode a little bit".
So when you talk about 'added risk' I gather that you are talking about the risk that the rt dies, but the risk of the rt being attacked is the same I think - so I think with or without this mechanic the responses from the players are going to be largely the same. There might be instances where a marine commander will say; "let the rt die, we can't save it". But I think that is true with exponential curves and linear curves.
And i agree regarding strong players simply attacking RTs literally any time they find an opening - and I think it helps RT decay work seamlessly.
So let me ask: what is the benefit to a non linear progression of decay @Nordic ?
Edit:
Also what does anyone think about a 22% decay in eHP for RTs, both armor and health, for both teams? This would be in lieu of armor decay exclusively, in order to prevent unforeseen buffs like fades etc.
Extractors have 22% of their eHP as armor, and Harvesters have 21.8% - so it's close enough to just equally damage both health and armor for either team - but what would be the downside to this approach besides being less visually clear where it will cease decaying?
When you said this, specifically "but then you couldn't let extractors just automatically self destruct" it made me think what if they did. How could that possibly work? Well it could not work linearly because they would die too quick.
If eHP declined with an exponential decay you could set an arbitrarily high eHP number at the start, making it so it really would be near fruitless to attack it at the start. It would decline quickly so that the eHP and timing is the same as you mentioned earlier.
So those timings as described would potentially be the same with an exponential decay in eHP. So if nothing has really changed from this model, what does? Well the whole point of having exponential decay is it would allow rt's to die over time at a slow rate. I will use 10 minutes for an example.
Most rt's will die long before 10 minutes. Each minute that goes on the rt gets weaker but an a slower rate every minute, increasing the likelihood the enemy team can get in their and kill it. Overtime this would make it even easier to crush the winning teams economy.
Basically it takes the decaying armor idea and exaggerates it to the extreme. If not a real viable solution it at least could show some potential weaknesses with the decaying armor idea.
So what happens at about the 9 minute mark? If a single skulk can get behind enemy lines he can wreck the economy. What happens at the 10 minute mark? The economy starts to collapse.
So what does a collapse of the economy do? Well it could potentially happen to both teams. The winning team would have to make a big move before this, because they will have to fall back and rebuild. This would give the losing team, which should have newer rt's, an opportunity to gain some map control.
I do see flaws with this though. It would also have a larger affect on the marine team since they have to build the rt's. Fades would be buffed even further because they have more health combined with speed to easier get behind enemy lines where potentially there are rt's without armor.
In what kind of game would one team's rt's not be killed for 10 minutes? A stacked game. The biggest issue I see with this is it could potentially lengthen unfun stacked games which should just end as quick as possible.
The decay, either linear or exponential, does not have to be at the same rate for both teams. They could stagger to coincidence with predictable stages of the game.
So it's like when a gorge is going to rush he needs to be very very sneaky otherwise he almost sertenly will die.
Fuck da haterz.
;p
Laboriously rebuilding destroyed power is one of the main things that prevents Marines from successfully retaking territory IMHO.
Wut? It takes less time to rebuild a powernode with a welder than it does to build an observatory. By about 5 seconds.
While I agree Marines need more help in regards to comeback methods, I don't think we should take away possibilities from one team to justify giving it to the other.
I think it's safe to say your average Alien player largely will only target a powernode first when it's Marine start - simply due to amount and importance of structures in it, and considering the time it takes to down a structure vs a node - and considering that their starting room is not considered "territory", I'd say that losing other powernodes implies that the territory was going to be lost anyways.
Said another way : Powernodes aren't a primary cause for losing or regaining territory, imho.
Now if you just meant the time it takes to repair a node without a welder, I'd agree, but at the same time ask you why you didn't have a welder?
(I'm all for matching repairing time with the build time, so long as the delay until you can begin repairing it is increased to preserve the same fragility for when it matters.)
I still don't see how removing cysts assists in Marine comebacks, tho?
You never will, but you'll be forced to live in a world where it does.
NO NO NO NO NO NO NO.
If I can't sneak into the back of biodome/veil rine start, evolve gorge, and drop a tunnel right under their noses - the game will simply no longer be worth playing. Don't take away my stupid shenanigans :P
I'm still yet to properly pull off the fabled "dope avalanche". In which I go gorge on the rafters in shipping on ns2_tram, place a bunch of clogs above the command station (with hydras one heal away from being built) connected to the ceiling above by a single clog, bait the commander out of the chair by spitting it, and drop the clogs right inside the open command station, forcing the comm to kill me and clear the clogs/hydras before he can get back in.
I've kinda done it twice. But one occasion the game was literally just about to be won by the marines, so it didn't matter. And on another, I messed it up by doing it during a respawn, and couldn't take down both the comm and the spawner even with my hydras + no meds.
It simply doesn't count unless it wins the game, or at the very least, sets them back a large amount. So I am yet to be truly successful. Thus, the dope avalanche remains a myth. A legend of a strategy that is simply too ridiculous to be real. And it always will be but a myth if such a feature was implemented.
Plz no.
please make sure you are recording the match when you do that.
I have faith in you. You can do it
I need to see that
Even so, aliens retake territory faster than they take it because some part of the cyst chain remains nearby. Marines retake territory slower than they take it because rebuilding power is slower than building it. I think this is a big part of why a lost marine game feels more hopeless than a lost alien game.