1.1j Resource Model?
matso
Master of Patches Join Date: 2002-11-05 Member: 7000Members, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Squad Five Gold, Reinforced - Shadow, NS2 Community Developer
Master of Patches Join Date: 2002-11-05 Member: 7000Members, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Squad Five Gold, Reinforced - Shadow, NS2 Community Developer
<div class="IPBDescription">Inquiring minds wants to know...</div>
From what I've been able to understand, the new resource model is extremly simple: each RT gives each side 15 res/min. Aliens share income equally, marines gets it into one pool. Killing marines gives the killing alien 1-3 res (does marines gets res for killing aliens?)
Aliens start with 25 res, RT's and upgrade chambers costs 10 res (or does a sensory cost 15?), an OC costs 5 res, a hive costs 45?
Notable changes: no overflow, no sucking, no extra gorge shares, no team-size adjustment, no per-hive resource limits.
Any PT/Vet can confirm the above?
From what I've been able to understand, the new resource model is extremly simple: each RT gives each side 15 res/min. Aliens share income equally, marines gets it into one pool. Killing marines gives the killing alien 1-3 res (does marines gets res for killing aliens?)
Aliens start with 25 res, RT's and upgrade chambers costs 10 res (or does a sensory cost 15?), an OC costs 5 res, a hive costs 45?
Notable changes: no overflow, no sucking, no extra gorge shares, no team-size adjustment, no per-hive resource limits.
Any PT/Vet can confirm the above?
Comments
A couple of thoughts
<b>Team size</b>
The marines now have a constant tech-up speed no matter the teamsize, only depending on resources and kills (instead of 1.04, where the larger teams got an insane income).
Small alien teams will have more resources per player than larger teams, given the same number of RTs.
OTOH, large alien teams have much more resources to spend early on, as each player starts with 25 res. However, if the larger alien teams fails to transform their initial resource advantage into secured territory early on, they risk dying a slow death from resource starvation. A 15v15 game will see each alien player get one res per minute per tower - even if they hold 4 resource towers, it will take more than 2 minutes to replace a lost resource tower for a gorge, or 4-5 minutes for a non-gorge to replace it (with the extra 15 res for evolving to gorge first). That's assuming that the alien doesn't die - with 2-4 res worth of upgrades getting wasted every time you die as an alien, you might easily find that you just can't afford to upgrade/die on large servers, meaning aliens will be MUCH more careful attacking (marines getting res when you die adds to the problem, of course).
A possible problem with large pub servers - if a game doesn't start full, but gets filled up after the cut-off time for aliens to get the starting 25 res, the aliens will be in trouble - resources getting spread out, and no initial res advantage to compensate for it.
Transforming kills to resources may help here, but it probably won't be of much help to a gorge. This in turns means that "going gorge" is something that every alien may be expected to do. Again, not a problem in clan games, but that requirement will be a problem on pub games where fewer people will be interested in helping their team rather than Fading/Onosing.
Oh, that's right .. anyone knows what happens to the res of people leaving the game? Not much of a problem for clan games, but for pubs, if the resources are lost the aliens will have a severe game disadvantage. If the resources are NOT lost, there may be a problem with resource transfer via the ready room.
Marines will also have a different large server game - small games will have about the same equipment as large games. What this means is that small games may see more shotguns, while large games will go for armor/weapon/mt upgrades instead. Also, electrified RT's will be really good in small games, where 75% of the alien team (3/4) may be required to take on out, compared to the 20% (3/15) for large servers.
<b>Early rush</b>
It would seem that with the initial alien res advantage, the alien team should get 5-7 gorges early on, dropping three upgrade chambers and capping 3-4 resources the FIRST thing they do. With 6 gorges and 2 skulks (in an 8 player game), it would seem obvious that gorge rushing the marine base will become a common tactic on medium-clue servers (of course, the upgrade of choice would be defense for carapace then).
I don't see this as much of a problem[1]. Mines, shotguns and 2-3 marines on defense should be able to handle it, and if the aliens fail, they will be in deep trouble. It of course forces the marines to defend their base much more heavily than in 1.04, which in turn may allow the aliens to use other openings (going for 3 gorges capping, and then the same 3 gorges drops upgrades - the time would then be ... 20 sec to evolve, 30 sec to build RT, 8 player games 4 RT's is 60/8 ~> 7.5 res/min or a total of 2-3 min before getting up 3 upgrades - given that the gorges survive that long).
Getting early upgrade chambers should mean that aliens will be putting up a fairly tough resistance right from the start - no more early marine dominance, instead we can expect aliens to get one lvl 3 upgrade right away.
This in turn should force the marines to drop a few shotguns early to get a good push - especially with that many gorges heal-spraying around.
[1] Apart from some maps - getting three gorges and three DC's in the marine vent at ns_caged 1 minute into the game may be a bit worrisome... add a couple of lerks and skulks and it looks pretty tough for the marines to hold onto their base.
<b>Here is somthing I have been toying with, as I am currently not excited about the alien economy.</b>: Aliens in the radius of a movment chamber built near a resource tower will have theyre incoming resources multiplied (a very small percentage for each tower, probably like %10 extra). Remove the spawn-time ability of Movement chambers. This means more resource control, and more res invested in defending nodes by aliens. Would-be marine commanders would try and hunt these "nests" of aliens trying to accelerate their evolution, causing massive conflict and out-of-hive fighting. Kind of like the old egg Idea pre-beta 1.0 days, but instead of using it to spawn, you use the "nest" to nurture your advancement. Why cant this be abused? Because it will only boost resources at %80 at the max (unless max towers were changed) and that requires a HUGE RP investment by the aliens. You might want to cap the max amout of resource boost, as to prevent turtling of the alien team. Or maybe you could designate certian nodes to be the only ones capable of providing the boost, nodes far away from alien hives. As a last balancing idea, you could lower the boost to a level where 8 movement chambers on a node would be un-noticeable (like a %20 boost), but make the benifits of a double node greater (%40).
I would anticipate much of that initial res being wasted in pubs (especially larger pubs) anyway. I suspect the aliens will have to adapt to chamber-building and hive-grabbing (low cost, low/global benefit) on larger servers and evolution-rushing (high cost, high/individual benefit) on smaller servers.
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Transforming kills to resources may help here, but it probably won't be of much help to a gorge.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Unless you rack up some kills as skulk, and then gorge for a specific task. Estimating 2 res/kill, a fresh skulk would need 10 kills to gorge for a second hive. Difficult to pull off in a skulk rush, so I imagine a mix of killing and waiting will be the norm.
This does mean that the team's best skulk will be out of commission gorging for part of the early game.
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->which in turn may allow the aliens to use other openings<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'm guessing that once alien tech is no longer:
1. Heavily tied to hives
2. Slow to ramp up
...we're going to start seeing a lot more diverse and interesting alien strategy. Which means we'll probably see an alien version of the JP/HMG rush in 1.1 (ie, an uber-strategy that was missed during playtesting due to the large combinatorial complexity of the alien game).
I think what he meant is that while in previous beta builds (afaik) alien rts sometimes produced more than the marine ones did (sometimes it was the other way round), it's even now. OR he means the fact that large teams got more resources per rt than small teams did.
Now, a RT produces 15 resources per minute, no matter what team it belongs to, no matter how big that team is. It doesn't give the opposing force res (I know it isn't 100% correct, and I had to read it an extra time too).
I think what he meant is that while in previous beta builds (afaik) alien rts sometimes produced more than the marine ones did (sometimes it was the other way round), it's even now. OR he means the fact that large teams got more resources per rt than small teams did.
Now, a RT produces 15 resources per minute, no matter what team it belongs to, no matter how big that team is. It doesn't give the opposing force res (I know it isn't 100% correct, and I had to read it an extra time too). <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Ooooooh. Thanks <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
I honestly thought it meant that RTs would give resources to both sides, and that there was some wacky game balance idea behind something so revolutionary (hey, if there's good enough reason to take out the melee weapon from one of the aliens, why not?). This does make much more sense.
We have no idea, As it stand ATM there is extensive playtesting to get rid of bugs <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo--> i dont think itll be anymore than 2 months mind you.
*edit* i wasn't <!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif'><!--endemo-->
I'm guessing that once alien tech is no longer:
1. Heavily tied to hives
2. Slow to ramp up
...we're going to start seeing a lot more diverse and interesting alien strategy. Which means we'll probably see an alien version of the JP/HMG rush in 1.1 (ie, an uber-strategy that was missed during playtesting due to the large combinatorial complexity of the alien game). <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Well, the main candidate for that would be an early gorge rush - 8 players, 3 gorges to drop 3 DC's, everyone evolves carapace, off to marine base and chomp it up.
An early lerk rush might work out well too ... 4 lerks spore camping the marine base should win the game, if they can cover the IP's. Hint: don't put IP's in spore range of each other...
OC rushing might work as well ... 3 gorges dropping 6 OC's outside the marine entrance, keeping each other and the OC's healed. Until GL's are evolved, that exit may be blocked to the marines (though actually, if enough marines concentrate fire they should be able to take down the OC's fairly quickly, even through 3 healing gorges).
However, I don't think these strategies will be uncounterable (mines/shotguns/electrified (TF|RT)s/turrets comes to mind), and neither is as cheap as JP/HMG (the aliens trade significant amounts of resources/map control to execute them, while JP/HMG gets you things you need anyhow, just earlier).
I do think that good aliens must scout the marine base early and punish any marine commander foolish enough not to defend his base.
The offensive gorge, much like the well known battle gorge (who goes straight into battle with other aliens). The team would rush with towers and chambers, quickly blocking off main access routes to their base, HOWEVER, not directly outside the entrances to the base. It's a forward offensive movement, much like you see with marines siege/phase outposts. The goal is to put up barriers to the marine team as far forward as it is reasonably defendable. Too far forward and you could lose the "wall" or "block" to a couple marines. Too far back and you've negated the whole purpose of the offensive wall. Eventually you try to capture the marines inside their own base by blocking them off from exiting their own base or at least forcing them to one route only (heavily guarded by skulks).
There seems like there's a variety of tactics but it looks like the aliens will have to lean more heavily on team tactics now, which may lead to some annoying newbies...(i.e. the newbie who does nothing for the team and saves for onos/fade, the newbie who idles half the game, etc, etc).