True Economy

Discussion in 'Videos And Replays!' started by Qzipco, July 9, 2016.

  1. elodea

    elodea Post Master General

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    Finally a decent post with actual content that I can respond to.

    I watched all 14 and found that the conclusions you draw are at odds with what is actually in them. Objectively, the outcomes in basically every replay you listed were not determined in any way shape or form by repairing a commander. Some didn't even have any repairing at all let alone repairing at a material level.

    It's been stated very clearly that commander pushing is what is actually going on so i thank you for providing 14 replays that prove exactly what we have been saying all along. 60% of these are Qzipco exploit pushing his commander and the rest are t2 rushes off 1 or 2 t1 factories. It's no surprise to me that you find them to be troll games. They are cheesy as hell because of the strategies chosen, not because of any repairing that takes place.

    You seem to think that repair makes cheese inevitable - that logical connection that doesn't hold any water. You are confusing the effects of other totally different player actions as coming from repair for some reason. Probably because it's the most visible mechanic that you can knee jerk blame.

    I encourage everyone to also watch each and every replay that was listed and see how flawed the argument against True Economy is. If anything, all i see is True Economy adding meaningful decision making and dynamic engagements in line with one of the mod's goals.

    Summary
    Significant factors that influenced the end result in descending importance
    1. Commander push exploit
    2. Building T2 first and doing timing attack on pure T1 armies
    3. Building a pelter first
    4. Building unit counter. e.g. Levellers vs Slammers or Slammers vs Dox
    5. Uncontested naked expansion that isn't attacked by bombers or raiding dox. Significant portions of the replays featured idle bombers and idle dox, especially the games with Admiral.
    6. Wall and turret positioning
    7. Bad unit control and uber cannons
    8. An opponent who builds mathematically bad units like icarus and spark
    9. Baiting enemy units into mines
    All are well known factors and already present in current meta without True Economy. The effectiveness of some of these strategies is also greatly increased via exploit comm pushing.

    Detailed
    Definitions
    Consequential - Without repair, a different end result (win/loss) would have occurred
    Inconsequential - Without repair, a different end result (win/loss) would not have occurred

    e.g. Commander A has 50% hp and Commander B has 51% hp. When they fight, repairing Commander B is inconsequential to the end result.

    Commander hp repair
    None: 0% repaired
    Low: <10% repaired
    Medium: 10-30% repaired
    High: 30-80% repaired

    Results
    [​IMG]
    Frankly, I'm actually disappointed how inconsequential repair mattered in the scheme of things. One of the side aims of True Economy was to make Commander repair viable.


    Let's address that one consequential result. Admiral made the mistake of attacking the Commander with dox and uber cannon instead of attacking the combat fabricators. He also did not target the combat fabricators with his pelter. Admiral had that engagement dead to rights but made poor decisions in the execution. For the purposes of balance where theoretical players make reasonable moves and counter moves, repair would have been inconsequential.

    Nonetheless, the fight is back and forth and enjoyable. Metal spent on both sides is balanced and the decisive factor that contributed towards the end result was player control. Repair isn't free like you seem to think - notice metal efficiency drop off a cliff halfway through. If you read the article I wrote on this, you'd have seen the specific test that made sure repair effectiveness was inline with the rest of the game. These kind of engagements increase spectator enjoyment. The only troll worthy aspect of this particular match was Qzipco commander pushing over vast distances (650 radius) in order to put a teleporter right outside someone's base.

    stuart98, Clopse and cdrkf like this.
  2. Clopse

    Clopse Post Master General

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    That second game hurt to watch, as you mentioned, just bad counterplay. Air seems too strong against this strat, spam bombers, kill his main base and expansions, kill his cfs, drop infernos by his energy, build more walls, snipe cfs with pelter, inferno drop the tp. so many ways to counter, all of which lead to qzipco losing.
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  3. Qzipco

    Qzipco Active Member

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    Fair enough. Here by I courtly invite Clopse and elodea to test the mod with me, since you guys probably know more strategies which can possibly counter this strat. If you guys win most of the games, I will take back what I've said about the mod. But if I win most of the games, you guys have to acknowlegde that you guys were wrong. I want to play 20 games against you next week. see you there.
    Last edited: July 14, 2016
  4. cdrkf

    cdrkf Post Master General

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    Can we live stream this? Grudge matches are always great fun to watch :)
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  5. Qzipco

    Qzipco Active Member

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    If elodea and Clopse agree, then it's fine by my tbh.

    Maps will be around 400 - 550 radius btw
  6. Alpha2546

    Alpha2546 Post Master General

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    **** yeah

    [​IMG]

    The betting pool has started people!
  7. wmurderface

    wmurderface Member

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    Thank you for this detail break down and response Elodea...I still disagree with how you categorised the repair strat as inconsequential in 13/14 of these games....sure it may not have won every single game but im sure it won a good majority of them.

    the argument of bad micro by the loosing side when they lose to this strat seems weak. i could probably win all of my games if i microed like a god and had spectator vision.

    I will test more games in stable without the economy mod on, Qzipco will attempt to preform the same strats with normal com repair balance. It should be interesting to see the results, im predicting that he will lose most of these games without true economy mod while trying to exploit com push repair strat.
    xankar and elodea like this.
  8. wpmarshall

    wpmarshall Planetary Moderator

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    And cast ;)
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  9. elodea

    elodea Post Master General

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    No. I won't be seeing you there.

    I refuse on the principle that balance is not determined by specific execution at some arbitrary point in time. This isn't an ego contest about who wins and who doesnt. This isn't a standoff in the wild west. This isn't a bet based on who performs the best. You do not need to always be a great basketball player to coach basketball. You are asking for trial by combat, and I refuse to partake in such a dumb process.

    I've already clearly illustrated based on the cases you have presented that commander repair as an isolated strategy does not even need to be countered. It plays no role.

    What you are asking us to do is counter your exploit comm pushes and your t2 rushes, and you expect us to somehow tie it to something completely irrelevant such as commander repair.

    It's just maths. Imagine a commander has 1% hp but is invulnerable behind walls while fighting a commander at 100% hp. I don't care if you repaired him 99%, you were still going to win - not because of repair but because of the walls.
    Last edited: July 14, 2016
  10. Qzipco

    Qzipco Active Member

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    So you keep debunking all of our games by saying:"If Admiral or METAPOD did this or that they would've won". But when I ask you to test the mod with me, you refuse, weak.
    elodea likes this.
  11. elodea

    elodea Post Master General

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    This response was 100% predictable.

    But you know, i don't really care how you want to spin me. You tried to lay a little sneaky trap and deceive people about how to properly analyse problems on this level. I refuse to lie down in it. Paint away with your crayons.

    You brought the contention, it's your responsibility to deal with it. Open up your dictionary some time and look up the difference between the words potential and actual. Don't assume you can demand others waste their precious time matching actual to potential in order to disprove your own claim.
  12. Clopse

    Clopse Post Master General

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    I on the other hand, love a good ego contest. I need a week to prepare. Just so I understand correctly, you are going to cheese rush your commander within a certain time frame each game? Or sometime in the game? This is pretty big, as it is a strong strat and I would use it too mid game of an option. But wouldn't do it as early as you do in some of the videos.
    cdrkf, stuart98 and Qzipco like this.
  13. Qzipco

    Qzipco Active Member

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    See you next week!
  14. wpmarshall

    wpmarshall Planetary Moderator

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    Poke me when this happens please :)
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  15. Qzipco

    Qzipco Active Member

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    will do
  16. cdrkf

    cdrkf Post Master General

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  17. wmurderface

    wmurderface Member

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    I've been thinking about those 14 pastats games, and i can only draw one conclusion from how elodea has been assessing his own mod....and this conclusion is that i think its highly unethical for the mod's maker to be judging it for everybody else on a social forum because these judgements will obviously be bias as the mod maker attempts to defend his decision making...i think the people reading this thread need to take everything elodea has been saying with a grain of salt because i think there is a greater agenda which this mod is attempting to fulfill...I sincerely hope that some balance change like this wont be used to attempt to fix reclaim strats in the main game, ive probably played over 5000 PA games possibly the most recorded games in the entire community and i want to reiterate that these 14 games were some of the worst games i have ever seen and played.


    I find it interesting that me and other top very active players think this mod is basically just trash but others (who hardly even play PA, let alone the mod itself or competitive 1v1s) seem to want to defend it as if they are defending a literal living thing and not, in my opinion a balance killing mod.


    We need someone with no bias for the mod or its maker to assess this mod and the kind of game play it creates, i dont think i can take elodea's thought's on the mod seriously (he probably cant take mine seriously either) because in his mind the mod is perfect while i on the other hand think it is absolute garbage. elodea we presented you with 14 games worth of raw data but you only picked the very few games Qzipco lost (probably due to bad micro right?) to try and prove your point.
    ''the outcomes in basically every replay you listed were not determined in any way shape or form by repairing a commander'' elodea i have absolutely no idea how you can sit there and make this claim....seems like you are in serious denial about your own mod.

    so +400% com repair eff doesn't change the game at all right? not even in the slightest, riiiiight.

    ''These kind of engagements increase spectator enjoyment'' is this why the mod was made? to make games more enjoyable for specs? in that case why dont we play all of our tournaments with guma guma slide?
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  18. cdrkf

    cdrkf Post Master General

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    @wmurderface let's just let @clopse and @Qzipco test it.

    Also, we can't change balance of the base game anyway, so not sure why all the drama....

    Breaking news: A balance mod changes the balance of the game, also scientists discover water is wet, more on this and other stories at 10.
    stuart98 likes this.
  19. wmurderface

    wmurderface Member

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    @cdrkf this mod was suggested to be used in tourneys....this is where my beef is.
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  20. cdrkf

    cdrkf Post Master General

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    Ah OK, well I think the idea is that a tourney where every player is locked into the com reclaim build would be pretty dull. This was one suggested solution...

    I also think the point most of the defenders have been making is the move shown in the vids probably would work irrespective of com repair. That's not to say it's not much better with this mod, just that it wasn't the only factor. I mean a 400% increase sounds huge, but you need to factor in just how small the repair rate was in the first place....

    I dunno. Maybe there's a better solution. Personally I'd suggest making a rule in the tourney saying don't com reclaim (I really feel it's against the spirit of what PA is supposed to be about). However I think that's unlikely to be accepted by players based on previous discussions- the general consensus is always 'if it's in its fair game'.

    I also suppose I'm not averse to more aggression with the commander based on the fact I come from TA, where you could swing a game with good com micro (as ta com can one shot anything it gets close enough to).
    elodea likes this.

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