Teleporter + Cookie Clicker = Interesting Teleport System?

So the Title is pretty self explanatory but when replying to a thread I got this idea about a maybe neat idea for a "Self Balance" system for the Teleporter.

Those of you who have played Cookie Clicker will know that things tend to cost more exponentially the more you buy it(I think it's a 15% increase?). To apply this to Teleporters imagine this;

Teleporters use Wormholes, the more you send through the worm whole the more destabilized it becomes and more energy you you need to maintain it. The first unit you teleport will cost 1000* Energy, and for each additional unit you teleport it increases the cost by 15%*, meaning the second unit costs 1150 Energy, the third 1322.5 and so on and so forth(1520E-1749E-2011E ect ect)

Now obviously if you keep it up the costs spiral out of control so you need some kind of cool down that lowers the cost when your not using it. so every 5* Seconds if it's not used it drops one step. So if you teleport 5 units it will take 25 seconds for the cost to return to the base amount.

Now of course that's just the basic idea and there is lots of areas to tweak for balance, probably the most difficult aspect is making sure players understand how it works and that the cost is exponential but what do you guys think overall?

*Arbitrary Numbers

Mike

Other than your arbitrary numbers being way off it sounds good

Eve style wormholes in PA? hell no.

If it was EVE style wormholes they would appear at a spot on a planet at random and hold so much mass "metal" worth of units till it was destroyed and then another would appear at random


I like this idea, they already talked about adding in a teleporter to have movement around in systems. This is a way to balance it, so its not just warping your entire army to point point, and your able to do it as much as you want, ever minute, with no extra cost.

It also would create a great reason to have Energy Storage

We don't really know how teleporters will work yet. How balanced the teleporter must be is pretty dependent on how easy you can get an exit-node in the exact location you want and of course the amount of units that can go through the teleporter simultaneously. It will have to be harder to instantly teleport a group of units than if the units have to walk in a line to get through.

I'm just trying to imagine the situation here: You want to send in a full scale invasion on the other planet. Then you decide to push as many units on the planet as you possibly can. You want to be able to quickly select a group of units, send them in without having to micro too much.

You will then run into a few issues:

• The calculation of the energy it needs requires you to use a calculator.
• You have to micro the exact number of units in order not to suddenly stall, a leap of for example 15% is nothing at first, but once you end up with hundreds of units going in after eachother the costs rise pretty sudden per unit, it's hard to anticipate.

So could you further comment on how you envision this?

Why did you latch on to the only part of the post that doesn't matter? Lets just call it Quantum Tunneling then.

A good side benefit too, but because the teleporting of a group is still sequential you could in theory have enough Energy income to sustain Teleporting up to a certain point, especially if there is some kind of Cap as I explain below.

Yes, we don't know how Neutrino envisions them working, the point of this thread is to discuss a possible implementation. The idea with this System is that it deals more so with the Mechanics of the Teleporter, the Balance is, as with any other unit, a result of all the different stats and Balance Levers.

The one part I did forget to mention was that The teleporting would still be done individually, the overall rate is yet another balancing factor. You could even make it so there is a cap to how much teleporting can cost, so it only rises exponentially to a certain point where it maintains, which could still allow for super late game mass teleporting if your Eco can handle it.

Anyways, to answer the points;

Only if you don't use the UI to communicate that instead. UI isn't my forte but off the top of my head you could have it such that if you have 10 units selected and if you mouse over the Teleporter it will show you the Total Cost to teleport the Selected units in a little Pop-up "Selected Units Require ______ Energy to Teleport".

Yeah, the whole idea is that 15%* start off as nothing and eventually becomes prohibitive. The idea is to in some way limit how effective Teleporters are, sending 5 units here, 5 units there is cheap and easy, but trying to teleport any entire army should be expensive given the other benefits that come as a matter of fact with teleporting. This again comes down to making sure that players understand how it works and the UI just needs to deliver the right information, I imagine that the Info window that appears when Moused over or selected for the Teleport could show the cost for the next teleport, and would update as it 'cools down'.

* Arbitrary Number

Mike

Seems like a sensible way of balancing teleporters to me, makes them useful for sending a few engies across quickly but prevents an entire army hopping onto a planet without the defender being able to react, a role filled by the less expensive but slower unit cannon.
The cost would presumably be per-teleporter building? So having 3 teleporters would in the long run be more energy efficient than one (and if there was a cap allow you to send across more units in a shorter space of time).

I completely agree with the core idea of an exponentially diminishing return on assets like teleporters. However the specific implementation of a wormhole portal you propose that gets more expensive with activations in serial has some issues.

First of all, players are simply going to build more teleporters all in one place rather than pay exorbitant wormhole costs to repeatedly activate one wormhole. This is also teleporter micromanagement. Secondly, it is very difficult to calculate (or even accurately estimate) how much energy such a system is going to cost, especially if your strategy involves multiple repeat activations quickly.

Nonetheless, I completely agree teleportation needs diminishing returns. I just don't think exponential increase based on the number of units teleported serially is the proper way to do it.

So how about instead the cost to teleport is based on the distance between the teleporters and the mass of the unit. The cost increases exponentially with either the distance or the unit's mass, but each teleport has a fixed cost depending on those two factors. Teleporting the same unit between the same teleporters over and over will cost the same each time, which is a predictable expense (although if it is difficult to calculate, you're going to have to do it once first).

This also opens up the possibility of having a teleport network which cuts down the exponential increase of costs with distance by leapfrogging between teleporters that are closer to each other. The actual route would be invisible to the player; they just specify where they want to go, and the lowest-cost teleport path is easily calculated automatically.

In gameplay terms, instead of building many teleporters at the desired origin and destination, it is more efficient to build them in a network reaching across from one point to the other, which puts more stuff on the map in more interesting places where they can be harassed, protected, or used for effect than if there were a cluster of teleporters in a large base.

I want to disagree with this teleportation system for Two reasons. Mass Transit / selective teleporting based on tier.

First i'll say that it is interesting and good way to use the energy resource to move units from planet to planet and have it so that the commander has to decide what units to send due to the rising energy costs.

I will argue that this method is limiting in mass transit of units.

Now i'm not sure how the unit launcher will work in terms of speed and distance at which it is effective. but lets say teleportation is the "T4" to the unit launcher "T3" and the speed is essential. Teleporting one unit at a time isn't going to transfer very well to the massive scale of 400 vs 400 unit armies raging war against each other on one planet and your teleporting in 1 unit from another planet that you colonized. I'm not sure if its worth building if the unit launcher sends a steady stream of units at a nice pace at a set energy requirement ( maybe variable due to distance). And in this case of only sending one unit at a time, it gets more and more expensive to send even the basic units across the solar system.

I also can see that the selective teleportation due to higher and higher energy requirements would mean you put your best units in all the time. since its not efficient to teleport ants but rather levelers. I know no one would decide to teleport ants but what if teams start on two different planets and they need to send units to help the other guy. Regardless of unit type, a few more units is always more helpful.

now this was going to be exactly what I was going to mention.

Now if the variability was just the energy cost due to distance of the planet and that got exponentially great... I would understand that. However, having it just exponentially go up doesn't make sense if there isn't another variable to define it.

Maybe an idea, but I do especially like your idea if you can set a limit to the energy the teleporter may use. Imagine you select the teleporter, and you see a UI box with a certain amount of energy in it. You can then modify the amount to the limit you want or even use a percentage of your current positive energy gain. That would fix the issue with the economy stalling and would probably make sending units a little bit more intuitive.

Ledarsi, the problem I foresee with doing any kind of system where distance is involved is that the distance is always in flux. Beyond that I'm not sure anything but the largest games in huge systems will ever provide a proper "network" of Teleporters such that they'll being aot make 2 short hops instead of going directly to the primary location, but that's just as dependant on the exact way the cost is calculated as the layout of the Teleporters at and given moment.

It is true with my system there is a point where more Teleporters is the answer, but that's not any different from other similar systems. Like the Unit Cannon, there comes a point where you can produce units faster than the Unit cannon can shoot them off for example.

With my system there are ways to control what that happens as well, for example if the cost increases cap out early(like say 20-30 units arbitrarily), More teleporters is only good if speed is required. If it caps out later(50-60 say) then yeah more teleporters are more economic. This also depends of the rate of exponential growth as well.

Also things like a large upfront cost for the Teleporters can go a long way to having a lot of them less desirable, especially if for example And given Teleporter can only be 'paired' to a single other Teleporter, so it's not like you could just build 5 on Planet A and get away with just 1 on Planet B.

Chronosoul, why does the Teleporter need to be Better than the Unit Cannon? They fill completely different niches. The unit cannon isn't meant to be used from within a Planet's Gravity Well, it's more so meant for essentially sending units from "space" to either other close points in "space" or to Nearby Planets.

The teleporter is supposed to work between planets specifically, but compared to the unit cannon it should be as effective when dealing with large numbers of units, otherwise you'd end up with potential scenarios where players build build up a massive army on some planet somewhere and just teleport the entire army. In terms of overall capacity the Teleporter sits somewhere between the Single unit Lander and the rapid fire Unit Cannon, which needs production on site orrrrr a Teleporter near by to supplement the "on-site" production from production from other planet(s)

Also I think your wrongly assume that just because teleporting is done for individual units it'll take a long time, I can easily see it sending 2 units a second, that's okay because the main balance factor here is the Cost.

Your argument that such a system will favor Levelers of Ants isn't wrong, but it's only as right as the overall unit makes it, but at the same time how is that different from any other transport options? This is something that needs to be solved on the unit end, not with the Transport options themselves.

Mike

Whats wrong with the Starcraft approach?
Sending units is free, except your opponent can destroy his end of your contraption.
Let's see how much hate I get for mentioning that game. lel

Seeing as there are two obvious ways to handle teleporters, why not have both in the game.

Teleporter: Build a teleporter pad, load unit(s) onto it, click teleport button, click somewhere in universe, energy builds up and ping.

Wormhole Network: Build a WN-Station here and one there, load units in one side, they pop out the other. The energy cost to keep the wormhole active would be constant but considerably less than the one-off teleporter bursts above. (The WNS's will have both an entrance tunnel and an exit tunnel, to facilitate simultaneous two way transport, i.e. evacuate engineers whilst sending in the cavalry)

The problem I foresee with this (unless I misread your post, which is likely, because I often do) is that the moment a teleport becomes unsustainable, you just ctrl+K it and build a new one. Micro barriers!

However, I do like the *idea* of it. Maybe instead of permanently increasing the cost of teleportation, sending a unit through a wormhole would cause it to "swell". Wormholes would cost a constant 5000 or so energy, and every time you send a unit through one, its energy cost increases by the E = E*M/20, E being energy cost, M being metal cost of the unit; compounding. Every 10 or so seconds, the energy cost will decrease by an (exponential? Linear?) amount based on its current intake until it is back down to the -5000 cost. Maybe something like E = E-10*E/2500

Also, am I the only Realm member that doesn't play Cookie Clicker?

Knight, that is a very good point. Teleporters on different planets will have tremendously fluctuating distances, and while there is a pattern, it will be very difficult to calculate or estimate. I was assuming fixed structures on the same planet, which of course is not necessarily going to be the main use case for teleporters.

OK, how about this then. We bite the bullet on the multiple teleport "problem" and instead say it's a feature.

A teleporter acts like an energy storage that gradually stores up energy (instead of instantly draining a ton all at once when teleporting) and then once it is fully charged it can teleport a unit for "free," meaning no additional energy cost. You've already paid it, over time, to charge the thing. More teleporters lets you charge in parallel, for a higher energy cost (linearly with the number of teleporters).

Here is where Knight's idea comes in. You can use an uncharged, or partially charged teleporter to make a teleport, but it is going to cost a lot of energy. The energy required drops exponentially the closer the teleporter is to fully charged, down to zero when the teleporter is fully charged.

And here is the part where the teleporters work together: they can share energy with other teleporters. Possibly range-limited like shields in Zero-K, possibly anywhere. Teleporters you control will attempt to equalize their energy distribution to maximize the efficiency of any teleport from any teleporter you control.

Having more teleporters gives you a larger pool, as well as faster regeneration for the grid. If you have 10 teleporters, completely draining one of them to execute a "free" teleport will drain all 10 by 10%, which they will all begin regenerating immediately. And you don't have to micromanage which teleporter you use because the pool is shared between them.

This is exactly how it should be done. You did spark the main idea but this guy hit it on the T. I also like this idea because you will have to send a unit to build each one of these and this tech will probably be tech 3 which PA has said they will probably creating a tech 3 which would be awesome.

SO many points being made haha.

try to answer it first by asking what is the main goal of this creeping energy expenditure that happens when you teleport units. Are you doing it to limit the amount of units that flow through? To give a punishment for sending units to fast? Whats the story here, because teleports in themselves are just for sending units from different planets quicker. Why are we making a system that has an additional energy cost?

Now to explore the points

I was bringing it up as ease of transport, not so much the niche of each type. If unit cannons are easier and cheaper then teleports. Why go to teleports when I can build a bunch of factories on a moon near by and keep launching them to the planet. the argument is cost effectiveness of transport.

Wasn't assuming it would take a long time but it needs to be decided where a good medium is.. ( sending bulk 5 units or 1 unit every two seconds like an assembly line ) I'm pro bulk like the star trek beam me up teleporter that has a somewhat set cost sorta. I can't really make claims that this is the best methods but I'd rather have batches sent to planets then an even flow. Really its up to preference to the game creators either method could be developed effectively.

Whats different with the teleport? I guess exponential cost no matter the unit sent, If the unit cannon is a set cost it beats the teleporter in predictable behavior.

Oh man I actually hit the 10k character limit.....wow. Alright well here comes a 2-parter...

Well, the system is kinda already that, assuming you require a Teleporter at both ends. The problem is that not assigning any cost to the act of Teleporting would require that the Teleporters themselves be prohibitively expensive. The key reason for this is Scale, remember, in Starcraft, you always have a Hard Limit on how many units you can have, and even thought you can do things like trow your army into the grinder and instantly create more units to get yourself up to max that basically only works once and requires preparation and good execution. But in PA, you don't have that same Hard Limit, so without any cost on the act of teleporting, the cost to move 1 Engineer is the same as the cost of teleporting a 500 strong army, the cost of the 2 Teleporters.

No, as I explained, the core idea has a "cooldown" that would slowly lower the cost of the next Teleport until it eventually reaches the baseline again;

I also add on there there could be a Cap on the Max Teleport cost, so eventually it won't get MORE expensive eeach time, but it's still mighty expensive if you keep at it without letting it cool down.

It could work, but I think what you propose is much more complicated, and I think the corrections/clarifications I point out above you'll find yourself liking my proposal more.

Not bad though I feel like this kind of a system would work better in a smaller scale game, I get the impression that the costs would be pretty high if you wanted to send more than a handful of units in short order of if the 'charge' rate is too low. I also am just too attached to the idea of paired teleporters to go along with the idea of them all being interlinked, it also comes with the slightly awkward logistics of needing to send units to the teleporter and selecting the destination, potentially, I can't see a cleaner way of handling that from the UI end of it off the top of my head.

Mike

The idea is that people are used to building up an army and marching it across the map to the enemy, and that still works in scenarios where you spawn on the same planet, but once you and your opponents main forces end up on different planets(either via spawning or just through the course of the fighting) should the same 'plan' still be applicable? Although Uber hasn't talked much in terms of the specifics of Interstellar transport, I've always gotten the feeling that they don't want moving big armies around to be easy, they want you to use Moons and Asteroids as forward bases with factories and unit cannons, they want players to learn when it's a good time to build an army and when it's not.

The problem is that teleporters can ruin that(going way back I staunchly spoke out against the idea of Teleporters even) if they aren't handled properly. I think my system does good job of making so that it doesn't encourage the idea of just building a large army and sending it where you happen to need it at a moment's notice, but lets you get away with it to much smaller degree. As I mentioned, it can even function alright as a complimentary bit to Unit cannons in some situations.

And for the scenario given you are right, I feel Uber wants to promote the idea of Build an army where you need it instead of Building one and waiting for an opening type of deal. The Teleporters are still handy to have because they can work from within a Planet's Gravity well and are technically 'faster' at getting units around. Teleporters are less about Promoting Expansion as much as they about Supporting Expansion I guess you could say. Or for one of my patently bad analogies, in teh days of the wild west, Caravans might have created towns and settlements, but it was the Railroads that let them grow to be cities. Maybe.....I'm bad at history.

The Exponential Cost is the main factor that makes the system work in my opinion so letting it move 100 units in 5 seconds is fine by me if you can supply the teleporter with the required amount of energy. It comes down to the fact that the system is based on individual units so the out come should also be done on an individual basis.

The point was that nothing is different, think about it Unit cannons will likely have a set fire-rate and in a 1v1 basis, a Leveler is better than an Ant, of course there are other considerations, like can the factory output create enough Levelers to match a a Unit cannon's Fire rate?

I will admit that it's more of a problem for teleporter, because it does support the idea of "Build it and wait for the opening" type of thing, I do still feel that it is a problem better solved at the unit level as opposed to the Transport level. For the sake of discussion lets assume things don't change, and Levelers are still 5x the 'value' compared to the Ant, the system still has some options.

The rate used could be different for Basic and Advanced, like Basic units add an additional 15%* to the cost of the prior unit and Advanced units add an additional; 25%* to the cost of the prior unit.

Or it could be that Basic units cap out on Cost differently than Advanced units do. so a Basic unit will never cost more than 10K Energy and Advanced units will never Cost more than 50K. Admittedly this one has a lot of loopholes that could be exploited if not handled properly and is more complex to teach a player but it is functional more or less.

*Arbitrary Numbers

Man my fingers hurt >.>

Mike

I'll respond to this sometime tomorrow. I wish more people would debate like this on the forums.

I hope teleporters get added into the game, otherwise all this discussion would be without merit!