Currently, the jump from Basic to Advanced is a HUGE gap. 5500 metal (for land) is so massive, it takes almost ten minutes to actually start a Advanced economy if you are rushing it - most of my games recently I can end (or at least decide) before anyone has gotten to Advanced. Now, I don't find this as an issue - but I think it can be made better. MUCH better, and more DYNAMIC. Now, before I go on, how do you counter a large army, say 150 land units with adequate fighter cover, filled with Slammers, or the old Levellers? You use Advanced bombers, right? They can cover your mistakes and completely negate a huge advantage exploited by your opponent. Personally, if I ever get to the point where the enemy has more map control and army than I have, I will start spamming t2 bombers and/or go for nukes. That is where the real issue lies. But, unfortunately, that's for another thread. This is just dealing with a symptom of OP bombers - and expensively powerful advanced. ------------------------------------------ I will list what I want to change, and then explain why, because i think all these changes must be taken together to make any sense or improve the gameplay at all. 1. Advanced Factories reduced price in half. I think the sweet spot for their price should be around 3-3.5 times that of a t1 factory. 600*3.5 = 2100 for an advanced Vehicle Factory. 2. Advanced Mex extractors will be reduced in proportion. 3. Advanced Energy plants are trickier, but they also will be reduced in proportion. 4. Adv units may need to have their cost reduced. (sniper bots, for example, are almost as expensive as a basic factory. That's just too much). 5. Adv. Fabricators will have their cost reduced by MAYBE 10% - I don't think its necessary though. I want them to be an extremely valuable asset - and a primary target. The reduction in price for the factories might actually require a price INCREASE --------------------------------------------- So, here is the big picture: More advanced Factories of all types will be available earlier, and thus Advanced units can be fielded much earlier by everyone. However, the advanced fabricators would remain expensive, which would limit the quick spam of Advanced eco early, and force players to either tech up and turtle (purely speaking, of course) or go for a mix of Advanced and Basic units to overwhelm enemy defenses. How I want it to look, is that two Adv mex and one Adv power should just sustain an Adv Factory (negative eco ofc). This is about how it works for Basic right now. This could easily be adjusted, simply because you are building advanced eco on top of basic eco. So, what do you guys think? I still want nukes/halleys to be placed in the late game aspect of the game, and not as a 10 min rush thing.
no good idea. the game is allrdy too fast (you can see the first nukes as lategame-game-enders fly around before 20 minutes mark). i dont want the same situation like in c&c6 (i think its c&c3 tiberium wars in US/EN counting) or starcraft 2 where you end your sessions after a median of 20/25 min with full lategame-tech-units. if your games are decidet after 10 minutes so you dont get the adv stuff, you play simply too small "maps". also if we are able to start on different planets it can take 15 minutes (or even more taking actual speed of interplanetary travel) till you reach your opponent (think about going to multiple other planets you have to scout for finding him AND then send troops there to attack).
Regardless, he does have a fair point - though you do offer the countermeasure of making Adv. Fabricators equal to or greater than their current cost, making the factory cheaper will invariably accelerate the pace of the game. You technically only need one Adv. Fabricator to kickstart an obscene jump in economy - start production on a T2 Power generator or metal extractor, assign T1 fabbers to assist/finish the job, start another, repeat. The same can be applied to T2 defenses and specialist structures like the Holkins, Catapult, Nuke Launcher, etc. The real issue is that T2 economy structures are a little too good. Currently, T2 units are expensive, but their expense is easily made up for by insane T2 economy. Reducing the effectiveness of T2 Metal and Energy will allow T2 units to be brought down to a more reasonable-feeling price. Pricing T2 factories to pace their debut time within a match (and preventing Starcraft 2's problem, as carnilion mentions) is an equally important, but completely separate issue.
exactly. to speed up the game they did reduce cost of units greatly in last patch, but they forgot about the eco structures. even the t1 eco is acutaly "too good" for the extreme cheap t1 units we have now. mered4>also it makes me a little sad if you can decide a match in the first 10 minutes on a size 700-800 map, because this way the game loses its core, meaning the fighting over resources....this sounds at least like it only matters who expandes fastest in the first 10 minutes of the game, the rest is predetermined. if this stays we dont need several hour battles whitch seem to be the target of the dev's. so there is a way bigger problem in game mechanics o.o
I think that many of the members of Realm could tell you within the first 5-6 minutes who was going to win a match in a 1v1. There are exceptions, of course. But in general, its really not that hard: If you know what you're doing, and you can make the enemy turtle up to defend from your harassment, it is gg right there. Did that to Evan earlier, he suicided instead of letting it play - because he knew he would lose. I agree, this does seem pretty troubling from a gameplay standpoint. However, I cannot help it when I manage to take a comm down to 75% health and he starts running towards my base from the OTHER SIDE OF THE PLANET. (another player, not Evan. ) Up until that point, he was playing at my level. He even had a higher APM. But once you make a crucial strategic mistake, the battle is already decided. It's like that in conventional war too.
true that, ww2 was decidet in 1940 when the british and french troups could escape over the aermel canal... realy big strategic mistake but ok in 1 v 1 a single failure in the first minutes allways matter, i dont think its that bad if you can decide it fast there, and i think this cannot be preventet by any game mechanic change. but i dont see 1v1 problems as the big ones here since its a little against the huge "40 players"-scale of the game. but to stay on topic. if the game lasts only 20-25 minutes and gets completet without the adv structures its not the problem the adv structures come to late, its the problem the game plays too fast (or a too small map, even if it are the biggest playable at this time of the beta - imagine foreign starting planets). making adv structures cheaper would speed the whole thing only up more. the example from leadfootslim with the one adv fabber initiating all stuff that is completet by basic fabbers is very good there.
I haven't really experienced the effect of T2 factory's being too expensive past the first 10 minutes.
Well, lets put it in perspective. Right now, they cost almost ten times that of their basic counterpart (with the exception of air). Hard to spam the way you can spam basic facs. However, there is the mechanic of factory rushing. This is very effective with one factory, but all of your eggs are still in one basket. Which encourages folks to put T2 in the middle of their heavily fortified base, instead of being on the front line where it could do the most good.
Yeah they are too expensive. Economy and technology balance feels really off right now. Energy is too hard to get, t2 takes too long to get there but once you get there T1 becomes almost irrelevant. T2 air just owns right now, the only way that ground can fight them is to spam flak turrets which is not too interesting mechanic. Your ideas seem nice, in general I think it would be a bit better to make t2 a bit more accessible but weaker at the same time so t1 doesn't become obsolete. Also diversification of t2 units is really bad. Leveller is basically t2 pounder, slammer is t2 dox, peregrin is t2 hummingbird. So you tech in ordrer to basically just get stronger versions of t1 play. Once you get t2 you play it very similiarly to t1 but with units that just have better stats
Right. And as I mentioned above, this really is just a symptom of the bigger issue: Adv Bombers own EVERYTHING. Gunships are actually balanced imho - glass cannons - but t2 bombers are like dropping a couple of tactical nukes on a base. They also need to readjust unit roles - hopefully Scathis knows this.
Taking a bot fac for example, they are expensive to build (~9x as much!) but they aren't very expensive to run (exactly 3x as much). It creates a long period of vulnerability where you aren't getting much out of your investment, which I think isn't really bad for the game. I think the issue is t2 econ more than anything else.
World War Two was decided at the tripartite pact, when the Axis entered into a war against the rest of the global economy and logistics. Pen is mightier than the sword. I think this is absurd and would speed up the game for worse.
The Massive Army Philosophy is already part of the vision for PA. Here is the concept video. 3 minutes and 15 seconds in
nope..first this was after the event i mentioned (battle of dunkirk ended june 1940 and would have lead to great britan surrender if other outcome) secound the axis had a real chance of winning this as long as usa didnt take actively part in the war. without "aircarrier great britain" it would have given no bombing of german industries, and the invasion of europe would have been impossible (there are not that mutch islands you can use as supportplaces like around japan) or came at least too late (meaning germany developing nuclear weapons and icbms (A10)-> usa screewed since they couldnt get their nukes to germany (superior aircraft like me 262 or even horten IX) while germany was researching about firing A4 (V2) from submarines at us-coast..also the enigma was broken by british ppl (alan turing) etc. pp.....have fun reading historie about it
I understand that and I LOVE IT. I'm just throwing out some ideas to add varied armies earlier in the game, provided t2 air gets nerfed back to normalcy.
