Yeah, they could give every single building some sort of power upkeep cost like they have on radar. And since there is already a power off function in the game, in times of need when you have low power you can simply turn off a few buildings to balance it. Like give t2 mex a xxxx amount of power to keep it running, else you cant benefit from its metal. Obviously a buff to t1 power would be needed, but it would make for a very interesting game play change, and raiding people's power would be really strong. Things like base defense could be a option to. ( just ideas )
I'm certainly of the opinion that there should be some drawback to upgrading to Advanced economy. I did write a fairly lengthy post about this a while back for reference - let me see if I can find it. EDIT: Found it. I'd also be happy for T2 power structures to be volatile - that's a mechanic that works well in other games (e.g. the singularity reactor in Zero-K)
I had this problem nailed in today, a friend who was new to the game was struggling with an AI. All I had to do to fix this problem was to tell him to build advanced eco ( he had not realized it was there) instant win. While advancing up tech is important I constantly have trouble with the balance atm, in which t2 renders t1 obsolete and often t1 is rendered obsolete long before you reach t2 (with turrets and the likes) on a side note, do any modders know if it would be easy to take certain units out of the UI just to play around with limited unit sets? I've started looking but still get lost easily in the code...
Yeah that shouldn't be a problem. But you can't be sure your opponent won't cheat and disable the mod
Normally I am against saying that we should wait until the full unit roster is implemented. But please don't push this topic too much or we will have the stale t1 game again. Spam 1000 of 1 unit does not add anything to this game. I'd like to see the current balance we have now with less cost efficient turrets. Do we not think the game is fun now? Or is it just me? I also think that if we do change the actual output of the t2 mex then the unit hp across board needs to be raised proportionally so we have some units to play with.
T1 P-Gens need an increase for sure, T2 needs to have a down side. I really like the idea of them having "issues" as mention T2 reactors that go Boom when destroyed would be an interesting direction to go. That way you can go T2 Eco if you want but you better spread out or else risk it. And if you spread out (which is the direction that generally you want this game to move in) you need more defense etc to defend your base. This would help promote proxy bases even more as you build Power bases here and their. As to Mex I like the idea of having to fight over metal more as it promote people moving about and doing things. Perhaps since Mex unlike many other structures tend to be out in the open by themselves. T2 metal could be a minor upgrade but a decent toughness upgrade so the structure is a lot harder to destroy. Perhaps even taking it so far as to add a very light weight weapon system? Just a thought. Of course with making changes that encourage people to spread out more we really REALLY need to hammer out nuke/anti-nuke/aircraft more as right now it's not in your best interest to spread out.
Who sais the problem is with the T2 economy? What changes made t2 rushing and option because we know there was a time when doing this was suicide or at least a risk - Cheaper T2 units (and factory's?) so we could spam more T2 units (making t1 units absolete) - Cheap turrets with walls that prevents T1 units getting close. T1 units have nothing that outranges a turret so I think a t1 arty unit would go a long way in making T1 more powerfull. And have pelters do less splash damage to units. Its a small change but suddenly you need units again to defend against the enemy or he walks over your base while you build a t2 factory
I remember the good ol' days of TA... here in tech lvl 0 (commmander level), you had solar power plants which where kinda expensive but robust and gave a continous flow of +20 energy. You also had wind generators which where fragile but cheap and depening on wind (suprise! ) for their energy generation; sometimes they gave >20 engergy but sometimes they generated nothing, based on the variable wind strenght which in turn was map-dependent Next, in tech 1 you had geothermal powerplants which gave 250 energy, but could only be build on vents which where kinda rare and only present on strategic spots on the map. Tech 2 fusion power plants gave a continous 5000 energy, but were kinda hard to build, if I remember correctly, and exploded with a near-nuclear explosion making protection essential & loss of a power gen a huge strike against your eco. Yeah, i'm getting kinda nostaligic when it comes to TA (spiritual) successors but I really liked the game this way! so my suggestions would be: 1. Energy gens based on enviroment/location are cewl; you could implement additional tech 1 powerplants based on this model or even add tech 1.5 plants which are location/planet specific (e.g. geothermal only occuring on lava planets, tidal only on water maps, etc.) 2. Tech 2 energy should be robust but precious & hard to get
I totally disagree with your statement. I think it is good how it is now. You can rush to Tier 2, but you will die. I have played many games and every time someone spent all of their eco rushing to Tier 2 they got annihilated by huge Tier 1 armies. If you just focus on building a stable Tier 1 economy, you can then go to Tier 2 and start building anti-nukes and holkins. You will then find that you have huge metal-problems, even when you have Tier 2 MEX.
I disagree with the principal of making Mex cost power. I think the economy should ban balanced so if you are very low on metal or energy, lowering income of one doesn't affect income of the other. I think making metal dependent on energy would make it too difficult to recover from an energy stall caused by your opponent. Will you really? You can get a massive t1 army in your opponents base before 7 minutes? You can get such a massive army that the ubercannon at max spam doesn't deal with it? Nevermind the laser turrets hidden behind walls?
It doesn't work like that now, T1 is comparatively much weaker due to some reactive turret placement negating T1. I don't know if it's possible to have metal problems if you have any kind of map control and T2 mex, on a standard map (not something silly like 10 player ffa on radius 200).
This is not true at all in the current meta. Turrets are so cheap they're all you need to hold off T1 units, and if you've gone eco it means you have lots of fabbers available for speed builds.
As Trophy said the main weakness of a T2 rush should be the resulting vulnerability. The fact that T2 eco is a direct upgrade of T1 is not an issue for me. But at the moment it is so easy to defend against T1 spam (uber canon + turret) that there is no risk to rush T2 eco. If T1 army were more dangerous, player would wait the good moment to go T2.
The rushers that I've have encountered had all their units on T2 without any defence against land or air. Not many metal for their ubercannon since it's all going to their T2-factory. In addition to that, just attack from behind the factory. The commander will be at the wrong side and has to walk around it, you have the factory destroyed before the has time to do that.
A normal player would scout what you are building and has radar. They will know where you are most likely going to attack and build turrets in those locations the won't go so heavy on the t2 Eco as they know they are ahead if you fail with your all in attack. Which is most likely going to be the case as you have put your resources to units and them Eco. You need to time your attack to perfection and hope they are asleep. Even then it is difficult.
Yeah, it might be enough to just vastly increase the cost of T2 mex. Someone COULD still turtle in a small base with T2 and have good output but they would have a hard time reaching that point without fighting for control of a lot of T1 mex to fund it. Right now you don't need much T1 mex to start T2 and then you don't necessarily need anything.
My opinions/ideas for eco balance are as follows: T1 pgens take too long to build and have too much health; for whatever reason they are way more expensive and strong (hp wise) relative to T1 mex, even though they can be built anywhere. Nerf cost to 300 and health to 600 to make inital power generation and stall recovery quicker, and crippling your opponents early eco a bit easier. This makes bothering with earlier raiding much more worth it, and takes away the painful and honestly boring gameplay involved in sloooowwly recovering from a pgen raid. T1 mex I'd buff to 8, maybe 9 per second, and make them cost 120 vs. current 150. This should make going for lots of T1 basically a no brainer. T2 pgens are mostly fine, don't think I'd change too much. Maybe a possible drawback could be when one exploded, a small EMP wave would be released that had a small to moderate chance of temporarily disabling units within a T2 powergen's distance away. T2 mex produce way too much right now, I'd increase their cost to 800, nerf production to 20 per second, and leave their main benefit being much more HP than a T1 (still nerf health down to 3,000 as well). Those are just my current thoughts, and don't necessarily make sense without balance changes to other parts of the game as well.
And that's why I want metal veins that deplete over time, much faster with T2. SO YOUR FORCED TO EXPAND. (eventually) Lets' say 10 minutes before a T2 extractor has depleted it's vein. That would be more than 30 min for a T1.
