[Poll] (with pretty pictures): Halving the Metal Given by T2 Metal Pumps

Because
what
players
want
really
matters
to
Uber.

To be fair, quite a few of these suggestions take a lot of time to implement.

Uber said there's gonna be new tech coming online in the next few builds, so hopefully we'll see some new super cool stuff be added.

We do have sliders for both metal density and clusters so people who want games with less metal can create planets like that and adjust. I disagree that having less metal spots on any one planet will promote turtling. If anything, on a low metal planet you would have to fight for what you can get. I suppose if the spots were all clustered around your base it might make turtling viable, but if they are spread fairly evenly or clusters are spread fairly evenly you will have to fight for them or lose what precious metal you can secure. Sure you can field fairly big armies right now with a comparatively small number of T2 mexes, but if you turtle and the other guy gets 3/4 of the metal on a planet no matter what the density or number of spots he will be able to out producing you.

If we combine this with a vast increase of the cost of game enders (I wouldn't object to a 10x increase of costs for nukes (the launcher and the missile itself), and halleys), so that you can't just sit in your base spamming nukes, you are going to have to attack with an army and the guy that holds 3/4 the planet is going to field a much more massive army. I read your bit about making nukes unassistable and I kind of agree and disagree. I disagree because everything else is assistable and it just doesn't make sense to single out nukes, but I agree something has to be done about being able to power them out. I liked what FA did, which was increase the cost of the nukes, and the build power of the launcher so assisting was much less efficient, but I'm not sure if that works with PA since as far as I can tell the rate at which a unit fabricates is directly tied to how much resources it uses and this is static. I think TA / SupCom's system (where resource usage was related to the build power of a unit, and the cost and build time of what it was building), while more complex, also allowed you to do more.

Something else to note, I'm not too sure if the devs are still toying with the idea of making T2 3-4x as expensive, but if they do, nerfing the mexes at the same time would absolutely cripple your ability to field large T2 armies.

That's cool. I understand that.
But they've hardly said "Hell, you guys seem to really want environmental effects/mixed biomes! We'll see if we can work that in."
Some acknowledgement would just tell us that they care is all.

I know about the Metal sliders. I was eager to try them out. They lead to turtling at the low-end.

The thing is, you can't have numerous Metal Mexes with high incomes from individual spots at the same time. Either it's precious in small pockets, or it's precious because it's sparse on the ground and you need lots of spots to get a big income.

The problem is, even with "low" metal mex placements, ten mex or so are enough to push a nuke, and single metal points giving so much metal means that even if a player has more territory, they may or may not have more metal. Thus we are not encouraged to expand, or fight for territory using armies.

I'm not saying the game is so bad that somebody can win if they are out-ecoed by 300%. Though of course that depends entirely upon what size the economies are and Nuke-Spam.

I don't like the idea of T2 being so expensive that effectively hits the "Restart" switch on the game. T1 units should be useful late game, if only as cannon-fodder. Making T2 increasingly stronger and expensive is only going to lead to the game being a tech race for "the best thing" - just like SupCom's Experimentals and T3 Aeon AA Gunships.

I think if we look on the Nuke 'Factory' as a Launcher in the same way as the Catapult, we won't feel quite so awkward about it not being Assistable.

Are you derailing your own thread?

Environmental Effects - Engaging or Disruptive? have been discussed by Scathis along the lines that it is hit or miss on who it effects and can be not very fun if it randomly shifts the tide of battle.

For a majority of the development process, we couldn't even touch the idea of balance since units and stuff barely worked. It takes time to get to the pretty aesthetic parts of the game.

I'm also not a fan of a straight up large price increase for T2, I'm just saying that I think that was one of the ideas they were toying with. It might not even be anymore, I haven't kept up with all the latest experimental changes. Personally I think on average T2 units should be stronger and more expensive than T1, but not in such a way that they completely invalidate the lower tiers. I remember the aeon gunships, they are one of the reasons I stopped playing SupCom for a while, I got bored when every game devolved into spamming large numbers of them. I also think we need more units on each tier. I look at TA's ~28 combat land units (between kbots and vehicles) vs PA's 10... but that's another topic entierly

Like I said about the nuke launcher, I agree / disagree. I'm closer to agreeing though since PA can't do what FA did and something has to be done. What might be nice is again, look to TA. Make the nuke launcher (and anti-nuke) entirely unassitable, but let them store as many nukes (or anti-nukes) as you queue up. Oh and they really need to show how many nukes I have ready to fire when I select all my launchers. Cycling through each one to check on build status is a pain in the ***. TA would show #+# in the nuke gui where the first number was how many missles you had ready and the 2nd was how many were queued up. PA should do something similar when you select multiple launchers.

I'm a fan of this idea. In real life, when new technologies are developed to drill more oil, it isn't that there's a huge increase in oil production... it's more like squeezing the extra bits that are harder to get at. What I'm trying to say is that it makes logical sense for T2 mex to produce the same amount of metal as T1... the advantage is getting that "extra bit" and essentially doubling the number of mex you have.

No, the rails of the discussion led here...

As for Environmental Effects, I have to disagree. There's a wide range of possible stuff from Volcanoes erupting by themselves or when Nuked, right down to whether a Tank moves faster on open plain than on rocky scree. Biomes are sufficiently large and identifiable that having unit behaviours alter in them would enrich, not disrupt gameplay. Environmental effects would immerse us more in the separate alien environments and give character to the game and battles. Just look at Total War if you want an example of how this functions just fine on a macro scale. Anyway there's a whole ignored thread with some good discussion and distinction between what I attempted to classify as different Tiers of environmental effects. Along with a poll showing a surprising amount of community interest in such elements.

I appreciate that this is a work in progress and enjoy seeing the game take shape.
As I said above though, it's not like I'm fist-pounding a table (all the time ) demanding these things be included RIGHT NOW.
It'd just be cool if Uber went "that sounds frickin cool and people really seem to want it" more often.

Environmental effects are just a bad idea. The poll on the linked thread is a little confusing and misleading. The poll results are skewed based on how it works. Uber has commented several times on environmental effects.

First off, losing a game based on a random effect destroying your base is a really bad idea.
Second, Uber has commented on it saying envirionmental effects have been tried on other games that they worked on, and they were bad for the game. So Uber developers have tried environmental effects and they didn't work.
Third, we kind of are getting environmental effects to a small degree. Terrain will effect gameplay, unit speed, and stuff.

So we are getting some form of environmental effects. We're just not getting the game breaking environmental effects that will mostly just piss off people.

Biome improvements are also being worked on.

So in other words, of your two examples, one of them is being worked on, and the other Uber commented on and talked about why it isn't being implemented.

But that's thread derailment.

That being said... nerf T2 metal!

Lets hope the pte gets released so we have a larger test group. Numbers changing this way means t2 units are no longer a must and it costs more going for t2 Eco.

In this weekends tournament I played against a nuke spam. I had less economy for most of the first half of the game but because I spread my base well I managed to crawl back into the game.

Are there threads other than this one? Because I'm quite honestly tired of saying "four guys in a forum thread aren't most of everyone"

It's been released for a while:
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/streams-pte-and-experimental-builds.58960/
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/pte-stream-64758-balance.58961/

I mean released as in the next patch. Wouldn't imagine many are using the PTE build.

I can always make another Poll with multiple options - I do think that a majority of people want some form of environmental effects in though.
I agree unpredictable, damaging environmental effects (disasters) are bad for gameplay. In that thread there was much discussion on how they would need to be predictable or player-triggered.
I agree losing a game by a random effect is a terrible idea.

They were in TA and worked fine (apart from meteor showers lol). They don't need to turn the tides of battles - it's just a factor to be aware of which gives biomes character and could partially influence the outcomes of battles.
But yes, I know and I'm happy some effects are in the pipeline - I'm really looking forward to it sorry for prattling on.

More than two examples but anyway!
Yes. Metal. Make it worth fighting over please Uber

In PTE this is already fine. However, people argue it would be even better if PTE was scaled down to match Stable, and I find that a reasonable suggestion. So I suggest that:

Scale metal down to t1:7 t2:14, scale t2 costs from PTE equally until it matches the ratio of the income to 14. Right now it is 28 so just cut costs and income in half.

Problem is you can rush it again.

Good thing is, all the t2 stuff would be expensive on either a t1 or t2 economy, and there would be no big advantage producing t1 on a t2 eco.

Generally, I think it makes sense in PTE to be expensive anyway, just makes t2 not an all game thing while before t2 used to be first five minutes, although one could opt not to t2 really if income was reduced.

Really I think the biggest problem ATM is the balance of actual units like gil-e. People bring up eco a lot but eco works better than ever, so its more OP than 14 gil-e can end the game, than it is that t2 eco gives you 3x more metal to use and still not enough metal to confortably produce nukes.

After individual balance, I would bet next that t2 eco is actually too expensive in PTE considering you can barely keep 1 t2 factory up without stalling. So I would bet in the middle might be the perfect point, think about it. If the t2 income was 75% its current, and the t2 costs were 75% their current, t2 income would be closer to t1, and t2 factories and junk would still be a later game thing, but t2 factories wouldn't stall hard.

I hate to side with the devs, but they did fix the income in PTE because if you do the maths they scaled income back compared to costs by 1/3 at least. You technically get 1/3 less metal throughout the game. They did the cost increase to delay t2 entrance until established t1 economy and increase the vunerability in teching. I side with the devs and they had a sensible plan of action and I think it wasn't a bad test build.

@eroticburrito
You can't expect a response from uber on all the threads you've made, and there have been a lot. I've only ever made 2 suggestion threads, both of which were a bit technical and were about the implementation / future implementation of a feature, and both got replies from neutrino.
Many of your suggestions are about adding entirely new features or redesigning existing ones in very specific ways. While they might warrant a response later on in development, we really aren't there yet for things like environmental effects. Many of the ideas have also been commented on by uber at other times and in other threads (there has been limited discussion from uber on environmental effects already, which can be found in the confirmed features list).
I know I'm a bit of a party pooper, but your post makes it seem like you are dissatisfied with Uber for not responding to all your threads.

Also, worth double posting, but I was around one of the devs... sometime, cant remember where, but it might have been a weekend tourney (but there weren't any devs involved with that one so maybe some other time?). They actually do listen to the forum and answer questions when they do have answers. Well, someone asked about unit variety and some other things. They answered that more units will be added as they develop more, and that they do use player suggestions.

The uber cannon and fabber gun are on different hands by player suggestion.

Grenadiers, repair units, and mines, are player suggestions. Combat fabbers and land mines didn't even make sense to me, it is amazing they tried it.

The buildrate precentage calculated off how much of what is stalling, is a player mod that was deemed vital.

The Quadraped Commander(s) are a player suggestion.

What players want really matters to Uber. However, as experienced game devs if they have an idea they usually at least attempt to test it in a build. Usually, it doesn't even conflict with player suggestion.

Very nice. I think it was the tank commander that was a player suggestion, though Might have been both, not really sure.

I don't expect them to respond to all of them - I make far too many.
I do hope they notice the polls and threads which get more votes and community discussion in, and consider entirely new features which are popular, but obviously I'd ultimately defer to their experience and expertise - if something can't be in the game, so be it - still a frickin awesome and beautiful game.