A while back i posted (https://forums.uberent.com/threads/any-chance-on-a-commander-storage-increase.54941/#post-842150) for an increase in commander storage to allow us to go factory first. Now i have no idea whether the devs listened to this or just felt that the commander needed some more storage, but they did add 200 metal and 8000 energy storage to the commander for a total of 1000 metal and 20000 energy storage. Thats great but its not enough. A factory costs ~600 (i think the air factory is 720?), which only leaves us with 400 afterwards. Since metal extractors cost 300 mass, we are left with 100 mass to play with for the factory (thats assuming we only want to build a single extractor which is not the case due to the combined income of the commander and the extractor only equalling 17). There is a little leeway here in the fact that the commander has the 10 metal income from the start of the game, which helps alot, but is not enough to sustain the commander until we have more extractors. As a result of this, we cannot even build dox let alone fabricators. We need a slightly higher metal storage, perhaps 1400? I think that would be probably the right amount, but may need to be slightly higher or lower to prevent dual start factories or still stalling on metal. The other problem is that the energy storage of the commander does not actually allow you to use up all of the metal at the start of the game. We tend to stall on energy before we stall on metal which is why we are currently forced to build the energy plant before factory. If the energy storage was increased to the amount needed to use up all of the metal in one go, it would solve a lot of problems (especially for those people crazy enough to build an energy storage after their first powerplant and before their first factory (seriously, wtf 0.o)).
I might sound a little ignorant here, but usually I build mex=>factory=>nrg=>mex=>mex I get what you are saying, that as soon as you get a little econ/storage going the whole play-style changes and it's a bit odd to have the first 2 minutes feel like you're playing with a different game. It's worth having a look at energy storage ,metal storage & team storage. I'm not sure what the numbers are, but I don't think I've ever needed more than 2-3 storage in FFA.
You should never be building metal storage. Some people of worth have stated that its ok to build metal storage when your metal income is so high it doesnt really matter (over 1k income), but at that point, 100 income wasted every now and again is meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Team armies is a game type most RTS games do not have, and because of this i find it odd to try balancing for it since Alliances (The standard gametype in all RTS) will be implemented at some point. 'mex=>factory=>nrg=>mex=>mex' is not what im after. factory -> mex -> mex -> pgen(or variations of such) are what i am after. The whole point of this is to remove the arbitrary need to build mex and energy before factory. Besides, the optimum build right now is mex->mex->mex->pgen->factory.
That's a fair point. Building econ first is just something I'm so used to I hadn't considered that it's wrong. So what you're saying is that a commander should be able to support a semi or fully functioning factory? It makes a lot of sense really. 1 factory would also get players into the mindset of building units instead of econ, which causes thier early game downfall more often than not
The build of power storage before factory comes from the previous build, and I don't think people have updated their build order. To be honest, I think it made a lot more sense than pgen factory pgen pgen pgen pgen storage, because placing the storage there often caused your economy to lag. Metal storage it kind of comes down to your playstyle to be honest... If you're expanding over a large distance, walking fabbers are probably floating a lot of eco. It's fair to get a fabber to invest in metal storage after your second factory so that those fluctuations are better handled by your eco. It comes down to individual playstyle.
I'm not sure about this thing. The problem with increasing early resources is that it might introduce more of build order poker. The more resources you have at the begining, the more you build before you face your opponent. So this inflates importance of first 2 minutes and then you aren't able to scout what's happening. To ilustrate what I mean. Let's say you have 2k metal at the begining, you make airfactory and a couple of bombers (which are reasonably good right now). This would put you ahead if your opponent chose to go for economic ground bot play but if your opponent chose to play straight airfac into interceptors you flat out win. In case you have 1k metal, you will be expanding beforehand and do the scout meanwhile. I'm not sure on this one though. On the other hand it would speed up the game which is a bit too slow early on for me so it would be nice. Why do we insist on starting with factory of some kind? Getting a mex or two and a pgen was a normal thing in supreme commander and it wasn't bad.
There is a point in the game when you build your first factory. All this aims to do is to bring it forward to the very beginning of the game, nothing else. We are still playing BO poker now just as much as this change would bring us.
Yeah well it makes sense. What I meant with the post is that we cannot go overboard with it because we might end up in situation like in red alert 3 when you started with 10000$ and it was enough to make Warfactory, two expansions and tech. Most of those money you spent before you gain intel so it wasn't too good for development of competitive games. And yeah you have to make factory at some point but then you also have to make some mex and pgens to have economy running. This also have effect on bo poker because it increases variety of openings. In case you have 1k metal available you can initially spend 1k on rush or 1k on eco and tech. So that's 2k of metal difference that is supposed to be neutralized by defenders advantage and delayed intel. But if we increase it to 2000 metal, then the difference might be 4000 metal and that's already a lot. Obviously then there will appear builds that are safe, but the point is, if the difference in metal between greedy build and aggressive is minimal then it's negligible but if it is big, then it really affects who gets lead or not. Sorry if it's a bit complicated, dunno if it's comprehensive, english is not my native language. I'll try to clarify with exaggerated numbers: If I have 1k metal i can skip 1-2 mexes and 1-2 pgens and rush for bombers and you will most likely do some little damage, then you see bombers and you react and depending how you opened you are slightly ahead or slightly behind. If I have 10k metal at my disposal i can make 4 airfacs and pump a lot of bombers and I'll have 15 by the time i decide to attack or I get scouted. If you decide to spend most of this on economy then i heavily cripple you or maybe even kill. Obviously you can adapt and have a safe build order but the critical thing is if you go for a safe one and i go for greedy I might get ahead by a couple of thousand metal (could be anything, but lets say 3k). Right now with initial 1k metal, if I choose to greedy opening i might get ahead by what, 200-300 metal, and this is really negligible. I guess and hope 1400 metal suggested by you probably would not have such effect. I don't disagree with you, I'm just saying be careful.
What it really comes down to is "How much is enough?" Hornets cost 180 Metal atm. So let's look at how many bombers you could build. 1400 - 720(Air Fact) = 680 / 180(Hornet) = 3.7 Bombers At 1500 metal it would be 4.3. In the end it would negligible. 3 Bombers can not kill a com. Your opponent would kill the bombers, build fighters, and have a better economy than you. In the end you'd shoot yourself in the foot. So, I actually believe that Gunshin's plan of approx. 1400 metal should only help the players get started better, rather than damaging the beginning.
BO poker won't be solved with starting resources. It exists because your build order is committed before the enemy is scouted. Only an early scout can fix that. Many other RTS games start you with a viable scout. In this series you start with a Commander, and the Comm is not a suitable scout. I already have 5 solutions for the matter, although admittedly the last one is a doozy.
Thats great and all but not what this thread is about. This is merely about getting the game to factory first, not about solving something that is present in all RTS games.
It doesnt matter which factory. Thats the whole point. I think the difference here is that you guys are complaining about being dealt 'a shitty hand' if you go bot fac first and the opponent goes air fac first. To me, this 'shitty hand' is no different to the metal distrubution and unbalance in the planet generator. If you are going to start complaining about rolling the dice as to which factory to build first, you better start complaining about the planet generation too.
Yeah any kind of randomness is bad, I really wish we had a set up planets that everyone plays with no random spawns and 1 players spawns on south pole and other on north or in general just on the other side of planet. I thought everyone agreed on this and we will have it implemented in future right?
The problem is with that is that you know exactly where your opponent is. That means you don't need to search or expand carefully. All you do is build a ring of defenses in their direction and then swarm units in. Random spawns make it so that every game situation is different. I haven't agreed to it and I haven't heard anything about it. It might happen or it might not. I don't see the problem with random spawns as long as their more "equal/fair" not symmetrical.
You can expect that for after release i guess. Its something a few of us have been trying to get fixed by having a symmetry line directly down the centre of the planet. A lot of people are against it, and im not entirely sure why. Either way, tournaments will likely have custom made planets or some sort of fix. And nobody agreed to anything of the sort as far as i know. There has been a lot of opposition to reducing the randomness in the game.
I've made thread about it in general discussion and I faced big opposition. I'm surprised and sad, competitive scene will suck if it remains the same way as it is now.
It would, but there will be changes. If uber doesnt do it, i plan on making a mod that helps to reduce the amount of randomness in the game, from scouting to metal distribution and more. Theres lots we can do, but the thing we must not do is write the game off merely because its not what we are hoping for right now.
