Energy to mass

+1

Turtle will never be better than expansion (in terms of amassing eco), regardless of whether the mass converter is implemented. No on is stopping the 'expansionist' from building farms of mass converters, since they should have the space to do so. The mass-converter is being spoken of as if only the person turtling can build them.

This. Which is why the "we don't want turtles" arguement is completely pointless. Don't like turtles? Crush them.
Can't crush turtles? Change yer flipping tactics.

SatanPetitCul has a good point, if turtling is OP, people will only turtle. Right now though you HAVE to expand.

With one or two player games, turtling might be a viable option. With up to 40 player games, turtle and die.

Even dying can be fun though. It all depends on the type of game, players involved, etc etc

To me a turtle is someone who decides how big his base is going to be in the first 5-10 minutes. They then build a ring of defenses and rarely expand past them.

It could be this ring covers 4 metal extractors, or it could cover 1/4 of the map. The traditional/average turtle won't build metal extractors outside the ring.

The advantage of the expander is that they claim the metal points the turtle won't. They end up with a superior economy because the turtle didn't want to risk losing metal extractors and the expander did.

I just don't understand how it can be OP. If they are more limited in terms of resources when compared to the non-turtler, they will begin digging a hole they will not be able to get out of.

To me, a turtle is someone who plays defensively, trying to hold on to his main/first base. This doesn't stop me from going walkies with my units, searching for resources, enemy bases, enemy constructions outside their main bases etc etc. All the while, you can make your base stronger, bigger, or if it looks like you can get away with it, build another base too.

I've had many many games when people have crushed my base to bits, only to wonder how I'm still alive, and annoying the hell out of them (Funniest against people you play against on a regular basis...).

@hahapants , in supcom it was more effective to just use pure mas convertors... bombers could counter you but just don't build them all together. People just wouldn't even use the mass points, however they then jumped completely the other way and... I don't know a single person that plays Supcom ne more... Like an IRL person. I liked how they worked in TA, they where for the guy that was going to turtle and fast tech. You needed insane amounts of energy.. Get to T2 and your energy can support your mass.. it's just not possible at T1. I still think it's possible in this game have the mas fabs require a crazy amount of energy so they are useless until you are into the T2 game so rushing is still a possible counter. I thought TA had a nice balance for that.

When I scout out the enemy and find that they love to turtle hard, I know I am going to win.

The problem is at the moment once they get entrenched it takes forever to break them. You have to work on your economy and get out advanced units. You get out a sheller/stomper/holkens/catapult. You take out there few laser turrets and then stroll in and win.

It feels a waist of a game to build for 20 minutes and then kill them with one attack.

The game's not finished yet, though. And there are many many many people out there who want to understand how everything works before they get really "into" the game. I've not played for quite a while, and I know damn well that I'll be disoriented by everything I see the next time I try, from the menus, keyboard shortcuts, units in the game etc etc etc.

Instead of viewing it as a waste of a game, maybe you could offer some advice to your enemy? You never know, you might make a lifelong "friend/enemy" within the game.

If that is the case then your don't really fit the typical turtle mentality. Your an expander who makes use of defenses, rather then attacking with force/speed so that the opponent can't mount a counter attack.

I 100% agree. And I do offer advice to player who want it.

My main point is that (in the current state of the unfinished game) small scale turtlers (as in the guy with 5 metal spots building laser defenses and walls) take too long to break.

This AIs (the commanders) want to annihilate eachother. Not sit in their little bunker and wait it out or chuck nukes at others. Turtling should simply not be a way to win. I don't even see how you can win as a turtle as long as the enemy builds anti nukes and protects his stuff against raiding parties and builds enough defences to crush the bit of an army the turtle can build with what they got.

Well, the person who expands can just build a KEW, leave the planet and send your whole bunker to hell.

The thing is, I will kill said turtles, but it won't be fun and it'll take an hour I didn't want to spend. Massfabs without shields and T3 arty won't make turtles win, but it will make beating them a chore. Like players who hide their ACU after obviously losing, it only prolongs the inevitable. Also keeping up with a massfab economy is a pain because it means unlimited exponential growth. More stuff does not mean more fun if all it does is multiply all the numbers by 10.

Turtling without any other form of offence cannot win, ergo people shouldn't be so hung up on those that do.

Except, the whole point of the game is to destroy the enemy's com I guess you wouldn't like playing against me...

No need to get defensive, you said it wasn't necessarily true and I would genuinely love to know why people choose to turtle / not expand.

Actually I think the exact opposite of this is true.

Just a reminder on this topic: while we rarely say never, for the time being, we have stated no metal fabs. They'll be fairly easy to mod in post launch, but unless we find a compelling reason to add them, I wouldn't expect to see them in un-modded play any time soon.

Feel free to keep talking about it, but someone would really need to come up with a remarkable reason to justify adding them that we haven't already discussed a ton of times. And saying not adding them is using balance to force certain types of play is identical to saying adding them is using balance to force/encourage certain types of play. At this time, we consider them as having more undesirable impacts on gameplay than good.

Not having them doesn't stop turtling as a viable tactic. It simply requires a larger core base to turtle with. We can revisit this after launch, of course. Especially once we get our metal density sliders and clustering sliders working as intended.

Heh, I'm sure we'll agree on something sometime. I'm not looking for arguements here.