Gameplay, Units & Balance

I kinda talked about it earlier in the thread, starting here.

Mike

Regarding teleporters, I was thinking they should have a start-up cost IN ADDITION to the flat, while on use cost.

Maybe (just throwing some numbers out here) 50k to connect with another gate, and 10k per tick to keep it open?

If you don't have 50k energy in your reserves it wont open, and will close if you run out of energy.

Energy per tick also prevents MASSIVE army movement, because the larger the army, the more time you need and the more energy it will take.

It's actually the other way around, assuming there is no limit on the rate of teleports and unless the per-second cost is astronomical it will mostly likely be more economic than a per unit cost.

[Arbitrary Numbers]

Think about an army of 100 tanks.

With a Per unit Cost, moving that army will cost say for EXAMPLE 50 Energy per tank, so that army will cost 5,000 Energy to teleport.

With a constant drain of say for EXAMPLE 500 Energy a second, if the army can all get teleported in less than 10 seconds it'll be more economic.

[/Arbitrary Numbers]

Obviously it all depends on the exact implementation, which we just don't really know yet.

Mike

I wonder how long it takes for, say, a blob of ten units to move through the teleporter? That would help us understand how economically limiting each method is. I still think waiting for the patch is a good idea....considering that we havent tested it THOUROUGHLY yet.

No offense Scathis.

Why must teleporters be "balanced" so they aren't viable?

If two players have started on different planets, the game will take a very long time.

Teleporters simply won't ever replace local production. If you're relying on centralised unit production and a teleporter network, then bomber sniping the local teleport will completely cut off your supply line and leave everything in the area to die by attrition because you can't reinforce it.

Based on my discussion earlier in the thread with Scathis seems to indicate otherwise currently.

So far it seems like teleports only have a constant drain rate for energy, meaning you can easily stream even a large army, especially with multiple gates, very quickly. This setup is likely to encourage centralized production without additional constraints.

Mike

personally, I've never seen the issue with centralized production.

i mean, you've never seen an army in the history of the earth assemble Tanks and Planes 5 miles away from the battle, have you? (correct me if i'm horribly wrong.)

There are a few assumptions underlying this analysis which are different from the system I proposed. Teleporters move units instead of producing them, splitting the rally into two separate components, and teleporters can be replaced.

You assume that teleporters are integral to the war effort in an area imminently, when this would only be the case if you are using teleporters for hot teleport mobility, such as to instantly reinforce a beachhead with a battle right there. I suspect that most of the time the teleporter will give you strategic mobility, but it won't be a combat teleport, since they will move to the front afterwards.

Sniping the teleporter wouldn't actually destroy any forces already deployed, potentially including extensive turrets, combat units, and constructors, it would just temporarily prevent new ones from being brought in. Sniping the teleporter also doesn't stop those forces from being produced. As soon as a replacement teleporter is online again they can all be brought in at once. Bringing in armies by teleport gives such a strategic advantage compared to building them on-site, in so many ways, that teleportation needs to cost.

Secondly, you are also assuming teleporters are expensive. This is another perfectly viable model for how to design teleporters, with a high cost to build them but with relatively low cost to operate. Using the high structure cost, teleporters will take longer to acquire and be more difficult to deploy, and be less expendable,. And in the late game, when economies are large, they will be a preferable choice because the structure cost is amortized across more uses, and paying a lot of resources for speed and initiative makes a lot of sense. Using high structure costs will limit the number of teleporters, and make each teleporter more valuable, harder to replace, and a better target for sniping to disable its functionality.

My thinking on the subject is that teleporters should be cheap to construct (relatively), but expensive to use. So spending a lot of effort and resources sniping a teleporter doesn't make as much sense. But players should want to transition away from using a teleporter of their own accord by building production on the other side. The teleporter leaves open the option of swiftly calling in reinforcements, but it would be something the player would rather not have to do.

The idea isn't to eliminate centralized production, but to make centralization a positive strategic choice that is competitive with even very extreme decentralization. Because centralization is inherently efficient, that means imposing extra costs on it. Transportation is the best thing to impose a resource tax on for distance in order to save time.

I believe that meta double nuked kfrancis there toward the end on the main planet....Garat caught the nukes flying in on his stream, but he didn't see them, so we missed the explosion.

looking back at your teleporter argument with exponential energy cost for teleporter useage. I don't think the pace of gameplay would be fun before the teleporter era. Because as much fun as it is to send stuff into orbit around another planet and form a proxy factory beach head instead of a teleporter, its quicker and a little more strategic then a war of attrition to get factories pumping out.

Trying to get a beach head on another planet will be harder now that the area patrol can quickly discover and find any army trying to build on the world. Performing a Teleport build with army spew will give that initial push needed to bring the proxy factories onboard on the invading world.

From what I see with your view point.. it would be incredibly difficult to build around the idea that you need proxy factories to form beach heads on heavily fortified planets. You can't invade the beaches of normandy by first building proxy factories, that comes second. First comes your onslaught of artillery and troops on the ground to establish that beach head to give you room to make forward bases.

And if you invest heavily into the large infrastructure for a teleporter... isn't that just making it more experimental then it needs be? (if it needs 25 advanced power gens to operate, its effective metal cost to operate would be quite large.)


I think the concept of moving your army(on the bounce) is another strategic element added then lost.

I don't think you will Normandy (to coin a verb) through a teleporter. Normandy happens in a doom drop assault from space. Then you quickly erect a teleporter to get some reinforcements down to the surface ASAP.

Then after the area is secure enough to build a bigger base, you transition away from relying on the teleporter, due to its high cost to use, and start using factories in the area to build what you need.

I personally like the idea of the teleporters always being on (cannot be turned off), as in the show Stargate. This makes the decision to build them as much a potential hazard (from a counter-attack) as a benefit to your offensive strategy. So, there would be sort of an interesting potential positive, or negative, strategic cost associated with it. Once built, they could essentially be used by anyone to get to any other teleporter owned by the player who built it. The only thing that would stop a counter invasion by the enemy would either be your forces defending the remote teleporter, or an "Iris" type device that could close the teleporter (could automatically close after use) and delay enemy forces from getting through immediately, and finally (as a last ditch effort to save yourself from a catastrophic counter-attack) you could destroy your teleporter. I would imagine the "Iris" having a fairly high amount of HP, as well as an alert to warn of an attack. This would provide the "owner" some level of warning of the impending counter-attack, thereby giving them a chance to prepare for it, and make a decision about what to do. A timer to self-destruct by the owner could also make things more interesting. In any case, the idea of as much potential for strategic penalty for a device that could offer such a large strategic benefit to the one who builds it is appealing and to my knowledge is fairly unique in RTS games.

Kinda a mish mash but here we go.

First, as for my Exponential Cost Proposal thing, I did specify that it was a potential options, whether or not it(or something similar) is the right option is dependent on a LOT of other factors. I put that forward 3 months ago when we had no details about teleporters so treat it like a stab in the dark really.

Second, as Ledarsi said, establishing a beach head and doing large scale invasions should be the role of the Unit Cannon/Asteroid Bases, Once you have that beach head secured it when you use a Teleporter to bring in reinforcements as needed and start working on your planet side base. In theory one could continue to use the asteroid base as a 'Proxy Base' to continue to support the invasion(instead of just initiating it) as a valid alternative to creating a long term 'Proxy Base' on the surface.

AS for the "experimental nature" of my proposal, I honestly don't follow. Like I said the idea of making the cost of teleporting primarily per unit is to allow it to be incredibly flexible. for example if my aim is only to provide an escape route for my commander, I don't need a large amount of storage/active production because I'm only concerned about teleporting a single unit(primarily) but if instead I'm trying to create a large "Reaction Force" have can support any of my planets that come under attack I need a large amount of storage/Active Energy production in order to send all those units in a short time frame to where they need to be. Of course the Middle ground option is to have small-medium defense forces stations on each planet with extra small-medium forces that are reactionary, because I already have some forces on site and so I have fewer units to send to "bring them up to strength" as it were.

To support that I do agree with the idea that Teleporters should be cheap(or relatively cheap) to acquire but expensive to use. I don't mind player have an extensive network of teleporters to all thier planets/bases, but I do mind the player being able to just sit his army in one place and just move it to where ever it's needed almost instantly.

Mike

Scathis doesn't build proxy bases.

Enough said.

Centalised production is bad. It's bad whatever way you look at it. Having one base is bad. You don't have much map control. You lose your mobility, you lose your map control, and the teleport represents most of your mobility.

If the game has had an interplanetary start, or is one a massive planet, whoever has air superiority destroys the teleporter. 1 nuke, big chunk of your production is ash and dust.

Sure, you can easily stream a large army. But you have no teleporter because it was bombed into dust by suicidal units, and now your large army is well beyond your lines.

You can make the argument that factories could also be bombed into dust. But each wave of bombers only tends to destroy one target.

Plus, your supply line is now over land, via air (if battling on one planet)or via orbital. All of which are fairly easy to cut the supply line of.

And if you can't reinforce your army, you can't win.

N.B: Ledarsi and I have agreed to disagree on our respective definitions of proxies. For me, a proxy is decentralisation of your main base. So beginning to create secondary bases (where a base includes production in addition to metal and defences)

Yes.

I refer specifically to the olden days, when an army would march up to your castle, block off your supplies, and start constructing catapults, ladders, siege towers and rams while they waited for you to starve.

You know.

Just out of bow shot of the rampants.

While that is horrifically historical, welcome to the 21st century.

Those aren't necessarily my assumptions, no, only the italicised text.

To clarify - I assume that teleporters cost 1500 or thereabouts, in which case, sniping two teleporters is much easier than sniping 5 factories. Hopefully they cost somewhat more.

I assume that the average length of a game would be about an hour, based on the data from PA-stats, where most games are shorter than that. If people want longer games, Galactic War!

Blue text is quite close to my assumption. My assumption is actually that what already happens often in games will continue to occur.

In general, the actual distance between a base and a fire support and production base is quite short. The reason being that the fspb has more or less been placed by the attacker to be as close as possible to reduce travel time, while the defender has thrown up artillery in close proximity to attack the units as they come off the production lines. The attacker is also in a good position to throw up a catapult/holkins and do some serious damage to the opponents ability to defend, or radar to keep an eye on what's happening on the edge of the opponents lines. It basically turns into WW1 all over again. The actual front line more or less becomes a pelter shot apart.

See the basis of my assumption?

The teleport is the basis of the fspb. If the teleport fails, the opponent can quite easily begin to attack you because his reinforcements are closer than yours. He can use air superiority to whittle down your defence (and your army consists of your defence in this case) and then steam roller you with an army.

The most fundamental part of my assumption is that anti-air doesn't just make air completely invalid.

Edit: I think that's a fair assumption. At 32:01 in the afternoon playtest on the 15th you can see Meta's 8 gunships absolutely shred a teleporter to pieces

In essence, the most fundamental part of my assumption is that increasing the supply line by destroying the teleport is damaging in and of itself. But the fundamental part of my assumption is that you don't have a significant amount of build power near the teleport, so the fspb can be critically damaged before another teleport is brought back online.


It's a hopeful assumption. A fair one too. Particularly in the case of interplanetary warfare, because you don't necessarily have air superiority on the beachhead world.

While that is horrifically historical, welcome to the 21st century.[/quote]



having said that..... it makes me wonder just what in the hell 3D printers use for "ink"

Kinda a mish mash but here we go.

Fair enough, but if you plan to adjust what factors are going into the cost for teleporting, now is the time more then ever.

This sounds more like theory then actual "strategy". Why I say theory, because the whole idea of your invasion rests on asteriod bases and unit cannons to perform beachheads while teleporters take a secondary role. I'm not against the idea of unit cannons and asteriod bases being used to assault another planet. but they are not always going to be there. What then? No unit cannon, no asteriod base, how will you invade? I'm not saying you should come up with an idea on how to tackle this problem, but at least with teleporters, a Beachhead can form on another planet.

This was more or less based off the unknown factors that you specify your teleporter to function.

Well, that feels like it can be solved with teleporter cooldowns that occur based on significant unit transfer and a pause inbetween. could be the window needed to bomb the teleporter and seal an army on a planet with no reservers.

Biological polymers essentially...

And you'd be surprised how much *crap* there is in the sea, from pollution. If they can make stuff out of plastic derived material, they will.

I guess what I was trying to say is that my proposal is functional in certain circumstances, but that I don't think it'll be workable in what is there right now(Scathis' version) nor within my proposal here.

Neutrino has talked about before that Asteroids were a big part of the gameplay, to the point that in the Pre-Vis despite the fact there was only a single planet with 1 moon, it still had a full asteroid belt.

Yes? I don't see what point your trying to make here, I'm outlining how my system is still flexible and functional whether you need to teleport a single unit or an entire army, but it's far and away from being the BEST option for moving things around all the time, which is my biggest concern with the implementation Scathis is talking about.

So after an Arbitrary number of units you can't teleport anymore? That is easy to circumvent as well by just building more teleporters. If you're fine with that what is so bad about my system, you have the same kind of limit built into my system, but it's dependent on your supporting infrastructure, not an arbitrary number.

Mike

something comparable to sandstone most of the time.
also I'm personally in favor of Uber's take on things here I know that this is YET ANOTHER turtle-encouraging factor but I can see how breaking a turtle could be hindered on the pay-per-unit model.

Read my previous post in this thread (page 12, I guess) for more details about this system. I think that having this arbitrary number may be a better decision than either on/off or per unit cost. You can call it arbitrary, but it's pretty close to existing bomber ammo mechanics.
As for per unit cost, it may sound nice at first, but I think it makes it a bit too easy to tank your economy by sending just a bit too many troops at once.