Gameplay, Units & Balance

Also there is a little problem with teleporters imo.
Building proxy factories was a really nice thing, and made positional gameplay extremely interesting. Just be careful to not make that strategy meaningless by having implemented teleporters, please.

Imo it should be used more for units that come out of factories that you built earlier in the game and that are far away from enemy bases, and shouldn't prevent you from building new proxy factories, if you know what I mean.

I think that centralization of building structures (especially factories) should be prevented and teleporters could cause that issue. It might be prevented in making teleporters more expensive and the building times longer.

No I don't know what you mean. What is a 'proxy factory'?

Teleporters are used to get your units around planets and galaxies faster. Without them combat units are not as useful because they take too long to get from point A to point B. You'll still have to build and protect your teleporters. It's not like they go up instantly and have a ton of health. They go hand-in-hand too with the new combat fabbers.

Don't try to look at any of these changes in a vacuum. They are all inter-related. Some of your old strategies won't work and you'll find new ones that work in new ways.

Proxy factories are factories that are built close to the enemy base, possibly in a position that the enemy doesn't expect them to be. It is the current way of shortening the way between the factory and the enemy base. Instead of building them in your base, you build them as close to the enemy as possible. It created really exciting dynamic gameplay imo, by building "walls" of factories around your enemy's base.

Teleporters could cause positioning of factories to be less relevant, by giving you a way to quickly get your units to the edges of your enemy's base, no matter where you built the factories. The teleporter would obviously be a weak spot in that strategy. But I'm just hoping that it doesn't make proxy factories completely irrelevant.

Proxy factories are factories that you build away from your main base.

The encouraging of centralized production over Forward Bases has always been a risk of teleporters. It's why there has been much talk about ways to 'limit' or downplay the role Teleporters play.

To me, the strategy behind force allocation is something that is a really important factor, especially when you consider how much harder it is to invade a planet when the enemy's army is only a teleporter or 2 away.

Mike

I think you guys are getting ahead of yourselves.

It's about time to assault an enemy base. With 'proxy' factories (silly name, imo) you have to wait for build times. When you see a factory spill out a hundred units in a couple of seconds, you'll see it's a much better route. It actually enables end-game invasion and win scenarios rather than stagnating the end-game.

And we love the changes made to building times. But that's frankly not what we're talking about...

Yes, I realize that a teleporter that can spew out 100s of units is better than a Forward Base that only only make 5-10 units at a time. The problem I have is that the Teleporter is just so much better that it becomes the default option.I worry about a scenario where you'll just have one big base per planet(or just one planet per system) that has all of that planet's/system's production and that one big army is just effortlessly moved around as needed. this is why I've been a big supporter of having some form of cost per unit teleported, potentially with a scaling cost no less, or something else along those lines that makes it so that yeah you can move some units around but your primary method of having an army in a given place is to build it there, or have the player invest heavily into a large infastructure to support the the ability to teleport large numbers of units around.

To me that feels incredibly shallow.

Mike

Having to build forward bases is a really nice gameplay element and shouldn't become irrelevant through the ability to use teleporters instead imho.

One method to solve this would maybe be to limit the rate in which units can get teleported. That would also encourage you to build multiple teleporters per location instead of just one.

What's wrong with it as the default option? When you can move combat units around a solar system quickly, it makes them useful in the end game. Or else they leave the end game and the only strategies there are are the super weapons. That sounds shallow to me.
I lost a game yesterday where an enemy dropped a commander and several fabbers and popped up a teleporter, flooded my planet with his units and took me out. It was one of the more epic game endings I've played.

And yes... you can have all your factories in you main base. That is, if you like putting all your eggs in one basket.

Just play it first.

It will be interesting to see how we will be able to get a foothold on a well protected planet to build the teleporter in the first place.


Maybe build it in orbit and have it fall via drop pod to the planet to deploy?


In any case we will see how it plays out eventually.

Alright we will be patient and try it first. But please, just keep our concerns in mind.
Forward bases actually gave you the feeling of some territorial gameplay aspect. And that was pretty nice and exciting. But we will see. Teleporters are definitely needed in this game, but there is a question about how to implement them best.

My official position is that you don't. I watch you approach on orbital radar, wait until your radar dot becomes two radar dots, then drop a nuke on the site.

Hold on there, like I said, it's not I think teleporters should be removed or anything, they just need some way to limit thier potential. Admittely I haven't had the chance to view the recent playtests you guys have put out so maybe there is something liek that already that just simply isn't doing enough for my personal liking. Having said that it was my understanding that you still don't have unit cannons, and if Teleporters are already really efficient I really have to question if there is any point to asteroid bases anymore, sure you might still be putting asteroids into orbit to kick things off, but it's not the same crowded asteroid with Unit cannons, Defenses and factories that was originally expected, but rather Unit cannon or two and a teleporter, with a landing force and some fabbers to build simply yet another teleporter on the surface to start the "proper" invasion.

I guess I was just hoping to see more significance placed upon proper planning and force allocation instead of just building a single teleporter where you want to got and flooding 500 units through it.

But you can make it a very tough basket, and with the way teleporters are, your army is never very far away.

Mike

I can only second this.
Like I said, we really see the need for teleporters. But they should be limited in some way, like limiting the rate in which units can get through, to not make decentralized, forward production allocation completely irrelevant.

Yeah, we should probably wait until the patch then play it for ourselves before we start judging the balance...

Of course we'll listen to your concerns. And I can say that when we first ship the new balance with all the new units and the teleporters, they are not going to be perfect. But we will iterate on it and get it right.

The games we've had in the office this week have been more engaging, more dynamic, and generally more entertaining. So I'm encouraged that this is going to have a very positive affect on the entire game.

Just to add: I too would like to see stargates teleporters further up the tech tree to not invalidate proxy bases. Either that or find some other way to make proxying still a valid tactic. A good idea would be to make proxy factories more economic than stargates teleporters.

It's not a proxy factory. It's a proxy base. God knows who gave it that name. It basically stems from the fact that the cheapest way to defend your outlying metal is to get production up in close proximity, and likewise the best way to attack an opponent is to sneak your units into his base. Most people play on one side of the hemisphere only, so if you put a lot of pressure on one side, they focus all their attention on one side. You can create a proxy base and sneak into their base, often on an undefended side. The first wave hits them earlier, the second wave hits them soon after that, and all your hopes don't rest on one structure.

For multi planet, you have to create a beach head. Currently the way to assault a planet is to drop a fabber onto the planet, then spam factories. If you are lucky, the opponent doesn't realise you are there, and gives you time to rush him.

Any opponent worth his salt is going to bomb you back to your planet the second you land.

Teleporters don't solve that problem.


The problem that exists with movement from A to B is that weapon range is the most important balancing factor. It's not actually land units taking too long to move from base at north pole to base at south pole, because people send fabbers to set up factories closer to their opponent. The problem that exists is that units take too long to move into range to attack the pelters and holkins that are attacking them, and then they get thinned out by point defence, don't make a significant hole in the defensive line, and losses are replaced by the time you send the next wave. I've happily run armies of 500 at defensive lines and watched them bounce off. The problem is exacerbated in FFA where people fortify and don't play to win.

Which is purely because you simply can't counter battery stationary artillery, nothing has the range to.

I've enjoyed my conversation with Ledarsi on this. The simple fact of the matter is that both mobile and stationary artillery need to be able to counter battery fire each other.

Enough on that, I got distracted.

Spreading your base everywhere is probably the best strategy for this game. You know that joke, Mechanical Engineers build weapons, Civil Engineers build targets? Centralised production was built by a civil engineer, and nukes were built by the mechanical engineers. . I am certain that the place of the proxy base won't be disappearing. Quite confusing that Uber don't build them though.

Teleporters are cool to have. I think orbital drop transports and aerial/naval transports would also go a long way towards alleviating the issue of beacheads

Lets let them get the stuff in game and then balance things out after we see how it plays out in the big picture for a few days.

I think an energy cost per unit on top of the always on energy cost would be good enough to even it out.


I really don't see the problem we have the ability to crash a moon into your base, then the build power, instant travel speed and army of God is not a far cry away.
But I guess the trick is to keep it tactical and not from becoming nothing more than 'hulk smash'.