Metal: thoughts and suggestions

Yes

Oh that's what I was explaining but I quoted the wrong post. I meant to reply to @dolphynn

Since it is weekend, I have played several games, and I have to admit that I'd really appreciate at least 30% more metal on the planets.
I support the cut of metal from the Alpha, but it was a bit too much .

Is there a possibility to either activate the metal sliders or give us a little bit more metal back?

TheGurken

Metal is ok until you get tier 2... 28 metal instead of 7 metal per spot. The race to tier 2 is pretty necessary now.

(Yeah, starting spot metal is bad ofc. I'll guess that will get fixed eventually. But those t2 mexes...)

I think What they should do it is pick the normal amount of metal we have and make that 100% then if people change the amount of metal on a planet then we would see 150% metal and that would be 50% more metal or we might see 50% metal and that would be 50% less metal this would be shown below the scale or something on the starting planet, though we need a way to look at all the planets in the system just encase a host made most of the planets normal but made one have 300% metal or something because that would mean they would do everything they can to get to it and have a huge amount of metal.

IMO The Metal Sliders shouldn't be activated until after we find a good 'standard' for PA. Don't forget that it's not just the amount of metal, but it's placement and Uber admits both aspects need work. Also keep in mind we don't quite know what the 'Egg' is going to do yet, it might remove the need for having metal directly beside a spawn somehow.

Mike

I agree that the standard amount and distribution of metal should be decided first before implementing the sliders. For now i think the metal should be more clustered together in groups of 3-6 metal spots. A wide spread of single metal spots is way to vulnerable to bombers and especially to bots. It's too expensive/annoying to defend every single metal spot.

But you can't have everything in clusters like that, it comes too close to promoting defensive plays IMO. There does need to be the occasional cluster to help 'focus' the conflict, but you also need those raidable assets to keep the gameplay dynamic.

Mike

of course there should be single metal spots around the planet. But the way it is now the metal is scathed around too much and there are almost no metal clusters/groups. There should be a balance in clustered and single metal spots on the planets. lets say 65/35 clustered/single ratio

I feel it should be more so 50/50 or 60/40 in terms of Spots found in clusters relative to spots found not in clusters.

Of course we should also keep in mind that there could still be a shift in balance where it could lead to more or less overall Metal spots with a relative nerf/buff to extractor rates and other such changes as well.

Mike

I'll again submit that we should be able to program the generator algorithm(s) in the lobby, preferably by making the map editor available there so that everything can be tweaked on demand, before a game starts.

It just seems obvious to me that we will not find agreement on how metal is "best" handled. Some prefer plentiful, dense clusters, others prefer sparse individual spots, or sparse clusters. Some prefer uneven distribution of metal so that getting to the best areas becomes paramount and decisive, others like a fair and linear distribution of metal over distance. Some find metal maps and other maps with metal aplenty the most fun ones, others absolutely hate those.

People just have different tastes. You could tweak the default algorithm all day long, it'd still not completely satisfy the majority of players.

Better just bugfix the current one, maybe ensure it's a bit more aesthetically pleasing, and then implement alternatives for other people's tastes

Together with client-side game list / galactic conquest filtering (horray for EBML / protobuf / BSON / (...) server descriptors that include the system editor parameters!), everyone can then just play approximately the kind of maps they want to play.

Long term that is the goal, but PA still needs a 'Standard' that you build the game around.

Mike

On the other hand, small 2-metal clusters, or wide continent-spanning clusters will still force defensive forces to be spread thin, but at the same time serve to make some territory more valuable than the rest. In addition, you can spread out clusters to ensure turrets can't cover more than one metal at a time.

I also wonder if there should be different types of metal spot, as it was with TA. Though, I'm sure that debate has been combed over in the past.

It's not a cluster if it spans a continent. >.>

Mike

I don't think I'm ultimately suggesting something immensely complex. At least all "fair" geometric patterns aren't too hard to program, even when you symmetrically adapt them to situations where some spots fall on un-pathable / construction-blocked locations.

Sure. Pick a standard metal income quantity per player for typical pre-conflict and end-game situations.

Then you can tune the cost of initial and ultimate units and buildings according to that first, followed by balancing the cost of everything in between according to how combat between units and defensive structures will work out "as such", on the battlefield (=based on their relative utility).

And right, you'd primarily test this against the current default metal generation algorithm, I imagine.

But if your unit/structure combat balance is all right, you don't need to re-do the game to be playable even with quite a bit more or less metal, or a different progression of metal income, anyways.

Okay, this... shouldn't matter so much. A player's "taste" for metal shouldn't be catered to during beta. There will be all sorts of mods for this, or very probably in-game customizable options, like you've suggested.

Knight is correct imo, beta needs to prioritize balance, or a standard rather.

The only way I see competitive strategies forming will be with linear clusters of metal at specific distances from each other and the players. Players need to be able to simultaneously attack and defend realistically. This can't be done with random placements, it just cannot.

I think they will have to standardize both starting location (perhaps picking 1 of 2 or 3 spots, depending on planet size) and where metal clusters will spawn. [note: I say "spawn" here because you may be able to customize how much metal beyond whatever standard we find, as opposed to where.]

Speaking of standards, there should also be some standard system settings for quickplay. Trying to find an usable game out from all those 10 planets games is a bit annoying.

And having to set up a game yourself all the time isn't really the solution I think.

One idea I had would be significantly increasing the number of mass points, but keeping them in relatively tight cluster separated by significant distances. This would preserve the competitive aspect of having to fight to defend and secure remote mass areas, while still providing enough potential income to field large numbers of units.

As soon as thing like infinitely repeating queues are implemented, I don't think anyone should have problems spending their metal, so more metal nodes per cluster would just increase the scale of the battles.

If you keep everything in clusters you significantly de-value raiding and dynamic play overall.

Mike

Personally I'd like to see some alternative ways of gaining metal, like a big starship wreck that you can reclaim over a long period of time. You could have whole maps based around controlling wreckage of ancient battles. Or fighting over landing sites of asteroids that crash down during a match.

I also think something like Uranium could be spread across a planet but only have about 3 spots on a planet total. Then require the player to control one of these spots to be able to construct things like nuclear missiles. That way you'll be able to preemptively stop someone from gaining control of a rare resource and stop them from having some capabilities.

Pretty random thoughts I know, but I feel like metal and energy and the way they are collected are so old school and something new might be nice.

I agree with this a lot. These would be cool scenarios.