Starting the Game: The Egg

Starting resources and the mechanics of starting to play are significant in any scaling RTS game, and is especially critical in a truly exponential economy like TA or SupCom/FA, where a strong start relative to your opponent can result in an overwhelming advantage later in the game.

In my opinion, developing a solid game start is the single most important design nexus for PA. It is the foundation upon which the entire game is built, and it is imperative that PA's game initiation phase be rock solid.


The Vanilla Start

The basic approach to starting a TA-paradigm game is to spawn the player with just a commander and a specific amount of starting resources. The player then uses these starting resources to build basic economy and production to get the game started.

The main advantage of this approach is simplicity. It's very obvious how a start works, there are no special mechanics, and the system is the same as used for production in the rest of the game.

However the vanilla start has two distinct weaknesses. Firstly, it is relatively slow. A player may need to queue up a factory to be constructed, and then essentially has nothing to do until that structure is completed. This is undesirable, but a few idle seconds is not a tremendous problem.

Secondly, and more significantly, is the possibility of stalling. Experienced players will have effective start sequences well mapped out, and will never accidentally stall. However, newer players will completely wreck their entire game by making critical mistakes early in the game, and this is a huge issue for the simplicity, approachability and broad appeal, and the longevity of the game, which warrants solving.


The Developed Start

A very simple approach to get the game started faster is to simply give the player more assets to begin the game. SupCom/FA had the option of giving players preset buildings and units to begin the game, although it was seldom used as it wasn't a terribly exciting option.

SupCom 2 gave the player a commander as well as two engineers to begin the game, as well as a VERY large amount of starting resources. In my opinion, this approach is the worst of all worlds because players are able to finance far too much hardware, far too qucikly, even with zero economy. Limiting resources requires a player build economy, and giving more limited build power requires a player consume more time.


Zero-K & Boost

Zero-K has experimented with various kinds of modified starts. The most basic is the idea of a specified amount of "boost" that allows a commander to build or assist to finish a fixed resource cost of structures or units close to instantly.

The boost system worked very well for getting early player economy and production built quickly, but had quite a few very odd side effects. For example, new cheeses involving building expensive defensive structures instantly, and all-ins using multiple commander boost to build expensive projects very early in the game. Eventually the boost system was replaced because it was too opaque, and created too many weird types of openings and cheeses, in addition to effectively solving its problem.

The current solution of choice in Zero-K is "facplop." "Facplop" gives the player a free factory which builds instantly at the start of the game, allowing the game to get started faster, and due to the simplified and streamlined economy, the risk and damage of stalling is much reduced. There are some gimmicky features of using a facplop system, such as blind cheeses being marginally strengthened. However this is a much less serious and more manageable problem than newer players losing the game before they have even built anything.


The Egg

The idea that Neutrino has floated is some sort of commander drop pod which transports the commander to the battlefield. The egg can be reclaimed to provide players with early resources and get the game started more quickly. Additionally, the value of an egg might be tweaked in the settings for individual games to provide differing levels of starting resources. In my opinion, this is a good idea to accelerate starts, since the exact functionality of the egg can be designed to be as beneficial as possible while eliminating weird early game side effects as much as possible.

Superficially, this type of egg approach seems very similar to simply giving a player a larger quantity of starting resources. However the egg is different for three reasons. Firstly, it allows the player to have more starting resources without increasing their resource storage limit. The player reclaims the egg a bit at a time to pull resources out of it, adding the reclaimed resources to his or her resource pool. Secondly, unlike builders, the egg does not necessarily confer more build power or create an additional build power source to accelerate blind all-ins using the increased quantity of early resources.

And most importantly, it is an additional asset, distinct from the commander, which might have distinct abilities or features. For example, the egg might house the basic resource generation capabilities at the start of the game, instead of the commander. The egg can be immobile, unlike the commander (although it might be transportable, unlike a structure). It might have radar or other intel-gathering functions to detect and effectively deter blind cheese, instead of encouraging them as other types of early-game boosters might. It might have a wide variety of functions depending only upon PA's early-game needs.

Long story short, the egg idea creates a great deal of flexibility for how the early game can be designed, because now there is an early-game-only asset other than the commander that can be designed entirely to suit the gameplay needs of PA.


A Possible Egg Implementation

I propose that the drop pod or egg that a player begins the game with be a large, tough, valuable object that the player reclaims a piece at a time, acquiring resources. This is the egg's most important function; a limited quantity of resources on demand in the very early game.

The egg cannot be constructed by any unit- you get just one, and you cannot acquire another. Once you have reclaimed it, it is gone. This means you have to think carefully about reclaiming the egg itself, since you are depriving yourself of the egg's functions in return for a shot in the arm of resources right now.


Reclaim

The egg should contain a sizable reserve of both metal and energy. Regarding the precise mechanic, the egg should have an internal resource reserve that is depleted first. Once its internal reserve is exhausted, then the egg object itself starts to get reclaimed and deconstructed. Once the egg is a nanoframe under deconstruction, it ceases to function as a unit.

If the game's parameters specify a modified quantity of starting resources, the egg's internal reserve is changed to suit. However the profile of the egg, including its reclaim value, is always constant, even if its internal reserve size is specified at zero at the start of the game. Eggs might be turned off, but if PA is designed assuming players have eggs, this is unlikely to be superior.

The egg unit itself always has the same properties, and always yields the same amount of resources when reclaimed, which should be significant. If destroyed, the egg leaves behind a wreckage which is of less value than an intact one, but still a significant amount of resources.


Resourcing

In addition to being a source of metal and energy if reclaimed, the egg should also be a functional unit to have on the board. This creates a tension between reclaiming the egg, and wanting to keep it around.

First, I propose that the egg actually generate quite a lot of energy relative to the amount a player will be consuming in the very early game. Sufficient energy for the commander to build whatever it likes, and possibly run a factory or engineer besides. As a direct consequence, it is a poor idea to reclaim the egg without basic energy infrastructure already built, and it creates an incentive for the enemy to destroy the egg if at all possible.

I also propose that the egg generate a small but significant stream of metal constantly as long as the structural integrity of the egg has not yet begun to be reclaimed. This creates an incentive for the player to potentially choose not to reclaim the egg, and eventually the egg will yield more metal than the player would have gained from reclaiming it.

If the egg is a powerful early game resourcing unit, it creates an interesting tension regarding whether it is a good idea to reclaim the egg. Keeping it will eventually yield a huge amount of resources. However reclaiming the egg yields a large amount of resources right away.


Intelligence

In addition to generating resources, I think the egg should have some method of intelligence gathering. Radar is one possible approach, making the egg a more locally defensive asset, and allowing earlier detection of incoming blind cheese and early game harassment.

However I think a superior approach is to allow the egg to construct disposable unarmed scouts, possibly even flying ones, creating the option of paying for robust scouting in the early game regardless of other construction choices. If interplanetary scouting is deemed necessary, then perhaps this could take the form of a long-range scanner, or other method of scouting arbitrarily distant locations. Longer range, robust scouting of a limted area (such as viewing the enemy start with an expendable flying scout) is much more effective at detecting blind cheese, and much less defensively effective against harassment than radar coverage.

The purpose of the egg-scout function is to create tension and counterplay between players as early as possible, and that requires information availability. Furthermore, in the event cheese is viable, it creates a strong option to discover it regardless of other opening choices. Also note that if the player opts to reclaim their egg, they lose this option.


Conclusion

I think Neutrino's idea for an egg as a starting unit in addition to the canonical commander is actually a good concept. It can be expressly and uniquely designed to maximize early game simplicity and depth, minimize weirdness, and creates a second tool to mold the early game other than the commander itself.

To flesh out the idea, I think the egg would be most interesting if it had three functions; an internal reclaimable resource reserve of a size that can be set in the game settings, constant internal resource generation, and the ability to acquire information about the enemy in the early game. Having features like this creates an interesting tradeoff between keeping the egg for the long-term and reclaiming it for a short-term benefit.

I like the idea of having a short range radar on the egg. I'd definitely prefer this to having the egg build scouts or anything else, as a radar is a bit more straightforward for a new player yet still effective in its purpose.

On the resource generation, making it generate mass seems kind of pointless. Even if it could possibly generate more mass than it's worth it'll still be a huge net loss because, as you said, the economy is exponential. Making it generate energy might be a good alternative to constantly having a geothermal vent next to each player's spawn location. It could be fun to make it a viable harassing target too.

In other games, the Comm was your starting egg. It had an initial pile of metal and energy, and a small amount of income to get things started.

Obviously the point of the egg is to create something that gets the game started, but isn't cheesy nor essential on the Comm. Ledarsi had a bunch of stuff, but if you are a TL;DR kind of guy here's the short list:

1) Straight up pile of rocket wreckage, representing an arbitrary amount of resources that can be reclaimed but not carried with you.
2) An engineering tower, filled with drones that capture local resources or assist with local construction.
3) A construction kit that easily transforms into something essential, like your first factory.
4) Any other fully functional structure, like a laser tower or generator or radar.
5) Your impact clears a small area of terrain, making initial construction easier on crowded worlds.
6) Your impact creates an extraction point. Nice.
7) It could even be a boat!

I don't like the idea of the egg being a terribly unique or valuable thing. If a unique structure was so powerful, they'd be the only thing ever built! Comms have a lathe to get things started, and a strong lathe makes it important to waste as little time as possible.

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I like the idea of plain wreckage best. It protects against cheesy rush builds, and it provides a delicious raiding target for a reclaiming scout. Get away from my egg! :lol:

This is an important point right here. In fact, the commander fulfills much of the functionality of the egg as described by ledarsi, with certain exceptions.

I do like the idea of the egg providing a guaranteed reclaim resource, and that it's one that can be reclaimed progressively. This prevents the player from stalling while they try to set up a basic economy, especially if they want to bring in a few engineers to help out. I'm not sure I care for the idea of it auto-reclaiming itself, if I understand the idea correctly. If that were the case, why not boost the commander's own resource generation for a short time ingame? (Somebody's going to complain about readability, but enemies won't be scouting that early, and as long as the player gets some sort of indication of the boost duration they should be better off than trying to figure out what some randomly disappearing structure is doing.) Also, while the resources might be substantial early game, they become less valuable as the player bootstraps their economy, meaning that the player is encouraged not to rely too heavily on this resource.

But giving it all that additional functionality, I'm not too crazy about. First off is radar. Radar is so cheap and fast to build that it can usually be tossed down early enough to catch any sort of rush. It also gives the player the option to forgo the early radar if they are so certain that their enemy is far enough/off planet that the risk is acceptable.

Basic defenses that bobucles mentioned . . . again, I think that it's just simpler to be able to drop down an early turret. In ZK, a single turret works wonders to stop very early rushes, and once again, the player has a choice to build it.

Building engineers/scouts/etc . . . now I think it's really going to far. The whole point of the egg's econ boost is to get that first factory up and running quickly and without stalling the economy. From there the player can choose to build any number of scouts, engineers, or move on to the meat of their early army.
(Additionally, for scouts, I'm of the opinion that intelligence should be a precious thing in an RTS. Having an overabundance of scouts, especially if there are few ways of stopping them, makes intelligence cheap, instead of something to be used effectively. But that's more of a personal preference on my part.)

I think that making the egg concept overly complex will introduce more imbalances and cheese opportunities than it would solve in the end. Really, we shouldn't be so afraid of cheese that we go out of our way to find a million ways to counter it before we know what it could be. Better to start simple and find potential cheese, then use small changes to cull it.

Additionally, I don't recall the Uber devs mentioning much about the egg concept, just some vague references. Unless I missed some info somewhere, I think it's a bit early to infer the nature of this object. I myself was under the impression that it was a modification of that transport used in the KS video (that carried the commander to the rocket). Also, it might be a delivery concept for moving the commander between planets later in the game; A potential solution for the whole shared/unshared economy between planets.

Sylvesterink pretty much nailed it. The egg is either redundant with the Commander's role, or needlessly complex.

The best system so far is Zero-K "facplop", though it could probably still be improved a bit more.
In Zero-K, the factory is the only expensive thing you need at the beginning, other things like mexes or light turrets are cheap enough to be built very fast. If it's not the case in PA or if it is still considered too long, it would be easy to add, for example, three mexes and two generators to plop.

A problem with starting game is the ridiculous spike of APM that is needed. You need to make your starting build as fast as you can, to not give ten seconds of advance to the enemy; those ten seconds may doom you right away.
A simple solution is to allow players to plan their starting build before the clock is ticking, say when they choose their exact spawn location if there is such choice.
This would be even perfected by the ability to give orders to planned buildings/units (whose construction hasn't begun), something I wonder why it was not in the original SupCom to be honest.

Ledarsi evokes "blind cheese" with factory choice, with facplop.
The egg wouldn't solve anything about this: even if you didn't build your factory right away, you can't wait to see which factory the other is building; someone has to build their factory first anyway. (One of) the first move(s), with any factory you build, should be to build scouts to find your opponents, their starting factories and build units in your factory according to that (e.g. AA if they are making air...)
The only way to prevent this kind of cheese is with balance. Scouts fast enough so you can find what factory they made before their attack units reach you, so you have time to react (let's remember that seeing enemy units also tells you which factory they chose). No RPS between starting factories, each one have to offer balanced options against all others (e.g. no starting factory without AA).

tl;dr : an improved facplop would work better than any form of egg.

One consideration about the Egg is that I was thinking you would be able to create these for base expansion (other planets). This goes well with the lander idea as well (e.g. the lander is effectively the egg and you build more of these for exploration).

Exact details of the egg are only going to be figured out through extensive playtesting. There is a pretty wide range of possibilities for what it could look like (as you guys have enumerated here).

I think this is the best option. But I am worried about how intuitive it will be to new players. We already have to get them used to the streaming economy, now we need to get them used to the idea that you can reclaim something and run into your resource storage limit. But since you are reclaiming something all those extra resources are lost.

It'd be nice if when reclaiming the game itself would slow down the rate at which your workers reclaim stuff so you don't lose any resources.

Also I am against this egg being anything more than a resource pile.

Uh. If the egg is unique, you actually cannot build them. So when you say it would be the only thing ever built...

In the above system, the egg spawns on your start location, and you cannot build another one. It's like a commander in that regard, and as a result its effectiveness "per cost" is totally irrelevant, since it cannot be constructed. The egg might produce 10 metal per second, gratis, and still be perfectly fair. Probably not good game design, but balanced.

No, although I didn't expressly specify. Something with the ability to reclaim has to walk over to the egg and siphon resources out of it. When the internal reserves are dry, the egg itself starts to be reclaimed, like reclaiming a finished structure down to nothing.

How so? Why not shift some of the functionality off of the commander, and onto the egg? Such as resource generation?

Yes. And having the egg able to produce scouts means you don't have to wait until your factory is done to have a scout being active on the map, which obviously accelerates the process. This fact is especially significant considering your opponent can already have a factory finished when yours is completed, and your scout can only begin production when they start their cheese production.

While I agree a structure to do this is an excellent idea, I think it may be mistaken to use the egg start as the base seed facility.

Obviously the egg is the seed for your first base, but the egg does (or should) offer a quite different set of functionality to a structure the player should use to expand. The egg can be unique, and due to its uniqueness, it can do some very unusual things with respect to the very beginning of the game if so designed. Such as produce metal and considerable amounts of energy.

The egg should provide a fixed size lump sum reclaimable amount of resources, possibly with constant resource generation to create an interesting tradeoff between reclaim now vs reclaim later. Reclaiming the egg lets you build something expensive in a big hurry, and the opponent can use their egg to scout this type of gambit. Reclaiming the egg can also be used to dig yourself out of a stall. And keeping the egg constantly produces resources, which acts against early game stalling (especially energy stalling) and bolsters your economy for the long-term.

The expansion structure needs to be cheap to encourage actually building the thing, which is going to make designing it to give you resources very difficult to swing. It probably also needs some sensors and weapons to be safe enough to throw out in the middle of nowhere to fend for itself later in the game, whereas the egg is more or less guaranteed to be protected by the early state of the game, your nearby commander, its time-distance from the enemy, and your production of hardware in the vicinity.

Nevertheless, I can certainly see the egg as a producible object with a featureset geared more towards expansion than as a unique early game economy booster, and that makes a lot of sense to use to expand to new planets. It just needs to be reasonably cheap and durable, probably cannot produce metal constantly, and it likely needs some sensors and armaments. Lastly, it probably needs buildpower itself or the ability to make/transport engineers in order to effectively seed a base on a new planet. An expansion structure does not need to scout for incoming all-ins/cheese; it needs to survive independently against light harassment, and act as a buildpower center or source.

It makes sense that one would want planet expanding to be an expensive process. Each new location represents the chance to conquer an entire world. It's only a first step, but the first one is usually the most important.

Who says an egg is unique? It could be a part of every single rocket launch to another world.

If the egg is mere rocket wreckage, then you get some bits every time a rocket touches down. This can serve several important points:
1) The rocket can be more expensive, since there's an expectation that it gives a refund. Every single launch becomes a steeper investment.
2) The refund only works if you have actual builders, in a safe location, to reclaim the wreckage. So moving combat units or being aggressive with it becomes a terrible idea, as you are literally sending money to the enemy.
3) It can also serve as a critical balancing point for the early game, since the Commander is shown to ride in on a rocket.

All that, just from a single hunk of smoldering metal. That's a pretty good ROI.

I don't know about the rest of you guys, but I found a streaming economy incredibly easy to learn. Only people that have never played a strategy game ever would have trouble, I would imagine.

Personally, I don't see why the egg has to do something other than sit there. I do think, however, that the "facplop" or free first capital ship in SOASE idea can't apply here. A free first factory is a great idea.

On a side note, I like the idea of the commander spawning into the map from a rocket. Gives the impression that your particular commander just won a battle in another system and just flew here to destroy more armies.

I'm mildly concerned that the Egg would also get in the way. "I wanted to put my first factory right here, but the egg pushes it out of the way!" or "My defensive structure fits best here, but the egg is in the way and I don't want to reclaim it yet!"

I'm leaning towards the "facplop" option (though perhaps a better name?) Building the first factory always felt simultaneously boring and nerve wracking ("Build faster! I want to start on the support structures!"). Just make it obvious the first one is free.

The commander arrives in a rocket, which turns into a free factory. Add in a 5 second-pause at the start, where you can queue up your first orders (like, the location of the factory) and there you go. No more being behind because of not performing your starting click sequence perfectly and everything is still fitting to the "Commander arriving on the battlefield"-style.

Well sounds like we find out what the egg is when uber finds out what is the best thing to do with the egg after play testing it.

You'd be surprised how overwhelming things can be for people. Also, don't discount those for whom this would be their first RTS.

For my part, I found I didn't really properly understand streaming economy until playing Zero-K. It helps that ZK makes resource spending 1:1:1 for metal:energy:buildpower, since it means that I can look at (the minimum of) my gross metal and energy income, along with how many factories and engineers (which almost all have the same buildpower each) I have on the field, and get a quick idea of how much more buildpower I can currently support. It makes judging what to do at any given time simple enough, since I can look at gross metal income (energy is usually higher) and know if I can scale up, or how close I am to being able to scale up.

Before that, I was just tweaking and guessing and trying to react.

The only major difference between a facplop and a pile of wreckage is energy. One counts as an extra energy bonus, which may help for keeping an uber shot in reserve or building some generators.

If the generators don't cost energy, then the facplop doesn't even matter. All it does is speed up the first few seconds. You can do that by giving the Comm a good lathe.

The previous titles could always get the game off to a running start using wreckage and reclaimable resources. Why can't it be used here? It just makes sense to strip the planet of its easy resources right away. It gives everything you need to get a base up and running, perhaps even before an enemy Comm can cross the map! For maps that have minimal local resources, the burning husk of a rocket should be more than enough.

Yeah, no. I taught a 12 year old kid all the basics of playing Starcraft in like 10 minutes. He was doing gold level macro in about 2 hours.

All you need is a proper understanding of what's important in game and a couple of challenges to drive the point home. Oh. And to not treat the audience like retards.

I agree that the resource model was pretty much a guessing game. It was impossible to know how the resources got utilized, and the 1:1:1 did a great part in simplifying things. However, it doesn't mean that 1:1:1 is strictly required, only that any differences in economic spending need to be obvious and important to the game.

Yeah, I don't understand all the fuss about streaming economy.
You just have to know that you must not stall.
If you don't fully understand how it work, you are just less efficient.
But either you are a causal player and you don't care. Or you are the kind of player who like to improve and like to learn the deepness of a game and it's a nice challenge to have.

Because this would add an unnecessary complexity to the game. The Commander is doing fine with those functions, no need to split them into two units just for the sake of having another unit. It's adding complexity without adding depth.

It doesn't work that way. At best, one will still "blindly" choose a factory and the other may choose they factory depending on that. At worst, both wait for the other to build a factory, wasting everyone's time.
The factroy's choice should depend on the map and playstyle, not what the other is doing. We are trying to avoid blind RPS, not to enforce it against the first one to act.

Also, having a big pile of reclaim as sole beginning boost is probably the worst of the solutions so far. It would work like Zero-K early boost, with possible rushes and such; it wouldn't accelerate much things, as your Commander would have to reclaim, build, reclaim, build, needlessly complicating the first actions.
If you need a big pile of resources right at the beginning, give the Commander a (relatively) big, full storage.

Similarly, if you need a bit of resource generation at the beginning, give it to the Commander. After all, what would happen if the "egg" was destroyed and the Commander survived? It would still be doomed, without resource generation. Having two key units to protect would simply complicate things for the beginning without significantly change gameplay (and the "egg" would be irrelevant in the later game anyway).

I know! Four actions with a single unit is SO BRUTAL, m i rite?

The early focus of the game is likely going to be a cash grab for all the map resources. A player who puts his efforts into reclaiming map resources is going to have a money advantage over a player who goes for a direct kill. So why not get that message across right away with a big pile of reclaimable wreckage? If the Comm picks it automatically (without waste), all the better.

A full storage can go anywhere. A boost can go anywhere. A pile of wreckage can only be used at your starting location, because you only have one lathe and your starting resources are already full. This means that your opponent is guaranteed to find:

A) That you used the resources to build a base, just like anyone else.
B) That you abandoned the resources for some kind of rush. Free resources, cheers.
C) That you used the resources to build generators for some kind of rush. Slower rush, and free kills to boot? Nice!
D) That you destroyed the resources for some kind of rush, likely wasting an ubercharge in the process. Good job.

A pile of wreckage also plays in well with a standard build order:
A minimal amount of storage builds the first factory.
Low energy means you need generators.
Wreckage provides extra metal for the generators(which in this case have to cost 0 energy).

In fact it helps to protect against early stalling, because the Comm can not have enough energy to use all his starting metal. Some of it ALWAYS has to go into generators. That gets the 3 key points of the game across in about 10 seconds:
Build stuff.
Find metal.
Build energy.
If a complete stranger started up the game, it's nearly impossible to screw that up. And it's enough information to play!

Everything bobucles said above is correct.

However, I think that a flat pile of wreckage isn't as interesting as having a unit with some utility as well. There's no reason to ever not use use a plain wreck immediately, or at least as quickly as possible.

A unit with a function and an internal reserve of resources functions identically to a plain wreck with respect to reclaiming, but creates more interesting decisions regarding what you do with it. If it has a function, you may want to hang onto it, and it creates tension about how and why you utilize the egg.

If that wreck was instead some kind of unique commander landing pod unit, then it can have unique properties and features to kickstart players' openings at the very beginning of the game. And giving it the ability to scout for cheese counteracts any additional cheese utility that the egg creates.

Dividing these functions between the egg and the commander is a HUGE difference. The most obvious reason being you can reclaim the egg for resources.

Kids are probably going to have an easier time grasping this stuff, but I've found many times new players in Achron who don't even understand that building things is possible, and don't try to figure it out by pressing the buttons. They just sit there and say they don't get it. Some players realize they can build things, but even then they tend to only build what they start with.

Also, you taught the kid directly, but most players here are going to need to learn it on their own or with tutorials. And don't say "oh they just need to put more effort in" or "well we don't want them anyway", as making games a chore to play disincentivizes playing them greatly, and we'd want as many players as possible to play this game for it to succeed.

People don't experiment as much as you'd thing and get overwhelmed easier than you'd think. I'm not sure what the solution would be, probably good UI affordances and ensuring the important numbers are clear (in this case, gross metal and energy income and spending).