Turtle vs. Rush

where is the happy balance that will make both of these work and not to powerful?

I personally would like to move away from the turtle side of the game and see more action, less hunker, and have the game feel like i'm progressing when I do both.

When is the time to turtle?

When is the time to Rush?

How effective will these be in actuality?

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What will be counters for the Rush?

What will be counters for Turtle?

How effective will these be in actuality?

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This topic may be too soon but thinking of this is a big concern of mine to how things are going to be balanced.

Usually turtling and rushing have a sort of rock paper scissors relationship.

Turtling beats Rushing, Rushing beats Eco-Spam, and Eco-Spam beats Turtle. As long as players have the option to quickly take terrain and resources, it'll probably work itself out.

if i was a moderator on site i would lock this topic cause above just solved entire thing!

^+1

:shock:

I've never seen anybody break down the metagame that way.

Also +1.

you have got good points! every good multiplayer game must take them in accounts.

First I want to say: there can't be a unique formula that can solve all that points automatically.

PA should have a trial and error approch where patches after the release of games incrementally solve those problems. (See starcraft 2) The support after the release is a fundamental part of the balance.

Also this discussion is based on the fact of how many races the game will be. If PA has (or at least starts with) one race then the balance problem will not be a problem.

Balance issues comes with more than one race.

I do not think these can be answered with "rock paper scissors". that is a possibility that turtling and rushing have a new meaning with this game.

Rushing could be good for only so much then you have to turtle for a while then rush some more. Could it be that the game we seek is built of bursts of land grabbing and holding that land till it is safe, while working to the goal of blowing up the commander?

feeling like "Eco spam" should not be part of the game. when u "Eco spam" you should only get so much out of it. both should be good tactics but I do not want both extreme cases and for a more middle ground approach to be viable.

no 5 min rush games.
no turtle your heart out.

Rock nukes are a way around Turtling.
Point Defences are a way around Rushing.

These are more of what i'm looking at rather than ideas. but more of what units could do what to others. and how to line up units strengths with out making "rock paper scissors"

I'm guessing that, based upon the economic model, PA will strongly favor rushing, if everything else is even vaguely resembles FA.

I say this because rushing in FA is horribly handicapped by the fact that structures build 5-10 times as faster as units, considering that both are balanced in mass cost and combat strength. As you may notice, defenses are not substantially better than equal mass in units, but far, far more flexible strategically because you can make them so fast.

In PA, however, units and structures only cost metal, and engineers build both at the same rate. Therefore, unless structures are substantially stronger (2-3 times or more) it simply won't be efficient to build defensive structures anywhere except the home base, and questionable even then.

It all works if you consider turrets/tanks to just be different kinds of guns. With tanks, you build your engineers at a centralized location, and then use them to build your guns, and finally move your guns wherever you want them to go, and if you change your mind about where you want them, you can move them at any time. With turrets, however, you can't centralize your production because your have to build turrets where you need your guns. That means that, if there's every more than 1 place you need to have guns, and it never changes, you need to focus primarily on the production of mobile units.... unless, as I mentioned above, turrets are wildly more effective in some way.

This model I describe above makes perfect sense even in FA because, as I said, turrets have drastically decreased build time as compared to tanks, countering the benefit of centralized gun production.

If there's a mobile variant, why make a stationary one? Anything that can be used in battle is better utilized on the move. FunkOff points out that defense turrets HAVE to be more powerful than their mobile variants before they can even be considered, and for some part that's true. It's also pretty lazy and- as many games have shown- ineffective design. Inflating the stats to allow bad tactics doesn't make a defense good. It just means the defense is fundamentally screwed up.

Don't forget that players will be building these things on the field! An exceedingly powerful turret will lead to all sorts of turret creep, especially if it fits into a rush.

The best place to start on defenses is to take roles that are rejected for mobile units. Some things might include:
- Super flexible defense (things that deal with multiple threats).
- Damage prevention of some kind (intercept projectiles, arty, nukes, etc.)
- Advanced air defense (burst weapons, AoEs, interference systems, etc.)
- Extreme range bombardment (arty, nukes, etc.)
- Perimeter vision (radar, superior sight, etc.)
- Energy draining weapons (splitting the cost with generators, encouraging storage and special management)
- Base maintenance systems (repair, rebuild, reclaim, etc.)

Defenses don't need to deal any damage at all to be effective. Headache reducing systems are a wonder all their own. Force multipliers like damage prevention will mesh extremely well with standard units on the defense.

That is honestly not what was meant at all. It is also an unavoidable type of interaction in the game. Players who pick a str

I'd personally like to see write least two types of turrets: a minimal tank turret without a body -half the price of a tank with all the how and firepower.... and a super-heavy turret, too big to ever mount on a vehicle.

Da faq....are you Sun Tzu? That has to be the best, most succinct meta explanation ever of an RTS.

its a lot more complicated than rush, turtle and ecospam. I think I would be horrified if someone told me i fitted perfectly in to one of these catergories(especially rush).

He didn't actually describe what the characteristics of each play style was. I may as well have said "daisies counter roses counter lilies counter daisies" and it would have been every bit as informative.

I think that "Rush, turtle and eco" are a bit more informative than flowers...

Edit: @Funkoff can i use that as my quote?

Slightly longer and more Sun Tzu sounding version, then. The basic rule is "Attack where your enemy is weak and you are strong".

That means that if your opponent is turtling (and thus waiting for you to come to him), you ignore him. In his base, he is strong, and you are weak. But in the field, he is weak, so that is where you will be strong. He can't stop you from taking economy because his turrets don't move, and before he's able to strike you, you'll have outnumbered him enough that you can pin him down in his base and slowly bring him down.

It means that if your opponent is spreading his units thin, trying to take as much terrain as possible, he is strong on the map. But if you build many units and keep them close together, you can strike straight at his heart, for his strength is spread around whilst yours is in one place. He is weak in his base, so you must be strong there.

And finally if your opponent is coming straight for your base, that is where you must be stronger. Since the defender is always in the advantage (if you obey the other rules of warfare, anyway) you can be much stronger than he is, and he will break on your walls.


Of course, in a full scale engagement, there's no one strategy to follow. Hardly anyone is fully turtle, or rush, or eco. You must switch between them, and you must adopt different strategies in different locations. But you must always be on the lookout for spots where you and your opponent are weak and strong, so that you can exploit them.

you sir, are a man of great wisdom.

discussion about metagame of a game we only saw 2-3 screenshots are epic

And my hype is rising

Holy sheet. I wish to train under you, master.

So, basically, following from this, the ideal state for a strategy game would be where all the mentioned overall strategies would be valid to a certain extent, but you need to be able to balance all of them as well. Rushing and purely aggressive play wouldn't be the ultimate winner, but a complete turtle would eventually suffer on the offense.

In short, yeah. The game state should force you to adapt to your opponent. If he goes eco, you attack. But if he switches from eco to turtle in response, you should stop attacking and switch to eco instead. Which will prompt him to attack you. Which should switch you to defend.

As long as player skills are tightly matched, that dance can go on for quite a while, with players constantly switching style to react to their opponent.

Then add in a bit of travel time between locations, so you can turtle and eco at the same time in different spots and must commit troops to a specific location instead of just having them be everywhere at once (a major problem with ASF spam in some games is that they remove location as a variable in your strategic process because they can be everywhere at once) and you've got yourself a really good strategy game.