Why remove Unit Wreckage?

moldez · August 15, 2014

hi,
did not have the time to go through all posts above but I just wanted to add my thoughts on this.
Removing the wreckage is a big disappointment at least for me.

There were several other ways to deal with this like:

1. turning the unitwreckage into little areas that just slow units down without blocking them entirely
- maybe only blocking bots to make tanks more usefull in such areas?

2. slowly degrade wreckage to rubble over time
- scars of war would still be visible and metal could still be reclaimed

3. turn the wreckage into a cosmetic thing, no blocking - no reclaim .. but somewhat sad

these are just 3 of many other possible ways to deal with this, but removing this feature is just ....

Moldez

lokiCML · August 15, 2014

ledarsi said: ↑

The reason wreckage has not been significant in PA is simply because it gets destroyed instantly by weapons fire, frequently the same series of shots that killed the unit. As a result there hasn't been much actual wreckage to reclaim.

What should have happened is making wrecks more durable so they persist even after a significant amount of damage. If wreck pathing is a problem, then make wrecks pathable (e.g. rubble). This sacrifices the tactical implications of a large wreckage field, but it's not as big a loss as the economic implications of wreckage.

As a result of the functional lack of wreckage because it is almost always destroyed immediately, Uber has pumped up the output of mexes to make armies bigger.

While it is true that this means you get more units on the field faster, it also makes the economic aspect of the game quite dull. When units are destroyed it takes an equal amount of time to mine that amount of metal again to replace them.

An army of 7,000 metal takes 100 seconds at an income of 70 metal per second (10 mexes) to build in the first place. Without reclaim, every single 7,000 metal army you build at this income rate will take the exact same amount of time to build, even assuming you are spending your income perfectly and directed entirely toward unit production.

With wrecks, not all the metal is lost when units are destroyed. Assuming a wreck is worth 50% of the unit's metal cost, that 7,000 metal army turns into 3,500 metal in wrecks. Rebuilding that same army now takes only 50 seconds; you only need to spend 50 seconds of mining time, plus the 3,500 metal of reclaim.

And actually, that's an extremely conservative estimate. If we suppose you used those units in battle and traded evenly with an enemy army, that battlefield would actually have contained 14,000 metal in units. And, presumably, about 7,000 metal in wrecks. If you reclaimed it all, plus the same level of income, you could have an army of twice the size you had before in the same amount of time- 100 seconds. That is the power of reclaim. Player income has not changed, but the more time passes, the more total metal has been created.

Without reclaim, the only way to get more units faster is to increase your income. That means more mexes, more energy, and upgrading mexes. While it is undoubtedly true that players would constantly build their economy in TA, the amount of time and resource investment needed to grow your economy was much higher.

The biggest difference between TA and PA, in my opinion, is that in Total Annihilation I always felt broke. Zero-K is the same way. Resources are scarce and your decisions about what to spend them on matters.

PA is the opposite- I always feel I have such immense amounts of resources that I have nothing to do with them except constantly make more economy, with which to make even more economy... To be brutally honest, I find it boring.

Most of the game in PA, and most of the actions in the game, are spent building economy and factories as quickly as possible rather than making strategic moves. Instead, whoever has more efficient economic management and faster hand speed will invariably have an extremely large army due to the miracle of exponential growth. And there's just no way to beat such a blob except having a bigger blob. Therefore, faster hands-->more economy-->larger blob is the best possible PA strategy.

Reduced mex yield means more time is needed to create metal. But creating new metal isn't the only way to acquire resources. Reclaim recycles metal that was previously mined. In effect, preserving mining time and reducing the amount of mining time needed to pay for units. As both sides mine and use that metal to build things, that metal stays in play for the rest of the game.

While this arrangement can lead to a slow game start due to limited metal income in the beginning, this is a very straightforward problem to solve by giving players flat income on the commander, or a fixed extra resource bonus in the form of an "egg" or resource boost or facplop as in ZK. Slow early game can be easily accelerated without ruining the game.

But without reclaim, if you want a fast game then you need an economy that grows like crazy. Which in exponential terms basically means you make economy until you're too bored to make any more. And then you attack with your giant blob, and hope your opponent's got slower hands so your force will be a hundred times larger, or he got bored sooner than you did and stopped making economy because he couldn't be bothered any more.
Click to expand...

ledarsi said: ↑

Let me put it another way. Wreckage is essential because it allows you to have a larger amount of stuff in play than your raw metal creation income would otherwise allow. Possibly hugely larger. The reason for this is that the total player's net worth can be much larger than the player's income, by building using metal that was created over the course of the entire game.

In a game without any wreckage, you must wait for mexes to mine all your metal you use to produce units. You must pay the same amount of mex time for every purchase.

Let us assume a constant income, without reclaim. If you wait for a long time, build a large army, and fight a big battle with it against an opponent who also builds a large army, then you are going to have to wait exactly the same amount of time to make an army that is equally large. In effect, time = units. Waiting longer means a larger army, but once it's gone then you're back to square one again.

If both players are making big armies, then fighting, then making another big army, etc. etc., rinse and repeat, the game state doesn't actually advance.

But if you can reclaim then the more metal has been created over the course of a game, the larger your army becomes even if your income stays the same. Your army keeps growing and growing the more metal is mined, even if your income never changes.

Obviously in PA income also increases, but the same effect also applies. Reclaim makes it possible to have much, much larger armies than the player's income and casualties would otherwise allow because metal, once mined, stays in play.

After an hour of both players mining, a very large amount of metal will have been created. If that metal is completely destroyed after a battle, then the players might just be making armies and mutually annihilating them over and over, with nothing changing. But if wrecks can be reclaimed, it is entirely possible players' net worth will be very large, and still growing, even if their income has remained the same for a long time, and even after a lot of activity, big battles, and resource trading.

Without reclaim the player's net worth, representing the total value of all the player's stuff, is tightly correlated to the player's income. With reclaim, it is possible to have relatively low income, but still a very large net worth. The longer the game goes on, the more stuff will be in play, even on constant income.

Eventually someone will have enough net worth to be able to afford a superweapon and destabilize the game. That's how stalemates are eventually broken in this type of game. But without wreckage, you need the raw income to be able to build the superweapon on new metal creation alone, which is much harder than allocating a portion of your very large metal worth to it.

Wreckage is also essential as a negative feedback loop, since the player being attacked can reclaim those units and use reclaim to catch up, while the attacker must wait longer to create more metal using mexes.
Click to expand...

PA definitely needs something like this. This would cause more use for the wrecks and would make the more of a contentious gameplay element. A negative feedback loop in PA's economy would be one of the best things too happen to it.

@ledarsi, I knew there was something that was needed but couldn't articulate it. I absolutely agree with your analysis. Hopefully this gets implemented into PA somewhere down the line sooner than later.

vackillers · August 16, 2014

Little disappointed with the wreckage choice to cut it but I'm sure Uber have their reasons wheither its from a pathing standpoint or one of the causes of the mass slowdowns late game. Hopefully they'll add that back into the game at a later point or perhaps have a check box somewhere in a similar fashion to supcom series where you can enable/disable wreckages.

Why remove Unit Wreckage?

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Why remove Unit Wreckage?

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