Fixing the "Slippery slope"

Give apc spawns back, or make them research faster and cheaper.


Also give the commander the choice of how much his rax will be, currently 400 he gets 100% hp on it when fully constructed but if he decides to get it for 200 the rax will have 50% hp when constructed and so on.
It still takes 100 energy to, the bar will still be full but the rax takes more damage.

Have i made this clear enough

 

I'm not a complete fan, but I like the basic idea.

One key element is well designed maps. Since Empires is using a territory-refinery model, there needs to be a risk for expansion. Usually this is in the form of a larger battle line that you have to defend and extending too far leaves you vulnerable to flanking. This is why games like Dawn of War spawn you in the corners of the map, the center line is the widest region and thus easily contestable. As you withdraw, you don't have to defend as much, but eventually if one side can push far enough they can contain their opponent and win.

Natural Selection's maps make use of having at least 2 routes to reach every point on the map. Sure one way may take longer, but you can still get there and are not completely blocked at a single chokepoint. This results in less take-and-hold and fortify up gamplay and forces you to remain fluid. This also mean the more territory you take, as in DoW, you have more risk since you have to protect more territory.

DotA utilizes terrain advantage. The further you push into the enemy's region, you're exposing yourself to their movement. So, a push down a lane to try and take down the next tower not only pits you against extra firepower (the tower) but the enemy is able to reach you faster (closer to their base) and typically has a better position because they can flank you out from the woods. However, taking down a tower gives your team a nice boost in cash, so there's incentive to push down the enemy towers.


Of course, the gain of pushing is greater resource flow. So, pushing and being able to overcome the risk and holding that extra territory should be rewarded. That is why I'm not a complete fan of Chris' idea because he wants a completely LINEAR map. I say move the precious resource generators a little further from the middle of the map but also add in risk to expansion beyond the 50/50 line. Make it easy for the defenders to mobilize and counter attack instead of simply having 2 effectively linear fronts with a few chokepoints.

 

It kind of sounds like slaughtered....

 

If you mean slaughtered is a horrid map, I agree.

The best map right now, imo, is mvalley. The only problem is the mad dash for the top of the map to secure both res nodes. Otherwise is has great use of multiple paths and if you over extend you leave your base very vulnerable.

 

But slaughtered fits your description perfectly.
More so than mvalley.
So if what you're saying is right,why is mvalley better than slaughtered?

 

If memory serves, Slaughtered = canyon map of doom. It's almost purely linear due to the wall spam over the river. It has only 2 major chokepoints (both sides of the river). You have nearly zero mobility for flanking. The only thing it does right is not having res in the highly contested regions (namely S-Bend).

Granted, around each starting base there are multiple paths, but they all funnel eventually to the river banks.



Mvalley has 2 ways to get around the center region, the higher ground with the bridges and the lower valley. It has all its res nodes along the outer rim. You have both the dam and the far north as viable major battles for res, and two different types of wars (one infantry, one vehicular). There are no major chokepoints on the map since every major region can be accessed in at least 2 different directions by vehicles, most from 3 points. The central hub provides easy access to all points, but can be avoided by a quick jaunt in the valley region. Granted, there needs to be more points to get from the valley back up to the upper region.

My major complaint is the use of double res in two spots of the map, both the north and the dam. Combat should be more spread out over the map. Also, the maneuverability of the wooden bridges leaves much to be desired.

 

I take it you have never read anything Chris has ever written? Basicly Chris want Empires to remove commadner and strategy and turn it to TF2 with tanks.

 

I hate TF2.

I want it to be empires minus all the things that usually go tits up and break the game.

So I want empires shooting, empires tanking, empires varied spawn points, empires maps, and empires hilarity, I don't want empires noob commanders, empires half hour losing games, empires 'we have customisable tanks but you only get one thing to put on them because we didn't research anything else', or empires 'we made a mistake in the first five minutes so the rest of the game will suck'.

 

I discussed a few ideas with some guys once. The ones I can recall are:

* Ability to recycle vehicle carcasses for res. Enemy carcasses would be worth more than your own. It wouldn't be a shitty 10% but something like 80%, something tangible and worthwhile. Hell, it could even be 150% if you want a driving factor for killing vehicles.
Why?: Because a failed rush would mean that the team that succesfully defended gets a nice boost and gets to do its own rush / build up its defense or base. It extends a welcome hand to crippled defenders and allows them to have fun with tanks aswell.

* The more refs you own, the less each next one will produce. This was discussed on the forum aswell, and everyone liked it in general if you put caps on the minimal res output.
Why?: This idea is mainly to prevent a team with a slight skill / experience advantage to completely wipe out the other team by taking the critical refs in the map and then just battering the losing team until they either ragequit or lose. The winning team will slowly but surely lose momentum if they don't pay attention to their res flow, and the losing team will be less at an advantage resource-wise, allowing for a longer midgame and more tank fighting.

* Some buildings become more expensive the more you place of them. For example, first rax would cost 100 res, the second 150, the third 225, the fourth 325, etc.
Why?: This also slows down the momentum of a winning team without imposing hard barriers; shit just gets more expensive. I prefer this design over upkeep (see below) because it keeps it simple to understand, but is effective in keeping off building spam.

* Upkeep. For every tank / building / unit / Daruck you have, you have to pay a certain amount of resources every second. I personally don't like this, as it's a pure RTS-implementation, and would take away from the fun factor of players. Imagine: The comm wants to do a rush, but only four tanks are allowed, even though there are enough resources for seven. The reason only four can be built? Because they're really good and have a very high upkeep. RTS-wise, this makes sense, but down on the ground, your troops will be pretty damn pissed.

 

Possibly, giving people on the back foot cash for defending successfully is a nice idea, but it would also give cash for people who wipe out defender's tanks, so you might as well just give everyone more cash.

If you added a territory system and only gave rewards when you killed people in your own territory, that might work, but that's rather a lot of effort for one thing.

What we need is for one ref to not be the difference between victory and loss, people should get res right up until they lose their base.

How about having all res nodes be pissweak, except you can place one 'super ref' which extracts at much higher speed? So wherever your main base is, that's where you get most of your income from, otherwise it's going to cause problems, because the order you drop refs in will determine which are most valuable, either that or you'll need to change the value of all refs every time one is placed which could be a little confusing.

I think just a way of saying 'this is our main base so this is where our res comes from' is best. Either a structure you can only place one of which generates lots of res, like a super ref or something, or making the comm boost ref output, either of those would work. You could make the comm generate resources but that is a bit dodgy I think, it should be a structure which can't move around and which you have to defend, something which solidifies a single area as 'main base'.

You could do it, but I don't know that it would help much, it'd just make APCs more powerful. Something which slows down the expansion rate might be a good idea, but making things expensive isn't the answer I don't think, because winning teams have more cash.

What you said, also I don't think it would help, because it still means the winning team fields more stuff than the losers.

 

I think the idea could work really well.

The key is to not implement it on a per-ref dropped basis. That is, don't explicitly bind the generation rate to the node dropped. So, if you have 3 refineries and lose one, it doesn't matter which was dropped first or which one gets destroyed first. You still generate the same resources.


I outlined a way to properly do this in another thread while also taking into account variable res node generation. Mappers have the power to make certain nodes produce more res, so this has to be taken into account.

The best way is to think of the number of refineries and the nodes capped as a pool. So, say we have 5 refineries placed capping several 1 res/sec and one 2 res/sec node. The algorithm automatically assigns resource generation to optimize payout.

So, the 2 res/sec node gets 100% exploitation, even if it was dropped last. The remaining 4 nodes get the progressively lower generation, also independent of drop order.

If the team then caps a 3 res/sec node, it shifts that one to 100% efficiency, the 2 res/sec gets the next best, and so on.


This simplifies things so you don't have to worry about which ref was placed in what order, only that 1) adding more refs will decrease efficiency for a ref somewhere and 2) some nodes may produce more. We still maintain that more refs = diminishing returns and allow mappers to make certain nodes more important.



Beyond that, let the mappers decide. I would recommend that the more contested areas have less payout than the ones closer to the base to help provide equilibrium, but perhaps the mappers want a really exposed node in the middle with a better payout, creating a forced unstable equilbrium? As long as there are peripheral nodes that can help make up for it (i.e. far away from middle node), we should be fine.

 

Give half the res with refinerys the rest with squadpoints, cause the
losing aka defending team usually gets more squadpoints than the winning
team.

 

It has an obvious problem.

In order to end up defending you have to have died a lot more than the enemy.

Therefore they have a giant cash bonus and you don't.

 

Someone once suggested that additional refineries should have a decreased yield. With this, refwhoring isn't as vital to winning the game while allowing for more forgiving game mechanics.

 

agreed. A boost like this can allow reversals much more frequently.

not sure i completely understand this idea. But if you mean that both teams will get about = resources then this could be tricky as it would lose the impulse to go get the damn ref.

Agreed whole-heartedly.

I'm do not care for this idea much. If it helps make reversals more common then go ahead but if Empires were my mod (in some crazy other dimension) i wouldn't add it.

 

Res-for-kills (i.e. RFK) was done in Natural Selection and gives even more benefit to players that are in combat roles.

This also gives an advantage to the people that are killing people, which aren't necessarily defenders. By "winning" engagements you gain more res which leads into more kills/winning engagements.

 

I echo what Chris said; maps are too much focused around resouce points.