Other than its a minuscule part of SOME games and past the first two minutes it isn't at all relevant whereas the suggestion offers improvements for all games and throughout the entire match?
How do you come back from having no res and no resources late game? on a 46 person server? This idea doesn't help anything, as a "comeback" when you don't have res is impossible no matter what. If you are so far pushed back that you've lost every last refinery points, you are going to lose. People have this huge misunderstanding at what it means to come back. Come back isn't coming back from the verge of a loss as in the cv is red, no barracks, no vf, no radar, no anything. Comeback is being pushed back to a disadvantage, then wisely spending your money so that you push the enemy back past the point where they have the advantage. Example would be pushing NF across the bridge and taking that refinery, then the NF cleverly retakes that side of the bridge and recaps the refinery without losing ground in the east. That is a come back. Not NF is down to 1 res point and BE is lining up heavies outside their last base and blocking all exits. Why the hell does a team need to be able to come back from ANY situation? that is totally unfair to the team that has decisively taken control of the map and won the match.
I'm unsure from what part of the suggestion that you think this is trying to give the opportunity to come back from ANY situation. One thing I will add. Make sure the commanders have an easy way to understand the pay-for-later mechanic. Since all RTS games and all the other builds are an up front cost, this idiosyncrasy may startle and confuse people. Confused comms are not happy comms.
I agree that if you are in a situation where you are unable to get together money for a refinary, this change won't save you. but this suggestion is so much deeper than that. it improves the start of the game, and more importantly, generally placing refs in the middle of the game becomes a bit more fluid and easier, and importantly players don't need to wait by refinary nodes for the commander to place them. has anyone actually made a case as to why it'd a good thing to pay for refinaries up front? anyone? when did that become a fun thing in the mod? seems like a bunch of people are afraid to change the status quo.
Some major, but mitigate-able points: 1) changing a res cost to purely time cost 2) confusion of comms if not well shown (no other building uses the mechanic and no other RTS uses this mechanic unless you count capturing a point in CoH or DoW as pure time cost) Also, from a res generation standpoint, there are edge cases that really screw with the system, making it not 1:1. Major ones include low starting res and if the ref is destroyed. For example, assume we start with 0 res and A res/minute (A = generation of 1 ref for simpler math). In the old model, you waited 100/A minutes, dropped, built, and then had 2A generation (but 0 res). In new model you drop, build continue to have A for 100/A minutes, then get 2A (you now have 100 res at the end). During that period, weird subtleties arise, especially in the event of a ref being destroyed. This also illustrates the essentially free res cost for same time cost in this special case. Both took 100/A time, but you have essentially 100 free res in the new model. For instances where you start with enough res to drop immediately, it all evens out. Whether those are "problems" is debatable. It's an uneasy balance, but for now I have switched sides to saying the benefits outweigh the costs, assuming problem 2 is addressed properly. Unfortunately, Empires has a bad track record of easy to pick up GUI, so that could become a major contention point.
this is one of the most decent ideas i have seen on the forums for a LONG time, and you people are seriously just shooting it down with absolutely POINTLESS arguements. All the points summed up are overshadowed by the benefits that this idea could bring to the game... cyclopean: ZOMG I HAS A VF AND YOU HAVE NO REFZ HAR HAR HAR you guys ALL know about this..
some of the main problems with the game are: A) com has to do too much BS so has a hard time focusing on important matters, B) due to chat messages being the way that they are refs dont always get placed when an engi is in position. suggestion 2 (engi placed refs) solves issue B and part of issue A. if an engi is sitting by a res node he can just pull out his calculator and poof in a ref then start to build it up so the ref will get build without the (sometimes) confusing process of spamming the com for a ref. if suggestion 2 is implemented then suggestion 1 ('free' refs) will be needed because no one wants to spend team recourses on an individual, tanks excluded. we now have the problem of res nodes becoming tactically/strategically unvaluable due to the exceedingly low cost (only cost is time to build and time to repay 'loan'). the solution to this is to raise the cost somehow. make it cost calculator ammo to place in addition to the calculator ammo to build so that the total ammo cost to an engineer is 3 bars. this then means that the cost of building a ref is now a whole lot of time for 1 person or a more moderate amount of time spread out over 2-3 people. we now have a cost that is about as signifigant as the current system but allows the com some freedom of where to devote his/her attention. plus, if you give a point to the engi who placed it after the ref actually starts to produce then you have an individual, as well as a team, incentive to defend the res node for at least the amount of time it would have taken to be profitable with the current ref system.
I just realized something. The 'loan' system essentially switches this to the control point capture resource model. If the Engi class can also drop on their own, even more so. The only cost is time to generate more resources. There's nothing inherently wrong with this change, just thought it should be noted.
Early rushes are supposed to hinder the enemy not guarentee the win for the whole game. Also you don't want one team building up momentum and become unstoppable, having a start up time gives the defenders more of an opportunity to rebound. Ever heard of musical refineries? If there is a start up time involved, then there would be more incentive for a team to stick around until their ref is up. Right now if you capture a ref here, the enemy just destroyed your ref and replaced it over there, always a continuous cycle. Games that have flag capture points (the Battlefield games) suffer from this. When you hoof it across the map to get that flag, the flag you just left was already taken. I like the idea. One time we nearly lost a match in cycleopean because the idiot comm used up the money before we got a ref. I basically saved the teams ass because I said "why don't we sell the barracks?" Lo and behold, we scavenged enough money to build a ref and then replace the barracks. We lucked out there, but most other games aren't like that.
Ironically, I believe this system would actually promote the "musical refineries" system. Why? Because refineries are FREE. There is absolutely no initial cost, and thus no incentive except for the time spent building the refinery. However, in the old model, the damage was perhaps less noticeable except to the careful RTS player. Typically people forget to take into account the drop cost and the time required to recover it and actually produce tangible resources. So, even with this subtle negative reinforcement to drop and PROTECT refineries, we have people dropping, leaving, and letting them die a fiery death. What makes you sure that converting this to a purely time cost will help solve that problem? In the idea's own defense, there will be a much more tangible breaking even point since instead of mentally tracking in time a refinery's lifetime you have something that tells you it's not producing yet, but from a purely logistic point of view I think the change would promote, not fix, your problem. Instead of defending your existing nodes, it becomes a cap everything everywhere ASAP war.
^ it would allert people to the cost of a ref so it can be assumed people will be more observant about keeping it up
And the cost of 100 res to drop initially isn't sufficient? That's a pretty distinct cost, especially in the early game. The only advantage is a noticeable breaking even point instead of mental calculations. However, since the new model doesn't even put you in debt, instead of a break even point it's a time waster versus making money breaking even point. If anything, from a simple perspective it might help (since the transition is more obvious) but from a higher strategy view it's a weakened balance point. It's not "wasted time" if you're elsewhere blowing up their res, just propagating the "musical refinery" syndrome. We would hope in either model people wise up and realize defending from their attack and THEN attacking the enemy means the enemy loses a ref and you don't instead of the problem of "two ships passing in the night". So, no, this switch, for all its merits, will probably not fix that particular problem. That being said, I wouldn't mind the switch. It's just that you'll have to accept this alteration of the dynamics of the system.
You made many valid points, however, there was a "start up" time to the refs. I would think it would make sense for the ref to be easily destroyed in this small window of time, thus meaning that people have to stick around and watch it. This slows down the progression between points for either team. The current model allows for 5 people to build the ref in seconds, in full working condition, which then means they can move to the next point.
So, you mean that during the startup time the ref should also be more vulnerable to attacks, thus creating a reason to stick around. After the start up period it gains more health, and thus can survive. Not a bad change, and opens up an interesting strategy for ninja-ing refineries and lets refineries die quickly if they were dropped in a highly contested area. The thing is that "musical refineries" isn't the refinery's fault. People leave refineries because they think it's safe or they're impatient to get to the front lines. Converting the res cost into a time cost weakens the reinforcement to defend refineries. Perhaps making them more vulnerable will cause people to realize the insecurity of the refinery, but at the same time without a cost except for time people may feel less inclined to care in the first place. Of course, this is all theoretical. In the end I'm assuming people won't realize the true cost since they appear to not realize the true cost now. You're arguing that hopefully people will realize the time cost due to the timer (but only the comm sees the timer, everyone sees the res drop or has had to wait for the 100 res while standing next to a res point. maybe timer should be other players seen as well somehow), and if they don't they're not as penalized since they didn't pay up front.
new alternative: make it a squad power available to all squad leaders regardless of class, keep the upfront 100 res cost, and make it 3 times more squad points than the current highest cost squad skill. in the early game nothing changes, but in the mid-late game you dont need to spam the console or distract the com from other activities. plus it promotes squad teamwork and would help to cut back on the current problem of stockpiling squad points for mass revive in a stalemate and mass arty call at end game by giving some thng useful for squad points to be spent on
