I've been thinking about this, particularly when someone mentioned in another thread how some research is broken into two parts just so people can afford to start them at a reasonable time. Why not change research so that instead of paying a large lump sum upfront, you steadily pay for it as it progresses? It could come out of income, generally (though if your income isn't high enough it'd come out of your accumulated res); if you hit zero res, or if you reach the end of the allocated time without enough money having gone into it, then the research is stalled until you have enough res to pay for the rest. There could also be a 'cancel' button that cancels your current research and refunds the res invested in it so far, for emergencies. Basically, because of the VF, Empires normally has more people than just the comm spending res. The current system is clunky; it requires that the comm often suspend construction in the VF in order to save up enough to start research. It sometimes forces the comm to micromanage res in order to continue research, and sets up conflicts between them and their team. If this was a 'normal' RTS, the current system would be fine. But in general, I think that putting the comm in a position where they have to restrict vehicle construction is a bad idea. This system would avoid that by allowing most research to be paid out of income; players wouldn't get to build any more vehicles than they can now, but the comm wouldn't have to micromanage restricting/unrestricting to handle it. It would also make it difficult or impossible for someone (whether a noob or a griefer) to waste so much res that research is interfered with -- at worst, it'd get delayed briefly, but with research getting paid out of income, it would be much harder to cause problems. This would also allow for some of the otherwise pointless 'two-stage' research items to be combined as suggested in another thread -- right now, those things are kinda traps for new comms, and increase the research tree learning curve to no real benefit.
i suggest that when we press the research item, 2 icons appear: one thats up front, and one that is over time (and displays res/sec cost). So rich comms dont have to worry about it. and frankly, i prefer up-front, though your idea deserves sme merit.
If this method is possible then do it. It's how research is handled in Homeworld, and it works nicely there.
Hmm. How about this? Make it so you can start a research item even if you don't have enough money. When you do, you pay as much as you can (in other words, all your money), and continue to pay using your income until it's completely paid for. If you do have enough to pay upfront, then you do so, just like now. That would be more straightforward. Of course, your team would be stuck at 0 res and unable to earn more until you're done paying, but that's no different than the "rax/ref vs research" decision comms have now (when it comes up, anyway), and certainly better than having to micromanage your VF to keep people from wasting res you want to spend on research. Alternatively, you could pay using only a portion of your income, so you're not stuck at 0 res... but in that case it might be best to just stick with the 'pay now / pay slowly' options. Basically, this would make it so the comm's research decisions would have 'first dibs' on any money the team earns, since they tend to be more important in the long run.
Yeah not payed debts and securities build out of debts are the reason for the global regression that we have now. Do you want that happen in empires too? I can see it, oh I pay my rails with a bet that I will win the race to the refinery, that financial product is totaly secure its based on a assurance that pays out if we destroy more tanks than we lose.
Ive had enough of all these vehicle factory owning commanders thinking they can just go ask the government for resources when they are in trouble! normal troops have to work for there points too!!!
:D You want those shiny H.I.T. missiles for your team but only have on refinary left? Just take a mortgage on your entire base and your dreams will* come true! *might not I like that suggestion, it would speed up things especially at the beginning of a game.
I don't think this will work very well, you're in a team where everyone can spend money, there is absolutely no guarantee you can get a unanimous vote on how to spend your resources, it's particularly impractical for pub games, apart from that, it's not very straight forward. Homeworld, the example mentioned, is one player per faction, whether you are in a team or not, everyone has full control over their own resource management, this is simply not the case for empiresmod unless vehicle creation is restricted, in which case this might be a nice alternative, however, still not one that has a big effect on anything, other than being a complication on a very specific part of the game, which IMO wouldn't be worth it. Research is currently split up, it's straight forward and doesn't give you options where it is unclear what the trade off is.
There is a slight problem with this. When it is paid over time, the refinery res income might not be fast enough to cover the expenses. So if someone buys a vehicle, and you have 3 res remaining, it'll take a hella long time to complete research, and half your team will be in base asking for vehicles. I like this idea, but I suggest implementing a minimum res limit, so once the res hits that low mark, the research will pause, and continue after there is more than, say 500 res. Or, give the commander ability to pause research.
Yeah bitterjesus, the fact that res income is dependent on individual mappers would make this problematic. But you're idea of having a minimum res limit to continue research is the same thing as hitting zero and waiting for ref income every second. Maybe if there were a way in the code to sync the res income to research cost, though I doubt there is. But then if you were to balance income and costs exactly, at say 200 res, it'd have the same effect as restricting vehicles anyway. Maybe just a "Pay 1/4th" option would work well enough at cutting up the initial cost, but it'd be a nightmare to keep track of as commander. (look im mayama)
this can also work in a fashion where you don't have to micro your research, as long as your radar stays up you can research just as fast as the guy who can click through the research interface quickly
What about paying half at the start and the other half over the duration of the research. Ideally, the com should have a check box for how they want to pay for research: up front, 50/50, over time. The downside to this is more stuff to learn as com.
I like this "pay over time" idea. I would like to see a up and down side to each implementation of it tho. Up Front Payment: + Research gets done 10% faster. - Costs 20% more. Description: You just want your research fast, you don't care about the cost. 50% Upfront Rest Over Time: (Quality Research) Normal Research Times/cost. Description: Quality research done on time and on cost. Pay As you Go: + 10% Cheaper - 10% Longer Research Time Description: Low on cash? Higher Less scientists to do R&D.
