Wages may be a problem on high resource maps. I'm not a fan of wages at all with the way they are. Typically you would have something that would waste your resources, like research and thus I can understand why wages were justified. But now that research is free, wages are literally a bonus for whoring in the game. I don't know the original intent of wages but I always thought it was to buffer the loss of resources you get from research, or at least that is how I originally viewed it when it was implemented in the game (my timeline of what got implemented may be screwed up)
Two things used to drain large amounts of res; tanks and research. Wages were the way of mitigating the resource drain on the team by a single player, so that getting a tank wouldn't immediately cripple the commander's ability to research (and to a lesser extent place buildings) and so that other players could still get tanks when the res tank was low. Actually, thinking about it now, since research doesn't cost much money, the average affect of wages is to reduce vehicle costs by about 150-300 res. So Tier 1 vehicles are effectively "free", Tier 2 vehicles are around 200-300 res, and Tier 3 vehicles are 500 res or so. But again, this is what I mean by the game not being looked at with the new changed systems. Research being free changed a flip tonne of the game, and really decoupled the whole thing from resources, which again, are the only real measure of performance in the game.
I know Trickster has always had issues with this idea but there is truly 1 solution. Balance by price and research time. Make 1 engine,1 armor,1 Missile and 1 Cannon over powered, Offset this by price per weapon + price for research + research time. Also keep them in separate trees. //Ideally this setup would crush every thing in it's path. But price + price + time would make it almost impossible for any team to achieve this full setup in a normal game. Now pick the next set. 1 engine,1 armor,1 Missile and 1 Cannon Make them slightly less over powered with lower price and time. Then you could also label items to make it easier for new players. engine name / tier 1 vs engine name / tier 2 New people would kind of know that hey tier 2 must be better then tier 1. So as you research better items newer players will use them.
Balancing by research time and cost doesn't work in pub games where no one gives a shit about team res. Just look at compo since before it was made cheap.
That was because if you researched anything besides compo then you was basically greifing your team. Compo was so OP.
The problem with costs for research - even though I think it's pretty necessary, is it makes it really easy for the team to be screwed over. Either by negligence, ignorance, or malice. I wanted a point system (derived from res intake, but separate) to make the best of both worlds, but it might be a while for that idea to take (or there might be things wrong with it). The problem with loading up costs on the tank side is that inevitably, tanks will take whatever will make them effective, and damn the costs. Most of our costs have been based around armour, though - which increases with # of plate. If we moved most of the costs to be centred around weapons instead (like you were buying a gun at an armoury), it could be workable. We usually balance things mainly around armour because that dictates how much punishment your tank can take. We set chassis costs at a particular level and then top them off with armour. If we balance around how dangerous the tank is instead, rather than how tough it is (which varies because of repairs and most especially engineer repairing), things would probably be completely different.
That's basically one of the things I did with my own research changes (besides faction research). There are two versions of regen, just as you described. I think I could do the same for reflective, and perhaps even absorbant.
It became less of a grief when players learned how to keep their tank alive, then it really was straight up better than anything. Even then though that's mainly from 2.4ish, I can't say what it was like in earlier patches when armors were more, but when compo was 25 which was like 10 more than the average it really only resulted in about an extra 200 res for a heavy, something like around 15% more than an average heavy. It wasn't much at all.
How long ago was that? 2.24 was when armors had their costs changed to now. 2.2 has compo at 38, for reference regen is 20 though all armors had more variance in cost. So we had nearly the same armor costs for the past 6 years.
I think you may be remembering versions incorrectly, compo was definitely 75 per plate for a long time.
Straight from the news thread. Also right from 2.24 scripts. Code: "Mechanical Eng 1" { "Name" "Composite" "Description" "Composite armor consists of layers of steel, ceramic, and plastic honeycomb, and it's designed to offer protection from almost all types of projectiles equally well." "Icon" "vehicles/gui/armor/armor_small" "HUD Icon" "" "Size" "1" "Type" "0" "Weight" "10" // was 10 (5 light 10 medium 15 heavy) "Cost" "25" // was 40 "Research" "Composite Armor" "Health" "96" // "Regeneration" "0" "Angle Modifier" "0" // was 0 "Speed To Damage Modifier" "0.005" "Damage Modifier" "0.85" "Damage To Heat Absorbed" "0.025" "Bioweapon Damage Modifier" "1" "Sound Impact" "" "Sound Repair" "" //Resists "GeneralPhysicsResist" "0.0" //General Physics Tree Damage "GeneralChemistryResist " "0.0" //General Chemistry Tree Damage "GeneralMechanicalResist" "0.0" //General Mechanic Tree Damage "GeneralElectricResist" "0.0" //General Electric Tree Damage "GeneralBiologicalResist" "0.0" //General Biological Tree Damage "KineticResist" "0.0" //Railguns, Standard Cannons, Anything that is just force "ExplosiveResist" "0.0" //HE, Nukes, anything that explodes "BioResist" "0.0" //Has the bio effect "BulletResist" "1" //Non Armor damaging "APBulletResist" "0.0" //Armor Damaging "BulletExplosiveResist" "0.0" //Bullets that Explode "MissileResist" "0.0" //Generic Missle type of damage "MissileExplosiveResist" "0.0" //Explosive type. "MissileBioResist" "0.0" //Bio Missiles. Different then Bio? "KineticArtResist" "0.0" //Kinetic Artillery "ExplosiveArtResist" "0.0" //Explosive Artillery "BioArtResist" "0.0" //Bio Artillery "AircraftMissileResist" "0.0" // Aircraft Missiles "AircraftGroundMissleResist" "0.0" // Aircraft Missiles to hit ground targets "AircraftBulletResist" "0.0" //Aircraft to Aircraft bullets "AircraftAPBulletResist" "0.0" //Aircraft Bullets to hit ground targets "AircraftBombResist" "0.0" //Bombs "AircraftBombBioResist" "0.0" //Bio Bombs? "InfantryGrenadeResist" "0.0" //Player Thrown Grenades "InfantryMineResist" "0.0" //Player Tossed Mines "InfantryMissileResist" "0.0" //Gren Missles "InfantryMortarResist" "0.0" //Gren Mortars "InfantryStickyResist" "0.0" //Sticky Grenades "InfantrySeismicResist" "0.95" //Siesmic Grenades "InfantryBulletResist" "1" //Just In Case "ExtraType1Resist" "0.95" //Building Damage "ExtraType2Resist" "0.0" //Again "ExtraType3Resist" "0.0" //and a third } This is from 2.2 for reference. Code: "Mechanical Eng 1" { "Name" "Composite" "Description" "Composite armor consists of layers of steel, ceramic, and plastic honeycomb, and it's designed to offer protection from almost all types of projectiles equally well." "Icon" "vehicles/gui/armor/armor_small" "HUD Icon" "" "Size" "1" "Type" "0" "Weight" "10" // was 10 (5 light 10 medium 15 heavy) "Cost" "38" // was 40 "Research" "Composite Armor" "Health" "80" // was 70 after observing reactive with its 0.3 modifier giving it effectivly 120+ HP, an armor should be like this in the game. "Regeneration" "0" // "Angle Modifier" "0" // was 0 "Speed To Damage Modifier" "0.005" // "Damage Modifier" "0.85" // "Damage To Heat Absorbed" "0.025" // "Bioweapon Damage Modifier" "1" // "Sound Impact" "" "Sound Repair" "" }
Yes which is where ikalx was coming from. Lots of armors costed more, this meant more expensive tanks and thus less tanks overall. I kinda wonder if tanks should have a simple flat cost so it doesn't matter what weapons or armor you put on them. Currently, and possibly in the past, there's a direct correlation between weight and cost, for the most part if you try maxing out a tank weight wise which everyone does it means there isn't a ton of difference between tanks. As we learned in past experiences you can't really balance by cost either, if it's the most effective thing people will get it(compo) or if it has no real redeeming factors expect cost people still won't bother with it.(Budget.) The same kinda holds true to weapons as well, there isn't much difference between weight and cost, I think the anti tank mgs are the only thing that's actually costly compared to weight. So it's the same thing, no one's gonna bother not getting a weapon if they have the weight for it, they don't care about costs. If a tank should cost 1500 or 2000 res, then might as well make it happen. Still this is just simplifying something no one cares about and never plan with and people will complain about removing a feature that does nearly nothing. I do advocate more expensive tanks though, I really don't like late game being tank or bust, even mid game can feel like that. Depending on map I feel like tanks should make somewhere between 25-40% at most, but I rather enjoy the infantry game so I may be biased.
