Currently the game lacks support for strategic decisions by a commander. Most decisions don't influence the end game because the end game is largely about controlling territory to get more resources. Upgradable refineries. Refineries can be upgraded, by a commander, to be better. Each upgrade improves output by 1.5x for the refinery. First Upgrade: Costs 400 and increases output to 1.5 res per second. Second Upgrade: Costs 600 and increases output to 2.25 res per second. An upgrade would have its costs recouped in about 13 minutes of existing. Just long enough that it is likely to occur, but it is reasonable that it will not. It gives commanders the ability to fortify a region at the cost of immediate power and would give good reasons for players to defend the well established home region. It would even give parties that somehow managed to break through enemy lines ideal targets to strike in order to weaken the enemy.
Upgradeable resources works in games like Supcom because you need the increased resources to match the exponential increase in consumption from additional tiers of technology. Empires consumption is pretty much fixed. You'll go from 500 res light tanks/afvs during which you'll be researching, to 1000 res heavy tanks after which researching is discretionary. This is not counting plain armor tanks or composite heavies, which are at less than practical extremes, but still within parameters. The increased cost of heavy tanks is also essential for attrition. Not to mention that refinery output is multiplied by player count, whereas building cost is not, so refineries can and will pay themselves off very quickly in larger games.
This has been suggested and discussed before, I recommend searching for that thread and continuing there.
I believe you are referring to an incredibly vague suggestion that included several other similar suggestions and was not actually discussed in any detail at the time (though I doubt that to really ever occur). Almost always it is suggested as a sort of additional research option, rather than something the commander is always capable of doing. Admittedly, there exist several problems: 1: Resources are scaled based on players, currently 2: Current normal gameplay has a fixed spending cycle, so this would often become a clearly good or bad idea. That said, if you were to, in theory, tone down the scaling of money and provide infantry with more to do during very large games, the problems for the most part are gone. That said, even in the case that refineries created twice as much, it would still be several minutes before profits were made.
i like the idea about upgradable refineries, but with the increased reasorse income... wouldn't building and stuff have to cost more?... or a reduced amount of refnodes on the map?
No, as it would be a tactical decision you could make (let's ignore the fact that res is multiplied by player number for now)
I don't see what it would add. Basically you'd just upgrade your refs in order starting from the base if you were far enough ahead to have money to waste, although in that instance you would probably win before they paid themselves back.
and i thought you'd like that. in the end you could just pump money in your base refs - lets assume that you could upgrade it so that for 100 res it outputs as much as an additional ref - and the area between bases would lose all their importance. not saying that it should be +100% for 100res, that would be absurd, but basically this would work in your direction. (unless it wasnt you who wanted linear maps with unimportant centers)
If that's all you're going to do though there are far easier ways of doing it, like giving each team one super ref they can place in their main base, or cutting all ref output massively and giving each team a large automatic income. This way is a very obfusticated route to that end. Hooray for pointless micromanagement, truly something empires is lacking at the moment.
i dont say that this could archieved differently - i only wanted to show you that its not the complete opposite of your own suggestion
I support this suggestion but fixed cost for the upgrade won't work because there is a refinery output multiplier depending on the number of players. Maybe give the upgrades for free, but each upgrade will take some minutes and in this time the output is zero or reduced. Also upgraded refineries should have different models to make them more interesting to defend and destroy. In my opinion refineries are the most important buildings on commander maps, and because of this adding some more tactical decision would be great.
Oh I know that, but I only support ideas which not only make sense but are also the most efficient method of achieving the goal.
I'll give a real great reason why I don't want this: I don't like it. This gives the winning team a greater edge + it's all just.. plain.. Boring.
Odd, the entire purpose of this was to give the losing team a greater advantage. I always find it odd that everyone will assume that if something is an improvement for one team it is an improvement for the winning team more. The entire point of this is to provide high-value targets, because the highest value targets right now are their rax and factory. They cost less than a tank and are easily replaced. Their only significance is that they slow down the enemies current output, rather than their long-term output. Losing teams generally have a smaller area to defend, and unless the game involves an unusually large number of choke-points, they can still get out to attack the enemy on occasion. Honestly, I don't like how res scales with players right now. It means in huge games that you have a vast excess of resources, and it means in small games you are screwed if you lose a tank. What it does most is devalue research, because it already costs so little. This is just making me think here, what if vehicle costs scaled down, rather than incoming scaling up?
Personally, I see it as a better gameplay opportunity for engineers, not the commanders. If engineers can upgrade the refineries through a bit of work, a small minigame perhaps - maybe make it co-op so multiple engies can upgrade the refinery multiple levels simultaneously. Would encourage defensive positions on ref nodes rather than attacking on the battlefield and losing refs randomly due to no-one helping defend them.
or put in a max ref # at 5 per team and make it so upgrading a ref removes .5 of your max ref number and increases it's production 25%. So it's a viable solution when losing ground but not a wining strategy. so lvl 1 :cost 1 ref point and give 100%res lvl 2 :cost1.5 ref points and gives 125%res lvl 3 :cost 2 ref points and gives 150% res and ref's can be un upgraded.
Already suggested, has my support, but not with those numbers. Max upgraded refs should only produce 1.5x the original amount at most (Vessboy's system also could work). There needs to be incentive to capture new ones, it's just that upgrading your safer ones can give you a nice boost assuming you hold them long enough. Basically, even if you control less of the map, you're not at quite the same disadvantage as long as you've invested in upgraded refs. However, these won't replace capturing new ones and make each ref more important, forcing you to invest more in defending them. Remember, the point of control point economies are to encourage map control by placing tangible resources in the field.
