Yes, but control point economies generally mean the team with the initial advantage will eventually win when combat advantage is determined mostly by who can field the most tanks. Additionally, adding two levels of commitment to the upgrades means you can choose how much risk you want to put in. Holding a 1100 res target for 13 minutes is very risky. Holding a 500 res target for 13 minutes is far less risky. Additionally, only being able to get 1.5x from a given refinery means that the rewards and risks would be too small to matter during a long game. By granting 2 levels of upgrade it creates real targets that will genuinely heavily damage the enemy if destroyed. I like this system because it means you can choose if you want to have targets like that behind your lines.
If you have the advantage it is going to make it both less risky, because losses mean less, and easier to defend, because you'll have more tanks. So it doesn't change the current system in any way.
It's risky while it hasn't paid off its debt to your team. During that time you're going to have less tanks and will really have to defend it to get your money's worth. It also means that you're going to have to divert manpower to protect the thing, which easily balances out any extra money you may have gained from it in any short term. It only takes an engineer or two and a jeep to take out a ref unless you pull some men off the front line to stop them. In any case, having a risk like that needs a reward that can be worth it, but is not too powerful. I don't see a problem with the concept of upgradable refs, it's just in the amount of risk->reward that it could be unbalanced. It's been a while since I posted on these forums last, guess I gotta start somewhere again.
No, you'll still have more tanks than the enemy, because you'll have more income than them even after you buy the refinery. Winning teams have a substantial income bonus over the opposition, it's what lets them build bases around their captured refs and still continue to win.
Let's assume the teams are even, they have the same number of refs, same number of tanks, same number of players. If you upgrade the ref once, 600 res is an AFV, and if the ref was a normal 1x income ref, then that means you will be in a negative net resource gain until you pay off the price of that ref. Example: - You start with 1000 res and three refs producing 2 res a second each, for a total of 6 res a second. - You upgrade one ref for 150% income at the cost of 600 res. You are now down to 400 res and your income now becomes 7/s - In 1 minute, your res stockpile will be at 820, but it would have been at 1360 without the upgrade, thus you could have bought more tanks without upgrading. - At 5 minutes your res stockpile will be at 2500, but would have been at 2800 without the upgrade, so you're still in a net loss of total resources available to be put towards tanks and research. - It takes until the ten minute mark before they both catch up at 4800 res, so until this point, you are down in res rather than up. These are arbitrary numbers, in a real game the amount of res would likely be scaled up, so you might be out for more than just one AFV's worth. Also, costing 600 res and increasing income by 150% can be changed for balance, so I don't want to hear any arguments that it isn't enough of a res loss to make a difference. This could make a winning team have a disadvantage because the losing team could pool their resources and buy tanks while the winning team is busy consolidating their gains by upgrading refineries, the losing team would have the chance to use their temporarily superior numbers of tanks, (unless of course the winning team is already so far ahead they can spend the res to upgrade and still have enough for tanks, in which case I think the losing team would be pretty damn screwed already with or without upgradable refs) they can go and take ground and cut off income from the team that upgraded, especially if they can take out the upgraded refs, making it even harder to recoup their lost res. Now, I personally think that the multiplier that affects resource income based off of players should also affect the cost of purchasing the upgrade. If your ref is making 6 res a second compared to 2, but still costs 600 to upgrade, you just made it give you three times the increase in income for the same price, not a good balance in my opinion.
Or you could simply assume 600 res, divided by 1 res/second, is 600 seconds or 10 minutes. The other refs and starting resources don't alter that equation. That would probably be assuming 12-23 players on a normal refinery. A 24 player game with a 2x ref would produce a 4 res/s refinery. 50% of that pays off a 600 res upgrade in 5 minutes, or less time than it takes to research an armor and engine after you have a radar.
You don't take into account the fact that both teams will be churning out tanks and technology constantly, which means any resources they have above that would be a float, and there would be nothing better to spend it on. The winning team would have more floating resources than the losing team, therefore they would be upgrading more refs than the losing team, and gaining more of an advantage, it's not like upgrading the refs shuts them off for a while, the winning team still has more res income than the losing team for the duration of the payoff time. If it involves resource expenditure and the losing team can do it, the winning team can do it more, and if the resource expenditure confers an advantage, that means the winning team will benefit more than the losing team because the winning team will be spending more and getting more as a result. The only possible use for this is if you know you're going to lose and you spend all your starting cash on res upgrades rather than raxes, in which case the enemy still has more map control than you even if you have even resource incomes, they're still winning. If it costs 600 res and has a long payout time it isn't going to be bought by someone tight on cash because in the payout time they would probably lose the game, if it costs less than that and has a shorter payout time then that exacerbates the issue of winning team dominance, because it gives less reason not to do it and less risk if it fails.
@ Demented: I put it in a form that most non-mathmaticians can look at and understand easily to better get my point across. As I said in my post above, I'd prefer the cost of upgrading to scale with more players, so when enough players join to make the refineries output twice as many resources, then the upgrade will cost twice as much (1200) which would mean it's still going to take 10 minutes to pay itself off no matter how many players you have. @ Chris: If the game is at the point where the winning team has a big enough of a float to spend on upgrading refs, then it's already at the brink of no return. The only games I see enough extra cash that can't be put to immediate good use on are games where one team is cramped in one corner of the map, or on Money. All of my examples and arguments are based around an at least moderately-balanced match, as in one team isn't past the point of no recovery. If the winning team spends those resources (and the losing team isn't at 2% of what the winning team is) then the losing team will always have a temporary resource advantage which they can exploit, thus the risk for reward. Also, winning teams will have a harder time defending these refs unless they have good chokepoints because they're more spread out, a losing team will be more clustered where their upgraded refineries will be, and make it at least somewhat easier to defend.
All games I play that don't end in five minutes involve an early-game abundance of resources, as both teams have capped half the refs (for sake of argument) and are churning out light tanks/AFVs with maybe an armor and an engine. Until larger tanks with more weapons come along you're going to have a lot more res than you need, because the resource ouput is usually balanced around the armor/engine/weapon equipped medium mark. So, what you'd have is either: Winning commanders spending their spare cash on these refineries, so that by the time they get heavies they can churn them out constantly, a good choice if you haven't completely bottled the enemy up yet because you will probably be in for the long haul. Or alternatively, winning commanders not bothering and going for a huge heavy rush once they get the res, good if you've already more or less won and just need to mulch their base. Losing commanders on the other hand will either not have the money for the upgrades, because they need to buy tanks, or at least will have less money for them, still expanding the difference between winning and losing but less so, and adding more needless busy work for the commander. Alternatively they will be evenly matched with the enemy in which case what's the point? You haven't achieved anything, in an even game the two sides will simply spend whatever spare cash they have on upgrading their most secure refs in order from most to least, resulting in a steady escalation of funds until one of them loses one ref and the whole thing collapses, which is marginally less annoying than sudden death.
The only way I can see this happening is on the very large games where a team becomes limited not by their resources, but by the tank limit. In a case such as this, with the same scaling as the resource income, upgrading a refinery is going to be just as pricey as it would be on a smaller game where everyone can buy a tank if you have the res. Do you use up half your res pool to upgrade a ref and then hope you can hold out with half the heavies once you get them? Or do you get heavies and use all that extra res stockpiled to make more heavies and hope you don't get into a long game of attrition. The argument of the losing team having less money to spend and the winning more is basically a moot point after a certain price point. It shouldn't necessarily be something that every game will see and every commander needs to do. It should be something that they CAN do to try and achieve victory in another way. Just because a team is at 80% the income of the other team doesn't mean that they'll only upgrade 80% as many refs as the other team, it should be whether they think they can put one or two upgrades to good use by holding them until the payoff starts.
If you make it cost 2000 resources a shot then fuck no, I press my advantage and win normally, rendering it utterly pointless.
I don't think it'd cost that much, and exactly what price point it should be at what player amount isn't what we're debating here, we're debating the fundamental concept of the upgradable ref and what effect it will have on gameplay if it's, hopefully, properly balanced. 3000 extra res in a 48 player game can still be fairly directly compared to 1500 res in a 24 player game. More tank demand, (excluding tank limit) by twice the players usually balances out half the same demand with half the players.
And I'm pointing out that no matter what you do to balance it you'll be going between one problem and the next. If it's cheap it becomes useless because it's being done by both teams, if it's expensive it becomes useless because neither team is doing it, if it's in the middle then it becomes the same problem we have now because the winning team is doing it more and loses less if it goes wrong. It's all very well saying don't talk about balance because balance will magically sort itself out but some things are inherently hard/impossible/cause problems even if they are balanced. A good suggestion doesn't need to take refuge in 'oh no balance is something different please don't pick holes in my idea because I didn't address balance at all'. A good suggestion already is balanced or supplies its own balance. Yes let's pretend a huge limitation of the game doesn't exist to make the idea feasible.
I decided to take away the balancing aspect after it became clear we were in a stalemate and tried to approach it from a different aspect. The 600 res cost for a first upgrade seems about as balanced as it's going to get, whether or not you or I think it's actually balanced. Pretending a huge limitation of the game is always going to be in effect during every game and should be the primary factor in deciding what should be part and not part of the game means that we should take out half the things in Empires. Let's limit each team to having one VF because it would take up part of the building limit in case they might reach it.
You're proposing something that you admitted doesn't work in a major game of empires, what's the point in that? Empires doesn't need more broken mechanics.
I have a better idea Chris, lets assume then that the game can change. Your argument is quite simply that for the specific set of resources, when it costs approximately equal to the amount of money you would just expect to have hanging around or less, the upgrade only helps the better-off team, and when it is greater it helps nobody. I will give you a counter-example. I just need you to follow a few logical assumptions. 1: Lets assume that there is a certain basic amount of fighting power than comes from having infantry. 2: Lets assume that a team can have a certain amount, X% of them currently in vehicles at a given time. Being in vehicles more than doubles their effective combat power. 3: Lets assume that these vehicles cost money, and that these vehicles die at a normalized rate, the rate itself does not matter. 4: Lets assume that you can invest X money to increase your income by Y percent. Now then, we will take a certain group of players, N. Each team has an income of I, and a vehicle cap of P percent. A vehicle on average survives T time, therefore the rate of loss can be calculated to be NP/T, multiplied by C the cost, is the lost money per minute. Now I am going to give a few relationships. Lets assume a steady-state situation, that is to say that a team is making enough money to pay for tanks as they lose them. Lets assume that a tank lives on average 10 minutes and costs 400 credits. Lets assume that a team has an income of 180 per minute from 3 refineries with no bonus. Lets assume that a team consists of 10 men, and it has a vehicle cap of 5. In a case like this, a team will have on average about 180 credits at any given time. The reason for this is that it is expected that they lose about that much every minute, because they are fully utilizing their resources. You generally keep as many vehicles as you can afford, so the number of tanks will naturally rise or fall to meet your income. In this scenario a tank is about 4 times as powerful as an infantry unit. Now then, lets assume that in this dynamic system the team spends 1000 credits to double the output of one of their refineries. The result is a drop in tanks and a drop in functional combat power by about 25% for about 10 minutes. The drop isn't immediate, but it occurs fairly quickly as the team either will expect to be able to replace tanks and lose them carelessly, or fight less aggressively reducing combat strength. This temporary weakness not only might give the weakened team a chance to advance, but also means they now have a location to strike, a very expensive one that will weaken the team if it is hit. Conversely, the expenditure is significantly less damaging for the weaker team, because they are already fielding less tanks. A team that was fielding as many tanks as possible with 2 refineries in the same situation, instead of 3, would experience only a 17% drop in power. Yes, these numbers are only approximate, but the basis of theory behind them cannot be proven wrong so easily. Even the the entirely absurd case that a team has more money than it can spend, the expenditure would cause a minor (5% for a few minutes) moment of weakness if it was done when the team had the excess money to spend. Quite simply, I don't see any way this doesn't add to gameplay unless the game is already so screwed up that it leaves my baffled.
They can't, they don't have 1000 res because their vehicle output matches their resource output, so they aren't making any money, they also need the occasional base building and research item done, so any float will be spent on that. Spending money on a resource node means they won't be able to research, or they'll totally stop tank production, once tank production stops the other team will advance because tanks don't multiply infantry power, they are an entirely separate power, they do things infantry can't, most notably they advance, and advancing is how you do everything in empires, defence is simply an attempt to advance which encounters enemies along the way. A loss of tank output is lethal to a team. It doesn't add to the game because as I said, it's either pointless busy work to escalate the output of all refineries if it's cheap, and can be replaced by a simple increasing scalar. Alternatively it's a pointlessly expensive pile of crap that nobody uses, and can be replaced by not includng it anyway, or it's something which favours the winning team more than the losers, in which case it makes the problem worse. Even if it somehow functioned as advertised, so what? Oh my commander arbitrarily spent money on this and now we have more money than the enemy, what fun, now the game because steadily easier as long as we hold this position, it's just like having greater refinery control except it now occurs even on maps designed not to have that problem!
Do you even listen to yourself? I was going to break down the rest of your quotes, but it is completely pointless. You contest a few things with these major points. I will only bring up those that I could quote if I wanted to waste the time. 1: Losing tank output means you lose, even if you are winning. 2: Infantry cannot advance. 3: A scalar that increases the output of refineries (presumably after investment) does the same thing. 4: The idea is bad because upgrading refineries takes time 5: The idea can only favor the winning team more than the losing team or do nothing. 6: I can't do justice to this one. I will now address your points in order. 1: Absurdly overdramatic and clearly untrue if you have ever played the game. It is indeed true that you will be at a momentary disadvantage, but I have never seen a game lost because the commander locked a factory to gather the resources for heavy tanks. 2: I have seen infantry, on their own, take on entire maps intended for vehicles. Indeed, it is difficult, but it is often harder to take out an enemy position without infantry than it is without tanks. Walls are a very powerful thing, and tanks cannot repair or destroy them. 3. Presenting the ability to take on risk for further eventual gain is entirely different than simply taking on a penalty now for certain future gains. Additionally, I contend that the losing team would have more spare infantry in supply (rather than being attacking in vehicles) to upgrade refineries in a well-established position. 4. Why do we even have buildings at all? Why not just have them appear? You will find that the answer is the same. Requiring manpower to create something promotes teamwork and means that there is an additional resource you must use to get a job done. It adds to the strategic value of gameplay because of the delayed effects, rather than detracts. You seem to only want a game with immediate gratification. 5. Apparently you didn't read my entire previous post. Long story short, the immediate loss of vehicles does less damage to an already losing team, and a losing team can gain a glimmer of a chance from the disadvantage it temporarily grants to a winning team. 6. Clearly you dislike the idea of a commander, research, and advancement at all in the game. Whats more, you also dislike the idea of the already existent refineries and the concept of winning because of a decision the commander made. You simultaneously insulted all of these. Now then, you will likely make a post responding to maybe a few of these, ignoring the most valid aspects to focus on nuances that don't actually change any larger implications of my point. Almost certainly you will spend a great deal of time disagreeing with #6 especially, because of the very limited explanation I did. If you do, please explain your position on these areas more completely, because it certainly seems that you hate everything strategic about the game.
Chris, not to be offensive or anything, but you need to come up with a little bit more than it won't work because I think it won't. Give us a scenario explaining exactly why it won't work. Give us some hard numbers. Look at it from the other perspective and see if you can come up with a way to make it work. I never said it wouldn't work in a major game of Empires. In fact, I have rarely ever seen a large game of Empires have so much extra money to spend that they can't afford more tanks, except in the case where one team already has a massive advantage. Hell, even if it does work the way you say, and gives the winning team an even bigger advantage, that just means a losing game will be over more quickly and the players don't have to sit through a long suffering defeat, and can instead move on to the next game with a fresh chance at victory. No one likes sitting through a drawn out base siege when you already know there's no chance to win.
I pretty much agree with RoboTek. Concerning my previous statement, I was merely trying to tweak the numbers. I'm personally in favor of 2 possible upgrades, but just felt that the final value should only be 1.5x the original value to promote capturing other refineries. However, due to the arguments made so far, I will amend that to 2x due to the momentary investment. The major balance is to make it worthwhile. Low enough that you don't just grab a few and turtle, but at the same time high enough that it's a viable strategy. Of course, you have to also take into account cost to re-coup investment, the effect of having a higher priority target they can sabotage/target, etc. As with all things, the numbers will require some tweaking as we test this stuff out. However, I feel that the code to support this should be implemented and we can hash out precise numbers later. We will need modifications to the model to indicate that a refinery has been upgraded.
