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hotdog1234
Advanced Member
Joined: 14 Aug 2009
Posts: 291
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 Posted: 25 Dec 2009 12:45:58 am Post subject: |
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Here's a summary of what our current resourcing system is looking like:
Quote: Belthium Crystals are your source of income for the game. A refinery will mine these crystals automatically; you do not require workers, leaving you free to manage other tasks. A refinery works on a per-second basis, meaning you will recieve a number of crystals per second. As you might expect, a refinery can only be built on a crystal deposit, and it will shut down when the crystals are mined out.
Rebma Boss and I were discussing this today, and it seems there are three problems with this. First of all, it's difficult, and almost impossible, to have a "just-right" amount of resources coming in--one time, it's just right, and the rest of the time, it's too much or too little. Secondly, it's easy to purchase mass amounts of particular buildings because of how fast your income increases with a single additional refinery. Finally, having just one more refinery than your opponent gives you an absolute advantage, making expansion more important than research.
We're thinking about changing the economy to something like a workers-system you find in most RTS games. However, this leaves the problem of the one-unit concept, so of course, we have to fix this to fit the game style of S.A.D. So we're thinking about having a Refinery you can constantly upgrade for the same price, adding more HP and additional mining capabilities. This will be like paying 50 for an additional worker that will increase resource gathering. That way resourcing should be slightly better and more balanced, and expanding will still be a factor. In addition, it is strategic to choose whether to upgrade your refinery or buy something else instead.
Instead of adding "workers," you add additional mining units. You can use a Scouter to move these mining units from Refinery to Refinery (when one refinery runs out of crystals to mine), but if your Scouter is destroyed, the mining units are also destroyed.
Example (Numbers are not exact, just an example)
You build a refinery, it will collect 4 crystals a minute and has 50 HP.
You pay 50 crystals for an additional mining unit, adding 50 HP and an additional 4 crystals a minute to the refinery.
You pay 50 more crystals for an additional 50 HP and an additional 4 crystals a minute, meaning your refinery now has 150 HP and mines 12 crystals a minute
Your enemy destroys 25 HP of your refinery. Your refinery has 125 HP, but still collects 12 crystals a minute.
Your enemy destroys another 30 HP. Now your refinery has 95 HP. Since it has lost 50 HP, it has lost one of its mining units and therefore only mines 8 crystals a minute.
This will mean adjusting all the prices, but if you like this new system, it will be worth it. We feel that this will better help in game balance and keeping games from becoming way to short, but we also need your opinion.
Incidentally, this kind of system will not have a build que (you can upgrade several times at once) but it will take time for each upgrade to take effect |
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Mapar007
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Joined: 04 Oct 2008
Posts: 365
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| Posted: 25 Dec 2009 03:31:06 am Post subject: |
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| This is much better, in my opinion. |
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darkstone knight
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Joined: 07 Sep 2008
Posts: 438
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| Posted: 25 Dec 2009 08:34:41 am Post subject: |
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you can make a similair system to starcraft:
miners move resources from the mining spot to the storage depot
only 1 worker can be inside an mining spot at a time
it takes 2-3 seconds for a worker to mine 1 "unit"
its balanced to for fact its effectiveness decrease when its farther away from your (3 workers required when its close, more when its farther away)
the disadvantage is that tou have units cluttering your screen |
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hotdog1234
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Joined: 14 Aug 2009
Posts: 291
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| Posted: 25 Dec 2009 10:11:35 am Post subject: |
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Quote: you can make a similair system to starcraft:
miners move resources from the mining spot to the storage depot
only 1 worker can be inside an mining spot at a time
it takes 2-3 seconds for a worker to mine 1 "unit"
its balanced to for fact its effectiveness decrease when its farther away from your (3 workers required when its close, more when its farther away)
the disadvantage is that tou have units cluttering your screen
That's just it, we're trying to avoid having too many units on screen. If processing power isn't the issue, it's the pixel resolution. However, that is a sweet idea nonetheless...if only it could be implemented 
Last edited by Guest on 25 Dec 2009 10:14:41 am; edited 1 time in total |
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darkstone knight
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Joined: 07 Sep 2008
Posts: 438
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| Posted: 26 Dec 2009 07:45:35 am Post subject: |
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in that case you can, say, increase build time if the mining depot is further away from your base, but give a set amount of recources each time
i dont see any other way to balance it... unless you want the "zerg" way of building: you can only build near your buildings, but thats lame..
that would, however discourage base defenses: you cant build near your mining depot (you can build them anywhere), so you need units to defend them |
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hotdog1234
Advanced Member
Joined: 14 Aug 2009
Posts: 291
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| Posted: 26 Dec 2009 10:46:39 am Post subject: |
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Actually, these "workers" stay inside the refinery the whole time. You can build a refinery 10 feet from your base or exactly next to an Operation Center, and it would still collect the same amount of resources. The resources are process, collected and actually stored inside the refinery.
We don't see how this would cause imbalance, but maybe you see something else? |
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jsj795
Newbie
Joined: 17 Jun 2009
Posts: 6
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| Posted: 26 Dec 2009 11:58:58 am Post subject: |
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How about, there are certain number of upgrades you can do?
Like in Starcraft, depending on the mineral numbers, some excess workers had to wait for their turn to mine.
Instead of making the upgrade unlimited, make it so that you can have total of 8 upgrades or whatever number balancing requires.
And may be after 8th upgrade, if the user upgrades more, then the HP increases 50, but the mining rate increases at 1~2mine/sec only?
This will make the players think if the upgrade is necessary or the expansion necessary. If the refinery is close to the base and the defense, then there's not much point in over-upgrading, but if the refinery is far from the defense units and such, then there is a point to over-upgrade since the HP will increase, therefore gaining more time for the defense units to come and help.
I don't know if this made sense to you guys |
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hotdog1234
Advanced Member
Joined: 14 Aug 2009
Posts: 291
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| Posted: 26 Dec 2009 12:07:25 pm Post subject: |
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Quote: How about, there are certain number of upgrades you can do?
Like in Starcraft, depending on the mineral numbers, some excess workers had to wait for their turn to mine.
Instead of making the upgrade unlimited, make it so that you can have total of 8 upgrades or whatever number balancing requires.
And may be after 8th upgrade, if the user upgrades more, then the HP increases 50, but the mining rate increases at 1~2mine/sec only?
This will make the players think if the upgrade is necessary or the expansion necessary. If the refinery is close to the base and the defense, then there's not much point in over-upgrading, but if the refinery is far from the defense units and such, then there is a point to over-upgrade since the HP will increase, therefore gaining more time for the defense units to come and help.
I don't know if this made sense to you guys
Ah, good point. We should probably look into something like that. |
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S.A.D. (Seek and Destroy) =>
