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If this change goes through it won't make it any easier to comm as newb than before.

The way one manages an econ and how active you have to be with it, is quite intense and pretty difficult in this game.

It's not the fact that each faction has different econ perks. That's not going to do anything for a newb.

One can pretty effectively control any econ as is, even when up against a faction with a more effective econ perk, given the setts.


This won't do anything but piss off the comms we already have. This notion of new players is rather silly at this point. We need to concentrate on retaining the few players that we still have.

There is a large amount of AAA quality FTP games that are coming out, so I honestly believe Alleg won't get much of a second glance.



Noob lesson #1:
Don't piss of the comm.

This rule applies to this situation.

On the whole, this won't really make it easier to comm. Yes, poor commanders tend to run an economy sub-optimally and the varying capacities is a contributing factor to that, but among all the other $#@!-ups they we make this doesn't affect the game all that much by comparison. And in R6, miners have a helium gauge which will unravel some of the mystery.

But that's not why you're suggesting it. You're suggesting it to remove the possibility of a settings stack. In my opinion, such a trivial problem isn't worth the homogenisation of the factions. Especially technoflux, for which the low capacity/high speed is part of what makes it tf.

TurkeyXIII wrote:QUOTE (TurkeyXIII @ Feb 17 2012, 07:39 AM) You're suggesting it to remove the possibility of a settings stack. In my opinion, such a trivial problem isn't worth the homogenisation of the factions. Especially technoflux, for which the low capacity/high speed is part of what makes it tf.

I agree, stacking settings, while I wouldn't call it trivial, is not a major problem - it's not practiced regularly in pickup games AFAICS, and in squad games people are supposed to have a clue (in the old days it would be a problem given how you'd do anything to win, these days it's more about getting games going.)

But the reason is not to avoid stacking settings - it's that it's a crapshoot right now. You can have the same two factions and have a *drastically* different balance in each game based on map, total money and resources. Trying to maintain the balance is almost a pointless affair because it's not the same balance every game, it's a random moving target. We can't talk about factions being OP or underpowered when the rate of early econ can vary by as much as 25-30% from game to game (the capacity difference is more but you need to allow for wasted travel time etc). Pick two low capacity factions, you are fine, pick two capacity factions, you are fine... mix them up, not so much.

I want to make this absolutely clear: we are not homogenizing the factions under this change. We are taking away the capacity difference which doesn't work anyway under normal settings, but adding more efficiency and speed differences, which work always.

Heyoka wrote:QUOTE (Heyoka @ Feb 17 2012, 05:48 AM) This won't do anything but piss off the comms we already have.

I really don't think so, for one it'll be very beneficial for balance going forward. As for the downside, most faction settings are similar enough or same (in case of Rix, BIOS, GT and Omicron) that you will only notice something if you are commanding Dreg or TF. I'll be honest: while numbers work out, those two will still be sufficiently different from the current design that feedback will be needed.

I don't see why this should be done- if people don't negotiate reasonable settings then that's their problem. That's not to say I can't see why you'd like to do it, I'd rather it left more or less as is.

Spunkmeyer wrote:QUOTE (Spunkmeyer @ Feb 17 2012, 09:06 AM) I agree, stacking settings, while I wouldn't call it trivial, is not a major problem - it's not practiced regularly in pickup games AFAICS, and in squad games people are supposed to have a clue (in the old days it would be a problem given how you'd do anything to win, these days it's more about getting games going.)

But the reason is not to avoid stacking settings - it's that it's a crapshoot right now. You can have the same two factions and have a *drastically* different balance in each game based on map, total money and resources. Trying to maintain the balance is almost a pointless affair because it's not the same balance every game, it's a random moving target. We can't talk about factions being OP or underpowered when the rate of early econ can vary by as much as 25-30% from game to game (the capacity difference is more but you need to allow for wasted travel time etc). Pick two low capacity factions, you are fine, pick two capacity factions, you are fine... mix them up, not so much.

Makes perfect sense to me. And we should be balancing for PU games, as this is Community Core, not Squad Game Core.

the ideal solution is have he3 static across all maps and have the total money setting modify he3 value and not he3 amount

So define it as amount per rock instead of amount per map, and change yield based on game settings? That's actually a really easy code change. I like this! Code development and player inertia being what they are, actually doing it could be a problem. Maybe also add a mining speed setting so higher money doesn't have to mean faster money?

NightRychune wrote:QUOTE (NightRychune @ Feb 17 2012, 09:55 AM) the ideal solution is have he3 static across all maps and have the total money setting modify he3 value and not he3 amount

This would have a massive impact on gameplay. A full miner load on a small map will bring in more money than a full miner load on a larger map; ergo, smaller games will get to adv tech much quicker than on larger maps. Not sure if that's a good thing. Edit: my assumption is that yield will also be proportional to map size. If it's not, then large maps will have more total money on them than smaller maps, which raises different problems.

My vote is to keep different miner capacities, as it adds an element of depth to this game. You say "stack the settings", I say "another way a good commander can differentiate himself from a poor commander".

Also, the devil you know is better than the devil you don't.

I did like the idea of all factions having the same yield, and different costs. (Or, I think it would be easier for all factions to have the same costs, modulo Bios and Belter's unique faction differences, but make up the difference with faction yield). Dreg in particular -- there's no reason to have increased costs AND higher yield, as they largely cancel each other out. Pick one.

As far as the "balance for squad games or for pickup games" canard goes -- there is no difference. Allegiance is chess in space. There isn't one version of chess for grandmasters and another for patzers. It's all the same chess.

chess does not have highly random elements that significantly impact the course of a game