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NightRychune wrote:QUOTE (NightRychune @ Jan 21 2011, 11:00 PM) but bios still sucks and dreg does not

i wonder why

You're saying the price of the miner will fix it? Well then, lower the price of the miner!

There are other reasons for it, maybe dregs super speed, or the 1 min over 10 min research?

In your core you lowered the research time iirc

brood wrote:id say being able to better payday another miner is much more profitable than being slightly worse at paydaying tech

I wouldn't say slightly but in most situations I'd agree with you.

I've not looked at the BIOS issue myself

The payday nerf works fine except (as people have said) if you have to payday a miner. And you will lose miners during that sweet *little* time when the enemy has enh/adv tech and you don't. So, lower miner costs?

Reduce price of miner to 3k, and reduce Bios he3 yield by 5% to compensate.

the.ynik wrote:QUOTE (the.ynik @ Jan 20 2011, 05:53 AM) I think the problem just is that Bios is too cheap - ½ tech cost, free adv techbases. Halving the paydays fixed the "turtling without miners" issue, but created other issues (e.g. not being able to payday a new miner). Sure, commanders can work around this by keeping some cash instead of paying for techs they don't need urgently (since miners bring in more money than they need); but the payday nerf still feels like the wrong solution to me. And it's surely not easy for commanders to figure out which tech they'll need 10 minutes later.
Also cashbox hunting still looks too profitable for Bios.

So I'd prefer if paydays returned to normal (or somewhere close to normal) and tech cost is increased instead (0.75 sounds reasonable).

With the cheap cost but nerfed payday, Bios feels too strong if they can keep mining; and are screwed completely if their miners die. IMHO switching from a payday nerf to more reasonable tech costs would bring the effects of losing a miner more in line with other factions.

Vortrog: I'd support reducing the advantage of unloading hvy cloak (move mass from hvy cloak to the ships), but that's not really relevant to this topic.

This is spot on. While the intend of the payday nerf was good and the effects it has might largely work out, what is happening here is that you are compensating for a perk (i.e. cheap tech, free adv) with a nerf in a different area that has large effects on areas NOT related to the original perk.
The correct way to go would be to raise the research costs, not nerf the payday, since the payday influences other factors that are independent of the BIOS-specific perks - such as constructor, miner, ship costs.

The cashbox argument is unfortunately not very valid here because BIOS has done this since ever and just used the cashboxes to drive their research. This is actually an argument FOR the reversal of the payday nerf and an increase of research costs, as cashbox pickup is not affected by the payday nerf, therefore BIOS still profits from it more than any other faction and can run a good deal of their research on cashbox pickups.

Please note that i agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment that no faction should be able to drive their research purely on paydays. However, the attempt at balancing this by nerfing the payday was, IMHO, misguided.

sono wrote:QUOTE (sono @ Jan 30 2011, 04:09 PM) The cashbox argument is unfortunately not very valid here because BIOS has done this since ever and just used the cashboxes to drive their research.

and the "bios can't payday a miner when they all die" argument is not very valid here because BIOS can just as easily use cashboxes to fund their miners.
which is especially easy as bios with cloaking scouts to fly around picking up cashboxes.

I'm not sure the problem is BIOS is too cheap. We had this "too cheap" BIOS for years and years and it was never a problem. I think the problem is BIOS has been boosted and boosted until it was too uber, and then the problem was pinned on BIOS being too cheap. We should, at least as a test, roll back BIOS to original settings when it was fine, add a usable heavy cloak as a boost, and see what happens then.

Mastametz wrote:QUOTE (Mastametz @ Jan 30 2011, 06:29 PM) and the "bios can't payday a miner when they all die" argument is not very valid here because BIOS can just as easily use cashboxes to fund their miners.
which is especially easy as bios with cloaking scouts to fly around picking up cashboxes.

While your statement is correct, tell me why IC should be able to payday a miner while BIOS has to pick cashboxes up to pay for a miner - how does this affect gameplay, why should this be so, and what does it have to do with BIOS research being to cheap / bios running research without miners. To restate, the issue here isn't that the bios payday was to big (it was not) the issue is that bios research was to cheap in relation to the payday.
We fixed the wrong problem, causing more problems, which need fixing again, potentially leading to other issues etc. instead of just fixing the root problem, maybe you suggest BIOS only get 250 from a cashbox pickup to bring the cashbox driven bios research balance in line with the payday? That's what i thought

Or of couse we could $#@! around and reduce miner costs only then in half a year someone will whine about bombers and tp2s and then teles because they're prohibitively expensive once home tp got galved or whatnot. So let's just fix what is broken instead of changing something else in an attempt to work around the broken.

sono wrote:QUOTE (sono @ Jan 30 2011, 05:54 PM) While your statement is correct, tell me why IC should be able to payday a miner while BIOS has to pick cashboxes up to pay for a miner

Why does it matter? They are different factions. And BIOS will not have to cashbox a miner unless they lose all of them. L2Keep 1 miner alive.
QUOTE - how does this affect gameplay, why should this be so, and what does it have to do with BIOS research being to cheap / bios running research without miners.[/quote]
I'm not obligated to answer any of those questions. Show us why the changes made create a "gameplay" problem.
QUOTE We fixed the wrong problem, causing more problems, which need fixing again, potentially leading to other issues etc. instead of just fixing the root problem, maybe you suggest BIOS only get 250 from a cashbox pickup to bring the cashbox driven bios research balance in line with the payday? That's what i thought[/quote]
It seems you are trying to say both of the following at the same time
1)It's not fair that BIOS might have to cashbox a miner
2) Bios doesn't need miners because they benefit too much from cashboxes




You can't justify core changes based on "I'm Sono and I could see this this and this possibly being a problem with changes that are already made in some scenario sometime"
If they aren't causing a problem, then core changes need not be made.

BIOS not being played/not winning is due to the fact that everyone's used to turtling for tech as bios and not learning to keep a miner alive.
This is not a problem with BIOS, this is a problem with the players.

Exp has gotten an exceptional amount of playtime lately since HTT mass got buffed. As a result, exp will win most games EVEN IF HTTS AREN'T USED AT ALL.
That's how collective mind of the community works - If HTTs got buffed, Exp is better, even if HTTs aren't used.
If hvy booster got removed, sup is now bad, no matter what.
If BIOS paydays got nerfed, BIOS now can't get any tech, period.

So there's that problem, coupled with the fact that they are only a handful of willing commanders left in the game because commanding sucks to begin with, commanders get banned for nonsense constantly, and commanders are the people whose voices should weigh most heavily in balance discussion but are actually most likely to be ignored.

We are approaching a point where XT and friends are going to withdraw from CC discussion completely (Sysx and friends have mostly withdrawn already), and RT and friends are going to change whatever they want, whenever they want.
Because all voices of reason have all but disappeared from the CC dev team.
Competitive players will play on XC and everyone else will play on CC.

Against my better judgement i actually read your post. It seems to me that you are trying to put up strawman arguments and fail to understand the key point of my position, i.e. the payday being only one of (for bios) three possible sources of income, and this is not addressing alliances sharing cashboxes, as well as the fact that this change puts BIOS in a unique position amongst all factions as the only faction that has to pick up cash to keep up normal operations lategame (tp2, bombers etc) with other factions. I do not wish to indulge myself in a lengthy post that will accomplish nothing but provoke another ad hominem attack / endless strawman arguments from you; i can only restate again what i have said before, maybe with bigger letters this time just for you:

Changing the payday to .5 has fundamental effects on ALL aspects of economy. It influences many things that i am sure with a minute of thought anyone qualified to work on a core can see. Changing miner costs shifts the balance between losing an empty miner (now much cheaper) and losing a con (still costs the same) as well as changing the opening spending. This, and the original payday change as well, are IMHO kneejerk reactions to a problem that should be addressed in a more direct way, e.g. raising research costs or removing some historically made perks for BIOS that have accumulated.


EDIT to your EDIT here AGAIN:
I actually love what you have done with XC. You need to chill and get rid of your facetitious squad front think. This is not some sort of battle between XT and RT, or if it is, then frankly i want nothing to do with that and will just carry on like i always do; you guys can sort that out yourself.

sono out

Bios scouts aren't OP. What Masta is saying that Bios isn't losing because of payday changes or anything. It's because Bios thinks they don't have to defend miners or kill econ, just drag out the game.