Warzone 2100 Forums

Say when you & your ally research the same tech then it could reduce the time to research by half. Just throwing this out there & see where it goes.

Cost could be reduced since it is shared etc...

Human Allies would benefit from this. It would be more difficult to coordinate with AI's but I have read that some people are creating more adaptive AI's.

- Scott

+1 support.

Personally, this seems like a good idea. It would mean less headaches from wasting valuable time and resources researching the same thing, for no benefit, though it might also change the way that team-based games play out, assuming that research is shared between teammates.

You can already see whether or not your ally is researching something and there is a timer to tell you how low it will be until the research is finished. (beta 2)

I'm not averse to this idea really.. I just think the balance issues would be significant.

Related topic: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=8972

I would certainly like to see the ability for allies to reduce research times by all researching the same thing. It would give well-coordinated teams a big edge over their opponents.

I'm not sure it should halve the research time though - maybe reduce it by 25% for each additional player on a team doing the same research? And it should cost each player the full amount. So you're not saving any money/power, you're just contributing to the research effort to make it go a little bit faster.

Giving teams too much benefit from good team coordination is a bad idea. It is one of those things that sound "obviously right" until you take into account the consequences on playing community as a whole. Basically, it should be possible for teams of random participants that do not know each other to go up and win against a group of friends who have played together for a while and perhaps speak together on teamspeak/skype. The benefits of being well-coordinated is so huge just from defending and attacking together that if we add more benefits, then getting together a random team of people won't be fun anymore, since losing is guaranteed when you encounter the other type of team.

I think this is the lesson from SC2, who have been very good at nurturing a sustained playing community. In fact, if we haven't been so used to research sharing already, we should probably move in the other direction and make research entirely individual.

Not to mention that the task of balancing the game will be impossible, since you can't really tell that item X won't be available until after minute Y anymore. Suddenly all bets are off.

100% agree with Per.

btw - if ally is good - there wouldn't be vipers, cobra at all. Research to python will be so fast that these bodys will be unreasoable. Y& yea its would require a new re-balance.

But, featuring with idea- I think would be interesting to make a special key-res-Items for ONLY ally, for example to unlock T2 faster: you & your parter researching from the beginning, you get to cobra first, researched it, Boom! & there is no any items to research further cause your partnet ain't got cobra yet & haven't get to "key-res" to unloch next research-tree part (from T2-to-T3).

So this "key-res-item" won't let good player to pull "noobs" just for power. How about that ?

What I think we need is a notification Yes No dialog when you click on a hearted research item that tells you that your ally is already researching it, and asks if you are sure you want to do it. That seems like the best idea to me. Heart researching is a bad problem in team games and the new power system makes it even more painful when you accidentally heart research, because you can't cancel it. Just a small dialog like the IP entry box without the text field. Getting the API for such a thing going would also unlock future enhancements.

I am heavily opposed to shared research benefits. It would change warzone far too much.

bendib wrote: Heart researching is a bad problem in team games and the new power system makes it even more painful when you accidentally heart research, because you can't cancel it.

why can't cancel ?

Terminator wrote:

bendib wrote: Heart researching is a bad problem in team games and the new power system makes it even more painful when you accidentally heart research, because you can't cancel it.

why can't cancel ?

Because it already takes the power. When you cancel it doesn't give you back the power.

Per wrote:... Basically, it should be possible for teams of random participants that do not know each other to go up and win against a group of friends who have played together for a while and perhaps speak together on teamspeak/skype. ...

Very good point, I hadn't thought of that.

but there is no such team in warzone. Except tomatoes ?

Most of the time, i'll place my own clanmates in the opposite team. Because a team of best BDCs can already desintegrate any other team. Except maybe the RBL champions ? It's not even fun ^^ .

However, I'm against the speed research in the standard mod, because it would break the game. Rushing the research module, labs upgrades and power upgrade seem to me way worst than python. Team would reach 20x speed research by the time it end it base. If the whole tech tree take 2 hours to end, with that technique, it would take 6 more minutes from that point.

My suggestion is : when a player click on a heart research, he give half the power to his teammate and that's it. When a player in a team payed for a research, anyone can resume it at any point.

Shadow Wolf TJC wrote:+1 support.

Personally, this seems like a good idea. It would mean less headaches from wasting valuable time and resources researching the same thing, for no benefit, though it might also change the way that team-based games play out, assuming that research is shared between teammates.

Hmm, with all their points that others have made against this idea, I now think that I should maybe drop my support for this. Like I said before, it might change the way that team-based games play out, though it seems as if almost everyone that replied afterwards believed that said changes would hurt balance, since it would mean that better-coordinated teams could research-rush certain techs faster.

However, despite this, I'd still like to promote a more newbie-friendly, though still rich and balanced, experience. Perhaps, if one player decides to pick the same research topic as his/her teammate, then perhaps power would be evenly spent by all participating teammates, though progression would only be influenced by the speed of the most advanced research lab assigned to the tech? For example, if one player assigned a certain tech to a regular Research Lab, while that player's teammate assigned the same tech to a Research Lab that has a Research Module, then while both players would split costs to research the tech, the tech would only progress as fast as if it was assigned to a Research Lab with a Research Module alone.

bendib wrote:

Terminator wrote:

bendib wrote: Heart researching is a bad problem in team games and the new power system makes it even more painful when you accidentally heart research, because you can't cancel it.

why can't cancel ?

Because it already takes the power. When you cancel it doesn't give you back the power.

stop trying to dumb down the game. it was your choice to do it so live with your mistake

I understand more about why you would want interaction among other players.

I was just suggesting some way of reducing micromanagement from what I consider, in my opinion, a non-important factor of the game. Having to keep up with what the other person is researching takes away from battles, where cooperation is key. Research is important, don't get me wrong, but I figure cooperation in researching the same thing would bring a reward. If each team player goes his own route, then nothing is lost from the current gameplay point of view. If you research together then there should be a combining of forces to reduce time and/or money. It doesn't have to be half or even a quarter. Just whatever would keep gameplay fun & interactive.

- Scott

I think that's part of what makes the game fun though - the fact that you get distracted by having to deal with research, getting oil, building air defences, etc.