Units preview. Why it should be back...

[Shadow Wolf TJC]

I seem to understand, at least I hope that I do, and yeah, I'd like to see something like the comsat station's surveillance sweep power from Starcraft be implemented as well, hopefully as an early T1 technology.

[Iluvalar]

(Is it low-oil maps? Please correct me if I'm wrong.)

Even with 20 labs, you will end up with an hole or two in the tech tree. It will have less impact, but on the same time i do believe high oil players play that because they don't want that to impact at all. So i'd say it affect every games, but less the high oil.

However, even though I don't exactly agree with him in terms of needing to bring back unit previewing.

It's not that i mind about the unit preview, but I believe I made enough experiment with mods to know that such change would be too heavy for the tech tree. We cant just change the lenght of the research or the magnitude of their effects. To buy those 2 more minutes for the players, there is a need to start moving the research around and shake the tree pretty hard.

OR the solution i said to effigy before : double research cost and time and divide by 2 the speed of the units. I doubt someone want that... so... I have no other solution for now.

Iluvalar, although I do agree with you on some parts, but not others, perhaps you should consider performing some real in-game tests.

I garanty that the lost of control in the game result will at least double. My feeling (but your right it need testing) fall more around 80% of the game that will be played alone. While it's 20% now.

Thank you to listen to me, i need everybody to pay attention to that. Not only in a single test, not only me. My guess is that the research behavior will have to change a litle. As long as both player mimick the 2.3 behavior, you'll still keep your chances to affect the outcome.

[Shadow Wolf TJC]

Not a problem. By the way...

OR the solution i said to effigy before : double research cost and time and divide by 2 the speed of the units. I doubt someone want that... so... I have no other solution for now.

I'm assuming that unit production and structure building costs and speed, and power generation rates, would remain unchanged, right? If so, then perhaps doubling unit production and structure building speed, and maybe halving the costs of producing units and building structures, all while keeping unit movement speeds and research speed and cost unchanged could be another alternative?

[Iluvalar]

nope not at all, but nice try . Let me explain.

With my change, the scout would be produced at 5-6 and would take 4 minutes to reach his scouting area. So he would end his mission around 9-10 at the best which would scale to 5 minutes research at half speed. which is the moment the scout was produced. But now that I think of it more carefully, i realize it will not even work because the reaction time, and the speed of that decay will be halved with the research speed. So it would totally change the game as well... Sorry i was wrong...

your idea would just double the amount of units in the game... would not help here.

[Emdek]

I still think that we could have some primitive UAV, kite or balloon, send in one way only, seeing maybe 20 tiles around and available each 3 minutes.
No real VTOLs for them, to do not create paradoxes like with sensors in HQ.

[EvilGuru]

Ignoring the pretty pictures and suspect data for a second, I have one question. Given that the removal of the unit preview is bilateral how can one make the claim that it negatively impacts the balance of the game? While it is true that you no longer know if your opponent is sending borgs against your cannons he also does not know that you're building cannons in the first place?

Yes, it make this potentially more random. But, that is not a good enough reason to bring it back to life, IMO.

Polemically yours, Freddie.

[Shadow Wolf TJC]

nope not at all, but nice try . Let me explain.

With my change, the scout would be produced at 5-6 and would take 4 minutes to reach his scouting area. So he would end his mission around 9-10 at the best which would scale to 5 minutes research at half speed. which is the moment the scout was produced. But now that I think of it more carefully, i realize it will not even work because the reaction time, and the speed of that decay will be halved with the research speed. So it would totally change the game as well... Sorry i was wrong...

your idea would just double the amount of units in the game... would not help here.

Ah well.

Maybe we'd need more testing in order to determine what we should do. Maybe it could just be a fundamental flaw of low-oil maps in general, since there's not enough oil to allow players to afford to focus on more than 1 weapon line, in which case we'll just have to accept it. I'd imagine that this randomness factor would decrease as each player has more oil, since they can better afford to focus on more than 1 weapon line at a time, preferably those that complement eachother, such as machineguns and cannons.

[Iluvalar]

While it is true that you no longer know if your opponent is sending borgs against your cannons he also does not know that you're building cannons in the first place?

I guess you are right, the game still "fair" since both players will give up the same extra 50% of their chances to affect the game as soon as the click the ready button. Independently of the research they chose. So it's balanced in that sens ?

I'm sorry but it will not be "potentially" more random but definitively a lot more random.


@Shadow Wolf TJC , no it's a fundamental flaw of the high oil maps to kill the research layer of the game. A game is made of decision and when you play high oil, there is no much more decision to take in the lab. The research layer that is an intrinsic part of the game in low oil, become secondary when the oil go over the classic zone.

[Jorzi]

@EvilGuru: While it doesn't give any player a specific advantage, it is indeed true that it makes the game more luck-based since you have less data to use when making decisions.
This does not affect the balance of the game, but it strengthens the rock-scissors-paper effect. On one hand, you might try to research multiple paths to cover up your weaknesses, but that will only make you the jack of all trades. The result is that you focus all your resources on a single strategy and hope it works.

Since the specialization of tech begins in a very early stage, you have enough time to prepare before the enemy can find out what you are up to, and by that time, the outcome of the game could already be decided.

I would however suggest an alternative solution to this problem, like an uav, or simply making the early tech more linear in the beginning (what if you had to research quite a bit of machinegun tech before being able to specialize?)

[Iluvalar]

I dont like that uav idea, it's just the other side of promoting a clever scouting habit. With units preview, you cant guess how much the enemy have you are quickly forced to go check. with uav we'd lose that scouting necessity.

I like that idea jorzi. I believe it could work. We could add a new research called "advanced weaponry" or such which would be a prerequisite for all the weapon upgrades. (maybe we leave the mg up to tmg to also unlock cannons). The research would be long, so everybody would produce some unupgraded units that we could scout etc...

[aubergine]

If using that approach (linear initial weapon research path) would it affect how people build up their bases at the start of the game?

How would it affect flamer research line viability?

[zany]

Ignoring the pretty pictures and suspect data for a second, I have one question. Given that the removal of the unit preview is bilateral how can one make the claim that it negatively impacts the balance of the game? While it is true that you no longer know if your opponent is sending borgs against your cannons he also does not know that you're building cannons in the first place?

Yes, it make this potentially more random. But, that is not a good enough reason to bring it back to life, IMO.

Polemically yours, Freddie.

someone else with a brain saw through the smoke screen
I find it hard to believe that so many people are so gullible to actually believe what the original graph shows

[aubergine]

I think Illuvar's point is that without knowing what initial research the enemy is taking, the first (and usually decisive) battle will be a game or rock, paper, scissors.

So despite both sides having the same situation, which is fair, the first battle is going to be more about luck than skill as to who wins. And, as Illuvar points out, it's then too late to adapt your research if you've chosen the wrong initial path - you're going to be lagging behind the enemy.

It took me a while before I really understood how important that fact is. It means that unless the enemy does something stupid, they've pretty much won the game, by luck rather than skill.

From all the things posted so far, an initial linear weapon research path seems the most viable based on what people have been saying. At least then if you research rock only to find that the other side has researched paper, you can quickly change to scissors during the period while your existing droids are still stronger than the enemy's initial paper research.

[Iluvalar]

If using that approach (linear initial weapon research path) would it affect how people build up their bases at the start of the game?

How would it affect flamer research line viability?

Well... all the weapons would be affected the same way. it would probably favor non-military research a bit and it would force every players to have another lab but we have a bit too much starting power so it could be great. We could do a good move (i think) by glueing that research to the sensor. Which would equilibrate the engineering and the sensor research at start as well.

I'll try to think longer about it.. but for now, the effect look to me positive overall.

[aubergine]

@Illuvar - current MP games, from my perspective at least, are all about the droids. Do you think the changes to research path would open up new gameplay strategies, such as building some base defences early on, or will droid armies remain the only strategy?