As promised... I'm right now somewhat dissapointed with the direction this project is going :-S Here's my post that I have prepared earlier, sorry that it's so long.
I just can't agree with everything that's going on with Warzone 2100 these days...
1st you wanted to get rid of structural requirements for research designs, now this
Zydonk wrote some nice lines in the last "rebalance" topic and I can't help but copy some of them here:
"But a lot of what I'm reading here seems to have little to do with WZ itself and more to do with the kind of game individual players want to be comfortable with. As such, the modifications sought have little or nothing to do with fairness or rewarding play, but more to do with fitting WZ to the comfort zones of people who may never have engaged with the WZ vanilla." I'm still very much agreeing with this myself.
I don't know if you think much about the future of this great game, but I do... and I think that if such "rebalances" will go on, warzone will diminish in to mediocrity and oblivion very fast. Therefor I can't agree with this, since it's effectively CHANGING and REDUCING one of the major aspects of Warzone - research & upgrade :rolleyes:
Timmay wrote:Now I can see your point and you are total right. By playing with lets say five factories you will most likely not be ably to produce all the time since your running out of energy and that’s why producing a bit faster is not really making the difference.
Well, sorry, but that's just not true (at least not all the time); much is dependant on your way of playing. Let's make a case study:
You have 5 factories, 10000 power and want to produce 5 units which cost 2000 power each. Let's say that normally it takes 1 min to produce 1 unit, with mk2 it takes 45 sec and with mk3 it takes 30 seconds.
Now, if you start making all 5 units in one factory, it will on normal take you 5 min and 10000 power to have all 5 built. However if you build 1 in each factory, you will have all 5 built in 1 min (however probably not on the same location), power cost stays the same. If you upgrade factory production to mk2, in the first case you will have 5 in 3,75 min, in the second case in 45 seconds. At mk 3 you will get 5 in 2,5 min, in the second case in 30 seconds.
Note, that in any case the power consumption stays the same - therefore you have to produce your units carefully and not hastilly; that's the whole point of MICROMANAGEMENT! Another "whole point" is speed upgrades for production - they make units come out FASTER - which is GOOD! Why should that be removed?!
Haven't you played any other strategy games? In most of them you have some kind of speed upgrade for your unit output... Now imagine if all of the developers would start remodeling their games and delete all the speed upgrades on the premise that "sooner or later you will run out of money/gold/power and faster production speed won't bring you any bonuses (becouse you won't be able to build anything without the resources), so let's get rid of these upgrades preemptively!"
Well, if this is the case, then why the hell do we still use the research speed upgrades & modules? "Sooner or later you will run out of money for research, so speed won't matter anymore, so let's delete them!"
So why do we still use the weapon speed upgrades? "Sooner or later you will run out of money for vehicle & defence production, so speed of weapons won't matter anymore, so let's delete it!"
Imho you all should REALLY think about making a REDUX MOD instead (I mentioned it in the earlier rebalance post) where there would be just 1 speed to make 3 models and only 1 research line would be required to build everything; just leave the original game alone... I like the weapon power balancing, speed balancing and such general stuff; but simply removing upgrades and structure requirements is like amputating parts of the game body! If you slowly train your arms, you can make them swifter, stronger, more skilled for various reasons and jobs, but if you cut them off, you can't do anything more with them. I'd vote for preserving the original game structure and just balancing it's workings, not taking out whole parts of it - becouse once you take away one part, all the others become imbalanced and then you have to take away another one to make it even, then the third part becomes obsolete etc. etc., untill you have only the skeleton of the original game left.
As a side note... I could compare this with the next fictious (or maybe not) scenario:
Let's say that you inherit a great very old old car from some relative, as a gift. The thing is a huge, rusted heavy and cumbersome heap of metal sittng in front of you and you are wondering what to do. Here you have 2 choices:
1. You can take your tools & cleaning equipment and clean the car up, scrap of the rust, paint over the blotches, remodel and replace the missing parts and when you have a renovated vintage car, you can proudly drive it to various oldtimer conventions and get the first prize for your work. It will never be as fast, safe or shiny as a new car, but it will be actually worth much more than any of them, since it's one-of-a-kind never to be seen again car. I know from seeing some such cars that it's always a nice thing seeing a car made before I was born still driving around almost the way it was made 30 - 40 years ago. People will definetly admire such a car a lot.
2. You can take your rusted oldtimer to... Xzibit on "Pimp my ride!"
There you can CUT OFF the roof, so you can install a hydraulic soft top in baby blue color with flames on it, you can CUT OFF the exhausts and replace them with shiny chrome ones, you can TAKE OUT the engine and place a new puch one which will make your oldie go 250 Km/ph, you can install a bloody Jacuzzi in your trunk and a disco speaker system with a matching laser show in the front for the "ladies" who only want the coolest newest fastest stuff in their man's car, plus becouse Xzibit knows that you like playing games, he also ditched your pristine vintage leather seats with white artificial leather ones and built a 10" LCD monitor in to every available place, so you can play Warzone while you cut off some more stuff from your car.
If you drive such a car around, some people will say that it's a good "pimp job", but hardly anyone will say it's a "great car" - since it's just an old shell with various new stuff inside. When anyone who knows what this car was like before the "pimping" will see this car, they will probably end up in tears of saddness (i know i would). If you bought a straight new car, it would be faster, safer, cheaper and better then your "pimped" car; if you had left it the way it was, you could have had a car that almost noone else will ever have anywhere... a 1st prize. But now, you have a f... up futuristic oldtimer whom noone will ever take seriously, let alone give any prizes for.
Ok; having posted this I can say that if such procedures will be implemented in the normal version of the game instead of any rebalance mod, then I'm probably done with Warzone 2100 ressurection. You have CONTROL over a great game, but instead of trying to preserve it, you want to rebuild and change the whole thing in to something it is not and something it will never be - a new game which is easy, shiny and fast.
There are many such games out there at this time, but there will always be only one Warzone 2100. I'd like to keep it this way, but since all strings are in your hands, I guess I'm done here
Bye, T.
