Warzone's power system

[TVR]

Warzone 2100 is purposely designed to allocate minimal attention on economic management, such is why there is only one resource, which it automatically accumulates in a linear fashion indefinitely, and there are effectively no limits on maximum accumulation.

[Rman Virgil]

Warzone 2100 is purposely designed to allocate minimal attention on economic management, such is why there is only one resource, which it automatically accumulates in a linear fashion indefinitely, and there are effectively no limits on maximum accumulation.

Indeed. Key design choices by WZ Creators to not lose sight of moving forward.

- RV

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[Crymson]

Warzone 2100 is purposely designed to allocate minimal attention on economic management, such is why there is only one resource, which it automatically accumulates in a linear fashion indefinitely, and there are effectively no limits on maximum accumulation.

True enough.

This is not Supreme Commander or Starcraft or C&C, if it isn't broken, then why fix it?

[Jorzi]

if it isn't broken, then why fix it?

I share this opinion

[JDW]

Warzone 2100 is purposely designed to allocate minimal attention on economic management, such is why there is only one resource, which it automatically accumulates in a linear fashion indefinitely, and there are effectively no limits on maximum accumulation.

I agree, it is kept minimal, WZ2100 shouldn't be a cross between monopoly and battleship. That said, it's never wise to not keep an eye on the power levels when a whole lot of power actions are being ordered, especially when there is a mix of high-power and low-power actions, which is mostly the case.

[Rman Virgil]

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That said, it's never wise to not keep an eye on the power levels when a whole lot of power actions are being ordered, especially when there is a mix of high-power and low-power actions, which is mostly the case.

True. Let's K.I.S.S. that.

- RV
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[JDW]

Warzone 2100 is purposely designed to allocate minimal attention on economic management, such is why there is only one resource, which it automatically accumulates in a linear fashion indefinitely, and there are effectively no limits on maximum accumulation.

I agree, it is kept minimal, WZ2100 shouldn't be a cross between monopoly and battleship. That said, it's never wise to not keep an eye on the power levels when a whole lot of power actions are being ordered, especially when there is a mix of high-power and low-power actions, which is mostly the case.

IMO, managing the power accrual system efficiently helps plan better strategies, than leaving it alone to be managed by itself and the effectively limitless linear power accumulation.

[Rman Virgil]

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Ok. I'll dispense with quoting entirely and be almost totally sobering.

Foreplay is sweet but the pay-off in all this is the the facility with which you can control your forces in the heat of battle on the battlefield and if you have to manage non-battle tasking to the point where it fracks-up your attending battlefield maneuver then you have gone to far in that particular design artifice. After all, this is a game where the fun is mostly in blowing up the other guys chit with clever, smarter, cooler, field command.

- RV

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[JDW]

Foreplay is sweet but the pay-off in all this is the the facility with which you can control your forces in the heat of battle on the battlefield and if you have to manage non-battle tasking to the point where it fracks-up your attending battlefield maneuver then you have gone to far in that particular design artifice. After all, this is a game where the fun is mostly in blowing up the other guys chit with clever, smarter, cooler, field command.

You're right RV, we all love the boom boom.

And like I said, I agree tasks like those should be minimal.

I agree, it is kept minimal, WZ2100 shouldn't be a cross between monopoly and battleship.

I was only pointing out that I also agree with what Per stated, being smart about your power use,

An effective player you should always be at low power. However, if you are overspending, you have already spent too much power building up too much production capacity, and you are not playing effectively. This goes for any power system. If you are playing your economy badly, then in power flow your production is stalling, in classic direct debit your production buildings are idle, and in power queue your production buildings have items on hold. Just different symptoms of the same problem, and the problem is not the power system, it is a sign that you are doing it wrong.

[JDW]

Plus, it's another factor to keep the game a little challenging, because he will have to juggle his well thought out orders between the front lines and his base more efficiently to succeed.

Aha, I think this statement of mine is the culprit for me being misunderstood. Well, I, personally, have never been distracted from an in-progress co-ordinated attack/counter-attack, unless if I was forced to prepare a counter-attack for a possible immediate simultaneous attack from the enemy. Juggling of tasks in the heat of a battle is probably performed by those not interested in the boom boom, or by those who do not know how to co-ordinate an efficient attack, or maybe even by people who know exactly what they are doing. I'm not saying that nobody does this, because I honestly wouldn't know.

A question to Zarel:

The advantages of direct-debit, as far as I understood (please correct me if I'm wrong), are

1) The gamer is able to make wiser decisions when creating power actions. By that I mean giving the gamer the intuition to prevent power actions from coming to a screeching grind in times of low power levels.

2) Power accrual queue allows for actions to be assigned a priority, which would means a shorter ETA for the power actions that are higher up in the queue.

Are there any other advantages that I may have missed out? Or which you haven't mentioned? Any drawbacks of the direct-debit method?

[Rman Virgil]

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I'll tell you right off - all this talk about making the game more "challenging" for "wiser", more "effective", bad-arse switch-tasking players is feedback commercial A game developers take with a heaping dose of salt becuase they do not want their game to become niche in numbers, catering to self-styled elite players... they want the game to be fun for the broadest number of players attracted to the genre of game they are or have created.

This is a discussion I probably should have abstained from since I have the resources to change WZ however me & my gaming buds like and choose to enjoy the game whether by modding or source level change.

I need not make any effort at persuading coders or modders to do work for me, make changes for me / us. It's a rather liberating position & affords me a level of objectivity I'd likely not have coming from a stance where my only option was creating an appealing & convincing call to action by others...

Also - In real life chain of command there is subordinate delegation of tasking so game mechanics that are supportive of facilitating switch-tasking actually have a basis in the reality of a War Theater & all the tacs, strats & support services that make up the complexity of its system dynamics..

And btw... when I referenced blowing chit up I was very precise in my wording & it was not at all synonymous with just watching things go "BOOM".

- RV
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[Lancefighter]

Interesting discussion: While not having played trunk(and possibly by saying that having removed any credibility I have), I wish to say a few things on the matter.

I had a time where I was an avid gamer in Spring RTS - for those who do not know, its an rts engine based off Total Annihilation. TA was based on a two resource system, energy and metal. Both of these were flow based, in that building a structure would require 100 metal, but it depends on the number of builders how fast that metal is deducted from your stores.
Now, it seems that this might be difficult, but TA also gives you something very simple - it told you how much was being used per second.

Every single unit had a +metal/energy and a -metal/energy number. For most units, these were negligible(and very few cost metal upkeep) However, for construction units, they have a -metal number when they are building something. If a constructor uses 1 metal/s to build the above 100 metal structure, it will take him 100 seconds. This is made simple by that the game tells you how much metal you are gaining, and how much you are losing.

If it could be done that near the oil bar, it told you +oil/s and -oil/s then i see no reason why calculus would be needed: you could easily tell that I am gaining 5 oil/s, and that tank I want to build will cost me an 5 oil/s for 20 seconds to build

I note now that each truck has a 'build points' associated with it - take those, and make them something useful - that truck builds at 15 oil/s (in my current campaign at least). So a hardpoint costing 300 oil would be done in 20 seconds with one truck, or 10 seconds with two, 6.3ish seconds with 3, etc.

As well, if a player starts with 0 metal, and wants to build a tank costing 100 metal, he could either wait to accrue 100 metal and start the tank, or start the tank immediately, and be done about when you would have started building the tank in the other scenario.

I am of the opinion that the only reason people think they would need to know calculus is that some things are not told to the player. if you can tell the player the rate of oil use, then there is no need for him to know calculus.

perhaps I simply dislike the method of requiring all materials up front - an assembly line does not require all materials to be available before the first two pieces are put together, why should it in a game?

[JDW]

I'll tell you right off - all this talk about making the game more "challenging" for "wiser", more "effective", bad-arse switch-tasking players is feedback commercial A game developers take with a heaping dose of salt becuase they do not want their game to become niche in numbers, catering to self-styled elite players... they want the game to be fun for the broadest number of players attracted to the genre of game they are or have created.

Meaning, it's best if a non - game designer/developer feedback focuses only on what would make the game more enjoyable by everyone, and how to make the game more appealing to newcomers so that they get hooked. I agree.

This is a discussion I probably should have abstained from since I have the resources to change WZ however me & my gaming buds like and choose to enjoy the game whether by modding or source level change.

Well, I guess even I am free to to make my own mod or change the source code to meet my special needs, regardless of whether I have the skills or not, they can always be learnt.

I need not make any effort at persuading coders or modders to do work for me, make changes for me / us.

I need not too.

It's a rather liberating position & affords me a level of objectivity I'd likely not have coming from a stance where my only option was creating an appealing & convincing call to action by others...

I really need to try looking at things more objectively.

Also - In real life chain of command there is subordinate delegation of tasking so game mechanics that are supportive of facilitating switch-tasking actually have a basis in the reality of a War Theater & all the tacs, strats & support services that make up the complexity of its system dynamics..

I see that now, and I agree. The role that the gamer plays in WZ2100 is that of a commander, and tasks to be performed by the gamer should probably be limited to this role.

[KenAlcock]

As to most aspects discussed in this thread, I kind of agree with what some others said--if it ain't broken, don't fix it.

However, there is one idea I've read in this thread that I would like to see implemented. I believe that this idea would be agreeable to most, if not all, Warzone players. That is being able to prioritize "one thing" so as to allocate all incoming power to only that one thing above all other things. And by "one thing", I'm hoping that could mean: building one structure, researching one technology, or producing one unit. Currently, to accomplish such prioritization is a micromanagement nightmare, requiring the user to cancel or pause all other actions in order to focus power allocation on the most critical thing that particular moment in the conflict demands of you. Unit production and research can currently be paused fairly easily, but if you have 5 research and 15 factories (5 of each type), then the user has to pause 20 things to focus power on building an important defensive structure (let's say AA to counter the enemy's VTOL spam attack).

How you developers would implement a GUI input action so as to prioritize building one structure to the top of any power allocation queue is beyond me, especially when you factor in that trucks could have queued build orders, and also that more than one truck could be assigned to building the current structure displayed in the build menu.


Slightly off-topic, Zarel and I discussed some Multiplayer Research with Allies ideas in this thread that have power consumption implications. Currently, power is simply lost many times in Multiplayer games in different researching scenarios. See that thread for more details. I would hope that any power allocation changes would be supportive of the changes I proposed in that thread, that hopefully make it into a future Warzone version.

[Jorzi]

Some kind of "high priority button" would indeed be a nice new feature. I made a quick mockup for it...