Economy Changes

[boxes]

Part 1 of 4 of post-pug discussions

--

The Existing Problems:

The team that wins the initial harv fight, will more than likely win the game in a snowball. The harv dump will give that team (300 * # of players) more total credits to utilize and hold the field for the next following harvester dumps. Because of how important it is, this limits the amount of risky early game plays, as losing the first harvester while the other team gets theirs is a death sentence mid-game. 

GDI and Nod balance is tied in quite heavily to the economy. Nod for example is much stronger when player economy averages lower than 1k, yet GDI is much stronger when it averages above 1k. In short, LCGs outshine both patch and gunner on the field, and Nod can afford Techs at the same time with mass light tanks and artys, which GDI has little answer to. Later, Sydneys and snipers combined with meds and mammys along with a deathball of hotwires is where Nod struggles to fight head on with. In short, one faction is not overpowered over the other, but rather one performs much better with a higher surplus of credits. Unfortunately getting to that surplus is rather time consuming and often difficult to attain. 

Credits are heavily tied in to the fun factor of RenX. If you can't afford anything, I can't blame people for deciding to simply not play. There's no significant objective to do with free infantry mid-late-game besides collecting crates (if you can even get to them) or repairing buildings and tanks as engineers (which becomes worthless later versus ranked up enemies). Games without your refinery often lead to some of the most dreadful experiences, mainly because the lack of credits leading to the lack of meaningful things to do.

--

What to change:

Decrease the harvester payload to 150, increase the passive tickrate to 3. Dead ref tick rate to 2. 

--

Benefits:

• This will slow down any snowball that occurs after losing the initial harvester, and makes the silo a much stronger alternative to protecting and attacking harvesters.
• GDI can get their meds and repairs out faster, while Nod would still push out their typical early game composition, decreasing the dominance of Nod early on, and perhaps re-evaluate what is considered 'Nod' maps
• In maps with one vehicle entrance and long distance harvesting, teams that are locked in their base won't have their economy bottle-necked as hard
• More interesting things can be used with the harvester without losing too many credits, such as bringing it to the front line for a base push.
• Teams that get their refinery destroyed early in the game would have a much better chance bouncing back with a tick rate close to the default one. 

--

Repercussions:

• Might be too high of a credit income overall, can lead to 1k infantry spam
• Destroying the refinery will much be harder to take advantage of if on the defensive end
• Teams might consider keeping the refinery alive just to be able to farm harvesters, as the dead ref tick rate is much higher and may have little change to the way the other team plays

--

Please share any thoughts you may have regarding any further benefits/repercussions, or your opinion in general

[Redarmy]

Quick side note, I thought harvester dumps gave different amounts based on the map?
Like a harvester dump on Islands is smaller than a harvester dump on say Eyes.

[NodSaibot]

14 minutes ago, Redarmy said:

Quick side note, I thought harvester dumps gave different amounts based on the map?
Like a harvester dump on Islands is smaller than a harvester dump on say Eyes.

This is correct.

[Redarmy]

So, I always figured if this sort of change happened, it'd have to simply be percentage based by each map. We're increasing the tick by 50%, so dumps should be lowered by 25%-50%. If you want more money in general, reduce dumps by 25%. So say harv dump on Islands is like.... 225 credits, it should be changed to something between 113-169.

 

Also, I would think keeping destroyed ref debuff to 50% reduced tick rate would also be better, meaning 1.5 a tic with a destroyed ref.

Keep refs brutal to lose. Losing unit buildings shouldn't be the only back breaking stuff.

[boxes]

14 hours ago, Redarmy said:

Keep refs brutal to lose. Losing unit buildings shouldn't be the only back breaking stuff.

Back and forth I hear two sides, one that wants building losses to be as painful as possible (old ren) and one that wants them to be more forgiving, both reasons I believe is for comeback oppurtunities, available options, etc. Depending on your position in the game, if you are dominating the field and pounding buildings, and you lose a building to infiltration for example, obviously this opens up a chance for the other team to decicively retake the field by taking advantage of what you lost. While on the other side, if you lose a building while locked in your own base, the team won't be cut away from so many resources that they can use for a future attack or to bolster defenses, and in the end minimizes the snowball. 

I personally think losing the ref right now doesn't quite fit into this scenario of "adpating to what you lost" as much as the production structions. Losing strip/WF means a team can focus on infantry plays mixed in with APC support for example, while losing HON/Bar means a team might focus on defending the base with tanks while sneaking in an unexpecting rocket rush. If you lose the ref, there is no significant way to get back a reliable source of income besides the silo (and as I mentioned, repairing requires your base to be sieged, and you will die a lot as you are a high priority target in the field). 

Therefore, the ref should be more lenient to teams that lose the building, as it will cut away too many oppurtunities if teams simply don't have credits to use. Harvester dumps are still important to overall credit gain, and losing it will build up a lot of lost credits over time.

[Akbaro]

Some games I feel like just leaving when all the stuff is gone and playing something else cos tier 1 infantry and APCs isnt fun but increasing the dead tick rate would make destroying refs pretty worthless. Just a minor setback.

[isupreme]

after reading this post, i considered the harvy /silo  balance.    Being an old school Ren player, i tend to think the harvy is everything.

But since silos now play a regular role in our game,  I think allowing them more importance is appropriate.   They tend to be out in the battlefield and harvys are more protected.    make silos more important and  Allow the harvy to be the obvious sign your team is failing...not the lynch pin.

(i reserve the right to change my opinion....)

 

[Guest]

I think its fair to lower the harvs payload, but still iffy on credit tickrate. Its not that difficult to accumilate passive credits (even for me who suicides his 1k units every 5minutes)

Since most maps play as a campfest, harv must be stopped, so on the camped team it serves no purpouse, when the camp..e'?' Team gets all harv drops, helping them accumilate even more income. This would balance out the playing field quite well IMO.

[boxes]

7 hours ago, Akbaro said:

Some games I feel like just leaving when all the stuff is gone and playing something else cos tier 1 infantry and APCs isnt fun but increasing the dead tick rate would make destroying refs pretty worthless. Just a minor setback.

1.5 might be more appropriate, but perhaps something else can be done to generate income rather than increasing tickrate. I've heard an idea that after the refinery dies, players then become responsible for harvesting tiberium themselves via some item allows them to harvest tiberium? And they drop off this item at a certain spot in the base where a chinook comes and picks it up at specific time intervals and this becomes an alternative harvy dump for teams without refs? Something like that

40 minutes ago, Kaunas said:

I think its fair to lower the harvs payload, but still iffy on credit tickrate. Its not that difficult to accumilate passive credits (even for me who suicides his 1k units every 5minutes)

Since most maps play as a campfest, harv must be stopped, so on the camped team it serves no purpouse, when the camp..e'?' Team gets all harv drops, helping them accumilate even more income. This would balance out the playing field quite well IMO.

The exact numbers of the tickrate should be tested extensively, to the point where the exact credit income over a period of time is as close as possible to what we have now. Spamming 1K infantry will definitely be a problem otherwise.

[OTT]

I like the idea.

The worst stalemates I've been part of were when both teams had no ref,might not happen often,but it still does,game would easily go above 2 hours.

Decreasing Harvester payload while increasing credit tickrate to 3 sounds like a good idea,as for the dead ref tickrate,maybe make it 1.5 when the map has a silo and 2 when it doesn't.

50 minutes ago, boxes said:

The exact numbers of the tickrate should be tested extensively, to the point where the exact credit income over a period of time is as close as possible to what we have now. Spamming 1K infantry will definitely be a problem otherwise.

Even if the credit income ended up being slightly higher,it would still be better,imho more money for both teams = more progress than when both teams don't have money,that is the case more often than not.

I like it when new ideas get tested out in game,how else would you know how they turn out,test them for 1-3 weeks,a lot of ideas might seem weird in theory,but when tried out in game,you'd see their effects more clearly.

Edited November 27, 2018 by ObeliskTheTormentor

[Redarmy]

11 hours ago, boxes said:

I personally think losing the ref right now doesn't quite fit into this scenario of "adpating to what you lost"

It's called git gud don't die, n00b.

More seriously though, I just feel like each building should be equally painful to lose, and it's easier to make the ref/pp feel more painful than it is to make the inf/veh buildings less painful.

 

[Guest]

Im with boxes on the general topic but support redarmy's point. In some situations its even 'benefitual' to lose a refinery and deal with lower credits than to let the enemy farm it for VP.

Ofcourse this idea needs a proper PUBLIC testing before you find the middle. Buuut leaving the ref tick the same and making harv carry less green glass shards sounds decent. 

 

[Akbaro]

MARV ASSEMBLY COMPLETE

[roweboat]

I like the idea of lowering the harvester payload, but I don't think the tickrate should be increased.

 

I'm with those who say "you gotta fight to earn your money, son!".

[Eagle XI]

There should be a point to protecting your team's income, your proposition aims to eliminate importance of eco defense. Its logical for an team that failed at defense to be setback. We should not make it so that destroying their Refinery doesnt matter. Why not replace all Refs with Silos then if you want the game to revolve around passive income ?

We can try different mutators on the Harvester per map besides income, stuff such as higher health, with gun turret, has platform for infantry behind/above, moves faster, self-repair etc.

[boxes]

2 hours ago, roweboat said:

I like the idea of lowering the harvester payload, but I don't think the tickrate should be increased.

 

I'm with those who say "you gotta fight to earn your money, son!".

The issue of that will be that it will further strengthern Nod's early game since it will take longer for GDI to get tanks and repairs out. At the moment, GDI's base on small maps could have 4 light tanks rolling in their base before they get one med out, assuming both teams lose their first harvester. And if donation time is open by then, early flame tanks will only make it harder for GDI to push out of their base, even if they donated for meds. 

The core reason for the higher tickrate is that GDI's passive income to 800 is faster than what it is now. By the time Nod gets their tanks rolling out in the field, GDI should have meds available.

[Xeon Wraith]

I'm generally okay with decreased economic focus on the harvester. Increased tick rate seems sensible for early game, undecided for mid-late game. It does kinda feel like increasing the tick rate is a band-aid fix to decreases wait times in those mid-game stalemates, rather providing a objective to remove wait times entirely.

 

12 hours ago, boxes said:

I've heard an idea that after the refinery dies, players then become responsible for harvesting tiberium themselves via some item allows them to harvest tiberium? And they drop off this item at a certain spot in the base where a chinook comes and picks it up at specific time intervals and this becomes an alternative harvy dump for teams without refs? Something like that

I recall hearing this in one of the post-PUG discussions as well though I don't recall it being exclusive to dead refineries. Still, I'm very much a fan of it, as gives a  value to getting small bits of field control even while losing. It potentially opens up some interesting map design choices with additional tiberium fields or early game options if purchasable with refineries alive.

If I recall correctly, it was suggested as some purchasable item like the Repair tool though, identification and pricing will be difficult with different infantry combinations. A additional weaponless (or pistol only) free infantry with the tool would probably be better suited, as it'll be a lot clear players who to attack/defend and clearly defines the role. This is probably a relatively high effort idea to implement however.

 

Stopping the harvester is pretty common when you're locked in. Strategies of keeping Refinery alive to farm VP from the harvester seems a bit optimistic to me. 

[roweboat]

9 hours ago, boxes said:

The issue of that will be that it will further strengthern Nod's early game since it will take longer for GDI to get tanks and repairs out. At the moment, GDI's base on small maps could have 4 light tanks rolling in their base before they get one med out, assuming both teams lose their first harvester. And if donation time is open by then, early flame tanks will only make it harder for GDI to push out of their base, even if they donated for meds. 

The core reason for the higher tickrate is that GDI's passive income to 800 is faster than what it is now. By the time Nod gets their tanks rolling out in the field, GDI should have meds available.

That's a good point. It's a very difficult balance since so many variables are involved.

 

6 hours ago, Xeon Wraith said:

I'm generally okay with decreased economic focus on the harvester. Increased tick rate seems sensible for early game, undecided for mid-late game. It does kinda feel like increasing the tick rate is a band-aid fix to decreases wait times in those mid-game stalemates, rather providing a objective to remove wait times entirely.

 

I recall hearing this in one of the post-PUG discussions as well though I don't recall it being exclusive to dead refineries. Still, I'm very much a fan of it, as gives a  value to getting small bits of field control even while losing. It potentially opens up some interesting map design choices with additional tiberium fields or early game options if purchasable with refineries alive.

If I recall correctly, it was suggested as some purchasable item like the Repair tool though, identification and pricing will be difficult with different infantry combinations. A additional weaponless (or pistol only) free infantry with the tool would probably be better suited, as it'll be a lot clear players who to attack/defend and clearly defines the role. This is probably a relatively high effort idea to implement however.

 

Stopping the harvester is pretty common when you're locked in. Strategies of keeping Refinery alive to farm VP from the harvester seems a bit optimistic to me. 

5

I agree with this totally.

 

Let's bring on the new weapon. a Personal Tiberium Vacuum =D

[yosh56]

Tie harvs to this?

 

??

 

Basically make it more important to defend them over time as opposed to just the 1st dump being outright game-breaking?  Granted you run the risk of making it take even longer for GDI to get meds. 

[Fffreak9999]

3 minutes ago, yosh56 said:

Tie harvs to this?

??

Basically make it more important to defend them over time as opposed to just the 1st dump being outright game-breaking?  Granted you run the risk of making it take even longer for GDI to get meds. 

This would be crippling for a team being camped while the other team gain stupid levels of credits, if you had a harvester granting heroic levels of credits and the team being locked in only had recruit and being farmed for VP, never getting any credit drops.

----------Unfinished Idea, looking to elaborate later---------------------------

Instead of granting more credits by veterancy level, make it so that losing the harvester grants a small credit boost to the team killing it.

 

Example: 25 credits at Recruit to all players on the team which kills a harvester, and scale it up to 100 credits at Heroic (see the below suggestion). This promotes the defense of the harvester as a long term goal of the team to prevent the enemy from keeping an economic advantage, along with promoting aggressive action to take out the enemy harvester to grant that team wide boost.

I would also like to see Harvesters take on a more aggressive approach, maybe have a small mounted machine gun that fires if the Harvester is active (Harvester has not been stopped, prevents abuse of the commander powers to control the harvester),  this helps prevent early game losses a little, while proving little more than annoyance at higher veterancy levels.

Maybe tie the Harvester veterancy into Match duration (00:00-10:00 = Recruit, 10:01-20:00 = Veteran, 20:01-30:00 = Elite, 30:01+ = Heroic)

[Xeon Wraith]

14 hours ago, yosh56 said:

Tie harvs to this?

??

Basically make it more important to defend them over time as opposed to just the 1st dump being outright game-breaking?  Granted you run the risk of making it take even longer for GDI to get meds. 

Kinda with Fffreak on this one, having a extra economic snowball mechanic probably isn't needed especially since the winning team tends to also have the veterancy advantage. Harvester dump size scaling with time could be nice though. It'll help reduce the impact of losing the first harvester while retaining importance after early game.

If you're trying to make long-term defence of Harvesters more important, wouldn't it be simpler to give players a small amount of VP on each successful dump? Veterancy already exists for the long-game and we already know how the game plays with steady VP income (from killing enemy harvs pre-commander patch).

 

14 hours ago, Fffreak9999 said:

Instead of granting more credits by veterancy level, make it so that losing the harvester grants a small credit boost to the team killing it.

Example: 25 credits at Recruit to all players on the team which kills a harvester, and scale it up to 100 credits at Heroic (see the below suggestion). This promotes the defense of the harvester as a long term goal of the team to prevent the enemy from keeping an economic advantage, along with promoting aggressive action to take out the enemy harvester to grant that team wide boost.

Giving credits to the enemy team on losing your harvester makes the economy snowball even worse. Not recommended. 

14 hours ago, Fffreak9999 said:

I would also like to see Harvesters take on a more aggressive approach, maybe have a small mounted machine gun that fires if the Harvester is active (Harvester has not been stopped, prevents abuse of the commander powers to control the harvester),  this helps prevent early game losses a little, while proving little more than annoyance at higher veterancy levels.

Adding a turret to the Harvester seems more like a gimmick than anything else. Having the harvester kill multiple enemy infantry means nothing if it dies. You're still going to be feeling the full effect of a crippled early game rollout. On most maps its relatively easy to break line-of-sight with the Harvester to C4 it anyway, so it'll probably be more annoying than anything else. There's also the issue of effectively having a respawning guard tower which is a whole other issue.

It wouldn't be too difficult to micro the harvester up to the enemy base and activate it for offensive usage, so you'll probably need some method to track the distance from it's base.

[Madkill40]

Dead Ref should be brutal, reduced to 1.5 tickrate works as does having a tickrate of 3 for an active Refinery.

A 25%-33% reduced Harvester payload is also worth trying.

If you want to boost the in-game economy after the refinery is destroyed it might worth considering buffing the credit income from repairing friendlies for the team which loses their Refinery?

So when a teams Refinery is destroyed text on each players' screen of that team could state [GDI/Nod Refinery Destroyed : Repairs credit buff initialized] 

The current credit income for repairing friendly vehicles could be buffed by a 50%-100%, so players have the option of suffering to a reduced tickrate OR they can repair friendly vehicles and accumulate credits quicker than normal to enable a swifter comeback for the whole team.

For example: If an Engineer's credit income for repairing is 2 credits per 1% repaired, that then becomes 4 credits per 1% repaired if their Refinery has been destroyed.

If a tank ends up having 7 engineers who are too careless and they all get slaughtered by an Arty or sniper(s), well that happens already... But at least those engineers will have been able to gain a fair amount of credits in the mean time. 

This also means Hotwire's will gain a lot of credits much faster which is healthy for the team because that means somebody or something is being repaired, but depending on the player of the Hotwire they may lose that repair to find a friendly vehicle instead, which doesn't always assure victory. 

But this also means if a team without their Refinery is able to push back out, the less damage they take the more it will cripple their own economy so if they're not careful and get cocky they risk losing their progress, or if too many players are farming credits via reps in the battlefield their base is more open to infiltration as well. So they're still at a disadvantage but the disadvantage is one they'd bring upon themselves if they're too reckless despite being a building down.

People already use engineers to try to gain credits back if they're low on money after the Refinery has been destroyed, so lets reward that initiative. 

Just to summarize what might work best:

• Buff Ref tickrate to 3 for Active Refinery
• Reduced Harvester payload by a %
• Debuff Ref tickrate to 1.5 for the team with a Disabled(destroyed) Refinery
• Buff credit income on repairs by a % for the team without an Active Refinery
  • In-addition to this buff, on-screen text needs to pop-up stating "Repairs credit buff initialized" for the team which just lost their Refinery

P.S. Minor Team VP for successful harvester dump would be nice on maps with contested harvester fields, however Crashsite and Islands as well as any other map with in-base tiberium fields would need this harvester dump VP gain disabled. @Xeon Wraith

Edited November 29, 2018 by Madkill40

[NodSaibot]

1 hour ago, Madkill40 said:

P.S. Minor Team VP for successful harvester dump would be nice on maps with contested harvester fields, however Crashsite and Islands as well as any other map with in-base tiberium fields would need this harvester dump VP gain disabled. @Xeon Wraith

I thought we were trying to stop snowballing and make harvesters less valuable? Any team holding field would be getting even more VP than they usually do.

[Xeon Wraith]

14 hours ago, BubbleTea said:

I thought we were trying to stop snowballing and make harvesters less valuable? Any team holding field would be getting even more VP than they usually do.

We're trying to make losing the harvester less economically punishing for the reasons in Boxes' post. There appears to be some worry that a decreased harvester payload might cause players to stop defending their harvester, so the VP per dump suggestion was there to counteract the decrease in a different way.

[NodSaibot]

4 minutes ago, Xeon Wraith said:

 

It would still help snowballing, would it not?

[Akbaro]

Am I the only one who thinks the economy is fine as it is? Base camping seems to be pretty 50-50.

[Xeon Wraith]

17 minutes ago, BubbleTea said:

It would still help snowballing, would it not?

I'm going to assume you're trying to quote the VP per dump thing and hope I don't look like a idiot.

Yes, it would. I personally don't have any issues with it. The veterancy snowball only becomes significant when you hit elite, at which point you're far beyond the early game.

[NodSaibot]

1 minute ago, Xeon Wraith said:

I'm going to assume you're trying to quote the VP per dump thing and hope I don't look like a idiot.

Yes, it would. I personally don't have any issues with it. The veterancy snowball only becomes significant when you hit elite, at which point you're far beyond the early game.

My issue with it comes from the fact that attacking buildings/killing tanks gives far more than repping does. Assuming the team that's in the base can't destroy vehicles all too well (which is why they're in their base), they would already be losing the VP battle. Harvy dumps, on maps such as Field and FieldX don't take that long. The VP would add up with the VP acquired from other sources quite quickly

[Trap]

Changes to the economy will have a huge impact on the gameplay. Even in ways that are not expected at all. I don't know if there are statistics about current unit / vehicle picks, but it would be pretty interesting to see how these would change after a possibly economy change.

Generally speaking I'm fond of @boxes suggestions, but as others mentioned it has to be set for most maps separately, as harvy dump times (and amount) are different on all maps. Also the harvy dump itself should not become irrelevant, as teams might start to deactivate their harvester as soon as a map starts (to deny the enemy team VP).

With 150 initial credits [3 credits / second tickrate] GDI would have to wait 216 seconds (3,6 mins) to buy medium tanks - even without doing anything at all and no harvester dump (which both is rather unlikely). Nod has the same time for flame tanks, but can afford artilleries after 100 seconds (1,6 min).

Now it depends on the map design and the teams how much impact these figures have....

 

[Madkill40]

On 11/29/2018 at 2:07 AM, Madkill40 said:

• Buff Ref tickrate to 3 for Active Refinery
• Reduced Harvester payload by a %
• Debuff Ref tickrate to 1.5 for the team with a Disabled(destroyed) Refinery
• Buff credit income on repairs by a % for the team without an Active Refinery
  • In-addition to this buff, on-screen text needs to pop-up stating "Repairs credit buff initialized" for the team which just lost their Refinery

Just do this and see if it improves the in-game economy