Manual laser mining of Tiberium

[Mystic~]

The idea is to allow manual mining of tiberium for credits when harvesting isn't viable.

This was half joking and half serious during the last pug chat, someone compared it to mine-craft, but I'm not thinking about pick axes or crafting tiberium weapons, more just mining using a laser. So there are several maps where the harvester travels directly onto the main battlefield including Field, Field-X, Under, Canyon, Walls, Whiteout, Tunnels and maybe a few more maps I can't think of right now. The harvester usually gets destroyed the majority of the game over and over or gets stuck in base, especially if one side can dominate the field as usually happens and it leaves people to defend with low tier units and they can often never able to mount an effective counter attack or recover as they have little team wide money compared to the opposition.

I was proposing the idea that maybe engineers could carry some sort of plasma torch or laser tool that maybe you purchase for free and then you go manually point it at a large tiberium crystal in order to generate credits more quickly than you could otherwise without it. Possibly not as many credits to be as valuable as a harvester dump but quicker than waiting for a 1 credit silo/refinery tick over time.

I'm aware that you can repair tanks and get kills to earn credits but this isn't always viable, repair jobs can only accommodate so many repairers, like suckling for milk. Some of these crystals could even be placed hanging out of the cave walls and in tunnels rather than expecting and allowing players to be sniped trying to reach and get close to the main tiberium field. Say you earn up to 100-150 credits for successfully mining a piece before it has to regrow and it takes a little bit of time to mine like disarming a beacon, the torch must also recharge before you can take from another source. The crystal should still remain available to other players, this would be another way to supplement some credits without using the harvester or could be used when there's no refinery. On Whiteout the obvious place to mine might be the main cave, the mine shafts on canyon, the tunnels on field etc. The fact that it takes away from combat would be what encourages people not to think they can just mine all game, unless you want to make the extra credits available team wide.

If you have something worth sharing, please comment below.

The video shows the concept of manually laser mining crystal/ore.

 

Edited August 13, 2020 by Mystic~

[Mystic~]

If I get over 50 views on the forum but not a single comment I'm going to get pissy with people for not contributing anything.

[Nyxblow]

First of all thank you for the suggestion, these are always welcome and cool to read.

Before reading your last paragraph, it looked pointless since you're talking about situations where your team is base-locked, and indeed if the enemy team controls the battle field entirely, then your engineer will probably get demolished trying to harvest anything.

The idea of crystals outside the battlefield is a cool idea, but I see the following risk: the enemy team is already ahead of yours economically since their harvester is at work and yours isn't. Now imagine if the enemy team also dominates those tunnels and caves where the crystals are -> then their economic advantage would just get bigger.

Also I do not really see what is wrong with earning credits from repairs. When you're base-locked, there's usually a continuous pounding from enemy tanks onto your tanks and buildings, which makes it quite reliable. Think about maps like Field and Under. I rarely do it for the credits only, I like repairing tanks, you usually cannot win games without repairs anyway.

In a way I am also in favor of not bringing too many gameplay changes compared to original OG, because if you make one such change, then the door is open to other significant changes. And in no time you can end up with a pretty different game.

[Mystic~]

Thanks for giving feedback, I think most of your points are answered to some extent in my original post. I'm not saying the idea being proposed is perfect yet, for example, I'm trying to figure out if there's a way that would dissuade the enemy team with total field control from also trying to manual mining, maybe there's an incentive to do this, or maybe it just takes man power away from combat play in which case they would lose their advantage of numbers due to greedy mining. Maybe there's some sort of time based resource cap in place that prevents whoring tiberium, but it's meant to be a supplement or an emergency way of mining rather than a primary thing.

There needs to be consideration of where any such additional crystals would appear of course, but I was thinking in either defensible areas near the teams own base. I'm not trying to suggest just putting another silo on the main battlefield that the enemy team can dominate, like Field and Field-X. I'm also aware there's a trade off, if they choose to try and attack or patrol such areas to prevent the other team mining then they have less players on the field.

I think the base original game has already been changed or evolved considerably beyond what you would now expect to play in the original Renegade... character weapons have changed, new vehicles, new mining systems, new building armour systems, new stats for everything, the solo repair tool is the closet existing thing I'd compare a laser cutter to... but both games have similar problems, often on the maps where the harvester must travel to and return from the front lines, which seems so utterly daft to me I don't see why we can't re-think this area.

I'm not trying to put anyone off from repairing tanks or buildings, but damage output can only sustain so many players flow of credits, this situation is also only very common to maps like on Field/Under, where as on maps like Walls for example, you can often be base locked without buildings to repair and under constant enemy fire, if this is your only way of getting credits, it becomes really frustrating. I'm trying to solve the problem of becoming an idle player and using basic infantry when low on credits... the donation system also helps to some extent. Maybe something like an excess portion of credits could go into a team wide pot that players can access for upgrading their character or maybe even buying a tank.

But coming back to the original problem... is repairing a building or tank an acceptable solution for not having a functioning harvester? Either repeatedly destroyed or deliberately told to stand idle. What about when the refinery is destroyed?

[isupreme]

Quote

or maybe it just takes man power away from combat play in which case they would lose their advantage of numbers due to greedy mining.

I think this points to my core problem with this idea.   In times of trouble my team stops fighting and then spends time doing solo work,  which then deprives my team of firepower and repairs.

The ability to gain credits by repair work, the constant tick from refinery,  and now in some cases by scoring bounty kills -  is sufficient.

Quote

I'm trying to solve the problem of becoming an idle player and using basic infantry when low on credits

07.    We have all experienced that feeling.  ..

Edited August 14, 2020 by isupreme

[Mystic~]

I don't think that is sufficient at all, else there wouldn't be a problem,  I also don't think repairing a tank or a building is comparable to getting 300 credits every harvester cycle and in any case you're going to get trapped in a repair role. Often there isn't something that needs repairs and it also doesn't take into account the complete loss of a refinery. It's possible that an infantry miner could contribute global credits to the team a bit like a silo, but rather than it being a 1-2 credit tick as it has been in the past it generate a greater amount for that player for doing work and then something extra to the team. The main purpose of repairing a building or a tank is to keep it alive, getting credits is just an extra bonus and incentive for doing these menial tasks in my opinion. Not having an economy kills this game and there're too many instances where the enemy team snowballs with both a harvester and captured silo and the defending team has little chance of coming back due to low income.

Say there are no repair jobs in the base, all you can afford is a basic free engineer, in a PUG you're going to get shouted at for being a free class, you can't make it onto an active battlefield due to various threats and you have a super low survival probability for any great length of time, the result is you get a menial income or waste a lot of time trying to secure that menial income. If you can afford the adv class this improves greatly, but you're then expected to remain in this role to support... tiberium is supposed to be there for the main economy, but you can't mine the expletive stuff because... reason: we had to stop the harvester because the enemy keeps shooting it and getting vp, credits and points and it's pathetic. I think manual mining is perfect for this type of situation, but as I said, I don't think I'd want it to totally replace the system of having a ore miner.

[roweboat]

Random other idea. Albeit a bit more Tiberian Sun esq.

 

What if you could buy a little drone or vehicle, it's sole purpose is to harvest tibeirum. Only the owner of the vehicle gives credits. It's half the cost of a harvester and gives half the credits when harvesting

[Mystic~]

I think that's Kane's Wrath era technology, I'd probably find that sort of thing annoying in the base game mode, but I'm serious about laser cutting, lots of other games use this as a method for manual ore mining. If I had to redesign a harvester for this game, they'd become more tanky, or it would consist of a submerged digger and conveyor belt system.

[Cheesemonk]

I have mixed feelings on this idea.

On the one hand, I have never liked the idea that damaging/repairing gives credits (even in the old REN). While it incentivizes aggression over stagnant play, it systematically is required to give more credits to the person doing the damage then the person repairing. (if the repairer got more credits the optimal economic strategy would be to never shoot anything you weren't sure you could kill.) This means that when I am sitting in base repairing the building that is being pounded, whoever is doing the pounding is earning more credits (and VP/Veterancy) then me, and the longer this goes on, the more of an economic lead the opposing team gains.

So giving credits based on damage/repairing both increases the snowball effect of the winning team, making comebacks harder; and also incentivizes the winning team to keep the opponent base locked without attempting to finish them off, even if they know they cannot destroy whatever building they are pounding.

Having objectives like harvesters and Tiberium silos that gives credits based on doing the work to capture and hold a location outside your base, or destroy/defend a vehicle allow for more mixed game-play. Sacrificing one objective to secure another (for example: let them have field, take the silo on the INF path). It gives an A-symmetric balance as well as more strategies available for a comeback.

Your suggestion would allow for an additional method for losing teams to try to reclaim an advantage, and I love that.

 

On the other hand, giving people a purely economic job without any fighting would be a BIG change to the game. I could easily see too many or too few people trying to farm money, and introducing such changes would upset the delicate balance of the game for quite some time.

I also don't see much lore precedent for infantry collecting tiberium. What you are describing is a player controlled infantry variant of something that already exists: the harvester. I don't mind the idea of infantry harvesters, but it seems too easy to abuse, or too silly to have half the team running around trying to not get shot while nothing to fight back. It would be a large jolt to the balance of the game and very hard to implement in my opinion.

 

I feel that economic management was always a big part of RTS games, and Renegade never did a good job of capturing that aspect of RTS in its conception. I have always secretly wanted to be able to buy my own harvester, drive it myself, and collect from multiple different patches of tiberium as i saw fit. The AI harvester is just too dumb. the Commander's ability to set way-points and stop the harvester is a poor solution in my opinion. In other threads it was discussed that the commander has enough to micromanage as it is without babysitting the harv.

I suppose my solution would be to just make harvesters player-controlled and expensive as all hell. Keep them as bulky targets that are slow moving. Maybe set a limit of 1-3 harvesters per team. or keep them free and have them do their AI-thing until someone jumps in the driver's seat?

 

[Mystic~]

Thanks for sharing feedback, I personally prefer the approach of shooting buildings that I know I can damage or in time destroy, the endless approach of shelling buildings is really tedious for both sides, and likewise I don't like gifting my enemy a bounty of repair credits. I know there's no such thing in the original games or lore of the universe its modelled on, but there were never stealth black hands, laser chain gunners, snipers either so I know new things can be created and still fit into the game mode.

Having harvesters on maps where they simply get destroyed every time they venture out of the base is just really silly and it breaks the game economy and stagnates the game play. They introduced 'rep tools' as small pistol sized repair guns, so I don't see why they can't create another small tool as a tiberium cutter. Engineers and advanced engineers are already basically unarmed infantry and run around like headless chickens trying not to lose their melons for most of the game.

One quick solution might be to give harvesters something like double the existing health or super strong armour, but I did think solo mining could be a fun mechanic as I know some people like to play more support roles, like healers, miners, drivers etc. Whether it helps the teams credits globally or its just for the player would be something to be explored, depends on the value to the team and how useful the person feels doing the job, if its a requisite for all games then I imagine mining could be just as boring, tedious and pointless to human game play aspect as wanting to go on auto-fire MCT repairs, hence an self-driving AI harvester... but this makes no difference at all if it drives directly into the enemy tank line as happens on something like at least 1/3 of all maps, low income games blow, particularly when they're one sided low income games with no hope of a turn around.

[DoMiNaNt_HuNtEr]

@Mystic~ Naw fuck all that. Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS, but naw I aint gay) Just get driveable and buyable Harvesters. They cost 1400 bucks in the original C&C, but that's pretty steep. So cut it in half - $700. Add it to the vehicle purchase menu. With the vehicle cap you'd have to choose wisely - should I double our teams money? Or is every tank needed?

Or maybe have player bought Harvesters separate from the vehicle build limit. Instead, have it's own build limit. It might be necessary, 'cause in 64 player matches on maps where the tiberium is tucked away behind your base, lets say both teams have like 7 guys in harvesters covering their entire fucking tiberium field, meaning shitloads of cash all the time. My god, now we're rich. Now we can buy whatever the fuck we want yeeeah boooi

Speaking of buying shit, I miss buying desert eagles. And Bieks #NeverForget

[Handepsilon]

I dunno about laser mining... because those blue tiberiums are a bit....

EXPLODEY

[Mystic~]

Blue tiberium bomb harvesters were a legitimate strategy in Tiberain Sun.  In fact I'm open to some sort of blue tiberium bomb tank-stopper as Nod seems to be in serious need of this, something you must risk your life on placing on a tank. In any case, just make the crystals green... I think on somewhere like Crash Site you should be able to detonate the field for extra damage and then it re-grows.

But seriously, buying extra harvesters isn't a solution for these low eco games, when they're all being sent out to die and having more than one harvester on most maps would result in excess economy. I think manual mining of some crystals tucked away in some sort of cave or side area of a base with an appropriate mining tool is a perfect supplemental solution to the problem of being broke because your economy doesn't exist. I've played countless games of repairing buildings or tanks. Usually I get as far as affording a LCG or a Gunner and you're competing with several other team mates for credits and then I try and take something out, but you're usually facing insurmountable odds and fire power against you, 9/10 this character purchase gets sniped down. Or are we supposed to be letting players invest their credits in some sort of weapon industry stock market? I'm open to serious ideas about how to deal with this. On maps like Outposts you literally can't do anything once you are base locked like this.

[Mystic~]

@Quinc3y Solution for Field/Field-X? ...Under, Uphill, Canyon, Whiteout, Outposts, Walls and literally every other similar map with the same problem.

[slashes]

13 hours ago, Handepsilon said:

I dunno about laser mining... because those blue tiberiums are a bit....

EXPLODEY

mining tib sounds like a decent idea tho maybe not using the laser drill.but like a different version of the repair gun collor it green then call it a tiberian siphon gun every player can buy it in the items shop for like 600-800 credits. 

then where to use this add a couple of different spikes around every map or so that grow overtime back could be a system in place to better wait till its almost fully grown to try to harvest it like it hase different growth stages. stage 1 yields 50 credits on harvest stage 2 yields 150 credits. stage 3 350 stage 4 650. stage 5 yields 1000 credits or a bit balanced around the spike collor

green. 1st-2-3-4-5 25-50-100-175-300

blue 1st-2-3-4-5- 50-100-200-350-600

red crystal 100-200-350-550-800

to keep it somewhat team bases 10-20% of the tiberian mined will be given to everyone  the 80-90% of the mined tib wont be shared to everyone.+somewhat of a bonus to the losing team  if a building on there end got destroyed the tiberian spikes in there base could get a buff on the growth stages???

when ya mine them the growth stages will ofcourse go down with the harvest making it much easier if ya not to strapped on credits to only harvest lvl 5 to 4 with the growth also being faster the higher up it go's like 0-1 takes 120 seconds 1-2 takes 110 seconds 2-3 95 seconds 3-4 70 seconds 4-5 takes 45 seconds.

the growth stages could be announced in the top corner when ya mine and also visually like ya see when ya mine a message the tib spikes growth go's down to 4 then 3 then 2 1 and then to 0 the tiberian spike hase no useable tiberian to mine

 

now for the spikes there is 1 red 2 blue and like 4/5 green spikes inside the teams bases

in the field there no green spikes only blue and red they could be in hard to find spots or just in open ground entirelly like for example a red spike is in the middle of gdi's base/nod entrance meaning ya can get possibly killed very easily by snipers or what not

 

also  handepsilon any plans to add visceroid mechanic to the maps. possible tiberian based weapons kills can spawn a neutral agro visceroid with the mechanic that tiberian based weapons regenerate its health.the tiberian weapons are also able to make it stronger/evolve really miss the visceroids and mutants from the original there even in the original maps of renegade still active+crate can transform ya into 1 sometimes in there.

Edited August 24, 2020 by slashes

[Mystic~]

The main problem I'm trying to solve is still having an economy without a harvester due to a high probability of it being destroyed during a base lock. The team that can maintain their harvester throughout the game still gets a huge economic advantage, they can buy better units and this increases the likelihood they can win, lots of airstrike suppression for example or easily forming a large squad of high tier units.

If you're talking about Tiberium Spikes like the columns in Kane's Wrath then I think this tech building needs to wait for the Firestorm expansion maybe, they sound rather similar to the existing silo, and this already exists. I thought being able to mind different coloured crystal was a nice idea, there's already green and blue in at least two maps now, never seen red before in C&C though.

If both sides get an extra building or tech structure, this would certainly aid getting credits, its money for nothing, but there's no trade off required to do this, where as I thought if 3-4 players are required to mine crystal placed somewhere, at least work and effort is required to secure it. It's a better income source than a slow credit tick and it can't be easily be blocked by an army giving siege to a base. If an enemy team also spends time trying to manually mine, I wondered if this would be considered attempting to excessively mine and doing so de-tracts from going on the offensive, but it seems like a very useful if not vital game mechanic to have when you are on the back foot or base locked.

[roweboat]

I think half the problem is it could greatly affect current game balance and make the game even more convoluted.

[Mystic~]

Every single new feature they introduce makes the game more imbalanced and convoluted, but that said, low eco games through total domination of tiberium fields, harvesters and silo structures is a serious problem with the game that turns it into a hot cup of fustration. I think if the core idea is looked at someone would eventually find a way to limit in such a way that it doesn't just multiply a team's existing income if this is what it emerges happens. But credits earned for mining seems fair and it requires man power, but it's especially useful when there are very few odd repair jobs to share and there's a chance of getting something you need so you can upgrade your class etc. I think many people would find this task actually quite enjoyable. The new super money crate for example, this gifts the whole team a small amount, say 100 credits, the only difference this time is that a task is required to be done before getting the money and it's less random than hoping for the right crate.

[slashes]

 

Mystic~If you're talking about Tiberium Spikes like the columns in Kane's Wrath then I think this tech building needs to wait for the Firestorm expansion maybe, they sound rather similar to the existing silo, and this already exists. I thought being able to mind different coloured crystal was a nice idea, there's already green and blue in at least two maps now, never seen red before in C&C though.

 

on c&c there differen typ of tib crystal in there its just not been featured in the maps or campaign due to the unbalance they give couple of renegade maps of the original players brought the red crystals with balance in mind.  it was further away+with the harvesters in there ya never could fully harvest red tib most of the time due to ya being forced to move over green and blue and harvester works automaticely so yeah......

also here is the red crystal strain got it of this site https://cnc.fandom.com/wiki/Tiberium 

 

Unknown Red Strain

This strain of red/orange Tiberium is extremely rare, and few commanders have had the chance to harvest it, though some have remarked that it is even more potent, valuable and explosive than Tiberium Cruentus and Aboreus. A sample was retrieved by Tratos and studied at his base protected by a Firestorm shield. However, all of its secrets were lost with the Mutant leader, who was assassinated by Nod forces on orders of CABAL. Notably, the sample grew into a large crystal, similar to a Vinifera or Aboreus crystal, except it was an orangey-red color. A similar although perhaps stranger monolith can later be found in a Tiberium field supplying CABAL's poorly defended center-south support base amidst the Nod assault on the Core (but it does not do anything and simply disappears from the map if fired upon). In Tiberian Twilight, Red Tiberium crystals appear only in the campaign mode, as a byproduct of the Tiberium Control Network.

and 2 others typ of tiberian crystals the finifera is blue tib by the way also a slight

Aboreus

Tiberium Aboreus is very similar in appearance to Vinifera and shares many of the same properties. Its value is roughly double that of Vinifera and is believed to be slightly more explosive, although this has not been conclusively proven yet. Apparently, there were enough chemical differences for Dr. Mobius to put it in a class of its own. Not much is known about this form of Tiberium. It is thought to be more valuable due to peaking chemical concentrations.

 

Cruentus

These are large crystals, similar in appearance to the above two strains of Tiberium, except they grow in clumps of approximately 1 square meter to a height of one to two meters. They spread patches of Tiberium Vinifera and Aboreus around them. These crystals are extremely explosive and quite rare. When detonated they shower crystals around the landscape up to 600 meters. This is thought to be a method of spreading Tiberium. It is called "Cruentus" meaning blood-red, even though the crystal itself is dark blue.

the team money crate hase a min credit of like 50 seen it give around 275 at max no clue if it would have more then that tho. back to the mining made them with tiers in mind to not be to greedy if ya needed credits because that the total output of credits ya get together so if it degraded from tier 5 to 4 the tib crystal holds only 550 more so ya mined in a short time frame 250 crystal from the red tib.

more about the crate tho kinda sucks the kamikaze crate is not the old one from renegade remember that chef outfit ya got when ya got it ya would also get a flamethrower everyone who even murdert ya up  close died  due to the blast radius. not the nuke we got now 10 seconds ..... remove the seconds and just let the player pick or the attacker end the nuked players live

 

Edited August 25, 2020 by slashes

[DoMiNaNt_HuNtEr]

10 hours ago, Mystic~ said:

... buying extra harvesters isn't a solution for these low eco games, when they're all being sent out to die...

I see your point. How about putting some faction owned indestructible uncapturable silos on the maps which have a shared tiberium field? At least 1 tiberium silo for each team, tucked away in the back of their bases. Maybe also introduce smaller capturable silo-like structures, small enough to fit into the infantry tunnels?

The idea of manually mining tiberium on foot could be feasible. Have a purchasable tiberium proof suit with mining equipment, a handheld collection device  combined with a backpack for storage. $250. It'd be cool to play as Nod 'cause they have Chem Warriors to back them up. But should those players harvesting tiberium on foot have to return to the refinery to generate a bigger lump sum of credits rather than stand in a spot mining indefinitely for a smaller but steady trickle of credits? There's more risk/reward involved with lump sum, compared to just standing there. Perhaps instead of a suit with mining equipment, have the purchasable equipment be a deployable drone that automatically goes to and harvests the closest tiberium patch quickly and returns to the refinery. The drone lasts as long as it survives, but it doesn't take in nearly the amount of cash the real harvester does.

You're right in thinking that harvesters are big targets and more of them could simply mean more of them dying. But you're wrong in thinking that infantry harvesters would not just as easily die. Infantry harvesters would be a sniper's dream. On a map like Under, infantry harvesters might be able to hide in the center area for a bit, taking cover but still being within reach of the tiberium crystals. This is why you think on-the-spot mining to generate income would be the best course of action, because even when the guys dies, he's at least had some time to generate more income for his team. Where as if he'd have to go back to the refinery but got killed along the way, he'd be fucked, having wasted time and money for nothing.

Unless you could somehow recover the suit's back pack?  Like it stays on the battlefield as a power-up for a little while after the guy dies? Allowing his teammates to recover it.

Edited August 25, 2020 by DoMiNaNt_HuNtEr

[DoMiNaNt_HuNtEr]

5 hours ago, slashes said:

add visceroid mechanic to the maps. I really miss the visceroids and mutants from the original

YES. THIS. Bring on the player versus environment gameplay. I'd love to have to clear a tiberium field because it's infested with a bunch of asshole mutants. The devs could take this to a whole other level in their Tiberium Sun Firestorm mod, with veins and veinhole monsters and tiberium floaters and those vicious attack dog/boar tiberium fiends.

Edited August 25, 2020 by DoMiNaNt_HuNtEr

[slashes]

DoMiNaNt_HuNtEr not infested with bunch of mutants tho just if players die in tib field they have a chance to leave 1. could be a very good methode to screw other team with higher lvl character being able to spawn on the go. stronger mutants+visceroids with the hero character spawning a guaranteed immuun character that ya cant drive over whenever they spawn. they could be using there secondary weapon or something when they spawn most character have strong sidearm anyway unless they spawn in as visceroid then just there normal chem warrior rifle.

[Gex_str]

8 hours ago, slashes said:

also  handepsilon any plans to add visceroid mechanic to the maps. possible tiberian based weapons kills can spawn a neutral agro visceroid with the mechanic that tiberian based weapons regenerate its health.the tiberian weapons are also able to make it stronger/evolve really miss the visceroids and mutants from the original there even in the original maps of renegade still active+crate can transform ya into 1 sometimes in there.

I'll say it in one sentence:
New model and animations are hard to make.

[DoMiNaNt_HuNtEr]

yeah making an accurate visceroid model, the morphing blob abomination. That would be intense.

[Mystic~]

They talked about tiberium creatures in the latest dev talk video about Firestorm development, they were considering it and didn't rule anything out.

I don't mind different coloured tiberium, so long as it doesn't come mining for rainbow crystal whilst riding unicorns into battle.

Indestructible silos already exist, honestly on some maps they're probably a good idea, but I was still thinking about is there any merit to making people go out and mind it? I was thinking lump sums rather than the way in which they're generated through repairs. I think drones is a nice idea, depends on how they look, less likely to be hit by tanks, but maybe possible to snipe them, does feel a bit high tier tech for the first Renegade era though.

[Handepsilon]

On 8/26/2020 at 7:40 AM, DoMiNaNt_HuNtEr said:

yeah making an accurate visceroid model, the morphing blob abomination. That would be intense.

Some of you might think of this as a joke, but.... unfortunately it's true. Organic things are a lot harder to do than mechanical ones to model and rig. I don't know how you'd animate it in general, I don't even know it's locomotions. Worse come to worse, I'd probably just settle with single idle animation that plays repeatedly

Barring that, AIs give me nightmare

[roweboat]

10 hours ago, Handepsilon said:

Some of you might think of this as a joke, but.... unfortunately it's true. Organic things are a lot harder to do than mechanical ones to model and rig. I don't know how you'd animate it in general, I don't even know it's locomotions. Worse come to worse, I'd probably just settle with single idle animation that plays repeatedly

Barring that, AIs give me nightmare

I could imagine the pathing alone for something like that would be a mess. Because the creature is designed to appear randomly, to have random movements, and not be assigned to "good" or "bad" team.

 

If tiberium creatures exist in the future, would probably need a team of coders that focus solely on them.

[Handepsilon]

Random pathfinding is actually very easy and already natively implemented.

[Quinc3y]

@Mystic~

I'm not a fan of the mining idea. It would lead to people doing that instead of actually helping their team - which you can still do using free units or cheap units in many ways.

I think there are better ways to help a baselocked team to increase their chances. Some simple things which could help is 1) increase the passive credit tick rate and decrease the harv dump, 2) decrease the amount of VP you get for killing people/vehicles inside enemy base, 3) decrease the amount of VP you get for killing harvesters and damaging buildings, 4) make the penalties from losing buildings less severe... there's probably more. Notice that some of them have already been implemented over the years.

Unfortunately the economy & game progression system is a core part of Ren X and C&C Ren, and I don't see how we move away from it. We can do some tweaks like described above but I don't see room for any groundbreaking changes to be honest. 

And for maps like Field and Under, these are the pinnacle of bad map design, seems like there is no saving of them. I think their design amplifies the weaknesses of the core Ren game mechanics.

[Mystic~]

@Quinc3y Thanks for the feedback, I was definitely thinking of that last Nod versus Nod game during the pug and how stagnant everything was.

I have to disagree that mining is not helping the team, it would be helping the team accrue much needed credits when no harvester is viable, and the mechanics of whether or not mining contributed to a global credits increase and how much might be gained is just a particular that could be refined and worked on, I don't see it as a massive change. I'm not suggesting to scrap the harvester in place of people mining with mining guns by the way, it's intended as proposed supplemental or additional way of getting credits in certain situations, it's not intended to be a requirement for each and every game. In the next Firestorm instalment apparently the harvester is going to allow for a driver, some people simply want to contribute more in this way.

My bright idea last night was to simply make the harvester indestructible and this could be changed either as a mod or server side setting to test it, but it would greatly change how economic warfare took place during a game as destroying it would no longer be a priority to go after and there would be much more vehicle/infantry skirmishes, which I think is desirable in reality. I think maps that presently send the harvester onto the front line as opposed to a quiet side area are a map design failure also, it doesn't translate well into the first person game. The problem with Field and Under is that most maps are laid out this way, I can only think of maps like Reservoir, Islands and Crash Site where the harvester always remains in the teams base at the back.

I have no problems with tweaking how point systems are scored and think this could balance the snowball effect somewhat, but it's no replacement for the whole team getting a big block of credits every couple of minutes, especially when one side always get this and one side never gets this. When people are constantly stuck inside repairing buildings merely for the credits I think it eventually becomes inevitable that side will lose the game as they are on the back foot and hugely economically disadvantaged - I don't think that just bumping up the passive credit rate is going to solve this as it balances both sides equally.
 

[DoMiNaNt_HuNtEr]

On 8/27/2020 at 5:10 AM, Handepsilon said:

Some of you might think of this as a joke, but.... unfortunately it's true. Organic things are a lot harder to do than mechanical ones to model and rig. I don't know how you'd animate it in general, I don't even know it's locomotions. Worse come to worse, I'd probably just settle with single idle animation that plays repeatedly

Barring that, AIs give me nightmare

I wasn't being sarcastic. When I said morphing blob animation, I meant it - that's a hell of an animation to create, to make it look natural, and then there's the AI, I wasn't even considering that.

Edited August 29, 2020 by DoMiNaNt_HuNtEr

[Mystic~]

So how about a drone system like this, but instead of being defence turrets, your engineer pilots them around a tank in order to repair it?

https://twitter.com/PlayOverwatch/status/1316197410662567937?s=20

Edited October 14, 2020 by Mystic~

[Fercurix]

Lasermining would lets say even a playingfield a bit imo.
Could do this in base for example with limited ammount. Like Islands and Reservoir, where this is near base and or defences. But to prevent abuse, some sort of cooldown perhaps? And the payout not too much, just so it can give you that extra 150 you need for something? Also make this part of the engineer so it cannot be used agressively.

I'm against repairing for credits simply, because repairs would actually have costs to it and that is already not the case. Or make VP some sort of currency needed to buy special items, idk.

And as I noticed someone mention other Tiberium forms. Remmember this is the Dawn era transitioning to Sun, nerw strains were not evolved/discovered yet. As for that beeing in FS, I noticed in the last Dev talk there were tib veins. IF chemical missiles and harvs would need this ingame and GDI needed some other resource for special weapons, that would be a lvl up imo. Work as a team for an outpost clearing WMD of sorts on say team objectives. But thats another thing. That said, team objective missions could also award credits in RenX. IF X amount of harvs is destroyed, the next one that gets defneded drops of some more?

[Ketchup]

Interesting idea. I wonder if it would change the game too much. IDK. 

It sounds fun. If anyone is suitable in game for this, I would think that would be the chem warriors?

 

I lost it at blue tiberium gets explodey!  

Edited September 4, 2021 by Ketchup

[Tarvin]

I know there's a lot here and it was a lot to sift through at once, so I'm sorry if I don't address something that was already brought up.

My first thought when I saw the idea of an infantry unit harvesting resources was to ask a question. Do they get shoes?

My second thought is rehashing the point that others raised about how if the opposing team already holds the field enough to force a harvester pause, infantry wouldn't fair well either trying to harvest raw tiberium. The only ones I could see getting away with it, lore-wise, would be the chem troopers because they're the only ones suited up to deal with the radiation.

But at the same time, the enemy shutting off access to the field or destroying the ref (especially if the ref is lost early-game) can make it almost impossible to launch a counter attack. It's especially annoying when you join a game in progress and end up on a team where the ref was already lost. You're basically stuck using free characters against top-tier enemy infantry and tanks.

My idea for this, inspired by what else has been said and the problem being brought up by ~Mystic, fits with the established lore of the series. The idea is rooted in the passive income tick from the refinery. My head-cannon to justify this tick is that the refinery takes time to further process the leftovers after Tiberium deliveries. This results in the continual small intake of credits that are enough for infantry, but wouldn't amount to much to construct a base on.

Getting to it, my idea is that if the harvester is disabled by the commander, the refinery will switch modes to focus more heavily on the further processing of more difficult to break down Tiberium in its storage tanks. Only, it wouldn't do this on it's own, potentially. The extra energy and processing power to carry out this task would come from an engineer (or more) that would focus their repair guns on the repair terminal.

In the event the Refinery is destroyed, engineers working the repair terminal would enable the remaining systems within the refinery to carry out minimal operations enough to restore the passive revenue tick to the team, or at least speed it up because there seems to be at least a tiny amount of revenue after it's gone.

One nice thing about these ideas, the revenue generated would be distributed to the team and wouldn't enrich any one individual directly.

Edited September 4, 2021 by Tarvin