Life After Death and new Capabilities (For the Ref)

[Tarvin]

There's few things that can derail a team more than being baselocked or losing the ref early game. Either of these can make a match an entirely one-sided affair. My idea to get around this is add an additional capability to the ref that only is active when the ref is either destroyed or the harvester is disabled.

The capability is to generate credits more quickly when a repair gun is being used on the terminal up to a maximum rate that would have to be play-tested to be somewhat less than would come in if the harvester were functioning and bringing in Tiberium.

The duty of manning the ref for credits would probably be self-balancing as people who have enough credits to buy things would leave and others in need of more would take over the post until they can purchase what they want. The idea isn't that the baselocked team would be able to go completely toe-to-toe with the other team, but would have a fighting chance to break out and take the field long enough to get their harvester going again. For a team that has had their ref destroyed, it would at least give a bit more of a fighting chance to even the playingfield by striking back at the enemy base.

One other credit related tweak would be geared to make it easier for players to jump into the action with already in-progress games. The idea is that once a team's harvester has made at least one trip to the refinery with Tiberium, any players joining the game would receive one Tiberium  loads worth of credits. This would allow them to jump right into the match more quickly. This may also be good to apply to people who switch teams or anyone who leaves the game (like due to the sound bug) and lost their credits when they return (or ends up on the other team).

[Atomsk]

It's a well thought out idea, but I'm not really for the idea of boosting cred production by repping the ref mct. 
When baselocked, I think there are plenty of available options that can be used to break free or to turn the game. Buffing out, getting the right mix of tanks, reps and emp or anti-tank-infantry (gunner/lcg/rockets if you need bang for buck), airstrikes, voting in commander, doing an infantry rush. For money (and VP), I go rep teammates or try to make a move on silo. 

The game is geared to getting a good group dynamic going. Implementing things that reward an afk-dynamic would make the game a bit dull to me. 

[Tarvin]

I hadn't considered the AFK aspect there. A possible way to overcome that would be to give a limited charge for how long a repair gun can energize the mct for increase credit generation. Once the charge runs out, it would begin a slow recharge and wouldn't be available until fully recharged.  This way the benefit of afk repairing would be limited. If an additional condition was made that the player had to actually leave the building before the recharge began, it could eliminate the afk exploit altogether and encourage players to go do other things.

[isupreme]

I kinda like the latter part of your suggestion - about players who join.   Some credits to work with is especially helpful when you balance the teams by switching.    I know for  a while we tried allowing players to keep money when they switched, but I guess that ran into problems as it did not last long.      Maybe providing a bit more credits to a player who balances would be kind, and the one harvester delivery is quite logical.

Edited September 19, 2021 by isupreme