I've finally done it, I've made a tutorial video that only lasts about 3 minutes. It's a remake of the perennially redone economy tutorial, but this is probably going to be the definitive one: On Youtube.
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Looks good, I am not sure I am up to commenting on most of it now. Perhaps you should say exactly what it is for. It gives a good overview of every resource mechanic (mexes, reclaim, energy types, overdive, buildpower, assist, repair, storage) but there is not much time in 3 minutes. For example I am not sure if the buildpower explanation suffices but you did show the main idea of things assisting other things. I've got a bit of a problem with the storage section though. The structure was on my screen for a long time which makes it look important. You left out the most important thing about the storage structure which is that you very rarely need it. Also I am not so sure that floating metal in ZK is better than in other games.
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The storage thing was a bit questionable, but it is a part of the economy system and I didn't know what else to put there to represent that part.
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Maybe add an arrow pointing at the storage bars or make them brighter/larger in situations where you darken most of the screen. At 2:39 I kind of missed that you were highlighting the metal bar. You might also want to mention radars and some other structures constantly draining (and relying on) energy as the reason before or after you say "energy storage should be full". In general I think sometimes your voice is not as clear as it could be. Occasionally volume gets low after a high, or single words feel "rushed". That said, you managed to create a very nice short tutorial. It's definitely enough to be very high on a list of things new players should see. Gj!
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Perhaps you could show how burst spending works. Get a HT fac with 4 or so caretakers and show a side by side, one with 1000 metal stored and one with 500 metal stored, of the production of a reaper. the 1000 metal one will build to completion quickly, but the 500m one will stall 2/3s the way through. This would not, however, account for the income per second. That said, I really liked it, and feel it looks and sounds very professional.
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Perhaps you could show how burst spending works. |
I suppose I should have, or at least repeat the clip from assist building, as that shows the effect of depleting storage. quote:
Maybe add an arrow pointing at the storage bars or make them brighter/larger in situations where you darken most of the screen |
That wouldn't have been a bad idea, I'll keep that in mind when highlighting UI elements in future tutorials. quote:
That said, I really liked it, and feel it looks and sounds very professional. |
Thanks, that was the idea, compared to the previous economy tutorials.
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Mmh actually "storing resources isn't as disastrous as in most rts games" could be completely misleading for new players. Most RTS games do not have a storage cap and resources can not go to waste by excessing.
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I think that storing is worse than in other games because excess is lost, and that the notion that it isn't stems from team games where team-mates prevent excess. In other games you can spend resources in large bursts too, if you have the buildpower.
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Storing is not excess though. At best storing has the increased risk of wasting resources through excess. How would you compare the cost of storing resources between games? In all cases maintaining a stable storage of X resources deprives you of useful stuff costing X. Perhaps the cost can be in terms of the extra Build Power required to spend those extra resources? Build Power is really easy to think about in ZK because it is so versatile. Comparing BP to other games becomes difficult. In Starcraft your SCVs represent a massive amount of BP but it can only be used for structures. To spend storage on units you have to make specialized structures with unit-BP and that takes time. Long construction times mean that the extra structures will start eating away at the storage quite late. ZK has a similar structure/unit divide in BP even though constructors can assist factories. This is just because constructors are slow and so are either assisting the factory or far away. There are games which I think have more forgiving storage than ZK. For example Company of Heroes has the same builder->structure->units system as Starcraft but storage feels very forgiving there. This is due to the massive BP of individual structures.
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I hear a resource flow system is very hard for people to understand. Perhaps we need a wiki page just for this concept. I would want to use something like the bucket analogy there but perhaps it needs good pictures.
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The reason I think storage isn't as bad is that extra resources reduces time. In RTS games that don't have assist-build, stored resources represent time truly lost. In TA-based games, however, unless the resources are excessing storage, that time isn't lost, just deferred. For example, if I'm playing StarCraft and I have 3 Barracks, I can produce 3 Marines at once (50 minerals each, takes IIRC 15s to build). If I have 150 minerals or less whenever the current set of marines finish, that's fine. If I have, say, 200 minerals, then that's 1 marine every build cycle that could have been built, but now will never be built that quickly. Even if I build another Barracks to use that money, I will never have the marine numbers I could have had. After a minute, I'm down 4 marines permanently. If the other player has been perfectly judging their income and production capabilities, they will have those extra 4 marines available. In Zero-K, as an example, if I have a Cloaky factory and am building Glaives with +10 income, then I'm not wasting anything. Glaives are being built quickly enough. If I reclaim a couple of wrecks, suddenly I'm at +16. After a minute, I have 360 metal stored, which is about 5 glaives. However, if I put a couple of my workers on assist build (presumably one has been building workers), then those 5 glaives just show up after about another minute. I never lost them permanently, because the extra metal allows for a free production speedup to make up for lost production. There's a period of time where I could have had more Glaives but didn't, but after that time I have as many as if I'd been perfectly on point with construction.
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i can spend a full bar of metal on a ddm or dante pridy quick even if i lack build power.. some units cost so much that i might not even need a con on the factory but i guess im known for not reclaiming im learning to reclaim more.. but i never need more then 2 caretakers.. i just spam a high cost unit or make a few hlt/starlight if i have too much thats enough for me to stay on almost 0 metal whole game
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quote:
I've finally done it, I've made a tutorial video that only lasts about 3 minutes. It's a remake of the perennially redone economy tutorial, but this is probably going to be the definitive one:
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I dont like your voice, but the content itself is excellnt. Would probably be better with more visual clues and more better pronounciation, but that's just nit-picking.
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quote:
The reason I think storage isn't as bad is that extra resources reduces time. In RTS games that don't have assist-build, stored resources represent time truly lost. In TA-based games, however, unless the resources are excessing storage, that time isn't lost, just deferred. |
Wrong. The systems are equivalent. Assist is not different to using the BP separately. If you produce X units per Y time, then assist just means that when eg. doubling BP you can opt to make that X units per Y/2 time instead of 2X units per Y time. Not being flow-based just means stuff happens in large increments but there is no difference in the end result. Example: [Spoiler]In SC, I have 3 rax building rines (each on its own), 200 floating minerals, and my SCVs gather 175 minerals/cycle. Rax have 50 builpower/cycle. Each cycle, my rax produce 150m worth of rines and I get 25 additional floating minerals. Now, if I get one more rax (also producing separately), my floating metal is reduced by 25m/cycle and I produce 200m/cycle worth of rines. After all my floating minerals are gone, I start producing rines in an irregular fashion but it averages to 175m/cycle.
In ZK, I have a fac and 28 cons assisting it at building glaives, 200 floating metal, and +175m income. Each second, I produce 150 (10 + 28*5) metal worth of glaives, and +25 net income. After I add 10 more cons all assisting the same fac, I now have -25 net income and produce 200m worth of Glaives a second. After I start stalling, I start getting 175m worth of glaives a second. Floating resources in ZK are not as dangerous because you usually have floating buildpower instead, and some floating BP itself is not as dangerous because you need it for various reasons: [Spoiler]
* reclaim. You need to have extra BP both to reclaim and to spend it.
* decentralisation. You often build stuff all over the map so extra BP is needed to take into account the BP wasted due to con travel time.
* random incomes. Overdrive is wonky and your income can fluctuate.
* repair. It's much more useful than in other games and uses BP.
Compare to other games where most of your BP is in facs who aren't affected by the above.
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I dont like your voice |
:( You are the first person who has ever told me that. Now I don't know what to think. Is this why so few people watch my streams?
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i can spend a full bar of metal on a ddm or dante pridy quick even if i lack build power.. some units cost so much that i might not even need a con on the factory |
This doesn't make any sense. The cost of a unit is unrelated to how fast you can spend metal on it.
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no way? O.O wait that cant be true if i put a fac on spam flea i have max metal.. if i put it on spam crab i have zero metal.. .. but im wrong .. i feel confused.. so if i spam flea ill still go broke? iv been a fool for so long.. ill safely assume im still a fool in so so many ways.. but at-least now i suspect i understand that build power is the limit of metal expenditure and the cost of a unit is relevant only in that it takes longer to build it.. and here i was thinking that expensive units build at a set rate and thus use more metal/s
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so if i spam flea ill still go broke? |
For super-small units there is a bit of delay, but its only because of the time it takes for a finished unit to exit the factory.
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