Hello, I've got a simple idea and want to discuss it. I'm not proposing a game feature, I just want to illustrate it on ZK. Haven't seen such thing in any strategy game, have you? Imagine if unit cost value was a monotonous non-decreasing function of a total unit count in a team. E.g.
Defender
Total count of build | Cost of new to build
-------------
0 | 90
1 | 90
2 | 95
...
10 | 150
...
100 | 300
This imposes a bit of additional complication to the gameplay, but on the other hand it prevents monospam and porcpush introducing a new strategy layer.
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Although not the same, it reminds me of upkeep in WC3. I never liked that game mechanic. It made me feel bad for being strong.
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Ah, yeah, I've remembered. Upkeep in WC3 is something strange for me: amount of income decreases as your army grows. It's pretty weird. But upkeep doesn't solve monospam problem, iirc.
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I think I actually have seen this mechanic in another RTS, but I don't remember what game it was.
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quote:
Haven't seen such thing in any strategy game, have you? |
Exists in Rise of Nations. Price increases based on how many units of a specific type you have. Dying units will reduce the cost. This also exists for structures. Iirc there's a few exceptions to this in supply and economy units/buildings.
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I know I've played Rise of Nations, so that is probably what I'm remembering.
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zk has comparable cost increasement in com morph for example tho... such dynamic/exponential cost for units could prevend mono spam shit (1st pene 1000metal, the 5th 2000 already for example) but seems hard to balance i guess
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quote:
it reminds me of upkeep in WC3 |
Upkeep in WC3 was probably the weirdest out of any game. Sins of a Solar Empire had a similarly weird version of upkeep: a technology that when researched (iirc) permanently increases upkeep - even when you have 0 units. Beside this version, there are many games with regular constant unit maintenance. Europa Universalis (3+4, probably other Paradox games as well) has a unit limit for land and sea, surpassing these increases maintenance prices. Some games can have slightly mono spam reducing effects by giving unit types specific resource costs or other dependencies. In the most basic form this exists in almost every RTS: units tend to have different resource cost ratios (eg. Minerals/Gas, or Gold/Wood/Food, etc.).
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I feel like it introduces far too much complication and it feels arbitrary. Also, how exactly does it specifically target porc pushes? Are porc pushes and monospam actually a current problem? Ramping unit cost feels about as hamfisted as banning people from repeating a move X times in a fighting game. It is forced, rather than emergent, diversity. I played Rise of Nations but forget exactly how it worked. As far as I know the system made sense in that game. There were probably armour classes so perhaps the units were much more strongly typed so such a system made sense. In Zero-K you would get weird effects as a result of role overlap. For example you might end up mixing Hermits into Thug balls because they both do a similar thing and Thugs have become too expensive. Decisions get diluted. Armies become samey. The situation would be worse with economic structures. Singularity would lose its simple role and people would need to do calculations to determine when Fusion is a more efficient option.
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quote:
zk has such exponential cost in com morph for example tho... |
Untrue. You get linear cost increases for each level, but you can have any amount of commanders of the same level without additional commanders becoming marginally more expensive.
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This could make sense for games where you buy the units. For example Dune had a starport where you could order units which would then be delivered by dropship. For such system it could make sense to have prices go up when there is much demand for a type of unit. But in zK units get produced on the battlefield, the robots are building new robots. The flow of resources is somewhat visible by nanospray/laser and in the buildanimation. There is no mechanic that suggest to players that the costs should be dynamic.
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You get linear cost increases |
25, 100 , 400 first 3 morph costs steps without updates... its cost = cost x 4 not cost += X => exponential (dynamic we noted)
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I remember that in rise of nations but also in rise of legends. I always though it as a blatant excuse for not finishing balancing proprely.
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quote:
25, 100 , 400 first 3 morph costs steps without updates...
its cost = cost x 4
not cost += X
=> exponential btw |
The physicist says "3 is prime, 5 is prime and 7 is prime therefore every odd number is prime". You can fit a lot of things to three points. Here is an infinite number of points for you to fit to. https://github.com/ZeroK-RTS/Zero-K/blob/master/LuaRules/Configs/dynamic_comm_defs.lua#L854-L864
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ok thank you, i already changed this in my first comment so we note com morph metal cost is an dynamic increase actually. back to topic: such idea would force players to build more facs soon to have more options, it would increase the dynamics of the battlefield alot, aswell change the gameplay alot.
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How is being forced to do something increasing options? Nevermind I answered my own question (if you are forced to build an additional unit type while the obvious optimal strategy was to just build one unit type then you gain the option of which additional unit type to build). However, it does not lead to more options in all cases. If you are forced to build lots of different unit types then people will probably have a bit of a counter to everything and armies themselves start violating Quant's Rule (they get samey). I don't think ZK is particularly bereft of options. Is it not cool to have a squad of identical units? You can reason quite cleanly about their capabilities, they will invariably have really satisfying power in some areas and a few glaring weaknesses in others. You can use the weaknesses of opposing armies to your advantage. People already diverse armies to patch those weaknesses. They do so because of the basic properties of the units, not because some economic fiddling incentivizes them to make armies which we deem to be pretty. Perhaps there is a difference in viewpoints. I think monospam is almost entirely absent from teamgames because even if one player is spamming a single unit they are only a small portion of their team's total spending. Furthermore it is fairly rare to see someone just spam one unit. Also, any sort of ramping cost must apply to entire teams because otherwise some really stupid stuff can regarding unit sharing. However, ramping cost across an entire team would be an absolute pain to deal with. Ramping cost is still a pain to think about in 1v1 and I haven't seen problems in 1v1.
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For the record, Rise of Nations' units were indeed very strongly typed and type countered. If you follow all the "strong against" text you get a few connected cycles, with the main one being 4 units long. I don't know why BHG went with that system, because a strongly type countered system would encourage people to differentiate anyway, otherwise monospam is trivially countered. My guess was to make it much more obvious that monospam isn't a good idea. As for an upkeep idea, WC3 reduced your gold income at thresholds (+10 < 40/50 units, +7 < 70/80 units, +4 otherwise, second unit value is for the expansion), which is basically the only way you can without streaming economy. Since ZK uses a streaming economy, the better question is really "should ZK go back to a TA-style, though possibly simplified to be constant rather than when moving or shooting, energy (and/or metal) upkeep expenditure per unit?"
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dynamically raising unit cost also limits the unit count. that can be desirable for many reasons.
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quote:
How is being forced to do something increasing options? |
you would be forced to build another fac early to increase your options (of units and strategies), because the units of your initial factory slowly become nerfed by becoming more expensive. you would have to think about more different strategies and units and even more complexive ecoing. this could increase the dynamics of the battlefield alot. no clue if this would even fit to zk... aswell i actually like spamming some arty or stuff, but this idea definitely has some interesting points to me.
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As for an upkeep idea, WC3 reduced your gold income at thresholds (+10 < 40/50 units, +7 < 70/80 units, +4 otherwise, second unit value is for the expansion), which is basically the only way you can without streaming economy. |
There are other ways to limit army / eco growth. Some games have population limit that can be raised by building houses/overlords/pylons and such. If player wants a bigger army then the cost is not only the army itself, but also have to pay for those supply-buildings. During a match the supply-buildings might be destroyed, depending on how easy enemy can kill the supply-buildings their cost can either be a one-time payment or require constant rebuilding.
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