Can we make windgens not depend on altitude?

I am just posting this here because many people are complaning about windgens. Some people probably don't know that on some maps windgens are better then Fusions, Singus and even Adv. Geos. Because of this ( and the fact that they cost 35M, so they have no initial investment) many people will build 100 windgens instead of a Singu. The advantages to building thrm are: Harder to destroy (can be built on hills in the back only accesible by Fleas), no initial investment (Singu makes cost after is is built, 100 windgens contribute even if they have not been all built) and lack of a glorious shiny explosion.

100 Windgens have one disadvantage: LAG. This alone should be enough reason to make them unsuitable for late game.

Making Windgens produce 0.4-2.5E regardless of altitude would make them reasonable. It would also give people reasons to build Fusions. And it would make maps with currently ridiculous wind better. And it would mean more shiny Singu explosions.

quote: Lag is definitely a thing. Maybe rework the model so it doesn´t move?

How do you know it's the model moving, and not for example grid calculations that causes the lag?

Capping windgen top output below singu seems fair as long as wind is still better on average than solar.

quote: How do you know it's the model moving, and not for example grid calculations that causes the lag?

We assume it because 300 fleas moving around also cause seriously lags.

quote: quote: How do you know it's the model moving, and not for example grid calculations that causes the lag? We assume it because 300 fleas moving around also cause seriously lags.

I don't think windgen spinning requires pathfinding.

The tree shader demonstrates that we may well have the technology for GPU spinning. The first thing to do would be to check whether spinning is actually an issue.

I like the windgen height boost, it gives wind some positional dependence.

quote: I don't think windgen spinning requires pathfinding.

If you send all fleas in straight line in flat map it takes so much pathfinding calculations (especially if distance isn't very big) to destroy performance? Its not even about 300 fleas, its enough with 40 - 50. Especially on so bad CPU as AMD.

Please no. That's the whole point of them. That's why they're fun.

Mexes and geos are a fight for horizontal territory. Windgens are a fight for vertical territory. And solars are just boring and meant as backup. Fusions are large boring solars with more fragility. Singus are beautiful liability nukes that require planning for isolation+defense, which is cool, unless maybe terra+razors defends them too easily in a boring way? (idk, I haven't really played FFA-speed-lobster much)

However, can we please remove the random changing wind? and just make it alternate between 25th percentile and 75th percentile every 30 seconds? As in, if the range in the old silly random-wind days (what were we thinking back then?) of ZK was 0.1-2.5, now it switches between 0.7 and 1.9 (average 1.3), if 1.3-2.5 -> then alternate between 1.6 and 2.2 (average 1.9). That way you have the exact same averages, but no randomness, and all you variation fanboys get to keep your variation.

Also, while we're at it, let's nerf solars. Seriously, who wants to see solars be the best option on almost every map even for your main base energy? Solars should be for vulnerable or isolated territory (such as overdrive for single mexes), like they are in real life as power sources for isolated electronics. Solars ingame can also be good connecting power to the frontline, which is fine, although I think that can be made a lot better, too.

Speaking of map-dependency, the way the wind-map algorithm combines with the maps we tend to have, makes it so that there's a ton of maps with a wind range of 0.0-0.8 or whatever, a few with 1.0-2.4, and not a lot in between. I'd be interested in an overhaul of the wind-map algorithm so that there's an approximately even distribution of wind-power among our map pool (either biased towards less wind or honestly I wonder if a mostly even distribution of map-averages wouldn't be so bad). [Edit: Tell me if I'm mistaken here, I don't have all the map stats in a table in front of me.]

I have a lot more thoughts on this and not the time to explain everything, but here's what I'd like to test out:


- Windgen changed to non-random as described above
- Wind-map algorithm changed to either
A) (very roughly, these numbers are just an example of the algorithm's style) 40% of common maps with an average 0.3 wind, 30% with .8 average, 20% with 1.2 average, and 10% with 1.7 average
or B) 25% 0.3 wind-average, 25% .8, 25% 1.3, and 25% 1.8

- Solars cost increased 20% (test a range between 15%-40%) from 70 -> 85
- Solars grid range increased +25%

- Windgen health increased +10% (test a range between 10%-30%)

- Pylon cost reduced 50%, 200 -> 100
- Pylon nuke-on-death damage reduced 50%, bullshit -> bullshit/2

- Fusion cost reduced 25% (25%-50%) [intended to make fusion not such an unrealistic jump in 1v1 or competitive settings]
- Fusion's stats all reduced 25% (25%-50%) (energy production, health, explosion damage)

- Geothermal's cost decreased 25% (10%-50%)[They don't seem remotely useful to me in a competitive setting, given their underwhelming cost benefits over solar/wind, low health, pylon connection requirements for overdrive, their coarse-granularity cost-jump (expensive things that come in large chunks means that you have to build them way too early or spend time with a power deficit, and spend much longer without payback during construction), their inability to choose their location in an convenient and defendable location, and their obvious locations marked with massive beacons for the enemy)
- [this one's just something I'd like to see] Eliminate geo's explosion-on-death (reduced to the minimum appropriate range+damage) [it's absolutely infuriating to me that something labeled "geothermal" would be dangerous. Geothermal plants IRL are the safest, tamest, most boring, most innocuous things you could possibly imagine. Flagpoles are more dangerous than geothermal plants.] Either that, or change the name to fusion reactor, and name fusions geothermals and make them safe.

- Current heavy weapon power requirements reduced from 50 E to 10-40 E, but have them actually consume energy while firing (after each shot, they consume their respective energy while reloading)
- Give power requirements to Bertha (50?), Nuke (for stockpile; not for firing), Anti-Nuke (for firing, although anti's mechanics are so janky), DRP (100?), Zenith (500?), and Starlight (1400?), and have them consume said energy while firing. Discount their prices by their equivalent cost in fusion construction.


Actually yeah, I love that. Make it so that Starlight is practically free (1000 metal-ish) and just an energy-focusing laser that is entirely based on energy infrastructure. I actually love that so much, I would love to see this.

So like, you have to build a massive energy farm and defend it to keep starlight operational. You can have other projects using the energy in the meantime, and then when you turn on Starlight, you choose to cannibalize all the energy from those projects and divert it to the starlight. So to get starlight up as soon as possible, you power-down all your overdrive, berthas, antis, cloaked units etc. and have to continuously maintain your energy grid requirements. Have Zenith be similar but not as extreme, so enemies can power it down and make any stockpiled comets fall on you.

Typed on phone, pardon the typos.

- if the problem is gameplay incentives and economy snowballing: use the "zkminwindmult" mapoption on more of those maps with cliffs to reduce the minimum wind to sane values (0.3-0.5)

- if the problem is performance, I have a magical solution: triple the cost, attributes and build footprint of wind gens. This way you get a third of the performance cost for a given metal investment.

Is there any reason why you people like the height boost? I like it in theory, but in practice it doesn't seem to result in better gameplay.

Most of the time the decision of whether or not to build wind gens is based entirely on the map, not the terrain of the map. Some maps just have like .7 min everywhere and there is no choice BUT to build wind. Others have like a .1 min and you can't build wind because it will drop to .2 and ruin your eco for a bit.