[feature request] Reduce metal extractor income to 0 after a set amount as mod option.

This sounds like a complete redesign of the game. I also don't see how zero income after a set amount of time will cause games to end. If anything, I feel like it would do the opposite.

Time limit is currently achieved by for example lava maps where the lava level rises over time.
There are also maps where rocks and things are the only source of income ( no mex spots ). Perhaps a custom map with this mechanic would do the trick? You could stop spawning features or only spawn them in the very centre of the map, forcing people to compete.

With some sort of mystical magical barrier you could turn any map into a lava map. Perhaps the walls could start closing in (from the corners, as the barrier would be a circle) at 20 minutes and close in on the center at 25 minutes. This would sort of act like a king of the hill mode, and there would definitely be a winner. Whoever owns the middle is often doing better so this method of game truncation sounds more reasonable than changing incomes.

The hard part from my point is view is making a nice magical sphere/cylinder effect.

The question is whether you are trying to truncate ZK games, or design a whole new game. A death circle seems much better for mere truncation:

• Chickens are unpredictable, exploitable, and can be defended again.
• The existence of chickens incentivize armies that are good against chickens.

A death circle does not preserve normal ZK, but I feel like it does a much better job of it.

well I agree that GoogleFrog 's solution is a better alternative but I am also thinking about how easy is it to implement. My ranking is as follow.

BAD -> GOOD

- Changes that make match longer or play less fun
- No changes or proposed changes with no implementation
- Moderately effective changes that require little effort [relatively] to implement [e.g. what I proposed]
- Highly effective changes that require lots of effort to implement [e.g. what @GoogleFrog propose]
- Magical changes that preserve fun game while keeping match time to 25 mins or less [using magical codes] maybe magical fairy to whisper in players' ears to duke it out when time limit hit.

Ideally, we want Magical changes but I suspect there is no magical codes/rules to do this

and I would much prefer GoogleFrog implementation [or similar (like a constricting circle where units that's left out self destruct)] but I suspect that this would require a lot of effort which would be unattractive and therefore won't be implemented. [all purely conjectures of course. I welcome people to disabuse me of any mistake I have]

Hence my solution with [relatively] minimal changes required with results not too far off from desired behaviors [or so I hope]. Also with cheaper implementation cost I believe it would be easier to test and if need be discarded.

I believe that perfect is the enemy of good so I naturally gravitate to "good enough" solutions

However, since I am not the coder myself, any solution better than no change which got implement would be good enough for me. I do wonder if there are other solutions that are easy to implement while still achieve the desired effect?

say we go with king of the hill style [we can settle the exact mechanism later]

would that be a bad thing to have porc in the middle?

sure that limit certain kinds of play but surely it opens up other.

or maybe we can reverse this.

Spawn Capture point whoever has more at the 25 mins mark win?

multiples tournaments with different flavors? See which one people prefer?

Personally, I do not worry much about these changes. Like I estimated, only 20% of games [conservative guess usually less] go down this route.
Main focus would still be direct elimination of each other within 25 mins but these would be extra objective?

quote: The importance of porc in the middle is, first of all, somewhat regulated by having to get to that middle in the first place. If the middle contains very little resources, then opting to porc there early costs you resources in comparison with choosing to temporarily build economy instead. But of course unless your enemies are diligent enough, nothing prevents you from doing both. Map-based reclaim sources become much more important because the units that allow exploitation of those are typically mobile. [...]Razors suck at defending against ground units. If the porc mid strategy is made sufficiently comparatively expensive in relation to expanding, other types of statics could be plainly tacnuked (or outright nuked!).[...]

agreed

quote: Athena becomes the choice factory if it can be teched up, being mobile and compared to losing your 800m factory to the Outside, with no chance to reclaim.

I haven't thought of this before, but would this really be undesirable? considering the effect of deathwall is minimal [only in 20% of cases] it would only make Athena slightly more prevalence. Considering Athena is not that common anyway, would it be good or bad to make it more common?

quote: Using a deathwall instead of lava allows water units to still exist on the map.

in my view, the thing with lava or Chicken is that it provides something unique to/representative of zk. death wall is new, [in my view] gimmicky and probably going to need a way to represent visually

quote: The middle could be further made hard to defend (and to own quietly) by giving everyone free LOS of it. It's possible to make the square middle of the map unbuildable. This prevents the porc scenario inside it, but still allows porc camps or area-controlling Cerberi right outside the limit. Capturable or rezzable static energy sources could be very interesting to provide temporary overdrive options. Same with geothermals. Storage is going to be interesting. Perhaps such a map should allow mobile storage units to be built.

intriguing but don't these make it even harder to be implemented? Which lead me to ask: Would anyone be even remotely interested in implementing a prototype? we can add or remove other feature later?

quote: The middle could be further made hard to defend (and to own quietly) by giving everyone free LOS of it. It's possible to make the square middle of the map unbuildable. This prevents the porc scenario inside it, but still allows porc camps or area-controlling Cerberi right outside the limit. Capturable or rezzable static energy sources could be very interesting to provide temporary overdrive options. Same with geothermals. Storage is going to be interesting. Perhaps such a map should allow mobile storage units to be built. quote: intriguing but don't these make it even harder to be implemented?

Free los: Grant each team an indestructible, unselectable, invisible non-interactive, dontcount unit with nonzero los somewhere over the target area. Most of the physics can be copied off an exactly this kind of unit called Glint. Trivial.

Unbuildable middle: Doable in several ways. A buildmask similar to what prevents other things from being constructed on mexes, for example, but that prevents all buildings. An extra loop in the death wall code that kills only statics inside the middle. A bunch of indestructable features that don't block units or projectiles, but prevent buildings. Fairly easy.

Capturable/rezzable energy: just add some gaia fusions or gaia fusion wrecks. Or if you want it non-destructible, point-capture code exists (used for some of the Sunrise campaign missions, maybe even for the current one?).

Geothermals: nothing to do, they exist.

I dont think this should be a game option. But it could be an interesting FFA map.