Re-role of defenses.

Yeah i would also like to reduce role of "frontline" defenses and instead made point defenses that need infrastructure around.

For that we first need to change how grid works.

Getting rid of grid chaining would be an improvement. That is, remove the "grid" model and only allow mexes and defenses to draw power from immediate local power sources... you'd have to increase a lot of radiuses (radii) and it could result in frustrating balance problems since you might have one base where you can't exactly touch all 3 start-mexes with a fus while another base does let you do it... maybe keep the xfer node thing as a small, expensive way to boost the range on something a little bit, but not enough to make a huge difference - just a way to grab something just out of range, but impractical for long chains. Annihilators would be far more expensive if you had to build them near fusions or geos.

Of course, this means that remote-but-powerful energy sources like the geos and windgen-hills would be far less useful.

Anyhow, this would encourage clustering of defenses rather than building long lines - like if Stingers needed 5E.

A more elaborate but hellishly-complex option would be to have some kind of max-grid-level for certain E-units. But I've gone through algorithms in my head and that would be *ugly*. You'd have to break E-units up into sub-grids with tricky logic about which units would be in which sub-grid. But if xfer nodes couldn't be used to power Annihilators, then the grid thing would be far more interesting.

Having all defenses upward of LLT having to draw e directly from nearby power sources (OD grid staying the same) sounds like a nice idea to try, maybe better than simply nerfing defense accross the board (I have no opinion regarding buffing arty).

But here comes a question: may defenses be powered by power sources directly connected to other power sources that are themselves directly connected to defenses?

This would allow defenses to be powered by wind farm (as one lone mill would not cross the threshold of power required).

Potential issue: player could draw long lines of wind mills from geo or backyard fusions/singus to front defenses. But this could actually add to the tactic side of ZK because the enemy could send scythes to break the wind mills lines and bring down the whole defense hub (even AA?) (DDM should be completely shut down). So even wind mills lines should be fortified, which is expensive, so players would choose their porc spots more carefully and sparsely.

quote: Pxtl: it could result in frustrating balance problems since you might have one base where you can't exactly touch all 3 start-mexes with a fus while another base does let you do it...

You could let fusions give more distant defense less energy. This way you could choose to build fusions in a save distance but you have to build more.


And Energy-Grid 2) would solve this issue too.

@licho: that seems horrendously complex, and completly untennable

the DF player in me DEMANDS IT NOW!

bonus points if the links themselves can be damaged/destroyed

Yes pylon as only OD ..
though i would allow pylon to pylon links.

Well, that would indeed lose the simplicity of aoe. Instead, you'd need to Ford-Fulkerson everything (read: You'd have to show and calculate a graph of flows, not a few grids), and maximizing OD output might not be trivial (haven't looked into that though).

The idea in itself sounds great and logical, but it's complicated to have it optimize e distribution.

Anyways, this discussion first needs to have a goal defined, people are arguing on different ends: OD and porcline are two different things. We need to make clear if changing OD is desirable or unwanted.

@MaurantKilom - I don't mean changing the transferring within the grid - optimizing flows within the grid would be nightmarish if there were internal transfer caps. I don't mean a complicated peer-to-peer transfer cap.

I mean the grid itself works exactly the same as it currently does. A windgen can transfer 1000+ E to the next windgen. The cap is only hit when transferring power from a windgen to a mex. So the player still doesn't have to worry about the interior of the grid any more than he does now, he only has to worry about the power-points of the grid.

So, imagine we have a grid that looks like

SINGU -> WINDGEN -> FUSION -> 2 Mexes

The windgen doesn't matter. Even though the windgen's output cap is 5, it has no cap within the grid. The only cap that's relevant is the fusion. We've got about 260E in that grid, and 2 mexes to power. Under the old system, they'd each get 120E (assuming no other energy drains). Under my system, the power-cap on the fusion prevents them from recieving more than 50 each. So they each get 50 and the rest of the energy must go into the reserve. The fact that the windgen can only power 5E doesn't matter because the windgen is *internal*.

Now, if we had it

SINGU -> WINDGEN -> 2 Mexes

Then you'd be dealing with the Windgen's 5E power cap. Then you'd be putting the other 215ish energy into the reserve while the mexes get 5E each.

See? While it's more complicated than the current system (which, I'll grant you, is already pretty complicated) it's not that bad. And the point is it will mean you have to invest near the mexes/superdefenses, not just building energy sources in back-country and running transfer stuff to the front.

Of course, you could take it a step further and remove the grid and just go by individual power-limits on energy buildings, but then we might basically end up back at square 1 with OD, effectively.

+1 to bunny, OD is hard enough right now to explain to new players, making it more complicated will not benefit the community or gameplay.

If the issue to be dealt with is : too much defense

Maybe the answer is IvoryKing's one, too weak arty.

But maybe part of the answer is also that, as Anarchid say, you can currently build up your porc step by step starting with HLT without any energy connected.

Maybe both reasons enter in the mix.

The arty thread is another thread. This one concerns too easy def and the way to deal with it. The more I think about it, the more I am pleased by the idea of def being directly powered by adjacent power sources, grid staying as it is otherwise (MauranKilom's idea). Licho, what do you think about that?