Metal & Crystal

[drumlin]

I use a few...not enough I guess 

[x4000]

just have to drop in. Have the game&the expansion for a couple of days, and like it a lot! I have not been so much into a game for years (compliment for the music!).

In the few games I played, I always had too much metal, but am really short for crystal. I guess its because I like starships and turrets, and I feel like these are heavy in crystal compared to smaller ships. And, at least on my maps, metal seems to be more abundant than crystal.

Maybe it would be an idea to rebalace the cost of metal and crystal a little bit, maybe in a way that not all turrets/starships are heavy in crstal. For example, laser/tractor turrets lot of crystal/less metal, missile based about half/half and basic turrets more metal/less crystal. Something similar could be applied for Starships (Fleet=even, Dreadnought=more metal, Raid/Leech: More crystal).

I am commonly in the situation that I need to (re)build a lot of turrets fast, if I want to set up a beachhead, or face some heavy attack on my planets. Would be great if I could adapt the turret-choice to my resources.

Glad you're enjoying the game (and the music!)

Really, having a lot of manufactories is by design, so that you can balance your economy if it turns out to be inherently unbalanced.  I also specifically made the starships and turrets cost more crystal, versus having most of the base ships cost more metal, so that there is incentive to go one way or the other based on your current situation.  In other words, if you find a lot of metal-rich planets but normally play starships, that's then an incentive to play with more fleet ships in that specific campaign... or seek out crystal-rich worlds.  That was something I'd intentionally unbalanced to give players more situational considerations other than just "I'll always build my favorite thing."

If you're always short on crystal, then I'd suggest either crystal manufactories, and/or specifically looking for crystal-rich planets to take when you are scouting.  Hope that helps!

[x4000]

I just wondered if there could be a way to bring knowledge into the resource/energy calculation. Okay, you can get the improved command stations if you spend knowledge, but there could be additional ways to spend knowledge to increase resource/energy output. Like a decrease of the stacking penalty or resource consumption for the plants, or something like mkII miners.
To keep the balance, these things would have their adequate price of knowledge of course. And you could turn the overall production of res./energy a bit down to encourage the use of these additional upgrades. So the player can chose whether he wants to not spend any knowledge on these and run a more resource less game, boost his economy a lot loosing a lot of knowledge, or find a balance between both to get an income like it is right now.

Someone might complain that then you have to spend more knowledge than before to achieve the same economy. The missing knowledge would totally mess up the tactics for knowledge-spending someone might have. Well, you could give more knowledge points at the start to equal this. The player can choose to spend this extra-knowledge on the upgrades, not more or less. Nothing would change compared to the current state. But he could also decide to save the extra points for something else or spend even more on economy. So nothing HAS to change if you don't want it to.

What do you think?

Regarding this (which I realized I missed until now), it's an interesting idea on some level, but I don't feel like it accomplishes much in terms of adding new decisions or strategy to the game, but it does add complexity.  Really, I prefer to keep most aspects of the economy relatively simple, so that players can focus on aspects that are generally more fun.  Thanks for the suggestion, though!

[x4000]

Concerning the energy costs for Mercenary Space Dock Employees.  While I see how maintaining them at no cost to energy would leave the road open to exploitation, as a passing thought with no penalty to sharing, I bring to consideration that they could have less of an energy cost to their increased metal & crystal cost.  This was just a passing thought, however, and I have no means to defend. Nor will.

...And this one I missed, too.  Also an interesting idea, but I think that some advanced players would exploit this too heavily (by taking too few planets to support real ships, but using mercs instead to get an ultra-low AIP and thus mangle the difficulty).  So, in the end, I'm just leaving mercenaries alone.  Again, thanks for the suggestion, though!

[Harry]

For what it's worth, I'm always short on metal!  But I haven't yet invested heavily in starships.  Maybe that's why.

[x4000]

Probably so -- I tend to be more of a fleet ship guy myself, and so am usually hurting for metal moreso than crystal.

[Lancefighter]

as a pure starships guy, dreads and fleet combined (usually fleets before dreads, but still) I am almost always short on crystal...

>.>

Usually because when I build defenses, I do it in style. I drop something like 20ish of every type of turret (except maybe lightning and tractor) on every WH i want to defend.. muhaha.

Then I realize my surplus crystal just went down into a toilet somewhere. Oops!

[x4000]

Well, it is true -- when I got into hyper-turret mode, I get short on crystal real fast.  But then I generally get quite a surplus of crystal right afterward if I'm not using enough manufactories.

[Lancefighter]

Thing is, I dont use manufactories much. relating back to TA - if your using metal makers as the backbone of your economy, your doing it wrong. Ever since then, I've always seen increasing territory as a much better alternative to creating those resources that you require..

[x4000]

Depends on your situation, really -- TA didn't have AI Progress.  But I certainly see where you're coming from.

[Lancefighter]

yeah, but I've found that AI progress doesnt seem to mean a great deal in most games.

Perhaps i need to go harder >.>
it just seems like after taking 5-6 planets near my home, I have all the resources I really need, with the limiting factor being /time/ (to build starships, of course)

Silly question; what does it take to play a game with the famed x4000? 

[x4000]

yeah, but I've found that AI progress doesnt seem to mean a great deal in most games.

Ha!  Well, okay, that's interesting.  Definitely sounds like you are playing on an easier difficulty than your true skill, then.  Of course, as this thread clearly demonstrates, different people feel different amounts of resource pain based on their playstyles.

Silly question; what does it take to play a game with the famed x4000? 

You know, I've not played AI War with anyone outside of my alpha test group (which consists of my dad, my uncle, and my uncle's colleague, and has been my weekly RTS group for years and years before AI War was even dreamed of), and my wife.  I haven't even managed to play a game with any of the other Arcen staff, interestingly (the fact that we are largely all in different time zones doesn't help). Well, I did play a few hours with Pablo when I was showing him the game when he was signing on as composer.  Just not enough hours in the day, and I really don't want to get into the appearance of favoritism amongst the fanbase.  But, who knows -- I will probably branch out more at some point.  Just not right now, when I'm so busy I keep missing sessions with my alpha group to code more.

[Lancefighter]

yep, next game I can play I will definately hitch up the level a bit more

And I mean, as per the favoritism, just er... sit in irc... or better yet, announce a time when youll be hosting a game sometime whoever shows up shows up....

But just sayin, your 4 person team probably has a rather similar playstyle each time, it might be useful to play with us 'common folk' now and again

[x4000]

That's why the forums are so helpful.  Really, my core group is used to looking for flaws in what's going on, and are used to me stopping the game a couple of times per night to give an update I coded on the fly.  I'm not trying to avoid playing with others, but you work with the time constraints you have, right?  I've been working so far today for... hmm, 14 hours.  And I've still got another good 2-3 hours to go.  Then tomorrow I'll wake up late, come back into the office, and work for another 8ish hours.  Then more in the late evening.  Then repeat.

I play with my alpha group partly because they are good at testing certain things, but also because I... uh, built the game to play it with them. We've been playing co-op RTS since '98, and I was sick of the cruddy other implementations.  So I created my own.  It's basically the main time I "see" my dad each week, and keep up with him and my uncle, etc.  So it's no offense to anyone, or that I consider others "common folk" or anything.  But I'm just not much of an Internet gamer anymore, haven't been much of one since college really, and so I just don't think of it.  I'm pretty much either working or spending time with family, so there's rarely a time where I sit down and can even play single-player games if I'm not doing it under the auspices of testing.

Not trying to rant by any stretch -- but I get that question quite a lot, more by email than anything, and I figured it's better to give a complete answer than to seem stuck up or somesuch.  Anyway -- I imagine I'll play with others before another year goes by, but right now all the AARs are super helpful.

[Lancefighter]

nono, I actually rather appreciate it. Its a lot better to know why someone does/doesnt do something than be told it and expected to believe on faith.

Problem kinda becomes that I'm not very good at writing :\

Although I think its cool that you wrote a game just to play with your family more

the common folk comment was really just in jest..
I was just kinda figuring that if you work all day in the office.. uhm.. doing whatever it is a single man (more or less.. different time zones you say o.0 ) office.. you must find /something/ to do all day long... >.>

Ah well, dont worry about it