So, this whole crystal thing (wait I think I used that title already...)

[chemical_art]

Ah! A terrible omission there.

What i meant is that the wall clocks dont interact nearly as neatly as in say AoE. In AoE either you or the enemy gets x resource (when resource is not neutral).

In AI War the relationship is lot more complex. And generally in the opposite direction. When player gets stronger, AI gets stronger. This is good! However, it means resources have to examined within strictly ai wars and not in a more meta sense.

[chemical_art]

THAT said, like i say with all these major changes, if you present a good carrot with a stick you could get a lot more support.

Example: It is decided resour ces are a lot more strategic choice by removing conversion. But you reduce the effect on RNG in a different way: in the lobby you get to choose your bonus ships. Id bite that offer

[Tridus]

Well, the point is that the AI isn't competing with you for resources. The AI won't take back a system because it really needs that crystal to build more ships, whereas that can happen in AoE. AI War is a different beast.

[LaughingThesaurus]

I'd say they're so similar not just because of conversion issues, but because the only real differentiation between them is what the mapgen prefers to seed on each planet. List 5 differences between metal nodes and crystal nodes. One provides metal, one provides crystal, but that's about it. Sometimes the map decides to have more metal, or more crystal, on a given planet. Nothing's limited, they don't really feel different in where they appear, nothing. In Starcraft, Gas comes from geysers (and you need a refinery for it), while minerals are just in the ground. In Supreme Commander, you can only get Mass from specific nodes, while you can generate energy from literally anywhere you can build a reactor at. In AI War, metal harvesters can only be built at particular nodes, and crystal harvesters can only be built at its particular nodes. They pretty much just feel the same. If crystal were actually different outside of just the name of the harvester that got it, I'd more entertain the idea of keeping them separate. That, unfortunately, is a lot more complex than just removing conversion or anything.

[DrFranknfurter]

I'm a big fan of multiple distinct resources, I wanted more complexity in Elemental:WoM, FE... also, AoE had the ability to convert resources at a market so even finite resources were essentially infinite (though increasingly expensive, each trade lowered conversion efficiency... not sure if that's worth considering). About AoE, for some reason I never warmed to AoE 3. Possibly it was the smaller maps that did it, but I really enjoyed the persistent world feel of gaining xp for your homeland... it just wasn't enough to keep me interested.

Anyway how about this:
Crystal + Metal combined.
Exotic resources added - only 8 seeded on mapgen, each one when controlled increases ship-cap for exotic hulls (at least +1 ship to all ship caps). Or, perhaps instead of just exotic have specific resources that match hull-types (composite, refractive etc.) and boost all ships of that type in some way. Fighting a lot of fortresses and maybe capture a polycrystal deposit first to boost your bombers/tanks. I think that would be easiest to pick-up and least complicated from the players point of view. Perhaps have it give a health boost, resource cost reduction, general stat boost, increased ship-cap as above or maybe let the player choose what it does when they build on it (using the exact same mechanic as the spire crafting, but placing an immobile structure instead).

[Zeyi]

Maybe crystal could be given a new application if turrets are rebalanced for distributed defenses., the number of crystal resources you control giving you increased per planet turret cap or something to that effect.

We're also talking of rebalancing energy, so what if energy collectors took an extra 25k energy per crystal.

Basically I just think if we want to bring back the strategic importance of picking planets for their resources there should be a way in one of the many re balances people have been voting for tin the next expansion.

[deadone]

I came from the post Big Items For 8.0 and was happy to see the game will still get some new things, and i didn't read all 10 pages.
but when i read the first and the last one i think:
yes hacking should/could be a bigger part of this game after all its an AI we are fighting against.
and then the idea about viruses came to my head.
So you cant just hack everything you want to, first you have to find and get the correct virus like you would get new ships/turrets/tech. this would make every game different and you cant use the same things in all of your games(maps).
I m not sure if the AI should be able to do the same. You have to be able to counter-that, like antihackerturrets.
Viruses:
-Hack  Turrettype(s) to paralysis/convert them for 30-600sec
-Hack Guardpostype(s)to paralysis them for 30-
600sec
-Hack Coreshieldtype(s) A-E

Another thing that would make Humancolonys more atractive would be that they give you the Hackers/viruses like a consumables. So you have to plan your big hacks more carefully.