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

[KDR_11k]

Star Filled Sky showed me that going deeper is rarely worth it.

[keith.lamothe]

This brings up another general question about the new hacking mechanic. In the case of hacks whose benefits can be lost, would / could you regain the points you spent on it, e.g., by destroying the resulting structure? Taking this case for example, if I decide I don't want to mask this planet from the AI anymore (could be because I took all surrounding planets, or I want to shift my whipping boy / chokepoint to here), could I get back the points I spent on that hack?

You could (and would probably would want to as soon as the main threat blockage was gone) scrap the hacking device to stop the hack.  But you would not get your points back.  The benefit of having eliminated that threat would be permanent, but I do not think that every hacking benefit needs to be permanent, it just needs to be sufficiently useful so as to avoid the "why is this in the game? I never use it" syndrome.

A lot of the hacking types will probably be pretty niche.  Like sabotaging a superfort or baiting a large threatball into the chipper shredder.  But there are definitely times when players would gladly have given a left arm to accomplish those things without resorting to conventional (and generally high-casualty) solutions.

As a related question, would adding Hacking level-reducing structures be reasonable here as well? Essentially Data Centers for the Hacking level.

I don't see a need for them but we could add them sometime, yes.

[DrFranknfurter]

I'm looking forward to hacking being revisited. I'm sure you'll manage balance however you do it and it certainly has a lot of potential to spice-up the game but I thought I'd ask:

Why not use AIP-floor rather than total or effective?

One key benefit would be that after killing one AI's home (and the core guard posts) the other AI would be too distracted to notice your hacking... it would give you a chance to win (via hacking toys) if you don't manage to attack both simultaneously. Another benefit is that the range is smaller, and therefore easier to balance, unchanged by DCs but yes CPs would matter (but that isn't a bad thing). Third is that if you can lower AI-floor (through hacking) doing so would further increase the effective hacking response... self-balancing that sort of additional mechanic.

Also, why multiplier? Perhaps use an armour like subtraction. (people like to hug the floor, it's optimal and people like to play optimally... or kill everything and bring on the apocalypse)
e.g. AIP-floor of 50
Effective hacking = (Total hacking - AIP-floor) or Hacking-floor whicher is higher.
(hacking floor could just be 20 or 30%, like armour, or use similar maths as AIP-floor... with certain hacking things raising it... people already are used to Total, effective and floor so no really new terms)
The current hacking responses, 'total hacking' would need to be scaled down to ~0-300 sort of range, something akin to AIP. But since number inflation is something you want to avoid anyway it isn't really a problem.
Perhaps have clear cut changes in the response every 50/100 effective hacking? Similar to the new ship type with AIP:
Tachyon bursts, EMPs, botnet golems, zombie warp-counterattacks, unleashed hybrid experiments, experimental zombie ships... spawned zombie eyes... lots of nasty options
Give some a countdown so you can panic, yell, spill your drink and then quickly shut down your hacking attept when you're warned but completely unprepared.
If the response changes every 100 then hacking below 100 could be considered 'relatively safe'. Each hundred would introduce a new, potentially scary unknown. (Though you would be warned by the afformentioned countdown so you don't have to reload).

Anyway, look forward to any planned hacking changes. I think the game flourishes because of the choices it presents. Choice: clear and meaningful, balanced and intuitive... makes the game great.

[zackk]

My suggestion? just keep the metal and the crystal in the game but combine the upgrades.

[LaughingThesaurus]

My suggestion? just keep the metal and the crystal in the game but combine the upgrades.

The argument against that is that metal and crystal don't really do different enough things to be separate resources. They are mechanically identical, so why bother keeping them separate from each other? A hacking resource would be fundamentally different from m/c in a lot of ways.

[Shrugging Khan]

Different M/C resources would make sense if they led to the player being forced to decide if it's worth to take a planet solely for the resources. But somehow, it doesn't quite work like that....weird thing, that.

[TechSY730]

Different M/C resources would make sense if they led to the player being forced to decide if it's worth to take a planet solely for the resources. But somehow, it doesn't quite work like that....weird thing, that.

Metal or Crystal contention only really plays a factor in the early game, where you don't have much coming in, nor do you really have enough to be able to afford the loss due to the conversion (though nerfing the conversion effeciency may be worth looking into, 75% is a bit high).

One you are past that stage, income becomes high enough such that you will probably have plenty of both, or due to the conversion, not so much of either, with the loss due to conversion having a minimal impact to your economic output relative to if you were choosing ships based on their one or the other resource costs.

EDIT: I want to clarify that I am in favor in keeping some sort of m and c split. This post is merely pointing out observations in the current balance.

[tmm]

Multi resource systems are really only worth doing when there is some differentiation in what they're used for.  For instance, in *craft there's a resource for basic units and a resource that higher tech units and spellcasters rely on.  In AIW knowledge and AIP are resources to be managed that act on different axes than M/C.

All of the above is a long way of saying that I think to make the M/C split worth keeping, you'd need to specialize them more and give them less overlap.  Say, M builds ships with a small C component, while C builds static defenses with a small M component.  Something of that sort.  Otherwise, they may as well be merged.

[chemical_art]

(though nerfing the conversion effeciency may be worth looking into, 75% is a bit high).

IIRC the effeciency rating is much closer to 50%. It certainly isn't higher then that.

[TechSY730]

(though nerfing the conversion effeciency may be worth looking into, 75% is a bit high).

IIRC the effeciency rating is much closer to 50%. It certainly isn't higher then that.

OK then. It's been a while since I have looked at that particular thing. 

Still, 50% is still a bit high. What was Total Anniliation's energy to metal conversion ratio, after you adjust for the difference in average energy production rates vs average metal production rates? (I think it was 1:60 if you didn't factor into the fact that their "scales" are different and you don't do any "currency conversion", and it was 1:10 in supreme commander) It was pretty dang low IIRC.

Not saying it should be that low, but maybe something low enough to make people think twice before just converting whenever.

[LaughingThesaurus]

In Supreme Commander (and presumably Total Annihilation), you can build only a limited number of mass harvesters, and as many energy reactors as you wanted, without limit. Mass fabrication in those games was a really big deal because income of it was pretty strictly limited and capped. Also, those two resources were actually different, unlike metal and crystal, which are virtually identical.

[Tridus]

Really, the biggest problem with m/c being so similar is the conversion between them being so easy and so cheap. It simply doesn't matter very much which one I'm getting, if I need the other one it just happens efficiently enough that I don't care. There is virtually no case where I say "gee I'd love to build a Raid Starship, but don't have the crystal to do it so I'll build some metal heavy ships instead".

The conversion either needs to become so bad that taking a crystal heavy world becomes a big deal just for the crystal harvesters, or the whole thing isn't worth worrying about.

[Shrugging Khan]

How about capturable Resource Converter structures (yeah, like the manufacturies of old)? As in, you'd normally have a conversion efficiency of perhaps 20%...but for every Resource Converter, you gain an additional 20% (or perhaps the 80% inefficiency just gets slashed by 25% per Converter, making the efficiency...20% originally, 40% with 1 converter, 55% with 2 converters, 66.25% with three converters and so on.).

Probably a lousy idea, but eh.

[chemical_art]

We've argued this already...in this thread no less!

The problem with reducing efficiency is that it, ultimately, makes the economy more based on RNG (when already so_many_things depend on the RNG) and ultimately it simply nerfs player economy since conversion will be used just as often regardless.

[keith.lamothe]

We've argued this already...in this thread no less!

Arcen Games: Where The Horse Is Never Dead Enough.