Author Topic: Economic preferences  (Read 9725 times)

Offline BadgerBadger

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Economic preferences
« on: January 07, 2018, 03:59:32 pm »
Hey Keith, in AIWC you could set the AI difficulty and also an economic +/- for all players. Is there going to be a similar sort of thing in AIW2?

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Economic preferences
« Reply #1 on: January 07, 2018, 04:14:16 pm »
Hey Keith, in AIWC you could set the AI difficulty and also an economic +/- for all players. Is there going to be a similar sort of thing in AIW2?
For the human faction, yes.

Maybe more flavor than +/-

Dropdown with choices like "Meteor Miner" (+metal, -power), "Archaeologist" (+science, -fuel), "Hacker" (+hacking, -everything-else). Could theoretically balance those to allow achievements.

Can also add simpler ones with just +100% everything (or just specific resources). No achievements with those.

Could also have more complex ones like "Turtle" (Immobile Ark variant, big +power, start with a flagship) or "Shadow" (Ark has really strong cloaking device so you're very hard to kill, but some other big disadvantage). Also difficult to balance, but good modding territory.


For the AI the AI difficulty is basically the +/-, but if folks want a separate dropdown that only changes the strength-budget income it could be done quite easily.
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Offline x4000

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Re: Economic preferences
« Reply #2 on: January 07, 2018, 06:33:11 pm »
Oh cool, I love those flavor pieces!
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Offline Draco18s

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Re: Economic preferences
« Reply #3 on: January 07, 2018, 11:07:14 pm »
That's a +1 from me

Offline x4000

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Re: Economic preferences
« Reply #4 on: January 08, 2018, 08:23:17 am »
Those would also fit well with the hybrid desires people have for the Arks, now that we have multiple visual types (and will soon have a dozen or so types).

If "Ark One" is the baseline, and we have Rorqual and some of the others that are basically different from the baseline in some way other than just visually (we promised that to the backers), then I think that gets across the personality of each Ark well, which is great.

BUT, we've also had a request from folks to be able to choose the visuals they want and then have a playstyle that they want.  So if they love the Rorqual visuals but are less than enthused by whatever its differential stats are compared to Ark One... well, they could be a Meteor Miner to compensate.  Or one of the more complex ones like Turtle, and it basically kills the engines of whatever Ark they choose, etc.

By having two sets of dials there, the underlying personality of each Ark is maintained, but players are able to have a further level of customization via this economic preferences thing.  Which sounds like it goes well beyond the economy, frankly.
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Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Economic preferences
« Reply #5 on: January 08, 2018, 09:28:45 am »
If "Ark One" is the baseline, and we have Rorqual and some of the others that are basically different from the baseline in some way other than just visually (we promised that to the backers)
Looking at the reward sidebar and the main-body-image description of Arkitect, I only see visual stuff.

That said, if a stat request is easily granted within the existing xml framework (which covers a lot of stuff) I'm happy to go beyond what was promised.


Quote
BUT, we've also had a request from folks to be able to choose the visuals they want and then have a playstyle that they want.
It's very easy to mod ArkOne (or a copy of it) to have different visuals. If desired we can have the end of the Ark dropdown list just be a bunch of "(Visual Only) Rorqual", etc options. There would need to be two entity definitions for each variant (with-stat-changes and without) but that's not a problem.


Quote
Or one of the more complex ones like Turtle, and it basically kills the engines of whatever Ark they choose, etc.
Turtle would actually use a different entity type, probably, so that the Ark behavior is handled entirely in xml and there's no special-case C# code for "this unit's engines are not only dead, they cannot be repaired" (those kinds of exceptions pile up leaning-tower-of-pisa style). If someone wanted a Turtle with a different Ark's visuals it's a 5-minute copy-and-paste in the xml.


Quote
By having two sets of dials there, the underlying personality of each Ark is maintained, but players are able to have a further level of customization via this economic preferences thing.  Which sounds like it goes well beyond the economy, frankly.
Bear in mind that stuff like Turtle or Shadow may not go into the base game because it may not be feasible to balance them or keep them balanced. Making variants is easy, keeping all variants equally playable ranges from hard to impossible :)

As it is, the economic variants would probably disable achievements (the straight-bonus ones certainly would) by way of indicating that it's more of a playing preference than a finely-balanced option. +science is always going to be pretty killer regardless of which resource you give up for it, etc.
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Offline x4000

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Re: Economic preferences
« Reply #6 on: January 08, 2018, 10:01:59 am »
That all makes good sense, thanks.  Good point on the promises to backers; that said, I'm just making copies of the Ark One in xml (via the duplicate) and then assigning the new visuals and letting us then do diffs as needed.  So as you say, having visual and non-visual variants would not be a big deal.

Potentially keeping them all visual-only would be best for balance, we can see what those folks think.
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Offline Draco18s

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Re: Economic preferences
« Reply #7 on: January 08, 2018, 01:47:38 pm »
Allowing the mechanical and visual to be chosen separately is a good idea, though I'd advocate for picking a style and having that style's mechanics be default (and listed) unless the player chooses a different mechanical layout.

It keeps the thematic pairing, but allows for a quick alteration if desired.

I'd leave XML adjustment to a player wanting to make that optional choice more permanent.

 

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