Re: New Unit & Devolopment Structure: General Introduction
Response to your Comments & Questions:
]1: Devolopments would not be unlimited since that would take far to much code but i do not see creating a "This or That" option many places at all. There might be some like perhaps you can choose between 2 Different Punits in a Route (not decided) or perhaps gaining 2 type of bonus's like perhaps the the final ETA bonus vs the final seed production bonus. I hope i wont have to suggest a single one of these limited options to make sure the tree stays as open as possible. However as you say and i mentioned in the devolopment bit each Devolopment you do will have a Secondary Cost. A Increase in Devolopment Mod, today we have one that ticks down globaly with each devolopment. This new one would be individual, and would work on: Base Cost + (Base cost xMod). So the first Devolopments would be cheap most of them perhaps only add 1 or 2% add to the mod. But some later devolopments say a Punit would increase the mod by atlest 10% and since the more devolopments you do the higher the mod it will help offsett the part of top allie being able to make to many good combo's to fast. Or a big Solo being able to get self deffensive combo's to easily.
2: If im to use a example lets use Military Tech Tree of today. You would be able to devolop Marines, Recruitment Officers and F117 if you had the time and resouces to do so. Its just the deeper you go down each branch the higher the base cost and the Dev Mod increase the devolopment would have, so you could rush down a branch and get the end unit of that branch cheaper then you normaly would suspect, or you could go say First Paratroopers, then Heavy Weapons and Shocks and do each branch one step at a time but the cost of the last units would be much higher this way. Same if you rush support devolopments, the cost of your unit devolopments would also be higher.
3: Yes i do foresee a change in Solo and Alliance play, in thruth if i could drive every Solo player into an alliance i would. I will not want to give Pure Solo's any Devolopment Advantages at all. No Route will be designed for Solo Play like Spec Ops was back when it was made. There will be much more simular situation to Age 2 Solo's. Where you are weak vs your counter route, but not as weak as say a Pom Player would be against a Biker Thug today. Due to the open tech tree's it is possible to be more flexible but it wont be a easy race since i belive without bringing solo players now into alliances and try to stabilise Alliances so we get some firm groups again in the game without that it wont be possible for the game to survive in the longer run. But generaly i forsee a few options in Routes that can handle solo play better then others, but no more support for massive Stealth Strikes for Solo Groups etc, I aim to weaken Solo's as a general and strenghten Alliances.
4: Today we see about 7 Units with the Punit pr Route. I hope at the very least to double it to 15, but i suspect it might get closer to 20. Somewhere inbetween there. Yes to go further on Crime i got atlest 7 More units that i could post up where some are lethals and others are NLT. The end amount iset set but i do hope somewhere between 15 and 20 since ive left some unit spots undone since feedback from the community is very important and it will effect the shaping of the routes so its been more important for me to try to indicate the roles of the Routes and some of the units to help illustrate this then post up a full list of units that might need to change drasticly because 1 element of the suggestion might be uncodable and therefore offsetting the entire ballance scale. And your slightly correct atlest, i want that each route to have more then 1 set playstyle thats effective. A good example is if you had played Poms today and some Thugs decide to make your round hell its very little you could do, with this new style you could change what units your using and therefore make the thug players biker attacks far less effective, might not solve the problem but you wont be as good of a target again, and yes i do hope each route will hopefully atlest 3 suitable options of good combo's within them and that players are able to find many possible ways to play each route and yes the "ideal combo's" of sort will be on different branches. This is to indicate that 2 mil players in the same alliance, will most likly start on different branches to help gain the allie more variation and better combo's. But at the same time if they notice that say a allie like this round is robo heavy they can adjust far more towards their needs creating a degree of flexibility for tactics.
5: Hackers, yes as mentioned they are abusable and would have been. But its the function of a unit that generates funds as you have it thats its function. Perhaps making it an Imobile unit would fix it since then people could just go and try to kill it. But one must also remember that Terrorisim that Hackers would belong to, would lose alot of their troops due to the Sucide Prinsiple so they do need some secondary money options. So hackers would help to add to this but if Imobile and have atlest 36 Houers before they generat Profit after build, have them only generate funds once a day perhaps so if their killed the tick before you get nothing. Things like that would help to ballance Hackers in i belive. And yes a Increase in Score value for Money after a certain point might be a good idea, i would suggest that to be around 700Bill, thats more then enough to "hoard" and more then enough for even a big resistance player to rebuild but not enough to get one into the top if you have nothing else. So if after this limit score value would increase alot it could help prevent lowbie hacker hoarders.
6: Its true i dont see getting alot of AIR units. I see perhaps 1 in Diplomacy, 2 in Terrorisim, 4 in Military and 2 in Robotics. And there wont be alot of air targeter's directly but say a unit like RPG could have had a targeting like this: Let, Let(Air), All it would mean that in a battle where there are Airborne units, the RPG would perform alot better then in there would be none, but it would stil have a large chunck of its dammage hits lethals (50%, 35%, 15%) and the total firepower would drop 20% compared to today if there where no Air, but if Air it would have been 15% higher then today, and it would directly target units that often have high degree of firepower but might be more fragile making it a good counter unit but sametime functional elsewhere.
7: Yes i do hope it will take about 3 Houers in the start. You could say i want to even out the start a little, make it so that not so much depends on that first night where the hardcore players can pull away so much. Sure they stil get alot of benefits but they wont be able to get as many attacks in as today at the start, as one then later get some Support Devolopments done, im guessing the last one that effect eta would be commonly done after around 3 weeks in then most would be like today but i do plan to end it atlest 1 tick slower then today so average attack later round i would aim to make around eta 6, with starting the round off around eta 9 to help even the field some and allow players more rest and stil be able to not fall to far behind at the start.
8: The best way to explain this would most likly to be using Military Route as an example again. Each Route would be true to its Core Prinsiple, like Crime would focus on Speed and Money but be generaly weaker military vise. But it would have 3 options of branches to go down. It could go down one with alot of INN Units that supports their ability to steal, they could get attack support units like Hooligans, Thugs or Loansharks. Or it could go towards the few Lethals and focus around that. If they go INN their more vulnerable, but great flakers, if they go attack support they can work well in teams, or if they go Lethals they can end up with alot of cheap but effective lethals to help since even today alot of a unit helps and even if its not the best alone Crime Route it works very well with others. Military would be more 3 different taks on being agressive, like Infantry would focus more on Health and Stability not the strongest for cost but not the most expensive either, then the vechicles with Humvee, Tank, Striker etc would be the most heavily armoured but be slower but would be more ideal if you expect alot of incomming. Then the last option would build on Air units, faster and more strong then the others but also far more fragile for the cost. But say Apaches covered by alot of Humvee's would stil do good, unless you face a player with a little to many counter units, but stil even if alot of these where around you could stil swap to a Infantry lineup to avoid it, and this helps deffend or attack since you can in a sense adapt vs what others have. And with this what units are in use might change over a round as people always try to adapt against each other to gain the upperhand.
I think that was all, if you have more please do state them and i will try to respond to each one. Im also really thankfull for your response and in the way you did it. Its helped i think create more light on the suggestion and perhaps help set the treand for the thread alone the lines all suggestions should be greeted with well defined questions of its clear someone who has read the whole thing and not trying to bash it in the slightest. again thank you.
- Sordes[/size]
