Making the game more fluid - The adjacency bonuses problem.

[Gowerly]

You should have seen the "Pizza Delivery" (Wtf Deman) that was set up back in Vanilla with all the fab spam. Good times.

[Pavese]

Off-topic: is it just me, or do noobs love playing with volatile stuff as if it were setting up dominos? Do they love making simcities to let others blow it up and revel in the glorious explosion/chain reaction of their own base?

It's more likely that they read something about adjacency bonuses and that it is important. Yet they have no clue why it is important or if it makes sense to build them.

That's why you see mass storage around t1 mex, Energy storages around a hydro or what not. They heard about it once and never thought it out. But that's why they are nooobs.

[Varaxis]

I think a good fix to this is to simply make mass storage more expensive. I haven't done the math, but maybe something like 2x more mass cost, 3x more energy cost, but with 3-4x the storage (same build time). Surrounding extractors with 4 of them gets you that 50% bonus, but it's not as efficient anymore, since it's more expensive. Then you will just have maybe your first 4 starting mass points surrounded once all are T2 and wait to surround your T3 ones afterwards--as an bonus aftereffect, maybe newbies will be more inclined to upgrade to T3 rather than max out production once they have all T2 mass surrounded. It's useful to have mass storage, especially after upgrading to T2, when you might not have the energy production to build, but it needs to be rebalanced relatively to upgrading to T3 Mex. With the storage costing a lot more, noobs are less likely to spam build them so early.

Can you possibly tune it to increase adjacency bonus to factories maybe to 5-10-20% for T1-T2-T3 Mex? That might help solve the spam T1 engineer assist issue, as t1 engineers assisting a fac probably don't get the discount for assisting. I know some may think that the adjacency bonus of a T1 mex for a factory reduces their T1 tank production cost to -3, from -4, when it's more like 3.9 with the decimal being truncated off.

Calculations at 5%-10%-20%:
- Building 1 mass storage adjacent to a T1 mex gives it +0.25 extra mass prod, and 5% from a factory producing T1 tanks would be -0.2.
- Building 1 mass storage adjacent to a T2 mex gives it +0.75 extra mass prod, and 10% off a factory building T1 tanks would get -0.4, and a T2 fac building T2 tanks -0.9.
- Building 1 mass storage adjacent to a T3 mex gives it +2.25 extra mass prod, and 20% off a factory building T1 tanks would get -0.8, a T2 fac building T2 tanks -1.8, and a T3 fac building T3 tanks/bots roughly -2.8 (ex. Harb/Othuum).

Maybe make it 5-12-30 or higher for T2 and T3, considering how conservative these figures look. Maybe encourage more than 1 T2/T3 Land fact with the bonuses.

I honestly think the adjacency/efficiency bonuses make the game more interesting and give it more depth. I'm against simplifying the game too much. I prefer there to be adjacency bonuses, as minor useful efficiency bonuses. Changes to Aeon's Eye and Salvation were needed fixes. Not too happy to see adjacency bonuses for other T3 arty to be removed, as it was a risk to put volatile structures near them instead of shields. They just aren't very effective, considering their cost, and that was a bonus that helped make them a tiny bit more effective.

[regabond]

I'm not sure if it could be done, but could adjacency add the volatile trait? That would open up all sorts of options. Adjacency for many other things could be buffed, but at the cost of if either thing is destroyed the whole thing dies. Then players would have the option of having a risky explosive prone base that produces more, and a safer base that produces a bit less.

If you look at most of the current good adjacency in the game, it follows that concept too. Do you build radar and pgens or separate them. Same with shields and pgens. Even if you overlap the shield gen with another shield, those pgens can be destroyed, heavily damaging all the shields.

So in the case of mex+factory, just look at mfab+factory. Well currently the mfab sucks for adjacency, but if it didn't you'd want to use them, but you'd have to be wary of the amount of damage they'd inflict when being destroyed. So adjacency bonuses could just destroy everything in the chain. Which would promote using lots of small chains as opposed to a single huge chain.

[Myrdral]

I only care about the mass storage boost being abnormally large. 50% bonus when surrounded is crazy. Should lower the bonus so it's not as efficient as upgrading to t3. Having knowledge of the most efficient build sequence, from observed math, puts the inexperienced at a major disadvantage.?

Economy is currently setup so that lower tiered economic upgrades are more cost efficient. Building a new t1 mex is more cost efficient than upgrading an existing one to t2. Why should upgrading a mex from t2 to t3 be more cost efficient than occupying an engineer while putting him in harms way to build a t1 mass storage. I would instead suggest that t1 mass storage increase the production of a t1 mex more efficiently than upgrading it to a t2 mex. However, mass storage isnt designed to be THAT efficient as it has other benefits aside from the mass adjacency bonus. If mass storage would only be useful after all your mex are already t3 it probably should just be removed from the game entirely instead. A t1 structure that isnt useful until after mass t3 upgrades? Seems like that would not be balanced or useful. I think mass storage should be made more useful at an earlier time. As it stands I can only see using it before t2 mex to store a huge amount of mass harvested from wrecks and even that is questionable. Storage does make economic balancing easier to manage, as you have a larger window before you mass stall or waste. It is very difficult to have too much mass I know, but it can happen with huge amounts of wrecks and reclaim if you do not have enough things to upgrade or the energy to match the sudden burst of mass. With 1000 unit count this is not a huge issue as people will have plenty of t1 factories, engineers and pgens.

Off-topic: is it just me, or do noobs love playing with volatile stuff as if it were setting up dominos? Do they love making simcities to let others blow it up and revel in the glorious explosion/chain reaction of their own base?

Part of the problem is there things are being blown up more because they are noobs. Also, I think they do not understand how to take advantage of adjaceny without overdoing it. They also may not understand how to place the structures to actually even make adjacency work. For example there is no adjacency for having a pgen siding with another pgen, yet you see an 4x2 double row of pgens between 2 factories at times when a single row could provide adjacency to both factories with half the structures and a much less volatile situation. When adjacency is properly setup, the volatility will not chain as badly. A good rule is to make sure having any 2 buildings completely destroyed will not cause a chain reaction. Losing a 3rd or 4th building after 2 are destroyed by enemy attacks hurts, but with the extra eco from adjacency and main base is still being destroyed so I think it would be a loss either way. Players should at least know what sort of risk they are taking with using adjacency and make sure they defend well if there is a catastrophic chain reaction potential.

[omega4]

FA, for me, have a big problem with adjacency bonuses :
They are mandatory OR useless. They are never an option or a choice. (Except for the radar and maybe the air factory).

For example, the mexes upgrades.
If you want to be really be cost effective, there is only ONE way to tech from T2 to T3. And it pass by making mex storage.

They must be done at tier 2, because, well, the maths prove it, but what does it add to the game ?

For me it make the game more complex and more difficult to understand for new player, without adding any depth in the game.

You have to do it, you have to do it at a specific time with a specific amount of engys, or you are doing it wrong. They is not other good justification to it.

One of the goal of FAF was to bring back players, but also bring NEW players to it. The economy is already enough complicated to
understand and master (after 3 years, some players are still not able to do it).

I see a lot of new players connecting energy with mexes, because it's logical : You see a nice connection line... But nothing with storage !?

I'm all for making the game less difficult to play, but deeper strategy-wise.
So for me, that's meaning removing all the things that don't bring more choices in the game... So, removing these T2 mass storage bonuses, and balance it otherwise (a 2.5 tier upgrade ? Redo the cost/time ? Making mass fab a replacement AND a choice for them ?)

Same with T2/T3 arty. These kind of connections should have more boost too. The radar is a perfect exemple of that : It's a choice, the bonus is nice, but it costs you 4 pgens.
For t2 arty, the reload should really be increased.

I know a lot of (old) players will not agree with me, but try to thing about what it really bring to the game...

I think you raise some excellent points.

SC:FA's complex economy separates it from more casual RTS games. While new players do NOT have to master the intricacies of the economy to have a good time, they most likely will have to do so if they want to have a decent chance of winning against experienced players.

But that's the beauty of SC:FA - it leaves the decision of how much effort to put into learning the game to the player, who can get out of SC:FA what he or she is willing to put into it.

[Softly]

But that's the beauty of SC:FA - it leaves the decision of how much effort to put into learning the game to the player, who can get out of SC:FA what he or she is willing to put into it.

Absolutely

[Gowerly]

Further to Ze_Pilot's upgrade points:

When you have a system like this, there will always be one critical path if you want to upgrade your economy.

I am ok with this, because I know there is no other way (except removing the adjacency bonus entirely).

The question, though isn't HOW you upgrade your economy, but WHETHER you upgrade your economy.
Do you spent hte 800 mass on storage for later gain, or on units to possibly get more map control?

Also, it's not just the mathematics of the economy, but also the mathematics of risk:
You have 6 mass extractors at t2 and the rest at t1. The others lie outside of your immediately protectable area.
While it is more efficient to upgrade all to t2, you run the risk of getting the outerlying ones destroyed. Do you take that risk to be able to build a larger army faster, or do you play it safe and storage->upgrade the ones you already have?

Looking at it in the immediate way, then yes, there is one most effective upgrade path. In gameplay, though, there are always other factors.

[Kekouse]

The tricky part will be to introduce those changes without altering the core-game.
Adjacency is a good idea. The problem is that it's not intuitive and gives a false impression of liberty.
"IF I want I can put those storage to improve this mex"
"IF I want I can put those Gens to improve this factory"

In fact you either have to do it...there is no choices at all. Or it's useless (factories+pgens past 3 minutes and all those other adjacency bonuses).

We have three possible solutions:
-Leave it like it is now
-Ditch it completely because its useless and give 0 strategy deepness
-Rework it completely...and by reworking it, I mean give something different from what we know today.

I would vote for a complete rework but the "old" player-base will surely not be pleased. We saw all the fuss about the 3599 and 3603 patch...and that was basically only about the OC and the E-storage thing.

For example we could give gens the possibility to decrease energy consumption like now AND enhance the Buildpower but with a negative consequence like massively decreasing the HP-Pool of the target building.
A T3 factory with pgens would have double or triple buildpower (maybe even more, I haven't done any maths about it) BUT the factory would be ultra fragile.
So you have the possibility to:
-have a normal T3 factory with a shitload of engies like before
or
-Pgen+ T3 factory doing the same job but with a massive drawback.

I haven't thought massively about adjacency and my example is not perfect (in fact I'm sure with my example, going T3 +pgens would become the new mandatory way of playing)...but you see what I wanted to say.
it is possible to go this way and redo the entire Adjacency to something more useful that add a layer of Strategy.

But would the players go for this way?
We all play FA since 2007 (5 years) and changing the game so drastically would be a big thing that may upset lots of people.

So either we go for the simple way (do nothing), the noobfriendly way (ditch it) or the hard way (redo everything and wait for the flamewar).

I vote for the hard way

[pip]

IMO, the energy adjacency works pretty well and scale well over time. For instance, if you surround a t3 airfactory with 4 t3 pgen, it will consume 200 energy per tick instead of 800. It works well for shields, radars, etc.

The real adjacency problem is with mass. It doesn't scale at all. If you have a t1 mex near a t1 factory, the factory will consume -1 mass (3 instead of 4), but it's the same if you upgrade the mex to t2 and t3, or the factory to t2 or t3. If the bonus scaled better, it would be more interesting to build factories near mexes through a whole game length.

If a t1 mex gave -1 mass discount, and a t2 mex gave a significant mass discount, for instance -3 mass discount to an adjacent factory, and a t3 mex -6, it would be much more interesting to use adjacency for factories. Several factories linked to t3 mex would be as interesting, if not more interesting than surrounding a t3 mex with mass storages. The best advantage is that it is intuitive : building a factory near a mex would be a good thing, same as building pgens near a factory.
For instance, surrounding a t3 mex with 4 factories would give you a production benefit of 24 (-6 for each factory x4), whereas the current bonus for 4 x t1 storages = + 9 mass. This would also encourage the upgrade of several factories (because having free t1 units from t3 mexes is not optimized).
Of course, if these values are too good, they can be -1/-2/-4 mass discount. That would be already much better than the current almost non existant "bonus".

T2 fabs would give only -0.5 bonus and t3 fabs only -2, because it's possible to build several, and they can be more easily be shared by several factories. Also it would be risky because of their high volatility. Still, these structures would be better than now : they are not used because they are not worth it, and better adjacency options could help. This would make them a little bit more interesting.
Thus a t3 factory linked to a t3 mex (-6) and surrounded with 12 t2 fabs (-6) would save -12 mass. Or something optimal : a t3 mex + 4 t3 fabs +3 t2 fabs would save -6 - 8 - 1.5 = -15.5. This would be very energy hungry though, and very fragile, but it would give you almost free t3 units.