The Losing Team's Advantage Idea

[Commoner]

One of the most frustrating things I've seen so far in Tremulous games is when one team (usually the humans for some reason) simply buckles down and turtles, never going a few meters from their base and simply waiting for the enemy to get tired of waiting and try to rush into them so that they can get free kills and thus extra money or evolve points.

Given this issue I think it would be a good idea first of all to make structure kills count only towards advancement to the next tech tree level and not give out evolve points or money to players.

But more importantly, I think the team with the resource advantage should be preasured into taking the fight to the loosing team instead of vice versa. Currently the opposite tends to be true as the team with the resource advantage will tend to be happy with what they have already equiped or evolved to and act like cowards to keep their items while the ones with lousy equipment and items are preasured to make the kills to get the goods.

Thus I propose that the way to fix this situation is to make it so that the losing team will slowly gain free resources over time to match the resources of the team with the greater resources.

Let me go into more detail here with an example. Let's say in a simple game of 3 humans vs 3 aliens, the aliens are down on their luck and have only 2 unused evolve points between them, with 2 aliens being stuck as Dretch and one having had enough points to evolve into a Basilisk. Now, we'll assume that each evolve point equal roughly 300 human credits for this example. This means that the aliens have 3 evolve points between them which roughly equates to 900 credits worth (2 unused and 1 used by the Basilisk player).

In the same example the human players have decided to turtle and have about 2100 credits worth of goods and free credits in their banks.

Now in a normal game, the human players will likely just sit in their base drawing in more aliens into their turrets to gain more credits. Of course once they feel completely confident, rush the base with far superior weaponry. This leads to a very slow and likely very frustrating game for the aliens.

Now, suppose that the aliens start gaining evolve points over time to match that of the humans. Let's assume that every two minutes an alien will gain an evolve point until the alien team's evolve points matches the human 2100 credits or in this case until the aliens gain an additional 4 evolve points between them. In this case the humans will be preasured to take the fight to the aliens who will then be encourage to defend their base.

This will certainly make the games more fast paced with much less waiting around to see who runs out of patience first. At the very worst if the humans decide to turtle in their base anyway, atleast the aliens will eventually gain enough points to have a fighting chance.

Of course a side effect of this will be that it would not be such a good idea to keep too much money or evolve points saved up and doing nothing which in my opinion is also a good thing as players will be preasured into buying weapons and evolving into creatures sooner rather than later, thus preventing the hording of money or evolve points until end game.

Another side effect will be that players will be less inclined to use hit and run tactics to get kills and not lose their precious equipment or evolved state particularly when they are already fully equiped or evolved into what they want. This will encourage winning teams to put their backs into an assault in attempt to wipe out the opposing team altogether rather than going in and destroying one structure at a time so that they don't risk losing their stuff.

Of course if this is implemented then a GUI change would be in order to show how much resources each team is in control of and which team's resources is automatically catching up to the winning team's resources. A geometric progression of gain which makes a losing team's resources catch up much more quickly if they are seriously behind and more slowly if they are only a little behind might also be better than a simple linear 300 credits gained every 2 minutes.

So what do you guys think? Is this a good idea? Can you think of any side effects to this sort of gameplay tweak? Do you think this should be implemented for all games or would it be better if it were optional depending on server settings?

[[db@]Megabite]

Thus I propose that the way to fix this situation is to make it so that the losing team will slowly gain free resources over time to match the resources of the team with the greater resources.

What is the point in trying to win, then? Why give an advatage to a team that is not able to get the game into its own hands?
If a team is weak it is supposed to lose, why stretch the game unnaturally towards sudden death?
I don't think that this would fix up the camping situations either. Humans can only win with an egg hunt. Going out of the base and crushing an alien siege has more to do with teamwork and psychology than resources.

Danny

[Commoner]

You don't get my point. What I'm suggesting is that the losing team's resources should slowly creep up to match that of the winning team's. I'm not proposing that their points catch up instantly. So basically if you have a resource advantage you need to press with the attack instead of waiting for more opponents to pretty much feed themselves to you and your base defenses.

If you don't think that resources make a difference try assaulting the base of a human team who refuse to leave their base with nothing but dretches when they already have pulse rifles, light armor, helments, and shot guns.

You try to win so that you gain the resource advantage first and so that you can take the fight to the other team's base and do some damage instead of sitting around at your own base racking up the money or evolve points.

Admitedly in large games, this tends not to be a problem since atleast a few players on each side will have a tendency to go gung-ho and provide the opposing team some way to gain resources. In small games, however, like let's say 4 vs 4. If more than half the team want to turtle, everybody on that team will be very likely to turtle as well, making the game either a waiting game or a game of one team constantly getting themselves smeared all over the other team's defenses.

An alternate way to do things might be to have some resource areas where players can basically mine money or evolve points. This could be anything from vents that spew out vapors that eventually run out by then respawn or respawning survivors that the aliens can either eat or the humans can rescue. Basically anything that will force players to be more aggressive and run around the map more would help.

At the moment it is simply way too profitable to sit in your base and wait for the enemy to come to you.  :-?

[Survivor]

Actually it isn't. Although you could maintain a stage advantage this way but there already is the 2 minute survival reward. What you're saying simply is a lot more complicated version of the 2 minute survival reward.

[mana]

while not having mind about your argument, i too think that ressource points could be a very interesting aspect that would of course need huge balance adjustments .. aliens can easily lure at the ways to those points, humans could install turrets arround them, and and and .....
All in all, this would allow more tactics, and thats, i guess, a good thing

[Norfenstein]

Although you could maintain a stage advantage this way but there already is the 2 minute survival reward. What you're saying simply is a lot more complicated version of the 2 minute survival reward.

As a matter of fact this was originally implemented for exactly the reason Commoner is talking about: to pressure the other team into using their advantage while they have it. It'd actually be a very good idea (and not complicated at all) if this bonus was only given to the disadvantaged team (or both, as it currently is, if both teams were the same stage with roughly the same funds). I think the whole survival aspect of it got mixed in as a feeding deterrent.

That said, the actual solution would be to make "turtling" ineffective by simply giving aliens more options for attacking bases. Competitive games need to be balanced in favor of the proactive or risk grinding to a halt (perhaps you've noticed that games are actually more fun when both teams have a handful of feeders keeping things going).

[[UG]Plague]

...I think it would be a good idea first of all to make structure kills count only towards advancement to the next tech tree level and not give out evolve points or money to players.

This is off topic from the main focus of your post but asks questions about the above part.  I personally think this needs changing or losing all together, so that the defenses are just there to protect you.  The Humans have a superior advantage in their turrets than the Aliens do with the acid tubes.  Granted that this gets slightly better in S3 when the Aliens get The Swarm, but not nearly enough equal.  For one, the turrets have a much larger range, and can also rotate.  Secondly, Aliens turret feed many times more than Humans.  Thirdly,  unless your standing in a shower of Acid, it will damage but not be fatal.  Turrets snap up dretches like Exxon Mobile stock and will kill Aliens that dare enter a Human base for a few seconds.  I don't care if the Aliens don't get kill points for deaths due to Acid Tubes and Hives since it will be very insignificant.  However, turrets just reap too many kills for the Humans.

Also, the Humans have to get a certain percentage or amount of damage on an Alien before they get the credit for the kill.  Just unless you were unaware.  But then again, the turret kills much quicker.

[Stof]

The problem is that any kind of armor will greatly reduce the damage caused by alien turrets.

BTW, why do you say that turrets can rotate as if it were an advantage ?

[[UG]Plague]

Because it is an advantage if a turret can swivel 360 and shoot at a target unless there is an obstruction between, while.

[Stof]

Plague"]Because it is an advantage if a turret can swivel 360 and shoot at a target unless there is an obstruction between, while.

Considering all the attacking buildings in tremulous except turrets ( and trappers, but trappers cause no damage ) can fire at 360 *without* having to rotate, this is considered a disadvantage for the turrets.

[kozak6]

Yeah, the main advantage of the turret is insta-kill for dretches, and range.

[Jaradcel]

I disagree with powering down turrets in any way (Hi Plague )

For one thing, I find that, especially in the early game, humans simply can't survive very well against dretches (at least, not till they start buying stuff or have amazing ping...) and rely alot on their own defenses to help level up to S2.

Is this necessarily a bad thing? I've seen comments on humans being camping bastich's, but unlike the aliens, who can potentially win the game in 4 minutes flat with a good alien player making it to 'goon in a minute (Don't laugh, I've seen it more then once, doubly so when doing a base move that goes to hell) the humans, I feel, rely alot more on their guns, especially in the early game, to help them survive.

Isn't that, sorta the idea of Trem in the first place? (Oh shit... we're stuck on this godforsaken transit station with aliens coming outta the woodwork.. defend! defend!)

I do agree though that ALIEN tubes could possibly get a bit of a boost....

[Stakhanov]

Isn't that, sorta the idea of Trem in the first place? (Oh shit... we're stuck on this godforsaken transit station with aliens coming outta the woodwork.. defend! defend!)

It may be fitting story wise , but not gameplay wise. Aliens help the human team as they die attacking , so the game flow is broken.

We should get rid of the aimbot turrets and killer headshots nonsense. Right now dretches kill light armor humans either in 2 hits or in 8+ , the bracket should be tightened to 3-5 at the very least...

[Rippy]

I dunno, in my experience it's never the winning team who turtles, it's the losing team who doesn't want to leave the base because they know they can't compete with the opposing team's superior upgrades.

Instead, I'd propose quite the opposite: give the WINNING team an advantage. There could be special rooms and areas in each map, about 3 per map, that can be "tagged" by players. Each one gives EP or credits to the team who controls it, at about 1/2 the rate of the 2min survival reward: so, about 1 EP per 4 minutes. Then the 2min survival reward could be completely removed from the game. These "secondary objective" areas would generate extra points for the team who controls them, so would motivate lots of things, like:

- map expansion (expanding/moving the base into one of these areas to better protect it)
- map control (forcing the enemy back into their base so that your team can control the sec. objectives, instead of just turtling in your base
- agressiveness (basically, discouraging turtling)

Basically, this would help prevent those looong games where one team is dominating and is inevitably going to win, yet the game drags on forever anyway. Instead, the team who has control of the game will be earning a good 3 EP or 900 creds (what's the EP-Credit exchange rate anyway?) per 4 minutes, which would help finish off the game.

[Stakhanov]

I've been asking for secondary objectives for a while now... it is most needed to balance Tremulous - fighting odds are about fine when combat occurs in the middle ground.

[Orc]

This game isn't and hopefully never will be NS...

So when will people stop suggesting changes to make it more like NS

[Stakhanov]

Objectives don't always mean "turning into NS" ... it would be good to have at least some objectives for stage changes , instead of the 100% kill based system right now. Like visiting hydroponics then medlab for aliens , and communication terminal then computer core for humans ; and collecting specific artifacts scattered around the map. Something that would push both teams to move around and relocate their base.

[Rippy]

This game isn't and hopefully never will be NS...

So when will people stop suggesting changes to make it more like NS

I've never played NS, nor have I ever seen a screenshot of it, nor have I known (up until now) that there are resource nodes in it. So please, don't accuse me of trying to make trem like NS.

Also, if you think by that flawed logic, this entire game is a ripoff. Look at how many games use crosshairs to great effect. OMG WE CAN'T USE CROSSHAIRS NOW OTHERWISE TREMULOUS IS TURNING INTO COUNTER-STRIKE. Look at how health points, how pitting 2 teams against each other, how having upgrades, how all of that has worked great for other games. omg we can't have any of that, because another game has it too!

By your logic, the game shouldn't even have graphics, because it's ripping off Pong.

So, because I was never comparing Tremulous to NS, I am NOT trying to turn Tremulous into another game. I'm trying to turn Tremulous into a BETTER game. Heck, I've never even played a game with resource nodes, so this is an original idea of mine, but someone else just thought of it first. So I'm technically not ripping anyone off.

(then again, "resource nodes" are just like resources, so it's kinda ripping off dozens of RTS games)

[Stof]

Same as you, I didn't knew about any game called NS until it has been mentioned on that board.

Also, if some people absolutly want to avoid using features that look like other games, could we please remove the CS-like money game ? I would be grateful if we could get rid of that crap :evil:

[Rippy]

I dunno... it's just that people don't realise how similar all games of a same genre are. Tremulous isn't that different from Counter-Strike, nor is Counter-Strike much different from Halo. It's just little differences that make each game fun to play through and not feel like the same game, although they pretty much are.