Is the late game economy a bit too op? Options

[R2D2]

Late game I find myself with so much income I don't even t know what to do with, which usually ends up in mass spam the 1-2 most appropriate units, instead of really thinking about what I need like I do in early to mid game. What I do now is just ignore the pool of money sitting there and focus my attention on best use of my forces, recruiting when needed, but this seems wrong somehow... like I'm playing with infinite cash cheat enabled or something.

Don't get me wrong, I love Generals as an RTS.. but darn... the late game kinda sucks ^^

Just my opinion anyway, what’s everyone else’s thoughts?

[{Lads}RikerZZZ]

100% agree, but its not changing unfortunately

[X1Destroy]

So you prefer COH late game where fielding a Jagdpanther reduces your income to an insane level and if you lose it, it's gone for good and you're crippled beyond hope then?

[(USA)Bruce]

Its not OP Its just annoying at times....

Like some factions lack some tools at a stage of the game while the others have a "peak" momment.
With this logic you'd wonder why bother with some factions, people just do....Like I like pilots, my favorite unit

[Zion]

My personal opinion is have a cap on t2 eco.. because I personally don't like late game spam, mainly because of the lack of micro you can do when the game starts lagging so much and sage cant handle it, nor can the crap laptops people play on.
Its just brainless spam, and usually the faction with the stronger GPs and units wins anyways.. and the other factions are left with, "survive all u want, u will still loose."

I think someone should come up with an addon, where all factions have a cap on how much t2 eco they can make. If i could i would.
None of the factions were designed to win only with crazy 2nd eco, so putting a cap on it will not break anything.

And once late game kicks in, and you have a limited amount of money income, that's where strategy happens, and people play under survival conditions, where if you don't use your GPs wisely or suicide units, you will loose..
But there are some players here who think that 30 war factories all waypointed to an enemy base is fun..

[R2D2]

So you prefer COH late game where fielding a Jagdpanther reduces your income to an insane level and if you lose it, it's gone for good and you're crippled beyond hope then?

Unfortunately I can't give an informed answer on COH Jagdpanther late game as I haven't played COH: Opposing fronts.

I agree that having a single units death become auto lose isn't ideal, but I think such case would perhaps be more a balance issue between super-unit and its upkeep costs? Fortunately, there are also other ways to deal with excess income that some games have implemented, like unit/building caps or letting the income rate scale down for each additional income source present,

This post has been edited by R2D2: 30 Jun 2016, 22:34

[Mizo]

I honestly opted for limited economy + regenerative resources but thats just me.

[Zion]

I honestly opted for limited economy + regenerative resources but thats just me.

not a bad idea, but how would regenerative resources work?

[Hanfield]

not a bad idea, but how would regenerative resources work?

Pretty much no sec eco, players run off of supplies that respawn by script

This post has been edited by Hanfield: 30 Jun 2016, 22:33

[Zion]

Pretty much no sec eco, players run off of supplies that respawn by script

map scripts is not the way to go, I mean an actually mod... even i can make a map that can regenerate money, but then I would have to make it for all maps

[Composite armour]

I don't like sec eco or the late game economy either, but at this point changing it would require so much work it's not going to happen.

[R2D2]

Was thinking about impact a limit on economy would have as well, such as smaller supply zones, which wouldn't affect income rate much in early-mid game and makes more dependency on building supply drops, hackers etc to support late game. Though causing the supply drops to deplete at mid game faster will also reduce contestable areas end game, meaning less combat all over the map. Also might cause some balance issue with ECA with them being less aggressive than other factions.

Really like Mizo's regenerative idea though, it sort of fixes some of these issues as well as keeping a map location contestable even after they've been fully harvested Best thing is it only really affects mid/late-late game, since that's when the supply drops should begin to deplete and regen come into effect (early-mid game is pure awesome, and have no problems with it).

Bruce also made a really good point about some factions having a peak moment and got me thinking.. When I'm playing Russia I experience the problem slightly less, because I can recruit expensive stuff. It feels slightly less of unit spam, because I'm spending more per unit. Perhaps an alternative to changing the economy is to create other ways to exhaust the excess money, either through special abilities or maybe buff up units or idk, just some viable outlet for the extra cash. What if general abilities had a cost associated with them instead of being free much like it is in C&C3? Just a thought.

Theres got to be a simpler way to fix it though, if only partially. Adding caps are all I can think of, but they have the tendency to make stuff useless unless it's like a unit cap (maybe a creative solution can be found to this as it's a much smaller evil than the pools of cash). Downside to unit cap though, would also require extensive balancing to determine how much of the cap each unit should consume and then will also have the issue of terrorist / bomb truck spam depleting the unit count and circumventing the cap.

This post has been edited by R2D2: 1 Jul 2016, 1:23

[Skitt]

map scripts is not the way to go, I mean an actually mod... even i can make a map that can regenerate money, but then I would have to make it for all maps

already done some

[Mizo]

Was thinking about impact a limit on economy would have as well, such as smaller supply zones, which wouldn't affect income rate much in early-mid game and makes more dependency on building supply drops, hackers etc to support late game. Though causing the supply drops to deplete at mid game faster will also reduce contestable areas end game, meaning less combat all over the map. Also might cause some balance issue with ECA with them being less aggressive than other factions.

Really like Mizo's regenerative idea though, it sort of fixes some of these issues as well as keeping a map location contestable even after they've been fully harvested Best thing is it only really affects mid/late-late game, since that's when the supply drops should begin to deplete and regen come into effect (early-mid game is pure awesome, and have no problems with it).

Bruce also made a really good point about some factions having a peak moment and got me thinking.. When I'm playing Russia I experience the problem slightly less, because I can recruit expensive stuff. It feels slightly less of unit spam, because I'm spending more per unit. Perhaps an alternative to changing the economy is to create other ways to exhaust the excess money, either through special abilities or maybe buff up units or idk, just some viable outlet for the extra cash. What if general abilities had a cost associated with them instead of being free much like it is in C&C3? Just a thought.

Theres got to be a simpler way to fix it though, if only partially. Adding caps are all I can think of, but they have the tendency to make stuff useless unless it's like a unit cap (maybe a creative solution can be found to this as it's a much smaller evil than the pools of cash). Downside to unit cap though, would also require extensive balancing to determine how much of the cap each unit should consume and then will also have the issue of terrorist / bomb truck spam depleting the unit count and circumventing the cap.

Unit caps is a lazy balance method though , since it limits army composition completely ( granted some units are warranted to get a build limit ,but yeah) and creates a very monotone meta.
Mr.Skittles are working on a small project of making some scripted maps with regenerative resources ( though this might lead to some unit stats being altered in the map, I.E ECA nerfs , and what not.
As for the entire mod turning into this? Nah. Lets just get over 2.0 already. Devs really cant afford to be distracted by decisions that will only satisfy the smaller part of the fan base that being the competitive one.

This post has been edited by Mizo: 1 Jul 2016, 3:04

[A34Comet]

If only we can restore the money silo....and this won't be a problem

But I didn't see a path to make it happen.

[ComradeCrimson]

So you prefer COH late game where fielding a Jagdpanther reduces your income to an insane level and if you lose it, it's gone for good and you're crippled beyond hope then?

Yes actually because it promotes harder tactical thinking and is more risk versus reward.

But that's just me, I am a masochist.

[X1Destroy]

I rather be bombed to dust by 30 nuke cannons instead, because for me the entire point of playing a war game is seeing mass destructions, not squad baby sitting. Maybe fun to click, but boring to look at.

This post has been edited by X1Destroy: 1 Jul 2016, 6:11

[{Lads}RikerZZZ]

The only way i see the current system working is if there was an upkeep system to your army when you got sec eco

So say every time you got a new sec eco thing, may it be a unit or structure, the price of all your units went up a very small %, kinda like a reverse Oil Refinery or something.

or, you do it the other way around and ever new sec eco thing gives you less money and do it that way.

[Kazan]

Red Alert 2 had implemented it perfectly with regenerating primary resource. I wonder why did Generals digress from that notion

[Shiro]

Ore and Tiberium have always been regenerative. I think that Gens changed because of the SecEco, not the other way around.

[TimeBurner]

The only way i see the current system working is if there was an upkeep system to your army when you got sec eco

So say every time you got a new sec eco thing, may it be a unit or structure, the price of all your units went up a very small %, kinda like a reverse Oil Refinery or something.

or, you do it the other way around and ever new sec eco thing gives you less money and do it that way.

For every combat unit you field you get a minimal decrease in income.

[Knjaz.]

I honestly opted for limited economy + regenerative resources but thats just me.

Again, cut or heavily nerfed Pandora prot, limited Howitzers, limited Claymores, HEAVILY cut GLA's bounties. (as that faction manages to put up a heavy fight even when everyone else has their sececo up), most likely further recovery gp nerfs, and possibly total rebalance of the "Faction A is stronger at game stage X, Faction B is stronger at game stage Y", as game stages will be switching each other much quicker.

Example: you'd need to make Russia cost-effective against TremorCycler and Buggy spamming GLA with GPRS cover and Sabotage/Overwatch GPs used, as it won't be able to have more cash than the latter. Or do it with China, including Chinese gens that won't have access to NCs. Then make sure not to break anything else.

What people often don't realize is how much of current metas and faction design/strength distribution among various stages of game depends on the lategamer's having access to reliable way to keep increasing their income.


As for OP, one simple request: Replay for the game from original post please. Asking because we already had "double paladin rushes on 900k" based balance discussions (which turned out to be that way only afterwards), which basically became a meme, just need to be sure you're talking about "valid floating" and "valid spam".

Or your in-game name so I could search for it in GenTools replay database, if you use those. (and since you play pvp, I guess you do).

This post has been edited by Knjaz.: 1 Jul 2016, 16:10

[A34Comet]

So, about the eco, how about we place uncapturable and undestoryable building, and we have that building auto generat supply boxes?

Well, though I guess if non people use it, there will be a shit weird yard of supplies....

But, hey, I know you have made a new tech building named armorary that auto generate something, maybe this logic will work right.

[Knjaz.]

So, about the eco, how about we place uncapturable and undestoryable building, and we have that building auto generat supply boxes?

Well, though I guess if non people use it, there will be a shit weird yard of supplies....

But, hey, I know you have made a new tech building named armorary that auto generate something, maybe this logic will work right.

K, I'll explain it in a simpleir terms: Sececo is a part of system of counters.
Not optional, but obligatory part, for there's certain amount of situations and existing tactics/force compositions where nothing else will help you to turn things into your favor. I.e. increasing your income against early/midgame faction that, by using their designed advantage, managed to get bigger part of the primary economy for them and got you boxed in, but you managed to just survive and slowly starting to fight back. Or, in other cases, increasing your income against a faction that has very cost-efficient ways of defending itself.
etc.

Unless, ofc, we move to Starcraft kind of balance with no different gamestage strengths. That means - Russia equaling ECA equaling GLA equaling USA equaling CHina equaling Russia in general map control capabilities and purely unit-based cost-efficient approaches vs each other during all stages of the game.

There is a way to limit the game from going SLate or VLate even (I have a very strong feeling that whatever the op was talking about is not what other testers here meant with "sececo problem". Like, entirely different scale of it, hence why I asked for replay), it just requires finely balanced and working superweapons, as after reaching some critical mass of sececo it wouldn't make much sense to keep developing it under SW strikes.

This post has been edited by Knjaz.: 1 Jul 2016, 15:05

[Hanfield]

The Armory is basically two Oil Derricks in one building, it doesn't bring anything new [aside from the ammo buff]