Summary of Coop rework suggestions

[hard ledge]

all eco buildings have circular aura area that enable energy grid and sharing, then there are node tower things that have big area so you can connect bigger areas fast, a lot of it was building solars in line earlyetc 😄

I didnt play zerok that much, but it had interestign things

[limber remnant]

Ok thats interesting, so it creates a network. I like the idea. Sounds like it did lead to a meta that looks strange. I imagine BAR is trying to avoid that. Similarly for my suggestion im sure it would lead to unintended strats.

I suppose another simple way to have a time delay would be when you send supplies, it gets dropped from orbit to a location of your choosing. So you would physically call a drop near teammates con for reclaim.

[hard ledge]

zerok is a bit different, there is no converters, but mexes are overdriven with energy more and more.

[wary grove]

Anyone below master in sc2 is not good at rts

That’s interesting data to see

[hard ledge]

especially the latency

[wary grove]

Sc2 is not as demanding a game as some which explains the lower apm range on the high end

Bar is also a very slow game relative to other rts

[wary grove]

Even the creator of that graphic doesn’t know what that stat represents. I’m looking at the study he did now

[hard ledge]

care to link it

[wary grove]

https://jhawe.github.io/skillcraft/#performance

[hard ledge]

thx

found the original article from those who collected the data. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0075129

[wary grove]

I’ll dm you this since it’s getting very off topic

[tall crane]

At the highest level of co-op though (that is - small teams tournaments) the winning teams always use their full APM though

[cold totem]

Not true at all, last Omega on Gecko Isle one of the players was just 5APM building tidals

[analog plume]

Then there was spare APM the team could have used to micro units for more value and raid etc...?

Unless we want to design the game around constant max APM usage at all times as a fundamental concept, but that sounds like making SC1 which would put off a huge amount of players, no?

[cold totem]

Well obviously designing it in a SC1/SC2 way where you need to have 200+ APM to be at least a bit good is bad

but if one player can just afk during the entire team match that's also a very bad design

like, if you were to try that in any other game you'd lose badly

[hard ledge]

Doesn't this depend on the map a lot and even how big the team is?

[fringe spear]

using all apm is a theoritical too

macro is such a big part of bar, when one player in 4 is doing 70-100% of the macro it doesn't feel like the microers are playing the full game

full coop with micro/macro can be A mode, but imo it shouldn't be the ONLY mode

[analog plume]

This feels like a "possible" vs "practical" situation - its possible to have 1 of your 5 players in a tourny not microing raiding units, but all else being equal they would lose to a mirror player who was adding value micro units (raiding, etc)?

[tall crane]

5v5 is a bit different but also just gotta give it time for teams to get better over all.

The last OS3 was also the start of the most extreme co-op meta so most teams were still trying to play solo

[undone rose]

yeah, but its tough to coordinate, even in coordinate team (it's probably referring to the scag), everyone is busy focusing, it's been suggested that for coordinated games, you could preferably claim teams units, otherwise creating/making & sharing units is quite a big apm tax.

before the tourney i even looked for options to maybe bind sharing to certain ally using numpad but iirc didn't find a good way to just select and share unit with numpad, so it def isn't as easy sharing stuff to allies when you are taxed say with your comm against 2 janus push.

like comms would be like -

can you give me x unit
which one?
pings
oh here.. ye
sure
selects & clicks share

it might be also tourney game thing where you are focusing really hard on agreed strategy for the execution and any distraction is doesn't feel good, maybe in pub games it feels easier to share

[analog plume]

Yeah, but that's kind of my point - this is another skill people can learn and develop that is team orientated rather than individual - its why teams in sports practice together etc, and i appreciate you will never get that level of coordination in public games with "random" teams, but there is also a collective experience of how to play the game which increases overtime which can lead towards more coordination in teams of random people etc.

None of these are absolutes, more wobbles around trend lines etc 🙂

I absolutely love the principle of "fight your opponent not the UI", to balance the relative power of things, the cost/reward will by necessity include all resources available to a player, those include apm which you can force them to spend to achieve in X rather than Y etc 🙂

in the example given (scags) which i agree is probably what this refers too, scag could have setup his Commanders queue, and instead of AFKing have taken control of a raiding party to micro and got more value out of it while his ally defended an opposing raid, or vice versa etc

My overall point is there's nuance here

[undone rose]

well, the general feedback from OS3 was that certain roles are just boring to play, as the game revolves around hypercarries / focusing resources into one place.

people say coop is there, but one part of the coop that sometimes the best play is not to play at all, since you suck at it, so just ship your metal, and play around with some ticks.

people absolutely love to watch the coordinated team plays, i do love supporting as well, but instead of some player/skill/diverse unit roster, we get a t2 arm veh monolab with one guy holding 80% of team assets, since getting a second t2 lab is often a waste of 3k resources

[analog plume]

Totally agree with all this 🙂

[undone rose]

i'd say, if there isn't a change (and gdt so far hasn't budged) - it's better if the game leans and we dont have to fight the ui, make the resources fully shared in one pool and make unit claiming (talking bout competitive games0

but I think the top player community wanted to explore some options that reward individual skill & actual counters.

one example in tourneys is that you really can't knock out a player, say a Chisato out, even if you stalked their scrim vods and know where he spawns, you could technically right now counterswap whole bases to gain a lane matchup thats favorable, and never can you get him out of the game, just by having sharing.

i just think it would be a nice switchup to explore possibilities like that too for comp play

[analog plume]

Yeah, ultimately its whatever their (admin/core team) vision for BAR is, and then we help make that into the best possible game it can be, ultimately, everything has pros and cons. You have to min/max for something

I'm not saying where we are is that best right now - to be clear

[analog plume]

Being able to fully knock players out would certainly be an interesting mechanic, feels kinda contrary to BAR tho (from my perspective at least)

[undone rose]

yeah i was against that originally, and def not for pub games, i like the fact you can fight till the last, but it's intriguing for comp games, to see individual players in the team, etc.

idea was to make decoy comms kinda shareable that can fully rebuild, so knocked out player should only wait till t2, i did write up a full change set list proof of concept

[mental mauve]

I'd suggest that ZK is a dead game and people actually do not want to not play the game(they want to play). So we should not copy what ZK did(in spite of their fine sound reasoning blog post etc...no one cares) and make the game actually interesting by rewarding individual skill expression. RTS is not fun when you're rewarded for not playing. SMH. This is the part of the coop discussion that should not require explanation...but here we are.

[mental mauve]

having to make decoy com to get back into game is interesting tho ngl

[edgy rover]

Another reason to just add a tax to everything. If u get knocked out, someone can pass u a com or con at a 30% tax cost of the unit in metal

[wary grove]

I don’t think LSR was suggesting that as a suggestion but more to make a point. I agree with him. It’s weird in what is effectively a shared economy game we have 8 economy grief mode on. I also agree that ZK seems to be the only game with this feature and that game is a failure

[hard ledge]

Zk had the right idea to limit sharing at start of the game.

[tall crane]

Its mostly just ZK graphics and age holding it back tbh

ZK still has a lot of really good ideas worth taking inspiration from

[mighty brook]

that last part is too accurate, I would say most of the team's APM in coop tourneys ended up going toward fighting the UI to share in the first place

[fringe spear]

50% of the macro's guy apm is literally sharing units

[mighty brook]

the most valuable apm I've seen so far is people who can properly manage their sliders in real time (keep it low 99% of the time, bring it up for an immediate dgun need and then immediately drag it back down) for people who aren't the solo carry player, and then the solo carry player is mostly focused on trying to hit a super tiny button next to player name on the bottom right, takes a lot of mouse precision

any team that can master these two skills will likely beat a team that can't atm regardless of strategy or execution

[soft star]

1k 🥳🎉

[mental mauve]

Maybe? Maybe it is? Idk. You either. The point is we should copy games that no one plays(respectfully) with caution....b/c no one plays them and I want to play BAR.

[mighty brook]

As someone who achieved a relatively high level of play in both BAR and ZK, the gameplay loops are simply just too different to make easy comparisons, ZK devs have some very interesting and valuable analysis in blog posts etc but the gameplay has diverged quite a lot, for example lack of multiple tiers while making initial labs free means people get a use case out of having multiple labs early as they can access niche t1 units, while niche in BAR tends to apply to t2 units

[analog plume]

By that logic, why should BAR copy any of the other numerous dead RTS games which also don’t have and/or limit forms of economic teamwork?

Let BAR be BAR

[mental mauve]

lmao what? There's nothing wrong with removing unfun mechanics and opting for ones that are fun. Just choose wisely.

[analog plume]

I agree, but justifying either with other RTS games is moot either way

[fringe spear]

why aren't more people giving base away when it's optimal

all you have to do is say "give me units to micro, carry me"

[mighty brook]

Personally, I ended up playing more BAR because the base building and stability of games appeals to me a lot, ZK team games was mostly about taking as many 1 for 20 trades as you can because unit interactions are very extreme

[mental mauve]

No it isn't. RTS games have mechanics that ...make them RTS games. It's not that complicated. Also... BAR is an RTS right????? If it is...let it be so...otherwise we are trolling everyone w/ saying it's an RTS when really BAR is an RTS(or Factorio) for 1 person and a MOBA for everyone else

[timid mountain]

what is happening in the 2nd picture even

[wary grove]

The players I would want to do it with mostly would send base back because they don’t want to kill the game with the cancer “gameplay” that would result xd

[fringe spear]

you macro and you give units
tournament driver gameplay

[mighty brook]

Usually all it takes is time for the best strategies used by highest level players to trickle down to common gameplay, just because some people have resistance toward giving away all their resources in casual games right now doesn't mean it will always stay that way 🙂

[timid mountain]

ohh that took me a sec lol

[wary grove]

20+ years on and new strategies are still emerging in scbw. That’s with teams of professional gamers playing 15 hours+ per day. These games can take a long time to mature.

[mighty brook]

Personally I think it's unsustainable to maintain this style of gameplay, even the recent nation wars was actually just a 1v1 tournament, teams still only made 1 lab on some of the largest maps in the game, this limits how much exposure players can get toward practicing 'optimal' gameplay (only 1 actual carry player per team gets to practice) and as of now it's a totally different gameplay from casual games

[gaunt forge]

yeah people have a hard time accepting that the game might get worse with more optimal gameplay

[mighty brook]

My observation is that the tournament scene is dominated by "first movers" into the coop scene as those are the only players who have enough practice at this point playing the single carry spot of the team to push a team to the top places, so it is and will stay only the same few people are able to lead a team despite the game getting lots more new and strong players in general

[mental mauve]

Yep, exactly my point. Potential new player watching tourney: "Hmm I like playing RTS games I wonder if I would like BAR"....Oh..wait...You mean I dont build a base? Have an army? Build an army? ....and I just micro a unit around? Hmm nah. I'm good. I'll go play League....or maybe they're down? Idk? My guess is not though b/c that's not the experience that's expected in RTS(and has shown to be unfun to boot).

[tall crane]

People play ZK.

[mental mauve]

true..something like that

[wary grove]

I play on a rust server that’s considered low pop. It usually has 150 ppl online at a time

[timid mountain]

Why am I not surprised u play rust 🤣

[mental mauve]

and no shade to ZK or anything. If people think it's fun good for them. I'd just like to be careful.

[wary grove]

I’m actually barely toxic at all in rust. My teammates however

[mental mauve]

avg rust player response

[edgy rover]

You know coop is the main reason we lack high level lobbies, right? We have the players. They just dont play because in higher levels u are often forced to hardcommie or lose (If other team starts commying).

Of course at lower levels, this is fine because its barely being abused there (except soft commie for t2 cons), and you can wonder why. Maybe because people dont even enjoy it there?

Why do we only see slider gaming and super bases in some high lvl lobbies and tournaments? And why do the lobbies always die shortly after its infected with it.

Why are most of the ppl who define commie as ''teamplay'' usually either very low rated, has a very few amount of games, or both such as yourself? And this is not me flaming you for your bar experience or skill level. Its a real question. I think i have the answer, and its probably because you haven't played enough to come across how oppressive it is to play vs a team who uses commie in a fairly balanced lobby system such as the one bar uses, so unless u do it urself, ur team has a 80 - 90% chance of losing.

And again, why arent most low os players using it either? Because they probably enjoy controlling their own bases, making their own units and balancing their own eco. Not just feeding a tier 2/tier 3 lab with metal, build power or both.

4 people commying a t2 lab is the same as having a lab cost only cost 725 metal vs 2900 if you solo it, and its the same result in units if you just match the bp.

[fringe spear]

playing the driver in 4v4 is basically 50% of the the team responsibility

you need your team to win, but from that position you can instantly throw at any point in the game

very taxing position until you play it a lot

and you can't delegate it away because it's more effecient for one person to control it

[wary grove]

It just removes player agency too. I’ve played small team games where our macro guy just wasn’t making the right units. I can’t tell you how tilting that is

[fringe spear]

it just goes back to the same point. macro/micro is a fine game mode but it shouldn't be the only game mode

[edgy rover]

Indeed

Whats wrong with adding a Commie mode, and you just press that button and have all sharing be free?

I swear this wouldnt affect 99% of lobbies as they dont play with commie anyway, and the top lvl lobbies can thrive again

[fringe spear]

whenever lobby wants to do crazy shit they can just press the commie button

[edgy rover]

^

Trotski can go play 1v8 with his friends in there, and everyone else can host our own rooms

[somber vine]

You do realize that most games when played optimally aren't all that enjoyable to watch right, usually it's the pro players doing something that isn't meta/optimal that is the enjoyable part, aside from that generally it's generally extremely Tier-limited gameplay, I used to watch a lot of tourney gameplay in different genres and it's not even close to how a casual would play any of the games, because they don't care about optimal, anyway, watching a pro level tourney in most games isn't really a good way to see if a game is for you or not, tbh (you don't understand it anyway due to lack of game knowledge, not understanding what is even going on in the optimal-level playing field and the aforementioned reasons) 🤷‍♂️

[mental mauve]

Would you say it should be fun? And what if, let's say you have 3000h and it looks not fun too? Is it still okay or should we try to change it? I'm suggesting it SHOULD be. Also..really. You're not actually serious. "most games when played optimally aren't that enjoyable to watch".

[somber vine]

I'm being serious, optimal gameplay usually is very limited, as it leaves out a lot of strategies that you'd see a casual player trying because they are playing for fun, there's a huge difference, in fighting games for example on high level, only a small percentage of moves is actually used due* to frame advantage / safe moves etc. a lot of the movelist doesn't ever get used on high level, the same is true for RTS, a lot of units just aren't optimal to make, nor are a lot of the strategies (with or without coop).

The only game I can think of that is enjoyable to watch on high level (at times, not always) is marvel vs capcom 2, because it's a game that was made to be fun, but because of that it's also wildly unbalanced, even broken to an extent and even in that scenario, there are S-tier picks/go-to teams to win tourneys, there's only a handful of players even daring to step outside of the optimal gameplay because the game allows for worse picks to still be really good, those matches are enjoyable to watch, however watching the same characters with the same set-ups/strats becomes boring pretty quick.

[mighty brook]

I think the best way to balance that has always been to balance around a stable “meta” strategy and then alternatives should take more effort or be slightly more niche in exchange for higher potential if done correctly

In the context of BAR, the most stable metas would probably be if the game is balanced around sheldon being the main t2 skirmisher, since it’s very limited in how much impact it can have over time due to low dps for cost and has a medium range that lets you balance around higher and lower range options

Bots as opposed to vehicle are also nice as they are usually somewhat slower and have the option to retreat, which gives the game good pacing and makes the primary strategy not be a variant of all in that certain limited angle vehicles tend to promote

under this framework I think it’s possible to have competitive/optimal play still be varied and fun

[fringe spear]

out of all units sheldon is the one that makes sense to have no hard counter

since it kills the slowest and moves slow too

[tawny birch]

In a good game (like Brood War), the only truly optimal move you can make in a moment without any doubt is cross spawn nexus first 2 base carrier. Everything else is humanly optimal and fun to watch. A game can do both. I don't know how rare it is, but. Point taken about MvC2 LMAO. I'd extend it to a lot more games personally, like Melee, and also point out that if it's impossible to play optimally in the sense of like, TAS optimal, and the human optimal gives a large variety of strategies, or even if the few strategies that are viable are highly enjoyable (does Zero May Cry count as this) then it's fine. Counter Strike (always fun to watch even though I don't play), some MOBAs. Are you tired of seeing Camille in League? I'm not! I'm tired of Neeko tho.

Hmm, I think this also fails to account for speedrunning, which is highly enjoyable to many people to watch and play. I learned how to speedrun/optimize Diablo 2 and it was fun as fuck rolling Paladin like 5 times in a row.

I'm mostly trying to put forward a counterthesis that it's not optimality that makes a game fun or unfun to watch. I rather think "players will optimize the fun out of a game" has become a trite saying, overcentralizing the way people think. There is still a kernel of truth that variety is interesting to watch, because humans are inherently novelty seekers, but the lack of it doesn't preclude the other modes by which people enjoy watching+playing games.

[fringe spear]

any competitive meta is going to be a small subset of the strategies in the game

but it still is a lot of strategies potentially

if you prefer to see all the strategies possible used then maybe watching comp play isn't for you

[tawny birch]

Yes. Which is why, while co-op does make balance and strategic variety more volatile due to its acceleration of the game pace, and theoretically the game could be rebalanced around it, the long-term discussion about whether co-op should stay or be reduced is moreso about what type of game BAR should be. And in that I agree with NotReal's point. What makes BAR unique is not what makes BAR good in this case, tbh, at least to the normal person.

While this is argued on lines of RTS conventions and game expectations, I'd also assert it's more naturally appealing to normal humans that they have their own possessions, their own economy, even on a team, and the game's balance should support that sort of gameplay because of that superior fundamental (mass) appeal. Hence, Co-op need be nerfed.

[wary grove]

Yes usually crappy niche games that go nowhere are like that. Very common

It’s not exactly a good thing

Glad everyone can agree this is not fun to watch. I’m sure that will be great for BAR’s health as a game

Are games supposed to be fun? This is a genuine question

[tulip minnow]

yeah the great thing about great rts games is that there is PLENTY of diversity at the highest level of play

you could argue that pro level starcraft is more diverse than casual because players are just good enough to pull off strats casuals cant

and there is plenty of starcrarft pro games where players make every single unit avalible to their faction in a single match

[cold totem]

yeah which is sadly why BAR cannot be considered great, because most top level games are the same on almost every map (when played optimally)

[fringe spear]

sumo/welder are expensive and not good enough, those units are super passive

jag attacks, controls maps, and defends in one

[gaunt forge]

units in BAR need to be more tightly fitted to a common range-speed curve 🤔

[fringe spear]

Another proposal by @gaunt forge (and maybe @hot flint)

1. commander can capture allied units and the capture "cost" is the cost of the unit.
   ally recieves resource at end of capture and no cost for capture enemy units
2. only commander can assist allied stuff and inject bp/cost
3. no sharing otherwise resource/unit

-capturing drains resource, ally only receives resource when the capture is done

[amber crow]

i think it's @gaunt forge suggestion but who cares, it's a good one IMO. makes commanders giga valuable and commander sniping even more important part of the game

[gaunt forge]

we can share credit in the spirit of coop

[amber crow]

xDDDDDD

[fringe spear]

sorry half asleep

[amber crow]

sleep > discord (unironically, very seriously)

if a modoption drops, we'll msg u chrono, dont worry

[limber remnant]

No sharing!

It sounds like it would achieve the goals tho

I did think of possibility of supply units, on the 2nd page of units you could build supply bot/supply truck. And they can be reclaimed by anyone for full value. No resource sharing otherwise.

[limber remnant]

Would mean the eco player needs to do a little more work to ferry supplies around, and other players would need to protect it. High metal and energy cost for supply units but reduced build time so they can get out fairly quickly if the resources are there. Its probably too hard a nerf and wouldn't be popular but thought i'd bring it up. I do like the idea of trying to add another dimension to coop play and counter play. So some physical representation of sharing would bring something new. People would hate it 🙂

[limber remnant]

Actually it wouldn't work as is. Not without more significant changes like only allowing the commander to reclaim the supplies for example. The supply units wouldn't have to travel if the eco player just built build power and shared it with teammates next to the production building. Nevermind 😦 I guess people would be right to hate it

Yep I think modulos suggestion is good and worth a try, its nice that it makes the commander even more integral

[fringe spear]

If com is the only thing that can boost you can scout it at least

[fringe spear]

New proposal: Reprogramming time

1. Disable all direct resource sharing and build assist
2. Any unit or building except the commander can be shared. Ownership transfers instantly, but the unit is disabled for ~30 seconds as it is reprogrammed to the new owner's control structure. Emp'd units can be re-shared, so players are not punished for misclicks. The enemy can see the unit's reprogramming timer

Features:

-Simple, no % tax and is fully visual: when you share a unit you can see the emp timer which immediately conveys the mechanic. Sharing of all units is treated in the same way. A day 1 player could easily learn the mechanic by themself.
-Balances coop properly with independent play, not just the first few minutes
-Encourages players to make and control their own units to avoid the reprogramming time, but sharing units is still completely possible if there is time to spare.
-Makes resource sharing scoutable and not impact other lanes instantly, bringing it in line with all other strategies in BAR.
-Prevents the instant sharing of 1000/1000 starting resources, the "battery" player needs to build econ structures, then reprogram them to the driver.
-Prevents OP take while still letting teams take control of leaver's bases

[plucky gyro]

You could do something a little more out there, and have economy storage building produce "crates" that containing resources, and can be moved via drop ships

Then reclaimed fpr energy or metal by other players

Like units woth 0 move speed and 1 health

[amber crow]

With this kind of cooldown, its not feasible to share a single thing here and there IMO, but its rather incentivized to build up stuff for 6min and share all of it, so you only have 30s freeze for 20-30 buildings

I think it somewhat kills commie in small doses and commie rushing, but promotes large scale transfers.

[fringe spear]

if you share buildings in small amounts they each have a seperate timer

sharing 1 at a time and 50 together is the same

there's no cooldown

You CAN play full coop and have the advantages of a super base but you have the disadvantage of having to reprogram units for 30 seconds if you want to utilize teammate's apm. That encourages teammates to own their own bases.

You can share units while you are massing up a push, being repaired, or otherwise idle, to mitigate the downside.

[amber crow]

So you can build a metal storage, share insta while building and effectively funneling metal to the player you shared it to, and they can also reclaim it for double metal? Or am i too tired to understand this interaction?

Ah, sry, too tired. No double income ofc. XD but still, the time cutdown can be pretty big if you share insta. Tzar might not even be EMPd for long after it comes out (remember you can select unit while making it)

[fringe spear]

A fine detail is you cannot share unfinished blueprints. This is to avoid cheating the time by sharing something during the construction, and to prevent 2 players from assisting the same blueprint

[amber crow]

@fringe spear but one post ago you said you can share units while they are building up

And ye i agree,this could bypass the timer by a lot

[fringe spear]

It means when you are massing them

For example if you are building up 5 starlight you could share the first 3 away

Or first 5 / 10 bombers

Since the units are mostly waiting anyways

[amber crow]

Sure ye, makes sense

[fringe spear]

https://discord.com/channels/549281623154229250/1389772638410375169

[lean shoal]

I kinda dig it

[violet fiber]

I'm not a coop hater, I actually love the coop options that the current system allows for but if there is any change I think this is the right direction VS some arbitrary tax/structure you need/neutering sharing.

[onyx crest]

Updated the Anti Co-op test mod today

[limber remnant]

Spotted this https://github.com/beyond-all-reason/Beyond-All-Reason/pull/5471

I like the idea of splitting t2 into 2 factories. Making the difference between t1+t2 less of a huge jump in power immediately

[mental mauve]

t1/t2 has little to do with resource sharing which is what "co-op" is. It's a distraction from the actual issue which seems particularly attractive for no reason whatsoever.

(not that this might be neat or something but it's not coop)

[noble drum]

I'd like to see shared resources go into an "escrow" and then slowly trickle out to the boosted player over like 1 minute, also, shared units should be disabled for 30 seconds (while they "reconfigure").

This allows sharing strategies still, but slows them down a bit and imposes some cost.

I also think it has a satisfying reality to it. In reality, one nation, or one city, can't just instantly share resources with another; it takes time.

[fringe spear]

has nothing to do with coop

making a light t2 tech level is fine but is it's own redesign with gasp, tons of different matchups to consider

if you do it wrong then you get some "light t2" labs that are only good for a niche purpose or are useless if opponent also goes light t2

[limber remnant]

Linked to highlight it as another potential variable for balancing the power spike. But you guys are right that on its own it doesn't tackle coop. Im very interested in trying it but I suppose I should have posted it elsewhere.

[cold totem]

Just realized that having units be disabled for X seconds after sharing also carries the risk of the enemy attacking at this exact moment. So it discourages batch sharing, and also penalizes the extra APM you get from sharing units to someone by giving a time window in which to punish it

[mellow kiln]

And I think it could create some exciting plays. Whatever "solution" to Commie the GDT finds, I'd appreaciate if this was part of it

[fringe spear]

yeah you can also share the units while it's being pulled back to repair

[noble drum]

As far as programming, you could just apply a 30 second emp to shared units.

[cobalt fog]

Or give it to Gaia and give it back after a capture animation.

[fringe spear]

a motivation to give control immediately is to allow for the recepient to start queuing commands

[steel eagle]

what if the enemy team gets notified that a x amount of air/ground/building/lab unit has been shared in the general chat? like the information is a bit masked but you know how much of a boost they getting or what type of coop is going on

i saw a guy suggest notifying with the actual information but that would be non optimal

[edgy rover]

How would u notify bp boosting?

Also doesnt rlly matter if u know its coming or not

[fringe spear]

too many ways to share resources, including lowering red slider

also it breaks immersion (why does sharing resources let the opponent know?)

and it could be too spammy in the chat

[steel eagle]

my suggestion is for unit sharing, so we can brainstorm some ideas on how to do that for resource sharing

[steel eagle]

for coop obv?

[steel eagle]

u can make a small separate chat for these types of notifications

the chat is alr flooded with pings and shared stuff

[tulip minnow]

nah text information like that would be extremely primitive

and would not help much

[steel eagle]

why is that? any good reason would be helpful to improve on the suggestion

[gaunt forge]

well it's not the surprise factor that makes it good, it's the economic efficiency

[fringe spear]

just the effeciency of finishing economy, units, and transitions

with 12 nanos you can transition faster than with 6

[mellow kiln]

I wrote this with good conscience - don't rage please my gf is sensitive 😭

@edgy rover no, this won't encourage battery play. It's in the details 😆

[twin phoenix]

i think it's unlikely we get a building added to the game but it would definetly solve a large amount of issues

[mellow kiln]

I actually think the implementation would be very easy (it's a guess though). You could just cover up the UI elements that alow sharing until the building is built and you could even use the pinpointer model (I heard there are discussions to remove its function). And just like adding a unit I think adding a building is even simpler (again a guess).

[amber crow]

I like it. My idea was storages requirement for sharing respective resource but you cant just tweak storage costs as they have other roles. Minus is that no new units are being accepted, but maybe this issue would be enough to change this rule

[twin phoenix]

yeah I just don't think devs want this solution I could be wrong tho

[amber crow]

Doesnt solve later funneling and centralized eco but depending who you ask this might not be a severe issue but just the way BAR is played

Sharing when leaving game has to be solved other ways anyway. Almost all solutions have this problem

[mellow kiln]

I think if it's technically possible to have two seperate economies after you "take" a player that has left, this should be the way. Even OP take wouldn't be a big problem then.

[analog plume]

re leavers, you are looking for a technical fix to a social problem - this is incredibly hard and often impossible.

[mellow kiln]

And just depending on which units you currently select you'd see the respective metal and energy incomes.

[mellow kiln]

I think two seperate economies to control is an appropriate fix. You could do OP take but obviously it'd take away some focus. But it'd at least prevent one player leaving from being an advantage.

[analog plume]

my 2cents: the practicalities of maintaining two separate economies would exclude all but the strongest players from the /take - a possibly reasonable solution would be all economic producing structs are unable to be taken, thus overflow to the team as per existing overflow, but you can /take all other units

That does however raise substantial other issues i'm sure

[mellow kiln]

I think everybody in the team would be happy if the strongest player takes - so from my perspective that's fine. And really it's always bad if a player leaves - you can only mitigate damage. This approach seems about right to me.

[analog plume]

That's really not ideal if they are in lanes which are not contigious or in totally different roles e.g. sea and air

Ultimately solving a player leaving is complicated and largely should be out of scope of trying to solve "coop" they are two very different problems imo

[mellow kiln]

we could chase "ideal" forever... 🙂

[mellow kiln]

like I did. What do you think of the rest of it?

[analog plume]

Indeed, but it so far from ideal i'd say its worse than current 😛

I'm probably not the best person to ask since it doesn't handle any of the conflating factors which are making coop as strong as it is and directly trying to nerf / manage a mechanic which is core to the spirit of BAR, broken down:

I like:

It being buildable by only t1 cons, that gates it behind a lab first - smart

I don't like:

1. Market buildings that aren't at the very elast interacted with by the player
2. I take significant issue with the concept of "optimal play" - in a game with such limited intel and the sheer scale of the problem space given 15 other agents who's minds you do not know thus resting stuff on a faulty premise
3. The issue with "afk battery" is the afk, not the battery per say - imo. This again rests on a faulty premise and bad definition of "good faith" i suspect as well
4. The "never optimal to get someone back in" is another thing built likely on the same faulty premise as above. Since the opportunity cost to the large eco player is essentially nothing compared to the potential benefit of having another active player who can be 'got back into the game' with such little investment from the team you are drastically "under-valuing" the human part of your ally in a team.

[vale basin]

I take significant issue with the concept of "optimal play" - in a game with such limited intel and the sheer scale of the problem space given 15 other agents who's minds you do not know thus resting stuff on a faulty premise

It's pretty clear to me that coop IS optimal play for the same reason why building 2 identical T2 labs is obviously sub-optimal when you could simply build another construction turret

[analog plume]

Coop is absolutely relatively a very strong strategy (compared to other things multiple players can work on together in the game), but to use of the word optimal implies things that are factually not provable or true imo

[vale basin]

I actually don't think it's a stretch to say that any coop build that involves sharing resources/buildings/units would be stronger than another team trying to achieve the same thing without using those mechanics.

[analog plume]

Indeed, but the other team shouldn't be trying to achieve the same thing, they should be exploiting the opportunity cost inherent with funneling - which is one player has significantly reduced capacity to respond to stuff.

Its a local minima imo, not an optimal solve

My opinion is largely moot tho - PtaQs statement confirms coop will be addressed, so we wait for that so it can be thoroughly tested 🙂

[hard ledge]

bigger maps

[analog plume]

Would maybe work if you made the spawn positions ultra close, and let people expand backwards, but that would make very stale porcy game play.

Otherwise it makes more sense to porc up and tech rather than fight at t1

[amber crow]

Btw, its been a while now, anyone knows when GDT fix drops?

[analog plume]

As soon as its ready (deadlines with volunteers are hard)

[mellow kiln]

All things being equal you can prove that funneling resources is optimal when the other choice is not funneling resources. It is simply a given due to the exponential nature of economy development as well as increasing unit efficiency with different tiers. Given average maps sizes the power spike beeing localized isn't preventing its strength and APM stalling (or reduced capacity to respond) can be circumvented by sharing for example military units (Which some consider fun but most don't). Since there is no upfront investment to Commie it is optimal in that context.

And I realise throughout these discussions that some people demand a "proof" or argue that x, y, z isn't a formal proof and could potentially also be explained by a, b, c. And while this might be logically correct it's just preventing the development of a common ground. Even if I'd develop a formal proof supported by empirical data people would still argue about potential flaws in this. The scientific method isn't about "proving" anything but about establishing a theory that can't yet be disproven and is applicaple. And we already had a few of those in this thread.

[analog plume]

My point isn't that "2 players cooping is or is not mathematically demonstratable stronger than anything else 2 players could otherwise do" its more "in an 8v8 game, you cannot know what is about to kill you while you prepare your coop play" - the problem space is too large, too varied, and has to many unknowns

[vale basin]

the other team shouldn't be trying to achieve the same thing

Granted, however the point is that the "optimal implementation" for any given build will always be a coop version of it. For example, if the counter to a Tzar rush is to overwhelm with T1 pawns/ticks than the optimal implementation would be to add BP to a single T1 lab than start pumping them out rather than build several T1 labs to achieve the same thing.

TL DR - the counter to a coop Tzar rush will be a coop T1 rush. Saying "coop is the optimal strat" isn't referring to any single strat

[mellow kiln]

Well, like I said.

[analog plume]

Indeed

[mellow kiln]

If the problem space is too big you work with approximations.

And don't sit there claiming that the problem space is too big.

[analog plume]

Yes, but that is overly reductive and is impacted vastly by compounding factors

ultimately, maths isn't gonna help us much here without a PhD level analysis which i doubt anyone is prepared to endure

[mellow kiln]

If the world would function with your described mindset it'd stall.

[analog plume]

This isn't the world, its a video game - not sure how that's relevant, regardless of its veracity

[mellow kiln]

I expected a "yea but" 😉

[analog plume]

🤷 i'm not here to score points, i'm here to understand and solve a problem

[mellow kiln]

So let's approach it and single out a few potential solutions that might work or might bring us closer to something that would work and learn while we do it.

You wouldn't imagine the "yea but"s I could throw in here every single day 😄

[vale basin]

The way I see it is that at the start of the game each team is playing a fluid game of rock/paper/scizzors except there's an element of optimization and execution where a very well-crafted rock can sometimes beat out a poorly crafted paper.

Coop versions of rock/paper/scizzors will always be stronger than their non-coop analogues, but does not make them entirely immune to their counters.

[analog plume]

So to take your quantum lab thing and break down the unfun aspects:

1: Some players being only batteries
i think this is a symptom not a cause
2. Steamrolled early feels bad
absolutely agree, but also true of solo tech rush, any 2v1 and party situations not to name a billion other plays on any map with flex positions in pocket spots (e.g. blame air) - so also kind of a adjacent compounding factor not directly an issue with coop
3. unscoutable
100% agree with this one - big issue we should try to address
4. Against WYISWYG
I think this stems from a miss-understanding of the principle, but that's just my personal opinion since no elaboration of the principle exists. It's not so much "i see something i can infer an outcome", I belive its more "I do X and Y is the outcome, so if I do X again, the outcome will be Y again"

Primary issues with "coop" as i see it
1: Low risk, high reward
2: Power relative to complexity of execution
3: T2 power spike over comparable metal in t1 units
4: T2 economic spike (compounding 2 and 3)
5: Social negatives (beg gaming, afk battery etc)

[mellow kiln]

I didn't discriminate between symptoms and causes - just mention what is unfun. And the power spike feels especially bad if its extremely early and due to the Commie of two players. If your direct opponent is able to solo tech while you stay t1 you can at least theoretically keep up with the pace. With Commie you can't if you didn't persuade your team to do it.

[analog plume]

Coop versions of rock/paper/scizzors will always be stronger than their non-coop analogues, but does not make them entirely immune to their counters.

Only if players (teams) don't play into the opportunity costs of coop - e.g. the consolidated nature of the coop and the APM burden applied to one player. I've seen many coop plays fail because teams have done multi-pronged attacks which result in the 'stronger' player being overwhelmed etc

[twin phoenix]

solo tech rush is pretty counterable a single tzar can definetly be kept aat bay by players spamming t1 and if the player with the tzar gets no help from his front players it won't go anywhere

[analog plume]

Yeah, in a 1v1 lane a solo tech can be rushed and first units countered quite nicely but in a coop situation 2 players making t1 units can also deal with 2 man tzar rush quite happily in most circumstances all else being equal

[mellow kiln]

This is not true I believe for equal skill - which is the main point of critics regarding Commie

[twin phoenix]

No the issue is that coop allows to rush tzar AND upgradupgrade mexes quickly

meaning coop is about 4 times as effective

[analog plume]

And much the same i cannot provide evidence to support this - but having watched a quite frankly embarrassing quantity of isthmus games, the skill diff is primarily what results in coops victory, rather than the coop itself.

Coop is absolutely relatively more strong, but that relative strength appears far stronger due to skill and mental diffs imo

[twin phoenix]

solo tzar delays mexes alot

[analog plume]

This comes at the opportuntiy cost of a whole flex position tho

[analog plume]

I don't disagree with 4x more powerful at all, likewise i don't think either of us could provide meaningfully relevant data to support either position

[twin phoenix]

4x because t2 mex income

[analog plume]

You aren't including team-wide opportunity cost tho

[twin phoenix]

you can just make more tzars with 2 man coop, if it was equal 2 man coop would mean just 2 tzars instead it's 4 easily

[mellow kiln]

And here we're getting in the spiral of subjective experiences again. If teams are of equal skill (which on average is the right assumption) Commie makes the difference.

[analog plume]

It's not so much "teams are of equal skill" since positional difference outcomes are massively amplified by Coop - you really have to address coop on the principle of "players of equal skill in all relevant positions" which is very rare in actual games

i gtg - been a good chat tho will check back later

[vale basin]

If you're a low-skilled player spamming coop strats in every game, your OS will eventually get boosted to the point where you will sometimes get clowned on by higher skill players with similar OS. A person speccing these games will naturally conclude that "coop can be countered with smart play and overwhelming the other player's limited APM".

[mellow kiln]

The "data" based on the underlying principle of economy development in BAR is enough to assume the statement of 4x the strength is true. Including saved factory costs it's even higher.

[twin phoenix]

it's roughly acurate a rule of thumb

[mellow kiln]

this equals out over a high enough number of games. Commie is a systemic difference - don't mix up those factors.

It's really exhausting to argue about those basics of logic

[twin phoenix]

we don't even disagree that much he just argues we can't know the exact stats and I think averages are good enough

[mellow kiln]

Yea, my point previously.

In addition there are some logical fallacies we have to clean up again and again

[analog plume]

The repay time of a t2 mex on a 2.3spot is like 1.5 minutes?, so the opportunity cost of that upgrade is relevant for a while - in addition to the boosting player who will have no lab, no t2 eco and no real ability to respond to any type of raid/attack etc.

Coop is strong but its not completely without its vulnerabilities or opportunity cost trade offs

Indeed, i agree its "relatively stronger than generally people would like" even coop enjoyers agree with that statement for the most part and as such is a degenerate strategy or in other words creates a local minima - just arguing the specifics of how strong is kinda moot since it drags us into the weeds

[fringe spear]

academia sucks at analysizing games

The repay time of a t2 mex on a 2.3spot is like 1.5 minutes?, so the opportunity cost of that upgrade is relevant for a while

Well coop anything is still subject to the properties of that unit

[mental mauve]

among many other things xd

[fringe spear]

we aren't comparing coop X to a completely different play, we are comparing coop X to solo X + the battery doing their own thing

[mental mauve]

ya... trying to quantify this to the nth degree might be some enjoyable torture. I don't think it's required b/c we can just implement changes that make sense and test them to see what happens. Just guess. It's probably fine. There's more than enough information that IS knowable to know that this is cursed. Just pick a variable.

[fringe spear]

you could probably graph side by side coop t2, and note on a graph where the cons comes out, and at each point how many combat units they have to defend and attack

if coop lab has 8 scouts out at the time that single lab has 6, you can probably say that the coop build is no worse off defensively

and if the first 2 scouts come out first you could say the coop build has better scouting / harrass, since the rovers come out faster

#1337861239526785064 continuing here

[mellow kiln]

you can very easily say that the Coop build can at any point in time have the same defensive units as two solo players + still grow faster in economy.

[fringe spear]

• a bit more units because they don't have 2 labs up

[mellow kiln]

yes

[fringe spear]

so they can cover the slightly more vunerable 2nd base

[mellow kiln]

Yes, I think this statement is straight forward correct

--> resulting in coop - however you turn it around - always being the more effective way to get anywhere in BAR. Only theoretical counter arguments are APM stalling and localized power. But APM can still be devided between players and maps are usually small enough for it being a localized power not outweighing all the advantages. Therefore it is always the optimal play. Which is why we're talking for 30.000+ comments here. 😄

[analog plume]

So you’re comparing apples to oranges? - since a 2v1 in a lane should win, so the only meaningful comparison would be 2 coop vs 2 some other teamwork strategy

[mellow kiln]

It's totally legit to compare 2 player commie to 2 player non-commie with both teams trying to achieve any unit composition or economy state. That's what's discussed.

[fringe spear]

i mean the battery can do their own thing which is trying to coordinate with solo X

[analog plume]

How is it? since your in a team game of 8v8, and i am repeatedly told "we aren't trying to turn the game into 8 1v1s" so either the enemy team has to work as a team, in a team game, or the enemy team doesn't and they lose to better team play, regardless of if its coop or not coop

[fringe spear]

If you look at ithmus 3v3 front

[mellow kiln]

And the result is that commie always achieves this faster with at least the same level of defensive units if desired

[mellow kiln]

you can chose whatever strategy you like - the issue is that pooling resources always enables you to get there faster.

[fringe spear]

say one team tries to coop t2. solo t2 + regular 2 man aggression loses hard to coop t2 as they can defend with less resources and hold until 3:30 when the first jag pops

their only chance is with some kind of 3 man t1 aggression or t1 bombing. However, t1 bombing solo timings are well known and can be defended in time. If you are under no pressure you can just make a flak truck after first t2 units

If they do 3 man t1 aggression all you need to do is scout, adjust the build with more llts or HLT, walls, slow down the t2 slightly. and continue as normal

[mellow kiln]

we don't even need to get into the specifics. BAR can have 1000 different valid strategies. Can be Pawn rush, can be fast AFUs, can be early bombing run, early t2 arty. The fastest way to realize any strategy is always pooling resources to one player. How is it possible that this point has to be repeated again and again?

[fringe spear]

The reason why it's fair to compare coop to the solo version + 2nd player does whatever is best for team

is that we CAN show that the coop version is by all practical purposes, better at offense/economy while maintaining equal or better defensive potential'

because just say the coop version IS abuseable by some play (coop or non-coop). Then the non-coop version will be even more vunerable to that

[mellow kiln]

And by the way nobody is arguing against team work. It's arguing against resource pooling which is a very unfun/primitive form of "team work".

[fringe spear]

if coop t1 bombing can threaten coop t2 lab, then coop t1 bombing will anniliate solo t2

[tall crane]

So you're saying that two players working together towards one goal vs two players doing their own things should be equally strong? What?

[fringe spear]

Think of it is they way:

consider 3 possible solo strategies in BAR as rock, paper scissors

if we can demonstrate that the coop version of those 3 strategies are better offensively/economically, while able to cover any percieved weaknesses (say cover the battery base with 2 extra scouts or 1-2 more blitz), then the coop version is just better than the solo version

so let us call these 3 coop versions, rock+2, paper+2, scissors+2 (like in D&D)

Rock+2 MAYBE is threatened or has an unfavourable matchup vs paper+0, and probably isn't good vs Paper+2

but Rock+0 would flat out do worse than that

so there is no reason to do non-coop builds if the coop builds are just better than the non-coop version + 2nd player free to do whatever they want

when i make the coop vs non-coop comparison I'm ALWAYS saying the 2nd free player is free to do whatever they want

always a 2v2

[fringe spear]

yes. it's worth noting that both team's ultimate goal is trying to win the game

[mellow kiln]

sometimes in this thread I'm really wondering if people refuse to interpret statements the right way. I think it has been established that the brainless way of teamwork (aka pooling ressources) being stronger than not doing it to realize any strategy is the issue. Meaning you're theoretically forced to always pool resources if you want to win.

[fringe spear]

the result of two players working on one project at the same being stronger is seen in the tournament

[timid mountain]

its completely intentional on neb's part

he's outright stated he just wants to troll coop threads

[fringe spear]

entire team always pools to build w/e thing, in fact there is only a 1v1 economy run mostly with 1 superbase

[mellow kiln]

if that's true, that's actually an even lower form of behaviour than resource pooling 😄

[tall crane]

Not true in the slightest

[tall crane]

You and me both are wondering the same things

[tall crane]

I have once in the past said I want to troll the anti-coop crowd who was being rude and arguing in bad faith, but that was a comment made in bad taste and also not relevant here

[tall crane]

Indeed, so if you have to work together by pooling resources to win the game, why is this a bad thing?

And once again, everyone agrees pure battery gameplay is bad gameplay here

[fringe spear]

because it leads to 1 person controlling the economy, lack of economy agency by everyone else playing the game

[timid mountain]

"I said I want to troll but it's totally not relevant here guys'

[tall crane]

But my point has always been that co-op does not have to mean one player doing nothing while the other does everything, in fact it needs to be the opposite in the most competitive level

[fringe spear]

you came in multiple times to troll

though you only admitted it once

[tall crane]

Talk about intentionally misrepresenting what I said. Dont be rude and Ill have a real conversation here

[fringe spear]

i'm doubtful of your capabilities

[tall crane]

Cool

[fringe spear]

economic agency, even chatgpt understands what it is

[tall crane]

You dont lose that in co-op if you communicate with your teammate....

[mellow kiln]

So you answered it youself. And now, where personal preference comes into play is if being a resource slave only controling some units is an attractive form of gameplay. I'm convinced for the majority it is not. And keep in mind it is not optional but forced if you want to play to win. You might as well replace the cicles on the maps saying "front, tech, air etc." by one circle saying "rich player" and the rest saying "resource slave + some micro".

[fringe spear]

it's just one person actually doing it, and the other person can drop a comment or tip here and there

[timid mountain]

Choice unironically adds more to discussion than you do

[tall crane]

Is it agency when a player can only take the last spot left, which is the air spot, and they have to play air or else get flamed/bullied/kicked?

And how is that different from there being roles where a player is expected to forego a personal base in favor of microing and calling shots?

[fringe spear]

if we are talking uncoordinated environment where spots are not chosen freely, then there HELLA ain't going to be any participation in a coop version

[tall crane]

That doesnt answer my question

[fringe spear]

It is, because you need to compare uncoord to uncoord and tourney to tourney

the situation where someone can only take the last spot only applies to pub games, no?

[tall crane]

Yeah

But so does the type of coop you dont like

[fringe spear]

is coop gameplay any better in that pub game situation?

1. one person forced to play air when they don't want to
2. 3 people don't get to own a base -- I hear owning a base is pretty popular among BAR players

[tall crane]

Is scenario 2 happening in pub games?

[fringe spear]

1 person battery, 3 person battery same thing. just how many noobs you can convince

[fringe spear]

i mean that's what's neccesary to support coop play in the pub environment

[tall crane]

If you have to convince them to do that then they still have agency

[fringe spear]

not economic agency

[tall crane]

Exactly and thats why in the real world how many pub games actually feature coop?

[fringe spear]

that's why it's so easy for party to come and stomp people

cause the match balance revolves around how many people willing to be battery -- as long as you have a half capable driver

[tall crane]

Yeah because they are a coordinated team playing against uncoordinated players it doesnt matter if coop is strong or not they will always have an advantage

[fringe spear]

if you play against a cooping party -- even one that uses afk battery or a very simple, I give you the tzar that's all you do

[fringe spear]

is it really coordination if what i need to do to get a 70%+ wr is get the guy to build 3 mexes and 4 solars and leave the game?

you could achieve higher with full coordination, but again this is pub game

[tall crane]

Depends who you are sharing it to ofc and if the other team is or isnt cooping

[fringe spear]

if the enemy team is cooping it's just a mirror match duh

[fringe spear]

duh, just because you can misuse a gun doesn't mean it's not op compared to a knife

[mellow kiln]

Please set realistic expectations to new players then...

[fringe spear]

actually the rich player should be in front. but yes

[onyx crest]

It's a power imbalance.
If I'm the battery/micro player, and I ask for something a bit off the wall, like "can you build me a commando", the macro player can say No.

But if I had my own eco, I can just do the commando play

[tall crane]

There is just no way to have a real conversation about this when you intentionally shape the language to paint coop in a certain light which is not accurate

[tall crane]

True, but hopefully you are only sharing your base away to a player who you can trust. There is no one forcing you to share your base, even if its the "best strategy" and the only way to win

[fringe spear]

lmao, I'm just stating the very real issues with it atm

I don't have anything against resource share and micro/macro. But that is the only way to play the game atm, which is a pretty big fuck you to people who like agency and expressing skill in managing their own economy

[tall crane]

"resource slave + some micro"

Thats reductionist and not useful

[fringe spear]

technically you can just delete teh resource slave

after you give all your resources there is nothing
you are just "some micro"

[onyx crest]

The other team is forcing me, with their 3:30 tzar plays.

There is no chance to do commando plays when I can either

1. Make my own base, die to Tzar before T2
2. Give away my base so we get to T2 on time, but the guy I gave my base too is rude

[mellow kiln]

It is fairly accurate in its essence

[tall crane]

We agree on this here its just a matter of how to solve it - I think its more of an issue with balance, but also that a team coordinating their resources should always have an advantage anyways

But only if all of the players are fully engaged in other ways

[mellow kiln]

oh, we might be getting somewhere

[tall crane]

Thats a balance issue though, imo. There is an over all lack of strong strategies, as T2 rushes are the sole dominant strategy. Coop is good at rushing the strongest strategies. So when there is only one good strategy, then coop becomes all about rushing that strategy, which isnt fun

i.e. T2 hard counters T1. How do you punish a T2 rush if it hard counters T1?

[wraith basin]

People say to share units to micro but honestly that’s not even a good idea. An army is like driving a car and giving each person control of the gas breaks and steering wheel doesn’t make the car drive better than 1 person

[mighty brook]

At the end of the day as an rts people should be having substantial base management AND unit micro in their gameplay. Recent team tournament play (such as nation wars) makes it pretty clear that the game misses the mark on this.

[mellow kiln]

But just looking at the basic mechanics of BAR you can see that every strategy can be performed more efficient with max. resource pooling.

[fringe spear]

it's just embarassing when you take a battery player going back to solo play and they can barely play the game solo

[tall crane]

I fundamentally disagree. Players should have the agency to find a teammate who can cover their weaknesses so they can focus on their strengths. If they want to micro while someone else macros, let them do it. Its fun gameplay

[fringe spear]

same for a tourney player. If you have a tourney player who all they are good is at micro, that just reinforces that tourney is not the same as being good at BAR

[tall crane]

Not really, its just expanding the definition of what being good is

[fringe spear]

microing rovers and bulls is only a small fraction of bar

[mellow kiln]

You're writing it like it's a choice. But again, optimal play to win forces you to pool resources to the extreme. There's no cherry picking for players (unless they give up on "play to win").

[tall crane]

Its not hard to make the disctinction that so and so is an amazing micro player but sucks at macro...

[mighty brook]

Specialization is fine, people’s bases shouldn’t all look the same and people on the same team shouldn’t all specialize in the same unit micro. Nothing is stopping people from finding specialization/teammates to cover their weaknesses in an RTS setting.

[fringe spear]

50 os players even if they suck at macro still are better at macro than 30os players

this is not true with full specialization. you can have 50os micro player with completely underdeveloped macro

[tall crane]

Why does this mean that every player needs to have a base?

Do you need a base to significantly engage with the game? I don't think so. Micro is very deep on its own

[mellow kiln]

The current state of the game means excatly ONE player should have a real base.

[tall crane]

Many games are even built around pure micro. There is no reason that BAR being an RTS means that in the team game mode you can't share RTS responsibilities by having a single base for your team, or a main base with auxillaries

[mellow kiln]

Would be nice to give players a choice, you know 😉

[fringe spear]

sure

lets say in your suggested example ... you say the in the eventual soluation coop should still be stronger
But if coop is still stronger than coordinated 4 base play, then for tourney players and competitive pub games, it still isn't a choice

[tall crane]

So what youre saying is if I open up any random 8v8 lobby then in every game Ill see players being forced to play with no base? Do you really believe that is the reality of the meta right now?

[fringe spear]

if your opponent coops every game you kind of are forced to

[amber crow]

Not tryng to defend coop, BUT its often wrongly dismissed on statements that you have no agency. Even coming up with a coop strat that suits the team and positions is part of the game and cooper have way more of this part than noncoopers. I dont think saying coop causes players to idle is fair and contributing. Especially if you aim to cancel stuff like basegiving

[mighty brook]

I mean did people who participated in nation wars find it fun? Was just a 1v1 tournament. I could tell my teammates were not really having fun and some of them spent substantial portions of the games without a single unit to micro lol, but this let us outperform half of the teams that made it to the final stage.

[mellow kiln]

We're talking about play to win and where the game will develop to the more expereinced players get. Ofc. nooby play isn't ideal.

[fringe spear]

do you why people hate the state of arm/cor t2 bot balance?

Yeah you can play them, if you don't like winning
If something is not competitive in strength, when you are playing to win, playing suboptimal strat/labs is simply not an option

[onyx crest]

And, from player experience here, even if you are completely afk, contribute no micro, the simple act of giving away your resources helps your team win.

Which, pushed to it's competitive end state, is 1 guy with base, and 7 people microing.
That is a terrible user base ratio to try to get, when everyone interested in pure micro gameplay is playing a proper MOBA instead

[mighty brook]

You might get two bases if lucky with map 🙂

[fringe spear]

so if you make coop / no-base continue to be optimal in power level, then it is basically forcing people who would rather 4 base to 1 base, because it's the best strat

which sucks in a similiar way to forcing people to play the strongest t2 lab instead of arm/cor bot t2
It's a negative consequence of bad balance

[tall crane]

Something you maybe havent considered, is that coop could just be defined as the team game mode and that would be perfectly fine as well.

The thing that hurts coop the most is a lack of interesting balance tbh. Id love if coop was the default team gamemode

[amber crow]

i think experience such as this is best data and i agree tournament play suffers a lot. but we havent talked at all about the distinction between tournament and pubs. if we can push changes that make pubs interesting again, but don't completely solve tournament hard coop between 2 teams, i think this is still a big win

[tall crane]

Not really though because a lot of players just play things because theyre fun not because its the best

[fringe spear]

you can call it whatever you want -- I'm in support of having 2 seperate game modes

[fringe spear]

the drive to win is strong, esp in high os pub games and tourney

[wraith basin]

Community is way too small to split more game modes

[fringe spear]

you can just have 1 lobby alternate

i'm sure people won't hate coop so much if we can play it 20% of the time and it's coop vs coop
instead of coop vs non-coop garbage

[mellow kiln]

Does it make sense to not call the problem "co-op" anymore but "extreme resource pooling"? I'm getting a sense that this is confused over and over again.

[tall crane]

Well then it becomes a question of, is resoure sharing an important part of BAR's identity? I mean, the flow economy defines the game, and this is a consequence of that

[mighty brook]

Pubs will generally follow tournament play, but will take longer for strategies to trickle down as there’s less incentive to sweat out advantages in pubs and generally lower skill ranges. So it may take say 2 years for pubs to reflect tourney play (1 base per team in 8v8) but with time it will happen.

[tall crane]

No, perhaps Battery Gameplay is the best term for it

[amber crow]

funneling is a good word i think

[fringe spear]

resource pooling, that's all it is

[tall crane]

I have no issue with extreme resource pooling if everyone gets to play the game how they want to

Funneling itself isnt a problem, and I find it to be the most enjoyable aspect of playing on a coordinated team

[fringe spear]

define "get to play the game"

[mellow kiln]

is that possible? I don't think those two goals are achievable at the same time.

[tall crane]

That is a subjective question

[fringe spear]

is it "you can play the game how you want, but you aren't playing to win anymore?"

[tall crane]

My definition does not require managing a base though

[amber crow]

I think the trickle down stops at some point and never reaches tournament play, simple because in pubs, you will ALWAYS get stoned, sleepy, uber chatty, relaxing after work people etc and will maybe in 1 game out of 10 have a chance to do the true powerful coop

[fringe spear]

eh you just need 1 battery and maybe get good and convincing team to send m

[mellow kiln]

I think that's fine. But optimal play forcing players into not having a base is not fine.

[tall crane]

No matter what there will be resitrictions on what you can do to win, so you cant play it however you want, but to be practical, I mean they should have a variety of playstyles to choose from

[fringe spear]

you know the instant +5-10 os strat?

convincing your team to send m/e

[mighty brook]

Ping teammates to build radar

[amber crow]

well yeah, when i joined this thread a long time ago, my goal WAS to kill the stuff like early coop and battery play. so i'm looking from that perspective. to reach the gamestate where you don't outright kill or tax coop but kill the early shit

because the narative here is

[mellow kiln]

If that's where opinions are conflicting, we're really talking past eachother. I think most people find this a valid statement. But it being the ONLY optimal play (if you're going hardcore play to win) is problematic.

[amber crow]

that tournament play will happen in pubs. i think thats very flawed

[fringe spear]

i mean people already see the tzar coop spam on glitters and likely copy it at lower os

[amber crow]

pubs arent organised players. they come from all kinds of daytimes and tiredness levels and whatever else

[tall crane]

Well, I appreciate that you can recognize this issue, as we all seem to want to have a conversation about it, but its hard to do so when our definitions dont align

[fringe spear]

anyways, kindly move the discsusion to #1337861239526785064

[tall crane]

How can this be curbed though? In any game, the competitive strategies will dominate in a casual format, doesnt matter the game

[amber crow]

so yeah, the idea is, preserve coop mechanics, but deal with stuff that stands out. if its slightly op, keep it, you have to drive the meta forward and you can't do it in stale meta. but cut the power spikes

[onyx crest]

"coordinated teams" is a big assumption here. Assumes tournament play.

And, while it is cool as a spectator to see the resource and unit slinging, we just had multiple tourney people here say they hated doing it.

[mellow kiln]

So we want both - players being able to not have a base if they want and players having a base if they want to and both plays not conflicting with "play to win". We currently don't have that.

[tall crane]

Well that was the point I was trying to make there

[fringe spear]

the difference between coordinated strat in other game and here is

[tall crane]

Coop is 100x more fun on comms with a team

[fringe spear]

in other games you actually need the coordination for those strats to dominate
in BAR all you need is the guy to send his base

[amber crow]

partly this but party pubs will never reach tournament play. they arent coordinated teams, maybe 1 in 10 happens like that by pure chance. with more players this will be even harder to reach in pubs

[fringe spear]

there are strong heros in mobas that are shit/underperform in pub games because they need coordinated support, or they have weaker stats but have vision tools that are very strong in high os / coordinated

that's how you do balance

[amber crow]

i guess what i want is to change resource pooling only so slightly that you save the pubs and with tournaments its whatever

i guess giga selfish but it is what it is

[mellow kiln]

Still I think it is worth it to project what "play to win" will look like in the near future with an experienced player base. Optimal play being unfun for most of the top 5% is a pretty bad statement for a game. And oh pleeeease, don't argue if that's really the case that that many expereinced players don't enjoy it. 😄

[timid mountain]

this is a copout answer though. If you're good enough friends with someone, rolling dogshit back and forth can be fun

[amber crow]

very much agree! but now imagine if you could balance out resource pooling in way of many patches that reach a goal where resource pooling is still prefered (this is BAR essence i believe), but it's not optimal (or it's impossible) to have strates where only 1 player dominates / players are idle

[mellow kiln]

hm... I genuinly think you need to rephrase that. I didn't get it, sorry... :/

[amber crow]

that's why i'm against flat out tax. because with tax, however you balance it, basegiving will always be prefered. whether tax is so strong that you don't coop at all, or it's just enough that basegiving is best strat again

[mighty brook]

my team coms in nation wars was jtl asking me for units and then me not giving him anything and he just speccing the game at that point :ahh:

[amber crow]

with tax i think you just kill coop. you don't boost other strats with it

[fringe spear]

can confirm i had same experience in one of the group stage games

i ask for t2 units, they wanted to keep pushing otherside with my teammate

[mellow kiln]

I think tax might achieve that because you can finetune it very easily - I don't know. I still like my Quantum Link Hub idea most. 😄

[tall crane]

Agreed. There needs to be a decision made on what the team side of this game looks like

[timid mountain]

I don't tourney play so correct me if im wrong but are coms basically "send x unit here" or "x units here"

[fringe spear]

so I just controlling 10 pawns. at minute 15

[tall crane]

Because its all subjective and without a clear direction there wont be any progress

[amber crow]

sry, second language; so i don't think tax solves anything. it's no coop OR we're back to battery or very simple but most effective coops. i'm in favor of gradual balancing so we reach coop that isn't just 1 player doing all, many pockets of cooping players

[fringe spear]

I mean if you think about coop vs coop it is already most effective coops only

[tall crane]

Not really, its more like "Im seeing X on the frontline, what should we make?" "Can you make me some pounders? Okay, thats enough pounders, transition into air"

[fringe spear]

the only reason why less optimal coops are viable is because you are beating up non-coop players with it

[onyx crest]

Which leads to the other problem, if you try to lean into coop, increase the micro requirements of BAR to give battery players something to do, you give the game a much bigger learning curve.

[amber crow]

tax won't make interesting coop be viable. if basegiving is best now, it's gonna be best when taxed. and if it won't be, no other coop will be

[tall crane]

For me, as a macro player, its "Whats going on guys, what do you need me to be doing?"

[fringe spear]

you really think coop gunslinger is viable in a coop meta? yeh, no.

[timid mountain]

I am sorry but this is just seems incredibly basic. I am sure it's more interesting when you're actually playing it but from the outside it's not very

[tall crane]

Agreed. To make coop more interesting, there needs to be a few things:

• More varied balance so T2 isnt dominant - right now the team which rushes t2 mexes the fastest usually wins
• Guides on how to coop in an effective and interesting way beyond just sharing your base away

[amber crow]

yes it is. on glitters i as tech made snipers for front (defence) and a slinger for canyon. worked great. not everybody in 8v8 has a counter even if labs are available

[tall crane]

How is it less basic than having to glance at your base every couple seconds and click a few things?

I assure you its very fun to do, especially in a well practiced team

[amber crow]

i agree with this. plus a lot of changes and killing off the basegiving etc

[fringe spear]

ur fun is not everyone's fun

[tall crane]

See Im not really opposed to having concentrated bases though, but if you give away your base you should have a reasonable expectation of being able to ask for things and micro to your hearts content, and it should also be a decision you get to make

[fringe spear]

that's just a social contract

[timid mountain]

Attention being split, especially when not everything is being made for you is a lot more interesting

[fringe spear]

lmao if i'm playing to win i ain't giving the 20 os battery player shit

time coordinating with him is better spent just focusing on playing to my potential

[amber crow]

you either reach a gamestate where you see 4x 2 players or 3+3+2 players doing some kind of coop project (i would love that) OR you just kill coop outright i think. i think some sense of this mechanic has to stay to be BAR, no?

[onyx crest]

I have my doubts with guides, trying to social engineer away the coop problem.
(Considering the current socially engineered solution is to kickban anyone doing coop, with flame wars for how much coop gets you the ban hammer)

[tall crane]

Well thats just a shitty, non-team focused attitude

[mighty brook]

most of teams apm in tourney also has to do with resource sharing, carry player apm is mostly unit share, micro player apm is mostly moving sliders when they need e/m vs not

[tall crane]

I wouldnt really call it social engineering though, its just setting better expectations

[mellow kiln]

Yea, it's not really productive to talk about what is fun. You'd need to empirically answer this if a healthy player base is desired. I think requiring a very significant amount of communication/alignment with complete strangers in a public game is what blocks this from being fun. I appreaciate your extroversion but I project this kills fun.

[fringe spear]

don't hate the player hate the game

[amber crow]

and to reach this, i think coop fix would have to include something about proximity.

[tall crane]

Sometimes you can hate the player

[fringe spear]

the goal of this video game is to win, if the game allows non-teamwork strats to be dominant (like quarterbacking and simply playing for the lower os player) then that's on the game

[amber crow]

so sending stuff long distance is a problem, but what if it wasnt long distance but a certain range?

you would imediately have more centers of power
instead of just 1

[fringe spear]

i mean I can give the 20os player the tzar I'm just griefing my team's win% chance tho

[tall crane]

Disagree here, while those tasks do take up a lot of APM, to micro and macro perfectly still also takes up most of the player's APM and since you are focused purely on one or the other the expectation is that you are doing them perfectly

[fringe spear]

isn't that the definition of trolling?

[mellow kiln]

sadly that's true

[tall crane]

If you have that attitude why are you even playing pubs anyways

I just call that toxicity and elitism

[fringe spear]

acknowledging reality and playing reflecting of it is toxicity and elitism?

[glacial scarab]

It's probably that you were being a meme Lord about it

[fringe spear]

if in a mixed volleyball tournament it's legal to bench all your women players, is that toxic/elitism?

[tall crane]

Yes.

[fringe spear]

no, it's the fault of the person who designed the tournament rules

[glacial scarab]

Yeah, most players follow incentives. We would hope that most players would play for fun though.

[mellow kiln]

If your vision is to build a game with all nice, communicative, empathetic, non-egoistic players I wish you all the luck in the world but am pretty sure internet anonymity will kill it before it become any relevant.

[fringe spear]

in a tournament it's only fair to expect players to play the most optimal strat

and even in high os pub games

[tall crane]

If you bench them simply because you assume they arent as good due to the fact of being women, then yeah thats pretty fuckin problematic

Same goes for "if I include the 20 OS player we'll lose"

[fringe spear]

they are very good players but obviously men have physical advantages

[tall crane]

🙄

[timid mountain]

thread devolves into gender discourse in 3...2..
1...

[tall crane]

Lets not have this discussion here, but assuming anyone's abilities based on superficial traits is wrong, full stop.

[fringe spear]

i mean you guys play in the same team you likely know whether those women are in the 0.01% of women who could beat competitive men player

[fringe spear]

you are literally in the same team you probably played them and know

you realize that the all time top women's tennis player got stomped by the 200th ranked male tennis player

running: high school boys are out running the top female runners

[tall crane]

Nope not having this conversation here.

[mellow kiln]

... what's this now? 😄
Giving a less experienced player less agency (if that means that the more experienced/better player has more agency) is without a doubt the right winning strategy. 😄

[timid mountain]

He already stopped listening when you asserted such a premise

[onyx crest]

Take it to off topic

[mellow kiln]

We don't need to get into gender topics for this. 😄

[fringe spear]

sure

[vale basin]

Let's not drag gender performances differences in sports into this discussion 🤦‍♂️

[mellow kiln]

yes, please...

[fringe spear]

lets instead talk about performance differences due to os

😄

[vale basin]

Well, can we first agree that this is a "cursed problem"?

[tall crane]

If you wanna talk about that, you are essentially saying that you should take agency away from players if they are low OS...

[onyx crest]

But really, trying to change people's expectations regarding coop is gonna be way, way harder than a game coding change.

[fringe spear]

the only reason why i take agency away from them is because i'm trying to win for the team

[tall crane]

Why are you even playing on a team with a low OS player if you think it hinders your ability to win?

[mellow kiln]

This will often be true and I hope you know it. It's pretty logical and not offensive at all in a game where winning is the goal.

[fringe spear]

if the game didn't reward it so much I wouldnt' do it

[tall crane]

Then why the fuck even play pubs anyways

If you are so competitive that you cant include everyone on your team, then dont play pub games

[fringe spear]

why even coop? why does the noob who leave the game deserve to win more than the noob who plays their own base?

[glacial scarab]

Get me up to speed here what's a pub

[onyx crest]

Hell, I'll argue impacts of OS differences is off topic here

[vale basin]

I think what Chrono is saying is that "playing to win" and "giving low OS players units to play with" are contradictory goals

[mighty brook]

As a quick and easy test, try being the highest os player on team and share your com/base to lowest os every game, and then try being lowest os player on team and share your com/base to highest os player on team every game.

One of these players will get banned based on past moderation history examples. I don’t think chronopolize is being elitist when he says that it is trolling to give to lower os player.

[mellow kiln]

uhm... one doesn't really have a choice in the current game state?

[amber crow]

guys guys..
can we rather go back on point and talk about what proximity chances to resource pooling would achieve? would you like the result of having many coop centers on the map?

[tall crane]

public game = playing with randos

[timid mountain]

public lobby

[glacial scarab]

Oh okay

[fringe spear]

why does the noob who give base deserve to win more than the noob who plays their own base?

[tall crane]

So a bit ago I had the idea of making squads in large teams

[onyx crest]

The problem is for 2 teams, all OS 40 players, coop is a problem

[tall crane]

Where you can only share with your squad

[amber crow]

i wouldnt box the game into squads but make it so it's only possible to coop in proximity

[glacial scarab]

@fringe spear when you play to win, do you play to win for accomplishment or do you play to win for fun?
@tall crane and what about you?

[tall crane]

I feel like at this level of player its not unreasonable to expect a degree of coop in most games though, and thats why I think the issue is more to do with uninteresting balance - whoever rushes T2 wins

[tall crane]

I play to win for the sweet dopamine rush it gives me

But I only play to win in 1v1 and small teams, I dont take 8v8 seriously because you have much less control over the outcome of the game

[mellow kiln]

Since Seth is here, I think this is a good solution (some other disagree though). Sorry guys :D:

[twin phoenix]

the label could be changed to "poverty plays + some micro"

[fringe spear]

you could just coop t1 into t1 bombing

[twin phoenix]

like making destroyers with consul is something i define as a poverty play

[fringe spear]

it's very easy to win with a half decent coop vs non-coop

[tall crane]

Thats answerable though

[glacial scarab]

Cutting the line I see. Well played sir.

[twin phoenix]

where you have minimal ressources

[fringe spear]

t1 coop is just economically better

[tall crane]

If the other team coops a bombing and your team can shut it down now you have an advantage

[glacial scarab]

You didn't answer my question

[tall crane]

the issue becomes that when the other team coop rushes T2, what counters do you have?

[fringe spear]

usually winning for fun unless it's tournament

i mean for most people, winning is quite fun and losing is quite painful

there are exceptions you can have good games that you lose, and it can get boring winning with the same strat 50 times

[tall crane]

Well the fun comes from the feeling of accomplishment, imo

But I still have fun even when I lose, cause to me the fun of BAR isnt about winning

[twin phoenix]

investing heavily into early AA is pretty useless in of itself and you dont get the wrecks of the bombers so really both sides will be pretty even after failed coop bombing

[mellow kiln]

I think winning is fun. If I had to choose I'd admittedly rather say for accomplishment. Which causes a feeling of satisfaction.

[twin phoenix]

all those t1 fighters are quickly obsolete and will be lost easily

[glacial scarab]

Dang. Not quite the gotcha I thought.

What I see here a higher tolerance expressed by neb for acceptable losses in exchange for fun, and inclusivity.

From chronopolize, I see a greater emphasis on winning the game itself.

Different strokes. There will be chronopolizes out there. Especially playing with randoms. It's reasonable to expect people to follow the incentives created by the game design.

[twin phoenix]

so really the t1 bombing run forces you to spend ressources on ineficiant units

[glacial scarab]

As a terrible player, I want that tzar tho so I'm playing with neb sorry bud

[fringe spear]

i mean, isn't it the most inclusive when the noob gets to play his actual base

[tall crane]

Not necessarily

It can be more inclusive to them if coop allows them to play with fun units they couldnt otherwise access due to their skill limitations

[fringe spear]

almost all games I, and most high os players choose to play solo even though it would be massively advantaged to convince anyone, esp low os to give up base

[tall crane]

Its just more inclusive to allow players who struggle to macro and micro at the same time to just focus on one or the other

[timid mountain]

Why are we encouraging noobs to give away all their resources and micro a few units instead of becoming good, complete players that can do both?

[fringe spear]

so you're telling me your noob is so ♿ he doesn't know how to build a tzar, so you should just give him a tzar so he can play bar?

[twin phoenix]

most players want to macro tho, you can see it in the playstzyle of newer players

[fringe spear]

instead of teaching him how to build a tzar?

[tall crane]

Its not just "microing a few units"

[mellow kiln]

I don't think that's what new joiners expect or want from the game

[twin phoenix]

they never overmicro stuff and constantly forget their units but they spend lots of time building stuff

[tall crane]

I know players personally who joined for coop...

At the end of the day it does make the game more accesible if you can rely on a teammate to the degree that coop allows

[twin phoenix]

going heavy into microing isnt a new player thing its something you become interested in if youve either played other rts like stzarcraft or you played lots of BAR

[tall crane]

Thats very true as well

[timid mountain]

what else? staring at mini map and pinging radar dots? If a noob is so bad you can't trust him to build a base, he wouldn't know decent unit counters, e.g. pounder into pawn

[glacial scarab]

Very clever hiding the construction of this behind a T1 constructor. Forces the creation of a factory for each player.

The stinkiest part of this whole thing is how would a structure enable the sharing of units? From a lore perspective, why would a building be needed to transfer control from one Commander to another?

[twin phoenix]

usually most new players just want to play tower defense basicly

[tall crane]

You micro more than just a few units, its all of the units that the macro player can pump out for you, and you have to micro perfectly. You should not be losing any units if you are a micro player

[fringe spear]

hold up, we are talking about noobs here.

[tall crane]

In addition to coordination with the rest of your team which is a huge part of teamplay

[timid mountain]

We are talking about noobs

[fringe spear]

on one hand neb says that you gotta give the tzar to a noob for inclusivity
on the other hand he says that micro/macro is all about microing perfectly and skill exprsesion

[tall crane]

If you want to take the conversation down this route though, most new players dont even play PvP, I think the statistic is something like 80% of BAR players dont play PvP?

[fringe spear]

ahh, the nothing matters so nothing matters argument

[twin phoenix]

yeah but none pvp isnt influenced by coop

[tall crane]

If you play in a pub game, you should include everyone on your team, but at the highest level of micro play you should be playing perfectly. Not mutually exclusive in the slightest?

[twin phoenix]

you made an argument that coop is good for new players in pvp

[mellow kiln]

Since the AIs supporting every units movement are very complex and have vast security protocols it's a complex task to overwrite this and transfer all the access constantly to another commander. The Quantum Link Hub keeps this online (just like Starlink). ^^

[tall crane]

And what this looks like IRL, is sharing a noob that tzar and telling them "your only job right now is to keep this alive and doing damage". I LOVED that stuff when I was starting BAR

[mighty brook]

Coop in raptors sounds fun. I should just give all my stuff away and keep my commander to level up dgunning eggs in mid 😄

[tall crane]

Like shit youre just gonna give me this bad ass Razorback and I didnt have to go through the trouble of making it? Hell yeah lets go kill some shit

[twin phoenix]

nah its gonna be afk lol

[timid mountain]

game for modern audiences moment

[twin phoenix]

or too close in range

[tall crane]

If your attitude is "the rest of my team is full of idiots" why the hell are you playing team games to begin with?

[glacial scarab]

aha, pseudoscientific hand waving. Very good.

this concept was presented to the game design team along with the others as they stewed on which path to take. Ultimately they decided on... Something. There are several people spearheading variations of what that will precisely look like, but the other concepts are on pause until this something is tried out.

[tall crane]

No one is forcing you to play with new players.

[timid mountain]

did you just leak that

[fringe spear]

spoken like a non 8v8 player

[twin phoenix]

but allso i think if youre bad at macro your OS should reflect it, there are players so good at micro and early aggression that it entirely carries their OS but if the game evewr goes on for too long they are clueless how to macro

[fringe spear]

there physically aren't enough good players xD

[twin phoenix]

thats a true micro specialist a good frontliner, not someone who gives his base away

[glacial scarab]

No

[timid mountain]

I'm pretty sure we weren't supposed to know

[fringe spear]

omg it's the t2 tech split split

[mellow kiln]

I'm sure given more time I could develop pseudoscientific into scientifically believable. 😄 But thanks for the feedback!

[timid mountain]

LOL

[fringe spear]

i thought 1 t2 tech split was enough work now we're going to have another years of discussion

in b4 you just coop t1 or t1.5 and kill them

[tall crane]

You can play 1v1 or small teams

I dont have trouble finding high OS games to play

[fringe spear]

the game should not become degenerate just because there is skill gap between top and bottom os players

[twin phoenix]

1v1 is too much of a hassle right now, part of the reason i play 8v8 is that i can join a lobby watch a video and when the game starts i will see it on my second monitor

[fringe spear]

if a game incentivizes non-participating in those settings it's a flaw in the game design

[twin phoenix]

i want matchmaking for 1v1 first

[fringe spear]

yeh i did play 1v1 i hit 40os

1v1 has good competition for sure

[onyx crest]

1v1 is scary intense. I still don't like it.
I like the big team matches, because I know someone else will have my back if I falter.

I really do not want 8v8 to degenerate into "large 1v1" where people are donating all the resources to me, or getting flamed for not tithing a huge portion of my eco to the "super base".

[tall crane]

Thats fair. Being the macro player for your team in tournaments is a lot of pressure! Some of the most pressure Ive ever felt in BAR, but thats what makes it so fun. I dont even try to be the micro player, its too much stress for me

[onyx crest]

Pond spot on Isthmus, I want that to be a spot where you contribute your own army to the front line, instead of feeding wind+tidal to the front and giving away my agency to contribute to the front with my own desired army.

[tall crane]

I dont think 8v8 will ever degenerate into that though. Even in teams as small as 4 players, its often still good to have a second lab depending on the map

There is a limit to how much you can pool, its just a very high limit atm

[fringe spear]

i want to control a base but I don't want to have to make and share every unit the team makes

but alas forced into that playstyle

[onyx crest]

8v8 does eventually result in a "large 1v1" once the eco player finishes snowballing and brings out the gantry, but I can still do my own T2 support thing without people getting upset I did not donate that 3k m to more T3 units.

[fringe spear]

keeping a t2 lab up to support the t3 lab is not so bad

ideally you should just premake the units then reclaim the lab but for 3k the flexibility is fine

making a significant play (maces, hovers, seaplanes) while team is cooping t2 or nuke bomber is NOT fine however

[timid mountain]

ye back when spybot was op I'd keep t2 lab up and was on top of emp enemy t3

degen playstyle I will admit

[fringe spear]

porc, lab, t3, t2, t1? don't matter emp it

they put spam with their t2? just stun it all together

[timid mountain]

I don't mean to twist the knife but with what Seth told us I think we should discuss why the tech split might alleviate the "dying to rushed t2 issue" but not the coop issue

[fringe spear]

how can you discuss what you cannot see?

[timid mountain]

https://tenor.com/view/philosophy-academy-athens-art-raphael-gif-17399902

[fringe spear]

I will just cook some coop strats post-patch. if people die to them without a counter well they should either blame themselves, or blame the game

[wet gate]

everythng has to go into github

[onyx crest]

Ya, I want to see all the degenerate T1 coop strats, and I want to see them used against whatever GDT fix comes out. Could test against the current Raghna tech spit experimental mod option

[timid mountain]

sign me up I'll be ur battery

[tall crane]

But that happens without coop as well

In fact before coop meta wasn't 8v8 just hold until eco wins for me?

Probably still is but that is one of the biggest reasons I don't enjoy 8v8

And its independent of coop

[wraith basin]

It’s misconceptions held by lower os players. The high os players all play front it’s much more skill expression and carry potential

[ebon turtle]

-# this belief was held long ago when more of us were bad.
-# front still has as much if not more carrying potential imo

[twin phoenix]

yeah thats a believe from back in the day when geo made 5 hounds and assumed thats gonna hold front for 10 minutes so he can just go t3

[tall crane]

Regardless if it's front or eco carrying, it's still a game devolving into one player carrying for the entire team

[fringe spear]

eco ecoing up to t3 is an antiquited style of play

eco is more like flex position, they just analysis when it's worth to make plays. for example making shit ton of spam or doing joint starlight pawn push is several times stronger than rushing maras

[mental mauve]

hey, tried the change. Can we remove flagship now(into extra units)? It's the same.

[fringe spear]

wydm the unit output is like nerfed to 66%, factoring in the cost

[mental mauve]

That sounds nice. I just died to a 20 minute flag

[fringe spear]

if it was a land lane you would have died in 12 minutes to 30 stouts
some games are just cursed

[mental mauve]

it's effectively the same thing

nah i can shoot stouts

[fringe spear]

#1390518390484893849 other thread

[mental mauve]

ah shoot wrong thread

[vale lantern]

I'm a new player, and I haven't played much yet, but I have watched a bunch of videos from various YouTubers about this game, so here's my opinion on the matter:
I personally like the idea of supporting the rest of the team with Eco. NOT sharing my starting resources and being a battery for one megabase, but also not being forced to be some late-game carry who builds T3 units to win the game. I'd like to be able to focus on building resource-producing structures and sharing resources (or the buildings themselves) to members of my team who need them while also still being able to scale up my production.
I don't mind the idea of playing a front position and having to balance micro and macro, I just like the idea that it's possible to be a more supporting role without directly engaging the enemy.
(I also like that this game has proportionally stronger static defenses and artillery than Starcraft, but that's off-topic.)

[fringe spear]

The power of coop differs by map, so there is an amount you could nerf sharing where coop is the best strat on some maps but equal or slightly weaker than solo play (with strategy boosts only)

the range of 140-115 refers to the theoritical power level of the strongest say, 20 strats

[wanton marsh]

Tax for example that many people want. Has a side effect that no on seems to consider.

The result of such change is that "good and fun" coop essentially becomes unviable or straight up bad. As well as basic team work.
While the hardest of coop the "unfun coop" like boosting will survive tax anyway and still exist. Even if in nerfed form.
So at the end the bad coop gets nerfed but honestly not enough that solo players have any chance anyway and while that was done all fun aspects of coop have been removed from game.
TLDR tax achieves the exact opposite effect of what it wants to do

[mental mauve]

I don't think we agree on what basic teamwork is or what is good and fun. You also just stated a claim, and then stated a result with no example of why that'd be the case so idk what point you're trying to make here. So far the TLDR is you didn't make a point. Can you give a reason?

[wanton marsh]

Any basic things like helping out stalling team mate. Sending metal for build projects, etc is nerfed also with desired coop. While the undesired coop still remains in the game at a strong enough level

[mental mauve]

Ya I think it's totally fine to nerf those things. They're part of the problem(it's okay if you don't though). At that point we're quibbling on what is/ isn't that much boosting and that's missing the point imho

[wanton marsh]

The point is that tax wants to remove undesired gamplay but it actually barely scratches that and instead removes desired gameplay

[mental mauve]

I would say it disincentivizes both. It isn't actually desirable to, for free, be able to boost your teammate w/ resources of any kind. That's a bad RTS mechanic that leads to unfun gameplay(what we have today)

[wanton marsh]

Yes it nerfs all coop just coop that is barely or decently stronger than solo will fall under solo level and therefore there is 0 reason to ever coop this strategy and its removes from the game. While the hard op coop is nerfed bit still maintains good power level stays in the game

[mental mauve]

This all depends on how high the tax is

[wanton marsh]

More tax = remove more strats

Hard coop however survives even with 100% tax

[mental mauve]

I'll agree you cannot solely fix coop w/ tax...but then again noone is arguing that

[wanton marsh]

Im just saying tax fundamentally doesnt achieve its goals

[mental mauve]

also more tax = different but not less

[wanton marsh]

The goal is to remove undesired coop not all coop from the game

[mental mauve]

depends on your definition of coop

[wanton marsh]

Tldr many solutions have been discussed, smart people looked at it and tax will never be put in the game.

[fringe spear]

Op coop already shits on fun coop, taxes change nothing

[mental mauve]

remains to be seen

[fringe spear]

Just like how meta solo strat shits on fun solo strat

[onyx crest]

Not sure I follow?

[wanton marsh]

Actually no

[mental mauve]

sometimes smart people figure out that they don't have a solution, which is what we have today. No solution. Ngl, you can't compeletely misunderstand a problem, provide no solution, and then use being smart as a shield. It's not how it works

[wanton marsh]

@onyx crest well for example u can steal mex from team mate. Eat com wreck. Steal metal by reclaim resurrect and other 100 ways of tax evasion hard coop.

[fringe spear]

Mex leaving is much weaker and you can target mexes. If you make coms more desirable to keep alive (e.g increase their income) then blowing com sucks more. Rez reclaim has a fix called hurty reclaim... boneless posted it earlier

[wanton marsh]

@mental mauve nah there is already solutions soon to be ready for coop by balance team but question is if gdt will allow worked out solution to be implemented

[mental mauve]

okay I'll wait

[fringe spear]

Mex leaving incredibly much weaker than vanilla coop there's much more room to over come it via skill. Or you can bomb their E and now they can't spend their metal

[gaunt forge]

the "solutions" will help but they won't be definitive 🤔

[wanton marsh]

I had today a talk with robert and i think what he proposed with some slight tweaks is very good way forward

[fringe spear]

You cannot fix coop with unit stat changes. What you do, delete ageo?

[mental mauve]

hope it works

[fringe spear]

Well currently there is nothing to show so I only see a lack of forward progress

1 week has turned into 1 month

Coop has been known problem for 1 year+

[wanton marsh]

The current concept not final are that labs should get a much higher bp to build stuff. This makes factories more valuable. And more viable to have multiple. Then additionally to that all t2 units get their cost increased bp wise and probably metal by a significant amount. That would make t2 power spike much weaker than before. Because obviously all rushed t2 units are giga broken rn. Then in general units that are op should habe their counters buffed or their weakness weakened instead of their good stat hammered down. Because if u do that all units become the same. Thats basically the main thing. And ye there will probably also be some small adjustments to deal with some edge cases etc.

[wanton marsh]

Tho what i said is i think independent from this project

[fringe spear]

those are good changes for the game, but don't fix coop

basically what it boils down to

[mental mauve]

ya not sure what that's going to help, but excited to try it regardless. I'm down to try whatever

[wanton marsh]

This changes fundamentally bring solo play closer to coop play. And player should be able to deal with t1 vs t2 rushes better. As t2 power spike would be down

[fringe spear]

it brings solo play closer to coop play but not fundamentally

does it change con/geo/ageoa/amex/fusion coop? t1 coop? t1 bombing coop? sala coop? navy coop? seaplane coop?

no it doesn't

[wanton marsh]

Currently labs are just 2700 metal for 200 bp makes no sense to build more. But if labs had lets say 1000 bp then there is much more incentive to get additional ones

[fringe spear]

more incentive to coop since a solo techer can't even use the bp

[gaunt forge]

you need to rebalance t2 units by a lot if you want to reduce the metal tax gate of t2 factories

[fringe spear]

but in general yes, more effeicent t2 lab ofc means building more is more viable

[gaunt forge]

unless you want even shorter T1 phase

[fringe spear]

You see, people ignore all the theorycraft/argument we make, and then do some theorycrafting of their own and feel satisfied without considering other things

[wanton marsh]

Yes t2 unit will get way more bp expensive too.

[fringe spear]

bp is just a cost. if rushing t2 unit is too shit then you just coop t2 mex
or any kind of t1 or t1.5 coop

[gaunt forge]

that could be ok if you adjust T2 mex cost and payout as well

[fringe spear]

knowing that the enemy takes 8-10 seconds longer to boost flak truck makes it an easy bombing target

[gaunt forge]

as well as T1 factories

[wanton marsh]

Coop will always always be better. This change just puts solo play much closer to coop. And especially makes it more fair as nothing is more unfair as t2 with no contest farming t1

But yes there is also considerations to nerf mex

[onyx crest]

https://discord.com/channels/549281623154229250/1389772638410375169

I've got a TweakDef that kinda does what you are talking about

[wanton marsh]

u probably should get in touch with @crude elbow the direction u went on some aspects is very interesting

[crude elbow]

so we meet again 😉

you are right.
Itanthias has great ideas. I really like where many things are going.
Following the deep dive we (XFactor and a few other guys) did , your tweak still looks rock solid.

Perhaps we can voice chat some time, too.

[onyx crest]

That would be good. My schedule is erratic, so PM me the kind of days and times that work for you all

[tall crane]

Robert is not on the balance team FYI

He should be though!

[edgy rover]

What?

[amber crow]

i've been saying that for a while now, with tax, only the most obnoxious coop will be relevant, and if it won't be, nothing cooped will be

[edgy rover]

If you mean loopholes, they obviously have to and can be solved.

Every single one except just taking more mexes on the map

[amber crow]

the nasty will stay, the creativity with players that dont hardcoop will be lost

like, basegiving is the best, most basic coop that has biggest value. if basegiving is not worth it taxed, nothing else is

that's the issue xfactor is pointing out. unless you balance the nasty out, tax won't solve it, just erase every coop imaginable

quakers taxes will still be best idea to play as tech on glitters

what tax does is just lowers the coop possibility bar, but the most cancer coop is at the bottom of the bar

[crude elbow]

It still helps fundamentally.

Since the co-op guys will need to think about more angles of attack, now.

You are right, of course. Coop will always have benefits in a team game. As it should.

But it shouldn't be a situation where too easy tactics give too big of a benefit. That's just not what I like to see.

I want high risk high reward situations.

You wanna only build 1 T2 lab? Go for it! We will build 2 or 3 and attack you from 3 angles. Have fun!

With cheaper labs that are actually worth their metal (in regards to BP) this is very much possible.

T2 factories pay 15 metal per BP. A T1 con pays 1.5.

They pay a tax 90% for the privilege of being static and not being able to assist.
A metal brick that places blue prints.
And you pay this gate keeper tax every single time you place a new T2 lab. That's insane. The second lab has not the same unlocking power as the first one.

Make the units more expensive. Not the factory. That will flatten the power spike. And it will give the players more choice at the beginning: more aggression or more eco (T2 mex would get more expensive, too). Additionally it will help the solo players.

An extreme example:
T2 lab costs 1 metal and gives 10000 BP.
The jags costs 3000 metal.
How big is the benefit of co-op now? Sure you can push this 1 Jag out faster, but it's not as if the solo guy would insta loose. Obviously this would be BS balance, too. But it proves that there must be a sweet spot between now and this insane example.

Now don't think: this will slow everything down. That's not the case!
If the factory costs 1000 metal less that will give you more possibilities at the start of the T2 phase. So the first few units/mex are there faster. And as such the solo player can react way easier. And the co-op would get less benefits, since every additional unit costs more and will take longer to actually pay back it's costs in benefits.

That is a fundamental change!

[tall crane]

Exactly! Coop can be addressed through balance, it doesn't need to be directly blocked. Labs are a good first stop - they are so inefficient right now. It's not even a question that making a lab is a waste of resources.

[violet fiber]

Labs having more bp will also help new players quite a bit I think. How many new players have you seen drop a lab and walk away slow building units.

Sure having no extra bp on the lab is still not good but it won't be as absolutely terrible as it is currently.

[fringe spear]

if the t2 units are unattractive you just coop the t2 mexes and spam t1 units. Or coop t1/t1.5/t3 units

again, coop is like trying to hold back a river with your hands

if you block one thing it will just flow to the next most effecient path

[fringe spear]

This not theorycraft, these coop builds exist already and you can do them right now

[vale lantern]

Reducing the prices and increasing the efficiency of a T1 lab means that the solo players are at less of a disadvantage by building more labs per team than the co-op players who build fewer labs, even if it also technically buffs the co-op build compared to current balance.
Saving 150 metal on each lab means that the solo players on an 8-player team save 1200 metal in total compared to current balance.
The co-op team, if they build 2 labs instead of 8, only saves 300 metal.
Co-op still has many advantages, but the gap is narrower.

[fringe spear]

#1389772638410375169 message

these cost changes don't change anything fundamentally, just find another thing to coop if t2 is unattractive

full t1 coop will have a significant advantage over solo too if you know what you are doing

particularly on maps that are racing to a specific location with thugs/rockets

example

it took me like 10 min to optimize those builds and they are fully executable without any teammate

In fact, it's better to have 1 person manage the economy and both coms instead of the 2nd person trying to guess how much eco to make

[vale lantern]

I think the intention behind cost and efficiency changes is to narrow the gap in performance between similar builds. They may not do enough to satisfy the people who want co-op gone, but is a 60 second difference in performance not an improvement to balance when comparing to a previous benchmark that had a 90 second advantage for co-op?

[timid mountain]

its ok we can blanket nerf all types of air play next 🙂

[fringe spear]

These particular build is not slowed down besides having slightly less metal early but that's made up for by the lab cost

• 3.5 income but -900 starting metal

By 4 minutes that's 840 metal made back

Per commander

[fringe spear]

The change nerfed t2 and mexes

Doesn't nerf everything else you can coop

In fact it nerfs the alternate strategies so t1 bombing coop is even stronger since t2 into flak truck and eco is nerfed

[vale lantern]

I'm afraid we're referencing different balance tweaks, I was referring to the changes to lab prices in #1390518390484893849 message

[fringe spear]

It makes multi t1 lab less bad yes

[crude elbow]

I am painfully aware of this.

And I don't expect this proposal to fix everything at once, that would be deluded and naive.

But I am sure it will take one big thing.
And again: it is a team game. So co-op will be better than 8 single players. That's how it works. Always.

To take it to another silly extreme: should we disallow shooting at the same enemy, too? Because it is beneficial to attack the same enemy at the same time.

So benefits are a given and are wanted, to an extent. A healthy extend. Currently it isn't healthy! We need to change things. Let's start with the most obvious. Without the big and imo unattractive nerf hammer.

I could theorycraft as long as I want. It won't help. And we might agree about it doesn't matter.
We need support from more contributors/decision makers.

[fringe spear]

coop is resource pooling, and the end result of resource pooling is 1 person control most/all of the economy, like in tournaments

there is no macro teamwork when you abandon base building and let one person control all eco. nor is it an interesting decison.

[fringe spear]

I don't understand why people are trying to do a painstaking rework of the entire game in a way that's not going to solve the coop issue
you can nerf geo/ageo doesn't matter you still coop it

It feels like people are thinking that BAR is somehow special, that you can balance coop just by changing costs, when every other game wasn't able to

and then months or a year later, when they realize it doesn't work, they will just use some kind of cope like "well we are happy with our changes, they solve the problem 33%"

it's twisted when defending one's work and status quo take precedent over game balance, especially one that makes

a playstyle a large % of the playerbase enjoys is just not viable

[crude elbow]

Please respect our intentions to make a good solution.

We know that there are many things to consider.

Coop is a magnifying glass. It shows were balance is off too wild.

We had multiple contributors trying to fix things on their own. Now Ptaq said he is willing to change stuff, we are combining ideas now.

Help us. Find the next big thing after the T2 power spike. We will take it to a better state, too.

[fringe spear]

and yet you don't discuss with members of the community who deeply know how to optimize this

you don't share solutions until they have internal inertia and people get defensive over them cause they put work into it

coop certainly is exasperated by OP units

at any stage of the game coop's aim is to make "the most impactful unit", which spirals out of control when that unit is an OP unit that does too much

but even if units had perfectly balanced power level the difference between coop and solo is night and day

you will not fix this problem

every time you finish a nano/geo/constructor/amex with centralized build power, you get faster returns
When you make a bombing run with 4 nanos instead of 2, the bombers build faster. You reach 8 bombers faster meaning the bombers themselves payback faster (less time between putting in the resources and impacting the game)

this is just as true even if you nerf these buildings. when you nerf the costs you are not nerfing coop, you are nerfing the unit for both coop and solo
This is why there needs to be a fundamental nerf to coop that specific targets the resource sharing aspect of it. Or at least a modoption that can be enabled.

Right now we have only words to go by.

Actions speak louder than words, and we have seen no actions.

[fringe spear]

taxes is compatible with the other reworks to balance the game

duh. No one said you stop trying to balance t2 vs t1 and op units after you apply taxes

the reason why quaker taxes will still be the best is because quakers are op, not because of a problem with taxes

[fringe spear]

What is the ultimate goals of these reworks?

Specifiying the end goal, what an acceptable solution(s) must achieve is a good way to prevent objective regression -- that is saying something is good enough to avoid further criticism/challenges

[crude elbow]

A well balanced game.
A game in which tactics that evolve around laying your mouse away and not playing is not the optimal play.

[fringe spear]

Would you be able to define a balanced game more concretely?

with respect to coop and solo

because depending on what the game devs want will change the possible solutions a lot

(i think we all agree about what balanced game means for units in general -- lots of different strategies and units are viable, nothing super OP)

[vale lantern]

Regarding taxes, I have to agree with Indigo's point here, as even with a 100% tax, there may still be "optimal" plays where one player receives (read: builds, steals) more Mexes than the others on their team in order to scale faster than a team with a more balanced distribution of income.

[fringe spear]

To copy robert's words " I don't expect this proposal to fix everything at once, that would be deluded and naive."

taxes cannot literally solve everything. Leaving mexes for teammates is a much smaller and delayed metal boost than base game

if it becomes an issue, we can look into possible ways to fix it, such as not having allied safe mexes so close to other teammates base, to increase walk time

[fringe spear]

the most nasty thing to coop exists because that unit has too much impact vs earlier tier units, or is just OP in general

t1 bombers / seaplanes are very strong, so is t1 when it's it secures an important part of the map

[crude elbow]

Sure.
The definition isn't perfect by any means, yet, but I will try my very best.

The high level goal is to have a game where high mental and or mechanical efforts are rewarded.
Afk strategies should be disadvantageous.

A good balance evolves around specialization. Units are good against other units but they aren't 100% hard counter.
It means that strategies with low risk won't be as rewarding as the ones that wield high risk and high rewards.
At the end, good strategies that take much effort to combine the strength of multiple people, and make use of the coordinated efforts of said people should be rewarded too.

Are we anywhere near that?
No!

But there are examples of ta-based games that don't reward afk coob. So it's possible.

[fringe spear]

what if you have two strong macroers on your team in a 4v4

but in coop meta its always 1 macroer and 3 microers

[crude elbow]

That's a bold statement.

[fringe spear]

thanks for answer. Your description of the general unit balance is interesting and I do agree.

[fringe spear]

which half of it?

[fringe spear]

The argument about afk strats being disadvantegeous is actually more nuanced than that

See, as coop supporters will point out, afking the battery is already not optimal

but pub game gameplay is more than what is purely optimal

[crude elbow]

I do.
I had a 3 hour+ call with multiple top players, yesterday.

[fringe spear]

1. coordination is very real cost, it takes time and attention to type , meaning it can be easier to just do the thing yourself. It's very easy to coordinate with yourself, hard to coordinate units with a teammate.
2. people favour best results for least effort
3. skill difference in lobbies, even just 10-20os difference. Even at similiar OS, YOU the driver are likely more knowledgable about the build / how to micro the unit you are making

[fringe spear]

anyone from op straits or glitters lobby?

everyone in pub lobby is playing NON-COOP

[crude elbow]

We are in line here, again 😉

[fringe spear]

so the reason people afk battery is because. giving your base away / coop is such an advantage that you can throw away a whole person's apm away and still be very advantaged. This is influenced by the above 3 factors #1339430217583951882 message

[fringe spear]

in line here...?

[vale lantern]

You are in agreement on that, I think is what he meant.

[crude elbow]

We have a different idea:
You can't donate your storage. You can only share the resource you are currently producing.
That will reduce the "I teleport 100000 metal around the map in 0.1 sec" benefits.

It has many implications.
T2 factories can't be cooped as easily.
If you want to help your mate? Fine but your 1000 metal in your bank won't help you. Your lane enemy will be happy to have 1000more metal worth of units.
You wanna help your mate by walking your build power over to their base.... What a shame. Now you have your cons walking around the map. Unused. And you base can't build defense as fast.

[fringe spear]

can you share units/structures?

[crude elbow]

Yes, but they can't teleport.

The con is in the base of your mate.

[timid mountain]

Can you name any or is super secret

[fringe spear]

aha, so let's call the driver player A and the battery player B

[crude elbow]

XFactor, Che and some other guys.

[fringe spear]

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16lnSNWMebKJE7kZo-3kkkaMoCBkU0upJlDRFCQWxoU0/edit?gid=0

i really want to show the devs this. Obviously there may be sampling bias but you cannot deny a lot of competitive people find the current version deeply problematic / want major coop nerfs

[fringe spear]

Player B gifts their mexes to player A. Player A builds solars and gifts them to player A

[crude elbow]

I am consulting our new and official consulting crew, too. LSR, blodir, rAndy, Modulo and Rippsy

[fringe spear]

Rippsy doesn't even play the damn game he is 25 os and only specs. modulo, blodir, randy are primarily 1v1 players

[crude elbow]

Let's get call the former battery, victim.

No BP in the base and a enemy that can produce one or two units in front of his face, now. Poor victim.

[fringe spear]

do you think I can be an advisor about the balance of league of legends just because I watch worlds and pro play, a lot?

[vale lantern]

If I'm reading this right, when you share 500 metal to your ally, does this mean that you effectively give your ally all of your M production until the transaction is complete?

[timid mountain]

Inactive, 1v1, 1v1, 1v1, perma speccer

Guys...

[fringe spear]

you may dislike my suggestions but at least the people's suggestions in the #1337861239526785064 thread have been picked apart by many different people

the solutions given by blodir and even ragna have not.

[fringe spear]

So just say I get a reclaim field and I have 5000 metal

I just get player A to share me nano turrets, and I boost their lab. Or better yet I give them the rezzers so the metal flows directly into their back account

[timid mountain]

"I wish BAR team consulted more top players for changes"
monkey's paw curls

[crude elbow]

Sweet. Make it alphabetical, pls. Otherwise it's too hard to read.

I can go through the names then. Perhaps we can talk to a few ppl. I am not sure if you asked them personally or if you made the list because of what they wrote. Text can sometimes hide intentions.

[fringe spear]

Those are people I've played with and talked with personally, or they've made it abudantly clear on discord, or people who are friends with those people vouched for their opinion

[fringe spear]

why do you need it alphabetical if you are just going to ask a few people

[crude elbow]

Correct. It isn't perfect, but it takes time and time does matter in a RTS.

[crude elbow]

To make it more organized. I am that type of guy, you know.

[fringe spear]

it's organized by rank right now, and there's a special category below. I'm sorry I can't make it alphabetical without copying it

[crude elbow]

I am here, talking with you, right?
Do you think it makes it more or less likely that we talk about a solution when you laugh at me and my intentions to make things actually better?

Let's not waste our time and energy on immature behavior.

[fringe spear]

There's 3 ways of resource sharing baked into the game
1)send m/e
2) share m/e/bp generation (incl. cons and engineers)
3) assist construction

so in your suggestion you can still freely share units/buildings, what about commander?

[fringe spear]

I don't think anyone is laughing at your intentions

[crude elbow]

Commander sharing... Yeah that's a hot topic.

[fringe spear]

everyone has good intentions, it's the manner in which they are going about things which we are disapproving of. Firstly, devs have blocked outsider's ability to test coop changes "leave it to us". Then, it doesn't inspire confidence when the panel they use to give coop advice consists of "Inactive, 1v1, 1v1, 1v1, perma speccer"

xfactor is skilled at coop ngl, but he has very competitive opinions, his viewpoint having some truth may not reflect how vast majority of player see the game

[crude elbow]

Is any of that restricted in zero k?

[fringe spear]

i d/k, does it matter?

i'm pretty sure I can make a coop build that follows your restrictions with only minor impact

without even gifting com

[crude elbow]

Yes, because if it isn't, then it is possible to disencourage afk co-op without it.

[fringe spear]

zerok has a completely different system

in zerok economy is equally shared to the teammates, which is resource sharing to everyone

[crude elbow]

And that's one goal, too. Don't invent arbitrary/random mechanics, if you can make a well balanced game.

Coop is a magnifying glass for imbalance in the game. I want to have this tool to make the game better.

[crude elbow]

What else do I need to say, then. You said it yourself.

[fringe spear]

???

[crude elbow]

Coop can be addressed in another way than taxes.

[fringe spear]

its less nerfing coop and more forcing an equal amount of coop on both sides

[crude elbow]

Is it the harder way? Yes.
Will the game benefit? Yes.

[fringe spear]

that's a lot of assumptions

https://zero-k.info/mediawiki/Cold_Takes/20_-_Teamwork_By_Default

[crude elbow]

It is 😉.
But we agree on the general direction of making the T1 and T2 factory more useful. It was easier to see that way. For me at least.

I am at work, now.

It was a good talk, imo. I learned something new.

[fringe spear]

I would advise you to read up on what zeroK actually did before concluding it is a elegant non-intrusive fix to coop

[timid mountain]

No you're right, I shouldn't laugh. However, and I don't mean this with any venom, the dev team seems kind of out of touch with their playerbase. I appreciate the effort you, Neb, and Itanthias are making.

[fringe spear]

and johannes

"do you think I can be an advisor about the balance of league of legends just because I watch worlds and pro play, a lot? "

rippsy being on that team I just cannot comprehend

[crude elbow]

Correct, Johannes listened to us this time. That's a great first step.

[crude elbow]

He isn't a consultant.
But he knows how ppl are feeling.

And that is important.

[fringe spear]

uh, he has been known to misrepresent things based on his philosphical views

[crude elbow]

Might be. Are you free of that?

[vale lantern]

Fun part about this is that at least you still have to do stuff to be able to eat a reclaim field, unlike spawning with 1k metal, giving everything to Macro, and going AFK.

[fringe spear]

sure no one is free of that, but I don't ignore evidence that my distractors have written

[crude elbow]

It is a different perspective. Worth looking into.
A good game has many aspects to it.

It can't hurt to understand a few extra views points.

[fringe spear]

he is a man who favours semantics over pragmatics

pseudo intellectualism over practicality

[crude elbow]

Might be. He still has something interesting to say.

I really don't like to talk badly about ppl. Especially if they aren't in the room.

[vale lantern]

Gating resource sharing behind income and/or BP is an interesting restriction, I'll have to think about it more to try and summarize its pros and cons compared to the current system.

[fringe spear]

interesting yes, qualified/appropriate, i doubt

anyways, that's all for the greviance

[crude elbow]

It helped me to understand you. So.... I think it helped a lot.
It didn't change a single number. It was way more valuable than that.

[fringe spear]

again, purely from a facts PoV, what makes a pure spectator more qualified when there is not any player from the glitters/straits lobbies which represent most of the game's playtime

[crude elbow]

He already added value. I hope you will see that one day.

[timid mountain]

Can you explain how?

Showing us would be cool but ik you guys can't show internal chats

[fringe spear]

that doesn't answer the question tho

I'm not denying what work he may have done for BAR, but that has nothing to do with being qualified to give advice on involved gameplay issues

[crude elbow]

He doesn't try to influence any balance numbers.

He gives advice on how to understand ppl and it worked for me.

[crude elbow]

Building bridges between you and me.

[timid mountain]

I see

[fringe spear]

I'm not sure if you are aware of this spamming the wink emoji can be taken as being condescending

[crude elbow]

Correct, I changed it. Thx for the feedback.

[fringe spear]

thank you

[fringe spear]

well, to be very on topic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UMQuKfPETQ
here's a coop build under that ruleset

this is with the additional hurdle of no-com share

using estorages to prevent e overflow

the ruleset being: no sending metal/energy directly

if you can com share you just share the commander the instant that you hit 0 metal, makes it less convoluted

[crude elbow]

So you say you can give up 100% of the tech position to get another advance?
Sounds okish for me.

You can scout this. You can lessen its impact.

Nice gaming btw

[fringe spear]

if the opponent solo techs you just 1 shot their t2 lab with 10 bombers

and the position is completely winning. you can also just bomb their geo removing their ability to match you in the air

[crude elbow]

But the green guy didn't build it, right? So he doesn't have T2 lab, too

[fringe spear]

well you have other teammates that can tech, on the north side for example

this is just a sample play

oh that is the wrong video

[crude elbow]

Yeah, you are putting all eggs into one basket. Of 2 players and you even cheat 4 estorages that's the eco of another player.

So I see a very high risk. If it gets scouted, it will have way less effect.

[fringe spear]

4 estorages is not benefiting the build

[crude elbow]

Kk

[fringe spear]

4 estorages is to prevent overflow from the battery to the driver

which is a way of bypassing the direct share restriction

see the battery is just making solars, they will never use that e

[crude elbow]

Again:
What do you want me to see or understand here?
We obviously see different things. I may have a blind spot.

For me the thing is clear: you need to have scouting information to prepare for a hidden timing attack.

It can be defended. Even with a stupid thing like: build 2 m storages in two different locations. Wait for the bombers, let them bomb, let them die, build T2 -> profit

So what should we change? Make scouting easier? Because that's the cause of the problem, not co-op.

[fringe spear]

why would you build 2 m storages?

[crude elbow]

Because then the enemy can't bomb my t2 lab.
It doesn't exist

Scouting information can be used to make the attack useless

[fringe spear]

Not making the t2 lab??? You just bomb their geo and solar

That is not a real solution

[crude elbow]

Well green didn't get any eco up. That is bad for the cold team, right? That's with more than a single ageo.

Make prude

[fringe spear]

maybe we need to actually simulate a 2v2 scenario

with real players. not to win, but just to see what is possible/not possible

[crude elbow]

Think about ideas on how to make the investment not worth it.

[fringe spear]

from my experience, geo --> t1 bombing on straits is an S tier build

[crude elbow]

Even if it gets scouted?
In minute one?

[fringe spear]

the timing between making 4 nanos and making the bombers is not that much
you don't know that it's a bombing until I throw down the air lab

it could be just tech

basically, IF there is a geo, you will coop it

[crude elbow]

So what mechanics would be needed to have an adequate reaction time and way to react?

[fringe spear]

the difference in bombing timing between 4:22 and 5:30 is completely different

one of them the enemy can get a flak truck out solo, the other one it's impossible solo

merely getting the geo up super fast puts you significantly ahead no matter what you choose to do after

remember the goal of the reworks, was to encourage people to have a base?

[crude elbow]

Imagine the T2 lab was free.

[fringe spear]

the cost to make t2 units is the sum of lab + units

if the t2 lab is free then it doesn't matter you are paying 1000m for a flak truck, which is silly

[crude elbow]

True.

[fringe spear]

you cannot say coop is not a problem because "oh ifI make flak truck 0metal then your plan gets countered"

coop just takes an existing build and makes more of the unit, faster

if the unit is useless, then the coop is probably useless too

just like how tzar coop was not that favoured back in the day because sneaky pete + spybot were too brutal

[crude elbow]

I don't.

It is a problem. And I want it to be RISKY as f... To build 9 bombers instead of ground units.

[fringe spear]

it depends on how many players are on the map

[crude elbow]

Imagine anti air ground units being fast. Then you could "skirmish" the bombers on the way to their target.

I am not saying this is the solution. I am just saying: there are more creative solutions than: delete this mechanic from the game.

[fringe spear]

tax is not delete the mechanic from the game

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73HWHIE-Pnc

is this video work for you?
anyways, I am saying that stopping direct resource sharing only can be worked around and you can do a very similiar coop build

there are other ways to effectively "teleport" your banked resources to the driver

like simply making E and estorages and gifting them. or making mexes and gifting them

Or by gifting the battery nanos

once the battery has emptied their 1000 metal, it's better for one person to control all the economy

why? because of coop reasons, but also because it avoids having to get around the restriction in the future

if the battery keeps any economy, they have to keep making structures and gifting them

if they give all their economy away, they don't have to do anything, and it works

This is already well known among people in #1337861239526785064

It's the 3 ways of resource sharing baked into the game

1. send m/e
2. share m/e/bp generation (incl. cons and engineers)
3. assist construction
4. (overflow)

you are only restricting 1), so I'm using 2) to resource share instead

[timid mountain]

dunno if just me but ur video broke 1 minute in and worked again when bombers lifted off lab

[fringe spear]

yeah same for me, super wierd

it works for me when I play the vid on my desktop

[timid mountain]

gonna chalk it up to yt being weird, broken anyway I try to watch it

[crude elbow]

I see.

I mean it still takes a lot of coordination, which is a skill and it takes effort. Being rewarded for that with a faster goes seems appropriate. It's not 8 1v1s on a map. But it's a bit too save, that is true. We need mechanics to punish the greed.

Bombers are punishing the greed to skip AA and scouting.

What can punish the greed here?

[fringe spear]

I could talk to my teammate for 15 minutes, and tell them oh build exactly 12 solars, then estorage now, share the mex nwo

[crude elbow]

That sounds like some work.

[hot flint]

most battery boosting would literally be better if plkayer didnt exist and instad just gave u their com at first 1 second of game

[fringe spear]

the only reason why you don't give the com at 0:00s is it would overflow to team

[crude elbow]

A state we all hate.

[hot flint]

yeah u need to get the 500 storage or spend it first

[fringe spear]

giving the com at 3:30 and giving the com at 1:00 it's all the same to me

[hot flint]

u lose 500 storage if he instant gives, so u wait until u spend that first usualy to fully optimnize