Resource sharing rework (anti-commie)

[warm oriole]

High level rotato games have, to my knowledge, always been a coop fest. 2-3 players coop a single t2 lab and the one who is faster/more efficient wins. The last few months there's also been a significant increase in communism gameplay in high level ATG lobbies (I don't have information for SI lobbies).

I personally am a huge commie/boosting hater, and I know a lot of people feel a similar way. To me, coop/commie fast t2 lab isn't an expression of skill, it's who gets a better team to actually get the players together and kill the team that doesn't do it. Because let's be real, when you aren't expecting a 4-man commie vehlab, you will lose over the next few minutes due to mausers and jags and bulls. Or a tzar. Or whatever. (This has been amplified by the ludicrous spybot nerf but that's a different topic).

Now here's what I propose - a setting which would only allow a player to receive and send as much as is x% of the total metal they produced themselves. The shared value is increased whenever the player receives a shared unit/metal. The principle also applies to metal shared through build power.

I originally had the idea that giving away something would decrease the value storing how much the player received, which would mean he could receive more, but that wouldn't solve the problem with BP boosting a lab as it's simple to just share the unit to reset this counter infinitely.

Some exceptions that could be considered:

• Sharing a commander wouldn't count towards this
• When a player has <5 metal income per second, he can receive as many builder units as needed until the metal rises over the threshold again.
• Metal reclaimed from team structures won't increase the amount of metal that can be received. Should metal from wrecks count towards that?
• Depending on how much metal was mined by the team, should the percentage decrease? This is because at start 10% means virtually nothing, but at 10 minutes when people have 20-30k metal produced, that's suddenly 2-3k metal able to be shared - enough to commie a lab together for a bit.

Example:
Let's say we have player A, player B, player C.
Percentage of shareable metal is 10% of all mined by the player.

1 minute into the game, all players have ~500 metal produced. That means that each of the can only receive about 50 metal - less than 2 wind turbines. At 5 minutes, player A has received nothing from their team and has mined 10k metal - they can receive up to 1k metal from their teammates. Player B has received 3 solars sometimes during that time, and and mined just 8k, so he can only receive 350 metal, and thus no t2 con.

The problems I can see with this approach

• Traditional tech spots will no longer work like now, since the tech player won't be able to receive payment from all players due to the sharing cap - is that a bad thing though? It will probably force multiple people to tech, or maybe no one to tech, or just slow tech down in general, thus prolonging the already short t1 phase.
• A player flexing into another lane to support it and then giving away the units for the other player to control won't be possible that well since not all of the units might be transferred - on the other hand it will actually require tech spots to controll their units and show their skill, instead of just afk afusing and giving away units for other to control.

[solar cedar]

Just my 2 cents since this has been discussed on multiple fronts so far:
Communism seems to spoil the fun for the majority of the players and there seems to be reluctance to restrict it because it means reducing the possible ways of playing the game. But I think in that case it would be for the greater good.

I like what you're suggesting and the "Problems" you mention I don't really see as a problem but rather think it would increase fun and depth. What would be so wrong with me having to tech myself while playing front? Finding that sweet spot when it's possible is a fun challenge. Tech players controlling their own units? I'm all for it!

[warm oriole]

The problems were meant more like "stuff that has a big chance to upset a large amount of people". I also think it would in most cases provide for more fun gameplay

[warm oriole]

Resource sharing rework (anti-commie)

[slim canopy]

Just remove resource/unit sharing entirely and disable ally construction turret/con units assisting factories and make unit market as replacement for unit sharing, problem solved.

Assisting Ally Factory sure is teamwork strategy and its valid. But if its being used to cheese games then its straight up abusing the system. This is amplified by players playing as a party then being used as a battery for resources.

[cerulean fern]

op way too complicated and not wysiwyg

need cleaner solutions

[bright basin]

I think we can start with disabling resource slinging (throwing 2k m in 1 second), and see where it goes from there?

This way, there is no instant resource transfer, and players would have to share mexes/winds, which would take time to make resources, this will drastically decrease the effect of communism mid and late game, but early batteries would still exist

[warm oriole]

obviously there would need to be a bar (haha) that would show your limit and availability

it's just a general idea, the basic premise is you can receive x% of metal mined, everything else is up for discussion

[cerulean fern]

yeah but how do you explain why that bar is there

[warm oriole]

in a similar way you explain why the storage bars are there

[warm oriole]

Straight up nuking everything would be bad for the game, there needs to be teamplay available imo

just not so freely as it is now

[reef umbra]

last time we removed communism - 3 backline players left and we were unable to take; take their overflow

[tardy axle]

As far as i know, the commi strats are annoying only when they happen in the first minutes of the game. Is anyone annoyed by sharing at like 10+ minutes?

[cerulean fern]

you either have the tzar and slinger rushes or you have the vanguard/razor/abductor rushes

which do u like more

[warm oriole]

There's also a 4 man t2 lab boost plays which are not just the first 10 minutes if both teams do it

[warm oriole]

obviously dc + take wouldn't be affected by this

and if people were leaving on purpose, well that's punishable by CoC afaik?

[reef umbra]

currently if you wish not to play the game at any time you are encouraged to leave/ resign. So, CoC fails here imo

[reef umbra]

currently they are (the anti commie settings in the client) so that's why I barked it here

[warm oriole]

yeah but if someone was constantly leaving the game just to have someone else take their stuff they would get moderated at least by the lobby if not the mods

[sturdy quiver]

there's no way around this you must embrace it. Even if you ban all resource sharing, then self-ding your mex and having the player with the t2 lab rebuild it will still be optimal

[warm oriole]

But I don't want to remove t2 con sharing with this

[onyx lodge]

Tbh no commu including resource sharing, overflow, t2s, unit sharing - nothing isnt so bad to play with

It extends t1 phase so much and removes all the ways to exploit commu and boosting except just taking ur teammates mexes manually. The only issue is if ppl drop.

Problem could be solved if only lower os than the droppie could take if someone dcs. If lowedt guy on team dcs, the guu above could still take (bottom 2)

But yea some sort of fix for that while still allowing t2 store would be nice, and its definetively possible contra to what some ppl say

[cerulean fern]

I would like the full block kellar is suggesting, the classic eco meta is basically pure team boosting/commie anyway with eco players almost never using the units they produce

[cinder palm]

How about.. everyone gets a share-alowance of 10% of their ressources produced.
Above that threshold you can share ressources(in any form, raw, units, nano-support, overflow) for an increasing fee up to a hard limit of 20% of your ressources produced.

That way a lategame eco can easily hand off a titan or a couple of maras to a dead ally for microing but earlygame ppl cant just pool their ressources. The alowance is a balance, so trading "metal for t2" is a neutral operation regards that balance

[warm oriole]

actual trading of resources where sending metal would do the opposite of receiving metal would not stop commie, it would merely mean people will trade metal for units infinitely

[onyx lodge]

Wont work. Meta will be to have highest os make a t2 lab and share con turrets to entire team

And entire team boosts blue/red pkayer by 20% times 7

Commy needs to be removed or taxed. Period.

[cinder palm]

That way they still have to make their own eco for their own units preventing the full merging of multiple players, preventing inofficial archon mode at least.

[onyx lodge]

We already have that though 😄

Just need to enable it

Make it meta

[cinder palm]

people fumble the settings and disable tech-role that way because they forget to enable unit market

[warm oriole]

This idea isn't aimed at unofficial archon, it's mainly aimed at communism and 4-man lab boost etc.

[onyx lodge]

I dont like the e overflow autoshare mechanic in itself. Eco missmanagement gets rewarded, not punished

[cinder palm]

though the question is whether the idea is to fully-disable cooperation or to only weaken it

[warm oriole]

weaken resource pooling significantly

[onyx lodge]

+20% tax on all commu related stuff including overflow, metal sendt, units traded, bp boosting etc.

If u want to trade a unit worth 1000m u need to tax 200m to trade it.

U can send up to 500 metal(total) before tax would solve commu and not change meta much

[warm oriole]

imo 20% tax isn't really gonna solve commu

it's still going to be worth it to 4-man commie a t2 lab

[cinder palm]

7x500 is enough for a t2 lab tho so everyone could send 500 to blue/red while they eco up in the back.. then they start building t2 with their huge eco.

Someone above said the issue is rushing it so why not lock the ressource-sharing behind a lab-pried building?

That at least delays it and puts a price tag on it

[warm oriole]

yeah, which is why I proposed a limit on how much a player can receive, which scales with time

[warm oriole]

having to build a building will never pass past GDT, and it's just too artificial

[onyx lodge]

True

30% maybe, idk. Some number at least

Just taxing it completely solved the issue with resource sharing in aoe 2

But it was mentally op even at 20% tax in top lvl games

[last helm]

just adding a tax seems the most elegant solution by far tbh
realtively simple to tweak for finer balance too

[onyx lodge]

But no matter what u can always self d ur com and give it to blue to eat xD

And u can build high metal cost dense structures and they can eat them

But u could even tax that tbgh

[warm oriole]

you can do that even now, and losing a com hurts

[warm oriole]

that's why reclaiming allied structures would count towards the allowance of what you can receive, and anything over that would vanish into thin air

[last helm]

that would feel really bad tho ngl
like you'd add some form of new UI component, sendbank? receivebank?

and like, you give your ally some units to defend their base so you can continue to micro your own front.
but oops, you can't because their receivebank is full?

if the issue is commie, just taxing metal transfers between players would solve it.
or limiting. but arbitrary limits feel extremely shitty in a game like BAR

[cerulean fern]

how do you tax sharing mexes and winds?

[last helm]

i wouldn't

the main criticism boils down to "the whole team can pool resources and just rush T2, which is insanely effective at clearing T1 and has little counter"
sharing mexes and winds takes a lot longer and is a lot more scouteable than just everyone donating their 1K to a single player

tbh, to me the commie issue sounds more like T2 is too efficient vs T1, if people are still worried about it if you'd include a tax

[cerulean fern]

there is the additional (and most common) method of simply gifting con turrets to allies that pump their resources into another lab

[warm oriole]

yeah that's one of the concerns I raised in the OP. But to be frank it wouldn't be that bad in my opinion. And it would also mean tech players will actually have to show some skill apart from afus farming

[warm oriole]

You can also just transfer all your economy, which is basically archon mode, and it achieves the same effect but avoids the tax. That's why a system that affects all forms of metal transfer is needed

[last helm]

are you then also going to forbid building on your team's metal spots?
like, where does the "anticommie" stop?

transfering eco, feeding that way is quite a bit slower than just spawning and dumping everything into 1 player

[warm oriole]

who said anything about forbidding from building on teammates metal spots?That's one thing I don't think should be removed, because it would slow down the pace of the game a lot, unnecessarily prolong it, and probably result in less t1 fights since everyone will just eco to get their own lab.

[warm oriole]

except it's not, because good players are able to plan it all out

[last helm]

#1354154551002923191 message
transfer all your eco, meaning gifting your mexes/winds
small step to just letting yout teammate build them

[warm oriole]

anticommie stops when people aren't able to coop labs together easily (be it through nanos, or just resource sending) and when 2 spawn spot archon mode is impossible (meaning when one player gives their whole base to a higher rated player to double their eco)

[last helm]

like, the commie subject is relatively controversial from what i read
nuking it entirely is going very far

[warm oriole]

Not sure I follow here...

[warm oriole]

it's not very controversial, most people don't like it, they're just forced to do it or lose. obviously there are some who like it but they are a minority by far

[last helm]

ideally, it's an optional tactic that has risks and rewards involved
atm it's just basically a free win

[last helm]

you say transfering all your eco is commie too, but what's the big difference from just not taking my mexes and leaving them for my to-boost-teammate

[warm oriole]

the difference is that the teammate can't build them as fast as you can yourself

so there's a metal loss, and more energy cost

• extra required apm

[last helm]

which is easily also simulated with a transfer tax

as opposed to introducing an entire new mechanic that heavily impacts the rest of the game

[warm oriole]

yeah, but a 20% transfer tax won't stop a 4-man commie

and it's not the same at all

and a 20% transfer tax does not affect eco building sharing, or unit sharing, which is also something this suggestion is meant to adress

[last helm]

that 20% tax does turn it into a 3500metal play, from 2900
that's another 600 metal in units your front's missing

ngl, coming into this game, the commie problem just sounds like T2 is way too strong, if there's really no pricepoint where T1 can compete

[warm oriole]

t2 needs to be marginally stronger than t1, otherwise what's the point for transferring to t2. T2 cost is perfectly fine for a 1 man play, where the player commiting to it will have a massive disadvantage with the t1 army until he gets the t2 units out. But if the huge metal cost is spread across 4 people who all lose just a bit of army compared to their opponents.... that's the main problem

[last helm]

the complaints i read are not that they're getting marginally outcompeted by their commy enemy
the complaints are basically, T2 -> tzar -> literally no amount of T1 can compete

that's going further into the weeds tho, not really specific to this thread

sorry

[warm oriole]

any form is just bad

tzar or fatboy are a bit more manageable but super annoying, and it's the meta on basically any rotato map

glitters has been seeing a 4-5man t2 vehlab commie which is pure cancer

[cerulean fern]

if you look at how top and bottom spawns on tartar are played that may not be so true

I think a solid case could be made that t2 labs are slightly too easy to rush

[solar cedar]

Not saying this would solve all problems but why would a building that unlocks resource sharing be too artificial? I find this rather strait forward. Some kind of "Energy/Matter Transformation Network". Also I don't know what "GDT" is.

[warm oriole]

Game Design Team

Basically the people that call decisions. A building like that was already discussed in multiple places and afaik the consensus always was that it just slightly delays the problem instead of solving it, and doesn't really fit the game theme (just relaying info as I remember it)

[unreal cloak]

AoE market

Imagine having drones transporting metal to allies

[solar cedar]

Thanks! And do you agree with that? 🙂
Because to me it seems that the price tag on this building can solve the resource sharing problem - especially if every player that wants to share resources/units/buildings needs to build it (not to receive resources/units/buildings though).

[warm oriole]

Obviously the price tag would be decisive. It can't be too low or it will allow for commie, but it can't be too high because it will completely destroy any light cooperation which is something that the game needs.

And a building like this would just invalidate the classic t2 con buying meta. Which might be a good thing? Tech spot still techs up to t2, but instead of cons they make units asap and give their team the time to transition to t2 on their own.

I'm not entirely in favor of such a building but I could see it being at least tested

[solar cedar]

But I think it wouldn't destroy the t2 con building meta because that's a building only the tech player would n e e d to build and then could share to everybody (again not saying it's a good meta). With the right price tag that would still be worth it.

Price tag maybe: something like a t1 vehicle lab but with 3x the energy cost or so.

Oh... and the Com shouldn't be able to build it. But only a t1 engi (vehicle/bot/air/amphib)

[warm oriole]

imo if anything it should be a t2 building

[solar cedar]

Even better - I like it

[reef umbra]

if commie is out; I might start enjoying the game again; (currently 4 games per week?)

[last helm]

t2 would be very drastic tho. but something built by a t1 con basically locks out what people hate, no?

[solar cedar]

Yea, I could still imagine it being a t1 constructor - could also be t2. A t1 contructor would maybe still enable some high risk, high reward plays with communism on t1 which might be interesting.

But the building would need to:

• only enable the player who built it to share resources/units/buildings
• be not buildable by the com
• cost something like a t1 vehicle factory with 2-3x the energy cost

I think this would change a lot for the better

[warm oriole]

not really since you can build it before a t2 lab which is the by far most commied thing in the game)

[solar cedar]

But with this every player who'd like to share resources for the powerbuild t2 lab would need to build that building - and then, I think, it'd lose it's imbalance. What do you think?

[warm oriole]

i mean it would obviously delay the commie timings but not by that much - i think like by a minute or two at best. It would be better than nothing obviously though

[rapid phoenix]

Dude you really don’t get the issue then. We can have a razor when you’re getting your first t2 units out

[onyx lodge]

That is quite literally half the point

[rapid phoenix]

Commie tzar is not at all the issue. Commie tzar sucks compared to the stuff ppl are doing

[chilly kraken]

im definitely more in the no boost at all camp than anything

[daring jay]

past 10 minutes you can coop flagship

partly it's the flagship being moderately op

but whenever you have a high cost unit that generates value over time, coop on it is a complete no brainer

furthermore cooping it reduces the vunerability time while building

[bleak karma]

One possible solution for the "make this building to enable sharing" would be to enable sharing when a T2 or T3 lab is complete and operational, but only for the player who made it. It would still allow for T2 cons to be shared with the rest of the team, but the rest of the team would not be able to share any metal to build them (or a Tzar).

One thing that hasn't been addressed is the rare occasion where a player is effectively eliminated from the game (has no way to build anything) before a T2 lab is made. A special exception would need to be made for sharing T1 constructors if a player has no constructor units of any kind.

[onyx lodge]

In c&c generals we call that dozer hunted 😁

[chilly kraken]

tbh, this happens rarely enough that we can just let them spectate. Then, if it's worth figuring out we could find a way to share cons w/e. It is a bit interesting there's currently no dying as an individual...maybe there should be? That adds a measurable amount of stakes which might be good?

[last helm]

individual death just sounds like punishing people for buying time for their teammates, is that something you want to do?

like, already sucks when you're a front, have a good game for 10 minutes, and then spend half an hour watching the eco players outscale everyone and play with the big toys.

[chilly kraken]

ya I hear that, I'm more saying that the interval people have share units to 'get someone back in the game' is a reasonable tradeoff to remove the frankly majority of games that are ruined by commie stuff. If we can have both great, but if we have to pick, I pick the latter.

[warm oriole]

most often when a player is wiped there's no point in rebuilding, they'll be way too behind, better to allow another player take the mexes

and ask for some units to micro yourself

[chilly kraken]

ngl pretty true...so you could still have sharing of military units and no worries right?

[warm oriole]

with my original proposition that would only be possible to an extent

you would be able to get new units until you run out of the metal received limit

so you'd either need to make sure your micro is perfect so you don't lose units, OR you can get a con to rebuild, and the con wouldn't count towards the metal received limit until you get above like 5m/s

[chilly kraken]

i'd be down to just remove sharing and see what we have ha

[elfin spear]

Wasn't aware high-OS games had this kind of conundrum. Looks like a very difficult problem to address without cutting off sharing entirely. Gotta take a bath and think this one thoroughly.

[chilly kraken]

Yep, it is complicated. Or...well, not if you just remove it. It get's difficult when people try to keep some of the things they like(or think they do).

[daring jay]

it's technically optimal for them not to rebuild and just let someone with the bp to take their mexes

and just recieve units to micro

[elfin spear]

I mean, being unable to provide T2 cons for your team is a big deal, that will undermine the strategic depth immensely. Perhaps you can also account for how much a given player can recieve as metal/units based on metal value he destroyed, so that backliners can't just do shenanigans they please, but active combatants still can get tributes. Again, gonna give it a think.

[daring jay]

well it can be good for them to have some economy to make the all importnat grunt screen ig
spam and rez bot control

[daring jay]

you can just make t2 cons an exception

[elfin spear]

Sure, but that be a strange one, and impossible to illuminate and explain.

[cerulean fern]

there are other fringe cases where sending rez is hard to replace, like a high economy player losing his bp

he will instantly start overflowing shitloads of metal

[daring jay]

t2 cons can be bought because that is an expected part of gameplay and serves a purpose to let non-teching teammates build their economy smoothly

tbh buying t2 and ecoing is insanely storng

in optimized builds the buying player is so much stronger than the techer (they have the metal to build 4-5 con turrets)

although optimally you should commie the techer m and e

[elfin spear]

It is not more "expected part of gameplay" than just making units and sharing them to other players to micro. It's just a front/tech meta. Hence why you cannot make a good argument for the exception other than arbitrary "that's what people should be able to do, but not the other things".

There should be a more general rule IMHO. I can't suggest anything off my head though.

[daring jay]

well

in no-sharing land, if you are frontline for 8 minutes, and its not going great

you will never be able to afford t2 lab to make your own t2
No selling t2 con is a viable game mode, but there might be undesired consequences

making your own t2 lab at 14-15 minutes when the techer made their's at 5 minutes is rough

not to mentin, it can be better for the techer to let you die then retake the ground and mexes

because you won't be able to upgrade the mexes for so long

[bleak karma]

It's one of the best features of the game if you ask me. Even if they're not able to help in a meaningful way it makes the player feel better knowing they're not completely out of the game and forced to spectate while they wait for their team to win or lose. It's especially nice in casual and noob lobbies where there's lots of time to rebuild in the early/mid game because people aren't as skilled at closing out games without T3 or nukes.

[rapid phoenix]

Can we just agree we are talking about balance for competitive play with gamers who know how to play the game and not about noob lobbies ?

[last helm]

well yes but this suggestion basically nukes that too. depending on gamestate, you can get gifted a handful of units and ... that's it then.
moving over to microing troops is better but that's getting slashed too.
that said, if you have no bp you're just overflowing to someone with bp anyway, i don't think it's that big of a difference really

[last helm]

not sure we can. i think the most complaints here are in relation to higher OS public lobbies?

[bleak karma]

Yes you can, but changes to fundamental gameplay mechanics should also take lower skilled players into account. Catering entirely to a small number of highly skilled players risks making the game less enjoyable for less skilled players and can cripple the growth of the game or even kill the longevity of the game altogether.

[solar cedar]

I think the edge case of a player "almost" eliminated is also fairly covered if a t2 building would enable sharing resources/units/buildings for the player who built it. In worst case the almost eliminated player has to wait for any player to reach t2 and build that building (which the techer will build anyways because it enables to share t2 cons).

Actually I think this would already be a good solution.

• t2 building that enables sharing of resources/units/buildings for that player
• if it's a t2 building the cost actually wouldn't need to be high (maybe like a t1 lab)
• it'd still prevent pooling of resources as soon as t2 hits because every player who wants to pool resources would need to build it.

Wouldn't that work?

[daring jay]

giving/selling them t2 cons is good enough to get them back in the game, while not being efficient

honestly I don't mind elimination as much because it adds more gravity to the situation

[bleak karma]

When matchmaking is implemented I think elimination should be the default rule for team games, but the definition of "elimination" would need some discussion. Saying that a player is eliminated because their commander is dead is probably too harsh in a large team scenario (although it would prevent my least favourite strategy of suiciding your commander for metal), so maybe if you have no build power you're forced to resign?

[warm oriole]

The problem with this approach is it delays commie, maybe by some minutes, but still doesn't eliminate it. It will just mean commie will come later, and the team that does the commie will have a huge advantage once again

[daring jay]

i mean just having no base left --> economic elimination. if you couple that with no sharing combat units (you have to control your own units), then it's defacto elimination

technically you can rebuild by sharing metal and selling them t2 cons but it's often not worth it

no sharing combat units is a niche option, but it does de-incentivize eco'ing in the back because if your teammates die you literally have to micro everything

it gives you a real incentive to protect your frontliner's base

because rebuilding it is annoying and you don't have the apm to control everything

[solar cedar]

From my understanding we don't need to eliminate it but give the opposing players a time window in which they can prevent it while not playing communism themselves. A t2 push would then be a valid counter strategy.

[warm oriole]

How would you want to t2 push though? Your team pooled resources into multiple t2 labs

[bleak karma]

Efficiency shouldn't be a consideration in terms of gameplay mechanics. If players choose to be efficient by not rebuilding that's a choice that a knowledgeable player can make.

[warm oriole]

while the enemy team only built one lab

[solar cedar]

Maybe we're missunderstanding eachother. If the enemy team wants to pool resources they all (or some of them) need to build that t2 building that enables resource/unit/building sharing. This is initially an investment which can be punished by the other team by pushing.

[daring jay]

yeah which is what it is

[rapid phoenix]

maybe... idk ... get gud?

[daring jay]

na it's losing sight of the playerbase

[solar cedar]

Yea, ignoring lower skilled players is a good way into an abandoned game 😄

[bleak karma]

Players don't play games they don't enjoy, which leads to people leaving the game which in turn leads to lower player counts which inevitably leads to no game at all. It's happened to literally thousands of games. Players who enjoy the game will naturally "get gud" over time whether they're tryhards or casuals, so it's important to make sure they continue to enjoy the game while they improve.

[rapid phoenix]

Do you think it's enjoyable to fight against jags and mausers with your rocket bots?

[daring jay]

there's a large % of players who only play single player, or just coop mode perhaps

[rapid phoenix]

Personally I think it's a worse new player experience gaming against someone who is 5 minutes ahead of you on tech

[daring jay]

yeah can someone make make a short list of what part of sharing is apprecaited in lower level games?

[bleak karma]

Sure

[rapid phoenix]

or even worse - 10 minutes ahead (t3 commie)

[daring jay]

like what features are valuable to players

(such as ability to come back in game after having base destroyed)

[daring jay]

yeah coop has trickling negative effects on new players too

like getting gangbanged with double economy opponent

what is there to learn when there's nothing you personally could have done

[bleak karma]

The option to rebuild after critical damage, the ability to share different types of constructors, the ability to share transports, being able to shore up a struggling player's economy by sharing some metal/energy, giving some rez bots to someone on a different front

[rapid phoenix]

balancing around noobs who don't know how to play is like balancing basketball around ppl who can't shoot a free throw

maybe.. idk.. get better?

[daring jay]

is race switching super important? or can that be delayed until t2

[bleak karma]

You have to balance around and consider both. Noobs become skilled players if they continue to play the game. They won't want to "get gud" if the game punishes them too hard for being bad.

That's just human nature concerning video games

[rapid phoenix]

Noobs who want the game balanced around their low level of skill will not, typically, ever be a high skill gamer. They have the wrong mentality for improvement

[warm oriole]

the window is really small, and unless the building costs the same as t2 labs, which a normally playing team will build multiple of, it will still be way faster to build 1 lab alone and then immediately switch to pooling

[daring jay]

it's not balanced, it's the game design / features / experience

[bleak karma]

It's not important super early, but it's more like being able to share a T1 air con so someone can place artillery on high ground or something

Cheeky niche plays that make players feel good for using the terrain

[daring jay]

balancing should usually focus on highest lv because for the most part low lv players don't abuse units so bad that they break the game

[daring jay]

transport and ground con works too

the reason why I felt the need to disable t1 con sharing in my modoption is, being gifted 1-2 cons early game, esp in the safe backline is insane
even bigger issue, the backline player can give you a con to cap their mexes

[rapid phoenix]

I think it's reasonable to make strategies that are really easy to win with (commie) weaker because it can really crap on a new player and make them (somewhat justifiably) want to uninstall the game

[daring jay]

playing against the best player in the chess club is fun, but not if they have an extra queen lol
what do you have to learn from that

[rapid phoenix]

correct. nice analogy

[coral elk]

But they don’t have an extra queen, they just have control of an extra queen

Both teams have the same resources at the start

[daring jay]

yeah but it's usually a backliner boosting

their pieces are on another chess board and take time to arrive. plus double lab cost

[bleak karma]

It's more like someone from another table gave them an extra queen 3 moves in

Which under normal chess rules is impossible

[rapid phoenix]

yes that's exactly what dude just said

[bright basin]

I guess a better analogy would be that its an 8v8 chess tourney, and the best player on the enemy team is making moves for the other players (does not strictly apply to BAR ofcourse, since BAR is an actual 8v8 team game)

[daring jay]

basically you crush them fast before enemy team can react and punish the weakness... or if it's a backline boost, you win the game so hard that backline making eco that pays off in 300 sec doesn't matter at all

[coral elk]

The map is the table, sharing units doesn’t add any units to the total

[daring jay]

ok the anology is kinda losing it's purpose

[bright basin]

lol

[rapid phoenix]

you guys have lost the plot lol. can't think abstractly enough to understand a basic analogy rip

[coral elk]

Why is it a bad thing to allow players to have a play style that can assist in ways other than microing units?

I have a friend who love playing sim city but dislikes managing battles, so he builds units using his eco and shares them to me, playing this way we both get to express our skills, and both get to have fun

[daring jay]

so how it can work is, backliner can skip building a factory (saves 6k bp), they can focus on using their commander to cap more mexes and make e

where as the frontliner recieves enough metal/e to make use of most or all of their commander bp boosting lab or construction
so it lets you start your com in the back yet have the army of 2 (or even more, since skip lab) people

[rapid phoenix]

that works for 5v5 but when you have 8 comms on most maps rly 3 gamers should just be going afk

[bleak karma]

It's only bad when it warps the game to be the only viable strategy. Having a techer isn't the problem, it's how badly the current resource sharing system distorts normal gameplay

[daring jay]

sharing eco is fine but we're saying it's too powerful atm

[rapid phoenix]

sharing resources is normal gameplay. that's the issue

[bright basin]

In casual games, resource/unit sharing is better for the game since it makes things more fun for everyone.
At the height of the competitive ladder, resource/unit sharing feels unfair and is not fun to play against

[coral elk]

APM is a resource that needs to be managed just as much as metal, energy, and build power.

Unit sharing allows teams to work together in ways that exemplify this dynamic.

[rapid phoenix]

wdym the height? in avg 20os lobbies you can shit on ppl by pooling money

[daring jay]

you can't scout resource transfer, all optimal gameplay involves pooling resources

[bleak karma]

Optimizing the fun out of games is what gamers do best

[rapid phoenix]

ppl act like this is some sort of michael jordan dunk skill expression. it's dragging a slider bro

[daring jay]

it lets you cap mexes in the back but produce all your units near the front

[rapid phoenix]

you can get 50os just by slider gaming. i'm convinced of this

[bright basin]

The thing, most people dont, its only the sweaters who do it, and inevitably rise higher in the skill rating

[coral elk]

The only reason it’s “unfair” is because they’re outplaying you with teamwork. Last I checked, each team starts with 8 commanders

[rapid phoenix]

wdym i do it when i want to chill. when i'm trying hard i micro my own units

there should be like a minimum threshold of games played to comment on these threads. you guys lack exposure to the game and these strategies

[daring jay]

is it teamwork if i convince all my 0os to give me their base
cause that's an ez way to get a big advantage

[bright basin]

Theres already been an extended discussion on this, most people in the op lobbies are doing this. The discussion is that it is not fun to become a battery every single game, simply because right now its the optimal way to win

[coral elk]

This sounds like a matchmaking issue more than anything

[rapid phoenix]

it's not

[bright basin]

I think I am in a better position to comment on this, so please keep your personal attacks to yourself, low os 🙂

[daring jay]

in practice there always will be some os spread

[daring jay]

even in a perfect matched game where everyone is equal skill level, coop is still optimal
for various reasons

[rapid phoenix]

i'm not talking about you skyfire but if you wanna talk - you would drop 20os without this crap lol

[coral elk]

Why are you in a lobby with 0os players if you are skilled enough to make a bigger impact on the game than all of their apm combined.

Like I said, apm is a resource that needs to be managed

[bright basin]

Only one way to find out

[daring jay]

even a 20os taking 0os

sure ideally the 0os player who left should micro
but who cares when the op take is good enough

[rapid phoenix]

like sure if I gave KDBRA all my money every game I would be 45 os as well

i like improving and having fun - sorry

[coral elk]

That’s not teamwork that’s you being carried

Which, while being possible, is not necessarily an advantage for your team because now that skilled player needs to pull your weight apm wise

[daring jay]

indeed, but it's a legal way to hit leaderboard lol

[bright basin]

Do you think high os people would be in here arguing against communism if that was their only skill? Its the other way around, please read, the low os want to keep it because its more fun for the game at that skill llevel, and only becomes unfun in the higher os lobbies

[daring jay]

i mean just rush good units. you never play coop to play a fair game. u just abuse the fk out of early timing units

[rapid phoenix]

The low os commenting here have barely played the game dude

many of those with more hours in the game are sick of this and want more individual skill expression

[daring jay]

you can just put it as a modoption, that way you can make changes without being afraid of bricking plp's experience for 2 months

[coral elk]

Delegation of duties in a team setting is skill expression

[rapid phoenix]

Is delegating my comm at the start skill expression?

[coral elk]

No, it’s actually the opposite if you then afk for the rest of the game

[daring jay]

yeah but it's good enough
because coop is so strong

there was a game, i realized i had no great plays so I just gave my base to my sea player and they made a flag

my best play was to just give my base away
opponent team gets a early flag in their base, I just stop playing the game

[rapid phoenix]

rly? bc it's op

yes there's literally no reason to rebuild your base if you die when sharing is turned on. you should almost always give it away to red

rebuilding at minute 20 is usually griefing your team

[coral elk]

Imagine instead of afking your opponent did the same thing, but was handed off units to micro perfectly by the person he gave his commander. They would beat your team w/ you afking because your eco player would be managing both his base AND his units

[daring jay]

also if all your bp gets destroyed you should give your base and resources to someone
because floating the metal is atrociously bad

[rapid phoenix]

correct

[daring jay]

yes we don't agree. but doing that takes effort
when you can just beat people with minimal effort due to OP game mechanic why try harder

[rapid phoenix]

i lost yesterday because some dude who controlled 1/3 of our team economy refused to share his money/base after losing all his bp 3 times

[coral elk]

Yeah and ideally you would then be given units to micro so your apm isn’t wasted

[rapid phoenix]

Echo. This game does not require a lot of actions. you're coping

you can win in bar at a high level with 1 hand - not joking

[daring jay]

the apm requirment in this game is not particularly high

[coral elk]

Every projectile is simulated, which means almost every projectile can be dodged

[daring jay]

you can play top level <80 apm

[rapid phoenix]

Idk what that has to do with anything.

[daring jay]

yeah but that's not how plp are playing

just making the right units, right place, right decisions, macro'ing effeciently, and bam you 40+ os

[coral elk]

So if people worked together to push micro to the limit, they would win? Sounds like good teamwork and strategy to me

[daring jay]

that's not the issue

[rapid phoenix]

in isthmus most of these gamers can barely micro dude. trust me this game doesn't require you to be jaedong fast

[daring jay]

it's that pooling resources is op

[rapid phoenix]

just watch 1 game of isthmus and try to tell me after that this game requires high apm lol

or even that high apm is all that marginally beneficial

[coral elk]

Yeah because it’s isthmus, rotato enjoyers specifically don’t like it because the chokepoint basically removes half the game’s skill expression micro-wise

[rapid phoenix]

do you understand that t2 units beat t1 units

so this is op on all maps

[daring jay]

honestly you only need like 60-80 apm to play bar at high level

[rapid phoenix]

and that's raw actions. not fake eapm

[coral elk]

T2 units are also more fun than T1 units

[daring jay]

the difficulty in 1v1 is not apm, it's coordination. can you see this situation and react accurately quickly. You see enemy forces, how many allied units do you send there?

it's doing all the tasks that need to be done, and starting from the most important ones

[rapid phoenix]

ok cool. wouldn't it be neat if all gamers got to make t2 units and not just 1 gamer at 7 minutes?

[coral elk]

In a team setting you should be sharing your t2 units for other people to make the most out of them

In a game like StarCraft a significant portion of the apm isn’t just building your base and units

[rapid phoenix]

why? you're just using them to kill 1 lane and end the game before 10min

[coral elk]

In bar you only really need like 1 guy on the team managing the base

In a lane map it gets more complicated because of the scope, but still

[rapid phoenix]

wtf? i have like 10k hours in scbw and i don't know what you're talking about

[coral elk]

I’m talking about like queen injects & etc in sc2

[rapid phoenix]

that's macro - base stuff

anyway this is a distraction from the topic at hand

[coral elk]

Not really, I believe unit sharing is fun, and maybe even an integral part of what makes bar special, specifically because it allows you to delegate the application of apm amongst your teammates towards the many tasks required to approach the goal of winning

[daring jay]

combat unit sharing is seperate from eco unit sharing

you can still allow combat unit sharing w/ eco restrictions

[coral elk]

Not really as eco just lets you build more units, sharing eco is just sharing the potential to build units

Which is really fun strategically imo

[daring jay]

i'm not sure ur getting it

pretend a game where eco sharing is banned but you can share units

both players make a base, and combat units. and they can share them

[rapid phoenix]

honestly i wouldn't have an issue with being able to share fighting units

that's not the problem at all

[daring jay]

now a game where eco sharing is also allowed
both players pool resources to make powerful units at an impossibly fast timing, and then they share them

[rapid phoenix]

being able to delegate pawns to another lane's attack is fine. that's not what we're even talking about

[coral elk]

It seems to me that you can’t grasp the abstract concept of “future” here

Sharing eco is like sharing units, they just haven’t been built yet

[daring jay]

you see, eco sharing enables the team to aquire units that are normally not possible

[rapid phoenix]

ur on a different planet buddy

[coral elk]

But they are possible, each team starts with 8 commanders, it’s a skill issue

[rapid phoenix]

this guy is trolling us i'm not replying to this clown

[coral elk]

Have you played starcraft 2 archon mode

[daring jay]

so sharing eco is like sharing units? so what?

[chilly kraken]

No I only play BAR

[coral elk]

https://tenor.com/view/based-kneel-dark-souls-gif-24182729

[coral elk]

So, it allows the game to be a team experience in ways unheard of in other rts games

Every unit/resource on your team in bar could theoretically belong to you, hence everybody else’s base is YOUR base

Bar is really just a big 1v1 with 8 commanders on each side

In a real war you don’t have generals selfishly denying their resources and troops to their allies, they work TOGETHER

[rapid phoenix]

Yes. That's shit

[coral elk]

I find it fascinating and it’s one of the main reasons I like bar

[daring jay]

okay you can play with our resources
we can share the os when you win. love you, peace

[chilly kraken]

Everyone against commie stuff understands this not at all nuanced point. We just don't think it's fun. It's a fun issue. And "teamwork" defined by giving your base away is a weird definition

[coral elk]

I find it fun when both teams do it, removing the ability to do it is a ridiculous notion in my opinion

[daring jay]

the downside to communism vs communism is that only a few players on the team actually engage with the economy part of the game

and you have superbases that have large amounts of nanos and are hard to attack

[coral elk]

fair enough, but building a super base is just one of many potential strategies

[daring jay]

if there's only 1-2 superbase on the map, all the other stuff you have to attack is mexes

[daring jay]

well building a superbase is not a singular strategy

you can go into any unit from there

[rapid phoenix]

funneling everything to 1 goal is op. how ppl don't get that idk

[coral elk]

“Teamwork is op”

Duh

the game is more complex than that

[daring jay]

instead of 2 players playing economy only one person gets to control the team's economy

[rapid phoenix]

I’m 25 os if I play with units. I’m like 40 os if I give my base to blue and ping the map for my afk team. Is that good?

[daring jay]

basically, it means that building your own base is only done by 2-4 people in an 8 man team

so over 50% of the time you don't engage in the base-building and econ management which is a core advertised part of the game

some people like it some people hate it

If i wanted to just micro units I'd play a moba

[coral elk]

This is true on maps like supreme & maybe glitters but in rotato lobbies where the maps get wacky & there are many points of weakness in the terrain sometimes you need to spread your eco out to avoid the chain reactions

[rapid phoenix]

You’re wrong lol

[daring jay]

if you are building anything less than afus you shouldn't be that chainable. 2 fusions is plenty to win the game

and it's much easier to defend vs air when you have only 1 critical location where you have 20 nanos
u just spam 2-3 chainsaws viola

[rapid phoenix]

You can easily just give comm to red on most maps and he can blow it for the metal after he takes your mex

[coral elk]

As a player who does not like base building and prefers to be laser focused on the frontline, I love this game specifically BECAUSE it allows for this playstyle

[daring jay]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2682180/Battle_Aces/

there's a micro-focused rts with minimal base building

you can play against plp who enjoy the same thing xD

[coral elk]

I can’t play this with my friend who hates micro

[rapid phoenix]

I think you just don’t like rts dude sorry to tell you

[daring jay]

ic so you just are a big fan of archon mode

[coral elk]

I like delegation and teamwork yes

[rapid phoenix]

You should get a job then. Lot of delegation and teamwork there

And it’s remunerative

[coral elk]

I do have a job, and even appreciate being told what to do by my manager

I think adding voicechat to the game would radically alter how it feels to play with and against commie strats

[rapid phoenix]

I agree I wanna bm with my voice from comm - proximity voice chat

[coral elk]

This grievance of yours sounds moreso like a flaw of your character, a la, not being a team player, than it does a serious complaint about game balance

skill issue?

[rapid phoenix]

wdym it's one of my greatest strengths

[coral elk]

I have fun sending my wind turbines to the front in lake spot on isthmus and to me, the fact this game lets me do it is awesome

If I want a more chill game micro-wise after a long day at work, but still want to play competitively, the option is there for me

[solar cedar]

Okay, Game Development Team, wie basically ALL agree on this. 😅 Please implement. Thanks! ❤️

"I think the edge case of a player "almost" eliminated is also fairly covered if a t2 building would enable sharing resources/units/buildings for the player who built it. In worst case the almost eliminated player has to wait for any player to reach t2 and build that building (which the techer will build anyways because it enables to share t2 cons).

Actually I think this would already be a good solution.
t2 building that enables sharing of resources/units/buildings for that player
if it's a t2 building the cost actually wouldn't need to be high (maybe like a t1 lab)
it'd still prevent pooling of resources as soon as t2 hits because every player who wants to pool resources would need to build it."

[coral elk]

I think if the overwhelming majority of players decide this absolutely must be addressed, whatever implemented fix needs to be oriented towards facilitating healthier cooperative play rather than overtly punishing it

Something like above is a lot more reasonable compared to outright removing the mechanic or implementing a tax or arbitrary restriction of some sort

As a unit sharing enjoyer, the only grievance I can imagine arising is temporary mild annoyance that you have to wait a bit before corroborating with your team

if mechanics like above or “linked storage” had been part of the game from the start I doubt boost strats would even be a common complaint cause they wouldn’t feel like an unfair “exploit” and instead would seem like an expected development in the progression of a match

https://discord.com/channels/549281623154229250/1352107491923853332

A little share icon tucked away in the corner looks more “optional” than a building with description text explicitly saying “USE ME TO TRADE”

I imagine they would soon be looked at similarly to rezbots—staple buildings that are “op” and a must-have tool in your arsenal

Buildings like this would also help lower os players to be a lot more aware of how strong it is to coordinate while also leaving the decision to coordinate itself a tactical one with tie-ins to the state of the battlefield

If there is to be a change, to make both parties happy between communism enjoyers and haters, whatever gets implemented should

1. Preserve people’s ability to cooperate and strategize via sharing units and resources

2. Make it viable (or even required) for a player to be in control of their own base for the majority of the game’s duration

3. Be implemented in a way that does not overtly punish players for trying to cooperate

@rapid phoenix @daring jay would you two agree with this assessment?

personally I think if trade buildings are implemented, trading units should be t1 tech and trading resources/buildings should be t2 tech to prevent scaling/teching too fast

As bemoaned as I would be to lose sharing earlygame wind turbines it would be a fair alignment of mechanics imo

[daring jay]

2. and 3) might not be possible to both do, subjectively

so you have economy coop strats

[coral elk]

Yeah it’s a tough issue to compromise on

[daring jay]

those strats have a power level. Are they: always better? sometimes better? slightly better? situational?
for example if it costs extra resources to pool resouces but you can make up for it with coordination and element of surprise (also saving build cost of 2nd lab)

[coral elk]

Making resource sharing dependent on terrain somehow with like “couriers” or something could potentially work but might change the way the game works too much

There’s a certain identity to the game’s team play that needs to be conserved

[coral elk]

Yeah if a tax or gate of sorts for unit-sharing gets added, i think it would be ideal for it to be diagetically implemented with some sort of mechanic that exists outside the ui

Making sharing resources a strategic decision instead of a meta-defining one seems to be the goal from what I’ve gathered from the anti-communism sentiment

And though I like teamplay in that manner I can see that alternative design choice being a healthy direction to take for a game that won’t always pair you with friends to vc with or “team players” who are chill with only playing as support the whole game

[slim canopy]

How about Coop strat stays but if a lobby decided to disable coop strat then its the lobby decision. No need to rework anything. Just need to fix the option to disable cooping we already have in game

[coral elk]

bar equivalent of Fortnite no-build

[elfin spear]

I'd probably prefer a T1 building, like a logistic core or whatever, that accumulates a charge and allows you to share a corresponding amount of metal or unit-metal-value. This way, you're not entirely bound to T2 for sharing anything, but it requires a certain economic investment to manifest, energy upkeep, and protection.

If you'd want to trade units to someone like a tech player, you'd have to share such buildings to the players if they can't afford it.

That probabaly would need a T2 analogue for sharing more expensive T2-T3 units.

[bleak karma]

It won't solve the problem when ranked matchmaking is implemented and competitive rules are standardized. That's why we're trying to come up with an in-game solution that prevents the early game T2 rush but still allows sharing between allies.

[daring jay]

yeah if coop strat and 1:1 strats are similiar power level they plp can play what they want

[slim canopy]

We can get back to this when those features are already implemented because I don't think those features will come anytime soon. But what I am suggesting is the quick fix. Fixing the can't take when a player disconnected/resigned on "Disable Unit Sharing". Making Unit Market more intuative. Instead of tax option we have in game to prevent resource sharing, replace it with an option to disable resource sharing

[daring jay]

in order to functionally disable resource sharing to have to prevent mex sharing , and assisting lab as well

my modoption supports 0-99% tax i should probably allow 100% tax and have it just reject transfers (instead of eating your metal)

[slim canopy]

Disable Ally Assist already prevent assisting lab. And yeah, that would be better there is also a bug when a player is overflowing metal or energy everyone lags when tax is enabled

[coral elk]

The reason I think this t1-t2 sharing separation would work is because, if the intent is not to fast boost to t2, sharing units early is almost the same as sharing eco early, you’re just sharing the eco you used to build those units

And once you tech up to t2, boosting out a fast t2 is no longer as op for obvious reasons

[coral elk]

I think it would still be good to make coop strats a bit stronger than 1:1, it is a team game after all

Just not so overwhelmingly strong it’s hopelessly unbeatable with a team of randoms

[daring jay]

sure a little bit stronger is fine -- it also depends on what is the selection of units to rush

certain things like double air nuke bomber, seaplanes, t1 bombers are incredibly strong on larger maps

how strong coop strats doesn't just depend on the theoritical math but what is the value of coop rushing these

for example, if you rush a flagship (op unit btw) in 1 minute instead of 2 minutes. How much more is a flagship worth if it arrives 1 minute faster?

[bright basin]

Chrono is the reason you havnt been playing lately related to communism

[coral elk]

wysiwyg etc etc

[daring jay]

was out of town. Main reason is I've played enough and match quality isn't that great / a lot of the time you don't get to try the strat you want / big time invest

although the days when coop is common was def a minus. If quality of games is crap I rather play a different game

[finite dune]

Holy shit it already has more posts than the previous co-op rework suggestion thread

[coral elk]

I’d say the unit to rush that’s the least “tactical” decision is the t2 con. Rushing out like a tzar or something is a strategy with some degree of counter play (depending on the map) as it’s kinda of a huge amount of metal to put into a single, slow, outmaneuverable unit, but rushing out t2 cons by comparison isn’t really a “strategy” it’s a no brainer objectively best thing to do most of the time cause it multiplies the whole team’s economy

Like what’s the counter play to an exponentially better economy? All-in desperation push?

Personally I think the mechanics as-is theoretically already treat communism rushing t2 as an “all in” that could be countered by early units if it’s scouted first

Really pro players might be able to approximate timings and how many units should be out where and when to sus out such a strategy like how a pro starcraft 2 player can sense a one-base all-in or proxy bunker, but I dont think bar’s “pro-scene” has developed to that level yet

[coral elk]

(This also only applies if you accept the “my base is your base” view of bar team-play which I suppose is a major point of contention in this discussion)

[coral elk]

anyhow, this is why I think gating resource & building sharing (but ideally not units) to t2 tech could be a viable compromise, as it removes the ability to rush t2 economies out faster than usual but preserves the ability to share t2 cons & eco once it’s out

[worthy summit]

"It's much more efficient to assist the existing lab than to create additional labs." - Beginner Tip Notification

[finite dune]

when's the announcer line getting added, triggered any time anyone builds a 2nd T2 lab on the team

[coral elk]

https://tenor.com/view/fnb-get-this-man-a-true-gif-25257480

[coral elk]

“The whole team is wasting metal”

[old notch]

yet to see a single good argument against commie
"its unfun (aka im salty)" aint an argument trade system(by metal and e value) should be an option though ||so people can finally shut up about this||

[last helm]

the arg against is that it's a single strategy that just wins games, no counterplay other than doing the same but better
isn't healthy on the whole

[old notch]

well yeah teamplay in a team game is superior to every player in the team acting like strangers

[elfin spear]

The reason why you don't see an argument against commie is because it expected to be obvious for the majority of players familiar with strategy genre.
In case you don't belong to that category, I'll give it - commie circumvent the designed tech-tree and economy curve, allowing the team to leverage base resource stockpile given at the beginning of the game to acquire something that a single player cannot do, which break that economy curve and manifests the spike in tech level, which individual players cannot match. Almost no other (none of what I personally aware of) strategy games allow for such unlimited asset sharing that BAR and similar games offer.

[old notch]

commie circumvent the designed tech-tree and economy curve
it simply speeds it up
allowing the team to leverage base resource stockpile given at the beginning of the game to acquire something that a single player cannot do
good thats teamplay why isnt the other team doing that?
which break that economy curve and manifests the spike in tech level
the economy in this game is exponential it favours team collaboration more than in other games where eco is not so extreme
Almost no other (none of what I personally aware of) strategy games allow for such unlimited asset sharing that BAR and similar games offer.
so?

[cerulean fern]

most team rts infact do suffer from this being a thing

its even op in sc2 but most ppl dont know it

its especially a big problem in age2

[old notch]

sc is mostly 1v1 game

you could argue to make commie more fun i guess...

coz just sliding the metal share widget on player list is kinda dumb

if for ex you could share resources only with BP it should make commie less frequent on most maps while making commie-ing an actual thing you have to do and collaborate on in game

[elfin spear]

Well it should be limited to some extent, because it underwrites the outcome of the match based on how far the resource sharing goes. It's like playing a team game against a group of players with VC, only on steroids and almost anbeatable.

[cerulean fern]

I think you could argue that 2 op players dividing the apm between base bitching and microing army are gonna do better than 1 op player sharing everything to another op player and going afk

[old notch]

team collab will always outplay schizophrenic teams

economic and micro collab should be happening how exactly this is implemented is up to debate but theres nothing wrong commie-ing in essense

||maybe anti commie sentiment will finally make players to play 1v1s more||

[cerulean fern]

i see a bit of that happening already

i think currently the best course of action is exposing as many players as possible to commie strats

ppl need to get a bit more comfortable around it and understand the basics

and maybe stop rejecting it out of hand due to some notion of honor

this would level the playing field and allow for finding better solutions

bottom line is that using all the game mechanics at your disposal to gain an advantage is the proper way to play

[old notch]

anti commie sentiment is a just a kneejerk reaction to an uncommon(but valid) strat people should be expecting it

[last helm]

The game mechanics are the subject here. So "just use the mechanics" is entirely besides the point.
What kind of game do you want to build. It's a gamedesign discussion usually conducted by the devteam behind closed doors. That doesn't really roll in FOSS projects

[cerulean fern]

I firmly believe that abusing the fuck out of it is the fastest way to get anything u dont like nerfed

[old notch]

consider how games like GO and Chess were balanced its pretty much just random (less so with go i guess lol)

they are prime examples of open games

[elfin spear]

It strange how the thread about discussing the merit of changes to resource sharing eroded into the discussion of morality. Nobody have even mentioned honor.

[old notch]

game should be balanced to be more fun if commie is not fun make it fun dont outright remove it

[last helm]

Yeah. If it gets bad, people will fork off to commiebar and splitbar.
But i feel that's where everyone loses, splitting a comunity like this would probably be a deathblow

[old notch]

for me t2 sharing is fun sharing metal to techer after killing a com is fun

[cerulean fern]

yeah standard tech play has always been commie

[old notch]

we have ingame options

[cerulean fern]

just a form of commie everyone understands and knows about

so well infact that it became entrenched meta

now you have dudes banning ppl for not playing the form of commie they are all used to

yelling commie broken while getting fed t2 units from eco xD

[elfin spear]

getting fed T2 from eco is eco spreading resources to the team, not the team pooling resources to boost the tech spike.

[cerulean fern]

yeah a diffirent form of cooping/commie/boosting

same thing still if you distill it

whole team upgrading t2 mexes is infact...a tech spike

[old notch]

tech spike is cool too it should be publishable though on "large" maps thats imposible so we fix our maps or the game?

[last helm]

You can scout and bomb an eco player.
You can't scout and bomb 5 coms instantly going for a T2

[cerulean fern]

you can t1 raid 5 coms going for t2 on most maps

its not a real strategy

like I said players need exposure to it, and test this stuff for themselves

its not AS easy as some make it sound

[last helm]

Can you tho? Like, if you know in advance yeah. But you need time to build your own labs, get scouts out, and pivot.

[old notch]

there is no elegant solution to the com commie boosting for t2s this is where we are really hitting the foundations of the game itself

[cerulean fern]

I dont know how you envision this 5 coms going for t2 specifically to talk more about it

like super early, or later on

[old notch]

its simple all coms spawn near each other and 5 coms is 5000 metal 5000e (plus some from income) and a ton of BP on large maps by the time you scout it it might be alredy too late

[last helm]

5K metal is enough to go straight to a T2 lab + units without stopping or choking, right out of the gates

[cerulean fern]

i never saw something like that, i doubt it would be very strong

[old notch]

thats the whole topic of this thread lol

[elfin spear]

I mean given that some T2 units can obliterate entire armies by themselves, its not that hard to imagine

[cerulean fern]

the team doing this would be at like 1/5th of metal produced compared to the team that spawned on their mexes and capped them

[old notch]

exponential nature of eco ensures that com pooling will always outperform individual play

[cerulean fern]

even if you assume very fast t2 mex upgrades they would be significantly down on metal

[elfin spear]

Which doesnt matter because one Tzar rolls over whatever they do before they even have a chance to establish unit production

[cerulean fern]

because t1 extractor is simply more efficient than t2

[old notch]

units also scale exponentially(?) both in DMG and HP t1 cannot complete

[cerulean fern]

you always wanna cap all of your t1 extractors before commiting to t2 ones

[elfin spear]

And its not 5 min Tzar, but like Tzar before you have your first Grunts

[cerulean fern]

its meaningless because you would be so far down on metal and map control

the tzar would not win

like I said all of you guys need to try this stuff yourselves

[old notch]

von you can just take map control back with t2 BTW you wont even have any meaningful map control at 2~3mins

[cerulean fern]

I can tell you that 2 players on 8 t1 mexes can build the t2 lab at around 3min into the game

[last helm]

It's very fun to crush barbarians like this.

[cerulean fern]

so why would you need more

with 5 coms you can probably rush a razorback or liche

[last helm]

It's not good design in a pvp game

[cerulean fern]

barbarian does not pressure you in the same way as 8 players

[elfin spear]

that's kinda the point. You dont even need to spawn all together, just pool the resources.

and 1 T3 rolls over everything the other team has because the tech difference is huge

[cerulean fern]

well a t3 rushed in this manner is completely allin, which is probably the reason we didnt see it much in tourneys

[elfin spear]

so unless you somehow manage to see it coming and somehow conjure a counter, the match is over

[cerulean fern]

last tourney game like that was a liche rush and the team doing it lost

[elfin spear]

yeah, probably coz T1 figs can kill a Liche. Wouldn't be as easy with ground units tho

[cerulean fern]

you have 8 coms and an absolutely massive metal income advantage

ofc you can kill the razor

[elfin spear]

with what

[cerulean fern]

i dunno probably medium tanks xD

anything

[elfin spear]

lol, that be a show

[cerulean fern]

i dont think you understand how much metal has to be given up to pull off a rush like that

[elfin spear]

You dont even need to spawn together and abandon mexes. Just pool resources to a single player

[cerulean fern]

its still not gonna be as op as going for pooled eco

and very unlikely to come out fast enough to prevent taking loads of dmg from t1 units

when I do glitters commie I only do it with one more guy, or i'm too scared team will fold before I can do my play

[old notch]

sounds like a removal of the player list slider sharing and bigger com "private space" (so you cant spawn close) will significantly nerf t2 pooling while still retaining economic teamplay

[cerulean fern]

double com spawns are generally a meme and not worth it

[elfin spear]

Like I said, I'd prefer if there would be a building somewhat close to a T1 energy storage that would allow you to share a limited amount of metal or units from that metal per unit of time.

[old notch]

i also saw a suggestion to lock down player positions to presets on maps

so how about that problem solved? im sooo smart damn.

[cerulean fern]

idea i'm liking currently (it changes alot) is the old idea of buffing party os

[last helm]

Not just that. Pooling starting metal is basically the crux of the issue i think.

[cerulean fern]

if party counts for more os than the same players seperately you kinnda nerf commie

in a roundabout way

[elfin spear]

its also a rather abstract way too

on the other hand it also doesn't only affect commie but also group-play as such

[last helm]

Tbh, spawning with less metal in higher # games can be a direction too.
Instead of 1K metal per player, you go for 1K metal per team.
Would slow down things a ton tho

[old notch]

no people mostly mad about t2 pooling you just click on the t2 blueprint and you basically have 60+% winrate. if com pos is restricted and slider sharing is disabled by the time commie team manages to get close enough to share metal via BP the other team will have good advantage and will be in a pos to punish

oh right unit sharing... yeam im not so smart i guess

[cerulean fern]

its a tough one to crack

alot of ideas were already put forward but every one of them has some problem

[old notch]

if we disable unit share and turn it into unit trade by value (e and m) then maybe? it will kill APM sharing though

[cerulean fern]

there is even a tweak that allows you to setup taxes and disable sharing and anything u want but nobody wants to play with it ever

so you have to ask if ppl even know what they want xD

[old notch]

i think people wont mind share being replaced by trade

[elfin spear]

That's why I think the building that controls your logistic limit would work best. You have to invest into that building to share something, but with enough investment you can share anything. You cannot immediately exploit to abuse starting resources, but you can leverage how much you need to play as eco support for others. You won't need to do anything else on top of that.

[old notch]

thats basically BP though

[cerulean fern]

but playing some old metagame that involves primitive commie like standard glitters eco forever and ever aint it man

[old notch]

you wanna commie? transport your BP!

[cerulean fern]

also a very interesting thing was said to me by a guy that play op rotato alot, he doesent commie but he said "I like it when narnuk comes and commies because than everyone else starts tryharding and doing their best to win"

[elfin spear]

BP won't be shared if you dont have the share limit to invest into it. You cannot build a unit if you have BP but dont have the resources

[old notch]

im saying that BP itself is the investment. why a seperate building for that? thats what you are saying right?

[elfin spear]

Like, lets say you have to build a building like a converter, that costs something around a tidal gen. That building drains 10e/s to fill 2 share units to a limit of 200 (100seconds for full charge). Each unit of that charge allows you to share 1 metal to anyone, whether as raw metal, metal overflow, build assist or a unit costing that metal. When you share, that drains the charge.

[cerulean fern]

this only works if you completely disable sharing buildings and units

or ppl just share mexes

metal gets spent on solars that are than also given away

it was practically all already suggeasted and discussed

[elfin spear]

yeah, but to share just one mex you'd need 25 seconds and energy upkeep

to share one basic solar you'd need 75+ seconds

and that not counting the cost of building the share buildings themselves

and that doesnt even come close to flat-out sharing the starting metal right off the gate

[cerulean fern]

that would amount to a tax so substantial you practically removed sharing, no?

[elfin spear]

there's no tax, but you just need to invest something in order to being able to share

[cerulean fern]

it would cost you more energy to gift some winds than said winds could produce

its like more than 100% tax

[elfin spear]

dunno, winds pay for themselves pretty quicky AFAIK

also, energy isn't limited by that mechanic, you can overflow and transfer as much as you can

we're talking only about metal

you can of course oveflow energy like there's no tomorrow and gift converters, but that won't be very efficient, thus not as problematic as an instant free teleport of thousands of metal between players.

[cerulean fern]

pure energy battery is one of the main forms of communism

a battery sitting in a corner and overflowing energy to team is very strong

[elfin spear]

fine by me. Also probably a juicy vulnerable target. Depends on generation, not on exploiting what is given to individual players at start.

One for All, rather than All for One.

[cerulean fern]

you still have a guy practically not playing the game

[elfin spear]

At least that's the only thing I came up with. Numbers are all arbitrary and up for debate. I couldn't come down to another solution beyond just cutting sharing almost entirely.

[cerulean fern]

which is one of the main complaints surrounding commie

[elfin spear]

He's playing a role. It's not different from another role. Its different from players actually not playing because they sacrificed their original assets to make one player win the game early.

[cerulean fern]

oh what a diverse skillfull role...of quening wind

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLgmE72oGI8&

[elfin spear]

yeah, but tech player does almost the same other than helping his team in other ways

[cerulean fern]

check this out

[last helm]

You mean the current meta eco role? 🤡

[elfin spear]

No I see it. Its just it doesn't even need any collaboration. Anyone in the noob lobby can do the same

[cerulean fern]

I already called that a primitive form of communism before xD

[elfin spear]

So I don't see it as a problem of any kind.

It is kind of commie that seem perfectly reasonable.

[cerulean fern]

it only seems so because its entrenched meta that everyone knows and is used to

[last helm]

It's only the very rushy lump-at-spawn form that's kinda toxic for the game imo

[cerulean fern]

no ur wrong

ppl mostly have a problem with everyone remotely boosting t2 labs and 1 player microing a huge army of t2 units

that player is almost always the higest rated one

multiple commanders spawning on one spawn is a meme and not op

try it urself

u will quickly realize the drawbacks

[elfin spear]

Well now you just denying the entire premise of a thread...

[cerulean fern]

another one ppl have a problem with is low os player gifting his base to high os at the start of the game, sometimes this is called op take

it still means that player will have to game really hard tho

but he will benefit from exponential growth

[cerulean fern]

no ur just poorly informed on commie strats

[elfin spear]

I'm not the one who made the thread

[cerulean fern]

where does hajaji claim multi com on 1 spawn is a problem?

this why I said before and I say again: try these strats and learn about them in real games

[elfin spear]

Where do I even mentioned multi com on 1 spawn plays at all?

[cerulean fern]

what you said sounded like you are in agreeement with ratty

might have misunderstood

[elfin spear]

That's the point, you're asserting a claim that someone did contrary to the thread's OP, then you zealously trying to prove it wrong.

I'm a bit confused too now.

[cerulean fern]

my opinion is very nuanced

I think its broken and that ppl should explore it more at the same time

i dont have a solution currently other than learning about it by doing it

there is a billion possible strats you can do with commie

many were never done yet

but I know for sure from testing that multiple coms on 1 spawn is not a real problem

[elfin spear]

I feel that just like @last helm said, the crux of the problem is unlimited metal sharing, not a BP pooling as such.

[cerulean fern]

you can leverage diffirent things to achieve diffirent results

some lead to very op seeming strategies and some not so much

[elfin spear]

So its when 1000 metal is given to every member of the team to do their thing, but instead they pool it to allow one player to skip ~10 minutes of progression, which breaks it for everyone but that single player.

[cerulean fern]

this player will still need dudes with units securing his flanks

[elfin spear]

Yeah, which is why usually people here mentioned 5 players, not all 8

[cerulean fern]

just look at some timings

2 players can build t2 lab at around 3 min

[elfin spear]

3 might work as an initial buffer

[cerulean fern]

first ticks can hit your base at around 1 min

most t2 units are very bad vs ticks and if you are building the units you are not scaling economy

so really you just have less units and the same economy as the enemy

[elfin spear]

well if you have some players as buffer, they can screen you against ticks, and your T2 will roll over everything else unabated

because there's also substantial stat difference between the tiers. It's not like SC2, where many early units can have the use in late game as well with upgrades and synergies.

[cerulean fern]

welllll

its op but its complicated

[elfin spear]

In BAR, high tier units can shread through dozens of times of resource value of low tier units

[cerulean fern]

execution difficulty quickly becomes very high with some of these strats

[elfin spear]

yeah, which is why it never happens in random noobs and boobs lobbies, and that is not in scope of the discussion.

people below the median have difficulty dealing with their own shit, commie strats are not even considered.

But it works more on the merit of an unexpected emergence, than on skill.

Everything seem to happen as usual, until it doesn't. And now the survival of that single/group of T2 units define the entire match.

And nothing else really matters, because if it works, you win, and if it doesn't, you're screwed.

[cerulean fern]

that is why commie eco is probably the strongest build

just build enough op t2 units to secure your runaway economy

[elfin spear]

Yeah, but it deprives the game of the strategic depth. It may be something cool for a Youtuber to show to his audience, but I wouldn't call it fun for participants.

Its like opening a chess match against someone by flipping the board off and turning it into an arm-wrestling competition.

[cerulean fern]

I dont know what to think honestly my opinion changes about it all the time

you can get many of the same feelings if your enemy laner suddenly gets 5 spiders from eco for free

its not fair to you and you will start losing if nobody reacts

but we still play that way and its considered fine

[elfin spear]

sure, but it the same as if that eco controlled those spiders himself, if he found it manageable. He still worked the economy up by himself to get there. He didn't get the T2 lab by draining resources from 3 other people to get them earlier.

so there's still skill involved in keeping that eco secure from POW of the frontliner, and there's skill involved in manifesting efficient eco build to get into T2 earlier than the frontliner can. There's no skill involved in multiple ppl sending 500-600 of their starting metal to a single guy, who just builds a T1>T2>Spiders in a matter of 3 minutes or so.

[cerulean fern]

yeah surprisingly those spiders would be unlikely to gain alot of value

they would be lacking support on the front and get outmicroed by quick raiding units

its possible to do a rush too quick xD

[elfin spear]

Sure. What if those are Core spiders? What if they're a Fiend rush? What if they're Sumo?

[cerulean fern]

slinger is more op in this role

[elfin spear]

What if those are 5 Panthers? I can go on. It's just a matter of pre-agreement before the game.

[cerulean fern]

there are counters to all of these plays but they tend to involve communism

these are extrremely unexplored interactions

boosted air is crazy strong for example

and could hit faster

[elfin spear]

If that is what appears out of a seemingly mundane early frontline engagement? Frontliners cannot do anything, they dont have the units nor the energy income to cloak-com or D-Gun. The backliners aren't any better, they probably start with cons and dont have any defenses prepared.

So I believe this is the kind of communism we're talking about. One that abuses metal sharing to circumvent boundaries set by costs of stuff.

Socialism by itself is fine, but there's indeed nuances

[cerulean fern]

again same is true for t2 cons to up t2 mexes

you curcumvent everyone building his own t2 lab

to get op economy, and if other team does not to that they lose

becasue they are so down on metal

[elfin spear]

yes, but its one guys giving it to other guys (and expecting payment), not few guys giving to one guy.

[cerulean fern]

most t2 cons are given free of charge

or at least 50%

90% of all transports are also given for free

[elfin spear]

yep, and that goes to the detriment of the giver

versus the detriment of individual players that pay

[cerulean fern]

and giant metal transfers happen all the time in every game because noobs cant spend metal

[elfin spear]

but its not like everyone gives 500 metal to tech so that he can just build it immediately

[cerulean fern]

so they just share it to someone

[elfin spear]

yeah, but that is not planned, dor does it involve the metal that is originally given

[cerulean fern]

it still impacts the game

[elfin spear]

yeah, but it doesn't break it from the beginning as a pre-planned "conspiracy"

[cerulean fern]

so you argue that everyone should remain ignorant and play the game wrong forevrer? xD

[elfin spear]

not, but there should be limits to the possibility of sharing assets, at least in temporal terms, so that the game remains to be 8v8

[cerulean fern]

you cant put these limits in and have the same eco meta I think

it would alter how ppl play the game as much as doing commie strats does

[elfin spear]

depends. If the commie was essentially a generic reality rather that an alarming outcrop, then there would be no problem. The OP suggests that there are degrees of commie strats, that flips the eco meta entirely on its head.

[cerulean fern]

meta by its very nature also has a natural progression which should not be limited by artificial means

[elfin spear]

Like, lets say on Isthmus, wind sharing is fine, scout+trans is fine, con+rez is fine, role separation is fine. It is all manageable and you can handle the flow of the match without those.

[cerulean fern]

i despise the wind boosting on supreme lol

[elfin spear]

But there's a degree of commie that makes you wonder what was the point of making it 8v8 to begin with.

[cerulean fern]

pond is a completely gimped spot due to it

meta is that ppl literally expect a bunch of free shit from u at the very start

[elfin spear]

well its a choice for that player. You may not do it, and the front isn't going to whittle down and die like a bag of potatoes.

[cerulean fern]

making you completely unable to pull of strong plays of your own

ur just again ok with it beacuse its standard and everyone knows it

[elfin spear]

I'm okay with it because its not making it a one-bet round deal.

[cerulean fern]

u would be ok with glitter corner boosting eco and microing fast t2 units if it became normalized too

[elfin spear]

Air doesn't NEED the T1 con, short sea doesn't NEED con+rez, front doesn't NEED winds from pond, etc. Its just minor conveniences, and in many cases people demand and pay for them.

And the only reason its agreeable to give free winds for fronts is because its a choice from just building the lab and actively participating on front with your own units.

[cerulean fern]

pffft lol

please try not boosting front from pond and see how it goes 💀

those nerds will get aggro

[elfin spear]

I do it pretty often

or sometimes I ask which they would prefer

[cerulean fern]

maybe you can get away with it if there are some freshies on front

[elfin spear]

Because I always play vehicles from pond, and that offers completely different utility than just some winds.

[cerulean fern]

that dont know better

when I tried it the mfker griefed me by intentioanally letting all leaks get to me xD

anyway i'm way offtopic now

[elfin spear]

Dunno, even though I'm mid at best, it doesn't happen all that often. Also if the leak gets to me and I can't defend, that's kinda on me

[cerulean fern]

and this is suggestions and not meta thread so I should resign from the convo

[elfin spear]

Now if I did give winds and was late to get the lab, the leak is on them naturally.

Well, yeah, I gtg and I already given my own suggestion on the topic, so I'll bow out. Cheers!

[finite dune]

As much as this solution isn't liked, I really think the game could have a different ruleset for ranked team play and unranked/vs ai on this issue.

It may violate wysiwyg and may split the player base, but plenty of other games concede the ground that, sometimes what's fun with the base design of a game or a different game mode just doesn't translate well to a competitive environment. Even with how AoE2 inherently restricts trade (slinging they call it), the competitive community restricts it even more.

[rose imp]

Yeah there could be a "competitive sharing rework" modoption for that

I remember someone saying the biggest limitation around sharing reworks was the engine though

[old notch]

ok but why? whats wrong with my suggestion? BP does the same thing you just set to assist whatever project you are trying to commie

it works in a similar way

[elfin spear]

Assist build isn't limited and doesn't require any investment other than the resources needed for the project.

The structure and associated mechanics that I propose placesa limit on it

[old notch]

and why the limit?

[elfin spear]

Because commie projects is a problem discussed in this thread.

[old notch]

the problem is that it happens too quickly and too fast my and your suggestions slow things down so that its possible to punish but yours intorduces a new "market" type building

[elfin spear]

Well, its not a market-type, but like storage-type, that generates your ability to share metal value, and expands the upper limit of that ability. So it prevents sharing from happening too quickly.

[old notch]

yeah i got it i just coudnt come up with a better name

bp is slow to transport i think it will do it on larger maps

[elfin spear]

Your suggestion was probably so much earlier, I haven't picked on it.

BP here colloquially stands for Build Power, so if you're using it for something else, it just got me confused

[old notch]

it is to remove slider sharing (playerlist thing) + replace unit share with trade(you cant give things 4 free you must pay metal and e cost) + only way to commie is via BP so walk a com/con/ctur to commie + restrict player spawns so that players cant all spawn in the same place to commie with coms

"shared bank account" building seems cool too but it just seems like a roundabout way of doing what BP does

[elfin spear]

Yeah, it may be another solution. Perhaps being able to only buy units incur some undesirable limitations. Also, it would rely on having starting position points for every map approved for competitive play. My suggestion isn't free of drawback either - after all it requires a whole separate, though low-def, per-player value and an associated unit.

[old notch]

also theres map that is explicitly centered on commie strats although nobody likes it coz its a no metal map with a heavy bias for the top team idk the name

[rose imp]

There was another solution which involved locking sharing behind utility buildings at each tier

[elfin spear]

Mine is similar, but its just more fluid and adjustable.

With utility buildings that allow sharing, you either can share something, or you can't. With transfer cores, you cannot share until you build misc buildings that give you that possibility over time up to a limit. You can even give the Comm some free sharing ability from the start.

[rose imp]

That kind of sounds like a complicated mechanic on top of an already over complicated game, but it is a very interesting idea

[rose imp]

So youd have to build these as the need for sharing arises?

[elfin spear]

Yeah, if you want to send metal, overflow metal, share units worth of that metal, or help with something that needs metal. So lets say you have 100 units and 1 unit regen/sec with Comm alive, and you gain additional 200 units + 2 unit regen/sec for each such building operational. Like a separate resource.

For each unit stored, you can share 1 metal for anything that needs it outside of using it yourself.

[rose imp]

This is too big brained for me to wrap my head around what you mean, but I also havent caught up to the thread yet

[elfin spear]

I mean its like a separate resource similar to energy, except you use it just to spend metal outside of your own needs, and its stored and generated by the same building in exchange for little energy upkeep.

[last helm]

that's basically the "market building" solution, but with an extra resource tacked on

ngl i don't think any solution with an extra resource will pass :p

[bleak karma]

The game doesn't need more resources to track. It just adds complexity where none is required.

Keep it simple

[rose imp]

Yeah I think the share buildings is the most likely change to be implemented rn

[solar cedar]

To come back to it again...
I also think the building that enables resource/unit sharing (possibly a t2 building or a t1 building that can't be built by the com) is the best solution.

And only the players who built it can share. So it doesn't enable the whole team to share.

[rose imp]

I think a T1 building to share T1 & T2, then a T2 one for T3

Though maybe T1 for T1 and T2 for T2&T3 makes more sense?

[solar cedar]

I don't think two different buildings make sense. What would it do to resource sharing? T1 allows more resources to be shared than t2? And if the only difference is unit sharing it's not really too important since pooling resources is the main problem.

[rose imp]

Why would T1 allow more resources to be shared than T2?

Ah yeah thats why I suggested T1 for T1 sharing, and T2 for both T2 and T3

having a separate one for just T3 would be weird but it makes sense to separate T1 & T2 since the eco scaling each provides is vastly different

[solar cedar]

It shouldn't allow it - I was just wondering what you're intending with two buildings. 😉

[rose imp]

Yep I see why T1 for both T1 and T2 sharing makes no sense

[rose imp]

But separating T1 and T2 scaling makes sense to me since T2 is so much more efficient, sharing your teammate one t1 mex vs a t2 mex is a huge difference

[solar cedar]

From my understanding of the game the main problem is resource sharing (because then only one player needs to have the build power and has all the resources). Sharing eco buildings at least requires all players to have build power and they need to invest time to build up their eco to then share parts of it. Therefore the complexity of two "sharing buildings", I think, is not worth it.

(to clarify: therefore putting t2 buildings behind a separate building needed to unlock sharing them, doesn't seem worth it)

[last helm]

It's just entirely sidestepping things, no?
What happens to overflow? What happens to metal gifts?
What happens to assisting ally buildings?

[solar cedar]

Would be all locked behind that sharing building for every player

[rose imp]

Ahh you are talking about the building for purely resources sharing, not for unit/building sharing

[bleak karma]

Overflow would be locked to maximum until the building is completed. Metal gifts would be locked until the building is completed by the person who wants to send the gift. Assisting ally buildings would probably still be fine.

It would likely need to be revisited to see if early mass assisting would need to be adjusted, say for example assisting through BP is fine but it uses the metal/energy of the person who started construction regardless of whose constructor is building.

[rose imp]

Not having control over my own resource spending sounds horrible

[bleak karma]

In most random lobbies there isn't a lot of random people assisting your construction unless you've asked for it

So I doubt it would be an issue, but would possibly create niche troll scenarios where someone purposely uses BP to screw over your ability to manage your metal/energy consumption

[rose imp]

Regardless, someone else being able to dictate my resource spending is not something Id be OK with, because that could completely ruin your economy

Even if not intentional someone might try assisting a teammate, thinking their being helpful while theyre really just destroying their eco

[bleak karma]

If it really becomes an issue then simply add it to the list of restrictions that require the market building

It's a potential problem but has an easy solution

[rose imp]

There just isnt a reason for that - your buildpower should spend your own resources no matter what

[bleak karma]

If that is the consensus then BP should only be shared once the market building is built. Plain and simple.

Otherwise the entire point of restricting resource sharing becomes moot

[rose imp]

Is there already a discussion somewhere about the market building?

[bleak karma]

It's in this thread further up

[rose imp]

Yeah same with sharing any resource, unit or building

[bleak karma]

It's one of the proposed solutions to early resource sharing that most people seem to agree with

I think it should just be the T2 lab, but others like the idea of a seperate building

[daring jay]

It's optimal so if plp learned / were playing to win you'd see it all games

[bleak karma]

Any strategy that dominates all other strategies isn't healthy for the game. It limits the ability for innovation and strategic depth of players at all skill levels. If you're familiar with Overwatch 1, the optimal strategy at one time was called the GOATS meta (after the competitive team that popularized it). It consisted of 3 tank characters and 3 healer/support characters and it became the only viable way to play the game pushing out every DPS character (as well as the players that mainly played DPS) and every other strategy in the game. It became so predominant both competitively and casually that it became the catalyst for the collapse of the professional circuit as well as the overall decline of the game.

[rose imp]

Oh actually gating it this way I wouldnt mind, as in once a T2 lab is built the builder can share or anyone can?

[bleak karma]

Only the builder can share

[rose imp]

Ahhh

[bleak karma]

Tying a player's ability to share to the T2 lab makes the most sense to me personally. It prevents early resource/unit sharing to gain an extreme advantage (like funneling metal/energy to rush out masses of T2 units by 6-7 minutes) but doesn't undercut the tech/eco player from being able to share T2 constructors with their allies to stabilize the team's overall economy. It also doesn't create an additional resource dump by having it tied to a seperate building that serves no other purpose

[old notch]

there is no game where such a dominating strat does not exist all games can be gamed out - video games especially

look at counter strike p much the only real weapon is the AK and M4

the dominating start itself should be fun thats all

[rose imp]

Yeah and it doesnt add another very niche building to the game

[bleak karma]

AWP. Deagle. Various SMGs are frequently used depending on the round dynamics. M4s and AKs might be the go-to weapons for most players but it also doesn't change the way the game is played. Aggressive resource pooling in BAR warps the dynamics of the early game to be both unfun and unfair to anyone who doesn't do that.

[old notch]

idk what was wrong with my proposal its elegant and should be do able to do it without too much rework if only i had the springLUA skills...

[old notch]

AK and M4 is the dominating weapon in the game its funny you mention SMGs coz the only good SMGs are the ones that mimic AK and M4 the entire game is "balanced" around these weapons other guns exist as a way to get money to buy them

all games have dominating strats games should structure themselves around these strats

[bleak karma]

Disagree. Games should structure themselves around the vision the devs have for the game, not the broken strats that players come up with by abusing mechanics. That's why League of Legends has been trying to battle lane swapping for years.

Also as I said the AK and M4 in CS:GO/CS2 don't warp the gameplay. The game is still the same no matter what weapon you use, it's just easier or harder depending on what you have access to.

[old notch]

AK and M4 in CS:GO/CS2 don't warp the gameplay coz the entire game is "balanced" around these weapons

[gritty vessel]

Existing lane assignments in the first place weren't part of the vision, so that doesn't make much sense

[old notch]

dev arent gods they have no idea how their games will play out in actuality

[bleak karma]

It's part of their current vision now and has been for almost a decade

[old notch]

its a 3 way yinyang relationship between the player-base and the devs and the game all three want to cohese into one form

[bleak karma]

If you're on T-side and you only have pistols you're still going to attack the bombsite and try to plant the bomb. Having AKs doesn't change that, it only changes your level of success. It would be a different story if you could do something like transfer your $800 starting cash to one player so they can buy an AWP or AK on the first round, because that would warp competitive gameplay in such a way that it would be the only viable strategy on round one.

[old notch]

if commie is dominating in team games then it should be embraced expanded and made more fun

[old notch]

the price structure of the weapons and equipment, win loss money, kill reward, the map timings and distances are all made around AKs and M4s

[bleak karma]

I think we'll just have to agree to disagree on this. I don't think the current system should support the excessive advantage that early resource sharing gives. It should be restricted to allow individual player expression in the early game. Players being forced to give all their resources to a single player to accelerate straight to T2 units is not fun for the majority of players.

That's my final say on the matter.

[old notch]

my suggestion nerfs t2 pooling significantly in way that does not introduce new mechanics or buildings

while still retaining team eco collab possibilities

[rapid phoenix]

How is it ever going to be fun to give all your money to red

[old notch]

in theory anyway

[old notch]

this is my suggestion btw

[daring jay]

buying units for their metal+energy converted cost is very advantageous actually, cause you save the bp cost and build time

restricting walking distance is an idea

however picture this

Player A is in front, player B is in back

Player A uses their metal to buy extra wind to get con turret up faster

they then sell the con turret and a worker to player B, who now can boost player A as much as they want
(making more nanos if needed)

the moment you have bp you can "sell" back it still allows you to effeciently funnel your economy into player A without having to care about the travel distance

[solar cedar]

Yea, that's the flaw in lotyj03 suggestion in my opinion, too - even though I liked it besides that.
I'm still for that t2 building that enables resource/unit sharing for the player who built it.
The reason I think it shouldn't be the t2 lab that enables this automatically is the following:

1. following t2 it should still be a viable strategy to decide to go into a commie strat but it shouldn't be as expensive as a t2 lab for every player because then you probably kill this completely in the t2 phase.
2. and most importantly it should be scoutable. If it requires a separate building it can be transparent to the opposing team and they can counter it with aggression - since the investment in (multiple) "sharing buildings" doesn't pay off right away.

[bleak karma]

I think those are valid arguments, but I'm not sure it's worth the development time to have an entirely new building just for that purpose. I suppose they could try testing it both ways and see which one players engage with better

I'm also not fully convinced resource sharing needs to be "scoutable". In most cases the eco player building a T2 lab and then a market building would be expected so they can share T2 cons with their team and so scouting wouldn't be required to know that at least one player is going to share units. The other thing I just thought of is depending on the cost of the market building you could circumvent the opportunity cost of going T2 lab into market building for the rest of the players by having one player build multiple market buildings, or trading off a T2 con and letting the other players build their own market buildings.

[solar cedar]

Oh, but that's just what I meant. Scouting "multiple" market buildings would indicate a commie strat. The tech player would probably build those.
I have no idea how complex it is to add a building to the game. 🙂

[bleak karma]

Probably less complex than a mobile unit, but it would add complexity to the game that probably isn't required.

[solar cedar]

Well, since resource/unit sharing is such a problem I think it is required

[old notch]

aaah ur right

it will nerf t2 pooling but not by much? or maybe it will be enough of a nerf?

[coral sand]

If devs add 1 metal jugg to t1 lab and everyone is forced to only play 1 metal jugg because it’s unbeatable are people salty or is it fair to say some times in games are just unfun

[old notch]

thats not an argument against commie-ing though read rest of the thread i am i favour of nerfing t2 pooling i just dont want eco coop to be killed off

[coral sand]

I’m saying it’s stupid to claim that things can’t be unfun in a game made for fun

[sturdy quiver]

does anyone have the tweak for the 1 metal jugg?

[daring jay]

1 metal jugg, the self d damage does 1billion% dmg to juggernauts

[cinder palm]

It all depends on the pricetag of the "market". Since the market cannot be commie'd everyone would have to build it eventually - or rush their opponent using the same ressources while staying economically isolated. The advantage of the building is that it adds a tool to the balancing that goes beyond a tax as earlygame cooperation is more problematic and lategame cooperation is really fun(dead players getting units gifted to micro.. though when ppl kill the market it might intercept the good part of cooperation too so maybe thats a problem).

Assuming the market can be built from t1 and building it unlocks overlflowing into the team, gifting units and slidergaming.

Let's say the market has 10% of the t2 labs cost - you'd still have commie alot as 2 players can invest 20% of the lab's price in the markets to then pool their remaining ressources to built it fast still.

Let's say the market costs the same as the t2 lab - now suddenly building two markets to commie a lab actually delays the resulting lab BUT gives the advantage of afterwards alowing people to pool their economies into the higher-tiered lab, which may still be considered a problem but at least has quite some windows to getting intercepted such as massive t1 attacks or a timed t2-rush without the market.

All a matter of whereto you want the meta to develop.

[solar cedar]

Yea, I totally agree.

And killing the market should actually be a legitimate mechanic - I think it rather adds depth. And if one player is eliminated early they have to wait for the first market to be built to get a constructor or units to micro.

From my feeling the price tag should be about 50% of a t2 lab. And obviously the player who wants to share t2 constructors would need to build it (and potentially build more markets to gift to other players if they want to commie).

[chilly kraken]

ya I'd think this would be a T2 tech sort of building if we wanted some sort of similar unlock mechanic. It wouldn't be cheap either.

[old notch]

what if we literally go with the dumb solution and block t1 units from assisting construction of a t2 unit/building that isnt your own entirely(on top of my suggestion(?))

so you have to build a t2 lab all on your own or do some out of the ass ballet selling a t1 con to a teammate who builds solars with it as a way to gift metal type shit

[modest geyser]

It's a shame that economic teamwork leads to victory is viewed as a negative. To me that is both part of the fun in the game and the reward of a team. It's one of the reasons the 5v5 and larger team tounraments and competativie match ups are worth watching - when both sides are equally skilled and you expect this to happen.

I think there is already an option to disable sharing. That's it; no unit or resource sharing. No special exceptions with rules about % accumulated. On or off. Energy overflow dissappears. Metal is wasted.

The fact every team game is "play pass the T2 out" .. seems just as silly to me as being upset about good teamwork.

So let players upgrade their own mexes to t2; which elminates the fudging it somehow so that sharing T2 constrcutors can still happen.

Still might lead to shared BP on units ?
Sure but no build turret + share. Someone had to walk their own constructor over there and build their own turret and then spend their resources on that instead of something else.

Personally I think the game is much less without the sharing of units and resources.
There is no rebuilding for a lost player. There is no units given to reinforce another front.

[warm oriole]

problem with disabling sharing means you can't take a player who leaves, which is probably the main reason why it's not used

and the problem isn't that winning through better eco management is bad, the problem is that it's just too much RNG on which teammates you get, and it completely eliminates the choice of staying t1 or going t2, and makes t1 phases so short

[daring jay]

could add a option that lets you share econ units but it emps them for 20 seconds

yeah without t2 buying a frontliner might never have the opportunity to go t2 unless their techer cooperates and covers for them

it could be better to let the frontliner die and then rebuild their mexes

[rose imp]

Yeah t1 is like 4 - 5 minutes these days

I wouldnt mind sharing being locked behind the t2 lab somehow, but T2 would still be insanely fast

[cerulean fern]

main reason its not used is because people instantly realize they will have to play diffirent if this is on and diffirent is considered bad

they dont think as far as we wont be able to take

they just learned their build and now you expect them to change it? xD

[cerulean fern]

i'm highly surprised there even is a t1 phase in 8v8 matches given the massive metal bank 8 players start with

[warm oriole]

that's just because of the difficulty of coordination and E cost

last omega gad 2 minute jags on Rosetta precisely because of the massive starting bank (and geo)

[cerulean fern]

well ofc

[elfin spear]

I bet its technically possible to block sharing without disabling the ability to take. I don't think these are actually directly connected.

[tight basin]

i didn't read all the post in detail but blocking resource trade / slider wouldn't solve communism since people would simply build con turret and have them transported next to the thing being build.
Even blocking the above would lead to more degenerate gameplay like a dedicated reclaim player that goes t2 from reclaim or someone simply taking more mexes from other player and that goes hard in buildpower while letting other player cover his lane a bit.
i think the issue is probably that being the defender is too big an advantage to overcome to punish greed? thoughts?

[finite dune]

It's been stated a bunch, but the counter to this line of thought is that at some point it becomes balanced or non viable. Rainbow con turret is a current issue, so I hear, and blocking it would be a good idea, but workarounds like taking more mexes are huge nerfs in themselves. Most workarounds to the simple and obvious nerfs (no sharing, no ally lab assist) will sacrifice significant things, metal, time, apm.

[tight basin]

Well i was only pointing out that fast t2 strat will always be possible even with the fix proposed here. The meta will simply shift around having a T2 player. A bit like how that was a role on some map before the meta was more figured out. On glitter for the longest time you had a player getting all the rocks and going t2 of his own E economy and still getting like a 5minute T2 lab.

[modest geyser]

Ah; I put this inanother thread.
Repeating it here; Mod options if you want to test anti-communism

!bset disable_assist_ally_construction 1 !bset disable_unit_sharing 1 !bset tax_resource_sharing_amount 0.99

[untold estuary]

The problem about this "solution" is that it makes the eco spot unplayable. Also what do you do if a player loses all his construction bots, he would be out of the game?

Another big problem is that people still would share resources because they don't know about that option. Overall, it doesn't work out well.

[untold estuary]

The problem about that idea is that it wouldn't stop communism. Players could still just share the commander (which gives 25 energy, 2 metal and 300 build power) and also share t1 mexes, because a t1 mex is very cheap. Every player of the team could for example just share one t1 mex and 1 wind turbine and you would end up with communism again.

Even with disallowing the sharing of t1 mexes, players could just let another player take their mexes to do it.

In my opinion you can't go around a high tax and a way to have things without tax (by getting it back in some way or form). Also you would need to limit the types of units you can share.

But even then you would end up with the problem, what do you do if someone took your mex and he wants to give it back or that someone doesn't take a t1 mex on purpose, so someone else can take it, so he gets boosted enough to get t2 out very fast.

[elfin spear]

That would be possible with my original suggestion of having an additional resource produced by a T1 building (whether hidden or UI-displayed) that limits your ability to share units out by metal, but people say its too complex of a solution, and the problem doesn't worth adding a new resource.

[modest geyser]

The problem about this "solution" is that it makes the eco spot unplayable.

No. It changes the way the eco spot plays or interacts with the team. No handing over tesources or crafting T2 bots or gifting units to the front line players - they get to make the units and use their APM
It might lead to a situation where the exponential scaling of the player at the back does literally carry the team; because only the opposing eco players have the economy/tech to face each other.

Right now; the elements that allow communism can still shift that burden somewhat across the team

We want to limit communism and sharing but we want to keep the bits we think are OK and shut down the bits .. we don't like.

As for a player losnig their cons being out of the game? Yes. It's an exponenital eco game; giving them units to micro was a crutch; but realsitcally it might always have been better if the player has the APM to cope for another palyer to take.

While communism may lead to organization teamwork victoryl I think parts of these mechanics also make a comeback possible -> sending resources or units outside of your lane for example allow that player some resilience; without it seems more like a snowball effect.

[modest geyser]

Another big problem is that people still would share resources because they don't know about that option. Overall, it doesn't work out well.

Yes. I'd rather sharing was disabled and gone as an opton than taxed. Having a popup "this transcation will be taxed at 40% are you sure?" every time would be a bit annoying

[tight basin]

i agree that a total ban on resource sharing, unit sharing and bp sharing or even a tax on resource shared would lead to a situation like MOBAs where you have a carry that take as much resources as possible and support player making do with a little as possible with the META being that support player reclaim their safe mex when the carry player has a need for more metal

[tight basin]

the only compromise i can see working is a resource share ban until the time a single player can rush a T2 lab. The longer you go after the more degenerate the gameplay could become

[cerulean fern]

teammate blows up his com, you eat it and build t2 lab with your own com at the 2min mark, next step in your commie build begins 🙂

[daring jay]

you know, the reason why I think letting your teammate suck your com wreck is okay is... its a fixed amount / blowing com is actually quite a cost

com explosion + color is public info

and if sharing cons and rez is not allowed then they have to walk a rezzer to eat your com wreck (walk distance matters a lot)

[cerulean fern]

yeah sure it would nerf it, but if something like I described would turn out to be optimal gameplay it might be worse than now

less options avalible too

[daring jay]

it would be good to use your com on front then when it gets low back it up and self d it for your techer to suck

[tight basin]

i agree blowing up com at minute 2 is such a bad play this early in the game it could probably make you lose front so hard t2 wouldn't save you

[cerulean fern]

its not bad if the reward is unlocking full commie

I still like the idea of time gating instead of taxing, seems less annoying to the players

everything shared is effectively emped for x seconds as ownership changes

I think that is rather intuitive to understand

and a new player would not be too puzzeled by it

if a little loadbar shows up under the healthbar its 🤌

[tight basin]

i guess i didn't explain my point clearly enough, i mean the time (chosen number) a normal t2 lab come out and not as soon as the T2 lab is built

[cerulean fern]

I see, I dislike arbitrary timers becasue they seem like bad design and a bandaid type fix

[daring jay]

blowing a com is not truly 1200m

you lose 1.5 nano turret worth + a mobile llt + a mex

in a vacumn blowing your com is only like a temporary 300 metal gain iirc after 1 minute

which isn't really worth it when you factor in the defensive hole it leaves (even as a midliner)

the only reason why you do it is for very high payback structures like t2 mex, or to finish a fusion

(for techers it's because you can't spend the commander's bp, so blowing com is converting bp infrastructure into lump sum metal)

[cerulean fern]

I mistakenly thought he wants to lock commie behind t2 lab structure so eating an allied com would be a good option to fund it

[daring jay]

ah

yeh locking behind a flat structure only stops early-mid game coop

[old notch]

the problem is that it's just too much RNG on which teammates you get
str8 up no. the only problem is t2 pooling we gotta nerf it by slowing down levels of t1 eco cooperation

[old notch]

taxation is stupid why penalize teamplay in a team game? the only issue here that teams can reach t2 stage way too fast to even have a game

[onyx lodge]

Its stupid to try to balance a strategy game?

[untold estuary]

I would have nothing against commie playstyles, if it were one of many good strategies you can play. But as it is now, the only good way to play this game is that playstyle. Even if you know that it happens, there is no real counter to it.

It is just how the game is designed the best way to win a game. So there are no other real options. I don't know why people don't understand it, that it would be more interesting to have more options to play in high level games than boosting/commie strats.

[cerulean fern]

thats unfair

the amount of diffirent strats you can do with commie is infinite

so if ppl atchually played it and learned the strats than counter strats would evolve etc

a new meta would form around it and it would be less limited in options than what we have now

so that angle is false imo

if there is a goofy meme strat that you never got to work

it would probably work with commie

[elfin spear]

Sure, but the amount of different strats you can do against the commie is basically nil.

[cerulean fern]

not if you consider commie as a counter

[elfin spear]

It's a convergence of the facts, that BAR allowing commie, it has infinite resources, and it has a near-million discrepancy between lowest and highest tech units.

[elfin spear]

So you inherently at a disadvantage if you're playing as a member of a team without conspiring to let someone circumvent the game's eco design.

[cerulean fern]

ur not circumventing it tho...ur playing into it

[elfin spear]

well no, you're playing into unlimited sharing and starting resources. The costs for anything as they're laid for an individual players are disregarded.

[cerulean fern]

yeah but thats the eco design as it is right now 🙂

[elfin spear]

No, eco design does not take commie into the account.

[cerulean fern]

not for us to make that claim

[elfin spear]

Why not? It's pretty much self-evident. All the costs are designed to allow gradual access to labs and corresponding units in accordance with the potential growth of the economy, which itself is controlled by the costs of resource production revolving about the known median of the map design.

That's why more competitive players disregard the full-metal maps - because it completely breaks the limits of the balanced economy and allows to turn the game into complete mess almost immediately.

[modest geyser]

I'm going to pull some vague memoeries of setons in SupCom.

The meta was to take the middle of the map; get the large amount fo reclaim and then overflow taht to the team.
The team that failed to do that effectiely had a significant hit to all the players economy as it allowed each player to boost their own mexes to T2.

The mechanics of a flow based economy; assit; reclaim - are well established.

The consequence of them in a various formats however; define the 'high level' game.
Personally I dislike that T2 mexes (economy) is gated behind a very expensive T2 lab but in cries of communism the daftness of "make and pass out the T2 con" is OK.

Most answers to communism are to limit sharing; assist or other defined mechanics of the game because with a larger number of players they are felt to impact the team format.

The game is vastly different if you t
Turn off converters. Disable all Unit sharing.

To the point where without the exponential eco that provides you get to move 8x 1v1 lanes than 'teamwork'

I want and expect to see communism in team games with these game mechanics.
1 or 2 labs at most. Players feeding eco and build power as and where needed.

Isthmus might only need 4 labs - 1 front; 2 sea; 1 air.
The other 4 players supporting those roles in some way

If anything we don't have enough teamwork or communism or the use of strategy and tactics to maximise the economy we do have.

[elfin spear]

Well, for me "problematic commie" is outlined by the sharing of the starting resources. Let's say if you'd only be able to share or assist with the metal you have mined on top of the 1000 you start with, that could potentially negate most of the cancerous cheese, that derails the match from the beginning based on prior conspiration

For me commie where two or more people work for the same goal is at least more organic, not even talking about a "battery" play, where one player just decides his role to supply power to one's who needs it.

The problem starts mostly when the 1000 metal / energy given specifically for a player to jump-start the economy and build some relevant units are instead used to back-leap one players to circumvent the costs of the next tech level specifically designed to gate it against being achieved in the early phase of the match.

[cerulean fern]

ok and eco spot normally makes 0 defenses and blows up its only fighting unit-the commander to skip the tier

[elfin spear]

Yeah, but nobody is helping him in doing that. All the rest of the team are covering for defenses.

[cerulean fern]

how are they not helping him

[solar cedar]

In the end we're discussion what's more fun to most of the players. It is just two design philosophies. Do you want to enforce more teamwork or not?
While to some people here the default answer seems to be "of course you want more team work in a team game" I'm pretty sure that's not true if you take a closer look.

It's not by chance that most RTS players play single player and use matches vs the AI. It's also not by chance that you want to lower the entry barriers to multiplayer (as also Beherith said in a recent interview). Commie puts a lot of expectation on new players and requires especially casual player to cooperate with other strangers to an amount that's not what most people want from a game and it isn't fun to people that want to quietly enjoy a multiplayer experience (which isn't contradictory in itself at all).

That winning or losing is about "who get's 7 other strangers to share their resources with me?" isn't fun. That's just about it.

[elfin spear]

They're not giving him any resources from their starting coffers

[cerulean fern]

eco builds are specifically designed to overbuild energy and bp and than rely on metal donations for the build to work

[elfin spear]

Where? All the time I have ever played eco, nobody gave me any metal to get there, and only paid for the T2 (sometimes) the exact amount of metal that it costs to make one.

You're not relying on metal donations - you're relying on other to do the fighting, while you entirely focus on building the eco, hence the name.

[cerulean fern]

if you play with noobs dont use a build like that than xd

its the most common style tho

[elfin spear]

Again, where? I have played quite a few matches in mixed lobbies recently, and never seen anything like that.

[cerulean fern]

ur not looking hard enough at eco builds than

[elfin spear]

such as?

[cerulean fern]

or understanding them

[elfin spear]

I guess I do not understand what "the most common" means, given that like 85% o the player base have an eco build not relying on metal donations.

[cerulean fern]

like wtf are you on about

i'm talking about paying t2 cons

[modest geyser]

I submit that the casual players are not playing PvP with that level of communism either.

The issue is the higher skilled active players encounter a few players or other 'good' players that are using commie.

ie: an inbalance in the teamwork on pickup teams.
That is my problem with these "fixes".

Watching "high level teamplay" in competative or tournmament format; everyone seems OK. You expect a 3 minute tzar or whatever the crazyness would be.

They don't seem to like it being the "only option to win" or "enemy team had more teamwork than the nubs on my side"
And that is where the games design and eco; sccaling; sharing; reclaim and assist meet the misfortunes of larger and larger team game formats.

[elfin spear]

Paying for T2 cons are not donation, its a payment specific to the unit cost of the unit.

[cerulean fern]

first they build units instead of eco to protect him while he skips a tier, he makes extra bp and energy for them to build them t2 cons, than they only pay him metal and he builds cons

its basicallly all commie based

[elfin spear]

Well no, its role play. You focus on one thing, other focus on another thing. Then you get paid metal so you can build a unit.

[modest geyser]

It's technically using the "share resources" and "share units" in two sperate transactions.
It's "fair" in that sense as you get an equivalent reward; but it is the same mechanis.

I personally detest the "need" to buy a T2 unit to upgrade my mexes from another player as the best eco option.

Just let me ugprade the mexes when I'm ready !
But no; we have it gated in this game and the GFT is against "upgrades" like that

[cerulean fern]

its just a shit suboptimal commie strategy that became meta because it was simple enough to understand

now ppl cry anytime someone wants to change it

cuz they cba to learn new strategies

[elfin spear]

Yes, but you're using your own resources and you rely on other players to keep you safe for 5 minutes to give them one unit, which they pay for with metal they have earned in the meanwhile.

[modest geyser]

anytime a tech/eco player asks "who needs T2"
and isn't making it or sending it out to the frontline players or team ..

he should make it and the team mate should pay when they receive it. Good Teamwork
Not be asking "who wants?"

and that is at the heart of commie issues. Teamwork is OP. always will be.
if it snot donating resources directly it will be 2v1

[cerulean fern]

doing better strats gets called "tourney gameplay" and ridiculed

or "boring"

[solar cedar]

Are we still discussing if this game (for all players) should focus on commie or not? Because you seem to get lost in arguments about details that noone is going to "win".

[cerulean fern]

u got lost on your way to this thread

[modest geyser]

That's one viewepoint.

Mine is different - we're using the team resources. From whom we let capture mexes even.
Its 8v8 everything on the map belongs to my team and our job is to eradicate the enemy from it.

In reality most people are palying 8 1v1 with "their eco" in mind not thinking of it as "team eco" and optimizing by that method.

[solar cedar]

And which one is more "fun" or more "engaging" to most players? Which one do you think would attract a broader playerbase? I'm curious.

[cerulean fern]

meta is literally starting to regress due to anti commie purity spiral, you used to be called a very bad player for placing a t2 lab next to the t2lab your co-laner already built. now dudes are so scared of being called commie they just build another lab xD

[elfin spear]

That's true, but the game is not balanced for the 8 players having 8000 metal and 8000 energy at start. It is balanced for a players to have 1000m and 1000e regardless of how many there are on each team.

[cerulean fern]

recently had a game where my back corner support made a very fast gantry so I decided to boost it with my con turrets without much team coordination

game ends and everyone is calling us commie abusers

its so mindless what is happening

limiting the entire gameplay to the accepted t2 cons communism is gonna be so stupidly boring longterm everyone will quit the game

[solar cedar]

And this certainly displays a distaste towards this mechanic from a lot of players. It doesn't matter what optimal play would be. It could be optimal to just give up your com to another player in the beginning and watch instead of playing. Still, doing it would be unfun and rightfully be frowned upon.

[cerulean fern]

educate yourself

[solar cedar]

You should leave your emotions out - I certainly will.

[elfin spear]

Now that's begins to look like pure elitism

[cerulean fern]

i'm gonna leave responding to your coments out instead xD

[untold estuary]

I never said that there aren't multiple commie/boosting strats. Also I called it playstyle. In the end you would only have commie playstyles.

[solar cedar]

That's a top 2% player view with buddies to develop strategies with. No, not everyone will quit the game but instead the broad playerbase will enjoy it more.

[modest geyser]

@solar cedar
Trying to answer you both.

I see the base game as balanced for 1v1 and small team games.
Trying to balance for 8v8 is a wasted effort. I consider it a herculean and almsot impossible task to balance for all of the above - specfically because "teamwork".

I don't see the game balanced around starting metal values. I see it balanced around when T2 transitions happening and it being a clear trade off in 1v1. The risk of "going" T2 leading to a period of exposure to T1 units.
That obviously doesnt apply in an 8v8 format where the other 7 players can 'cover' that techer.

I think that a lot of balance and discussions are based on that "diminished risk period. With those trying to maintain something like 1v1 balance wanting to "extend the T1 period"

However I do see that the casual players enjoying the 8v8 format have the Extra Unit Pack.
Where the units are inherently less balanced but "more fun" for taht game format.

I don't care for 1v1. It's strategic and tactical and to me looks like pawn and grunt wars with positioning and manevuring around the map. It's like a completely different game.

So; I want the co-operative teamwork in large team formats and its not 1000m starting values.
It's 1 player out of 8 is probably "safe"
That making your own T2 bot is not the best risk proposition
That 8 players as team will expand and cover all the mexes far faster so that team income support a safe T2 transition much earlier

[cerulean fern]

I had a really refreshing experience when testing commie in some mid lobby vs 2 very smart but low chev players. they lost only 1 game to t2 unit rush and instead of crying about it they copied and executed the strat back at us next game and won

with the right mindset you win.

[untold estuary]

Also a problem about commie strats is that you end up with players doing nearly nothing in the game. So I don't think you have really more teamplay with commie strats, because like 4-6 out of 8 players are not even really playing the game with commie strats.

[cerulean fern]

this narrative only works if you think all commie is is taking the base away from the noob, but really you should consider how things would look when everyone is op

when thinking about balance you should never consider noobs

[solar cedar]

@Stanis
Not sure I understood you fully but probably. For me actually the unfun part is to use the 90 seconds (or so) before the game starts to convince random strangers to play into my strategy or to develop a commie strat ("hey, share your mexes, it'll be better, believe me!!!"). If I had 3 buddies I play that game with I maybe would enjoy it. Or if I was in a clan playing regular 5v5s. But I don't and that process is really tiring. And I believe most players don't.

[untold estuary]

The reality is that you don't have only OP people. And still you would end up with players that have nearly nothing to do.

[elfin spear]

Like I said, I don't care much about people pooling their developed resources for the more expensive projects, as long as these resources are in fact developed by players who are playing the game, not just flaunting their starting resources into an early T2/T3.

A highschool football team can work together to cover the field and launch an effective attack on the enemy gate. Under BAR rules, that team can also discard two players to get a single mature adult player instead, who will crush any opposition.

[modest geyser]

This is a mindset

I'm happy in a game where I had the biggest eco; and a huge AFUS farm at the back
But I gave all the units to another player to micro.

Some epople think "AFUS" at the back is boring.
Others think a huge base with lots of giant robots smashing into each other .. is the best RTS experience.

Your perception of "not doing much" is a conception of what "teamwork" should be.

[cerulean fern]

if 3 op players commie vs 3 op players who also commie you can be damn sure they will find work for everyone or they will lose

[untold estuary]

I am speaking about strategies where someone just gives mexes and wind turbines to the other player and has only his commander left.

If you really do a lot of commie, you can even end up in situations where u don't even have a base.

[untold estuary]

And 5 players have to do nothing?

[modest geyser]

So play unranked games.
The issue here is "Parties" and "Matchmaking" for a challenging match is broken.

Personally I consider OS and balancing is trash - for pretty much the reasons you say there.
I'm not palying with 3 to 5 friends and I don't care to "organize" my team that much.

The problems are elsewhere; never nerf teamwork

[cerulean fern]

no...its just an example...u know what i mean

[untold estuary]

In my opinion teamwork is way harder if you can't share resources and units, because you have to coordinate your attacks and get the right unit compositions.

Its way easier just to give away your base and so on and control some units you get.

[solar cedar]

See, there I disagree. 🙂 You call it "teamwork is winning", I call it "you're highly dependent of others that you can't control". "never nerf teamwork" --> sounds good, doesn't work (imho).

[elfin spear]

Yeah, basically one makes tanks, one makes arty, one makes bots. Now all of them have to coordinate, but if they do, they will crush. That's pure teamwork, not commie.

[untold estuary]

It can even be the same unit type. If 3 players have pawns and coordinate an attack it is way harder to exectue than giving one OP player all the pawns.

And giving the units away is way less teamwork

[cerulean fern]

I honestly just want 1 thing

[elfin spear]

Its completely different if three people build eco and then pool all starting resources to build T2 immediately and then roll a Tzar when people didn't even have jammers on the field

[cerulean fern]

go do a commie strat in a game

to see how it even works xD

[elfin spear]

Or spam panthers, that just roll over everything

[cerulean fern]

fuck imma boost u even and we can voice if u got nobody

so we can have better talks

[modest geyser]

The number of players on a football team would make them a primary resource; having 2 players down seems like a poor idea.

As for your analogy of Age to OS .. I'm not 100% sure what age highschool is.
It would be fairer to say the school could pay scholoarships, have btter coaches, train 5 days a week with a reputation for being the best football team in the state.

And then play against a local poorly funded highschool.

This is the truth of teamwork in the real world too.

[cerulean fern]

everyone that didnt do a commie strat yet should go do some

[solar cedar]

I don't wanne voice with anybody. 😄 I'm introverted. So does that mean I'm not the target audience of a RTS?

[cerulean fern]

we played exclusively 1v1 is starcraft for years and nobody complained xD