Easy Sharing Tax modoption - feedback/discussion

[digital anchor]

I have made a new modoption as a potential solution to co-op. You can find it under Experimental settings. Up-to-date description of what the mod does is available at https://gist.github.com/RebelNode/43b986f29b9cfacbe95cf634cac25c49 and also in this post.

How to use:

• You only have to enable Easy Sharing Tax modoption. Don't enable other anti-coop modoptions at the same time or you might break the game. The taxrate is currently unconfigurable to enable more consistent lobby experience and feedback.

Rules in Easy Tax mod:

• Resources sent to allies are taxed 30 %. If you send 100 metal the ally will receive 70 metal (message still shows 100).

• Resources overflown to allies are taxed 30 %.

• Assisting ally construction is disabled

• Partly reclaimed wrecks cannot be resurrected. I.e. you cannot "insert metal" into a wreck.

• Giving combat units to ally is free and works like normal.

• Giving economy buildings, factories or builder units (including rezbot) to an ally works, but the building/unit will be stunned for 30 seconds. This also happens when taking control of a dead ally's economy.

• Commander can't be given, but can be taken from dead ally (no stun).

• Partially built units can't be given (except when upgrading mexes/geos or taking dead allies).

Thoughts/implications:

• Sharing T2 cons is probably still a good strategy with these changes. You just have to initiate the first T2 mex upgrade before giving the constructor so your ally can build the mex while it and the constructor are stunned.
• Leaving more mex spots to one player may be viable play. But it does cost the team considerably because you can get those mex spots capped slower. Also the trickle of metal from mex spots is much slower than funneling metal from e.g. big reclaim fields to one player.
• Leaving more reclaim fields to one player may be viable play. But that player would need to have map presence all over the battlefield, which isn't free. And quite often reclaim fields are only available for a few seconds before enemy pushes you back from them so choosing who does the reclaiming could result in the team losing control of the reclaim field and getting nothing.
• It's still possible to selfd your commander and let your ally reclaim it. This can perhaps be later mitigated with balance changes to make commander selfd less desirable overall. It's already much more disadvantageous with Easy Tax because you cannot resurrect the com after reclaiming some of it, so it's gone for good if you use this tactic.

Let me know what you think of the mod and if something should be changed or if you found tax loopholes.

[swift roost]

sharing solar in order to reclaim the full metal would effectively cost twice the build power of the solar
for armada that's 5200 build power + the action cost.
all to avoid paying 30% tax on 155 metal

not sure you even need to prevent circumventing this loop around since the opportunity cost implied are already higher than 30% of 155 metal

[digital anchor]

Maybe yeah. From initial feedback it does seem the reclaim tax is most unpopular feature. I just don't want people to actually do that solar reclaim jank as the ultimate form of gameplay.

On the other hand you can think of reclaim tax as another co-op nerf: you get less metal from reclaiming t1 lab and solars to build t2 lab and fusion so t2 rush is slower.

[swift roost]

no the ultimate form of gameplay will be sharing mex (or not building them at all and letting the carry build them)

2.0 metal income for 30s emp tax

[swift roost]

I think we've established slower progression is coop buff

I like the initiative though im sure many lobbies will benefit from this

[digital anchor]

Perhaps you're right yeah. Though since here co-op is already heavy nerfed with taxes it's more of a nerf to t2 rushing in general.

[summer fog]

I can imagine that the "Partly reclaimed wrecks cannot be resurrected" is really annoying in some situations. For example only 1 commander is left alive and 1 commander wreckage got reclaimed by 2%. It would also confuse people why it isn't working anymore.

[pure cedar]

If reclaiming any alive (or partially built) unit, the resulting metal is taxed 30 %.

What does this mean? (I'm confused because buildings are "units". Buildings count towards the "unit" cap.)

Reclaiming a building gives me only 70% of what I put into it?

If I reclaim my own army units, do I get the full metal refund?

Partly reclaimed wrecks cannot be resurrected. I.e. you cannot "insert metal" into a wreck.

This is backwards. Partially rez'ed wrecks should not be able to be reclaimed. (Perhaps the amount they are rez'ed decays over time; it's just energy put into rez'ing after all.)

Giving economy buildings, factories or builder units (including commander and rezbot) to an ally works, but the building/unit will be stunned for 30 seconds. This also happens when taking control of a dead ally's economy.

One of the most hated examples of commie are when player just give their entire base away at the beginning of the game, and it ends up being effective. A mere 30 second delay doesn't really stop this. It's still better for the 10 OS player to give the 40 OS player his base.

Also, one of the main commie complaints on Glitters is that T2 arrives at the front at 5 minutes (this is the meta that's killing the game, I've heard more than once). This doesn't stop that.

I don't think anything can stop that. Are we ruining the simplicity of the game by adding a bunch of strange and arbitrary rules to satisfy people who cannot ever be satisfied?

[summer fog]

Someone could bypass the tax that is probably why those things are put into place.
I also think that 30% tax isn't enough. Giving someone 3k metal instead of building his own t2 lab is still way more efficient.

[digital anchor]

The intent isn't to remove teamplay from the game. Just to make it more fair to solo players.

[hollow sphinx]

I played with it all last night on stream. I think its great so far. I need to keep testing. I didn't see any performance issues etc. This is the first mod option that seems to do anything reasonable to fix resource sharing mechanics in the game. Might be cool to show how much is lost to tax when transferring(in some way). Not sure if thats possible with modoption

[still onyx]

Was this on isthmus? Im curious if the 30 second stun is enough to make pond boosting suboptimal. I fear that it makes it worse than before, but still the best use of time for that position.

[cedar drum]

Do i understand it correctly that eating my own solars / labs taxes the metal I get by 30% ? If so, that is a bad thing. I get why it's there, to prevent sharing stuff for others to eat, but honestly that is something no one will ever bother with

[digital anchor]

Yeah I decided to remove the reclaim tax since it's the most unpopular feature of the mod option. It will be gone in next release.

[cedar drum]

Great to hear that. Otherwise it's looking quite solid, will have to test it though

[idle fox]

the trick is to share units/buildings you would reclaim anyways
or share metal storage op

[idle fox]

you probably have to manually boost e with 30% tax. still worth it tho

@digital anchor you can give commander without emp penalty

commander is also an economy unit, basically a walking mex + 1.5 solars and 300bp

[hollow sphinx]

yep it was, I think jury is out for now. In my games there was no boost...seemed fine.

[idle fox]

a good option is just to forbid giving coms

[idle fox]

it's better to funnel e with 30% tax until they have enough rez bot to support themself i think. It takes 100 seconds before giving a structure catches up to funneling w/ tax (30sec/0.3 tax)

[weary relic]

If you remove it, how to prevent from solar donation to give full 150 M ?

[summer fog]

Okay, interesting idea.

[idle fox]

yeah what you can do is start by feeding them e from your solars 30% taxed, and then play normally. And then when it's time for them to make their fusion you reclaim your solars 90% then they bring over a rez bot to eat them all to power their fusion/units

metal storage lets you transfer 330 metal with 5840 total bp cost, saving 99 metal

[digital anchor]

You don't prevent it. But the hope is that it's annoying enough that people won't actually do it in public lobbies. Also you still need to spend buildpower to do it, and you cannot teleport the metal and have to walk actual constructor over to do it.

[idle fox]

paying the bp cost twice makes it not very profitable to do in a vacumn unless you are excessing bp. Where it matters most is giving stuff to your techer that you were planning to reclaim anyways. for example rocket bots as the t1 phase is ending

[weary relic]

What !
Techer will just make 6 laz and beg for solars all his teammates and area type reclaim solars shared..

"bring back tax on reclaim"

[digital anchor]

Com takes the emp penalty too.

[idle fox]

i tried it once in skirmish mode and afus was stunned but com wasn't (it naturally has emp immunity, might be why)

[digital anchor]

Oh you mean it's bugged?

Ah right we have made it emp immune...

I could just make commander unshareable I guess. Just have to think how that behaves when someone leaves. Don't want to leave the last commander untakeable.

[idle fox]

in the future it would be good to have the disable a seperate state that's not coupled to emp.

[digital anchor]

Yeah PtaQ said same thing. It should be like "re-programming" or whatever we make up in lore.

[idle fox]

how does easy tax handle take? does take bypass restrictions?

[digital anchor]

No. You get the 30 sec stun on eco with take too.

[hazy schooner]

I quite like the idea, with many avenues already covered. The reclaim is the hardest one indeed, but even with no reclaim tax, the delay between rez-bots moving around to get all the solar/unit metal+ stun should disincentive it quite a bit.

[hazy schooner]

This might be a bit brutal. You are already behind with a leaver (usually). I would be fine if this is an exception, I don't think leaving -pause game- share- rejoin is going to be a common pattern (and worse than tac-pauses, which are already not allowed)

[mystic tapir]

In a lot of situations having a leaver puts you ahead

[bitter patrol]

Op player taking a leaver isnt just Op player with twice power but more than that, because of how stuff scales in BAR. Leaver is Op for the team

[mystic geode]

btw i don;t thing u have to give solar to teamate/let reclaim, u can just donate not ended solar, and it naturaly evaporate to him without paying bp to reclaim that, im not tested that so not sure if there is anything what making it problematic

[hazy schooner]

Usually not, as you need to split your attention. Imagine starting 7 vs 8 with an extra commander. You probably have a heavier presence in one lane/role, and a lighter presence in another.

(Leaving aside that much less skilled player of your team leaving. Could also be the red player leaving after all)

[weary relic]

Omg, indeed, have you think of decay giving full M !?

[digital anchor]

That's why I put a rule that you can't give partly built unit/building. It needs to be finished before you can give.

[mystic geode]

oh sorry op

was reading that yester day and get kinda hyped

[idle fox]

one benefit of having a coop modoption is that now you can specify in lobby title "no mex leaving" or "no mex leaving first 5 min"
it was impossible to draw the line on what is coop and what isn't, but mex leaving is more clear cut

[weary relic]

BP cost with a bunch of lazarus is nothing (200 BP each).
Travel time with lazarus is also nothing (78 speed).

Reclaim tax is mandatory i think, it change a lot the "reclaim & rebuild" mechanics but you can always justify it by "dismantle cost" in the lore

[idle fox]

no there's a better way. bit more advanced. reclaiming units always returns the metal to the original creator regardless of if it was shared

you can help your ally reclaim their stuff but the metal goes to them

Imo the current easy tax is good enough for widespread testing (for becoming a permanent modoption, not advocating for it in vanilla). yes there are workarounds but they are not gamebreaking. the main function works

[digital anchor]

I agree that there's no real reason that reclaiming unit needs to refund 100 % metal. It could as well be any other number, this is just the one people got used to.

However if I want to play games with my modoption I have to make it popular enough that people turn it on in lobbies. So it's worth it to me to concede on this matter and still fix most of co-op rather than insist on the rule and then nobody uses the mod option.

[idle fox]

The two house rules I'd recommend using it with are:
-No intentionally blow com to funnel wreck to techer
-No mex leaving (especially before 5 min)

[idle fox]

yeah there's nothing wrong with it being less than 100%. players just have gotten used to for 1000's of hours lossless lab reclaim and base reshuffling

if you lose 810 metal when you reclaim t2 lab then lab reclaim builds will probably be obsolete in most cases, which is quite a big change. It might reduce the powerspike from solar --> fusion i suppose.

[mystic geode]

100 time better than weirdo book of rule with arbitraly interpretations

[weary relic]

Ah, well, you mark a point, concede on this rule to lower friction point for better lobby adoption, alright, you convinced me.

🤞 Let's just hope "hardcore addict commie gamers" with some lazarus micro skill won't use this technic to get full funnel M

[mystic geode]

btw why assisting temmate construcion is't just taxed?

[hollow sphinx]

I believe b/c you can't assist

[mystic geode]

wdm u can't?

[mystic geode]

yeh, my question is exacly about that, why it;s disabled but not taxed, could be enabled and taxed

[outer badger]

That would be a large game changing setting affecting more than coop

[hollow sphinx]

ah, gotcha, ya not sure. tbh im good either way. Main thing w/ lossiness of sharing would be to make it more obvious what the loss is when it happens

[digital anchor]

Yeah I could also try tax assist. There was already existing code for disabling assist so it was easier to reuse that than try make something new.

[viscid skiff]

This messes with a lot of eco builds. Reclaiming labs and solar are a big part of tech gameplay. It would be a significant change and would nerf things like bot to vehicle switches or T2 to T3 transitions (or T2 to AFUS).

[summer fog]

About leavers, I don't know if it is possible, but what would be nice is that someone can take control over the units/buildings from the leaver but the resources generated by the buildings are shared to the whole team.

[lapis hazel]

I have only glanced at some of the related code, but I think the reason started with "ally-assist code wasn't initially designed to support taxes" and the UI question of "how do you communicate to the player that their assistance is being taxed?"

So it seems like it was just "hard to do" and so disabling ally-assist was the simpler option.

That being said, great job RebelNode on getting this into the codebase

[mystic geode]

about comunicaton it could be even icon like close to wind icon about current tax with inforamtion any resource shering type is taxed

[subtle root]

Would be nice if there was also a way to adjust the tax percentage in the adv. options menu. I can see 30% not being enough sometimes

[digital anchor]

I made it unconfigurable because I hate when every lobby plays with different rules and you always have to adjust your play. And it's hard to get the setting voted in too if people start to argue about correct number. If the 30 % isn't enough we can raise it globally at some point.

[idle fox]

first we can test commie with tax on various maps
ofc commie still optimal on the big 2 map, but you can see rotato

[subtle root]

fair enough

[pure cedar]

Is there a solution to the problem of accidentally reclaiming 1% of the metal from a wreck, and then you can no longer rez it?

If I understand correctly, I can have a T3 95% of the way rez'ed, and then an afk bot comes by and sucks a tiny bit of metal off the T3 wreck, and then I can't rez it anymore. It's just junk, just eat it?

That sucks.

[pure cedar]

Kellar suggested taxing the metal put into a wreck.

Or, we could make it so that you can't reclaim wrecks that are in the process of being rez'ed. This could theoretically be abused to transfer metal tax free, but I don't think it would happen in practice.

It's also just really annoying to have afk bots start eating your rez projects, so if we can stop that it would be good for its own sake.

[half bison]

Recommended tax was 40% in Adv Options tax tooltip.

[swift roost]

I just realized that not all units are stunned when you share them? why is that the case

I thought that was the whole premise without that there is nothing stopping coop

[hollow sphinx]

It just stuns economic units

[woeful mauve]

10/10 modoption

[swift roost]

yea but whats the point if it doesnt stun fatboy

[woeful mauve]

cause fatboy was already slower to get to in the first place

by virtue of all the other changes

my biggest thing would be changing the donation message to include the taxed amount - not sure how possible that is though

should read as "Porsicus I sent 2040 metal (taxed to 1428) to WhiteSeraph"

[hollow sphinx]

💯 agree

[woeful mauve]

game state also feels much better, so far today every game ive seen has gone for 20+ mins

before games would be over in 10mins if one side got fatboys and the other side played pve, now fatboys are slower so more time and t1 to react, more time to get jammer + storage, more time to prepare, means lanes dont fall anywhere near as fast

[idle fox]

combat unit is just sharing control, it's not pooling resources
a fatboy that gets shared arrives at front exactly same time as one that doesn't

[still onyx]

Quick question. The more popular co op solutions (tech cores, relay building) are essentially fancy time gates to sharing. And when i think about coop it's often times the early things that are most toxic (energy slave meta, base giving). Is it possible and would there be interest in just throwing on a time gate lever to sharing? Say no sharing pre x minutes with x being configurable? The eco stun kinda accomplishes a similar goal by attempting to make sharing suboptimal. I made a thread on this and got no traction, so hijacking this one to ask one more time.

[pure cedar]

sharing a t2 con doesn't pool resources

we could double down on the Rosetta front mex tap--tech just goes around tapping mexes and player prepare to build them from there

[idle fox]

it's not coop, it's tech sharing. but extremely powerful tech sharing.

it's because the t2 mex and ageo are extremely powerful buildings

[pure cedar]

but less powerful than sharing a fatboy, as evidenced by the fact that giving fatboys is usually done before t2 cons

[idle fox]

it's not sharing the fatboy that's strong it's sharing money to rush the fatboy

the idea of using a t2 con to tap ally's mexes mainly applies to non-coop scenarios
if you are cooping you're turbo rushing the t2 con / t2 unit (your choice)

[pure cedar]

then why are we punishing giving t2 cons, when it's something that's mainly done in non-coop scenerios?

a t2 con is a t2 con no matter who controls it--the same logic that applies to fighting units applies equally well to constructors

[idle fox]

because using t2 con to go tap mexes is insanely powerful. it's similiar to being able to make hounds out of consul instantly

when you share a consul, you unlock the ability for an ally to make hounds (formerly) without the investment of the t2 lab

[pure cedar]

and your argument is that a tzar on the front at 5 minutes is different--your argument is that a tzar vs t1 at 5 minutes is NOT insanely powerful? (I'm asking, do I understand your argument?)

[idle fox]

may I ask your os?

[pure cedar]

no, because that will lead to arguments about me, but this is not about me--if you can find out my OS, so be it

[idle fox]

when you solo make a tzar you can't make it by 5 min. it pops 5:40 or something i think?

share t2 con builds to upgrade ageo is insanely powerful, it's dominating on straits, rosetta, simmers, etc.
you can produce a full starlight push (5 starlights and jag/spam following) by 10:30

[swift roost]

I disagree, its sharing the fatboy thats strong, sharing money to get it faster is negligible in comparison

[idle fox]

just watch op lobby, I play techer thousands of games. I'd like to make my own t2 lab but it's mostly obsolete against buy t2 upgrade

[idle fox]

pretend team 1 techer makes a fatboy and controls it
team 2 techer makes a fatboy and gives it to ally

in both cases they pop and arrive front at the same time. The only difference is who is microing it

[swift roost]

yea, the difference in micro makes one side target tick and the other target the middle of the ball of whistler

[idle fox]

i played techer to 50os and microed my own units. if people can play 1v1, they can control base and micro t2 units

anyways, the change in control is an apm/control optimization, doesn't involve any resource pooling

[pure cedar]

pretend team 1 techer makes a bunch of t2 cons and upgrades all their allies stuff without ever giving the t2 cons away

why is this not punished, but gifting a t2 con is punished?

in both cases they pop and arrive at their upgrade targets at the same time, the only difference is who is microing it

[idle fox]

i think you are misunderstanding

in eztax, you are allowed to tap as many teammates mexes/ageos with one t2 con, same as vanilla. The advantage over this is you save the metal/energy cost of making extra t2 cons, which can be a big deal.

If you do a tech build on an ageo, make your t2 lab yourself and upgrade your mexes/ageo yourself, you will have less con turrets, less resources, and more vunerability, due to having to blow com and metal being sunked into lab

[pure cedar]

do you think t2 cons should be emp'ed when shared or not?

[idle fox]

yes. they are economy/production. they also happen to be tech unlock

[pure cedar]

See my previous comment. I think our brains work different enough that we can't understand each other.

Why is there no constructor emp when the techer micros the constructors, but there is an emp when the techer gives the constructors away? The only difference is who is microing it.

[idle fox]

the suggestion is to make t2 cons unable to tap allied mexes, AND stun them when transferring them
right now they are stunned when transferring, but you can bypass that by keeping the t2 con and tapping everything

[torn cloud]

Could always reclaim = {allies = not spring.getmodoption().easytax}

That makes it a little bit harder to coordinate

[idle fox]

suggestions:

1. make t2 con unable to tap allied structures
2. make the emp timer pause when unit is being transported

reasoning: players can bypass the 30sec share timer by tapping allied mexes/ageo
doesn't make sense that its slower to share a t2 air con to a teammate than it is to share a t2 bot con and transport it while it's emped

[pure cedar]

I wish we would just see what a working tax would do to the meta first--we've never tried that

we just jumped straight to all these strange rules and inconveniences

[delicate peak]

idk i dont think you can boost the bluyprint also stunned

also ally assisnt is disabled

[gusty plume]

for the reclaim tax, could you not tax 30% to the original owner, so 70% goes to reclaimer and 30% goes to builder, would probably be a good inbetween, or change those values but 30% for consistency

[pure cedar]

So I get some metal when an enemy eats my com?

[gusty plume]

no only for allies

[woeful mauve]

yeah i guess that makes a lot of sense on maps like supreme where ageo / air tap were already commonplace

[idle fox]

i think there's an exception for tapping geo/amexes atm

you might not be able to boost the blueprint but the starting the blueprint is the most important part
you see a similiar thing with legion t1.5 mex on rosetta. it's super mandatory to rush t1.5mex in mid, with 30 seconds delay it's less required unless the mid player actually opens legion themselves

[fierce pawn]

Probably because pooling buildpower is strong. Even if it was taxes, E.g. 2 commanders can build a rattle twice as quickly as one even if one player is taxed at 30% (meaning the building overall cost 15% more to build assuming both players put exactly the same amount of BP into it). These are good reasons to disable ally construction assist even if you could tax it.

Rainbow cons for units would still be good even if taxed at 30% but now players have to make their own BP and spend their own resources and can't passively rely on teammates, even if they are ok with giving away their income at a tax like that, let them manually use their sliders if they are ok with losing 30% of their money to continue to pool resources.

[digital anchor]

Changelog: The reclaim tax is gone from live version now. If you don't know what that is/was it doesn't matter because it's not there anymore.

[digital anchor]

Yeah I can maybe work out how to do this in some future update. There are some other UI improvements that could also be done but this is probably most important.

[bitter patrol]

Thanks @digital anchor for the modoption, much appreciated. Personally i dont have a huge beef with commie gameplay but i love this modoption. You still sling some resources, but its fairer and you get less combat t2 on field early. I also like the fact that you cant just print t2cons for everybody instantly

Looking forward to playing more of this

[torn cloud]

🎉🎉🎉🎊🎊🎊

[lethal wadi]

ok i just tested it in low level lobbies you can upgrade at your own cost all of your team mexes and geo and pop 2 or 3 of the blueprints for whatever the guy wants to be built (like anti nuke, power plant etc.). The receiver can just set a constructor of hiw own to build the blueprint and pause immidiately so that the blueprint doesn't evaporate but he doesn't have to pay the construction cost right away. this prevents the stun issue

most of the advantage of a T2 is the blueprint, not the build power, i'm thinking of ever building a T2 air lab constructor and sending it away to place 1 blueprint of T2mex on a loop, everyone can start building 1 T2mex by min 6.30 and by the time everyone finishes the first T2 mex, the T2 air con already cameback around to merely "put down" the blueprint for the second one before leaving almost instantly. I think the air lab is a greater investment BUT worth it because with the tactic of manually building my team mexes at my own cost i can't do eco for later not do an early nuke by 17min or so. What do you guys techers and eco fans think about that?

[bitter patrol]

If you can do something with air play prior, sure. Otherwise its gonna be tough vs team with ground t2 units. Picking up their t2 or bombing on t1 before teching is probably good

[lethal wadi]

Ah true that's a potential redundant T2 air lab. What about having the tech player giving metal and energy -despite the tax- to have air build his T2 air lab? => this way air gets early access to powerful T2 bombing air units by 5-6 minutes and the couple or single T2 air constructor just moves around placing mexes and needed blueprint like a power plant by typing what they need at the ping location. Quite bothersome even if for just the first 10-12 minutes but that is resources the team can use to build units to push hard, IF we can coordinate well. Worth it despite the tax compared to making 8 T2 bot constructor at the beginning you think?

[ionic kernel]

Tax against communism! 🤣

[cold citrus]

https://tenor.com/view/ironic-star-wars-chode-gif-5274592

[near sonnet]

As a noob, sharing units and resources is one of the coolest parts about this game that makes in unique for me. I can see how its difficult to balance, but it would be a real shame to see basic strategies patched out of the game because OP lobby has to take things to an extreme. The game has no pro scene, let people have fun imo. my 2c.

[idle fox]

this is why i never suggested for tax in base game. coop is rarely an issue in casual lobbies, and if some party comes along and tries to abuse coop they can turn on the tax modoption

tax and coop solutions in general necessarily sacrifices some QoL features to keep unlimited sharing mechanics from taking over the entire gameplay, when gameplay is optimized.

[half bison]

I do not see anyone playing ranked PvP game unoptimized or with intent not to win.
There are 2 types of people who like funneling/resource pooling.

1. "Pros" or better players, who like to get economic advantage without doing anything and win with that instead of outplaying opponent with micro and unit composition.
2. "Noobs", who do not know how to play or spend m and prefer to just send it to better player who wins the game for them while they idle.

Played couple of games with modoption - games were back and forth - no
unreachable units for single player at unreasonable times, better micro and unit compositions won.
Good modoption - probably can be improved even more.

[lapis hazel]

Hopefully some kind of balancing system can be made so that ally-assist can be re-introduced, because I agree it seems very natural to help your teammates if you have a spare constructor available

[near sonnet]

My mind immediately goes to using your com on front to help finish your ally's rattle or smth. I think another poster nailed it for now in keeping it a lobby option since commie's not really an issue in noob lobbies.

[idle fox]

im sure there are plans for taxed assist but it requires engine changes the last time i checked

[lapis hazel]

Could you just prevent rainbow assist and get a sufficient effect? "Only one color can contribute to building at the same time, but red could start it and orange could finish it up."

[idle fox]

that's pooling resources
player A dumps 1.25k metal into a rattle, then player B dumps 1.25k metal into rattle (or t2 lab). congrats, commie at home

[lapis hazel]

Ah, gotcha, thanks for the quick rebuttal

[lethal wadi]

"better micro and unit compositions won." In team, so 2 V 2 or more, things change quite a bit though it terms of skill. "I do not see anyone playing ranked PvP game unoptimized or with intent not to win."
there is a few things to clarify i think
Economy management as part of a Rock/Paper/Scissor Trade-Off:
If your resource production capacity doubles every period T, then waiting 2T gives you (2)² = 4× as many resources to play with.
At -any- moment "grow eco for twice as long = four times as much units later" is exactly exponential growth mathematically speaking.
That's just basic risk/reward and rock/paper/scissors integrated in the game itself like a good deal of RTS but from an economic standpoint.

BUT:
With the -sharing system- as it was made at the beginning of the game, units and building sharing, is literally asking for people to mix and match unit composition to get the better of all factions when taken to its extreme min max efficiency.
This include things like having starlights and Tzar working in your own army, either through a trade with another allie's faction or paid in some fashion or even functioning as a "debt" => "next time you attack"

Co-operation in teams and Specialization:
Because of how the human mind works (shown in studies but also in competitive games of all e-sports, specialization of activity in groups will always win against a team full of jack of all trades, considering equivalent:

• “IQ "innate performance", age, coffee, alcohol etc. or "personal skill"? i guess)
  and
• Deep knowledge of the game ("skill"? or BAR skill? or RTS skill?).

Because of all the sharing option the absolute most efficient teamplay will get closer to look like an MMO type party
where some people are good at :
-assessing enemy attack potential and how to defend in advance and respond quickly ("Defender" mindset)
While others are good at :
-assessing enemy defensive capabilities and how best to attack where it hurts based on best guess considering enemy unit/eco ratio ("Attacker" mindset)
-Others will be good at managing if the output of resources at one point in time should be used to build more eco, more attack units, more defenses ("Heal"? or something)

it's no at all only a question of "bad" people play in back or play with defensive structure forever without attacking. The way i see it this can be considered a good or a bad thing by the majority of people:
-the opportunity to create something really unique compared to other game
-or lacking the comfort and reassurance of having BAR work by the same principle as most other RTS games

Personally, I don't have an opinion on what's "good" . I would cowardly (i guess) just say it's up to the devs to decide (they made a vision into a reality) and the community can also forcefully steer them in one or the other direction.

At least we should be able to agree on the assessment on what the game is and what it tends towards when played to its extreme min/max of competitive play, before we can even properly judge if we like what we've discovered or not.

[idle fox]

request: setting that toggles whether /taking a leaver or resigner's base incurs the 30sec self emp

yes is technically correct, no is good for smoother gameplay in pub games as long as no one is abusing it

[woeful mauve]

Agreed. I had a guy leave after his com died on front. Immediately leaks starting coming. I took him, but the freeze started from when I took, so we already lost ~10 seconds, then the freeze happened, can't produce any units (my t2 lab was under construction) from his lab because it was frozen. Lost all mexs. Lost all winds. Too many units in the base by the time the freeze was up.

I think make an exception in the case with /take. If it becomes a problem, then give an option later down the track, but overall - I think it's a negative experience. If someone is going to leave you're already losing an entire player (though arguably if a poop leaves and high OS takes it - the poop is barely a player to begin with).

[pure cedar]

It's fairly common for a player to leave without actually resigning, by giving their base away. It's polite to give your base to a nearby player before leaving. Even in 30+ OS lobbies (so, like the top 1% of players) it's fairly common to have someone just resign and nobody on the team even notices they're gone for several minutes.

If I want to rage quit and hurt my team, I guess I just give my base away, force the stun, and then they wont have an option to /take ? I'll have plausible deniability because this is a fairly common thing to do. Players who do this sometimes come back, or just watch, or micro a unit or something.

[fierce pawn]

Yeah, having dropdown over which features to turn on and off (as seen in the Community Balance Modiption) could be helpful, by default all would be on, and you can manually pick and choose which options you want.

[fierce pawn]

Yeah, stun in the case of take is pretty brutal since many times your team will just die. If leavers becomes an issue, you can maybe additionally enable the setting for that, but also leaving games repeatedly is moderateable as well, so if it becomes a problem, enable the additional option, and/or kickban the players, and also report their BAR accounts.

[idle fox]

leaving is only an issue if it's abused to op take

[pure cedar]

Which happens most of the time. So yeah, it's only an issue most of the time, because:

1. High OS players didn't become high OS by quitting a lot

2. When someone does quit, teams prefer to give their base to high OS players. So if a mid player quits, probably a higher OS player will take instead of a lower OS player.

[fierce pawn]

It is abused, but like one or two matches here and there is not much of a systemic issue. But you gotta somehow make up for being a person down on your team though.

[eternal fractal]

Just a thought on the transfer delay:

I know we’ve defaulted to “emp” because it’s an existing mechanic that was easy to repurpose… but if we want to keep the delayed handoff, maybe the “capture” mechanic is another way to do it? You’re basically saying there is a transfer time. Some units can have a short transfer time <1sec, other units have a long transfer time ~30s

You could recolor the Emp effect to the color of the destination player and use the capture progress bar to show status.

[cold citrus]

That certainly would make it sexier

[idle fox]

its' better if it's a seperate new state to prevent coupling issues imo

since the time formula for determining capture duration is completely different than extax's flat 30 sec

[eternal fractal]

Sure sure, I’m just saying “Emp” is confusing. But if we just re-theme it to “transferring” it will be intuitive to the player

[idle fox]

agreed, emp doesn't really convey why

[eternal fractal]

Transferring is also universal. So even “instant” sharing can have an extremely short transfer cost. Like BP

So we won’t have “some units are emp’d while others aren’t”

[near sonnet]

Saw a cool suggestion in the comments of drongo's new vid: what about a bp tax? especially when it comes to rainbow cons could be an elegant solution. 1st unit assisting gets 50% bp tax, 2nd unit assisting 75%, 3 or more 90%. Yeah you're still sharing resources but at that point i would think the diminishing returns would make it super not worth, while still allowing for, say, the two front players on isthmus to assist eachother building a rattle.

[fierce pawn]

Not many units are allowed to have the capture command, so if you dont have your commander at home in your base you wont get the cons

[hollow sinew]

Hmm, is sharing really a problem outside of Glitters and Isthmus? I don't play them and never noticed this being a problem.

This very mechanic is one of the core things which makes this game stand out for me, it creates tons of interesting strategies, e.g. me playing front and someone else sharing a few winds to me so I could rush the enemy.
Also, I watch all the tournaments and I love how pros are using co-op there, it's IMO part of the spirit of the game, would be sad to see that all disappear :/

[cold citrus]

The stun/capture would be fine if it was within player expectation (aka it was communicated blatantly in lobby+modoption that it was going to happen). Tax doesn't imply that units would be stunned LOL, so ppl would be caught off-guard. There also DEFINITELY needs (and by needs I mean it would be really really really cool) to be options for /take behavior so you can decide whether you want it to do the stun/capture or something.

[fierce pawn]

Probably better in general for no assisting ally construction at all honestly, cuz even if you could tax that and do it dynamically it shouldnt really be promoted especially if it is so inefficient anyway, like if tax goes up the more BP you put into ally stuff its way more a waste than just sending them the metal and pooling the buildpower in their hands

[cold citrus]

If it's true that it's only a problem on Glitmus, then I don't think you have anything to worry about: the solution will remain there for them (and not become the base game, probably).

[hollow sinew]

that's my worry, that this will get into the main game and completely change small team games

[eternal fractal]

I’m mainly talking about the UI of the capture progress bar. When sharing a unit, show a progress bar similar to capture command. Call it the “transferring” bar or whatever. Give the unit a colored Emp effect while the unit changes color to the new player.

Some units transfer slower than others. Eco units take 30s ticks take 0.5s (or whatever) but every unit gets some amount of transfer time so the behavior feels intuitive and predictable. Kind of like how some units require more or less build power

[fierce pawn]

Sharing resources is a problem throughout the entire game, most the 5v5 tournaments are all about resource pooling into 1 player, its most easy in high communication tournament settings, but is always optimal.

Same reason why there is a voice line saying "It is much more efficient to assist an existing lab than to build another lab" this holds true even on the large scale of an entire team's income.

[near sonnet]

i feel like sending m is a fair trade though because then you have no m yourself, and it's up to your opponent to exploit that.

[fierce pawn]

Ahh gotcha, yeah, just another way to communicate to the player that they will get full control of it in some amount of time and so you can make it dynamic depding on unit type and such yeah

[eternal fractal]

Ya makes more sense than “some units you share get emp’d” but retains the core mechanic

[fierce pawn]

Pooling resources and spending them on more resource efficient units or eco structures is always going to be strong in every situation, your opponent might be able to kill you with 5k metal in units if you give away all your metal and then die in the clapback when 5k metal in t2 shows up to obliterate the t1.

[near sonnet]

there are ways to counter t2 with t1 units in the game already

[fierce pawn]

Personally, I don't think sharing combat units is that big an issue, its more economy structures, builders, and rezzers, things that interact with the 3 resources of BAR, Metal, Energy, Buildpower. If something is a combat unit it will exist regardless of who controls it and its effectiveness only changes depending on the skill of the controller, but all skills being equal it doesn't matter who controls it.

[idle fox]

glitters, isthmus, rosetta, hellas basin and any front-back maps are strong coop maps but it is significantly advantegeous on any map

[near sonnet]

I see no issue with sharing anything at all, although strats like rainbow cons is certainly no fun for anyone else in the game... Feeding m to geo on isthmus to rush t2 units has never been an issue for me, I just kill geo before it matters.

[hollow sinew]

Is it? Look e.g. at POG vs PRO from the recent Omega series: https://youtu.be/JngpPNYpxmk, I don't see co-op being broken there - it was used in some of the games in interesting ways, but in some it also didn't pay off. For me it made the games really interesting and allowed fun strategies.

[idle fox]

you can't kill the geo if their t2 lab comes up at 3:00. without blowing their com

[near sonnet]

no one outside OP lobby is getting a t2 lab up at 3 mins

[fierce pawn]

I'm not talking about those but yes there are, there are ways to do it with no units other than a jammer and a commander, so like, its really only about pooling the resources into more powerful and more efficient units and making that less efficient and prefered to do. Like the problem stems from the power difference between tech levels, and without changing that, making it less efficient to share resources than spend it yourself is the best way to deal with pooling resources, or by hard preventing it all together.

[near sonnet]

4 mins is fast, 6 mins is more realistic.

[idle fox]

casual games don't need this by default but the option should be there for higher level play. also if a coop party wants to go in your lobby and stomp you're gonna want it

[fierce pawn]

I mean, tournaments often end up with coop in different ways, everyone sets energy and metal sliders low except 1 player, they freely send metal and E to whoever needs, etc. Its not always about rainbow cons and stuff, though those don't help.

[near sonnet]

in a noob lobby if someone wants to coop they will probably still lose to the one guy who asks for the max rating level to be increased to 28

[idle fox]

when the coop thread becomes 70% a coop education thread

[fierce pawn]

I think if it works out good enough it should be the default honestly, but at least for now it can be tested and be considered and if it is well liked and works well then can remain as a modoption unti a decision is made about whether to make it default or not.

[idle fox]

almost all teams are setting their sliders down, which automatically redistributes resources towards whoever is pulling it. If the whole team has their red metal slider down, as long as people aren't spending their metal on other projects, if one player makes a t2 lab they will pull metal for the whole team

[near sonnet]

problem is the commie strats are what makes BAR, BAR. without it it's just starcraft with a better engine.

But again, you don't ever see two people tag teaming one position or rainbow cons in a noob lobby. ever.

[fierce pawn]

They aren't generally well liked by the skilled players, it creates bad gameplay for less skilled players, and the game will still be vastly different than SC regardless of sharing or coop taxes or whatever

[hollow sinew]

yes, but I don't see why is this a huge problem in 5v5? anyways, what I mostly had in mind was single lab vs 5 labs, different teams played that differently and in that tournament it wasn't obvious which strategy was better

[idle fox]

1. exponential scaling economy
2. radar and jamming
3. commander d-gun
4. navy
5. emp
6. simulated projectiles and dodging. laser fall off
7. bot vs vehicle pathability

[idle fox]

the t1 lab got cheaper and players often make more t1 labs because of the unit roll off time, and because it's easier to coordinate. stacking up 2-3 players on 1 t1 lab is possible and strong.
t2 lab, you will not see multiples

[near sonnet]

balancing around the top 1% of players is a slippery slope to no player base though. It's cool to have options for them to enable, tourney rules and such. but theres no need to fix a problem for the whole game when that problem doesn't exist outside the top lobbies.

[idle fox]

i mean me and my 0os friend can go into any lobby (noob, all welcome, op) and do a 2 man commie in a 8v8 game and likely end the game within 6-10 min

[near sonnet]

and? I can can do that on my own if I get pond

[fierce pawn]

Yes, but you also don't see people with consistent t2 timings in noob lobbies either.

Also, below Platinum in SC2 you don't see any common or meta build orders being followed or timings being hit consistently either. In Platinum and Diamond players follow build orders and can be more consistent with timings and such, but you won't see good timing attacks being hit or a variety of strategies.

[near sonnet]

t2 timings in noob lobbies are actually pretty consistent. they're consistently performing average.

[fierce pawn]

There are no build orders in noob lobbies, they just emulate their own mind's impressions of what the high level players are doing. Its imitation without understanding.

[gusty plume]

theres actually alot of new players who come into mp with only the knowledge of an eco build order^

[fierce pawn]

Actually fair enough, but thats cuz some of the bigger content creators around the game play the eco spot and like 2 year old Drongo Eco Guide is still one of the most viewed videos

And they don't really "know" the build order they have the general concepts down or the timings down, or optimizations made to their micro and such, again they are emulating what they see others do not so much understanding the build orders or practicing the timings in skirmish

[near sonnet]

I mean... not everyone has weaponised autism. Does that mean that their experience doesn't matter, because OP lobby will optimise the fun out of the game regardless of balance?

[fierce pawn]

They are playing a different game than what the 30+ OS players play pretty much. You don't want to balance the game around the noobs anyway, you want to balance the game around what high skilled players have found to be optimal, while only secondarily taking into account how fun it is for everyone including the low skilled players.

[near sonnet]

30+ OS is the top 3% of the playerbase friend

[fierce pawn]

Yeah and the game should be balanced around high skilled players, not a bottom 50% player's impression on what a build is

[gusty plume]

yeah, the execution of it is questionable most of the time, but if they all follow a simillar guide they will get simillar times

[near sonnet]

Just because that's a different game dosen't mean it should be the gold standard for balance

[fierce pawn]

Only with practice

[near sonnet]

Game should be balanced such that the majority of the playerbase are having fun. Let the top 3% tryhard if they want, but they do it to themselves. No need to warp the game around them. There's no pro scene so it's not like anyone's livelihood depends on it.

[fierce pawn]

This is not how online multiplayer games usually get balanced and for good reasons.

[near sonnet]

You would be surprised

there's a whole graveyard full of games out there that balance around being hyper competitive, and then no one plays them but the sweats.

[hollow sphinx]

3rd day playing w/ EZ tax. It's OP. Lot's of the other gamers seem to like it too.

[dense jasper]

Name 1

[near sonnet]

We'll start with Heroes of the Storm, and I can go on if you want

[dense jasper]

You mean the addition of loot boxes and killing the esports league? Please go on

[near sonnet]

Hmmm? They tried to force the pro scene, balanced the fun out of the game, casuals stopped playing, sweats couldn't find lobbies. Try to find a ranked game above gold lol.

[dense jasper]

Forcing a pro scene and balancing according to unit interactions are 2 completely different games :/. The good players stopped playing cause there was no pro scene anymore compared to alternatives like LoL, game failed because it offered less than other titles, not because of balancing the units correctly

Also, almost every other game has tax for good reason, this should be in bar aswell

[outer badger]

true you should go tell league (the largest game and most successful esports in history) to buff Azir because it has been sub 40% win rate and weakest mid laner in bronze for years. Who gives a fuck about high level players? We should make the game around noobs!

Also a little forecast for you. Drongo already made simple guides on how to do rainbow cons (it takes 0 skill its a simple concept and just have to click share button). Its only a matter of time till you see it abused in your low os all welcome piss lobbies

[near sonnet]

No we won't lol. rainbow cons requires your team to not touch the con. That's a tall ask in a noob lobby.

[idle fox]

the whole point of rainbow cons is that the players you are passing cons to don't have to do anything. which makes it suitable for pub games or taking metal from low os teammates

[outer badger]

low os dont even notice a tick wiping their whole base or them e stalling and their metal bar filling for 2min. You think they're gonna notice a con being shared to them and search across the map to find it then use 1 of their 12apm to use it?

[glossy condor]

Good Option, i like easy tax

[serene reef]

@digital anchor Is it possible to have an optional timer for the taxes to be turned off at the 20min mark as default (or any timing you desire including leaving it on indefinitely) ?
By then, there should be full resource funneling as the team chooses. Kind of a different ballgame altogether when the game reaches that stage with everyone typically in T2 and even T3; and I would like to keep that "unbarred" mid-endgame aspect we seen normally in the past games of old.

[haughty rain]

I’ve yet to play this modoption, but it looks very promising. It seems to solve most forms of coop.

[haughty rain]

Are you sure an arbitrary timer is a good idea? If it should be possible to disable tax, which I’m not very sure about, there are probably more intuitive solutions to this like a building that reduces tax. I think the restriction that comes with tax is well balanced - you can still feed, but at a cost of voided metal. It’s more efficient to use that metal yourself, and I think that is a good incentive.

[swift roost]

i think tax should stay throughout. no exceptions. if you want to coop after 20 minutes for whatever reason then the 30s emp timer is not as much of barrier as it is at the start of the game, so you should still feel that unbarred mid endgame youre talking about

[serene reef]

There can be a separate discussion on whether "taxes" should stay in the midgame or lategame. All I am asking for is a simple option. There can be more game modes than the main game you know, as an example. By default it can be left on indefinitely no issue, rather than 20mins.
No one has a monopoly on how they want the game experience to turn out.
And my current opinion. I want taxes to have a better gameplay experience, but not throughout the entire game. I will let it stand it on its own. Programming levels of less restriction after significant time passes is a good idea also (eg. 10% tax, 10s emp), so food for thought.

[ionic laurel]

I'm not great at the game so maybe I'm misreading this but as a front player is it even worth buying a T2 con now? You'll have to send more metal cause of the tax and it will have 30s of not doing anything? I feel like this is going to slow down the game. I'm probably wrong but it feels that way from a casual perspective.

[gusty plume]

personally im all for everybody making their own t2 to be meta, but no i dont think its significant enough, theres also ways to bypass anyways

that being said i dont think it needs to be there for cons

[ionic laurel]

How much is that you'd need what 600 metal to send now? While still pushing units and it doesn't actaully move for 30s. I'm not in game atm so I don't know if that's the right math but that sounds like I'd rather just wait till I'm T2 right? That slows unit production. I don't know I'm open to being wrong and to be fair probably am lol

[glossy condor]

I had activated sharing taxes for around 30 matches in my lobbys in the past, that was maybe 4-5 month ago. And i saw in some games there was a strong server lag happening when to many people overflow resources (heavily) after around +30min and longer games. I had reported this problem at this time but it was sadly ignored by the devs. I can't judge yet about the new Easy Tax System, since i played only 2 games with that option and specced only one while it was active. But if this option introduced the same lag spikes for the server, then i would also recommend to disable this option after 25-30min, to evade server performance degression.

[lethal wadi]

yes it's worth it. When you buys a T2 con you are buying the capacity to land blueprints your own T1 units do not have access to. Build time of mexes is always going to be larger than 30sec so the stun timing actually doesn't matter. The original modder said it himself: drop the blueprint and then share the unit so you can still build shit meanwhile, BUT you can go even farther: simply drop down all of the 3mexes before sharing. You keep building a single one until completion because it is the most efficient, but simply have a con start building the other blueprint and put it on pause => this prevents the blueprint from evaporating without having to micro it or having to waste ressources building multiple mexes simultaneously. Think of it as dropping the overall price of the anti nuke building: your cost to the tech guy is still lower than all the resources needed to make a T2 lab AND the build power to do so without hindering your usual unit production.

[true yarrow]

i'm loving the easy tax and I feel like game quality is improved a lot by it already and could get even better with some minor adjustments 1) change leaver stun to be in line with other stuns-only economic units are stunned while combat units remain active so games are not just lost because the whole frontline including turrets was stunned

2. disable sharing blueprints and placing upgrade blueprints on allied structures so that the stun timer on constructor cant be cheated

3. transporting should halt the stun timer for the same reason as above (tansporting also disables all other actions like jamming and radar so it makes sense)

[cold citrus]

Did this actually happen? I played HotS religiously (non-competitively) with my friends for like 5 years straight no joke and I don't remember this. It was great casual fun. I think we started a little late tho
Off-topic but yeah.

[vagrant zenith]

I dunno my impession of HoTS was always it was a watered down, super casual moba aimed primarily at kids.... which is why no one kept playing it lol.... totally opposite perception

[lethal wadi]

I agree it is the best option if the goal is to counteract multiplayer cooperation to the fullest, but it does seem in the end to contradict what the game description of roles suggests by having the tech position described as the guy that shares T2 con to everyone so they can up their economy. What did the devs really intended????? can anyone one of you tell us here?

[true yarrow]

the roles on role maps are player conceived constructs

[lethal wadi]

I wholeheartedly agree, and anyone can see that the air wall strategy becomes retarded once T2 comes as flak vehicles are able to properly kill bombers by costing less ressources to do so. But not the ability to -share literally anything you own-, why would they, the devs, bother making it if not to use it? it's not an easy task.

[true yarrow]

i'm not sure i understand

[hollow sphinx]

lmao wat

[lethal wadi]

i agree some roles are retarded, like air and its fighter wall strategy in my example, but the devs made the game with the ability to share anything you own freely

[true yarrow]

oh boy...you have some reading to do

[lethal wadi]

why go back on the usage now? is it because they didn't realize it was so overpowered?

[true yarrow]

remember we are talking about an option that has to manually be turned off for players that prefer to play with more limited sharing

[hollow sphinx]

ya you might have to wait until your context window can get large enough to digest the coop is a problem thread. The more limited sharing is pretty fun so far...be curious to see how it holds up to more testing

[summer fog]

It will be interesting to see if and how players manage to bypass it, and how powerful the coop turns out to be.

[lethal wadi]

combat unit sharing would need to be restricted i think to really limit the issue of people cooperating too much then. right now it's not enough.

[true yarrow]

debate on combat units share is still going on, I personally feel like its fine because the creator of the unit that gets shared either had to fund it himself or whatever sling he got was taxed, the change is not oriented at preventing cooperation but resource pooling

[lethal wadi]

but the point of resource pooling is often to pool to do something interesting like getting a bigger army controlled by one guy. someone previously said "no
unreachable units for single player at unreasonable times, better micro and unit compositions won.
Good modoption - probably can be improved even more."
Thats an issue

[summer fog]

I would still buy fatboys even with a 30% tax. It is 100% worth it. Even if I have to pay 2k metal for the fatboy. If the combat units also got a long emp and can't be transported when they are emped, then it would maybe be worth it to build a own T2 lab.

[true yarrow]

if you can afford 1.5k + metal at min 6 and not die i feel like that is fine

[lethal wadi]

the question would be what amount of taxation would be enough to offset the freeby of not having to build your own T2 lab and the buildpower associated

[true yarrow]

I think the tax heavily incentivises you to buy a t2 con instead because the returns will be far better longterm

[summer fog]

It is also fine for the tech player if I just send him 500-700 metal and if multiple players do it he can get easily the fatboy out. 700 metal after taxes would still be 490 metal. So it isn't that much less metal.

[true yarrow]

well...its 30% less metal xD

[glossy condor]

That shows how weak the season balance patch was when it comes around nerfing the OP Fatboy. But that shouldn't belong in this Topic. But atleast the 30% tax makes the game clearly more balanced against this Meta.

[summer fog]

My point is that it is still worth it paying for the fatboy. If I have to pay 30% more for it doesn't really matter, it is so strong that it destroys the whole frontline of the other player.

[true yarrow]

yeah but its just inherently more risky to buy the fatboy now and if you get it dgunned its straight up tragic for your win chances

[lethal wadi]

the good tech doesn't worry about the price tag, it's just that it dramatically hinders the building of other things that will be useful to the team later on. The tax need to be prohibitive in the sense of the entire team, like one fatboy at 6 min prevents you from getting everyone mexes up until 16 min or something. The fat seems like a high risk high reward already

[glossy condor]

What about sharing it while it produced in factory? The emp is vanished already in the time, till its picked up from transport to delivered at front.

[lethal wadi]

u can't share units not fully built

[true yarrow]

it wont work kobold, ally assist is disabled completely

[glossy condor]

So lifting up allied units with trans wont work with ally assist disabled?

[true yarrow]

that will work

[glossy condor]

Then i dont understand you? which exactly wont work?

[true yarrow]

your not assisting an allied unit by transing it, it only involves construction tasks

and as I wrote above I think that emp stun timer should be paused during transport to avoid cheating it

[lethal wadi]

you are trying to find ways to make the disable time more manageable right?

[glossy condor]

Exactly, i think voncomet dont understand me. I was talking about, to evade the EMP cooldown... so when the unit is shared after passing the factory build, it takes time till its at frontline anyways

[lethal wadi]

right now your thing works out more or less

we are trying to think about improving the constraints like disable time being always active during "useful" operational time of the unit. so no "sharing unit and immediately transporting around for 30 seconds

[glossy condor]

So sharing units while they are build in factory is a new "easy sharing tax" restriction?

[true yarrow]

https://gist.github.com/RebelNode/43b986f29b9cfacbe95cf634cac25c49 reading op kobold

[glossy condor]

Or is that related to "disable ally assist"? that we can't share "not fully built" units?

[lethal wadi]

it's not up to date btw u can reclaim ur shit no issues, he disabled that reclaim tax

[glossy condor]

Okay i see it there: Partially built units can't be given (except when upgrading mexes/geos). I missed that feature, that's smart to block it.

[glossy condor]

I agree with that, i didnt saw that you wrote this already... so we on the same page here.

[lethal wadi]

not really, think about it, even without that if you were to build somehting in your factory and share it before completion, while ally assist is disabled means you can finish the unit because it's no longer yours, you'd have to recalaim it and start all over. It's more about mexes and building.

[glossy condor]

So it would stuck in factory and block the que?

[lethal wadi]

even so a 30s emp delay may not be enough to compensate the fact a whole ass fatboy is now on the battlefield. Timming is important but on a lane those 30seconds equate to only a few units that would get slaughtered by the proper microing of the fatboy. 30sec delay could still leave people feeling disatisfied and "cheated" by the teamplay here

[lethal wadi]

last time i tried yes, but maybe they changed it in between idk

the emp can be made to reset after each influx of ressources into the units, there's already code for that

[true yarrow]

the fatboy just has to deal more dmg than it had to deal before to be worth the delay on t2 cons, each fatboy has to deal roughly 30% more dmg than it did before...how can you guarantee that?

[lethal wadi]

we can manage around those strategy of avoid the 30 cooldown without issue i think

[lethal wadi]

you don't, i just said people can still -feel- cheated. The fatboy is ALREADY a high risk high reward (killed off by figs or D-gunned by com, or focused by smart micro etc.)

[true yarrow]

with infinite funnel you could just replace the lost fatboy and also have t2 cons at good timing, now mistakes will be punished-as it should be

[ionic laurel]

I don't really use blueprints like I stated I'm not that good so I haven't even looked in to them yet. I'll try it but man losing nearly twice the metal for a T2 con and 30s doesn't sound like a lot but that on top of the 650 - 700 metal? lol that sounds like alot of T1 conbat bots I'm missing out on.

[lethal wadi]

losing the fatboy is already a loss teamwise.

[lethal wadi]

yeah blueprint is a word already used in the game for something else, i meant that the use of T2 con is the ability to START a T2 building, he doesn't need to be there afterwards

[true yarrow]

you pay 30% more metal for the t2 con which is an extra 130 metal

[ionic laurel]

I usually pay 480 for a t2 con usually to give a little extra 700 taxed 30% is 490 so i rounded up

[acoustic igloo]

https://tenor.com/view/it-needs-to-be-removed-take-it-away-serious-demanding-crypt-tv-gif-14208347

[lethal wadi]

u want a 200% tax?

[true yarrow]

new suggested change: any time duxi complains about it the tax is doubled

[acoustic igloo]

I want no tax

[bitter patrol]

the whole point of tax is to discourage pooling resources. as it stands, BAR is designed in a way that one person scaling with infinite resources will scale much, much harder than 8 players scaling on their own COMBINED. Because of the centralized buildpower and quick returns when you build a costly energy project. so any resource slinging to a teammate is overpowered compared to several players doing their own eco.

personally i was never a fan of taxes but i think it's the only real way to mitigate slinging resource to 1 player that builds up infrastructure with them to have more than everybody at some point

[twin marten]

Man people are killing each other over reclaim now.
Bruh.

[bitter patrol]

yeah games could evolve into giga-aggro playstyle. but on the other hand, every new patch has to be tested with aggro play, this was always the case with patches in all RTS games, they were rush fests first weeks

[weary relic]

@digital anchor GG, game state is a lot better with this modoption, a lot more room to each individual skills and still good teamwork with funnel and share balanced.
Here is a good example of quality game with "easy tax" :
https://www.beyondallreason.info/replays?gameId=0af76769b328d1cdf127ac7c4467f059

[glossy condor]

I also want to appreciate RebelNode's work here, its a clear upgrade and finally the exploiter's can go back under the rock where they come from. I hope that it won't take to long to see this patch introduced in the Vanilla code.

[lethal wadi]

a harder a time "tax" on combat unit sharing would be nice too otherwise the front liner can just micro forever with a stream of combat units made from the eco that maximize efficiency of the build power they have. It's a sort of ghost slinging so to speak, instead of sending resources you continuously spam units without ever building eco properly and just wait for the Eco player shielded by all those units at the front to scale safely and dramatically, then they share a constant stream of powerful units to everyone at the front who shouldn't have access to great economy to finance that stream of units. 30 sec stun on combat units like the eco units would be a start, possibly a bit more even.

[signal flower]

I think we should keep it simple and apply the stun to all kinds of units/buildings when sharing them and disable sharing of the commander (and I think 30s is rather too low. Maybe 45s?). The reason being that we should never encourage an "only eco" play nor an "only units" play. Imagine one day we have auto matchmaking with a map pool - I'm sure not all maps will have an eco spot and suddenly the former "eco only" player has no idea how to play front. For disconnects or a player leaving we could restrict it to only buildings (so that the remaining players can use the units to defend at least).

[bitter patrol]

nah i think combat units shouldnt get stunned. its fine they appear on frontline, its a big thing in bar to have t2 spike comming and dealing with it. what game needs is ways to deal with that and with 30% tax, and jammer range fix, and knowledge about holding the lane with minimal costs is enough IMO.

i'm more interested in mex leaving to techer games and seeing how this evolves in glitters lobby.

[hollow sphinx]

logs into BAR checks glitters....Has EZ tax enabled.....checks OP Supreme....has EZ tax enabled. The world is healing.

[idle fox]

rotato too

[hollow sphinx]

gasp

[thorn moss]

People don't do that anyways except in tournaments. If we want to fix rainbow cons isn't disabling ally construction enough? This changes BAR too much for me to fix something that barely exists

[fierce pawn]

Is it? Most don't notice it being shared

[slate rover]

Disabling ally construction is too much too.
I have no reason to enable the modoption in a casual game, pve especially, t's just making the game worse for no reason in that environment.

[thorn moss]

I agree. The change I would make to fix rainbow cons is to make so when you share the con it loses "guard" orders (and "roaming" con turrets get to default state). That way all the allies will need to manually guard and it will make rainbow cons a lot more annoying to do

[haughty rain]

Ally construction is a form of resource sharing. It should definitely be taxed the same as sharing resources and overflow are. But it shouldn’t be disabled, because sharing resources isn’t. This solves rainbow cons.

[digital anchor]

Changelog:

• Commander can no longer be shared, but can be taken from dead ally (no stun). This is so that you can't mess up with (last) commander by getting it stunned/uncontrollable and losing the game because of that.
• Sharing resources now shows how much of a resource the ally received.

[fierce pawn]

This is real cool

[fierce pawn]

Even if the resources shared is taxed, it is important to remember build power is also a resource that is better pooled, and as long as the design behind this stuns things like con turrets when shared (or puts them in any form of like cooldown when shared) then assist ally construction should be off. Generally speaking right now, assist ally construction should be off since a number of exploits of player's and unit behaviour and stuff for rainbow cons. I still do think though that assist ally construction should be off even if the resources could be taxed when doing so.

[haughty rain]

Why though? Taxed ally construction should be very inefficient if taxed sufficiently - around 30%. You could even consider taxing build power. I just don’t think that ally construction should be disabled, as it’s quite restrictive to do that.

[fierce pawn]

Full funding someone's build by just sending them all the metal means 30% tax, if they put 50% of the time into building something and you put the other 50% in, the effective tax is 15%, as only half the cost to build was taxed, granted, half the resources did come from the player trying to actually build it, but still. Still less efficient than making it yourself, but also gotta remember cooping forward defenses is a thing, and assisting allied labs is a thing, and that build power is a resource as well, like commanders have a fair bit of resource and con turrets do too, pooling build power in 1 player lets them spend resources faster and currently you don't need to pool it you can just assist all allied stuff, putting your own resources into it to complete it faster.

Also, this allows you to bypass any restrictions or cooldowns on sharing construction units, as one player can fly in cons or whatever, drop a blueprint and use everyone else to build it, yes at 30% more expensive, but then they don't need to share units and stuff, it will be worse, but maybe shouldn't be encouraged as an option.

My thoughts are around the the whole idea that buildpower is in fact a resource in the game, and part of this modoption is to restrict/make less efficient the sharing of buildpower and constructors. Like, teamwork can still exist but generally you should be spending all your own resources on your own stuff if possible, and if not, gotta pay the tax to send it elsewhere or pool it.

[summer fog]

Btw what happens if someone loses connection, someone take the player then sees the player is rejoining and giving the base back?

Is the emp still applied?

[fierce pawn]

The EMP is a stop-gap solution, its temporary cuz it uses current game mechannics from my understanding. Ideally, it seems like in most cases /take shouldn't stun, or giving back a base to someone who caught up, but those things clearly need to be worked on (as repeatedly leaving matches, especially for gameplay reassons is already a moderateable offense and the offending players should be kickbanned from the lobby they are in).

[summer fog]

For /take there has to be even a bigger nerf then just a short emp in my opinon. I had a game where someone took 3 players (it was even a noob lobby and the other player was only 27 OS) and I still nearly lost the game even when my team had a big advantage.

[weary moon]

It would be nice if sharing a partially built unit worked - just do actual sharing when the unit is finished. It's annoying that you have to wait for it to finish (also, the sound effect plays just like it worked so it's also confusing)

[lethal wadi]

can be quite annoying indeed, i don't think there is a code easily available to repurpose so that there is an automatic action that can be delayed like that. Best is so set a timer with your PC or phone or something in the meantime.

[weary moon]

I don't think it's hard to implement, the question is if it should be added. It would have a follow-up needs like canceling the share, and some ui indicator

[lethal wadi]

send the modification away to our great guy RebelNode then, the faster the better if possible. "follow-up needs like canceling the share" that kind of flair is going to take a "bit" of time to implement for sure though. About the UI indicator you mean something else but the color system is that right?

[lethal wadi]

we'd need to have a proper system to join back THE SAME game after temporary connection loss. Right now it's a bit f*cked.

[digital anchor]

So there are a few issues with sharing unfinished units:

• The 30 sec tax doesn't do much if you build something for 30 secs.
• Your constructor doesn't stop building when you give the unit away so you can assist a build that now belongs to your ally.
• If you half-build solar, give it away and let it decay you essentially transfer metal wirelessly and taxfree to your ally.

I guess something like SuperKitowiec suggests could work as long as it doesn't complicate the rules too much. The UI for canceling and stuff could make it feel pretty complicated.

[weary moon]

I mean, the unit won't be shared until it's finished. Sharing will be scheduled for when the unit is finished

[cold citrus]

I used to dislike what I'm about to say, because imo it was a misdiagnosis, but this can be considered a matchmaking problem: equal skill team should be able to punish nerfed OP take.
Unless the nerf isn't big enough 😂
POINT IS, the margin is currently unknown, but.
Yeah on second thought the 30 second timer (and 30% tax) is probably gonna go up over time as people get better and realize it's not enough. Hmmm it really could go either way, but I'll just agree w/ whatever Chrono says

[tiny arrow]

Enough for what, exactly?

Any tax is clearly a nerf to sharing, but what would you define as the goal that a nerf should achieve?

[vagrant zenith]

I think it might be a bit wierd... not all labs and all units move at the same rate, some units can be 1/4 of the way across a map before other units even clear the gantry for example. At worst you could end up with stunned units sitting in a lab blocking production

[weary moon]

That's a good point

[fierce pawn]

Its kind of a mixed bag because many times you take a teammate its because they resigned and your team is likely (or is at least percived by your teammates) to be a loss, and this just makes the snowball effect worse, while at the same time, taking leavers is not because leavers are intentionally trying to pool resources, but yes this can happen where the highest os gets a lot more income and can spend it better for sure, but thats more an issue with skill distribution and playerbase size cuz ideally lobbies would be full of people of roughly equal still and such, where pooling resources is still good, but your team won't be punished for having a leaver.

I think we need more time to be able to figure out which works best.

[fierce pawn]

If unit goes uncontrollable and sits on your lab your lab gets paused, pretty sure this avoids that, unless you want the unit to move a little before it goes on some sort of cooldown (which the stun is a stand in for)

[summer fog]

In my opinion the emp is already good, but for eco buildings the resources should be shared to the whole team and one single player should just take control over units/buildings.

I think especially in the early t2 stage (transition to t2) it can be really strong to take someone. Everyone is upgrading mexes anyways, not much action is happening. If someone can get a whole economy (even if it gets stunned for 30 seconds) it is still very good and OP at least in my opinion.

[fierce pawn]

Taking right now is for sure better earlier, but its hard to say what to do with it for now because the stun just further adds to the enemy snowball when you take in the case of someone who has left who hasn't yet fully died, for example.

[summer fog]

In theory there could also be no emp and just share the generated resources to the whole team with some little tax (depending on how many players left) and one player takes control of the buildings/units. So not the whole eco gets funneled into one player. And without emp the game would also not immediately end in some situations.

[fierce pawn]

Yeah, that might be something that works best but at that point we're getting close to saying that mexes should just provide global income which is against current design philosophy for BAR

[cold citrus]

For me and my money, that sharing-based builds/strats and solo build strategies are equally viable at most skill levels (with a strong bias for higher skill levels). Right now I'm just assuming it won't be enough if people really put their balls into co-oping appropriate to their skill level, I could be wrong tho.

[idle fox]

there's multple reasons why you can't have sharing unfinished blueprints

[cold radish]

You would also have to start looking into the idea of moderation for people who resign prior to the rest of the team. This is because a 30 sec stun would likely have the opportunity to cost some teams the game so resigning would be essentially sabotage. Additionally not resigning and just giving all your units would be a simmilar form of sabotage

[idle fox]

the way you should interpret it as, stun when giving all units is the intended gameplay
and resigning not incurring the penalty is an exception to the formal rules in order to make pub games smoother

resigning games early for the purpose of pooling resources is worth a lobby ban (it's different if your base is half dead)

[cold radish]

What about the times people get 30 min into the game and realize that they need to go? They then get banned because they pooled resources by bieng unable to complete a round?

Basically how do you determine the intention of the resign, or just mass donation

[pure cedar]

People are allowed to resign, unless it's happening every game in a disruptive way. Probably best to just let lobbies ban and deal with it when its a problem.

[idle fox]

it's pretty obvious if it's a pattern, and you don't really care about pooling so much after 15-20 min, or if your base is half dead

[summer fog]

That is hard to do, how do you want to know if it is normal disconnect or someone pooling resources?

[true yarrow]

I wanna say that moderations were issued in the past for players that got reported for it too much, i think mostly warnings

[long chasm]

Just leaving my thoughts here;

• Doesn't impact coop all that much (just changes up the way to go about it) aside from the no early sharing (which is fine and totally ok with that as it's pretty much what I originally suggested as well)
• Impacts several aspects of matches that are also done consistently when playing non coop (like stunning the t2 con, seems to make no sense to me)
• I think stunning things is actually annoying, I think loads of people agree with that, would like to have something more streamlined without stunning, like a rate limit instead.

[west sundial]

can't troll anymore by giving 0.0001% finished wind turbine on rosetta

[acoustic igloo]

comet stop being a creep, smh

[true yarrow]

i dont know what u mean, didnt delfea get warned for leaving too much or something?

[summer fog]

The stunning of the t2 con doesn't really matter that much if it is shared before it gets transported or it gets shared after it set down the first blueprint.

[long chasm]

It's not that it doesn't matter much (also on some maps it definitely does btw, there's plenty of maps around where the 30 sec delay of the con when your bases are close to eachother it matters) it's just seemingly there for no reason, when it comes to coop for example the t2 con sharing really isn't an issue so why stun it, that's more why I said it doesn't make sense to have the t2 con be stunned, it's actually just an annoying (seemingly needless) aspect of the change

[hollow sphinx]

So the stun just adds cost(adding cost is key) in the form of time. It could be something else and that's fine too, but the point is that there is a cost to transfer economic units...instead of making it yourself.

[glossy heart]

Hello guys, just wondering if I’m the only who feels the sharing of constructors being stunted is weird? The problem for me is stuff like backline giving front units to micro themselves, for me it’s all the military units that shouldn’t be shareable immediately, tier 2 con is still amazing value to share EMP’d and I think a desirable part of the game so everyone can expand their economy faster. As for sharing economy buildings like wind etc, maybe EMPing these makes sense, it shouldn’t happen on taking allied player who left the game though, or who were otherwise viable /take command for reasons. I also liked the change that you can’t share commanders, I actually feel thematically it makes sense you can’t swap commanders around, it would make sniping commanders late game slightly more viable, if someone with low E is suddenly last com and sharing resource buildings will be EMP for a while to fix it, and it also has your name above him, I feel like that should just be yours all game long until it dies, just my opinion anyway.

Lastly, I think there should still be a away to unlock the original sharing of everything and assisting and a normal rate at some point in the game, whether one player makes a building and unlocks it for everyone, or each player needs to make one to “fix” it for themselves, either way could be quite expensive in tier 2 and more of a late game thing, so that you can revive people back into playing the game if they’re dead for example, but also because doing commie in late game just isn’t as much of a glaring issue as it is as the start (particularly rainbow cons imo)

[bitter patrol]

a lot of players come to the conclusion that at some point in the game, free sharing of resources and units is preffered, and they suggest some kind of structure you need to build to negate the limitations. In the early days of this thread we've been brainstorming early building like that, but at this stage, it could be a costlier one, t2 building you do AFTER cons and units. i think this is a great idea and i hope at some point we arrive at this kind of balancing in the end

[delicate oxide]

i this idea before, pinpointers are gonna be replaced right? why dont they get reused into "trading platforms"

more you build, more you can share

[glossy heart]

Yeah I mean that’s what I always thought would happen, you wont stop people sharing tier 2 cons whilst they are shareable when they cost 500~ metal and the lab is like 2900~, maybe some other way to combat it is to make lab and con both like 1500 metal, but I don’t really want to try fixing it like to be honest 😅

[bitter patrol]

yeah like, just even having a pinpointer redesigned as some kind of a network hub or whatever satisfies the lore aspect, and it's costly, lots of E required, but when you build it, all the sharing limitations and tax drops. just one for whole team. commie it if you must, who cares, it's a decision to do it earlier or in late midgame

but it has to be substantial cost, like close to current fusion

[glossy heart]

You can also balance that quite easily by tinkering with the price

[delicate oxide]

for easy tax, i think invisible modifiers that change stuff is not good, cons getting emp'ed? resources having tax after being set? bad and confusing

also, you can always eat friendly solars as a bypass measure

[glossy heart]

Yes it’s not ideal in my opinion, removing all commie option and allowing them back in tier 2 via reasonably expensive building is what I’d go for trying

[bitter patrol]

i think a big reason for this modoption is to even see how community likes it

[delicate oxide]

pinpointer price would be definetly changed, even could be t1, but it depends on the people to build it or not, and extremely most of the time, people dont build stuff like that, eco has time and energy to build 16 afuses, but not just 2 flaks
or even nettles, people only build non super essential shit out of desperation

[bitter patrol]

because as it stands, we have how many, 60k msgs on this thread, but its more of less speculation what we want in the end for the game to feel and play. most players just know what they dislike

or we could just load this task to mapmakers, say that map atmosphere type affects network transmitions which are "tax rate" and call it a day

"just make a better map" sounds refreshing compared to "coop is a problem"

[delicate oxide]

air pads return as "cargo platforms" and units have to deliver resources by logistics, new game design
and logistic trucks.... op???
what if

[still onyx]

I dont see why there must be a building or a cost. Sending resources late game is just a great part of the game (front players can suck up a big reclaim field and send it to tech for cool units or buying a fusion, etc. No one dislikes it.

Just setting a 10 minute timer that expires with an announcement accomplishes the same thing. A building makes thematic sense, but I dont think it makes gameplay any better.

[still onyx]

How does it not impact? It seems that mex leaving is really the only efficient way to coop with this enabled.

[bitter patrol]

yeah i think thematic sense is important, thats why the building ideas always come up

[shell scroll]

Could just scale the tax down by 1% every min past 10 til the half hour mark, at which case it is now only 10%

[gusty plume]

taxes only get higher tho

[hollow sphinx]

ye good point, would break the immersion, should probably approach infinity

[lethal wadi]

"If you half-build solar, give it away and let it decay you essentially transfer metal wirelessly and taxfree to your ally."
=>Reclaiming allied buildings need to have the SAME effective tax as transferring resources wirelessly otherwise people can just leave -any- low build power building to be reclaimed by allies to circumvent the tax, be it solar or even a stealth generator or simple walls for low value transfers etc.

"The 30 sec tax doesn't do much if you build something for 30 secs."
=>i think we have some code already that will convert any kind of build power injected into a unit into a full refresh of the EMP, this allows the insurance that units really will have a "useful time” wasted by 30s when sharing (assuming we always refresh emp as a unit gets transported by air as well)

[lethal wadi]

You can choose to always share multiple eco buildings with teammates equally, thus making your eco providing an effective global income.
When you say that about mexes I'm assuming you mean that the sharing is “forced” rather than a choice to just share each of your mex, or converters to each ally right? Since the base game is about being able to share absolutely anything you own i’m sure this entire thread is then “against current design philosophy for BAR” so i’m not sure what you mean by that exactly.

[lethal wadi]

i understand the issue and potential sabotage, but i really think we need to keep it realistic and just imagine the BEST INTENT of player toward their team, minus involuntary fuck ups and inefficient min/max. Indeed, if a player really wants to sabotage they can just self destruct all their units and buildings, or just like one guy i saw once D-gunned his own AFUS to be able to force the team to resign.

[lethal wadi]

Could we even attempt a self taxation? like before you are allowed to give a unit away you need to have 30% of its value in metal AND energy available in stock, and once you share this money evaporates instantly? This way the cost is no longer time and an EMP that is "annoying" for some as you say. Well, at least not directly time but the tax itself would slow down the next unit to be produced, since time/eco/unit production and linked together. Could we simply also have negative values in case of not having enough metal in stock?

[cold radish]

I am not saying this is a widespread issue, but this thread is for a coherent discussion. A solid discussion is at least aware of most if not all aspects of the effect produced. I was simply pointing out one potential issue that comes with the stun tax as the moderation for it would likely wind up bieng at least slightly subjective.

[lethal wadi]

how about making the stun happen or not depending on how permanent the unit transfer is? like if you resign your team gets you stuff with no stun. If one guy gets disconnected and the team already took his stuff WITHOUT stun, then when they give it back to the original disconnected player the stun happens. so a stun depending on original ownership in some way?

[carmine sparrow]

People abusing coop harder from what I’ve seen with this change, if this continues I’d suggest raising tax to 50%, then again to 70 if that isn’t enough

[cold radish]

I mean I dont know if that is possible for the devs to do, but yeah having a filter for taking an ally after they resign and that not causing stun seems more adequate. Even if it does leave the door open for people to do OP takes still

[fading quail]

It is easy to separate factory-built units and put them on a little leash before they are shared. Doable but the interface will be new & slightly awkward. So it's worth figuring out how that would work first.

[lethal wadi]

they'll be punished by economics anyways and lose if they do something stupid for them strategy-wise. People are angry at enemies that use coop effectively to win against them, not about their team using commie strategy to be 100% honest=> the existence of the tax is to prevent you as a player from losing if the enemy team can cooperate better and out commie your team despite have less “skill” or “battle IQ”=> that’s what gets people mad. If your enemies use commie strategy and lose because it's inefficient due to excessive tax rates then your team will on the contrary be happy they got to crush the “stupid commies”.

As i said the tax should be based around the relative investment time and resource wise=> T2 con is costly because you have to acquire lots of metal and dump it into something that's not a combat unit nor and eco unit, and then waste time and resources and build power to build a T2 constructor.

For the early game, i'm not even sure a 100% tax would be enough to compensate the MASSIVE advantage of having a T2 constructor that can plop down unique buildings and systems you don't normally have access to. At the very least you would need to have the buying of the T2 con be worth around the same as the lab, at least for the early game.

[hollow sphinx]

how are they abusing it more than before? I tend to see the opposite from the games I've played. Ex. no direct slider drag etc.

[glossy heart]

Because in theory it should be allowed to be used now, since the rules negate it anyway, why would there be a gentlemen’s agreement on not abusing coop now?

[hollow sinew]

I actually really like this idea, that this would be a map attribute, not game. This way we could have the tax only on the maps which allows co-op abuse, without breaking co-op in small team games

[fierce pawn]

When I say that, I mean, if your teammate builds a metal extractor on a spot, every player now recieves equal income from it, i.e. global incomes. What I mean by against the design philosphy is that having this kind of global income thing is in other spinoffs of TA but not in BAR, its a thing that makes BAR different.

Plus its not that the game is actually based around being able to share everything you own, but that is a component of the game but not like a main feature.

[fierce pawn]

But early game coop is good on almost every map whether there are currently consistent strategies for it or not. Big example would be in any middle to high os rotation lobby, the like mid 20 OS player doesn't have t2 and hasn't won lane yet, but funnels money to their higher OS player to fund a t2 lab to hopefully win the game for them.

[ionic laurel]

Been practicing this with a buddy and it is more effecient to buy the T2 con still vs making your own as front but it does kinda feel bad paying 650-700 metal for a single con you can't use for 30s. I know people are saying that it isn't that big a deal but from what I've seen (playing front) it depends on whats going on if its a big deal or not. You might be getting pushed and having to produce so you can't come up with that much metal easily or having to micro units (tech can't q up your metal extractors any more). I've never encountered people abusing the econ so I'm not sure why this is needed but I suppose that's for the higher OS to understad I'm not quite there yet. If people feel it's necessary I understand but I'm struggling with the changes a bit for now.

[hollow sinew]

I usually play 2v2-6v6 games where extensive co-op is a bet (and an interesting mechanic), the counter to it is just pushing - if you're co-oping then your expansion is hurting and you're losing map control, so it's a high risk strategy. I don't like lane maps in general, there are IMO many more problems than co-op there ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[fierce pawn]

If it applies equal to both teams then its not being punished., its just different than before, and the idea isn't to make it flat out worse than making your own t2 but to make it less efficient so that the negative interactions and outcomes of all in coop strats dont happen as much.

[glossy heart]

I still don’t think the goal of this mod should be to prevent people from sharing tier 2 cons or other cons..

[fierce pawn]

Its still strong there especially with any coordination, just see how the 5v5 tournaments play with most teams having most their players put their sliders low fpr example.
But I know Chrono can speak more to it in smaller team games, and als that you don't always have to coop for t2, doing it for t1 also works because just having more build power on your lab an an extra 500 metal from not building 2 is strong.

[fierce pawn]

Its not preventing it, just putting some restrictions on it so that it becomes less efficicent than it currently is to do coop strats, though this should be clarified that we aren't taling about teammwork cooperation and stuff but rather what much of the high skill community calles "commie" strats where resources are pooled in 1-2 players who use that to get fast t2 units and constructors early to begin the snowball effect. BAR is fundimentally very snowbally and due to high costs of labs compared to units and no resource limits, it is way more efficient especially early on to just put most the resources into 1 player to make the more powerful stuff, and making that less efficient would make so called "battery" gameplay less relevant and should encourage people to not abuse low OS players since it will alays be better for a higher OS player to have their resources than it will for them to have it and not spend it well.

[glossy heart]

But coop tier 2 cons, is that really a problem? I find the game is much more unplayable when enemy team rushes tier 2 military units and my team are making tier 2 cons and eco

It’s especially preventable on for example, glitters, tech is gonna share fat boy to several players so they can micro them themselves, if he can’t share them he would need to micro them all himself to have the same impact, which would be really hard or impossible so.. I feel that’s the biggest problem, on strait they will all be in the same location on the middle but he would still need to micro himself while doing eco things in the back, which is not easy either I think

[fierce pawn]

Yes because its not just about the constructors but also the units. Going cons first always incurs risk, but rewards are massive, so slowing down the efficiency gain from that can help and making it much less desireable to rush/afford t2 units is good too

[fierce pawn]

Sharing combat units is fine cuz again, if the units are made, they are made, could have been made by anyone, with near-perfect control could have the same impact as handing them out. I'm open to restricting the actual unit sharing but it is less of a problem than pooling resources to make those units in the first place.

[glossy heart]

I don’t know what you just said to be honest

[hollow sinew]

it is ofc strong there, as all well played team cooperation, but is it a problem in small team games? I've never seen that in my games and in the tournaments this IMO lead to a very interesting games (and the super-communist plays often lost the games)

[fierce pawn]

With sufficient skill one player can micro 3 units spread apart and make t2 cons for teammates.

Regardless of skill, sharing the resources to the player to make the 3 units in the first place is the main issue.

Keep in mind, I do prefer that t2 con sharing is restricted as an option that makes the game that much less snowbally and preventing resource sharing.

[glossy heart]

So if we have two 60 os front vs each other and one gets fat boy from his ally and the other gets nothing because his mate is doing tier 2 con amexes at the back, the guy with fat boy just wins because it has good micro, if the fat boy has 30 os tech bringing the fat boy he can’t share, it’s going to be used a bit worse because he is 30 os doesn’t have the skill to manage his base and use the fat boy at other side of the map as well, even more so when it’s 3 fat boys in 3 different locations, so yeah maybe someone good at the game can micro them all perfectly but then they deserve their os anyway

Sharing tier 2 cons is almost certainly more fun than all having to make your own lab and own con really late, doesn’t impact the game as much instantly

[fierce pawn]

The more broken part is sending resources to the tech player to fund the fatboy faster or make multiple, I don't think we need to restrict unit sharing in general but if you do that, its gonna have to be prevented for all game.

And, despite me using some OS differences for examples and such, the game shouldn't be balanced against a top 100 player vs a top 10% player and the interactions that leads to because there is a massive skill difference there.

[glossy heart]

Fighting against sharing constructors is fighting against the wrong problem in my opinion, playing vs trotski using rainbow cons to make tier 2 army asap to win the game is easily the most broken thing I’ve seen, and has nothing to do with sharing tier 2 cons, it does share tier 1 cons but if assisting lab is disabled anyway, then that doesn’t matter it doesn’t work

[lapis hazel]

Or I'm sure some modelers would be happy to create a new, dedicated structure that enables trading / sharing. I'm sure there are some modelers who are interested?

[glossy heart]

Well I’d have a bulling unlock all sharing again later, so you can’t fund tech player early and you can share later, fixed both your issues there

[fierce pawn]

The most broken interactions of coop come early in the game off t1 economies, since funneling resources into t2 units is far more efficient than t1 units, especially on maps with easily held chokes, but also generally on all maps.

[fierce pawn]

This is one indeed being worked on. I think something like easy tax helps fix the problem better while keeping the game closer to how it already is with unrestricted unit sharing, no tech blocking, and overflow of resources plus sharing. Just under the new settings here it is less efficient than before (but arguably not taxed enough)

[tiny arrow]

if you can freely share cons, the result isnt just "normal" t2 con sharing, but just sharing to that 60os front player to tech asap and build that fatboy etc for himself

[glossy heart]

Yeah sure but that takes quite some time.. lol

[fierce pawn]

This but also, again, game balance should not consider like 20 or 30 os players interacting with 60 os players since there are too many variables there.

[glossy heart]

For example if you play front on supreme, you can upgrade 4.3 Mex with a tier 2 con, but you need the infrastructure of BP and fairly good E income to get it done, which in a competitive match up on front you might not have time to do easily, if you playing against terrible opponents at the front then yeah sure, but that’s your advantage of their team having better players on all the rest of the map

[glossy heart]

This is pretty much the conditions for the worse instances of coop being broken, low os giving everything to high os to snowball hard the game early

[fierce pawn]

SI has plenty of E and many front players currently aren't making con turrets and are instead making more t1 cons since not only the change to con turrets to make them cost more, but also because your t1 cons can assist a t2 one.

[fierce pawn]

We should absolutely try and afford this and the good thing about easy tax and disabling assist ally construction is it acomplishes both.

[glossy heart]

Why is disabling those things only something easy tax mod can do

I’m pretty much suggesting how to modify easy tax mod not remove those things lol

[tiny arrow]

If you can freely share cons, then there's no restriction that prevents front player from having high E (since somebody in the back can just share him a con to build that). BP at least has to be built on the spot, or walk there which is a tax of its own

[ionic laurel]

I see that however I will say this could very well also add a snowball effect while yes it affects both sides but if one is struggling more so than another maybe losing lane the issue could be much more detrimental to one side than the other. I believe the early game of front is extremely important and things that can snowball it could become very one sided very quickly

[glossy heart]

Yes I suppose you could do that, and it does save you some resources on building a con, but, you still have to invest resources into the wind turbines yourself

[fierce pawn]

Given the snowball nature, if one side is already losing lane and your team cant readily stabilize its already pretty over if you opponents get the reclaim anyway

[idle fox]

really? anyays the most op part is 30sec delay on share only

remember coop power differs per map, a tax made for all maps is not likely to make coop exactly balanced with normal play on favourable maps like SI

[lethal wadi]

I'd say there is a potential issue with combat unit sharing and multitasking: that could still create a situation where a player can be against an enemy that has kept a 100% up time micro the front at every second and has literally only 10 windturbines from the very beginning while microing evrey details a massive T2 and T3 army 100% of time because the "eco/unit making" ratio and the buildpower efficiency is being managed by someone at the back doing nothing else. If every one here that dislikes commie play is cool with that then it's good, otherwise -some- restriction on combat unit sharing might need to happen one way or another. @fierce pawn

[outer badger]

Yeah for t1. Why t2 tho?

[lethal wadi]

u can quite efficiently transport construction turrets around using only a cheap light transport. We need to consider that in the balance

[idle fox]

purpose of t2 coop is to rush a t2 combat unit or con. one justification, besides consistency (all other econ units are stunned), is that rushing a single t2 con to tap everything is too powerful, which is amplified when cooping

sharing the same t2 cons is really crazy tempo, especially on ageo or high mex value maps

it's not a must. you could make an exception for t2 cons if you really wanted

[ionic laurel]

That's fair I know you already snowball my point is this adds to the snowball and it can feel worse than normal playing from behind with this change when you can't afford your T2. It's just somethng to consider when the game already has snowball adding to it eventually (i know this isn't the deciding factor) but eventually it makes it where you know who wins 5 minutes in the game

[true yarrow]

Problem is that you still can just tap everything since placing bp on others mex is allowed and stun on bp does nothing unless you finish the mex in under 30 sec

[idle fox]

yes, either tap mex/geo should be disable, OR you should remove t2 con stun

[idle fox]

snowball is the front winning so they send 2000 metal to techer and techer spam t2 unit and makes fast t2 con at the same time. in my experience, that kind of funnelling with half-competent players leads to more snowball. if you think about it, free resource sharing lets you move around and pool resources instantly wherever on the map they are most important

if one lane wins, instead of having to scale your economy, you can dump a few thousand metal into the navy land so they can spam destroyer or battleship, heavily impacting that lane within in 1 min, normally it would take at least 2-3 minutes to scale up E make units and walk them to that lane

[ionic laurel]

Maybe but in my experience when your losing front the thing that can bring you back in the game is sharing resources so others can help your lane. Now that isn't really an option. If your losing you're just losing might as well just stop. If you get pushed back it always felt bad. This has the potential to feel worse that's all I'm saying. I'm kinda average on front I win some and lose some. When your losing with these changes I will say not getting that T2 con feels horrible.

To be fair it does fall under the category of just don't lose or "get good". Just saying the worst feeling I've had in BAR is losing a lane in front early and basically being pointless for the next 25 -30 minutes

[idle fox]

the techer should still get you a t2 con after the front is stabilized. you can't use a t2 con if you are actively getting pushed, or if you had no time to scale e past 200e

[ionic laurel]

I have never and I quote never played with a techer that gives me a T2 without paying. I've heard they are out there but I've never seen it. And if your losing and have to keep pushing units to slow them down I can't float 650-700 metal to them.

[idle fox]

if you are in danger of dying what is the point of them spending 430m, and you spending 550m on the t2 con, instead of making units to defend front, claim a mex and get reclaim

techer not giving t2 after they fully upgraded is just hurting the team overall. a few minutes later they will have to come online much earlier because you are not a player without t2 mex

[ionic laurel]

I've always been told if your losing front slow them as much as possible if you're going to lose your going to lose don't bring other people down trying to reclaim and save yourself just keep pushing units to try and hold till someone can get there. Also again I've heard some people do but the guys I play with and the randoms I've played with aint giving nothing without getting paid lol

To be fair also I'm very average lol I'm off and on trying to learn the game I play with a very specific group. never actually talked to any high OS guys so I'm proablby wrong lol but thats what the guys in my group told me.

[carmine sparrow]

In a span of one evening I saw people do 7 min abuductor drops, eco instant give their Mex to their torny winner frontline, and 3 player air from eco geo and air

[idle fox]

i mean the tax is never meant to stop commie completely. tax is explictly meant to allow commie strats
mex giving instantly is busted with only a 30sec delay tho

personally I see a lot less coop with the tax

[still onyx]

I mean all of these strategies are strictly worse without coop, especially the mex sharing. Without mod option: player gets resources immediately. With modoption, mexes are stunned 30 seconds. That doesnt change the world, but it matters.

So i don't get how this is making it worse. Unless you are saying because players know commie restrictions are in place, they arent concerned about opponent commie strategies so they are doing dumber and worse stuff because they can get away with it?

[fierce pawn]

I've seen a bit of pond going full battery still, to very little success though, they give tidal boost, make mexes, give mexes to geo after they done making mexes, go sac commander and give to geo. I didn't see it as effective as it was before.

[idle fox]

on SI specifically the timing is insanely critical so its worth paying 30% tax for E now instead of E later

[fierce pawn]

I.e. the like 4 games I saw it in, they lost every time, 3 time to front losing because despite the geo boosts, pond showing up with units and not boosting front meant that front was able to win before the geo could come online.

[fierce pawn]

Yeah, build orders are so tight and the chokes are powerful that coop there can end the game against anyone who doesn't do it. Its like under current patch, if your pond doesn't do tidal boost and the enemy pond does, its already gg unless your front is highest os and enemy front who was boosted is lowest OS

[idle fox]

tidal boost is just a bad idea because you are trading mex timing for E that is now 30 sec delay
you should make some winds and send e manually, that way save your com from walking

[foggy abyss]

SRY I WAS MUTE ABUSED BY 20os mod. Im here now ----->Tax feels great. We had very fun games whit this (Everyone playing whit own units and base and more balanced sharing). Also bad experiences when we started to just instantly share mexes..... TAX fixes 1 of the 2 issues -> if goal is to have players play their own base and units whit balanced option to send taxed metal. ISSUE NUMBER 2 MEX balance -> fix needed to lock in the mexes to spawn circles or similar solution(atleast for the first 10min). Figure out map balance whit mexs available for players (mex distribution option). If players are not limited whit sharing the natural resources of the map the snowball/commie effect is unchanged and whit this tax mod potentially worse vs solo players wanting to play own base.** (Front slower to start while Tech whit many extra mexes get busted timings/snowball -> mex sharing not taxed)**

[signal flower]

I think the cleanest solution would be to combine this mod with the tech core concept. In the end scaling tech cost to a certain degree with the number of players makes the most sense. And then if tech position takes too many mexes, the opponent team will be able to counter it by winning front. Restricting mexes to certain players will never get past the GDT I think.

[foggy abyss]

I know.. We know how to make the game balanced for 8v8. The problem is does the legend sir bossman want it. Is the game 1v1 whit slaves <-> Or actually 8v8 whit everyone playing micro macro.

[floral osprey]

I may be wrong in the way i read this, but any way: leaving a mex ( for another to build) is a tax, due to time not used. giving a mex is frozen, so, some kind of time tax. I'm all for some time limit on things, as really coop is kind of only a problem early (4-7 mins) and beyond that, well, stuff could/should have been built to see. Just to be clear, in your games, the mex shared were on a cool down, correct?

[foggy abyss]

Yes both methods .. Leaving mex open or instantly shared(30s stun) would break game balance and be one side slaughter. We made same timings as full on battery play whitout the tax.

[floral osprey]

is it beacuse you can use your com to do more useful things?

if that is the case ( as in the first 3 mins) maybe, that could be addresed

like some evolving crap

[foggy abyss]

No main issue is the tech players eco snowball (Timings too fast for anyone to fight back).. Ofc comwalk/nuke instanly is broken too (but its another topic)

[floral osprey]

but both teams have access to a "tech" role?

[foggy abyss]

Yes but I believe we are trying to give players the option play their own base.

[floral osprey]

personally, for now, i ok with not having nigh 0 info, major team benefit

[foggy abyss]

Tech is very strong even whitout stealing teams mexes(and just broken when they do it)... It makes the other player role to just be speedbumps while tech rush game ending units.

[floral osprey]

so on rosetta, this should't be a problem

7 horses too

glitters... hmm, walk time ( again scoutable), same for most supreme lobbies

you are probably correct, I absolutely am missing somthing

i do however think the stun should be progressive

but that does require a new inheritance bit.. lots of work

[floral osprey]

well we have that now. some maps have a meta thing, and, that is because they are played too often. If you want individual only agency, pure randomised maps ( and the maps are heuristic) .

[foggy abyss]

I think its easier to fix/balance coop mechanics than trying to fix the issue whit map balance (mexes-geos-size-lanes-seas-lava-windspeed). You can have a solution that even fixes supreme glitter to be fair when attempting to play own base .. and that solution continues to work on all maps

[foggy abyss]

Tax is alright BUT -> I still believe relay or hivemind tech building (delaying share mechanics past 10mins) together whit spawn mexes circles locked to players is better to fix this issue and visually more clear option. T1 phase just needs to last 10min(whitout commied t2 units showing up)->that will allow players to play their own bases and fight back. Coops after 10min is fair. --- Or mix the 2 solutions -> have heavy tax on whit all the mechanics working -> and remove restrictions when the Relay/hivemind has been build.

[still onyx]

Mex locking feels tricky and awkward. I feel like the only way to do this is to start the game with opening mexes claimed, but that has huge timing implications. I enjoy optimizing my opening and extracring value from how i manage that. But also, its mostly memorization so its kinda just a knowledge check on low skill players. Maybe that kind of change is for the best.

In my head, perhaps commander spawns in with an unsharable mining tower that extracts from all nearby mexes. So players still have spawn freedom, but whatever mexes they are near are claimed. The building could be destroyed but not rebuilt so mexes can be claimed by another player if their ally dies and doesnt want to rebuild.

[foggy abyss]

For it to make sense (gameplay/lore) it would need to be a diffirent entity than the contested mex. (Something you can still raid)... Its the only way to manage and balance natural resource per player. Map makers can balance how strong each lane is whit contested mex -> opener circle new "goldmine" mex/building default.

[glossy heart]

Moderator recently told me they don’t enforce any kind of fixed mexes, so you can take your teammates if you get there first and keep them, you just risk upsetting people and getting kick banned or whatever, seems kinda toxic policy to me but alright 😆

I think it’s ok if you have tech take more mexes naturally for example, if that’s how you wanna “co-op” by just leaving the mexes open, at least they gotta come get them all manually which takes time and someone is gonna be down on resources too

[bitter patrol]

Agree that a building to unlock commie perks is the best,most immersive idea. Not sure about fixed mexes per player, i feel this needs to come down to team decision.

I get that you can still push out t2 unit faster by snatching lots of mex, but this severely hinders some player. I think at first, mex leaving team will have advantage, but with experience i dont think its gonna be as strong as slinging, because its easier to take reclaim and just sling pure CASH to techer

Like, with mex taking some lanes become potentially too poor to hold aggro t1. Its also consistently poor lane while with slinging you have adequate lanes that can shove their wins down tech throats but arent inherently poor

[glossy heart]

Yeah I think we should try a building to unlock all coop stuff, what tier builds it, how much it should cost, if you should be able to share cons with or without it, I don’t know what’s best of the parameters

[crystal warren]

we can make it so that tax only applies if u didnt build an afus in the first 15 min of game ez

solves all coop now everyone gonna rush afus

[fierce pawn]

More cuz no share in first 60 seconds plus 30s timer, so you would trade all that metal income for "instant E" but 90 seconds later, which might honestly still actually be worth it, but then there would be other options by that point like handing out rezbots and such.

[foggy abyss]

The games are better in my opinion if team fights are unit decisions and not forced money funneling. Mex sharing avoids the tax (and is just same level broken as battery play)-> everyone else is just speedbump role.

[fierce pawn]

Mex locking would be pretty awful, the actual solution to that would be for each mex captured everyone on your team gets income, but then you just made bar into 0k so

[foggy abyss]

If you go 8 tidal and dont share.. Just feed the e manually. You can still top the entire team whit the 30% tax. (Tax could be a bit higher) - X the father of tidal boosting

[fierce pawn]

Yeah, agree, its just so worth it in the first 2 minutes due to very tight build orders and execution but mainly on SI where E is abundant and the reclaim on mid is pretty snowbally and front would need to spend time with their limited BP to make E structrues instead of units, and units fast is better because if one side doesn't rush boosted units fast its gg for them cuz other team will be in your bases with the units you need your commander to kill and they reclaim front.

0 mex tick rush in a noob lobby (I'd imagine even with taxes) actually can end the game before the 3 min mark so you don't gain OS

[thorn yarrow]

Lot of gameplays options are cooked now . Giving one example:

the rattlesnake rush in strait is totally dead with this mod as you can’t boost it with your team mate frontline coms.

T1 mono spam and aggro reclaim seems main way to play this mod

[hollow sphinx]

any other strats? Commied porc isn't exactly a giant loss. There are a lot more cursed options we dispense with. I'll start. Commie flag/starlight/t2 lab/tzar/fatboy/heavy trans/tidal /energyslave/....

[foggy abyss]

We completely skip t1 fight phase whitout tax -> Units front 3min -> avarage timing t2 shows up at 5min.... Or the hounds that showed up at 2:30 whit TM clan even whit tax on, but mex share.

Only positive things happened whit tax on.. Only when you abuse mex it gets really bad.

[fading quail]

The E cost on T2 defenses seem reasonable to cut with easytax active but that's not huge

30% tax -> 15% discount, why not

[thorn yarrow]

My proposal for easy sharing tax mod:

-remove Emp stuff on cons
+add assist ally build with same tax

• 30% baseline tax on t1 phase
• 20% tax after first t2 lab is finished
• 10% tax after first t3 lab is finished

[idle fox]

Mex locking is probably only needed for specific map perhaps. Not sure. You'd have to define it for every map which makes me think it need to be a definable per map, like a separate tool from tax

[foggy abyss]

In majority 8v8 lane map every frontliners can afford to instantly give 1-2 mex to tech and be just fine.. While making tech busted op.. unlimited mex sharing/leaving is a problem (It avoids the tax) -> it needs to be balanced. How do we fix this if not limiting mex to spawn? -> you can do like infinite mono rocko spam whit 2mex and be a good speedbump

[fierce pawn]

t2 labs get finished at 4 mins into the game on maps like SI and Rosetta, so like, 30% tax (which arguably isn't enough) for 4 mins, then 20% tax for the next 10 minutes, cuz usually with the t2 power spike and cons and stuff nobody is affording early t3 until close to the 14 min mark.

[idle fox]

There still is some tax because the techer con has to walk all the way. But yeah probably the optimal strat

[fierce pawn]

A better less clunky solution to mex locking is just global income, everyone gets income whenever a mex is captured, values globally would need to be decreased but its like the only option that isn't clunky and forced on players.
I don't think this is the right fit to BAR, but it would work a lot better than mex locking.

[acoustic igloo]

or no tax no tax and did I mention no tax?

[thorn yarrow]

It’s enough of a nerf imo and you are not breaking the game in the process . Speaking in the context of the easy sharing tax mod

Co op is worse the longer the game goes

[hollow sphinx]

ally build w/ same tax seems fine. Tax should not get lower until t3(if ever). We should not incentivize slinging any more. If anything, I'd increase tax. I'd like to figure out a different "tax" than EMP, as it's seen as not "fun"

[idle fox]

Unless u want to see 9 min shiva every game

[fierce pawn]

Is it? Arguably the best time to tax the highest is when the t2 lab is being made and when it pumps units/cons out for the first several minutes after it is made, since this is when resource pooling is the strongest. So to nerf it, it would have to be like 30% tax until first t2 lab is done, then 40+% tax for the next 5 minutes, then back to 30%, then decrease once a gantry is done, even then this is awful.

[idle fox]

Just make flat tax and then you can have an expensive t2 structure to unlock permanent sharing

[fierce pawn]

Keeping it static is most intuitive to all players. Sharing is always taxed at the same amount makes the most sense and is the most understandable.

[idle fox]

Tax is not enough for SI but that's just variation in map. The tax is meant for all maps. Some maps are just better for coop than others. Unless lobby wants to specially set a different tax for a heavily played map

Tier tax just adds distraction for little gain

[fierce pawn]

I would argue that any map with sufficient resources (in the form of rocks, trees, crystals, mexes, geos) if played enough will get as optimized as SI (even if riskier) and will likely all succumb to the same stale metas of cooping for t2 (in the current base game) units and cons. Won't be as easy, but very much in the same way that as soon as tidal boost started to be used more than once every dozen games or so, it became mandatory to use every game because you just auto lose if your team doesn't do it and their team does do it.

Yes some maps are wide open fields hard to control, but players will find the bare minimum needed to defend against everything that isn't anti-meta cheese/timing attacks and optimize their strats to have the biggest impact with fast t2 units.

[idle fox]

That's how metas typically evolve

[fierce pawn]

We see this with the 3rd most played map, Rosetta. Used to be a rotation staple, everyone played around the center mex, and big early battles and stuff, now it is just a race for 2 players on each team to rush t2 units, stall out the fronts, make afus, then make t3 and hope to either win or stall the game long enough to win.

[idle fox]

Rosetta is a giga t2 rush map, and backline map

The mid tempo does matter but backline scaling is more reliable esp in pub

[hollow sphinx]

yA bBbBuT iT's NoT a TuToRiAl MaP lIkE sUpReMe(sry I'll see myself out)

[fierce pawn]

Yup, which is why coop is always a problem regardless of map, because trust, on even like Flats and Forests, people would giga rush coop t2 units and stuff if people spammed that map as much as Glitters.

[idle fox]

Tax propotionately nerfs coop

So that coop t2 lab performs not that much different then 2nd person making extra t1 units. Which have a lot of utility on flats

[fierce pawn]

Which is good, we don't want it to not exist, we want it to not be the only cost effective thing to do, or the most optimal thing to do in every situation, and we don't want battery gameplay, we would ideally want it to be only just as good as everyone who isn't cooping

[idle fox]

In 8v8 there are so many resources so you would have to look into increasing the t2 tech up cost. This is beyond the scope of coop solutions, it's a t2 pacing problem

[thorn yarrow]

Yes , co op is awesome mechanic , only need some nerfs , even 0 tax and enabling co op after the first t2 lab is built is huge nerf to all early cheese builds

[fierce pawn]

Yeah, indeed, its why changing the cost of the lab is so fickle, increase it, and you make coop even more incentivized because it becomes the most optimal play you just gotta get over the hump at all costs. Decrease it and you also incentivize coop more because now it is just so much more cost effective that you just have to do it.

[idle fox]

Anyways cooper are just going to write random 🗑️ because they have no incentive to critically think

By nitpicking and doomposting they convienietly ignore the underlying flaws of coop gameplay in pub games

But nothing they say will change what the lobby wants.

[idle fox]

It does remove the early cheese builds but what you turbo rush the t2 lab into giga commie.

Now the t2 lab also unlocks global sharing too making it even more of an asset.

[outer badger]

Go off king 👑

[thorn yarrow]

That’s my issue, I think of balancing for high level / tournament-like gameplay , on pubs you have people trolling , griefing , wintrading , so with this tax thing pub status still face same issues.

In fact , I feel trolling just got stronger as it’s harder to punish the afk eco gameplay as overall gameplay is way slower

[thorn yarrow]

Well tourney meta
Is fully changed with this , as no early battery gameplay is allowed

[outer badger]

Trolls in my walls out to get me 😱

[foggy abyss]

Are you telling me potentially everyone needs to be playing the game!?.... cruel fate!

[hollow sphinx]

trolls gonna troll wcyd. Compared to vanilla, this modoption is uniformly good for the game. Sure maybe we tweak/change the cost of some things but the idea of adding cost to the transfer is good.

[idle fox]

I don't troll all the time but when I do I blame it on taxes

[idle fox]

As long as it's a modoption tourney can play which mode they want. Nerfed coop tourney is actually very interesting imo.

Where you spawn and put your base matters a lot more, you can't just be a mex capper for the team in early game.

[foggy abyss]

Tech building cool units should not be dependent on stealing ally base... Im sure we can find a balance where everyone gets to play and tech is still strong.

[outer badger]

Tech is still very strong. Have you tried fighting t1 when your opponent even had just 2 mauseres? It’s legit unplayable

[thorn yarrow]

On tourney meta this can work, anything can work even totally killing co op can still be fun in tourneys , cause people co operates there and all play to win.

This is different in pubs, cooperation is drastically low , people plays to mantain a range of os so they can do meme plays or afk afus, and this just creates even less engagement between players as it creates islands and people playing their own game.

So tldr you are playing the biggest team game mode to play almost on your own ( go play 1 v 1 ?) ,it’s like you sign for a fall guys game.

I say we need to nerf co op, not kill it .

Again I just proposed my suggestion for this thing . At least removing the emp on cons should be a massive QoL improvement.

[outer badger]

How has it been removed? What can’t you do anymore?

[thorn yarrow]

Hypothetical of killing co op in tourneys , like go 90% tax for example , people will still find good builds and ways to start and co operate

[outer badger]

Ok so it’s not 90% and even in your hypothetical you’re saying people would still find ways to coop? So what is your point how is it removed?

[hollow sphinx]

This is true, curious what that would look like when all the good players on a team are playing.

[foggy abyss]

I would pay money to see this

[thorn yarrow]

Ofc interesting

[weary relic]

A tourney with "easy tax" is the best thing that could happen to the game.
Every tourney mass coop/funnel with battery and massive "give base", dumb cheese (abductor drop..) are just boring to watch

[thorn yarrow]

Want to donate ? I can organise a disable co op tourney

[foggy abyss]

I will support a tourney whit 5k when the working anticommie solution is in default game. Make personal skill matter.

[novel quiver]

tourney with no coop is just gonna look like any random 8v8 lane fight. just rocko spam in all lanes.

[thorn yarrow]

A sum of individual 1 v 1 s most likely yes

[novel quiver]

would be pretty boring to watch

[foggy abyss]

Xfactor playing the entire team like 1v1 was boring to watch already... doesnt hurt to try.

[idle fox]

Wow that sounds like perfectly good gameplay. I couldn't imagine a game where people don't find good builds and cooperate

It's almost as if the goal of tax wasn't to delete the strategy game.

[idle fox]

Is it better than make 3 janus into t2 commie?
Or 20 rovers into t2

[thorn yarrow]

Ok let’s say we delete co op from the game as a whole, tell me how a glitters game looks like.

I hear

Also explain me 1 strait game too curious to hear

[outer badger]

Who’s deleting coop?

[thorn yarrow]

From playing tourney as a team I have fun, lot of it , playing any role , maybe auto says the same , the scrims we played against TM and PRO were fun

[weary relic]

Good, put a slider down and click on "share" button is not really relevant skills of the game.
Rainbow con and full assist some high value unit/build neither

[outer badger]

Reminder this dude got disqualified by Shoty in a tourney from coop t2 trans. What great gameplay xd

[thorn yarrow]

Ok then go make a team and win sigma series tourney soon you only need 1 good player to give base , you only need 1 good player

[novel quiver]

this depends on the map and amount of players entirely. I think alot of people enjoy playing team games because you can skip t1 phase and go for higher tier units much earlier than in a 1v1. but only you know what you like to play right

[idle fox]

I say full coop tourney is a decent game mode but on smaller maps it can be very stale

Just predictably rovers into 1 janus per lane into t2

[thorn yarrow]

Skill issue on our side, was wp by them + way better build

[idle fox]

T2 comes out so fast that you can ignore 99% of t1 rush strats
This is maybe a t2 pacing problem not coop problem.

[novel quiver]

well if you start with 5k metal and 5 coms from the start its quite easy to afford t2 . If you can rush through t1 phase you unlock so much more plays and interesting units imo. I think that makes tourney gameplay fun

[foggy abyss]

T1 fights are iconic in these games. Its insane we are skipping them in current balance in large teams. T1 phase should be 10min and not slaughtered by 2:30 hounds/bulls.** Tax achieved this .. if we dont abuse the** mex sharing.

[idle fox]

If t1 is so boring it makes you want to skip it in 2:30 that sounds like a t1 problem

[thorn yarrow]

You can go play 1 v 1 and spam millions of t1 units

[idle fox]

Lolol your t1 gameplay is in another castle

[foggy abyss]

You can go play fortnite .. but I dont see what this got to do whit taxing large teams..HMM... Game working as intended in 1v1!? Ill be there too when we get matchmaking.

[novel quiver]

its not that t1 gameplay is boring per se, but t2 is much more interesting imo. As indaclub say t1 is very much relevant in 1v1, 2v2 for a long time. I dont mind playing with taxes in pub games, I think its good. But would be sad if it became part of tourney gameplay aswell imo

[idle fox]

yeah i don't see a problem with full coop tourney, though non-coop tournament could be very interesting when you are actually min-maxing to win, and team has to coordinate their economies and production together.

[glossy heart]

problem is rocket bots are meta once you stabilise and rocket bots are boring

[outer badger]

In your average 5v5 I doubt people are making rocket bots. Most the maps are veh

[idle fox]

blitz + pawn breakthrough with 1-2 figs or 2-3 shuriken with it is gonna be devasting vs rocket bots

[idle fox]

@digital anchor

I gave the three mexes at 0:30, 5 mausers complete at 4:30. between those 4 minutes I paid only 30/240 = 12.5% tax on the metal on those mexes, and those mexes are tax free going forward

even a 30 second delay is noticeable because energy is often needed at the very start. For techer builds you don't actually need the M until you throw down t2 lab, making the tempo delay unimportant.
I combatted this in my original tax modoption by needing a completed t1 lab to share anything, and the eco unit stun was 50 seconds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IANKlbQbcEg&feature=youtu.be
4:30 5 mausers while keeping 1 com alive for defense/flex, note that windspeed is fixed at 11 and tree or rock reclaim was not used. Just 2nd attempt, not refined or anything

A summary of the metal transferred by 4:30

Mex income: 210x2.3x3 + 120*2.3 (4th mex) = 1725 metal received by techer. Taxes paid: 276 metal (30x2.3x4)
Com wreck: 1200 metal
Starting metal and com income: 1360, of which the majority was spent on mexes and e economy (1320 metal on 8 solars and 2 winds, and 200 metal on 4 mexes), which were tempo taxed by 30 seconds on transfer

[gusty plume]

Make pinpointers lower tax, maybe people will build them then 😹

[surreal bloom]

can we somehow block sending E and sharing eco buildings for 3m

[idle fox]

if you have to first build a lab you don't want to give away all your buildings but if you are just making ticks you could give away mexes

[surreal bloom]

I really want a lab requirement to share outward, op take excluded

[glossy heart]

You can't take allied com when players resign on this mod, so it's not playable atm

I know, I know, I said you shouldn't be able to share coms ever, but I meant whilst you're still playing the game... 😄

[delicate peak]

you could take com yesterday. i watch someone do it after someone resigned. idk waht change today.

[glossy heart]

Probably updated the mod?

[still onyx]

I dont love the concept of mex locking, but I think the approach wouldn't be defining which players get assigned which mexes, but instead by giving players all mexes for free within a certain radius. This would very obviously force players to spawn in fairly normal circles.

[serene lake]

Unfinished blueprints aren't shared when taking.
Assuming that this is unintended?

[crude gull]

Mex leaving is just the most basic technology to coop in no coops mods. There is way more. On the other side it will be quite funny when mex gets locked to player and glitter techer has to play front of front player, so that front player can be techer xddd

[true yarrow]

mex leaving on glitter not a very impressive start and has low % of swinging the game very hard

I think upping a mex or 2 very fast is probably more metal

and mex leaving delays ur t2 lab->delays ur t2 mex

[crude gull]

https://tenor.com/view/bugs-bunny-bunny-no-nope-nou-gif-13480425249407915803

[true yarrow]

u can come and show how i'm wrong sometime xD

[crude gull]

t1 mex has payoff time of like 25 seconds, there is 0 universe where t1 mex dont help t2 timing or any timing beside timings that are based of starting metal

[true yarrow]

yeah but there is compounding advantages to rushing t2 lab fast from 6-7 mex because you rush con at like 5min tap ur mex and share con to op player

[crude gull]

what im saying is, tldr if u take extra mex u also get t2 con faster and t2 mex faster

[true yarrow]

u dont need mexes to rush lab u just need com blow

[crude gull]

the limitation of any tech build is the metal, if we had infinite metal there would eventually be bp and energy bottleneck but that bottleneck is at like 2min timings. so unless solo players make 2min labs every single metal speeds up the timing

[true yarrow]

u only need a specific amount of metal to make t2 lab, i never saw anyone make lab faster if they invested more into t1 cons and mexes it just delays it

[crude gull]

i personally done it only a couple 100 to a thousand times. its op

[true yarrow]

it only means u can make more t2 units but later

com blow with 6 mex lets u make 4-5 arties for example than u run out

that is also enough m to make t2 con and mex

[crude gull]

idk what enough even means. sure everyone can have enough metal for 10min t2, but the more metal the faster timing...

[true yarrow]

u dont have more metal because u put it in extra cons (that have to walk far) to cap mexes

[crude gull]

the payoff time for that is super super super small, and additionally to that way way way more efficient than t2 mex even

[true yarrow]

maybe with trans micro i dunno, i'm just saying i saw plenty mex leave builds and done it myself and its never faster than tight 6 mex com blow strat

show me strat that has better t2 lab timing

[crude gull]

idk these people must have fallen out of their chair and accidentally unplug keyboard or something to be slower than default

like it is not even possible to be slower if u dont grief, like u actively have to try to be slower to be slower

[true yarrow]

no its just that com blow alone gives you enough metal to make t2 lab why would u need extra

[crude gull]

to do t2 30 sec faster and upgrade mex x2 faster and then have x3 units at front?

[true yarrow]

it just dont work like that lol

[crude gull]

its basic 1v1 knowledge xdd

[true yarrow]

ok i will believe when i see better t2 lab timing

[crude gull]

soon

but pls dont kickban if its too op

[true yarrow]

i dont think i ever kb anyone for doing a strat lol

[bitter patrol]

Im also hesitant to believe mex leaving has better outcome. Kuchy has done a couple on glitt and units for front werent faster, id say slower. Perhaps he had a better transition but on glitt it doesnt help to spam units nonstop as fronts will solidify because of enemy fatboys. So early units to solidify than ecoing is best IMO, which brings standard comblow as better for this specific goal

Lab and fatty is faster, and pub players can easier transition to ecoing a bit. Maybe with pro team this would be true @crude gull , but in pubs, faster first units help more for casuals as they wont continue aggro anyway

[crude gull]

how is it ever slower, even if u build a con at 2min for 120 metal, and build 3 extra mex for 150 metal, by the time lab would be up at 4min or whatever this mex already generated more metal than was paid, and every second u are in t2 u get like 6m/sec extra too

[bitter patrol]

I think making 5mex with comm and than 3 cons until t2 is faster than opening fewer mex and spamming more cons for mex on the front, quite far away

At least on glitt economy. High value mex close by and quite far away frontline extra mex

[crude gull]

why do people even take t1 mex if they not needed XDDD

[bitter patrol]

Except maybe if u take air and corner mex which r closer but u hinder important roles

Nah i mean the timing considering map properties and distances is tighter with 5mex by comm and rather quick t2 with blow. Im sure more mex is better for long term, but with faster unit timing this helps pubs more

[glossy heart]

Xfactor, are comparing with the same amount of metal from coms and then extra mexes too? Because I think obviously having more mexes is better like you said

If you comparing extra mexes vs an extra com sac, probably com metal is gonna get you the lab faster right..

[true yarrow]

its very easy to test, just execute mex leaving strategy vs ai and compare result to drongo video on glitters teching

I think he gets t2 con around 5:10 or something like that

[glossy heart]

Anyway this mod is totally broken atm if you don’t get blueprints on take, don’t get commanders on take, base gets EMPd on take

[true yarrow]

we are just comparing 2 diffirent solo strats

[glossy heart]

If a player resigns, then it shouldn’t do these things, if someone is still in the game and just gives stuff it should EMP, once they resign it’s different, and if someone tried to circumvent this by resigning early for team to op take, you just stop the game and rehost anyway right? Like we normally do now when someone leaves early

[true yarrow]

no the point is to nerf commie and op take is commie

[glossy heart]

Commie is the strongest by far in the first few minutes of the game, and that’s when you just rehost if someone resigns

[true yarrow]

its strong all the time

[glossy heart]

I mean… yes it is or can be, but it’s not quite the same as at the start of the game.

I think you guys need to decide what it is you’re trying to do with the mod, completely annihilate any form of coop in the game at all, or nerf co op to the point where it is worse than playing standard, and what parts of coop are actually the issue, I seen most people saying it’s tier 2 cons but I still think it’s like.. when bsckline just brings a fat boy front at 6 minutes, and don’t really have a problem with giving everyone tier 2 cons to be honest

[true yarrow]

yeah and t2 cons are the least affected by easy tax changes

[glossy heart]

I think fat boy least affected 😆

[true yarrow]

the larger the sum of metal you donate to tech the more tax you pay, you need to be a real expert fatboy user now to make it worth it for you when compared to lesser investment into t2 con and the better returns you get from it

[glossy heart]

But they don’t get EMP or anything, so tech can still share freely to every front on the map to micro themselves with no downside 😅

[true yarrow]

the 30 sec emp on t2 con is nothing because you just trans it during stun or place a t2 mex blueprint before you share it and they build it during the stun time and even if this gets changed (i think it should) you can more or less negate the stun timer by adding 1 more construction turret where you are upgrading the mex so it just gets done faster

[glossy heart]

Yeah EMP is bad and annoying anyway, should add a building to unlock coop features 😏

[true yarrow]

yeah no

have a clown emoji good sir

[ionic kernel]

That's my idea

[gaunt vapor]

my idea is timer on t2 units. so just allow fiends etc to be made at minute 6 or 7 or something. quakers and mausers at minute 8 or 9, and fatboys and tzars at 9 or 10. i feel this would mean no unintended effects on other non issue strategies. whilst also not being annoying to deal with. its just part of the game and will ensure t1 stage is kept existing. whilst also giving some actual gameplay for gunsligers and fiends that i feel they would be fun to see more early rather than jus straight heavy t2 leading to uneeded nerfs outside of rushes and commie

i dont think people have issues with t2 cons being given out do they?. like thats not the actual issue in the game. the issue is the t2 combat units being commied out super fast, or just simply build by a eco/tech player early.

the actual times can be balanced and adjusted of course. but you get the idea. and this timer wouldnt hurt 1v1's right its not like t2 lab finished in 9 or 10mins happens in 1v1 lol

[true yarrow]

that solution lacks any kind of elegance and completely limits creativity

it also breaks the this counters that unit relationships

[gaunt vapor]

what creativity does it stop that doesnt involve commie strats required to do those creative ways?

like what strategy does it stop as an unintended casualty

and dont forget, these timers can all be adjusted and balanced. so if theres a counter unit needed, then you can further delay the problem unit, or unlock earlier the counter unit. that wouldnt be an issue at all. the timers would just need to be thought about and balanced

for example. the sniper could be unlocked before the fatboy, tzar or SL etc etc..... and the jaguar naturally would be ulocked before the SL, so the SL comp would still work fine

im mostly interested to hear ''like what strategy does it stop as an unintended casualty'' though. please do explain. as your name is voncomet, you are much more clued up it all than i

[outer badger]

I work with the Game Design Correctional Unit Sir, you're under investigation please hand over your license and ign for further inspection

[gaunt vapor]

oh shiiii the GDCU are here i gtg bye!

[crude gull]

@true yarrow well looks like i got kickban for mex leave gg

[true yarrow]

lmao

well u cant say it was from me 😂 i will watch replay to see ur timings and what u did

[crude gull]

it wasnt even done good xddd

people just salty for loss and need to blame on something.

[thorn yarrow]

Imagine playing with anti co-op mod to kick people for co op

[true yarrow]

well this is a diffirent thing u did because it was combination of mex leaving and resource funnel

what i was saying before is related to mex leave only

and even with all that ur lab was finished 20sec faster than is normal timing

[gaunt vapor]

i am still interested to know of what creativity is stopped by my idea if you wouldnt mind voncomet.

[glossy heart]

yeah we were losing anyway

how did you get kicked banned lol

[true yarrow]

its kinnda obvious: the ability to pick what units u will build when lamo

[gaunt vapor]

the only thing it stops is the backline tech player building certain t2 units at 5 or 6 mins...it doesnt stop anything else lol......and it doesnt stop any frontline player from building any t2 units at all.....

[true yarrow]

yeah that game a lot went wrong for our team, air made figs vs on air and fronts lost even before fats, i failed to break canyon fast enough etc

[gaunt vapor]

i thought t2 uits hitting the frontline early was an issue people didnt like?

[true yarrow]

no its about resource and bp consolidation

[true yarrow]

it was 8d that kb and he was not playing but spec xD

[gaunt vapor]

i dont see how easy tax solves this at all. the player giving his economy to another just hands over all mexes or eco buildings, or donates just the same no? so, maybe the boosted payer has a little less, but they still have way more than they should. nothing changes, but thank you for explaining

[true yarrow]

did you even read what easy tax does?

[gaunt vapor]

30% tax on donated resoucres. and overflow, emp for 30seconds economy traded units and buildings right?

[true yarrow]

yeah, so you understand how just giving mexes in punished right

by how much something should get stunned etc is all still up for debate, these are the preliminary tests

[gaunt vapor]

i feel like taxed overflow is ugly and unnessesary for this consolidation issue. - but i understand it for commie on small team and duo

[true yarrow]

no its necessary because at high level (tourney gameplay) people will "slider game" meaning they put their share sliders low to automatically boost the tech player

the intention is to have a comprehensive commie nerf setting, and you cant let some commie be unpunished because naturally that will get exploited

[gaunt vapor]

i know all that - ive seen it on small team and duo matches

[hollow sphinx]

taxing overflow is based

[true yarrow]

why should players be rewarded for having bad macro?

[gaunt vapor]

why should the game be changed to help 0.5% of the playerbase?

lets be honest, almost all this stuff is only happeneing in the 30-40+ lobbies

[true yarrow]

again you forgot a basic thing, we are talking about having a togglable option

[gaunt vapor]

more choice is always good right? i just wonder if theres not a better option. or cleaner options as you might say

[true yarrow]

you can be the guy that came up with it

[gaunt vapor]

things like the commander revive. sounds great, but needs to come with 'an ally cant reclaim another allies commander'' if youre going to stop reviving a commander at all if its been reclaimed at all

[covert parcel]

Player lookup: `Slinky`

-# Only includes public PvP games since <t:1746121194:D>

Games found: 59
Time playing: 1d 9h
Last seen: <t:1768406362:D>

Factions:
Cortex - 54% won of 44 played
Armada - 40% won of 15 played

Maps:
All That Glitters v2.2.3 - 59% won of 44 played
Supreme Isthmus v2.1 - 26% won of 15 played

Recent public PvP games:
<t:1768406362:D> - Large team: 8 v 8 on All That Glitters v2.2.3
<t:1768403446:D> - Large team: 8 v 8 on All That Glitters v2.2.3
<t:1768401117:D> - Large team: 8 v 8 on All That Glitters v2.2.3
<t:1768397993:D> - Large team: 8 v 8 on All That Glitters v2.2.3

Gamemodes:

Large team

current: 13.73±4.83
highest: 14.24±4.85
50% won of 59

generated in 38ms

[gaunt vapor]

imposter

but i like the trying to bully me with an OS figure lol

[gaunt vapor]

out of interest. what skill level do players need to be to be allowed to contribute or discuss ideas in this community

[fierce pawn]

It is clear that "mex locking" to certain players is not an option. Mex leaving still seems more theoretical and plus with restrictions on commander sharing and an increase to how long mexes are stunned for when being shared it seems way less practical since you have to move constructors around to build the mexes, t1 mexes with values near 2 take almost no time to pay off (25 seconds) but still, in the first 5 mins of the game when this matters most, let us hypothetically say one player left 2 mexes for their tech player, the tech player needs to walk their own cons over there, takes maybe 35 seconds, takes maybe 20 seconds to build the first one, another 10 seconds to walk to the second, and 20 more seconds to build that one, so you are only looking at like 3 minutes of mex profits assuming they walk right to it without taking all their home mexes first, realistically you are looking at this only adding up over a 10 minute period and less impact in the first 5-6 minutes. Also a front player can share a con to do this with but can't share in the first minute, and will be stunned for 30s plus then front built an extra con instead of a unit or two so things are not the most favorable to do this. You're looking (in the 5 min period) maybe a difference of 120 metal, and over 10 min period 600 metal without the mex getting upgraded, which is fairly low impact for some run of the mill 2.0 mexes.

[true yarrow]

watch the game x played on glitters 10 min ago for reference

[fierce pawn]

Also if techer built an extra con for themselves, they barely profited any metal with mex leaving for 2 mexes over the 5 min period, by which they could have used extra metal for a lab. Maybe they made like 100m total or something after the con and stuff but only on maps which really have enough mexes to leave for mex leaving to do a thing.

[true yarrow]

@glossy heart ign?

[fierce pawn]

Straight up being gifted a mex is way better cuz then someone else spent the 120m for a con (or made it with their commander) and spent the 50m on the mex so its just all payoff for the 3 or so mins you have it during the first 5 minutes

[true yarrow]

the primary thing that allowed insanely fast timings on t2 units was getting energy boost

[fierce pawn]

Where can I see this at, you got a summary?

[true yarrow]

being gifted winds/solars before you even build lab is insanely powerfull on vanilla

[true yarrow]

just search darth revan on bar website replay section

[glossy heart]

trash_panda

[acoustic igloo]

Op

[idle fox]

One day you may get 30-40 os or the strats may come to your lobby.

[gaunt vapor]

hey, maybe then i would be allowed to contribute!

[foggy abyss]

Only 0,5% of players are using AIMBOT/WALLHACK in tarkov and other fps games.. We should not fix the issue!? - New player experience is important, but doesn't mean they should not balance the broken mechanics ( large team 8v8 money funnel is broken and leads it to be 1v1 in whit slaves. Personal skill/play should matter). Also I would argue this is good for new players too if you ever fallen victim to raigeki/outlaw noob lobby farm coops. Its like cheating.----- Tax is very potential fix for it.

Solution for mex sharing issue that allows you to fully avoid the taxes(Finlandia fueled solution): What if instead of mex locked to player spawn -> You tax player spawn mex income if they are shared 30-60%. But you are still free to share them. Also aplied if mex left open on player spawn position. And tax is gone after expensive hivemind/relay is build.------- Surely this not a nightmare to code.🤓... You have to control the natural resource available for each player to achieve any sort of balance. No tax evasion

[glossy condor]

I like easy tax, but im not a fan that a commander isn't no longer allowed to be shared.

[delicate peak]

im a fan i think it should be shared when team mate resigns though but before resign i think everyone should ahve there own com. blue/red getting 3 coms is too op

[true yarrow]

that is maybe a not so bad option, some kind of timed repayment for sharing resource producing building

[acoustic igloo]

Remove it

[foggy abyss]

option to play own base ? .. Nah man its here to stay. Just fix the mex loophole

[haughty rain]

How do we make it clear that these mexes are taxed? What about maps with no clearly defined spawn mexes? It goes against game design principle, especially the you get what you see principle that the game design of this game seems to rely on heavily. Global tax, for example on all resources shared, can adhere to this. Selective tax, however, such as these three mexes being seemingly arbitrarily worse when shared, can not adhere to this.

[foggy abyss]

unlimited option to just funnel all mex to tech at start just cant be balanced... the principle is flawed for large team games if you want ppl to actually play the game instead of 1v1 whit slaves.

[haughty rain]

I don’t disagree with you on this, I just think that the solution you propose is lacking in some areas.

[foggy abyss]

And majority of new player seem to like to play their own base... And then realise later GIVE base or you playing against your own team.

[hollow sphinx]

Having easy tax on in lobbies is the most fun ive had in BAR in a long time. I'll actually play glitters/rotato now(I didn't play supreme last night b/c it was off). I go looking through all OP lobbies and just pick through the ones that have it enabled first.

[bitter patrol]

BEST SOLUTION me and @foggy abyss gave already, its building unlock for sharing. Adhers to game and opens up 8v8 gameplay

But for mex leaving, maybe just lock mexes in spawn circle (+ some radius extra, a bigger circle presented)

So if u want to leave mex to others, you need to spawn in some rural area without mex

Like with combomb u have 2 circles. Make another spawn circle, substantially bigger, which disallows placement of other comms and locks mexes to you. Make a player colored outline for mex in circle, they cant be taken by other comm

[cold citrus]

Yeah would love to see what EasyShare tax settings would work with Xthrawn's PUMP!! My cursed co-op fix!

[ionic kernel]

You can count me in this too

[cold citrus]

The best eventuality for experimenting w/ different sharing modes and their combinations would be Attean's PR 5704.

[fierce pawn]

Mex locking is just bad design, doesn't work well with BAR because then it forces you to play per the mapmaker's intent even if there are better or different but valid ways to play that map, and also there appears to be no comprehensive way to do it while still allowing for maps to be played on with any team sizes they aren't designated for, it would mean a map meant for 6v6 can't be played 8v8 and such (personally I think when you are playing maps in wonky ways you should disable ranked anyway but still, its not even really an edge case to this issue, its a huge problem), or can't play a 3v3 map in 2v2 cuz I guess the other mexes are locked out of your ability to use them? It makes more problems than it solves, and doesn't solve the issue in an intuitive way.

[acoustic igloo]

well it's about to be not much fun when people find ways to bypass it which many people who are anti commie already are doing. these people who wanted this system are the ones who's inveting stuff to bypass it.

Tbh it's ironic and kinda funny if you ask me. why work all this way to fix something only for the people who complained in the first place are trying to find ways to go around the tax itself.

I think this is just a call that shouts What are we doing exactly, what is happening to the game when you go based on community changes?

[bitter patrol]

no, you missunderstand. only the mex in spawn that you Choose get locked to You only. other mex are free for all, and you choose where to spawn so no interference with 6v6, 3v3, etc

so you can still take free map mex as you wish, only the spawn point mex get converted to you on impact of spawn. so you can't just give first 3-5 mex you spawn with

[fierce pawn]

I see. It still seems like a not very elegant solution. What if I spawn off mexes to prevent them from being locked, at the cost of 20 seconds of income? What if that player taps out early cuz their base dies to ticks. There are a few cases which this can be an issue.

[bitter patrol]

yeah i think having a deliberate strat like you mentioned is cool don't wanna hack and slash BAR, just mitigate. the last issue is sadly a problem for all current solutions - leaving still hasn't been fully figured out

[fierce pawn]

The actual solution to mex leaving (should it prove to be a real problem) and mex giving and such, is actually to just have mexes provide a small global income to all players on the team. One person builds the mexes (for cheap) and everyone gets income from having captured mexes.

I do not think this solution is within BAR's identity or design philosophy though and thus will likely always be off the table.

[bitter patrol]

it's a half way Zero K solution

devalues contested mex positions on the map which can change how maps are played

[acoustic igloo]

mex leaving is a problem now and if you were to play easy tax modoption you'd know that. Unnforuntly you don't play with it. I've looked at your past games it's always been supreme and the modoption was never on to begin with.

Again I request you to play the mod option to have valid ideas on it

[fierce pawn]

I haven't played many games with it on since few lobbies have it on for the moment, and when I've seen high OS games with it being on I haven't actually seen it outside of actually front players on glitters giving 1-2 mexes to the techer even with the 30s stun, didn't seem impressive and when you run the numbers for how much metal extra they get in the first 5 and then 10 minutes into the game it is a fairly small amount of metal as I've discussed before either in this thread or the coop thread, that you're still taxed even on mex leaving, because you are taxed the price of a constructor to go and build it, the cost of building it yourself, and the time tha it went unbuilt by your front player or yourself, for a 2.0 mex you're talking only an extra 120 or so metal in the first few mins of the game and maybe 600 in the first 10 from being left 2x 2.0 mexes, which is a non-zero amount, but is way different than being sent 1000 metal in reclaim or like 500 metal from another player who made fewer units within the first 5-10 minutes of the game.

[bitter patrol]

what you do is leave 3-6 mex to techer, not share. just plain leave for them to bypass tax, meaning this strat is actually Stronger vs team that doesn't do that in this tax modoption (assuming they pay to techer even)

[fierce pawn]

Right, I don't think it is right for BAR to do global incomes from mexes and such, just would be the only option that addresses it.

[fierce pawn]

While yes, however, again, the time it takes to make an extra constructor for it, the time for that constructor to walk and then build those mexes is quite a while. Its an advantage early for sure but its not a large advantage immediately it takes longer for it to compound and to notice the differene, as it takes time for those mexes to pay off, plus time to pay off for extra cons made to make them (or if you don't make any extra cons, the extra time the mexes aren't made are just lost team income which puts you at an immediate disadvantage) and then later it becomes more of an imbalance and possible issue. I don't think mex leaving is the biggest concern on maps for the moment to bypass the tax, since you are still being taxed in the form of time that those mexes aren't built, so its missed income.

The other reason I don't think it is a large concern at the moment is mex leaving will be very map dependent, it won't be much of an issue on maps like Supreme Isthmus since it has limited number of mexes, or maps like Jade Empress with all its poverty 1.0 mexes, or even maps like Rosetta with its assortment of 3.0, 2.0, and 1.0 mexes that really matter in the early game that each player gets the right amount of income to perform their role. A number of rotation maps may also be open to mex leaving more easily, plus also Glitters and its variants will be open to mex leaving being more of an issue, but it seems more like a map to map issue rather than a general issue with the game or this modoption.

[idle fox]

Yeah it's not on the table. Doing that makes everyone's income based on team actions and ruins the idea of builds (you can't determine your own eco)

[bitter patrol]

I tried it myself and im convinced mex leaving is extremely strong, the build times etc that you mention are meaningless. Theres build time and cost for everything in the game and if you spend it on Mex, its the best spent metal, time

[idle fox]

the only limiting factor for mex leaving is walk time and exposedness of the mex

[tiny arrow]

When there's different mex spots that aren't on the start locations, especially, there really isn't a notable downside to having them capped by a single player. As there'd be a walk time delay to capping them regardless

[crude gull]

I mean I am personally open to accept that mex leaving is no issue.

As long as I dont get kickbanned for doing it xddd

[cold citrus]

https://github.com/beyond-all-reason/Beyond-All-Reason/pull/6703

[lethal wadi]

did the math and comfirmed in two mirror games with the team metal difference by minute 14: mex leaving displaces the initial supplementary cost due to the tax, to a stunted exponential growth of the economy for the entire team. it's a strict negative. However, the difference get can get super low to the point of not being even 1 min late compared to the other team in terms of metal produced if the mex left are ALL close to the techer. Still a straight negative though. If some players are more equal than others then the snowball effect doesn't matter much for them so i guess you could try to ask to weakest to leave mex and spawn close to the techer and only then the math can make sense to the mex leaving strategy.

[bitter patrol]

if techer gets more mex, they can invest it better with infrastructure and because of non-linear scaling

[lethal wadi]

...

[tiny arrow]

post the math

[lethal wadi]

So apparently i cannot spam the discord with lines and lines of math and text (who would have thought lmao)
let me summarize:
The Naive Expectation vs. Mathematical Reality
The Intuitive Argument for Pooling
The intuitive argument goes something like this:
"If we all give our money to one person, they'll have SO much capital that they can build a massive operation that grows incredibly fast—faster than all of us growing separately!"
This feels true. Big companies seem to grow faster than small ones. Economies of scale are real.
But is it mathematically true in a pure exponential growth model?
The Surprising Answer: Constant-Rate Exponential Growth
Let's work through the math carefully.
Scenario A: The Individualists (No Pooling)
Each of n members grows independently at rate r:
R_i(t) = R_0 · e^(rt)
Total resources for the group:
Total_A(t) = n · R_0 · e^(rt)
Scenario B: The Collectivists (Full Pooling)
All n members pool their resources into one "techer" at t = 0:

techer starts with: n · R_0
techer grows at rate r
Others have 0 and contribute nothing further

Total resources:
Total_B(t) = (n · R_0) · e^(rt) = n · R_0 · e^(rt)

The Startling Equality
Total_A(t) = Total_B(t) for all time t!
Under pure constant-rate exponential growth, pooling neither helps nor hurts the total output of the group!
This is actually a well known mathematical property of the exponential function:
e^(rt) + e^(rt) + ... + e^(rt) = n · e^(rt)
versus
n · e^(rt) = n · e^(rt)
The exponential function is homogeneous of degree 1 in the base when the exponent is fixed. Pooling doesn't change the total—it just redistributes who holds it.
[slowmode wait...]

[slow mode=>]You can also do the math with any intermediary values of sharing but it's clearer by going stupid simple.
We can also break the symmetry that can make pooling actually matters for the better, or worse. But that is contingent on player competency on the usage of resources, regardless if the resources are used to build more resources or units and defenses to stay alive so that there is actually a point in gathering resources.
An issue: being dead and rich quickly makes you poor and dead so that needs to be taken into account.
to J"ohannes" I assume by “post the math” being so concise you didn't really want the math but calling a bluff or something because you disliked the result, but if you are genuinely interested in the details ask away i'll just manage something.

to "indigo / 1984" i'm sure you understand that if your general statement was true then we'd have seen top players pooling crazy amount or resources into their techer to pool resources and beat the other team, but they don't do that, not only is it lame to have 1 techer being slave master to the others, but it's also just mathematically a less efficient strategy given that the sharing always has a cost : build power and time.

[still onyx]

So this isn't novel math. If you have 1000 compounding at 6% interest or two 500 accounts compounding at 6% interest, which ends up with more money? They are identical. This is all youve presented. Why then does mex pooling win over the non mex pooling strat? Didn't you prove that mex leaving results In less team metal? Again, painfully obvious without math: does a mex taken now or a mex taken 30 seconds from now produce more metal?

The answer is not simply metal produced, but how that metal is leveraged. So let me ask again, what makes more money, 1000 at 6% interest or 500 at 6% interest and 500 buried into a hole in the ground? The answer is again obvious. Now imagine smarter people can get better interest. What makes more money, 500 at 6% or 400 at 7%? 7% obviously. The point is this is not a matter of mathematically calculating metal graphs, but rather a result of two main factors:

1. any given 8 v 8 is full of a considerable amount of dumbasses, and giving those resources to a smarter player effectively results in a better interest rate, even though the principal is smaller.

2. defending has several advantages. But generally speaking if you spend all of your mexes attacking and I spend all minus a few defending, I will hold and use the the mexes I reserved to scale ahead. So mex leaving to a techer can punish aggression if the aggression cannot be meaningfully be converted into map control. Some maps are better at this than others. And also, some players are dumbasses and will stop at mid no matter what, handing the game to the greedy team.

This is the problem at stake here, and the only way to solve is to tilt the scales in favor of aggression. But because most players are bad, this will allow strong players to win harder off aggression, shortening the game. It is all hard to solve because most players are bad and all make suboptimal decisions.

[lethal wadi]

"So this isn't novel math." No it's not and I never said it was, nor even difficult. Indeed I was surprised people asked for "the math", the details are just the calculation of the difference in growth due to the mex not being active, you can make it big, you can make it small, it's all there is to it.

"This is all you've presented." =>This is a video game and people hate reading weaponized autism so i'll just present the basic and obvious math that any one can understand as an -INEQUALITY- tacitly: meaning that if there is a tax or a delay or any issue, of course it's going to get worse for the pooling strategy. "Why then does mex pooling win over the non mex pooling strat?" => proof how when how?

"Again, painfully obvious without math" => simply responding to other people in a productive and generally polite manner in a restrictive discord format.

1. [...]"giving those resources to a smarter player effectively results in a better interest rate" I mentioned that, sure, what kind of proper -quantification- of how "bad" people are, compared to the tax, would you propose exactly?

2)"punish aggression if the aggression cannot be meaningfully be converted into map control" that is just being better than the other player yes that is part of rock paper scissor of the game: time/space + units + economy => it is a biased bet with incomplete information that you win more often than 50% of the time by being better, nothing to do with tax management.
"mid no matter what, handing the game to the greedy team." I fully agree with that and I hate it myself not much to say about that, it's just random players making the core of multiplayer games.

[slow mode]

[slow mode]"It is all hard to solve because most players are bad and all make suboptimal decisions." Again, I fully agree again but you can't, like, force people to be better by yelling at them in the game and sometimes not even by being helpful, there is nothing to do about that. Bad people lose more often and Darwinism can be more or less enhanced by making difficult OS min/max strategies and loop holes. But having bad people on your team making us lose because they are bad is part of the multiplayer game with randoms. I'm not sure how to even begin to address this issue since most games that ever existed always traded technicality of the game and its subtleties AND its great punishment for being bad at the game, by dumbing the game down and making skill matter less and random events and luck impact the game more.
What would even be a strategy to defeat the issue of "skilled game punishes bad players harshly".
I’d like it if we can manage to transform this reddit-like debate into something useful for the devs.

[tiny arrow]

are you really AI?

[torn cloud]

Yes.

[lethal wadi]

bruh it's the in game name i choose, the AI in scenarios are dumb so i though hey even chat GPT would do better and made a name related to that, end of story. sadly i'm 100% sure real Chat GPT AI would play better than 90% of us and not just APM wise...

[still onyx]

My understanding of your statement was the mex leaving was a "strict negative". Which i interpret as you saying it is suboptimal. And it seemed to me that this was after the thread had turned to discussing if mex leaving is a problem, because it is not addressed by this mod in any way.

That to me sounds like your stance is that mex leaving is not strong, because you had math to prove that total metal without mex leaving > total metal with mex leaving.

This to me is not a compelling argument, because the strengths of mex leaving were never about math of total metal produced, but always about the way in which that metal is deployed.

The only solution is to make mex leaving so bad that it loses to early game tempo, and the game already tried to do that with reduced t1 factory costs. I dont necessarily have answers here, in part because any answers (such as auto claiming nearby mexes at match start) will result in many other changes in game tempo, and completely eliminate niche low mex starts that some players have perfected.

That said, combining auto mex claiming in a defined radius at start, along with harsher mex sharing penalty might be the only effective way to force mex leaving to be suboptimal.

[idle fox]

yes mex leaving may have to be addressed especially on popular maps where spawns / safe shared mexes are close to each other

[fierce pawn]

Mex leaving seems better in a 11+ minute outlook but not as strong before then, possibly even a weakness for the first several minutes. When I'm thinking about it, it mostly would seem to be a Glitters problem, maybe also on a few other maps where there are decently strong tech spots like Rosetta and Koom Valley, but maybe less so outside of those maps, and already you see mex leaving on Koom Valley just in general since the meta start spots are very much not the ones ovbiously intended to be the start spots for that map (where its most clear teams are supposed to spawn on the 8 clusters of 3 mexes and not where the meta spawn spot circles actually are). I can't think of many other maps it will just be porentially oppressive on right now but definitely will be some but not most of the maps

Also maps with higher base mex values will benifit more from mex leaving, where as maps with lower mex values will likely not be as good. Generally speaking though most maps have a fair number of very safe mexes, so outside of like, leaving some of your spawn mexes to be taken later into the game by a tech player, won't be too different to how things are now.

Importantly, there is a time cost though to mex leaving, in the time it costs to walk and capture the mexes, and the time it costs to build them, and the time it costs your team's metal income without anyone making metal from it.
It can pay off a lot more later on into the match, but only if they go longer, which the advantages might not matter nearly as much or might matter even more but if it matters more your team was probably winning anyway.

The cost might be worth it most times, it might not be worth it, but seems more map specific, and mainly, a Glitters problem moreso than most other maps where spawns are further apart or forward mexes are less safe, or maps that just dont have a lot of mexes

[lethal wadi]

"the way in which that metal is deployed." Is essentially just player skill, since the game is symmetric, you cannot make a mod that satisfies more than 50% of the people (winners don't tend to complain much after winning a game, people are complaining that people who are better at cooperating are winning against them despite having worse "battle IQ" or what not.

We eternally return back to the same issue. Yes your tech guy u chose in your lobby is the guys with 190 OS, cool, now what he still is limited by the fact that the resources he pulled from the team, may have strengthened him super-exponentially, but the teammate on the front are working with less resources. With equal skill.

"But what if this or that guy is better?" well he loses more often, that is the point of games.

I'm pretty sure we are not tackling the issue because the issue doesn't exist => if people are annoyed that their personal tech player didn't manage to capitalize as hard on the same buff as the tech on the enemy team, then people are annoyed of losing in a multiplayer coop game because. "my teammates are bad" may be true if one doesn't abuse the OS rating system loop holes but you CANNOT make a solution in a symmetric game around the issue of "better player" can better put to use "the way in which that metal is deployed". I think i get your point, but the solution not to lose, because your teammates are worse than you, is to play duels only. Playing multiplayer and co op means you ACCEPT that -someone- other than you or your enemies can make you lose.

There is no solution around that. Ever.

So if the issue is somewhere else can you please try to explain it to me?

[lethal wadi]

So with what the others have said before it means trying to hope that the tech player has a better use of resources than the one not taking the mex. So the goal is to prevent team optimization to pool resources to the -better- player in general, not specifically the tech player. How is that any different than people who aggressively attack the lowest enemy OS to try and gain an advantage? that is also an optimization of resources and attention just going to the enemy. The general vibe seems to be wanting to make 8 v 8 be more and more independent and more duel like? there are many ways to go about that, but is it reeally the essence of what is wanted in this thread?

[lethal wadi]

we can reduce overall mex production and drastically boost commander metal production, that would be easy to implement and prevent pooling from weird roundabout ways. How about that?

[still onyx]

I agree that ultimately a game of 8 v 8 has a lot of noise, and even if you are a good player (or even the best player) in a lobby, you wont always win. As youve said, this can never be "solved" because its not actually a problem, its a fact of life.

That said, the community has decided that a specific strategy, that is resource pooling, is obnoxious enough that we want to make it not function, and we are willing to dramatically alter game fundamentals to get there.

Yes, there are infinite other ways for you to lose the game that are outside of your control, but resource pooling is particularly frustrating, because in its optimal application, even with the nerf, there is no realistic counter other than doing the same thing yourself. If you have a lane collapse, as a strong player you can maybe go support it. But if t2 shows up front from resource pooling and your team built t1 with the same resources, the game is fully out of your hands. No plays to make. It just feels different and is frustrating. It also has no punish, because it cant be identified in any cost effective manner.

[lethal wadi]

"
That said, the community has decided that a specific strategy, that is resource pooling, is obnoxious enough that we want to make it not function, and we are willing to dramatically alter game fundamentals to get there." ok good what about the commander metal income boost then? How about that?

[lethal wadi]

"
No plays to make. It just feels different and is frustrating. It also has no punish, because it cant be identified in any cost effective manner."

=> yes there is, as we've talked about above, the punish for a weak enemy front line because they have less resources to work with is to push.

If you naturally cannot push despite the enemy having less resources to work with can mean two things: either a bad player, or maybe the devs didn't make the game defense mechanism -sensitive- enough to resource management in terms of defense.

Seeing high level replays tells me option 2 is not true in the absolute sense but maybe true in the sense of being sensitive enough to "very average" players.

I'd say it's an RTS and if someone isn't pushing and prefer going a tower defense game, then we can make wrecks more resistant to damage, increase reclaim amount from wrecks and make static defenses artificially weaker to encourage players to go on the offensive thanks to low risk and high reward. How about that?

[hollow sphinx]

Ya basically no one likes blowing com. Just havent figured it out yet

[cold citrus]

I would imagine that sucking friendly comm wrecks (self or ally) be extremely taboo in lore. So they just don't do it because it's ultra cringe :)

[woeful mauve]

honestly we should make it meta that air donates his com wreck to tech, that'll get it fixed quick smart. Like what is air doing with his commander anyway? After the first 4-5 con turrets are built after receiving the T2 con, commander kinda useless

looking for a SINGLE air player willing to donate commander at 5:00 for first T2 con in my area - text me im greedy

[still onyx]

this isnt correct though. I am not entirely sure what you are considering when you watch the replays, but if you are evaluating that at a given moment, the greeding team had enough advantage to snowball into a win, are you sure you are accounting for full knowledge? Defending is objectively stronger than attacking for 4 reasons:

1. Reinforcement time is lower
2. Commander is a very powerful defensive force in t1
3. Can build situational counter units (ex. pounders)
4. Multiverse play makes it risky to all in

What I mean by point 4 is in general your play needs to be designed to account for different possibilities, and narrow down to the correct strategy once youve determined what universe you are actually playing in. If both you and your opponent build t1 and you all in, you will lose because they get the metal field. So you can't just say, pressure hard at t1 to punish them if they tech. But if you are too passive, then you will miss your punish window. This is why it ends up being optimal for both teams to commie tech, because there isn't a real punish for that strategy, so it covers all the multiverse options the opposing team has (except some really specific and coordinated aggression, like heavy raid units microd well. But heavy raid loses to every other strategy except greed, so it does not cover many multiverses, so you can't use it without perfect knowledge.

If you knew what your opponent was doing, you don't have to pay the multiverse tax to cover for multiple things (or get a good scout). But if you don't know, the multiverse tax makes you fail to punish a weaker front, because you cant tell. Plus it is very difficult to tell you have an advantage when that advantage is just two mexes your opponent let tech take.

[lethal wadi]

"what you are considering when you watch the replays" well I'm technically wrong i the way i let it be read sorry. When i re read it implies that they overcome the defense to push through, but in actuality defense IS strong but only LOCALLY, so the aggressiveness is used to go around defenses in raids and fuck up everything. It's not that defense are weak per say as a whole, it's more that it's impossible to invest so much to be able to defend from every angle of attack... just like real life. French "Maginot line" style so to speak. I think of it by saying that defense is weak: the resource investment to protect against leaks going in is too high compared to trying to leaking into enemy territory to inflict equal damage and balance things out.

[summer fog]

Probably just use the commander at front and maybe even com bomb someone.

If the team is ready to move in with their commander and maybe even the air player places a con turret with a transporter nearby for reclaiming, it could be much better than just blowing the com up. But most air players (especially on glitters) lack the skill to use the commander as something else then a con turret at their base.

[lethal wadi]

I think your description of part 4 is about both teams trying to do a late throw of rock paper scissors, but that actually ends up being one of the options=> play defensive to minimize resources used in units or defense structure to boost economy. To counteract that you need to increase the risky spot of metal mex in the middle of the map to punish extremely hard people who defend. This is an equivalent tax => enemy gets access to cheaper resources by being more aggressive so the metal difference in the teams gets a boost for the attacker. I'm not convinced you are right about the description since it's hard to get data what people do based on their real level, but if correct then i propose the following:

Perceived Issue remaining 1:
=>people pooling resources through indirect means
Change:
=> boost commander metal production + reduce metal wrecks of commander
Expected result:
=> less ressource pooling through shenanigans of com leaving + diminishes self blow up of com
How
=> incentivise personal play because you can't gift the commander away that produces all those resources and punishes blowing up com because you do get much out of it and you lose metal income associated with the commander being alive.

Perceived Issue remaining 2:
=>people not punished enough for turtling and farming eco
Change:
+boost metal income from middle of map risky metal extractors

• increase metal wrecks value (like a 100% reclaim of metal, and/or less energy/buildpower used to revive)
• weaker static defenses so that the defenses at the base itself are less useful.
• diminish metal and energy production across dense buildings like AFUS and normal fusion.
  Expected result:
  => Incentivizing attacks, incentivizing defense and turtleling.
  How
  -boost metal income from middle of map risky metal extractors => punishes not being on the offensive

-increase metal wrecks value (like a 100% reclaim of metal, and/or less energy/buildpower used to revive) => rewards attacks more

-weaker static defenses so that the defenses at the base itself are less useful
=> makes attacks less risky
=> punish people “eco-ing in the back” that benefit from indirect pooling by not having to invest into units at all to survive.

-diminish metal and energy production across dense buildings like AFUS and normal fusion =>to punish people “eco-ing in the back” that benefit from creating resources safely and more passively.
Further Resources pooling through mex leaving:
reduce metal income of “safe” metal extractors far from the front lines.
=> incentivise personal play because the mexes at spawn aren't even worth that much to begin with

Not all of that is easy except maybe:
+diminishing by let’s say 30% the return on investment value of fusion and advanced fusion
+diminishing converters efficiency
+lowering hp and DPS of static defense by a flat percentage as well
+increasing commander metal production dramatically
+increasing front line mexes income and/or diminishing base mexes income somehow??? Map dependent => Is that possible to do somehow devs? like making the mex produce more depending on how on the center of the map it is or something?

[true yarrow]

can you type everything with 90% less words?

[gusty plume]

u r wrong

Thats like three

[still onyx]

I am not talking about static, and yes the op strat against over porc is go around. Optimal defense is mostly units with a sprinkle of static, so that if your opponent balls up at a weak point you can catch them or do your own attack since they are exposed.

[summer fog]

Com bomb + centurion also works very well in early game.

[still onyx]

Your solutions im reading are:

1. higher com income
2. weaker static defense
3. more contested mex
4. lower afus value
5. increase reclaim value

I think some of this could be tried, but this is a lot of regime change which would always have unexpected consequences. My concerns for each are

1. losing com on front is often a valuable thing. Sucks to punish so hard. Lowering com reclaim value is another option, but that removes com bom catch up mechanic.

2. static is already kinda bad. Only works cause everyone eco.

3/5 are similar. Both are very snowbally. You should he punished a little for losing mid, but you shouldnt auto lose.

4. I think testing and understanding the implications of this would take years.

I get that incentive strategies feel more elegant, but I think they are too complex to work out. I think after some tweaks to ez tax (I support longer stun for mex share, at least early). As much as I want to come up with the solution to mex leaving, I dont think there is one. All players are inefficient, so one inefficiency instead of two combined with better players with more focused startegies will always produce better results. There are some maps where individual responsibilities are low, and metal should be deployed outside your lane.

[glossy condor]

Hello? Can you guys stop offtopic? How has anything to do with this modoption?

[true yarrow]

i really wish some of the spam got cleaned up because it killed conversation more or less

[glossy condor]

All i can say about this modoption that i mostly like it, but i wish there are 2 minor changes, 1. like commander should be tradeable (but with a big EMP stun, not sure if that possible since com's are immune to regular emp) 2. No EMP stun or less EMP stun for T1 and T2 con's.

[true yarrow]

why do you think emp stun on cons matters so much? it seems to me like its better to just keep it uniform and logical

[glossy condor]

Sharing T2 con's exist since bar's early days as a Techer role, the 30% Tax is limiting already enough in that department. I also think a little exclude/whitelist for EMP shouldn't be so difficult to add in the code. BTW. i think so uniform isn't this modoption or do you see a EMP stun for a Transporter or Commander?

[true yarrow]

its just simple rule of 30sec stun on all economic units

[still onyx]

The conversation had shifted to if mex leaving was an additional problem to solve.

And I think 30 second is not long enough for t1 mexes.

T1 con must be stunned to prevent getting around the intent of taxing early mex share.

[fierce pawn]

Metal producing structures could probably get longer durations (mexes and converters), the stun is just a temporary thing to try it out and if it works well then a different mechanic can be made to take its place that works less clunky possibly.

Mex leaving seems to be more or less a map to map issue, and like I've said before, while it will still be strong, there is still a "tax" on it, such as needing to make an extra con (or more) the walk time and build time of those extra mexes, it means you would get them a fair bit slower, at least if not more slowly than a stun on shared mexes most of the time due to t1 con speeds and such. You will be ahead of your opponent techer if you do this but depeneding on how many mexes, you'll only be ahead by a few hundred metal at most at the 10 minute mark, and that compounds to more by the 15 minute mark, but whichever front player doesn't have those mexes will have several hundred metal less than their opponents within that same duration.

And when I say its a map to map issue, it primarily seems like Glitters is the target for a lot of mex leaving, since mexes are lower valued 1.8 there, and there are lots of mexes on the map so skipping 1-2 mexes as a front player isn't giving up that big of a proportion of your income, and it seems Glitters players are most of the ones leaving most the feedback about this modoption right now.

I've noticed it isn't on as much on Supreme because a lot of the high skilled players there don't want to re-learn how to play the map with less or slower coop since the map was so hyper-optimized with lots of resource sharing and early boosts to get units out before the 1 min mark and several transports and scouts out before the 3 min mark and t2 out before the 5 min mark, its a lot to re-learn and figure out, especially when you're used to things being 1 way, and certain forms of coop such as rainbow cons not having been really meta defining on that map.

[idle fox]

mex leaving is favoured on maps that

1. have short distance between allied spawns, or where it's good to double spawn front
2. there are shared safe mexes not too far away

[idle fox]

you can probably make a 2nd front build that 1 mexes and leaves 2 mexes to techer, or front can double spawn and tech takes pond mexes
this is assuming mex sharing has 50 sec penalty

supreme mexes are farther away and the tech commander cannot naturally take them while walking forward

[idle fox]

right now the emp timer is too low. But if you want to boost, as long as it's something important and you understand how much you should boost, boosting is still very good at 30% tax

[fierce pawn]

How about a map like Koom Valley, where players' meta spawn spots are off all the groups of 3 mexes, just seems like would be better for techer to take all those extra back mexes instead of some of the front players expanding backwards (which already happens from what I've seen)

Seems like less of an issue since thats also a dedicated tech spot and due to timings needs to get commander sacrificed early and probably doesn't change much.

Yeah boosting is still good but players getting too caught up in the minutia units being stunned, like the early E is still super worth it but you have to build your own eco structrues behind it and it seems like front aggression is a lot more viable now so a pond that doesn't boost structures but just by slider is still good then they make units could beat out a tidal or wind boost type thing just from having more front presence. But thats more a theory it needs to be seen more. Plus its still super powerful on that map to do like 1 mex lab make 5 ticks with boosted E before making cons, winds, and units, and you are more vulnerable to that without a boost, but player's home mexes usually safer cuz commander still covers the mexes

But still like on Glitters you are looking at like 20+ second walk time to mex leavers plus the build time plus the extra con you would likely be making, this can be more mitigated with a transport though so you can move a con bot and con turret arond for it I suppose, so it can be stronger but the lead still takes a while to compound into anything more than something like your front player sending you 1000 metal in reclaim or something (untaxed)

[idle fox]

yes koom valley ez mex sharing map. 1 techer probably can start mid back and take the entire back
sure maybe you lose 100-200 metal in con capping it later, but the other player gains a bit of tempo, they can walk their com up earlier or something to be useful

[fierce pawn]

A map design flaw angle, one of the examples that came to my mind first, because its obvious on that map that players are "intended" to spawn on the spots with 3 mexes next to each other, but in reality with how that map is plaed, 2 spawn in the pits in the front, and 2 spawn forward off some of the 3 mex spots in order to expand backwards with safe mexes while having their units closer to the front faster to contest ground up there. If start boxes were smaller or mexes were in slightly different spots this would be mitigated, for example, and would probably also make mex leaving on that map less desireable.

Generally speaking, it appears that most of the better BAR maps give you several safe home mexes, then force you to expand towards your opponents so mexes and such get less safe the further away from home you get, rather than putting a bunch of safe mexes in the back but having big spawn boxes letting you make your home base far forward and allowing your safety net to be 1/3 up the map instead of only in the back, and then just expand backwards.

[acoustic igloo]

ADOS stats:
easytax_duration_avg 19:06 over 213 games where average_skill > 30
non_easytax_duration_avg 22:08 over 190 games where average_skill > 30

--- Game Duration Analysis (avg skill > 30) ---

[+] Games with EasyTax ON (213 replays):

• Average: 19:06
• Median: 18:04 (50th percentile)
• 25th Percentile: 11:58
• 75th Percentile: 23:57

[+] Games with EasyTax OFF (190 replays):

• Average: 22:08
• Median: 20:51 (50th percentile)
• 25th Percentile: 14:50
• 75th Percentile: 27:34

[thorn yarrow]

That’s expected , really good info , easy tax makes teching way worse so this data makes sense. (speaking about the normal pub gameplay)

Just numbers for example:

if you share 7 t2 cons to your allies as techer you are stunning 3:30 minutes them.

This means you are wasting 220bp (on t2 arm con) * 420 seconds stun -> 92400 BP wasted

If you add that you burn some resources while sharing to the techer to get t2 cons cause tax…

So yes, giga t2 transition nerf -> t1 or/and t2 units spam more important -> shorter games

[outer badger]

are the games shorter because of tax or because people are actually playing the game seriously and testing strategies with tax? idk how people are pretending that games last long when lobby is full coop try hard. With full coop games insta end spamming 10 tzars or 20 fatboys.

[acoustic igloo]

stats never lie and also if you have 2 teams cooping it just leads to stalemate

[outer badger]

so its a direct cause and effect? theres no other influencing factors?

[acoustic igloo]

major skill issue from players. 1 mistake they do can lead to them losing lanes and eco wont bail out anymore due to taxing so youll have loss games far faster.

[bitter patrol]

I think in new meta, there will be skewed data until its settled a bit

[hollow sphinx]

Full commie on any(both?) team just kills lobby. Can't test something that doesnt exist

[idle fox]

Tourney full coop games are very fast. Avg game time is probably no more than 13 minutes

[outer badger]

Also what subset of games is being used? Is it easy tax primarily being high os min 20-30 (naturally much faster and aggressive) vs all welcome glitters?

[pure cedar]

A small amount of reclaim will make a unit so it can no longer be rez'ed.

So, if your com dies near a con turret and the turret automatically reclaims 1 or 2 metal from the com, it can no longer be rez'ed. This sucks.

Is that something we hope to fix one day?

[idle fox]

better to make ally com reclaim go to the original creator

[mystic geode]

if u transporting cons (u shuld) this 30sec is't real

[cold citrus]

I will be promoting this idea. It is a very good idea.

[idle fox]

removes accidental griefing, and also gives a front player some come back mechanic when their com dies but their team recover the wreck. rn it's optimal to have the techer player slurp everything

[fierce pawn]

What if Com wrecks can only be rezzed or dgunned but not slupred from?

[dense jasper]

Combomb

[fierce pawn]

Might prolong games too much and have to much combombs or comdropping (which comdropping is a different problem)

Maybe somehow com wrecks can contain 0 metal but take metal to rez every time or something like that, but I think this kind of discussion probably not for this thread

[idle fox]

com drop would be too op tempo when it takes 75000 bp to rez it plus double to repair it

[fierce pawn]

I mean, instant 1250 metal is pretty strong tempo too but from a different perspective

[slate rover]

Yet another unintuitive exception

[glossy condor]

@digital anchor This was actually trying someone with me today... i rejected him. A techer asked me to self-d my com as airplayer, that he can leech my metal to build faster t2 and to evade taxes. We need a quick hotfix against this evasion.

[thorn yarrow]

There is no tourney sliders gameplay on pubs.

[hollow sphinx]

Agreed. So is self-d com and it leaving a wreck for 1250 metal . So this is just an exception causing a side effect. Fortunately no one likes that people blow com/eat wreck

[slate rover]

Fortunately no one likes that people blow com/eat wreck
I like having the option to blow the com and eat the wreck

[nimble surge]

I like having the option to blow the com and eat the wreck

[long chasm]

I like having the option to blow the com and eat the wreck

[hollow sphinx]

[fierce pawn]

Not that we should balance the game around them but I find when I play with my friends I gotta play in all welcome or noob lobbies, but when I play in those, if you're below 20 OS (so like 70% of the playerbase) you're almost allergic to blow up your commander intetionally. Tech timings of players at or below I'd say 25 OS are often quite slow because they don't like blowing up their commanders or think it is somehow useful to them outside of the first 4 minutes for buildpower and then at the 4 min mark as 1250 metal. They often will queue up a bunch of winds or soloars or LLTs somewhere stupid and afk their commander that way building stuff, but basically they never blow it up.

Just putting it out there a large majority of the playerbase doesn't blow up their commander when playing tech spots even though it is by far the best possible thing to do with your commander when trying to make a t2 lab.

[idle fox]

from what i hear there is a strong GDT sentiment to discourage com blow b/c it doesn't fit the fantasy of the most important commander unit

com blow is skill testing both from execution and from a economy/theory point of view, but it could be removed as long as stuff like asolar/estorage/solar exist that keep the economy depth

[true yarrow]

No com blow techer meta would allow for a bit more skill expression-skilled players could find extra value with com on front vs less skilled using it as bp

tech atm is too much about having a good build

[lapis hazel]

And you would prefer for tech to instead be skill expression based on map-reading and anticipation of the needs of the front line?

[idle fox]

thats already the case

[bitter patrol]

is easy tax broken? players couldnt share units last game just now

[rocky trench]

people couldn't share units in normal games too

[still onyx]

I dont think com self d can be optimized out of game without insanely buffing its resource gen.

The com has to leave metal or com bombs become too strong with essentially no downside.

[idle fox]

just giving +1m/s would make self d com pretty fringe. +2m/s would all but eradicate it

[versed vale]

thought the com had 2m/s passive

[inland plank]

it does, so giveing it +1 (3) or +2(4) would make it so much more valuable to keep

[tawdry token]

I was spectating a game and it seems like commander take after dead didn't work? Well the player was kicked and they didn't seem to be able to take (they took rest of base). The lavendar player was kicked and as you can see in the screenshot they couldn't take

[still onyx]

Is there resistance to modding this in and trying it? Or someone just needs to do it?

[cold citrus]

It has a lot of balance implications, like, A LOT. So I imagine the BLT have reservations.

[fading quail]

+2 metal/sec on Commanders would be a hilarious community balance patch. So obviously I'm supportive. But you'd have to make a "qualifying post".

[hollow sphinx]

Ngl it'd be interesting to see what happens with that com change.

[woeful mauve]

yeah i'd be keen to see that com change

literally only players it hurts are tech players who early control D, or those that lose it early on when overextending

there are ways to mitigate it as the tech player, for example, instead of going 2x con turrets, you'd just go +1 con bot and keep the commander

but if the goal is reducing again the tempo of tech (because im rushing fatboy and its still dominating games) then I think this achieves that.

[fading quail]

Feb 2026 Community Balance Patch rules: "Limit changes to a specific unit, or up to 6 units related to a narrow, well defined gameplay interaction." All comms can qualify easily. You're golden. Hey maybe add tht +10 DGun range with it >_>

[long valley]

What if coms just had much higher bp requirements to eat/rez? (think those large reclaim piles on at lava map that have tons of metal but rez bots only eat at like 2m/s or something). I know this would require custom modifications to allow repair to not get nerfed into oblivion but I feel the com is the one unit where it could make sense to try and seperate repair speed from bp if possible.

Might make it too beneficial to com bomb though

Alternatively, what if com self d radius/damage and metal value started really low like 1/4 current radius/damage and 200m valhe and climbed over time, reaching current self d and metal value by 10 minutes or so.

Idk if second idea is possible as I believe unit values are loaded at match initialization but I'm not 100% sure, Evo Com is a thing so maybe?

[digital anchor]

I have a potential fix coming for this, but it's not live yet. This particular issue is hard to test because you can't "disconnect" an AI ally in singleplayer when developing.

[fierce pawn]

You'd self D the commander not for 10 minutes of metal instantly but 5 minutes of metal, probably still worth it, you'd generally be 600m richer at 5 mins when you go to self D commander and get the next 5 mins of metal instantly. I think you'd still do it, maybe not other positions like air, but on Supreme, Geo and Eco still would.

It would probably also make the sea spots a bit more powerful as their commanders are usually kept alive longer and the extra metal really helps sea.

However, it will very certainly hurt front players or on 8v8 lane maps make fronts more snowbally if you lose your commander it better be for something good and worth it otherwise enemy is now instantly way more ahead of you than before even if you get the reclaim.

Also like sure, it would make giving your commander away less desierable as well, but not sure it would solve anything.

[fading quail]

Make a discussion post for this

[dense jasper]

What is the current stance on /take taking commanders?

I just got screwed because I couldn't take a rage quiters com, wasn't fair to anyone on my team

[cold citrus]

Imo it's fine if /take took comm. It'd be best if we had configurability (aka 5704 👀) tho
If quit happens in the first 5 min you should prob remake tho

[dense jasper]

Guy got fucked over by ticks at 3min cause he was poop, can't stop for rage quiters :/

[cold citrus]

Yeah he got f'd so the enemy team earned that, true.

[dense jasper]

If i took his com I could've prevented a free 1.25k metal donation and held off for a bit longer :/

[lapis hazel]

Ive seen /take2
work ...

Wonder if something is interfering with the code that renames /take2 to /take

[woeful mauve]

https://discord.com/channels/549281623154229250/1464535523820572693

Done.

[lethal cove]

when disconected of crash is completely bugged
gave all my unit away then when they try to give back just emp the unit and dont actualy give back to me

UNIT CAP

[fading quail]

Ah I thought we fixed the max units on rejoin issue.

Why's it three, though. Lol.

This looks a bit like something that RebelNode found when trying to check for "dead teams" where the way we should be detecting that is awkward. So you got, what, one unit from each of your allies, maybe?

[cold radish]

I am going to be honest. I have seen little evidence that easy tax is an enjoyable solution to communism. The majority of lobbys I join that have it enabled wind up disabling it before the next game. Past the fact that it appears many people do not approve of easy tax there is the issue of what it does. The fact that it stuns t2 cons bieng sent to teamates is the most intolerable thing for me. I feel that unless the intention is to remove the sharing of t2 to teamates this stun requires reevaluating. I can accept a tax on sent metal, sent energy, and even to a large extent shared economy buildings.

What I dont like about that is when a teamate let's a leak through and it takes out mexs it ends up bieng 2x as problematic because if another teamate rebuilds half your mexs for you they are unable to share them back without costing your team more. So if on glitters you are playing rainbow lane and you get half of your expansion mexs wiped and your air player rebuilds them then you just lose half your economy...

[outer badger]

Since it was released the op lobbies pretty much exclusively play it. So clearly it’s enjoyable

[cold radish]

Since when does a game balance for enjoyability for only the 1%

[signal flower]

I see a lot of evidence for it just by how the games with easy tax enabled turn out. Healthy t1 phase, no frustration because of t2 commie shredding t1 frontlines.
You can't have sharing of units without a price or else commie will dominate. I'm happy to hear alternatives but stunning units when sharing seems a reasonable approach.

[signal flower]

You have to anticipate in which direction the game develops. With more skill everybody will discover the strength of commie and the more skill involved the less enjoyable commie play becomes in public lobbies.

[gusty plume]

idk like if you dont like just go make a lobby without it 😹

[outer badger]

League, dota, sc2 or really any game with competitively in their interest

[cold radish]

Same thing goes for if you do like it.

[gusty plume]

well yeah

[outer badger]

Which lobbies are these you are playing in? If you like I could come to your lobbies and abuse rain cons and farm cows still you guys enable it

[nimble surge]

Come op supreme

[outer badger]

Sure I’ll full coop on enemy team and 0 coop on your team

[nimble surge]

Chrono alreay did that and got 25% winrate but u can try

[signal flower]

Wouldn't work there - everybody is already full commie

[signal flower]

The problem is that players that utilized commie for some time boosted their OS respectively and it won't have any additional impact on the game then

[outer badger]

Also isn’t the supreme lobby dead now a days? Rarely see a queue of high players and when I see skinner playing half the time it dies and turns into all welcome

[signal flower]

And I still think Supreme pond slave is horrible gameplay

[gusty plume]

no i find it fun staring at my tidals being slowly built :p

[signal flower]

at least that way we attract some of those Minecraft gamers

[nimble surge]

It is very alive it just has problems different from coop sadly

[signal flower]

What are those? Just curious

[nimble surge]

there are about 8 people who abuse os system and either troll to drop os or try hard, like today we had 70 os gamer that was building 5 afus into resign

[signal flower]

Ah, I see. Okay, that's hard to prevent. Only way is probably remembering the names and kickbanning.

[lethal wadi]

can't they change name anyways? and how to tell the legitimate resign from the other seems a pain

[nimble surge]

I mean some of them changing names and even taking other players names there were reported multiple times but it is just does not work, so it is either boss to kickban them or they steal lobby and boss themself so wcyd

[signal flower]

Yea, but you can see previous names by hovering over their names in the player list. And true the suspicion that someone is trolling is rather used too losely.

[outer badger]

Straits players always kickbanning people for next to nothing just to blame loss

[glossy heart]

I think the mod is "ok", it's just making attempts at fixing the problems and doing the wrong things imo, understandably I'd say because I think finding a fix for everything is gonna be really hard actually

[lethal wadi]

i think most of it boils down to us players not even being able to agree at scale on what is the issue -specifically.🤷

[fading quail]

Players don't make decisions (sorry dudes) so we don't need anyone to agree. We have two or three options to test, now, though. And that's huge.

[outer badger]

Funny thing is most straits players don’t even really like coop. Often eco spot makes their own 2nd t2 lab because they don’t want to battery. Pond often makes their own late t1 lab after boosting which is pointless. Even the recent straits tourney had anti coop rules

[lethal wadi]

that'd be great data then! what are the specific options selected for the game modes and how were the satisfaction levels?

[outer badger]

yeah nah straits is dead af

easy tax glitters has had big ass queue and min 30 the whole day

[nimble surge]

try to have more then 1 lobby lol

[outer badger]

theres no join queue lol legit 1 game away from becoming all welcome

[lethal cove]

my com and when i reloaded for 2nd time i could make some unit for 3s so i placed convertblueprint bcs why not

[fading quail]

Dynamic max units has worked on rejoin before so idk what happened. I looked at the code earlier and that provided guesses - but that's a bad way to debug

[lethal cove]

yeah its ok just sad it lost us the game since i was red :/ and i crash pretty often so i'm scared it will happen again rip

[fading quail]

We will figure it out. Eventually.

[hazy schooner]

Played a few games with the easy tax, and it does feel quite nice in general. The one thing I don't like is that rebuilding takes an extra 30 seconds for even t1 cons to be shared. 30 seconds is quite a lot of time to be without constructors. I'm not sure how to adress that without opening loopholes though.

[lethal wadi]

thanks for the data already provided! could you also know of a way to quantify the number of disconnects or rage quits? this is to -try- to ground the level of satisfaction from a match with proper data. Disconnects are truly random, while i expect unsatisfying games to "mysteriously" have more disconnects or resigns or quitting in any way shape or form. Do we have individual resigns and team resign votes data from your ADOS stats?

[acoustic igloo]

The thing with this is that it completely shuts off any form of bail out which makes alot of sense before people used to send metal to get a t2 unit for a losing lane now if a lane is losing one can't just start making units otherwise you'll be hyper behind.

[glossy condor]

I say this data would be only interesting, if you compare this 190 vs 213 matches versus another set of 200vs200 matches...

[lethal wadi]

? what?

[glossy condor]

He needs another set of data to compare his first data, where he compare the time difference between Easy Sharing Tax ON and Off.

Its like a counter statistic, to see flaws and to verify the result.

[signal flower]

So you're basically just saying that the sample size isn't big enough for your liking?
Or what should be the specific characteristics of those additional 400 matches?

[glossy condor]

nah, its not about to a add additional matches to just 1 statistic (i think this would be time waste). Im talking about to create another statistic (with a NEW set of matches), to compare the result's against each other.

[signal flower]

My question remains... 😂
So, what would be "new" about that "statistic"?
Because if it is just another set of matches with and without Easy Tax it would just be an increased sample size.

[still onyx]

I think what kobold is getting at is you could imagine that the original 200 v 200 analysis has shown that analyzing two separate game sets will produce two different average game times.

So he wants another random set of 400 games divided randomly into blocks of 200 to have average game time compared to see what the difference is. Theory being if there is a similar average game tome difference, then this measurement wasnt due to easy tax, but was random noise or meta shifts.

If I mistated kobold you can correct. I do not think that this is the right way to think about these statistics. The presence of easy tax to me is enough to just collect games before and after to see. Kobold seems to want a sort of meta study.

[tiny arrow]

just split the 200 v 200 into 2 sets of 100 v 100 then lmao

[lethal wadi]

this really seems like an issue with the American education system more than anything... or whereever you are. Now other than that the thing that could be interesting is the evolution of how people adapt to the new game mode may change things a bit so I'd be great to see if you can update incrementaly as u get more and more data: if we see the play time difference diminishing it would mean we need to be more agressive with the tax system because they found a way to adapt. If not, we succeed... for now.

a date with each version of the easy sharing tax too to put in perspective as we update and tweak it.

[idle fox]

lowered play time is more like people are not sure how to boost after tax, and are adjusting to builds. When the boost meta hasn't settled more people will die quickly (the most stable meta is where both fronts are boosted same amount, and lower os players have time to copy higher os players and hold their own)

there's more skill expression to balance your economy and do tech build, so people screw their economy more.
Also i know some people who just do cheese rush strats when tax is turned on because they hate it.

[lethal wadi]

yeah so the satisfaction thing would be nice too to prevent that weird bias for sure

[idle fox]

even without wierd factors, new patch in any game is dominated by rush strats because people need time to readjust

[crude gull]

I predict it takes 2 months until glitter meta will be that backline spot play front and front spot tech

Actually jesus if I could I would redesign like all starting positions. Makes no sense to spawn like rn xdd

Canyon should have air in back. And tech spawn on 3 spawns in back and other 5 player beside canyon player spawn front

[lethal wadi]

maybe an option to boost commader metal production and energy like wr can with build power would allow you to ignore the map metal spawns you don't enjoy.

u can spawn anywhere this way

[fierce pawn]

Is tis any different from like rotation lobbies? Woever has the most mexes, wins the most reclaim, or wins their lane, or stalls out the enemy and stabilizes is usually the first to go t2?
Like on glitters that just mainly means anticanyon spots can afford to go t2 and tech for their team since they have access to the most and safest mexes on the front. Would this be so bad for Glitters?

[fierce pawn]

I think the current spawns are mostly holdover from old glitters metas where each of the back corner spots were techers when self D commander was 2500 metal and gets you instantly to t2, and the center spot was pure eco, didnt waste time on units until first few afus done, thats like way old meta for Glitters though. These days it could make sense to switch the spawns around, but also a centrally located techer makes response times shorter on average.

[thorn blade]

@digital anchor
As per BetterStrategy's lobby this evening - tested with the setting on and off with no other changes - it appears the first Commander death is causing a team resign for that team?
These are the other settings enabled...

[lapis hazel]

So that reads like it's not caused by easy_tax?

[thorn blade]

In what way?
If EasyTax is on, the bug happens, if it's off, it doesn't

[lapis hazel]

Oh, I assumed it was going to show easy_tax = 1 in the lobby settings

[thorn blade]

Screenshot was from after we tested it with Easy Tax turned off 🙂 This is why I said 'These are the other settings enabled'

Here are some replays from where Easy Tax was turned on, @lapis hazel, @digital anchor

• https://bar-rts.com/replays/44f87769a5808a877b241ca4f1ba990e
• https://bar-rts.com/replays/0bfb77696d918916fda4140791a214f5
  When the first commander died on a team, it was game over!

[fading quail]

I'm poking around in game_team_com_ends but unsure the answer is here. This code hasn't changed.

[glossy condor]

I think you sum it up correctly. But i was also thinking about a additional viewpoint, that a newer comparison might show, how people maybe adapt to the Mod changes. I actually would expect a longer match time from Easy Sharing Tax, because of the tech delay.

[digital anchor]

Huh? That is most odd.

[digital anchor]

@fading quail looks like https://github.com/beyond-all-reason/Beyond-All-Reason/pull/6775 fixes the resign bug. No idea why, but it does.

[lethal wadi]

"would expect a longer match time from Easy Sharing Tax, because of the tech delay"
and we see EXACTLY the opposite
"ADOS stats:
easytax_duration_avg 19:06 over 213 games where average_skill > 30
non_easytax_duration_avg 22:08 over 190 games where average_skill > 30"

At this point this is just about discarding statistics when they don't follow the narrative one had in mind beforehand.

Now maybe the stats are wrong, but then we definitely need to explain -how- and -why- BEFORE just asking to re do them again. Otherwise it's pointless Pi hacking: "let' keep adding more stats until it fits what i want, and stop when the stats go "the wrong" way."

re-doing a sampling every weak to see if the -difference- in timings flattens because people have found ways around the anti-commie strat, is interesting to see... if we need to be more aggressive or not with the anti commie modifications. Although just because the timing would converge to be the same doesn't mean people are enjoying it as much.

[idle fox]

#1460179448967073916 message

remember when people first started boosting 4 wind/4tidal on straits? games were ending in 4 minute. Because uneven boost + very short rush distance, and most players did not know how to survive 4 wind boost 1 mex grunt spam

[lethal wadi]

are we just doomed to have to wait for Drongo to make enough videos and people adapting for months on end then? or do we just take games above OS>[your personal threshold] to put into the stats to know if the anti commie is working? but then catering to the top 10% is going to get the rest unhappy as we've seen before...

[idle fox]

#1337861239526785064 message
#1337861239526785064 message
There are other reason against coop in pub games, here. t2 pacing is impacted by coop but is not solely limited to coop

[idle fox]

i mean if you just play or spectate the op games, you will see that slinging happens a lot less in taxed game. People are slinging less and spending their own money. When they boost they have to consider how much they want to boost. It's accomplishing it's main goal, which is why ppl are using it a lot in glitters

[lethal wadi]

yeah but op games people generally don't have issue about min/maxing or being quick on their feet for that matter...

[idle fox]

there is some friction on loopholes and loss of QoL. some of those can be improved.
wdym?

If you primarily play with not sending 600+ metal to teammates or relying on wind boosts, then the tax is a buff to you

[lethal wadi]

you've been tacitly explaining how no data will properly show us our progress against commie strat because disruption in meta make games shorter in general. I'm just wondering then which OS would be a good limit to exclude from the stats the people who get bambozled by the change in meta and can't adapt at all on their own => die fast and make game quicker.

[idle fox]

you could just measure amount of resources slinged per game. But a better way is to show that coop strategies are still decent and see that boost is (obviously) weakened.

why is game length the ultimate metric here?

[lethal wadi]

any metric, anything we can have is good i'm working with what he provided before

[lethal wadi]

i just had the same thought like a week ago right in this thread. But the way you say you imply it is an objectively bad play as a strategy (they lose more often) or as a concept (and should be squashed)?

[idle fox]

" coop is bad as a concept (and should be squashed)?": see #1460179448967073916 message
note: tax is not trying to eliminate coop just not make it dominant."
"objectively bad play as a strategy (they lose more often)", not saying anything is a weak strategy. in fact coop is usually OP

[lethal wadi]

" just not make it dominant" as long as we allow combat unit sharing you can have a massive amount of specialization in the roles of a team (what you call macro-guys vs micro-guy). The only reason it' not done more is probably cultural (it's an RTS, not an MMO with dedicated roles which have distinct mindset optimization). Yet blocking combat units sharing will not happen in this thread if i remember the sentiment around it correctly.

[fading quail]

It's literally the only bug I could identify in all of the code. Lol. It had to fix it. But I'm so interested in how that causes the resign loss

[thorn blade]

Nice to see that it's been fixed so fast! Even if it's a mystery how!
Good Tech-Priest vibes

[fading quail]

I have a theory (a game theory)

Yep. I'll apply a small patch elsewhere to make sure this bug doesn't return, because it's confusing to diagnose. Ty for patience everyone.

[still onyx]

Im not sure what your stance is.

I am getting the sense that you think a small but vocal minority of players dislike coop based on nothing but how it makes them feel.

Most players in this thread (and Ez tax supporters in general) believe that resource pooling leads to advantages, and specifically these kinds of advantages are frustrating to experience and difficult to counter.

I agree with chrono, that eliminating co op is not at all about game length, and presented any statistic we could craft infinite explanations (ex: games are shorter now because high level players win t1 and other players have trouble pooling resources into an effective counter. Source? I made it up).

Success of a mod designed to kill resource pooling is only defined by whether or not the pooling continues. Two main forms:

1. sharing metal/economic structures: ez taxes pushes towards punishing this by taxing and stunning
2. pooling resources by leaving metal to techer: ez tax does nothing for this, harder to define if its a problem and how to solve it.

There isnt some metric to determine empirically if game quality is higher or lower with or without ez tax. While most players think pooling is strong, it is hard to prove and no one has bothered to soft through games to form a study. You are welcome to be the first. But there is lots of circumstantial evidence that people dislike this strategy at moderate to high level play regardless of how strong it is or is not. And players feeling better with ez tax on is the only indicator of success, whether or not "game quality" goes up. And players feeling better can kinda be measured by whether or not lobbies choose to enable and keep ez tax on or not.

[lethal wadi]

"minority of players dislike coop based on nothing but how it makes them feel." i wouldn't know and probably don't care enough. Most likely the reverse, i don't think RTS enjoyers are happy using strategies that are similar to MMOs.

"There isnt some metric to determine empirically if game quality is higher or lower with or without ez tax." No indeed, i'm looking for the best aggregate for it: maybe player resign and votes on team resign could help?

"While most players think pooling is strong" Mathematically pooling gives you nothing in a game with this type of growth pattern. IF there is an advantage that people find, and it is real and NOT just a feeling, then it can come from two things: pooling can work -positively- if the receiver has better overall skills, and/or if people are confused and are already co-opping=>

=>i'm repeating myself again but: all studies even including on small groups for gaming, show that teams of people that -specialize- in particular roles have better performance than teams made up of jack of all trades. That's just how the brain works.
So people could be more efficient using coop but hating playing the specific "job" they have.
hence a satisfaction-like metric would be great, no matter imperfect it's better than than absolute guess. especially if we can make a vote thing in the discord to ask about how often they had a great game with this or that mod activated.
it's biased yes, but we are optimizing people's happiness and feelings, not the math since math says pooling gives you nothing more (previous posts).

[slender minnow]

Can we just get the option as to whether or not stuff gets stunned moved to an option so lobbies can decide what they want and test it accordingly?

Stun t2 cons,
stun everything else
stun on take after leave

[lethal wadi]

although manually just setting the tax to 30% yourself can be done.... but then it's no longer "easy" tax for sure