Cosmite Depletion Option

[ashbery76]

I am not of fan of this and the few 4x games that added it tends to a unused option ala waste of dev time plus the A.I also needs to be tuned to understand how to play it.Making bigger factions less efficient in the use of it would be a better option.

 

[BloodyBattleBrain]

I'm not a developer but I imagine that having it deplete or not deplete is fairly simple to code, compared to making the rest of the game.

In other words it could be tested fairly easily I *believe*

Could just be wishful thinking .

Ofcourse the trick is in assessing whether it makes the game more or less fun.

I favour cosmite depletion and/or diminishing returns but my thinking is heavily heavily coloured by considering how to make T4s good but not gamebraking, and how to bring a game session to a natural close without the dreaded end game tedium.

Depleting a resource as valuable as cosmite acts as a timer of sorts.

It also gives players locations of real value to fight over, strategic objectives that aren't cities, although ofcourse I hope cities will be useful.

So that's my support for depleting resources.

There are other mechanics that can help here, all worth exploring, like upgraded sectors, multiple t4 types, differing victory conditions etc etc.


As an aside, I hope they'll keep in empire achievements, like centurion (first to 100 units) and paragon (1st to have a t4.)

Another aside- I'm hoping that, related to depleting resources, that there are variable income mines etc (or whatever produces energy etc) and that you can upgrade these resources, again in service of giving people juicy targets other than cities

 

[LennartGS]

Its not as trivial as might seem. It needs to be tracked and communicated per node with proper events or it'd be unplayable. This is worsened with units requiring upkeep in said resource.

 

[Chimaira]

I am not so sure about cosmite depletion. It will not necessarily mean that after cosmite is exhausted the game will end soon. The closest example I can think of is Age of Empires 2. Military units are created with food, wood and gold, and although each resource can be depleted food and wood are much more common than gold, which exhaust really fast compared to them. If one player gets more gold than his enemy he most probably will win - unless his enemy is more cost efficient with his units and gets good engagements. If both sides get equal amount of gold the game frequently turns into so called "trash war" where most of the army is composed from units that cost only food and wood to produce. You still can get some gold via market or by collecting relics so the gold units will not disappear, but the bulk of the army will be "trash" units. This system works in AoE 2 but it is RTS so game ends much faster than in 4X genre. Typicall AoW game will most probably take much more time to play. I don't think it will be fun that after a long game (in case of exhaustion of cosmite it most likely will be long rather than short) you are going back to use only T1 and T2 because there is no cosmite left. It can even prolong the game because it will probably be harder to siege cities with only T1 and T2 at your disposal.

Besides such system will naturally favour human players, who are better at conserving and protecting important units than AI. Another important thing to note is that if the game will get many complicated elements then the AI would need big bonuses to remain competitive or it will not perform well.

 

[Nerdfish]

Its not as trivial as might seem. It needs to be tracked and communicated per node with proper events or it'd be unplayable. This is worsened with units requiring upkeep in said resource.

You sure about that? a differential of an exponential is an exponential.
Every mine only need to subtract a percentage from the current base output for each turn it's in operation and
the output will be an exponential decay with a finite total value.

 

[BloodyBattleBrain]

@LennartGS thanks. Sounds like it makes it more of a challenge.

@Chimaira good points, especially about having only lower tier units at the end.

All I'd say is that if it makes a game of Planetfall more fun and the end game better than in AoW 1, 2 and 3, then it is worth it, as opposed to comparing it to AoE.

 

[LordTheRon]

Wow, lots of things have been said in this debate already. I'm not so much in favour of resource depletion and thus finite resources. Looking at what the devs say, I think they're on the right track. Make Cosmite special and make sure the choices you have to make to spend your Cosmite on are meaningful. Nothing better than a huge decision on deciding what you should spend your precious Cosmite on. Multiple T3's, that one T4 or maybe some great mods for you elite T2?

 

[BloodyBattleBrain]

Nothing better than a huge decision on deciding what you should spend your precious Cosmite on. Multiple T3's, that one T4 or maybe some great mods for you elite T2?

 

[Fluksen]

I'm against finite resources mainly because of:

there's a scenario where you'll be left with an anti-climatic end games fighting with "sticks and stones" when the special resource runs out

some people don't mind that and I could live with it. But why not make T4s (and maybe T3s) cost cosmite as upkeep, with a very finite amount of cosmite to begin with that would even bring new hard decisions like: Do I save my cosmite for a T3/T4 boom timing that gets me military superiority for as long as my cosmite stash can afford it or do I built them asap for easier early dominance (but that will loose me cosmite in the long term unless I can utilize them to gain new cosmite sources)
As for the racial tech:

Some kind of more elaborate governance levels ?

I always thought "race" kinda replaces the AoW3 class, so I do expect a fully fledged tech tree for each race.

 

[BloodyBattleBrain]

@Fluksen my impression is that what you outline is the existing situation.

Limited cosmite availability *few sectors have it) and t4 units need it for upkeep and purchase.

Ditto t3 units.

And special abilities.

The question is whether that's enough or if it should be finite as well.

 

[Fluksen]

ups ok thanks for clarifying. I was somehow assuming that you need cosmite to built that unit but upkeep wold be be energy only (like all produced T4 units in AoW3 need mana to build, but only gold as upkeep, with the exception of summon of course). Clearly a folly assumption without any background on my side.

 

[BloodyBattleBrain]

I *think* it's required for upkeep.


If not, seems to me that'd be an easy way to counter t4 spam.

 

[NexiKuro]

Couldn't you do this much more simply with something similar to Warcraft 3's "upkeep" mechanic? So that as an empire grows an increasing percentage of their income gets lost? That combined with an upkeep on certain units should give smaller empires an edge vs large spread out ones. And this way you wouldn't have to track your decreasing income per source: they all get affected equally and there's only one number for you to track.

A proposal where the nodes themselves drop over time would just make rushing stronger no? The empire that expands the fastest gets the biggest slice of the total amount of cosmite, especially if it drops exponentially and the conqueror leaves nothing but scorched earth behind.

 

[Nerdfish]

There is another way to implement this without keeping track of Remaining Cosmite for every mine, or mess with tall vs wide balance.
An option for random map to generate no comsite mine, but every player starts with a large stockpile (say enough for 10 T4 or 40 T3) of it.
The only way to get more is to loot from mobs or trade with neutrals.