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Zero-k: A libre sci-fi RTS game, with an economy based on metal and energy

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Re: Zero-k: A libre sci-fi RTS game, with an economy based on metal and energy

#121

Post by Buttons840 »

pdntspa wrote: post #118
rollcat wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh well I guess that depends on the win condition, and yes I can imagine 1000v1000 units can be fun (myself am an avid enjoyer of 4v4 in SC2). But especially as the number of players go up, I think the popcap should be going down. I've played a couple custom 2v2 games in SC2 with a reduced popcap (100 instead of 200) and the games were wiiiiiiiild: you have very little economy and turtling is just impossible, so the…

I love turtling. I hate that the prevailing strategy seems to be always be on the offense and micro eighty million stupid little things. esports and APS have ruined competitive RTS play. Turtling lets me build up my base and economy and nurture a curbstomping offense after which I can overwhelm my opponents. If I wanted to play a tactical RTS there are a million options out there that limit you with horse-blinders

So your preferred balance is that both players build and nurture a base until one goes an overwhelms and "curbstomps" the other? That doesn't sound satisfying. Remember, 50% of the time you need to be the one getting curbstomped. Just imagine that base you nurtured getting rolled over and there's not much you can do; is that fun?

It's easy to be too optimistic when balancing a game. It's easy to imagine "oh, this unit will be nearly indestructible, and I can watch it destroy my opponents and their bases". But what really happens is "my opponent destroyed me, I tried everything I could but his unit was nearly indestructible".

(This is why we need strong AI for RTS games. First, we get strong AI, then we find ways of dumbing it down in fun ways. In the end we have a creative AI that offers a few surprises, but is content to let the human player win 95% of the time.)

Re: Zero-k: A libre sci-fi RTS game, with an economy based on metal and energy

#122

Post by pdntspa »

Buttons840 wrote: post #121
pdntspa wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love turtling. I hate that the prevailing strategy seems to be always be on the offense and micro eighty million stupid little things. esports and APS have ruined competitive RTS play. Turtling lets me build up my base and economy and nurture a curbstomping offense after which I can overwhelm my opponents. If I wanted to play a tactical RTS there are a million options out there that limit you with horse-blinders

So your preferred balance is that both players build and nurture a base until one goes an overwhelms and "curbstomps" the other? That doesn't sound satisfying. Remember, 50% of the time you need to be the one getting curbstomped. Just imagine that base you nurtured getting rolled over and there's not much you can do; is that fun? It's easy to be too optimistic when balancing a game. It's easy to imagine "oh, this uni…

Again, that's why you need the one-unit-that-loses-you-the-game-if-it-dies.

> there's not much you can do; is that fun?

since when is losing supposed to be fun? I don't want to give my opponent chances at a reversal. I want to win, reliably and assuredly.

I don't know what the 'indestructible' unit has to do with any of this, even the most impenetrable fortress has weaknesses. You have to declaw a turtle slowly and methodically, or just straight up overwhelm their defensive lines. A turtling player cannot be everywhere at once, they have weaknesses.

Re: Zero-k: A libre sci-fi RTS game, with an economy based on metal and energy

#123

Post by chaps »

thinkingtoilet wrote: post #83
Pannoniae wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The game is much less click-intensive, but you need really good situational awareness for it. It doesn't have "traditional" micro, you don't need to manually queue units or babysit every single unit so it doesn't die immediately, but to win, you need to micro in key areas and most importantly, manage your economy well.

Interesting. Does managing your economy mean being efficient and keeping resources low or are there more complex elements to it?

Because ZK doesn't have an exponential economy, each unit is important, even the cheap ones. There's also metal reclaim in battles, which tends to be about half of your econ. So fights become terf wars to make sure the enemy doesn't reclaim each battles' spoils.

Re: Zero-k: A libre sci-fi RTS game, with an economy based on metal and energy

#124

Post by chaps »

wheelerof4te wrote: post #38
emsimot wrote: post #18

Custom games? :D I miss playing "tree tag" on Warcraft3 Battle.net

These types of RTSs are way less "arcadey" than Warcraft 3 or Starcraft, so I don't think supporting custom games is on the devs radar. What you're usually after in these games are huge battles on massive worlds with thousands of explosions leaving craters and debris everywhere.

What? Custom game modes is ABSOLUTELY on their radar. Less so than the main game for sure, but to say ZK doesn't support custom game modes is flat out wrong.

Re: Zero-k: A libre sci-fi RTS game, with an economy based on metal and energy

#125

Post by MauranKilom »

thinkingtoilet wrote: post #83
Pannoniae wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The game is much less click-intensive, but you need really good situational awareness for it. It doesn't have "traditional" micro, you don't need to manually queue units or babysit every single unit so it doesn't die immediately, but to win, you need to micro in key areas and most importantly, manage your economy well.

Interesting. Does managing your economy mean being efficient and keeping resources low or are there more complex elements to it?

Some basics (from someone who played the game a bunch a decade ago): There are two resources, metal and energy, neither can "mine out". To build something, you need equal amounts of both, and the thing building can only spend them at a certain rate ("buildpower"). Notably, metal income is effectively proportional to the amount of territory you control, whereas energy generation can be built anywhere. Buildpower is local to factories and builder units. Neither resource needs to be "moved around", it can be spent by builders anywhere.

One important economy management aspect is matching your metal income with at least as much energy income and buildpower so you can actually spend it (excess energy is turned into a bit of extra metal). And then yes, you should spend it, but the factories support queues (including automatic re-queueing), and you can of course shift-queue buildings.

Another important aspect is that dead units leave behind metal scraps. This can boost your metal income substantially (e.g. if a failed enemy attack leads to a bunch of dead units near your base).

In short, balancing metal income (/territory expansion) with energy income and buildpower is the core economy management loop. But because units have pretty capable AI (e.g. auto-kite when applicable), you can devote a lot more of your attention to this aspect, as well as higher-level decision making.

Re: Zero-k: A libre sci-fi RTS game, with an economy based on metal and energy

#126

Post by rollcat »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #120
rollcat wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh well I guess that depends on the win condition, and yes I can imagine 1000v1000 units can be fun (myself am an avid enjoyer of 4v4 in SC2). But especially as the number of players go up, I think the popcap should be going down. I've played a couple custom 2v2 games in SC2 with a reduced popcap (100 instead of 200) and the games were wiiiiiiiild: you have very little economy and turtling is just impossible, so the…

A popcap would have to be logarithmic or something. The most expensive ZK unit costs nearly a thousand times more than the cheapest one ! http://zero-k.info/mediawiki/Detriment http://zero-k.info/mediawiki/Flea Not sure why you would expect that turtling (porc(upine)ing) would work in a competitive game with 2 teams, the opponnents will just take the rest of the map and then crush you using these extra resources. And…

> Not sure why you would expect that turtling (porc(upine)ing) would work in a competitive game with 2 teams, the opponnents will just take the rest of the map and then crush you using these extra resources.

That's exactly the issue, when playing in a random team. Matchmaking can be a real dice roll in a small playerbase (which SC2 4v4 is). Sometimes I get teammates 500MMR below me, where the metagame is almost always turtling to T3 behind infinite static defense.

Being the only aggressive player in a game with 7 turtles feels extremely unrewarding. Sure I can go expand first into 80+ workers before making a single army unit. I just think games like this suck.

Even if you execute your initial greed correctly, you're still vulnerable because they've been building T3 units, you have more places to defend, and a bigger part of your popcap is taken by the workers. Maybe it would actually be good here if SC2 didn't have a popcap (so that you continue to capitalize on your initial greed for the rest of the game), but that would make Zerg incredibly broken - they make more stuff (including workers) faster than any other faction.

> And a lower population cap would make it easier to turtle, not harder, so I'm kind of confused as to how it worked in your example ?

Lower popcap means you don't get to continue building an even bigger, more unbeatable army behind a wall of turrets or cannons. Static defense doesn't really help against armies (only deters harassment), because siege weapons. Sitting on a maxed army is throwing away a temporary advantage. It incentivizes to attack first, because even if the opponent is maxed too, any time you take an even fight near an enemy base, you get to deal a little bit of damage to their eco or production (the win condition is to destroy all enemy structures).

SC2 recently rotated the entire team map pool; many maps now have very few bases and a very short rush distance. Some people still try to turtle, but it's difficult as attacking early is so much stronger. The average quality of the games has IMHO gone way up.

Re: Zero-k: A libre sci-fi RTS game, with an economy based on metal and energy

#127

Post by good_lord_dang »

rollcat wrote: post #114
jader201 wrote: post #55

I hadn’t heard of this before, and was excited that a new RTS was being announced, given that RTSes seem like a fading genre. Of course it’s just a link to an older game. I guess the days of the RTS really are behind us. :(

There's a lot of promising RTSs currently in development, that can trace their roots to Blizzard and/or SC2. As wheelerof4te suggests, I'd keep my eyes on Stormgate. It's being developed by the ex-Blizzard team that worked on SC2 and WC3. More big names involved than I care to drop. https://playstormgate.com/ >, https://store.steampowered.com/app/2012510/Stormgate/ > ZeroSpace came out of the blue a couple months ago…

[dead]

Re: Zero-k: A libre sci-fi RTS game, with an economy based on metal and energy

#128

Post by Buttons840 »

pdntspa wrote: post #122
Buttons840 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your preferred balance is that both players build and nurture a base until one goes an overwhelms and "curbstomps" the other? That doesn't sound satisfying. Remember, 50% of the time you need to be the one getting curbstomped. Just imagine that base you nurtured getting rolled over and there's not much you can do; is that fun? It's easy to be too optimistic when balancing a game. It's easy to imagine "oh, this uni…

Again, that's why you need the one-unit-that-loses-you-the-game-if-it-dies. > there's not much you can do; is that fun? since when is losing supposed to be fun? I don't want to give my opponent chances at a reversal. I want to win, reliably and assuredly. I don't know what the 'indestructible' unit has to do with any of this, even the most impenetrable fortress has weaknesses. You have to declaw a turtle slowly and m…

I assume you're talking about competitive play, since you mentioned it, and lamented that competitive RTS play is ruined.

> since when is losing supposed to be fun? I don't want to give my opponent chances at a reversal. I want to win, reliably and assuredly.

This comment explains why this theoretical opponent of yours doesn't exist. You want to play against another human who you can defeat reliably, and who has no fun being defeated. Why would anyone ever want to be your opponent? It's not fun for them, and they have little chance of winning. This is why, as you observed, there's many tactical RTS games that people are playing, but nobody plays games like you imagine.

Re: Zero-k: A libre sci-fi RTS game, with an economy based on metal and energy

#129

Post by thinkingtoilet »

MauranKilom wrote: post #125
thinkingtoilet wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. Does managing your economy mean being efficient and keeping resources low or are there more complex elements to it?

Some basics (from someone who played the game a bunch a decade ago): There are two resources, metal and energy, neither can "mine out". To build something, you need equal amounts of both, and the thing building can only spend them at a certain rate ("buildpower"). Notably, metal income is effectively proportional to the amount of territory you control, whereas energy generation can be built anywhere. Buildpower is lo…

Thank you so much for the detailed response. Seems interesting.

Re: Zero-k: A libre sci-fi RTS game, with an economy based on metal and energy

#130

Post by BlueTemplar »

willis936 wrote: post #111
olavgg wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

link?

I want them to take my money. Update: They have taken my money. There are few groups that have kept my trust as well as these folks. I know they'll deliver. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BB49yJp-rJI https://industrialannihilation.com/

Very interesting, I wonder how they are going to balance supply chains being hard to set up but easy to disrupt ?

It reminded me of an old game : Mechanized Assault & Exploration (M.A.X.) :

https://www.gog.com/en/game/m_a_x_m_a_x_2

Gameplay : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TdjQZz0lFY (stretched, sigh...)

So you need to use surveyor units to scan for underground resources (metal, fuel, gold), build mines that extract them, but then also have to transport them (also ammo) to the place where they will be used (buildings, constructors, units) either by using specialized units or via connectors (think Factorio's overground pipes).

It's quite complex, so it's turn based (either simultaneous real time, or sequential turns). M.A.X.2 also experimented with real time (as well as 3D map, inspired by Total Annihilation ?) but sadly it's basically a rushed mess.

Annoyingly this brilliant game has been plagued for decades by memory issues :

https://www.gog.com/forum/m_a_x_series/changing_dos_extender...

But it looks like we finally have the solution as a "port" !!

https://klei1984.github.io/max/

Seems to be working as advised (the only thing not working yet would be network multiplayer and some of the various non-critical bugs already present in the original game).

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