Oil Refinery bonus does not stack

[xezon]

Oil Refinery bonus does not stack. It gives 10% price reduction flat, no matter how many are owned. Repair bonus from Repair bay does stack.

[xezon]

Dominator

Refineries should stack. Just like repair bays do.

HenkOnderwater

Disagree. Some maps have >1 refineries and >10% discount on all units is just ridiculous. It also prevents mapmakers from making a (FFA) map where everyone gets 1 refinery on their island. I think it is a unnecessary change and don't fix something that isn't broken.

NickName

Hmm, don't know. It might be interesting to have maps with more than 1 or 2 refineries. Don't recall many FFA maps that has a refinery for each base. But if a player has 3 or 4 bases, and thus 3/4 refineries, he probably will win anyways.

Depending on how it gets calculated, 4 refineries give either 40% (each simply gives -10%) or -34% (first gives -10%, so you pay 90 instead of 100, second gives another -10% over the 90, so that will be 81 etc).

At first I was like: nah, not a good idea. But after some thinking, I don't think it is bad. As I said, for FFA a player can become very big with cheap units, but if he has -10% and 4 bases or -40% and 4 bases, he probably would have won already. Plus the refineries might become a target now.

Would like to see a 1v1 map like Oil Rampage, but with 3 or 4 refineries. Or a 3v3 where each base has a refinery and some oils and 1 player per team can simply go for it. Having 1 player with 6 oils, and 3 refineries (27% cheaper units) will be massive. On the other hand, that might be too OP indeed

HenkOnderwater

Increasing the importance of the refinery is a good point. It will become more important on such maps. This change should be heavily tested though. We don't really what kind of impact this will really have on games in general. It might be a good change but it could also be a game breaking change on maps with more than 1 refinery.

And I don't think this 'if a player has 3-4 spots he has won anyway' should be said. I think that this way, the other players have even less of a change of making a potential comeback, which would make games more predictable.

ReLaX

Agreed. Question is how. What means having 2 or more in the end for the players' units?

Dominator

Take snowy drought for example, I go to the trouble of fighting for the enemy refinery and oil and I get them. Ok I got cash boost from the oil but what about refinery? why did i bother to capture it?

It should be compound discounts, so 4 refineries yes -34% discount.

If you let the enemy take 4 refineries then it's your problem, not a new imbalance.

I dont know any maps with 3-4 "safe" refineries to capture.

NickName

True, but as Domi is stating: what maps do have that many refineries? I can't think of any FFA map that has 1 for each player/base. Some maps have 1 in the middle, or some 1v1 maps (Snowy, Oil Rampage) with 1 for each player. Having 2 isn't easy, so it should be rewarded imo.

I would like to see such a map being played out with FFA and 3v3 where there is 6 refineries in total. I think it might be more problematic for 3v3s, as the team can decide that 1 player goes for them (probably mid player), so he will be on -27%. With FFAs, I doubt you will see that happen much that a player has like 4 or more. In addition that if that scenario happens, I wonder what the percentage will be of the player with 4 refineries would have lost otherwise. But most important question remains: what maps have more than 2 refineries?

We might see some new maps with more refineries now, think it can be a good thing compared to the drawbacks.

First one (current situation) gives minus 10%. So $100 will become $90. Imo, a 2nd one should be minus 10% of the $90, so it will be $81 and not $80. Then the 3rd will be 10% of $81, so $73. Don't know if this is possible, but if it stacks with 10% at a time, the difference won't be that big. Instead of $73 it will be $70.

But agree, most of the time I don't even bother, usually I just try to kill the refinery when I have secured that area. It does not have a purpose to me, and it can only benefit the enemy. Yes, you have a rare situation where the enemy takes my oil/refinery, but 99.99% of the time they will try to secure their own oil.

As I said, would love to see some new oil rampage kind of maps but with 2-3 refineries for each.

Jundiyy

Stacking seems fair, although, not sure how the game would react if someone captured 10 or more if they all removed 10% of the original price each. Would the player gain money if they built a unit and they had 11 of them? Only ever tested with 2 or 3.

[commy2]

Exec as far as I can tell.

[FiReArM-ZH]

Not a fan of stack tbh but wouldn't mind with some testing

[ReLaX82]

It will definately be a benefit for ZH to Stack them.

[ImTimK]

Edit: It might be ok, there aren't any ranked maps with insane amounts of refineries?

It's all about the reduction model though.

[MTKing4]

Snowball Effect, not good

[ImTimK]

@MTKing4 You are right, although it's all about the numbers.

I've changed my mind about compound reduction though, it still sounds too OP? Even when there's only 2 on the map and you own both, you have a 19% advantage over the opponent.

[MTKing4]

Maybe make the increments very minuscule with a limit, like after the first Refinery you get only 1% for each extra Refinery you get with a limit of 10, meaning reduction maximum amount is 20%

One would only be playing vs a rabbit to get that many refineries uncontested

[ImTimK]

Here some quick and rough math:

Let's say you're China and spam from 2 WF/Sup. So as we know 1 Supply Center mines about $3K per min (with good positioning) and it supports 1 WF, that means you spent $6K a minute to keep 2 WF's rolling. Now with a Refinery you saved 10% cash after 1 minute, that is $600 right?

(For reference Oil Derrick generates $1K a minute).

[Float1ngFree]

I'd suggest to limit max bonus at 15%, therefore you get -10% for first one and additional -5% for second. That should be enough to motivate capturing/recapturing enemy's Refinery without doing potentially crazy discounts if the map has 3+ Refineries available.

I've tried to edit it in ini files but wasn't able to find a proper solution.

Other bonuses to consider:

1. Buildings Cost Reduction -- say -7% first one with -10% limit, or
2. Initial Capture Reward -- similar to Oil Derrick, but could be less, say only $500.

[penfriendz]

Compound reduction sounds good, i.e. formula of the form (1-0.1)^n.