Balance issues stemming from buildable resource mechanics

[VReaperV]

1) A base can be rebuilt over and over again, needlessly prolonging matches. This is mostly the case for aliens because humans can't outrun them for long and it's harder/more time-consuming for them to set up a base. This would be solved by having a sudden death (which is already the case on @cu-kai server). 2) Leeches don't need to be mantained as much as drills. Alien bases mostly consist of egg spam, which doesn't require BP to function. One may argue that the issue in this case is that alien defensive buildings are bad. However, regardless of that humans have to use a bunch of defensive buildings. Aliens can have a constant wave of defending aliens with just om and a bunch of eggs, since there's no cooldown on spawn and eggs have enough time to cycle their cooldowns. Leeches are also much easier to hide and don't produce a sound when you're nearby, unlike drills. 3) Armory and medi cannot be rebuilt without BP. Those structures being dead can very easily lead to the humans losing. Aliens, on the other hand, only need the overmind to evolve, and can always regenerate. This is hugely disadvantageous to humans. 4) Armory and medi can't be used with negative BP or if there's not enough BP and they're too far from the reactor. Again, there's no such problem for aliens. Booster also cannot be rebuilt or function with no BP, but the same being true for armory and medi has a much higher negative impact.

[sweet235]

This would be solved by having a sudden death

The sudden death implementation seems to be quite stable. The main reason it is not merged is this: there was some controversy about if this can be solved by other changes to the gameplay. Personally, I do not see a reason not to merge it, as it is completely optional.

Armory and medi cannot be rebuilt without BP

I'm still running a hack to allow for building them without BP if the team does not have any at all. That is how we did it in late Tremulous.

Armory and medi can't be used with negative BP or if there's not enough BP and they're too far from the reactor.

Maybe we should make both work even without BP, like spawns.

[cu-kai]

I think my SD implementation would require at least some work to be made upstreamable, but I'd be willing to put effort into it if we can look past the controversy of its' existence.

I wouldn't object to the arm and medi working fine without BP. The human team can basically not function without these.

One other thing which I would propose is: you are able to purchase medkits from the armoury for a small fee if there is no working medistation present.

[ghost]

What I would propose is to make aliens regeneration depends on the presence of an OM. It would reduce the endless egg hunt a lot. I also think the respawn is way too fast, this makes it too difficult to attack as defenders have both the defenses advantage and the number advantage.

[DolceTriade]

If players like sudden death I'm ok with it being merged as an optional feature.

[Viech]

Quick response to the points:

1. We do have a gradual/soft sudden death implemented. Currently and for many years, build points in the recovery queue recover at an exponentially decreasing rate. The low/negative BP you are experiencing is precisely preventing endless rebuilding. Thus your point as stated is not quite correct.
2. / 3. I agree with the following: Humans require more structures to be functional and this is somewhat unfortunate. I'd like to point out though that while this is related to the mining/build point system, it is not caused by it. Pretty much any way you distribute/allocate/limit buildable resources will suffer from the fact that aliens just need their main building and two eggs to win the game while humans need two more crucial structures and defenses on top of that.
3. See (2).
4. I find this a very good point, except there is again a misunderstanding of how things work (which in itself is understandable, as the way power works is not made transparent to the player). As far as I recall, buildings power down independently of the build point queue if there are more buildable than the maximum current pool size. I have made it such that egg and telenode never power down and it would certainly be possible to extend this to other buildables. (At least for the armoury I find this a good idea!)

Side remarks:

• As said on IRC, no objection from me on adding classic sudden death alongside the current system if it is optional and defaults to off.
• Assuming that one allows the armoury to work without power as discussed in (4) and by @sweet235, one could additionally discuss the idea of making the first armoury free. Then, it can always be built and will always function, akin to the overmind.

[VReaperV]

We do have a gradual/soft sudden death implemented. Currently and for many years, build points in the recovery queue recover at an exponentially decreasing rate. The low/negative BP you are experiencing is precisely preventing endless rebuilding.

That is true, but with the current recovery rate values it still allows continuously rebuilding overmind + eggs even in longer matches.

Pretty much any way you distribute/allocate/limit buildable resources will suffer from the fact that aliens just need their main building and two eggs to win the game while humans need two more crucial structures and defenses on top of that.

I agree, my point is more that you can spam a bunch of leeches around the map, build lots of eggs, and then if the enemy team destroys your leeches it won't have much of an effect on your base. Whereas building a bunch of drills around the map won't be as successful since the enemy team destroying them will shut down your base. I n essence, it makes drills less useful than leeches since they will mostly be constrained to your base.

[cu-kai]

@Viech

I n essence, it makes drills less useful than leeches since they will mostly be constrained to your base.

I agree with this, and after some testing on Bunker with SD, @VReaperV fed back to me about making drills re-buildable in SD mode 1, which seemed a sensible thing to do.

Losing a drill hurts humans far more than losing leeches does hurts aliens. As has been said before, aliens can function with just an overmind and eggs. Humans need at least an armoury as well as the reactor and telenodes.

[Viech]

Most of the issues related to drills ad leeches supporting a minimal base, including problems (3) and (4), should be resolved by an implementation of #61 as both teams would always have the initial build points at their disposal. A question is thus: Would this be sufficient or is alien/human base dependence still something we'd like to balance assuming humans can always build and use an armoury and a medistation? And if so, should we reduce alien capabilities or increase humans, or both?