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Soft Capping improvements.


Dr Rush
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In my playing of various online games I've found there are a few universal truths. Amongst these, mechanics that require hardcaps or similar limitations are almost without exception unbalanced in a fundamental manner.
 
Improvements were given a hard cap because an underlying mechanic (construction cost) is not balanced. This has had several unintended side effects.
 
First the cap on military buildings has lead to the mantra max everything! The current situation is that most people are unwilling to start a war unless they have everything they need to hit the caps. Effectively setting a cooldown timer between wars. Further it means that militaries are all cookie cutter builds. It also means that city count is ultimately the deciding factor at the individual level. 
 
Second issue is that, a hard cap means that resource structures are unable to adapt to market demands fully. This is most notable in the steel markets but applies to the others as well.
 
Third issue is that improvement costs are absurdly cheap in the grand scheme of things. So their loss is of negligible concern. This further leads to the prevailing wisdom that you should tear down your military improvements during peace time & rebuild them during war time. Essentially, meaning there is no specialization between military & economic builds, you can just switch when you need to.
 
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Solution:
 
Replace the hard cap with a softcap. The best implementation of this would be to place the cost of improvements on a increasing scale. The more of an improvement you have the more the next one is going to cost you. The specific numbers are up for debate but right now it's the concept thats important.
 
The area where the change would be most apparent is in military strategy. Military builds would diversify, we would likely see tank numbers drop somewhat & planes numbers increase, which would help mitigate the steel balance issue in a substantial manner. We would also see the rise of specialists in certain types of warfare.Which would encourage teamwork as a by-product.
 
In the world of resources, we would see the market better able to meet the needs of demand, thus finishing the balance correction of steel.
 
The significant increase in the cost of improvements would make them more worthwhile to target in war. Giving missiles & nukes a much needed buff in the upper tiers while not unbalancing the mid tier to much.
 
Commerce is where things butt against it balancing here would be tricky, done incorrectly we'd just see everyone condense their commerce into stadiums & subways. A change to the way commerce works may be needed but that does give an opportunity to adjust income levels if needed. 
 
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This is a fairly serious change, but given the net results I believe it is worth a serious discussion. 

 

 

So I originally suggested this about two years ago. Despite numerous changes sense then this is still a plausible idea and given the resource issues worth looking at again.

 

 

Resource issues of the day were different when I first made this (There was a severe steel shortage). However this idea can fix the current issues just as well. Part of increasing costs is resource costs going up as well. Which adds a large resource sink to the game. Additionally, because this means you are keeping at least some military buildings around at all times, there are less resources being made in the first place.

 

Also another side benefit thats new, the super whales can actually use all their slots on useful stuff now.

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23:38 Skable that's why we don't want Rose involved, so we can take the m all for ourselves

23:39 [] but Mensa is the cute girl at the school dance and she's only dancing with us right now to get our friend jealous

23:39 [] If Rose comes in and gives Mensa what she wants, she'll just toss us aside and forget we ever existed

23:39 zombie_lanae yeah I do hope we can keep having them all to ourselves

23:40 zombie_lanae I know it's selfish but I want all their love

 

 

6:55 PM <+Isolatar> Praise Dio

Pubstomper|BNC [20:01:55] Rose wouldn't plan a hit on Mensa because it would be &#33;@#&#036;ing stupid

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You would have to have some form of diminishing returns per improvement for it to work with commerce I would think.

 

While this creates an initial small resource sink, it doesn't fix the issues of too many resources being produced. Which is why I would still like to see some sort of exponential infra upkeep (based in resources, ie bridges roads and buildings need regular upkeep and repairs) put in place to make it more difficult and less profitable for nations to get max resource production.

 

Together they would create a resource sink and limit the ever increasing production we have in the game which is causing the problem.

 

Also as a by product, people would be less likely to stack heavy infra because of the upkeep which would make wars less costly and possibly more common :o

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I see the merits, but the downside is unchecked military proliferation increasing the cost of war until only the wealthiest alliances can afford it....

 

I mean... Yes! Let's do it! ;)

 

 

You would have to have some form of diminishing returns per improvement for it to work with commerce I would think.

 

While this creates an initial small resource sink, it doesn't fix the issues of too many resources being produced. Which is why I would still like to see some sort of exponential infra upkeep (based in resources, ie bridges roads and buildings need regular upkeep and repairs) put in place to make it more difficult and less profitable for nations to get max resource production.

 

Together they would create a resource sink and limit the ever increasing production we have in the game which is causing the problem.

 

Also as a by product, people would be less likely to stack heavy infra because of the upkeep which would make wars less costly and possibly more common :o

 

These two things are literally the counterbalances for each other. A large part of this is eliminating the ability to entirely change your improvement build. Meaning that unless you wish to fail horribly you'll be keeping a mix of econ & mil  at all times. So overall you'll have less of both in the relevant periods. During peace you'll have less production turning out resources by far, and during war you'll probably see less of the cheaper units and more of the stuff like tanks. There is additionally the fact that improvement rebuilds will start sucking up enormous amounts of resources particularly if the losing side continues to drag the war out as is the current trend.

 

 

23:38 Skable that's why we don't want Rose involved, so we can take the m all for ourselves

23:39 [] but Mensa is the cute girl at the school dance and she's only dancing with us right now to get our friend jealous

23:39 [] If Rose comes in and gives Mensa what she wants, she'll just toss us aside and forget we ever existed

23:39 zombie_lanae yeah I do hope we can keep having them all to ourselves

23:40 zombie_lanae I know it's selfish but I want all their love

 

 

6:55 PM <+Isolatar> Praise Dio

Pubstomper|BNC [20:01:55] Rose wouldn't plan a hit on Mensa because it would be &#33;@#&#036;ing stupid

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