Tritanium, Upgrades, and Super-Research

posted on December 3rd, 2010, 1:44 am

First off, I was wondering what the bonuses are from damage/defense/sensor/speed upgrades.  If anybody knows these numbers can you please tell me?

As I start making maps, I've seen that dilithium is in almost every case more important to have than tritanium.  You expand to dilithium first, you attack your enemy's dilithium first (all other things being equal).  So Di is the primary resource and Tri is the secondary, it works fine.  But I think that you could bring them closer to equal value and improve gameplay in doing so.

Dilithium goes into ship production, while Tritanium goes into special weapon research, upgrades, and mixed-tech.  Right now building more ships is a much better effect-for-cost than researching the ship upgrades, with the upgrades being expensive and granting your fleet a relatively small improvement.  If one player mines 2 Di moons and 1 Tri, putting all resources into ship production while another mines from 1 Di and 2 Tri, making a smaller fleet and upgrading their stats, the first player will win the engagement.

What if you reduced the cost of all attack/defense/etc. upgrades to make them more desirable?  With upgrading as a legitimate build-up strategy, players will need to pay more attention to their economy and more options are opened up for expanding.

Which brings me to my big idea: super-research.  RTS designers learned a long time ago that people LOVE awesomeness.  Players are constantly choosing between building units at their current tech level or teching up to better units, but eventually they reach the top and cannot go any higher.  80-90% of all games end before they reach the absolute top of the tech tree, and small games never do.  But there are times when, in the midst of a 4v4 slugfest, someone reaches the top.  And a smart game developer gives him something awesome.

Protoss motherships, the Krogoth, nuke launchers...they're all incredibly cost inefficient and hardly ever get used, but they add a special flavor to the game.  Fleet Ops has the Tavara, cube, V-15 and such which are lots of fun, but I think of them as the top of the "Dilithium tech tree."

If you consider a balance in which there's one tech-tree based on dilithium (bigger and better ships) and a second tech tree based on tritanium (special weapons, upgrades, and mixed-tech) then there could also be some Super-Researches.  They wouldn't be excessively difficult to code I think and wouldn't get used often, but if you balance them right they'd be awesome and fun to have in the game.

I'm thinking of researches that cost around 1000-2000 Di  and 3000-4000 Tri. Here are some ideas I've thought up:

-Klingons: double experience.
-Klingons: already have their battleship-cloak.  Upgrade it to also give all ships 3-second cloak.

-Romulans: double special-weapon energy.
-Romulans: remain cloaked for 2-3 seconds after decloak order is given, but can fire during this time.

-Federation: veteran limit removed. +25% experience.
-Federation: supply costs halved (or removed).

-Dominion: build times halved, build limits removed.
-Dominion: full map vision.

-Borg: +50% system value.
-Borg: ignore enemy passives.  weapons have 3-5% chance of disabling a subsystem.

I know it sounds crazy, but such abilities also help to break stalemates and bring very long games to an end quickly.

posted on December 3rd, 2010, 1:53 am

By bonuses, in what unit value did you want them listed? Speed is increased by 10 each time, weapons increased by 6 then 12%, shields by 8 then 16%, lifesupport by 6 then 8%... aaaaand just found what I think is a bug 

posted on December 3rd, 2010, 4:29 am

Are those numbers cumulative?  Meaning after 2 upgrades the attack bonus will be 1.06*1.12?

Thanks for the info btw.  Good job catching the bug.

posted on December 3rd, 2010, 4:37 am

i like the idea Tryptic, but somehow i suspect that ppl may try to rush to this super-tech.... just like some ppl might rush to star fleet command.

posted on December 4th, 2010, 4:11 pm

I strongly disagree ... in all good RTS and RTS Mods where balancing isnt totally off there is no such thing as a super tech (just look at  the best balanced RTS ever produced or rather patched to what it is today.. Starcraft)... but I would also like something that would let me turn my tritanium that i amass in later stages of the game into something useful

posted on December 4th, 2010, 4:26 pm

but I would also like something that would let me turn my tritanium that i amass in later stages of the game into something useful

they already exist, they are called support ships and researches.

there are many many researches to do which are all useful. such as more weapons power, more shields, faster engines.

also u can get specials for loads of your ships.

posted on December 4th, 2010, 5:24 pm

well usually I only go for 3-4 differnet kind of ships in a sufficient number the get the specials for em... the weapon, shield & speed upgrades hmm ... in several 4on4s I played on LAN with some friend I went through all of these an still had some trit left... and for support ships... I gotta focus them more I suppose.. but I never build more then 6-7 of em because every ship has a useful special and the supports have more then 1.. and i just cant micro that...

posted on December 4th, 2010, 6:58 pm

Well, the super-techs wouldn't need to be nearly as powerful as what I described, I was just setting a baseline that we can go up or down from. 

Starcraft doesn't have super-techs and their researches don't require extra vespene gas, but there is a much sharper contrast between minerals and vespene, as some units require ONLY minerals and some require MUCH more vespene than minerals.  I was thinking more about the Age of Empires games, where you have to balance between building more troops or upgrading them to a higher level.  And in AoE2, any player can buy full map vision for an insanely high price.

Setting the super-tech idea aside, the current offense/defense upgrades look like they've been deprecated, super-nerfed until the devs decide to add them into the game for real.  An attack upgrade in Starcraft is 10% and about the cost of 2 units, while in Starcraft 2 I believe the upgrade is 25% (balance changes occur often).  Now this is on the extreme end of the spectrum, but I think Fleet Ops' current upgrades are underpowered to the point of being useless.

The standard way of analyzing upgrades is by using army-size numbers.  For example:

A game has an L1-upgrade number of 10.  This means that when a player controls an army of 10 units, he will gain equal advantage from building another unit or upgrading what he has.  In this game, an attack upgrade that costs the same as 1 unit will give a 10% bonus.  Whether he builds the unit or gets the upgrade, his army has 11 units' worth of attack.

If the army is smaller than 10 units, the upgrade isn't worth it.  The upgrade-number is a tool for Devs to control the army sizes of their game and keep players from getting more units than they can handle and enjoy.  If you use a smaller number, armies will be smaller and upgrades will be more common.  A bigger number means bigger armies because upgrades aren't a priority.

Right now, a Federation Akira (trying to find a ship that represents the average) costs 584/176.  Since Dilithium mines at 1.5*the speed Tritanium mines, I'll make the quick, dirty combination (584+(176*1.5)) and say it costs 848 resources for simplicity.  The Federation L1 attack upgrade costs 400/1200 or 2200 resources and grants a 6% bonus.  If we assume a map where the expansion Di and Tri moons aren't paired together, and the player must choose one to protect and mine from, the effective number is:

(2200/848)/(0.06) = 43.239

At what point is it worth it to research the L1 weapon upgrade?  When the player has over 43 ships.  Well, that sounds a bit extreme and we all know that Dilithium and Tritanium are different.  What if we try the equation again and assume that even though it mines slower, Tritanium is only worth 1/3 of Dilithium (because you'll have extra trit anyway).

(800/643)/(0.06) = 20.736

So even when you've got lots of extra tritanium, if you have less than 20 Akiras in your fleet it's NOT WORTH THE MONEY to research L1-weapons upgrade.  Basically, most players should never research an upgrade, ever.

posted on December 4th, 2010, 7:19 pm

Aha ....

  Well the math is good, but I don't think the results have been surmised fairly .

  While the damage may only increase by 6%, part of it is that once the shields and such are upgraded the life expectancy of those vessels goes up.  Increasing the weapon values is a natural way to keep up.  Concurrently, the stronger your vessels are, the less likely they are to perish and give EXP to your opponents .

  Your math isn't wrong, but there's a bit more to it than just numbers .

posted on December 5th, 2010, 9:12 pm

I'm wondering if I should make this into a new thread, since it's leaving the original topic...

Of course there are a lot of things I haven't factored: a number-10 attack upgrade only gives you the firepower of 11 ships while your defense remains at 10, but the upgrades allow you to focus more fire and help your ships to escape and go repair...

But a 6% increase on a 500HP ship is +30HP, that's like 2 shots.  And the defensive upgrade costs more than the offensive upgrade already to make up for that effect.  Overall the upgrades remain sorely underpowered.

posted on December 7th, 2010, 6:41 pm

I think that increasing the overall effectiveness of the upgrades would work better, maybe instead of 6% it is 15% for the first upgrade. Give players a great reason to upgrade, like in Starcraft, if you out upgrade the enemy even if they have more units you will still win and it helps motivate people to tech up and upgrade.

posted on December 8th, 2010, 2:28 am

I think technology is supposed to be a bit less powerful than that.  As in, it should give you an advantage and if you have the extra tritanium you should go for it, but it should never be absolutely necessary.

posted on February 12th, 2011, 5:38 pm

I think technology is supposed to be a bit less powerful than that.  As in, it should give you an advantage and if you have the extra tritanium you should go for it, but it should never be absolutely necessary.

I think tech should be a game changer, just because I like having to rely on sovereigns more often , but also if you if your fleet of intrepids have been destroyed in the first 5 min. of the game and you're low on di. you should be given another chance to win the game

posted on February 12th, 2011, 10:16 pm

Just as an aside, tritanium is completely useless....until your opponent harasses it and you have none left.  Then it's gg.   I've mentioned that in some replays, and there are a lot of recent ones where people were tri locked, with 3k dilithium.  So it's definitely worth it, and is just as important as dilithium in many respects.

As far as the upgrades are concerned, I have a completely different perspective on it.  Tritanium is mainly used for special research, support vessels, and buying supply.  Other than that you don't need large quanitites of it per se.  So, if you have a surplus of "useless" trianium (Let's assume it's useless until you find a use for it ), then it doesn't matter how much a research costs tritanium wise.  It's completely irrelevant.  So now you're only looking at the dilithium cost of the research.  This is 400 for the weapons, so that first 6% only has to have a better effect than 1 intrepid.  The Tri cost could be 428,502,385 tri for all we care, but if you have excess tri and nothing else to really use it on, then we don't care how much it costs, so long as we can pay it.  We only care about how the research will limit ship production, and di is generally the limiting factor there.

I do think your main point was having some more interesting researches at the top.  I'm not opposed to that at all, but we also get the avatar bonuses, which are very similar to the types of researches you described.  In a sense, you're already getting the super tech you're looking for at the beginning of the game!

I'm still ok with some more higher level researches that make things interesting.  I know some people would like to see the brel produced faster after a research, etc.  I think that's what you're really getting at:  Researches that alter tech tree/starship functions.  One idea would be to add different passives to some ships.  So perhaps the akira could get a new passive ability if researched, kind of like how SC2 has passive research that increases reaper speed and Colossus range, etc.  Was that more of what you're thinking?

posted on February 13th, 2011, 5:03 pm

Mostly I was thinking to make tri more valuable as a map-maker, so I can make maps with Di and Tri moons in separate locations and know there's an equal chance of players going after either one.  The Super-researches could be used to break stalemates and give an exciting bonus to people who have 5000 tritanium and no dilithium.

It's great to see somebody finally understanding my upgrades argument:

If you have unlimited tritanium and are only looking at the 400 dilithium cost, then "that first 6% only has to have a better effect than 1 intrepid."  Well, this will only happen when you have more than 17 intrepids!  Otherwise it DOESN'T have a better effect than 1 intrepid!  That's how small a bonus it gives to your existing ships!