Should the main base be raidable?

posted on May 26th, 2013, 7:54 pm

I'm not just making blanket statements without thinking them through. If you don't understand my evidence that's okay, but don't start using that as an accusation against an old thread. Whoever said anything about identical ship types for all the races?

I did, because I was looking at the conventions used by other RTS games to differentiate their races and a lot of them have identical low level scouts and similar early attack units between races to force everyone to start on an equal footing. I do see your reasoning quite clearly but I think the root of the problem being in the lack of cost effective base defence. It's easy to suggest that turtling needs countering, but we have units for that and if rushing is the main problem then it means turtling is too ineffective. Turtling needs to be effective in the early game to counter the rush. Improve one and reduce the effectiveness of the other.

Turrets at the moment cost too much in my opinion. If you were to make them weak and cheap but with a high enough attack to destroy an early game rush unit before they get in range, but low enough range that the sniping units can pop them in a few shots, then you have a simple way to avoid rushing. Torpedo turrets can be a more expensive role that fills the current price bracket etc.

This tiering of the turrets is done in so many other RTS games, like SupCom, TA, SW:EaW, C+C, RoN, AoE, and the list goes on. Right now your only defence is units and that makes the early game a coin toss. (Ifm the opposition rushes and kills your collectors they have pretty much won, if you kill the rush however you can hit thier collectors pretty much before they can gather a viable defense, making the most aggressive games pretty short.)

posted on May 26th, 2013, 8:10 pm

I agree completely that turrets should have more offense and lower cost, so they can be used as more of a deterrent and less of a fortification. Especially since some races have no siege capability whatsoever; it's another staple of RTS games that at least one unit from each race have longer range than turrets to allow them to be removed without opposition if the defending player doesn't react to your attack. Without such weapons, players are encouraged to use turrets either in large numbers, or not at all.

However, I wasn't talking about rushing as in early attacking, I meant yard rushing. Sorry, I didn't make that clear. I'm talking about building a shipyard at the center moon on Duel, for example, before the opponent has a chance to build enough ships to stop you. A forward base on certain maps can create a powerful position, and the other player had no chance to prevent you from getting it.

As I've said, I think that the player who builds a forward yard should be low on resources afterward, so his enemy has an advantage. As it is right now the Feds or Dominion can claim the center moon on Duel, plus a mining expansion and STILL match ship production with their opponent because of the high starting res.

So because the starting ships are weak, and a yard is particularly useful in the early game, the high starting res actually makes (attack) rushing weaker vs early expansion. If starting res were lower, early raiding would be better balanced.

posted on May 29th, 2013, 6:35 am

Although it has been some time since this thread first began, perhaps I can add a bit from our v4 game balancing perspective .

If I might attempt to summarize the ideas presented here, we have, in no particular order:

1. Main base should be hard to raid
2. First expansion shoudl be hard to take
2b. Taking middle map positions should be dangerous
3. Cost of refineries increased
4. Turrets being more offense oriented/cheaper
5. Starting resources reduced

This is a nice collection of ideas, and internally we have discussed many similar concepts over the years. Here's my perspective -

1. Main base should be hard to raid

I disagree. This is the basis of the Starcraft 1/2 (henceforth known as "SC2") style system, where most infrastructure is in the main unraidable base. However, despite that, Starcraft has Air, something that FO does not have. Air means you can raid into the main base - the only thing besides the very uncommon blink stalkers that is used to raid (drops+voids+oracles).

2. First expansion should be hard to take

I disagree. The first expansion in FO is not the same as the first expansion in other games. The first expansion in FO is basically an extension of the homebase. We almost never have strategies that rely on 1 moon pair for long (exception being Leahval rushes and Borg, who are a special case), because you can't afford to tech or build a fleet. That we don't want somebody to hunker down on one moon pair is likely not going to change - super turtling is generally boring in my opinion.

The second expansion in FO is basically the first expansion in games like SC2. Therefore, the 2nd expansion is generally much more unsafe, unpredictable, and prone to either being shut down fast, or giving you quick economic advantages.

2b. Taking middle map positions should be dangerous

Yes, I agree. In v4 the first expansion to a strategic middle location has direct 'counters' of a sort. Point 6 addresses this more closely, but also changes to raiding systems and the speed of structure construction etc affect this.

Also, I cannot understate the importance of map choice. In v4 testing we've completely abandoned Duel II as the gold standard - and that basically solves middle rushing right there. I don't think we've had one test game on it in ... well, since just probably the first 2 months after beginning v4 testing! Our balancing maps are generally far larger - at least moon wise. The smallest 1v1 map has 7 dil and 9 tri moons. The largest 1v1 map has 12 dil and 12 tri moons. This is interestingly a similar pattern as to what happened in SC2 - maps became larger, small maps were almost entirely ditched. In SC2 tournaments, none of the original small 'awesome' maps are ever used.

3. Cost of refineries increased

This is one area which I had become curious about in the beginning due to the way SC2 had implemented its economy. But ultimately, I disagreed. I want to promote rapid expanding to allow macro players to have just as good an advantage as microers. If you get behind in either, you should be punished. The worst thing to see is a player get taken apart by micro, yet have no ability to macro up and out tech or out spam an enemy.

In SC2 (again, our age old gold standard) we have a Nexus/CC/Hatchery (Bases). Very expensive structures. We also have Drones/SCVs/Probes. Very cheap workers. Combined, this means you can easily expand your economy by building workers constantly, and slowly expand your resilience and ability to build workers by building Bases. But, bases are EXPENSIVE and slow to build. That means you can never expand beyond 3 Bases at game start and there's no advantage to ever expand beyond. It's also very painful to lose one of these Bases. Losing one usually is tantamount to suffering a tremendous instant loss of resources and ability to rebuild. If you have more surviving Bases, you can rebuild workers very fast however and not suffer from raiding as much.

In FO we don't have either of these mechanics. Workers are built from Starbases, Starbases don't mine. Furthermore, Moons only hold a max of three workers. This does not scale very much. That means in order to have an economy that scales appropriately and rewards risk taking and the very cool sneaky expansion (something we very very very rarely see in SC2 due to how dangerous it is), FO refineries and workers must be cheap. I still want to introduce a SC2 style build system for one of the factions down the road, but that's talk for another day. In FO we also emphasize map control a lot more than in SC2 - SC2 your map control chiefly consists of the 1-3 Bases you hold initially. in v4, you might have 4 dil and 4 tri moons around the map - even some behind an enemy's base. Scouting becomes very important.

4. Turrets being more offense oriented/cheaper

Ultimately this was addressed in a previous newspost, posted quite some time later after the relevant posts here. The turret system we put in place very early in development for the Federation and Romulans follows a cheap and weak rule. Fed turrets are still beefier defensively, and Rom turrets are quite strong offensively, and quite weak defensively. Romulan turrets are capable turtling facilitators, Fed turrets are not. That's largely due to how cloak, being out of position, and fed fleet synergies and turret harass cooperate. Other factions will follow precepts that match their fleet capabilities as well. Feds don't have the element of surprise that cloak offers obviously and you never know where a Romulan's true fleet lies.

5. Starting resources reduced

This is one of the very first changes we made when working through balancing issues in v4. Saber spam was just too nasty - you could easily plop down two yards at start, and that totally screwed over any player doing something else. So resources for the Feds and Romulans are 3000 dil and 1500 tri. But who says that every faction has to have equal resources . We'll see how that goes as balancing progresses .

posted on July 9th, 2013, 4:16 am

To back up what Dom said a little ...

the v4 answers to these questions will more or less fix most of the issues brought up here . The gameplay style is very much open to a variety of styles, but fall within the confines of knowing what can actually happen TO you, and what you can actually do to someone ELSE. Mining stations can be rebuilt, miners can be re-commissioned, all of these things are replaceable, but it's knowing when to replace them, how many to build, and feeling out the general tactics of your opponents that will win you the game .


Turrets are a deterrent. I can't stress that enough. Each race's turrets will serve a different purpose, but overall turrets do not replace fleets , and probably never will. Turrets are something that you can plop down to say to yourself, "good, now at least they can't sit within range of my turret and kill my miners forever".


I created Duel 2 a long time ago. For tournament sake I asked Dom to help me balance it as carefully as possible for all races. Obviously, we couldn't make it perfect. After it became the go-to map for 1v1 people began to try new things and discover the deficiencies that it had as a perfectly balanced 1v1 map. For v4 we've got several go-to 1v1 maps that vary in terms of size, pathways, proximity, and numbers of moons. This is in the hope that we can balance the races appropriately for any map within reason .

So just remember... Boggzy is super anal-retentive about map balance, but we're all on it and doing our best to make sure things are as clean as possible

posted on July 9th, 2013, 7:29 pm

For main base raidability, I'm of the opinion that tech buildings should be more vulnerable, to allow for them to be destroyed while the game is still competitive, and mining should be able to get some cover from the starbase -- certainly not total, but enough to allow the defender to force starbase damage onto the attackers if they want to kill more than one miner per moon per raid.

posted on July 9th, 2013, 7:52 pm

^ really agree with more vulnerable tech buildings (not incredibly weak tho).

i think it would be a good idea to give great benefits to placing science stations away from the main base as well. (such as nubula or asteroid belts or planets etc) meaning that a more spread out base around the map would be beneficial as well as more vulnerable.

benefits such as a 3rd level of upgrading shields weapons etc.
placing a science station next to a mining station could give it benefits as well.

so there wouldnt be so much of a main base any more

posted on July 9th, 2013, 11:50 pm

something like armed science ?, lightly, say one pulse, or one phaser, or one torpedo , to scare 1-3 ship raiding partys ?

i like idea of reserching some form of weaponery on any station... not strong like on starbase, but something litle for fun , i surely do not build unarmed outpost filled with scientist somewhere alone in space....

there is o word for it : SITTING DUCK.

also refinery, we need to protect our resources, even merchant ships have at least one weak weapon in star trek enterprise.

i do not want overpower any race , so give it to all races....
than we see less of one angry bird of prey shutting on base 50 times bigger for 30 minutes, and civilians running for lifeboats...

other thing is when battleship/big cruiser shows up, than this weaponry should be useless.

posted on July 10th, 2013, 5:45 pm

i wouldnt have any other stations have weapons,

but i would say that if a science station was next to a nebula it would open up more research options due to scanning tech babble tech babble etc.

just means that it can benefit player that dare spread their base out.

posted on July 11th, 2013, 5:31 pm

Iv always believed the starbase should be able to defend the base moons against early game ships and i totally shun maps that have the moons so far away that it makes the starbase utterly pointless.