Refining

[DumbMarine]

So, I've been putting a lot of thought into this thread (viewtopic.php?f=8&t=118) for many days now. It's touched on a subtle issue with the game: refining is straight up boring. It's an aspect of the game which currently subtracts from the gameplay and it should either be reworked or removed.

Now, before you yell at me, let me say that refining definitely adds complexity as to how the early game plays out, and some games I don't mind doing refining. However, that's usually because of how brain dead it is-- you can't screw up refining, and you can watch other people and chat because your role requires almost no concentration. It's a good 'stay out of the way' role, and I'd love to give this role to newbies in order to help them acclimate to the game, but it's just not a good representation of the game at all. The entirety of refining is picking things up and putting them down. This isn't 5 star gameplay, and it certainly isn't the gameplay that will inspire people to stick around for game #2. The current accepted practice by many pubbers is to add an AI for each team, not because getting a full game takes too long, but because they would rather just skip refining entirely. This is a grave sign.

There are other roles of the game that are currently just as brain-dead, such as nav pinging and science. However, these elements at least mix with other roles, and they are also not finalized, more patches are planned for them (sensor console and more science abilities). Refining has no synergy at all, there's no way to 'be skillful' at it, and in fact it's a job that inevitably gets an AI bot to do.

Now, I don't want to see refining get removed. It has a significant impact on the early game. However, I would rather remove it and rebalance everything else if there is no way to improve refining, because that will still result in a better game. These are the (last resort) options I see for removing refining:

• Add a permanent AI refining bot.
• Change the dropoff point for minerals to be the refining location.
• Make any minerals touching the BC floor instantly turn into money.

I don't know of a good way to add depth to refining. I think one way we could do it is with a refining console, but as to what would go on it I can never find a satisfying solution. Here's an example of how a refining console would work.

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Minerals placed on the refining pad don't get automatically refined. Instead, the refinery console would have 5 abilities to refine:

• Refine All Veldite On Pad(1000 energy)
• Refine All Chalcorium On Pad(1000 energy)
• Refine All Pyromantite On Pad(1000 energy)
• Refine All Kermiculite On Pad(2000 energy)
• Refine Everything On Pad(15000 energy)

All of these abilities would have a shared cooldown of 10 seconds, so you can only mine one color at a time (unelss you spend a ton of energy for the last ability). This console also has upgrades for multiple refining modes: the default refining mode, a high power high efficiency mode (10x energy cost, 3x cooldown, 2.5x minerals gained), and a continuous refining mode (energy costs doubled, refining something gives the refining console a 12 second buff which increases mineral yields by 25%, so constantly refining will yield more minerals.

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There are other ways to go about implementing a refining console, this isn't the only way.

What do you all think about refining? What can we do?

[Red-Rocket]

i agree that the pad should be moved closer, but not to close, the distance should be like in the old CC beta version of the distance, this would probably mean an entire new layout as people also request a new hangar where the ship is visible sort of like the WC3 version. I do agree of a drone but it should be purchased as you want to develope your BC, i wanted to reduce the cost of the first drone by half but that idea got shot down. And i completely disagree with the second part, it makes things to energy sucking and makes things complicated, we want complex not complicated and i feel refining should be neither in this case

[Siretu]

Usually when I'm on BC duties, I handle pinging, upgrading, power transfering, refining and deterring enemies. Because of this, I never feel like it's a boring task because I'm running around doing everything trying to minimize the downtime and predict what my team will need next.

Now, I'm not saying I don't agree with what you're saying. Refining alone is definitely a boring task. I'm just saying I dont personally have a problem with it. That said, I still agree that we should do something for this. As you said, this isn't the awesome gameplay that inspires new players to play another game(I also feel like this is a problem with the mining, but that is another discussion).

However, I think the easiest solution would be to just add a free drone at start. As time goes, I'm going to add more and more roles for the AI so that initial drone could be pretty useful for other things as well.

[Corinthian]

Refining does not need to be changed. With two people on the BC you never have a dedicated refiner. Both players are alternating between Navigations, Upgrades, Refining, Weapons, and Science. This is a complex and difficult dance. It takes exceptional communication, and a full knowledge of the systems.

These tasks have the fastest pace of all early game responsibilities, and my heart quickens when I head to the hanger deck because I know response time has been decreased, and thus our Battle Cruiser is more vulnerable.

The only time you have a dedicated refiner is when you have lost multiple small ships, or you have someone who NEEDS a simple task.

Even when I have a reputation 0 player on my team, and they are assigned to refine instead of mine, I have them transition to Weapons or Corvette by the 14 minute mark. This is of course contingent on mineral income, but a single competent miner provides for this.

I would be happy with a starting Ai, or a reduction in price of the initial Ai.

[LordDragon]

Even though I am one of many players who tends to take the lobby-AI rather than a 6th player, it is mostly so that I can give more broad instructions. If I tell EVERYONE to get off the BC, they tend to find a small ship and go. I'd rather just take on the duties of BC solo and work it out from there. However, I'd also like to note that I made this a common practice once I quit making/playing against parties constantly. As Corinthian stated, it's a rather complex dance and I just don't trust a newbie to pick it up in the first few games.

As far as the original post...I think having energy cost for refining is an awful idea. Moving the pad would be nice, but not necessarily needed; it's a far sprint, but doable. Plus, if you use a chomper (unload all, press q, run to refine, q, relaunch) the refining process takes next to no time.

All in all, it's a tedious task that deserves merit within the game. I wouldn't mess with it too much though.

[Tempest]

I also believe it should be left untouched, the refining system and all of the other many many things to do on deck makes it ideal for a 2 man team to handle it, one player just refining is wasteful. Theres a wide variety of tasks to be done already that 2 can barely keep up with, i want it to stay this way for competition sake in a 6v6 with all pros, the harder it is to make your bc function the more of a skill cap the game has for great players to actually be great.

[Red-Rocket]

The price should be reduced because once those mining upgrades and other stuff start to kick in minerals start streaming in (it really gets intense for a full 6v6 pros) and you end up full timer on refining because the miners are mining so well at a higher level, reduce price so that it still is optional to do 5v5 and the fact that the drone can be part of the flow of making your BC greater and more effiecient i personally think that overall drones are expensive (i rely on more then one drone, i like to have 3-5 that is just me) And something should be reduced about them expecialy when more roles are added and more drones will be need to increase the pace of the game but not imbalance it

[DumbMarine]

I'd like to point out that, while all of you are defending the refinery, none of you are actually refuting that refining is boring and are instead opting for the "I do 5 things at once so it's not boring" argument. I also do upgrade/nav/science/refining, and I am not personally bored when I do all of these things at once, however this doesn't actually justify refining alone being boring. It's boring to me when I do it alone, it's boring to newbies when they do it. The fact of the matter is, we all understand the nuances of this game, and we all buy an AI to do our refining anyway, or start with an AI.

Everyone who has posted in here has understanding of this game. I'd be willing to bet we all get satisfaction for the same reason: leading our team to victory. If that includes mining for 40 minutes, so be it. If that means sitting on the nav console for 40 minutes constantly pinging so much that our finger cramps, so be it. This is not the type of fun the majority of CC-goers experience. Good players follow, they hop on consoles when asked, handle the console with skill, and sometimes they act before being asked. Bad players cause headaches. Neither of these are going to be doing 'refining/upgrading/nav/weapons/power/science', that's just too much to ask of them. Do not forget that the average reputation is below 40, and the majority of games have one team that is pretty much all newbies.

My other point on the AI is direct. If you have 250 yellow and 50 green, you buy an AI, don't deny it. That is not cheap, that is a lot of money, and yet nobody would be mad if it was spent on an AI. Does anyone buy AI for miners? No. (late game they're great with a cloak, try it, especially since late game mining is also boring as Siretu points out). Does anyone buy AI for missile loading? I highly doubt it, I've never seen it barring games where a team has a jillion minerals, but I suppose it's possible. No, you buy it for refining ASAP. Why would we bother with an AI if refining wasn't so bad? 250 yellow is a ton of money and 50 green can be a crapshoot to get. With some blue you could upgrade BC shields, or 5 out of 6 core upgrades. That's 50 GW, nothing to sneeze at, and shield boost is a clutch ability.

Of course, some players don't think buying an AI is fast enough. I'm sure all of you have been petitioned to add AI for refining before the game starts. My first game logging on today, someone was petitioning for them in the lobby. It happens semi-often.

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As an experiment I opted to assign newbies the refining task instead of doing it myself in games today. In the first game, the lucky newbie seemed like a promising fellow, he listened, followed orders and asked questions. I showed him how to do refining as all the small ships were out and let him know to do upgrades when there was nothing to refine. The miners kept him busy, and we never actually got enough yellow minerals to buy an AI, so he pretty much refined the whole game. The game ended abruptly with a fast kill of the enemy BC. I wanted to ask him about his thoughts, but unfortunately he did not try CC again and went off to play other custom maps.

The second game wasn't lead by me, but by Phaeroth. The second newbie seemed a bit less attentive. He was assigned to refining, but by the 10-12 minute mark I think we bought an AI and he was basically told to "do whatever", which of course to a newbie means launching a chomper and going off on an epic voyage. Having learned from the last game, I asked him right then and there his opinion on refining. His answer amounted to 'could be worse, I assume there's more game than that'. He proceeded to chomp then lay mines for the rest of the game.

However, I think the easiest solution would be to just add a free drone at start. As time goes, I'm going to add more and more roles for the AI so that initial drone could be pretty useful for other things as well.

I don't personally like this suggestion, as I have already indicated I see removing refining as a last resort, but ... well, I don't see any alternatives. So I agree this is probably the best option.

EDIT: I think adding an AI is a good solution but not a permanent one. If we ever get an AI that does constant pinging, I would prioritize that over refining, because constant pings are just far more valuable. May be just me who believes that though.

[Corinthian]

... Marine, thank you for putting us in our places.

[Karl913]

Had a slight thought.. Remove refining and remove being able to send resources back, or make resource transport much more sluggish. Also, for shooting them down, add a line from the miner to the CC which the thing follows. Could add some more strategy, or it might just be entirely ignored.. Just a thought.