Cruiser Command

Something I very much dislike about CC is the way upgrades and the metagame works. The upgrades console give an illusion of freedom, and I'm always dissapointed to realize that it is, in fact, not very free at all.

Mostly there's a fixed metagame that almost everyone adheres to. Sometimes people step outside of this; but most of the time they do not. This metagame dictates the order of upgrades; which upgrades to take and when. You know the drill: use kerm for hardend shield, ss energy. Powerdock somewhat before the final fight. Upgrade miningbeam as soon as possible. How often do you discuss which upgrade to take next with your team? For a game that should focus on teamwork and where upgrades are quite important, if find it sad that you so seldomly ask your teammates which upgrades they prefer and would like to have.

So, why do most follow this linear path of upgrades? Well, most upgrades are just that; simple upgrades, making something better by x%. They don't change how the game is played and the way you play the game do not influence which upgrade that would benifit you. The only purpose of hardend shield is to give the richer team an advantage. It doesn't change the amount of power put into shields or how you fly the bc or fire the lasers. Nothing changes in the game when you buy hardened shields. Noone needs to know if you've bought hardened shilds or not; they do not need to change what they are doing or how they do it.

Also, this means that it's not so much about which upgrades to take but rather a race to be furter ahead on this path. Upgrades are so much a strategic choice as they could be.

I'd like to compare this to commanding in Natural Selection 2, which is somewhat similar to CC because it's about teamwork and resources. NS2 does have a linear path of upgrades that most people follow (if commanding marines at least, less so for aliens), but the commander has more trouble balancing resources; is it worth it to drop a medpack in this fight or should I save the res for another forward armoury? There are more important choices and your teammates are interrested in what the commander does; it's common to hear aliens argue about what hive to evolve to first, because the diffrent hives favour diffrent playstiles. Marines sometimes ask their commander to not drop medpacks on them and save the resources instead. Weather to take jetpacks or exos first is almost always a cause for heated discussions.

In short: in NS2 the upgrades your commander pays for affect how you play the game. If you enjoy my way of using lerks and fades you'd like your commander to start with a spur hive. If you enjoy ambusing marines you'd like him to start out with a shift hive. If you like blink you'd ask him to upgrade fades. Etc.

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So, I don't play CC a lot so I would like to know if you also feel this way. Maybe you agree but think that this is a minor issue? Or maybe you disagree and think that the way upgrades are designed right now is nice and fun? Is there any upgrade that impacts the way you play the game or that you ask your commander to buy because it fits well with your playstyle?

I will repeat what I said in Skype.

The three major upgrade paths are Small Ships, Economy, and Battlecruiser. Small ships serves to try and hit economy fast. Economy serves to further battlecruiser upgrades. Battlecruiser upgrades serve to take Kerm. And no, I don't mean it's a rock paper scissors game at all, in case you thought that's what I was implying.

I do agree that if you want to deviate from this fixed metagame you need to have upgrades that have a significant influence on 'how you play.' A prime example of this is Chronitron vs. Leech on destroyer. One's better at sapping away over time at energy while the other simply bypasses shields all together. One supports the battlecruiser by draining energy more quickly during the fight while the other is it's own offensive entity that acts on it's own accord. Furthermore, for each of these to be effective you have to not only invest in a destroyer, but the four destroyer upgrades. It is a lot of resources to get a large bonus.

Things like that are what add flavor to each game. Currently it's set up such that all of the upgrades are actually expected to be purchased before the fight, or at least most of the core BC upgrades. Most teams opt to try and achieve maximum upgrades before making an attack, and because of the current setup for Kermiculite it often becomes the case where one team will have all of the BC upgrades and one will not. As you put it, whoever gets the Kermiculite spawn gets the advantage -- and it is almost always one teams get the majority of the Kermiculite.

So, rather than what you're looking for -- 'Should I save or should I buy shotgun now?' sort of scheme, most things are obtainable in a very short sequence due to the low resource cost. The easiest way to go about changing this would be to lessen the number of upgrades and simply enhance their effects and research time (I.E. 6 levels of mining laser for 10% --> 2 levels of mining laser for 30%) which would great a much greater sense of opportunity cost as I see it. You could also deem to create more levels for each upgrade, dampen the effect, and maintain or increase the research time but this would only serve to lengthen the game in my opinion.

There's always the option of going for more 'Branching Upgrades' as well, but I get the feeling that's not Siretu's thing. Anyways, weird rant done.

You're right IMO, scrypso. The upgrade tree is kinda stale.

If you remove broadsides, engine boost, miner laser upgrade, and vessel energy upgrade, you're left with a list of upgrades that don't particularly matter when you get them as long as you get them before the final fight, and they don't have much of an impact prior to the final fight. There's very little decision making, to the point that I think an AI could actually be good at doing upgrades. That's not a good thing.

Making upgrades cost more would force the teams to fight without all upgrades, instead of it being first BC fully upped attack the other.

the upgrader would have to question what's best to use that red on, weapons or engines.


Downside to this : lame captains would just take more time fully upgrading before attacking.

Also : too much kerm. I never ask myself if I want stabs, shield or core upgrades, I just get them all.

that's what I think atleast...

Increasing the upgrade costs sounds interesting.
The downside of it would be that an economic difference would create an even bigger gap between both teams.

So I'd rather suggest a mix of decreased mining speed and slightly increased costs.
The consequence of both would be that you wouldn't stay at just 3 miners and that killing a single miner would not be as game-deciding anymore.
Chompers would be more frequently used since I think that they're still not used often enough.

increasing costs is fine but dont increase speed up upgrading, its a pain to solo CC with good miners because you spend all your time on upgrades just to get the money worth and not have time to load missiles/snipe on weps/energy shots from science/stock BC with those repair bots...ect...

Personally, I don't think increasing the upgrade cost is interesting. It makes the game slower and just increases an upgrade's impact due to the high opportunity cost. This is not an interesting kind of impact.

Instead of: "Hey, we got an exo, some people should get welders and we can start making a rather big push that the aliens have to respond to."
You have: "So yeah, we spent a lot of money on an upgrade that doesn't really change our playstyle, it is just a step in a chain of upgrades we want before we attack the enemy."

Basically, the difference is that a lot of the choices in Natural Selection changes how the game plays while few choices in CC changes how the game plays.

There are some exceptions in CC of course. The plasma transfer, if used, would be an example of this and the other power transfer upgrades could be seen as other examples of it, although not changing the gameplay that much.

However, most other upgrades are passive and the ones that aren't doesn't really change the gameplay.
* Engine boost: You can go faster for a while. If you dont have it, you spend more energy. Getting it is basically a way to save energy.
* Hardened shield: Passive
* Triple/Penta burst: You still right-click in the same direction but with the biggest burst. Sometimes you use a lower burst to save energy while the enemy is overloading on shields.
* etc


I don't think the idea of increasing upgrade costs is necessarily wrong. I just think it wont work currently because most of the upgrades don't matter until the final fight. I could see increasing upgrade cost and reducing upgrade levels working if we do it right. Let's say there were three expensive for small ships:

* Quad-extraction: Increases mining speed by 80%, increases miner hull by 100 and gives miners the ability to vent their minerals into space towards a targeted location (Can be used offensively as a long ray asteroid spray or defensively to create a small defensive buffer against projectiles)
* Delta-cooled Thrusters: Increases all small ship speeds by 50%, reduces the mana cost of side boost by 50% and the cooldown of Turbo Jump by 50%.
* Offensive Construction Pipeline: Automatically creates a new wraith if the hangar is not full. Increases wraith hull by 50. The EMP now deals 30 damage and sets engine to 0 instead of reducing it by 40%. The wraith and corvette damage is increased by 50%.

Let's say all of these upgrades cost 100/100/100/10 each. They'll take some time to get, they are kind of scoutable and they feel more... fun (in my opinion). They are not XOR, but they are expensive enough to prevent you from getting all of them early game. They're obviously not balanced. I made them up on the spot. However, I feel like it could potentially lead to 3 possible openings.

Now normal tiered upgrades aren't necessarily a bad thing, I just think (after considering scrypso's post) that they should be in a minority instead of in a majority.

So we add the kind of upgrades I gave an example of above. More of them for different periods in the game as well as several ones at different prize levels in the same period.

Yes, the increase in upgrade price wouldn't solve the problem I experience at all; new/reworked upgrades would.

Take the transfers as an example: which one your team choses actually changes how you play (at least somewhat).

Also all upgrades to the BC fail to change much because the BC isn't very involved until the endgame (kerm spawn possible excpetion).

Upgrades that add new abilities, something like slightly homing wraith missiles, could (this is probably a bad example but I hope you get the point) divide the players in two sets: one with wraith pilots that aren't very good at aiming (or like to keep their distance) that would want this upgrade; pilots who go up close and personal wouldn't see the need for this upgrade. So, the captain would (optimaly) talk with the wraithpilot and ask their opinion.

I urgently need to clean, so this is quite hastily scribbled down, but I hope it gives you some toughts.

Alright, fair enough. I think I understand what you're getting at a bit better now.

The RTS scheme works a lot more heavily on unlockable tech than CC, though. In an RTS scheme, you start off with workers and very so so fighters, and as you get more resources you start to invest into more research which unlocks more powerful, but expensive, units and upgrades.

This sort of concept does not exist in Cruiser Command. You can build all small ships from the start. All upgrades are available at any time. All consoles can be purchased at any time. There is no real division between them, so people naturally get 'the most necessary' one first. Where an RTS would make you invest resources just to get to that really good stuff, CC makes it readily available at any time so long as you have the resources. There's no real 'tech tree.'

I think that's a fatal flaw in what you're currently looking at. I understand it isn't the issue, but I do think it's a good chunk of it. If you go ahead and do make more abilities that change how people's play style and such, people are still going to single out 'the most useful ones,' and Tech them first. It will still be the concept of 'a race,' even if these abilities change how you play the game.

With that in mind, if you want to pursue the addition of more upgrades, I think it would be wise to also consider finding a way to turn upgrades into 'paths.' Not necessarily 'opportunity costs,' but at the very least a string of upgrades that lead up to something big.

By example, and just example:

Battlecruiser Hull Level 2 --> Hardened Shields Level 4 --> Shield Boost Research --> Force Field Generator

The thing you would want would be, say, Shield Boost and Force Field Generator. However, you'd have to make a certain investment into that field of research rather than simply say "Oh look, Force Field Generator. Tech that first." I feel like if you want to make these abilities, they should be by result of the culmination of your research. Because the moment you make them available at any given point in time, they become like broadsides -- everybody grabs it before Kerm without exception, and then while it gives everybody more things to do, it ultimately doesn't really change the overall scheme of things since everybody is expected to have it.

I hope that makes some sense.

While I do think changing the upgrades to more of a tech tree structure might not be a bad idea, I don't think that was scrypso's point. If I'm understanding him correctly, the big problem is not that you can technically get stuff in any order, just that the individual upgrades don't have as much of an impact and that balancing resources between the different upgrades is not a hard decision.