Request for a New Add-On: Static Defence Upkeep Thread - Ultimate Apocalypse Mod (DOW SS) for Dawn of War

While the idea of capping a Strategic Point to gain more resources is a key character to Relic's gameplay design, I believe it brings too much of a 'snowball' effect to the game. Capping a SP should reward you with more resources, that's fine by me. The problem starts when a capped SP is reinforced with Listening Posts that boosts its survivability AND increasing the amount of resources given.

I think this is a bad approach to the game. It makes 'turtling' the most reasonable strategy to use in most cases. This also means that units which relies on mobility as its key advantage severely hampered from mid to late game, where most LPs are heavily fortified and can kill an unprepared squad. I don't want the strategy which involves building of static defences to be gone, I just want there to be an add-on which gives an upkeep penalty to using such strategy. I believe this would make the overall game more dynamic, as the player would have to make a choice between a higher-but-unstable income to a lower-but-steadier income.

Here's my proposal for the add-on:

1. Captured SPs, while being the most vulnerable resource income, should give the highest amount of income to the player. The more a player reinforces the SP into a LP, the less requisition rate the player will get from it. I think a 50% income rate reduction would be a good start.
2. I understand that removing turrets would break the AI. I propose that instead of capping the limit of turrets, each turret should have a set income upkeep. This would make it even more important to know where you place your turrets, as every moment it exists without contributing to the battle, the more it becomes a dead weight to your economy.

Those are my proposals. I hope Lord_Cylarne and other UA modders would look into this idea and test it out. If there are disagreements to the proposal, please tell me why you disagree with it.

That's the point. RTS games like DoW follow a simple formula: gain resources, build an army, defeat the enemy.

Building LP's is crucial to your economy, you can't and shouldn't get rid of it. The fact that it also adds a turret... eh. One gun means nothing. But putting a small upkeep on actual turrets, not fortified LP's, would be a good way to balance out the relentless static defense spam some factions can pull.

rototornik wrote:

Building LP's is crucial to your economy, you can't and shouldn't get rid of it.

I did not said in my original post that LPs should be rid off.

Edited by: s2korpionic

To elaborate on your point: it sounds like you basically want two seperate upgrade paths for the listening post.. One to increase its survivability/defensive capabilites but without offering increased income, and the other offering increased income without offering turrets/more health?

ThePendulum0621 wrote:

To elaborate on your point: it sounds like you basically want two seperate upgrade paths for the listening post.. One to increase its survivability/defensive capabilites but without offering increased income, and the other offering increased income without offering turrets/more health?

Close. My proposal was to branch out the tech-tree of Strategic Points into two paths.

Path 1: SPs are left exposed but giving full requisition rate. It would be the most vulnerable to enemy decaps.

Path 2: SPs are upgraded to Listening Posts at the expense of higher requisition rate. This would prevent easy decapping by the enemy (or at least delay it).

A similar principle applies to turrets. Turrets would lower the income rate (preferably Power income ala Red Alert economy system) when they exist in-game. It's going to be a "you gain some, you lose some" scenario.

I'm currently testing out how this scenario works through Corsix, though I'm having a hard time in dealing with the Necrons due to how their economy works.

Edited by: s2korpionic

I really like this idea. Especually the turret part. At present, there is no incentive to not spam turrets/fortifications everywhere amd due to the way this mod was designed, it is so easy to do past the early game.

Damn, keep us updated here if possible. I like the idea a lot.

Modifiers, reference to income_power_player_modifier.lua with an addition usage type. A value of -0.1 would have an in-game reduction value of 8. This is with income rates being standard.

A single Power Generator can easily support a single Listening Post without going into negative upkeep (+10 to +2). With each upgrade to the listening post, you're going to need another Power Generator not go into negative upkeep.

Obviously there's a limit to this. Each HQ building can support a limited amount of Power Generators. A single HQ with full Power Generator support can build ~10 Listening Posts without power income being negative. If the LPs are fully upgraded, then only up to 4.

The situation changes with the Necrons. A single Monolith, fully supported by Amplification Generators and Plasma Generators, goes into a similar situation as stated in the previous paragraph. However, it will only go up to 90% production speed. If you go to 100% production speed, your power income rate will go into the negatives. In other words, you're gonna need a second fully supported Monolith to have a positive power income rate while having 100% production speed. Realistically, with this setup Necron players would contend with 40~50% production speed in order to have an acceptable power income.

Edit: As it turns out, a power addition modifier with a value of -0.1 seems to have broken the AI progression. They keep building LPs to the point that they have negative power income. -0.05 seems to be the more appropriate value.

Edited by: s2korpionic