Unit cost calculation formula modification

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

While you are at it, you could make both reactor impact on cost and reactor HP burn rate as you called it, adjustable through ini, since it will be hard to find a consensus among players on what values should be.

Think carefully about providing "ease of fundamental change" features like this.  Is your goal to write a modder's toolkit?  Or is your goal to popularize your mod?

If the latter, you need to make decisions, and then promote your game design.  For my mod I don't run around apologizing or second guessing the changes I made.  I do take input from other people and I do listen to what playtesters have to say.  Tweaking your scheme yourself is very different from promoting a never-ending expansion of different forks to be tweaked.  And I really don't believe in handing players the tools to turn important core features on and off, because that means (say) 50% of people who could have been playtesting your mod, now aren't.  They're off on that other options path.  Option-itis is a curse for any kind of testing: game, 3d graphics benchmark, doesn't matter, it creates work.

The considerate thing to do would be to document how you did your changes somewhere, so that other binary modders who want to grab your GPL licensed work and commit to doing something different with it, can do so.  My version of that sort of thing is my CHANGELOG.  Almost every gory detail of what I've done is in there.  Only my 1st month of initial development is missing, before I made a release.

Wise words, man. Thank you for pointing this out.
It was always a latter. I am building a game, not a toolkit.

To dino and others.
Read through my mod statement in README. I do not create new experience as many other modders. My goal is to clean up clutter, breaks, exploits, stupid implementation as much as possible to let original game features shine strategically as they were intended to. I do not bother with "balancing" of anything. Merely fixing problems.
Reactor HP multiplier was a real game breaker. So I fixed it easiest possible way. Done. Unfortunately, this fix also rendered reactors useless. So I had to give them some benefit in unit cost domain so the player have incentive to research and use them. I also toned down this benefit so it is not overpowered and doesn't break game too.
The rest of it - whether make it 15% or 20% or 25% cost drop is a sandbox play which I am not interested in. It does not affect game play significantly. There are a lot of other things requiring my attention.
I would definitely appreciate players feedback on what this price drop should be and collectively we can find a sweet spot for it and keep it this way and then enjoy the game together instead of everybody wasting their time on tweaking unimportant game parameter.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Even though this change seems good at first glance, there is nothing perfect under the Moon.


One tiny inconvenience I just discovered is that it is useless to pay for reactor upgrade. It does not add to the already built unit value. I guess this is a minor thing to worry about. After all, further upgrades to unit with both better weapon/armor and better reactor do make sense as better reactor lowers target unit cost thus lowering upgrade cost.

However, it seems that upgrade cost and rush cost formulas can be simplified to avoid related exploits completely.
Here is the proposition:

• Set all rush cost to be flat - no special 10 mineral restrictions or anything.
• Set unit rush cost to purchased minerals x 4.
• Set unit upgrade cost to cost difference. It is that simple! Now you can actually upgrade reactor and shave some money off it as you get cheaper units. Not sure if it is implementable, though. Just an idea.

Rationale

It is better to avoid any complex formulas unless it breaks the game. Speaking about quadratic growing unit rushing cost formula, I don't see what strategical variety it brings. Yes, it is now more cost effective to invest in facilities than not in units. Pricing unit rushing cost flat with x4 multiplier achieves same effect. There is a subtle numeric variation between flat cost and growing cost but most of the time you'll be investing in facilities anyway so these variations do not apply and do not do any significant impact to the game. On the other side, simplifying formulas gives player clarity in their actions. They now know exactly how much it'll cost without tapping calculator.
Same story with 10 minerals restriction. I don't see anything in it it except cluttering player's mind and hindering the progress for everybody. What's the problem in building facilities quickly in new bases if you have money for it?

Simplifying unit rush cost also naturally calls for similar simplicity in unit upgrade cost. Just pay the rush cost difference. Linear cost eliminates any exploits in the way upgrades are applied. One will end up paying same price for upgrading A -> B or A -> C -> B. Setting unit rush cost multiplier same as for SP eliminates crawler rush exploit as well.

Killing 5+ birds with a couple of stones.

[bvanevery]

Yep. That is an exploit all right. Essentially it makes your project about twice as cheap to spend money on.

That's the essence of the Supply Crawler Upgrade exploit.  Half price.

However, it is still extremely expensive to pay completely for. Big part of it is usually minerals.

I have found that Secret Projects cost a flat 40 minerals to avoid the big rush penalty.  Even projects in my mod that cost 1000 minerals.  I was led to believe that one had to complete 20% of a project in order to avoid the penalty.  40 minerals is indeed 20% of 200 minerals, the cost of the cheapest projects in the original game.  However what I see is that it costs 40 minerals, period, The End, doesn't matter what the project costs.

Woo-hoo! Apparently I fixed this exploit even not knowing about its existence.

I'm feeling a little formula challenged right now.  I'll study it later.  Supply Crawlers in my mod are quite expensive.  A Fusion Supply Crawler, infantry chassis, no armor, no abilities, costs 50 minerals.  Deliberately just like an Artifact.  A Fission is like 80 minerals, to get the Fusion to be 50.  I could do an upgrade experiment to see if I've resolved anything...

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I have found that Secret Projects cost a flat 40 minerals to avoid the big rush penalty.  Even projects in my mod that cost 1000 minerals.  I was led to believe that one had to complete 20% of a project in order to avoid the penalty.  40 minerals is indeed 20% of 200 minerals, the cost of the cheapest projects in the original game.  However what I see is that it costs 40 minerals, period, The End, doesn't matter what the project costs.

You need to fill out first 4 rows for SP to by the rest by x4. Otherwise, it is more expensive. See hurry formula.

[bvanevery]

Well that's only 40 minerals, assuming normal INDUSTRY costs.  Hardly a penalty on a 1000 mineral project in late game.  My lesser factories put out 40 minerals in 1 turn.