Return of Resource Race

[Richard LeMoon]

A long time ago, in a playerbase far far away......

It was a time of long travels, Squid pilots, Engineers gnashing teeth, buff hammers, and very little strife.
There was a mode, avoided by all but those few that liked long, arduous journeys through virtually empty skies.

It was the time of 'Resource Race'.

Many 'always active' capture points were scattered through the skies, far flung so only the fastest of ships could reach them,
only to move on to the next point. On and on this would go, until someone finally won through attrition alone.
Resource Race was canceled, finally defeated by a vast, great yawn from the playerbase. There it has sat, gathering dust,
Until now....

I have always liked the idea of multiple active points, but in the end, Resource Race failed due to other mechanics of the game, namely the ships, number of points, and the distance. I thought for some time on this issue, and have devised a way to bring back Resource Race by removing one word, "race", and replacing it with "King". Thus, Resource King is born (better name, of course). By combining the fun of King of the Hill with the multiple capture points of Resource Race, a unique mode is created. This new modes eliminates all points but 3, as well as most of the distance. In fact, the points would be overlapping, instead of on the far corners of the map.

Here is an example of how Labyrinth could look with 'Resource King' rules instead of the standard KotH.



The three points surround the central area, just overlapping. This allows a single ship to attempt to capture all three points at once if they find that 'sweet spot'. Once points are capped, the team needs to decide to hold what they have, or try for more. Do you keep the two points you have, or risk your position to go for all three? Is the enemy weaker on Point A or B? Points could cycle quite often between teams as they are pushed off one point and on to another. The battles would dynamically follow a much larger area.

On paper, it sounds like a lot of fun. What are your thoughts?

[GurasOguras]

Wouldn't it always (or most of the time) end up in either winning the engagement and capturing all three points or losing and occupying none?

[Naoura]

Honestly? It sounds like KotH with more complication. Since all three points are in the same effective area, then there's no incentive to play it any different than KotH, just a bit more annoying to keep the full point.

If you were to have, say, four points on the map, some on the outer periphery of the central area, and then one, central point, it might be more engaging. You'd obviously have squid-rushes for some of the outer points, but a team that holds one outer and the central might have an edge.

That, of course, inspires just holding two points and sniping anyone who tries to take the central point, but the above is just a possible theory.

As I recall, Resource Race was less KotH and more Domination, where you had to control the multiple points over a larger area. The distance was part of the problem, as was ship speed, meaning you only utilized some of the faster moving ships. No real way to fix that, as people will spam faster ships to ensure a capture, no matter how tightly you try and put the points together.

As for having the 'sweet spot' to capture all three points.... Like I said. Over-complicated KotH. Players would sit in the exact same spot as they do now, with no incentive to play differently.

[Psi Crow]

As I understand it:
Distant points weren't good because of ship speed and close overlapping points like this make it possible to defend (and attack) all at once, making it too similar to KotH.
Then how about close points that have barriers in between them so you can't attack and defend at the same time, but still don't necessarily need fast ships to get from point to point.
For Example we could place 3 points around the ancient wreckage of dunes for testing, I'd like to try that.

[Naoura]

I could work with that, Psi. That makes plenty more sense than the others. Testing it out on Paritan might be the best chance to try it out.

[Machofish]

I was never around for this gamemode, but comparing it to current PvP play, I think this gamemode would only work in the infrequent 3v3 or the rare and exotic 4v4.

Most gameplay at the moment revolves around 2v2, the defining dynamic of 2v2 being that if allied ships don't stick close to each other, they die. It'd still boil down to a case that whoever wins the first engagement will probably win the points.

I haven't explored Paritan rumble in detail, but if it's the one I'm thinking about--cramped urban corridors, and a large, open central square with the partially-destroyed globe monument--then a ship stationed at any of the 1 points would have a clear firing line to both of the other 2 points. As others mentioned, the capture times or respawn times would need to be adjusted so that one team couldn't just wipe the enemy team and seize all 3 points.


One suggestion that comes to mind--and I do not claim to be educated about designing and balancing this sort of thing--would be to space the points further out, but adjust the capture speeds of certain ships based on their durability and speed. This way, fast and agile ships like the Squid and Shrike would have a slower capture speed than the Galleon, Spire, or Mobula. The problem with this would be the need to fine-tune the specific capture speed of each ship, as well as account for the fact that most medium and heavy ships have varying acceleration rates but very similar top speeds once they get going. The result would be that pilots of particularly fast ships like the Shrike, Goldfish, and Squid would feel unfairly nerfed because they would be forced to sit on a point until the enemy team catches them - and of course since the light ships rely on hit-and-run tactics, it would become borderline impossible for a team of light ships to stand still on the capture zone long enough to take it without getting shot to pieces for their trouble. They would essentially need both enemy ships to be dead before they could capture a single point.

I think this may be my own bias against lightly-armed ships showing here: I realize my above comment leaves an unsaid assumption that, "Well, if fast ships can't capture any better than heavy ships, and they can't even do enough damage to kill anything*, then what the heck would they good for?" Again, I'm sure there are plenty of Squid/Goldfish pilots who will gladly let me know why I'm wrong about this assumption.

*With the exception of the Shrike, and any build that uses mine-throwers for direct fire.