SmedBlog: Harvestable Resources - Page 7

Justaman · 2012-08-12, 01:13 PM

IMO, there should be effects like, bringing bonus resources to a base will reduce timers on things that require that resource.

Ivam Akorahil · 2012-08-12, 01:30 PM

if implemented it should also be non repetative, or we have the eve miner disaster happen in PS2!

immo star trek online has a good resource minigame !

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Kyros · 2012-08-12, 02:04 PM

If there are harvestable resources i'd rather have it in the form of buildable harvesters or some such. What i do 'not' want to see is an individual person sitting there with mining equipment hacking away at rocks or what have you. Why? Well the more people you designate for these extra tasks, the less men you'll have on the battlefield. And in a game like planetside, every able bodied person counts as battles are often won by numbers.

IMMentat · 2012-08-12, 02:38 PM

mining runs in eve would be an awesome thing to mimic.

RoninOni · 2012-08-12, 04:15 PM

Originally Posted by exLupo

It would but what would be the impact of breaking those lines or deciding to not? Good time to brainstorm.

Could be a new resource type that's particularly valuable...

or a bases resource drip to the faction could be largely dependent upon this harvesting...

In either case, attacking the harvesting units would affect the factions resource gain.... not as significantly as capping the base for sure, but far FAR more executable behind enemy lines.

Of course any attack would set off alerts, and this mission system that is yet to be implemented could be leveraged to lay down patrol routes people could sign up for and be rewarded for completing. (people would then have new tasks to perform, but in a still military function rather than mining function)

It would just add a new dynamic to the game. New targets and require broader and more active defenses... something to help whittle away the 'zerg' focus.

I think augmenting a territories production/stealing resources from enemy territory (far riskier, definite need of escort) is the best way to go.

Territories would have a smaller auto drip, and would need it's harvester units doing w/e they do for that resource to achieve it's maximum generation rate.

Back territories would pretty much run 100% most of the time save for enemy harassment runs, which would become a new attack & defend game focus.

Front line territories would suffer a LOT more from resource production due to both their harvesters being far easier to destroy (not needing to go behind enemy lines and not having far to pull back) as well as their resources getting stolen by enemy harvester teams (being escorted by players if they want any chance of success).

Maybe engineers on foot could even 'car jack'/hack enemy harvesters too (engineers because infiltrators might have too easy a time with cloak >.< ).

And a player COULD manually drive a harvester (primarily for stealing runs to get a smarter driver than an AI) and it could even have an MG on it that a player could hop into.

Phisionary · 2012-08-12, 05:07 PM

I think this could be an interesting mechanic for particular facilities. Firstly, with regards to resource denial, I think this just means that resource denial will mean more complexity than just camping bases you already own. You'd have to go out and actively disrupt the enemy to deny resources.

I'd like the system to be mostly automatic. Minimize tedium and griefing both at the same time. Once a mining facility is captured (perhaps an easy to hold facility by itself), harvester/mining vehicles are deployed, and travel to some predetermined mining locations. Some limited control could be offered, to select among possible destinations. I would think to some degree a base need be specially designed with this in mind, for some implementations to work well.

A concerted effort would be needed to assault a harvester. An automatic turret gun could hold off a couple lone soldiers. Auto self-repair would keep a small attack from causing undue damage. Perhaps the internal control could be hacked to delay the vehicle, but you'd need some heavy weapons to destroy it outright. Again, prevents a lone griefer from being a pest, but a small squad of 4 or 5, or a tank, or a lib, might be something that needs contending with. The mission system could alert the need for defense, and the harvesting facility itself could have some sort of vehicle tracking/mapping system to aid coordination? I dunno.

In terms of resource value itself, it's hard to say without knowing how the balance plays out as it is now. But the gist is, if owning a facility for X time means 100 resource, losing a harvester might mean 50 resource, or a successful mission would mean 200.

Edit: I like the idea of BIG harvesters. Somewhere near dune-scale, I suppose. Pretty big, anyway. I was thinking, maybe a harvester could be built like a capture point of sorts. First, the harvester itself is this big complex vehicle, with storage tanks, equipment, control rooms, walkways and such. Say, a rolling three-story office building, in terms of size. Lets say each wheel is individually reactor-powered, and you can destroy/shut down the containment field or something. So, shut them down and the harvester slows. The reactors auto-repair, depending on how many are gone, and how many are left. So, one enemy soldier, given free reign, wouldn't be able to stop the thing at all. One could destroy one reactor, run strait to the next, and before it's offline, the first has repaired itself completely. A spec. ops. team, OTOH, could make a surgical strike and hit them all at once. That could be interesting.

psychobilly · 2012-08-13, 12:06 AM

Originally Posted by Kyros

If there are harvestable resources i'd rather have it in the form of buildable harvesters or some such. What i do 'not' want to see is an individual person sitting there with mining equipment hacking away at rocks or what have you. Why? Well the more people you designate for these extra tasks, the less men you'll have on the battlefield. And in a game like planetside, every able bodied person counts as battles are often won by numbers.

Exactly. An empty continent with player built structures - cool. One type is a mining rig - cool.

Active harvesting, gathering, mining is by far the most boring aspect of most MMORPG's. Don't bring it to PS2.

Vertigo · 2012-08-13, 07:01 AM

If anyone remembers Command and Conquer: Renegade, they did something like this. THe tiberium refinery would deploy an automated harvester that would travel back and forth between the facility, and a nearby tiberium field. Destroying it cut off the enemy team's income until another could be deployed. Most of the fighting took place initially around the tiberium fields.

I would say that harvesting should return a portion to the outfit controlling the vehicle(s), and the rest spread out among the rest of the empire. Gives incentive for everyone to defend (or attack) them.

Vector · 2012-08-13, 07:06 AM

I would love that idea of actually seeing Harvesting resources.
I love it when you actually get some physical in game representation of a Gameplay mechanic such as resources, it just really adds to the immersion of gameplay.

Stanis · 2012-08-13, 07:47 AM

Originally Posted by ringring

True. .

link this to additional vehicles that require special rare resources .. it's all getting a bit rpg, gathering, crafting....

Reading Smeds complete post.

It sounds like Star War Galaxies: The FPS

Not a bad thing as I loved the crafting and resource aspects of that game and felt the rpg generic kill 20 rancor missions combined with rpg style PvP let it down. (This would be SWG when initiall launched, before the Jump to Lightspeed also added space vehicles and combat).

Forgelight is an MMO engine. I wouldn't be suprised if they are targetting an merged FPS MMO style of RPG focussing on skill based action and combat rather than mouse clicking abilities.

Azarga · 2012-08-13, 08:13 AM

How about harvesting some rare resource that comes in limited amount? A resource that is used to buy some significant (note: I said significant, not OP) temporary bonuses. Each member of the empire gets the amount of said resource proportional to the amount gathered by his empire. But the amount of this resource in a game world is limited and resets only after a period of RLtime, 12 days for example. This will add some need to work together to deny this resource of your enemy and gather maximum for your empire and, effectively, yourself.

Will the limitation of availability of some resource be good for gameplay in terms.of cooperation?

What do you think?

Kail · 2012-08-13, 08:38 AM

I don't think having any long-running supply chains will work well - It will either be unimportant enough no one will bother defending or doing it, and if it is, then people get stuck on "guard duty" once the sparkle wears off. In my opinion any implementation would have to be a transient thing (ie, a few hours at a time).

There are two ways you can look at it; either this is something to enhance / strengthen currently gameplay, or add a new element.

Enhance existing elements

Imagine being able to "take" a large chunk of resource a base produces - maybe an hour's worth at once. The empire that controls it could load up a big transport vehicle and "take" that chunk, which after doing so means the base doesn't produce any resources until that time is up. However the empire doesn't have it yet - they need to get the transport to some pickup point. The transport itself could be destroyed or captured.

In this way you could use it to get a temporary resource spike for your empire with no net gain in the end, or even try and temporarily deny resources to an enemy trying to take over a facility.

New element

A good way for this is dynamically spawned nodes that need harvesting - Auraxis's core is a little unstable and randomly explodes resources upwards. First empire to sucessfully harvest and get the transport back get's a nice resource boost.

Incidentally, it would be super cool if these nodes actually spawned as a mini eruption. Imagine running in the middle of nowhere and you're screen starts to shake...

Eggy · 2012-08-13, 08:39 AM

I like the idea of a multi-person harvest machine. Driver/miner, top/reargunner and 2 side gunner. Its limited to when it can be used, its limited to what / where it can harvest.

It should need some security so this adds the oportunity for low level missions.
"We need a squad to protect this harvester for 20 mins, bring air and armour".
It could also randomly automaticaly create a low level mission for an oposing faction.
"TR harvester detected, spawned at base X, heading east".

This way it enforces the team play aspect that made PS so good. You cant solo harvest at all. The investment from you VS the fact you will not complete the run on your own make it not worth the effort.

It also keeps the PVP aspect. Its a PVP game we dont need solo people or even groups sat chipping away at rocks. With the mission system generating an auto mission its almost a gaurantee someone will turn up.

vVRedOctoberVv · 2012-08-13, 02:23 PM

This would be pretty cool, actually. Hah, Planetside carebears :P

Mordecai TR · 2012-08-13, 02:47 PM

Whether you like or dislike the devs ideas for the future, we should all be grateful that they are trying to make this game feel fresh for the players. The biggest reason why a lot of players stopped playing planetside was because it was extremely repetitive. Each base type had the same layout and all the bases were pretty much captured in the exact way. So I will keep an open mind about any ideas they have to help break up the repetitiveness of capturing bases.