I was working on mapping out the effects of different step sizes of scaling and money making before I went inactive. The denominator of any metric, such as $/s or cred/1% scaling, simplifies all ratios to its simplest form. My hypothesis was that this metric is not an accurate way to measure the game because the rate at which we spend our money is not constant (humans can't place buildings immediately the moment they finish building, strategic pocket pillbox, forgot to build out of WF, etc), so we would need a corrective factor to accurately portray all of these metrics.But I wonder if this is the correct way to apply the change. In OMnom's playtest build he tried 1600 cost WF. I would like to hear what was the reasoning behind capping WF production at 4 instead of cheaper WF as ways to reward players for building 2nd WF.
First, a comparison of "bang for your buck" 1600 WF vs 2000 WF capped at 4.
2000 WF capped at 4 (2nd WF yielding +25% production speed): 2000 / 25 = 80 creds per 1% of production speed boost
1600 WF capped at 7 (2nd WF yielding +15% production speed): 1600 / 15 = 107 creds per 1% of production speed boost
Anyways, back to the $1600 WF...my original idea was to shuffle around the added costs to the "meta" MCV rushing by making the SD $1500, the WF $1600, and the MCV $2500/40s. This would allow WF first builds to queue the defensive structure needed in the earlier stages of the game, but it would also make MCV first builds require a net extra of $400 relative to the current MCV. It also equalizes the scaling and the pace of the game, relative to the amount of money you can spend, due to the extra 8-10s on the MCV. To try and explain this as simply as I can: by making early game development faster, along with slowing down the scaling of MCVs, it'll hopefully create room for other units to appear.
A similar change to this would be to nerf the MCV to 48s. The games we played on this mod were strangely well balanced, but the pace of the game changes dramatically because of this. Armies became bigger, and there was not many ways to stop the deathblob. This is because the time gap hits exactly after you start your first MCV -- 17s of max eco production leads to a lot of units. In my latest tests, the time gap is spread out over the course of WF - SD - MCV production, which means a lot of the extra production time is during a period of low eco. As a result, I can get the positive effects of a 48s MCV, without the added max-eco production time.
Qualitatively, the net effect of these changes made early APC, Ranger, LT, and APC builds much more effective; the quicker WF makes it so that light vehicles have more time to do damage while the infantry count is still low. It also made capturing more than one oil derrick, without the help of a ranger/apc, impossible. Right when the first MCV was made, there was a greater threat of the MCV being taken out by early vehicles/armies (it's still a relatively minor threat), so players weren't able to move their MCVs around the map with impunity. A second/third WF was made on occasion, typically during a stalemate. I tested these changes out mostly with Lorry and Smitty.