How to reintroduce the Silo?

Discussion of silo for Red Alert in ORA

Discussion about the game and its default mods.
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Mo
Posts: 126
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 1:40 pm

How to reintroduce the Silo?

Post by Mo »

Recently brought this up in the discord chat, how do we go about introducing the Silo again without making it game breaking, boring, or snowballing for the losing player?

The refs as they are placed everywhere take up a lot of the cash storage, making silos useless. What experiments could be run to test how to bring the silo back in a positive light? Having silos could add an element to the macro and eco game of silo raids and building silos for economic gain.

Could silos perhaps act like an oil derrick by "refining" the ore they bring in thus making it worth more? E.g. a 5 (experiment with numbers) minute payback period before gain is seen from them.



Unrelated: Nostalgically, I just remember the 4 silo configuration from back in the day.

Matt
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Joined: Tue May 01, 2012 12:21 pm
Location: Germany

Re: How to reintroduce the Silo?

Post by Matt »


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avalach21
Posts: 214
Joined: Mon Aug 10, 2015 8:01 pm

Re: How to reintroduce the Silo?

Post by avalach21 »

I am currently working on a mod that restores OpenRA unit rosters as close as possible to the original RA without totally disrupting current OpenRA balance (Please check out my thread if you are interested). My goal is to have all of the original units and structures included and give all of them some type of usefulness.

One of the changes I made was removing the Hijacker (which sounds like an official change that may be coming soon) and reintroducing the Thief (spies will provide economic intel rather than steal credits... maybe the british spy will do both? who knows..) I have been thinking about the Silo in relation to all of this and I think that simply having the Silo store Ore as a way of preventing it from being stolen by the thief(/spy) already gives it some useful value.

I think if a Silo is present, it should get priority for all ore storage and until all available silos are full, no ore will be stored in refineries. This will protect Ore from thieves (or spies etc.) I also think that if you lose a refinery (to selling or destruction) you should lose the ore that is contained within while Silos, if lost or destroyed, will be able to transfer/float the ore inventory to any other available silos (and maybe refineries as well) before you lose it all together. In light of this, I don't mind making the silos somewhat stronger/tankier, so they really are an armored storage container to protect your ore from being stolen & destroyed. That was the original purpose of the silo and it makes logical sense.

I'm not really too fond of giving the silo any sort of other crazy function or bonus. It should, in my opinion, fill its original role of protecting and storing Ore, and simply just accentuate it's ability to do this.
Last edited by avalach21 on Sun Aug 12, 2018 3:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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avalach21
Posts: 214
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Re: How to reintroduce the Silo?

Post by avalach21 »

Another idea I just had was that perhaps additionally, silos could "Process Ore" slowly turning ore inventory that needs to be managed and stored into hard credits that no longer have the liability of being stored. This would motivate you to build them over just letting them sit in the refinery because you could lose your credits if the refinery is destroyed or infiltrated (Credits Stolen!).

pointbreak
Posts: 44
Joined: Mon Jul 23, 2018 10:54 am

Re: How to reintroduce the Silo?

Post by pointbreak »

What do you mean? I already use the silo to store my excessive ore when the factories can't produce as fast.

lawANDorder
Posts: 140
Joined: Tue Oct 24, 2017 3:20 pm

Re: How to reintroduce the Silo?

Post by lawANDorder »

Matt wrote:
Sun Aug 12, 2018 1:48 pm
See also the discussion at https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA/issues/3816
You can also start at the bottom for a tl;dr (which doesn't mean that all the ideas there are not interesting).

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