OpenRA

1. Neither was flak trucks which are an important unit for balance. The speed was also a lot faster. Allies now have hinds for balance. Most importantly the original game didn't have multi queues and updated AI we see now it is nothing like the original. I think bounties is one of the smallest things that have deviated from the original.

2. The whole premise of this game is Einstein shook Hitlers hand through going back in time in a chronosphere which killed Hitler and gave birth to a new empire of evil. Also there's a giant rod that shoots electricity at tanks. You cannot apply logic to this game.

3. There was a similar feature in Generals but because they didn't have it doesn't mean it's a bad feature. The games didn't have multiple building tabs is it better we remove them also?

Base pushing isn't promoted by bounties its promoted because buildings and defenses structures are better tactically on the front line as static tanks. If anything it's to keep your army alive not donate money. They're over used because they're the best way to spring an offensive.

When the eco is completely dry you cannot simply "build another ref" or "another truck" that will make the problem worse with harvester saturation. As soon as there's no ore left only harvester per mine leaving a lot of AFK harvesters, if we tweaked ore regen so that we didn't run out of eco then every map would play like Roadkings - play someone who loves macro on that you'll have a great time.

If the opponent getting eco for 10 extra rifles is too much of a burden to overcome I'm a little confused. As people repeat many games are won with horrendous combat stats.

avalach21 wrote: Any "lack of money" argument to me is silly. You know what my answer is? Build an extra ore truck. Build an extra refinery. Build another base expansion. Capture some oil derricks if available. That is how you get money in C&C and that's how it always was. If there's still not enough money available somehow, that can be tweaked in ore regeneration rates and or how much each load of ore dropped off is worth (I don't even think these tweaks would be necessary, but would be better options and more true to C&C than a "bounty system").

You are right with what you are saying the danger if the bounty system is removed is that some games with balanced teams could slow down to nearly freeze.
I know this from the time before we had a bountysystem here, some matches lasted very long often until someone gave up. Often the team with more collected crates won and a last chance option with selling the base as a last option to win where used.
but that was only the case on maps with too less ore mines.

A better regeneration rate for ore could be a way but i dont know how this would affect already exsisting maps (they could be changed anyway) this should be done carefully.

I dont really think that removing bountys would work against basecrawling as this always was a part of RA ( and hopefully ever will be ).

I dont really care if it is removed from ra or not it but maybe it is better to delete it for aesthetic reasons.
Its just looking weird especially if a nuke is dropped into a big army or in some other cases.
Btw a nukedrop shows how unfair these bountys can be, while the one player is already punished the other one gets hundred of dollars.

Okay, I lied about leaving this thread alone.

Removing the bounty system actually promotes IMO more emphasis on saving your units. (Some units anyways. A star ranked Mammoth is still awesome.)

@Omnom:

Because losing a Mammoth tank with stripes gives the enemy more income. It also has a major side effect with spies.

Do you see why I am confused? Also, wtf is with the spies insertion. and how the hell does that have anything to do with bounties?

To me, a logical statement would be :
"Removing the bounty system actually downplays the emphasis on saving your units because losing units will not give your opponent income"

or

"A bounty system actually promotes more emphasis on saving your units because losing a unit gives your opponent more income"

The way you've written it makes no sense. "Removing the bounty system actually promotes more emphasis on saving your units because losing a Mammoth tank with stripes gives the enemy more income." <--- how the hell do you give your opponent income by losing a unit when you've removed the bounty system? You're contradicting yourself in your own statement.

______

I guess now that this has its own thread, it warrants some proper organization after all the shit that its been through. I'm going to try and use some basic logic:

A true statement is one that cannot be refuted.

A valid statement is a logical statement that holds true for all interpretations, given a particular set of circumstances. Just like how all square are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares, all true statements must be valid, but all valid statements are not necessarily true.

A sound argument is a logical statement with true premises, but a false conclusion.

The goal is to write a list of valid arguments, starting off with a truth, to prove a conclusion.

Hopefully, that should be enough for people to understand what I'm trying to write...

1a) Bounties give more money to the winner, and give less money to the loser of an engagement. 1b) One strength of basepushing is the ability to use all of your assets to attack.

Both are true.

2. The money you make from bounties provides additional income to build more pillboxes.

Unsound argument.

You can't assume that the bounty money goes directly to building more pillboxes. You've been using "$600 = 1 Pillbox" this entire time, but you could easily replace this metric with "$600 = 2 rocket soldiers" or "$600 = 6 rifles." Point being, that $600 is money spent towards everything, not only pillboxes. Rewrite this argument to the following:

2' : The money you make from bounties provides additional income to rebuild all assets, not just buildings.

But static defenses are part of all assets, and one of the strengths of basepushing is using all your assets to perform an attack. So an argument against 2' is :

â””2' : A strength of basepushing is using all of your assets to attack. Bounties give you more money to build assets. Therefore, bounties contribute to basepushing.

To fix this, we write:

2'' : The money you make from bounties provides additional income to rebuild all assets. Since a strength of basepushing is using all of your assets to attack, therefore, bounties contribute to basepushing.

But there are still holes in this argument, mainly with this counterargument:

â””2'' : A strength of basepushing is using all of your assets to attack. Harvesters give you more money to build assets. Therefore, harvesters contribute to basepushing

One could try to deduce from â””2'':

Harvesters are the primary source of income. Bounty money only provides 10% of assets destroyed. Harvesters give you more money than bounties do. Since harvesters make more money than bounties, therefore, the money you get from bounties is insignificant.

...which attacks the premise of "additional income", calling into question it's significance and magnitude. But this opens up a new can of worms...using this argument is the equivalent of a dead-end. Scale and magnitude is something we need to define with playtesting, not with words. For now, lets just assume that "additional money" is significant enough to proceed to the next argument

3. If (1) is true, and if (2'') is valid, then A) it follows that the winner of an engagement will have more money to rebuild than the loser of an engagement, and B)
the winner will be able to out push the loser. Therefore, bounties are imbalanced and should be removed from the game.

(3), aka anjew's argument, or, the snowball argument, is valid under the given set of circumstances.

However, if we introduce a new premise, citing my own findings from my map making thread:

1c: You need between 5-7 harvesters to support the current RA metagame.

Then a new argument arises:

â””3: By taking away the bounty money, we are taking money away from both players. Because of this, players have to spend more time rebuilding and harvesting money.

I've noted in my own testing and playing that the main difference between low-eco maps versus high-eco maps is that the snowball factor is more prominant in low-eco games because players don't have enough time or resources to rebuild their army. As such, basepushing is stronger on low-eco maps, but it's easier to do on a high-eco map. If you take away money from both players, you're making the game lower eco, which makes the game more prone to both snowball and stalemate situations.

So, to answer JuiceBox's questions:

Aim and motivation: To find out, by removing bounties, which change is more significant: removing assets from both players or ensuring that both players have equal opportunities to earn the same amount of money.

If I were to go about this:
A) Figure out what the average money earned from a single battle is. A sample of 10 battles (different replays and different players) of different sizes ought to be close enough. Obviously, the more the merrier here.

B) Figure out what the average time between battles is. Using those same samples, measure the time in between the first and second battles.

C) Divide the Bounty money by the interval between battles, and that gives you a value with units of $/ second, noting min, max, and standard deviation as well

D) Compare with the value of $33-42/s for a harvester on a normal ore patch, $7/s for an oil derrick.

Once we figure out what this number is, we can decide how to tackle analyzing maps with no bounties...not saying that we shouldn't play the no bounty maps, just saying that there is no good, quantitative way to measure gameplay right now. Regardless, since the maps are already out, it'd be a good idea to get a good sample size now, and analyze them later.

Materianer wrote: I know this from the time before we had a bountysystem here, some matches lasted very long often until someone gave up. Often the team with more collected crates won and a last chance option with selling the base as a last option to win where used.
but that was only the case on maps with too less ore mines.

This is true, but this was also 6 years ago (bounties were first shipped in release-20110511). The general game pacing and map design have changed completely since those days, when Forest Path was considered one of our best options for tournament play.

The discussion here really reminds me of older arguments about:

• Implementing the feature that let infantry share a cell ("this will break the balance by making it too easy to mob infantry!")
• Implementing the feature that lets tanks crush infantry ("this will break the balance by making infantry useless!")
• Added the base radius to restrict base walking without moving the MCV (e.g. #2156, #4378, this forum topic and many many... many others)
• The recent hind/cobra/huey fight

As the player counts have increased these arguments have become less and less pleasant to deal with.

The most important point to establish is whether or not the feature is appropriate at a conceptual level for the RA mod. So far many good points have been raised suggesting that it is not.

Arguments from both sides about "but muh balance!" don't really help IMO, because the balance and metagame will evolve and improve with or without it. The world didn't end when we added the base radius restriction, and I very much doubt it will end if we choose to remove bounties OR if we don't.

Happy wrote: 2. [...]Also there's a giant rod that shoots electricity at tanks. You cannot apply logic to this game.

Check out Nikola Tesla's Wardenclyffe Tower, was thinking of making a map with a giant tesla coil called Wardenclyffe, but I'm rubbish at making maps.

AMHOL wrote:

Happy wrote: 2. [...]Also there's a giant rod that shoots electricity at tanks. You cannot apply logic to this game.

Check out Nikola Tesla's Wardenclyffe Tower, was thinking of making a map with a giant tesla coil called Wardenclyffe, but I'm rubbish at making maps.

I meant as on offensive weapon

Happy wrote:

AMHOL wrote:

Happy wrote: 2. [...]Also there's a giant rod that shoots electricity at tanks. You cannot apply logic to this game.

Check out Nikola Tesla's Wardenclyffe Tower, was thinking of making a map with a giant tesla coil called Wardenclyffe, but I'm rubbish at making maps.

I meant as on offensive weapon

Fair point xD

Sleipnir wrote: Arguments from both sides about "but muh balance!" don't really help IMO, because the balance and metagame will evolve and improve with or without it. The world didn't end when we added the base radius restriction, and I very much doubt it will end if we choose to remove bounties OR if we don't.

You are right with what you say and removing bounties will not have such a big effect as the buildradius had.
I think it should just be tested how big the effect of this change would be on various maps.

I will add some maps the next days to do this, because just trying how it works and if it changes the game in some way is often a good way to go.

Sleipnir wrote: The most important point to establish is whether or not the feature is appropriate at a conceptual level for the RA mod. So far many good points have been raised suggesting that it is not.

In your opinion.

In my opinion no evidence has been submitted to argue a case for the removal of kill bounty. only opinion theory and general taste have been discussed.

What about all the good points raised that it is a good feature?????
Balance aside people also like it don't forget this.

Omnom has put out a good test plan. Alot of hard work is going to be required to run it correctly. Only after the tests are we going to get a true reflection.

In addition
I could understand the debate sleipnir if this discussion was about the INTRODUCTION of a feature but in this case it's a removal. If your going to remove a feature it should have to be a pretty damn good argument to do so, With justified reason other than just concept. Sure if it's removed the game will still be playable and people will forget and move on but IMO if the removal has anything less than a positive effect on the game then it's just a step backwards. What I imagine to see from the results is longer games less assets bigger times between engagements. I am failing to see the positive effects this could possibly ever bring to the table

@Klaas: Go to his twitch page. Hit videos. Past vods shown there.

@Happy: They are built on the front because they are better then tanks in most respects. In which they can also earn more income since they are repairable and do more damage. IE: Pillboxes shredding infantry, Gun Turrets out ranging tanks.

Eco is hard to dry up if your killing units. See bottom of the post.

OMnom wrote:

Removing the bounty system actually promotes IMO more emphasis on saving your units. (Some units anyways. A star ranked Mammoth is still awesome.)

@Omnom:

Because losing a Mammoth tank with stripes gives the enemy more income. It also has a major side effect with spies.

Do you see why I am confused? Also, wtf is with the spies insertion. and how the hell does that have anything to do with bounties?

They are seperate lines. So the removing bounties promotes saving units. AKA repair pad for tanks or medics. (All be it soviets don't get medics.)

The second line Because losing a mammoth tank is with bounties on. In which case losing a mammoth tank is worse then losing a mammoth tank without bounties.

______

I guess now that this has its own thread, it warrants some proper organization after all the shit that its been through. I'm going to try and use some basic logic:

A true statement is one that cannot be refuted.

True. Its called facts.

@Omnom: A valid statement is a logical statement that holds true for all interpretations, given a particular set of circumstances. Just like how all square are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares, all true statements must be valid, but all valid statements are not necessarily true.

The word valid defines as having a sound basis in logic or fact; reasonable or cogent. There is no particular set of circumstances.

Ok so now that the word games are over moving on: (AKA Skipping by the rest as its moving the definition premise)

--------------------------------------------------------

1a) Bounties give more money to the winner, and give less money to the loser of an engagement. 1b) One strength of basepushing is the ability to use all of your assets to attack.

Both are true.

2. The money you make from bounties provides additional income to build more pillboxes.

Unsound argument.

You can't assume that the bounty money goes directly to building more pillboxes. You've been using "$600 = 1 Pillbox" this entire time, but you could easily replace this metric with "$600 = 2 rocket soldiers" or "$600 = 6 rifles." Point being, that $600 is money spent towards everything, not only pillboxes.

This is assumption as well. You can easily place other constructions on hold and allow the money to pour into one build queue to finish it off faster. Once built you can then resume other queues.

Rewrite this argument to the following:
2' : The money you make from bounties provides additional income to rebuild all assets, not just buildings.

Unless they pause the other queues.

But static defenses are part of all assets, and one of the strengths of basepushing is using all your assets to perform an attack. So an argument against 2' is :
â””2' : A strength of basepushing is using all of your assets to attack. Bounties give you more money to build assets. Therefore, bounties contribute to basepushing.

To fix this, we write:

2'' : The money you make from bounties provides additional income to rebuild all assets. Since a strength of basepushing is using all of your assets to attack, therefore, bounties contribute to basepushing.

^^^^ The above is repeat incorrectness due to "Placing other queues on hold"

But there are still holes in this argument, mainly with this counterargument:

â””2'' : A strength of basepushing is using all of your assets to attack. Harvesters give you more money to build assets. Therefore, harvesters contribute to basepushing

One could try to deduce from â””2'':

Harvesters are the primary source of income. Bounty money only provides 10% of assets destroyed. Harvesters give you more money than bounties do. Since harvesters make more money than bounties, therefore, the money you get from bounties is insignificant.

How much infantry can 3 pillboxes kill?

...which attacks the premise of "additional income", calling into question it's significance and magnitude. But this opens up a new can of worms...using this argument is the equivalent of a dead-end. Scale and magnitude is something we need to define with playtesting, not with words. For now, lets just assume that "additional money" is significant enough to proceed to the next argument

Check Ganon's stream.

3. If (1) is true, and if (2'') is valid, then A) it follows that the winner of an engagement will have more money to rebuild than the loser of an engagement, and B)
the winner will be able to out push the loser. Therefore, bounties are imbalanced and should be removed from the game.

Correct.

(3), aka anjew's argument, or, the snowball argument, is valid under the given set of circumstances.

Also correct.

However, if we introduce a new premise, citing my own findings from my map making thread:
1c: You need between 5-7 harvesters to support the current RA metagame.

Then a new argument arises:

â””3: By taking away the bounty money, we are taking money away from both players. Because of this, players have to spend more time rebuilding and harvesting money.

Also true and already aware of this. With 3 pillboxes how much money can be earned killing infantry in 5-7 seconds?

I've noted in my own testing and playing that the main difference between low-eco maps versus high-eco maps is that the snowball factor is more prominant in low-eco games because players don't have enough time or resources to rebuild their army. As such, basepushing is stronger on low-eco maps, but it's easier to do on a high-eco map. If you take away money from both players, you're making the game lower eco, which makes the game more prone to both snowball and stalemate situations.

Incorrect. Removal of bounties has had no effect on money making with ore trucks. Tested. On low eco maps the base pushing is popular because you don't lose assets easily with defense structures. AKA killing infantry with defenses for greater outcome. The structures are also repairable while tanks are not. So without bounties on low eco maps it will be about the samething. Holding these spots to keep your eco going.

So, to answer JuiceBox's questions:

Aim and motivation: To find out, by removing bounties, which change is more significant: removing assets from both players or ensuring that both players have equal opportunities to earn the same amount of money.

If I were to go about this:
A) Figure out what the average money earned from a single battle is. A sample of 10 battles (different replays and different players) of different sizes ought to be close enough. Obviously, the more the merrier here.

B) Figure out what the average time between battles is. Using those same samples, measure the time in between the first and second battles.

C) Divide the Bounty money by the interval between battles, and that gives you a value with units of $/ second, noting min, max, and standard deviation as well

D) Compare with the value of $33-42/s for a harvester on a normal ore patch, $7/s for an oil derrick.

Once we figure out what this number is, we can decide how to tackle analyzing maps with no bounties...not saying that we shouldn't play the no bounty maps, just saying that there is no good, quantitative way to measure gameplay right now. Regardless, since the maps are already out, it'd be a good idea to get a good sample size now, and analyze them later.

Ive measured this since last year. Heres a good example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BX3O9MKOjU4

This was a map made by Norman with some idea changes in the game. He decided to test the bounty system in TD. Give it a watch and let me know what you think. I have a list of things that happened.

I cba inserting quote after quote.

@AoA

I think your actually blowing the scale way out of proportion. For arguments sake a game lasts 20 mins and player A has 24k in kills over player B this amounts to 4 pillboxes. This is slowly dripped in over the course of the game. That's 1 extra pillbox every 5 mins.

How much INF can 4 pill boxes kill in 7 seconds ? A hell of alot if you let them.

How many INF can get killed by 4 pillboxes with APCS + tanks soaking up damage? Well as many as u can micro before they die.

How many die to pill boxes if u place a wall Infront of them ? That's a 0 and you give 240 credits to your opponent.

If you are relying on cash bounty to get you through games your going to have a hard time.

If the Cash bounty was such a snow ball effect we would never see Comebacks this is not evident. Cash bounty only really comes into play once the eco has dried up late mid game and late game. You should always have the eco to be building out of your production tabs effectively or IMO your not playing the game right.
Only time I have paused my Q's is when I need to re eco from attacks or Snipes and pump some refs out to get my production back. So your argument about pausing important production to spend you cash bounty makes 0 sense as omnom said it drips into everything.

You can afford to take considerable losses if you are out producing your opponent anyway so the main emphasis is the harvesting. Harvesters DO contribute to base pushes they contribute to everything a successful base push is not decided on the cash bounty it's decided on the effectiveness of the push and having the assets to back it up

Using TD replays to back up your statements is no help at all. This RA not TD. I hope the data you say you have collected in the past year isn't from TD also. We need data from RA games

@JuiceBox:

Im assuming you haven't watched the video as Norman's play style was essentially sitting behind Guard Towers with MRLS and a few mammoths to barrage the units. With the amount of units he had this should have done the job.

I would also like to point out that towards the end Norman had 0 harvesters. Zero. Used aircraft for herassment and pick offs to keep a very slow build of units going. He should have built another harv when he could with the bounty kills.

RA and TD are different. Yet the same strategy mindset happened here. CD happened in the same way and that is even further different from RA.

Relying on cash bounties gives you the edge you need in games. If you aren't using this edge being competitive you need to be as it does give extra in conjunction with ore collection.

Okay after this extensive discussion we can now start testing ;D

We should collect as many games as we can and please try to be neutral while doing this.

If you think this changes something into a bad or good direction upload the replays to make it provable.

I start here with tournament island

http://resource.openra.net/maps/20652/

and doubles
http://resource.openra.net/maps/20651/

I will test some teammaps testing 1on1 maps is up to others.

Awesome thanks!

AoAGeneral1 wrote: @JuiceBox:

Im assuming you haven't watched the video as Norman's play style was essentially sitting behind Guard Towers with MRLS and a few mammoths to barrage the units. With the amount of units he had this should have done the job.

I would also like to point out that towards the end Norman had 0 harvesters. Zero. Used aircraft for herassment and pick offs to keep a very slow build of units going. He should have built another harv when he could with the bounty kills.

RA and TD are different. Yet the same strategy mindset happened here. CD happened in the same way and that is even further different from RA.

Relying on cash bounties gives you the edge you need in games. If you aren't using this edge being competitive you need to be as it does give extra in conjunction with ore collection.

No I didn't watch the video because it's TD
Your constant references to TD shows me that you are obviously more involved with TD and to boot you balance TD. that is commendable and I wouldn't question your knowledge if this debate was about TD but it's not this is RA.
Please stop using TD as your reference if you want to convince me please show RA examples.

I hope you can see where I am coming from. I think you would be pretty annoyed if I was proposing a change to TD and use RA as all my references and experience to promote my proposed change.

You have to look at this as two completely different games if I went into TD playing with my RA logic I would get whooped same vice versa.