Rework storage

I think storage as a gameplay element is kind of unfun at the moment.

I appreciate the recent economy enhancements and maybe it's a good time to rethink storage too?

Currently:

- Comm gives 500 m/e storage I believe
- Storage building gives 500 m/e additional

Problems:

- new players frequently build lots of useless storage buildings, possibly misled about what it does. This is a waste of m/e for the building cost itself so it generates hate for new players, which isn't fun.

- storages can hog team resources, so its in conflict with the "overflow share" concept which I think is actually a very fun and unique gameplay element in zerok.

- when comm dies you lose metal income and build power, but also your m/e storage, all of it. It's not fun having to desperately build a storage. Sometimes later in the game if you com dies you will have a bunch of other available build power (constructors/factories) and com was just a small part of it, but it still brings your economy to a halt due to loss of storage (way more important than loss of metal income from com??). Experienced player will just build a preventive storage mid-game. It seems overly taxing and unfun.

Some options/ideas:

1) Simply make storage building explode like a singu to discourage its use. Blowing it up makes up for the fun :)

2) Reduce com storage to 250 and add 250 to factory. At start of game total storage is same as before, because of free factory. If com dies you're still heavily hit by loss of 50% of your storage. I think we could remove the storage building itself or make it more expensive to discourage its use. Players can build additional factories to get storage instead of the storage building. Could also add a small amount of storage to constructors.

3) Add some base storage that players always have detached from anything. If we add a small base storage it will already make loss of com less problematic and works as a patch. If however we go extra mile and add a large base storage then we could just maybe remove this unfun gameplay element completely :). Maybe could also make storage grow over time during the game.

4) Go completely other way and give storage building a small metal income, turning it into a true economy building which has an actual use. Metal income could be sort of "interest" percentage depending on how much metal you already have in storage, or just a flat rate, say 2 metal/s 20 energy/s.

Maybe a combination of all the above?

None of 1 (lol), 2, 3, and 4 seem to fix the issues as you've state them.

• Option 2 is the closest solution, if you pick the route of removing Storage, but making it more expensive won't stop some players from building it.
• The large base storage of Option 3 would cause automatic resource hogging.
• The metal producing storage of Option 4 would probably break the game, and if it is situational then I bet new players will make it in the incorrect situations.

I like commander storage because it means that all of a teams assets physically exist within the game world. This is really neat and makes sharing so much easier. I don't think the fact that losing your commander hurts your economy is a bad thing. As far as I have seen, losing your storage does not actually halt your economy, it just removes the buffer. Construction still happens at a rate limited by your energy or metal income.

I am most partial to the idea of putting 250 storage in factories, but this is less neat that the system as it currently exists. This is the proposal that I am comparing the current system to.

The solution is super simple.

Storage is the only building that has a time limiter on it. Every 5 minutes, you are allowed to build 1 storage. Therefore by 10 minutes you can build 2 storages. 3 storage by 15, etc. If the noob doesn't want to lose all that metal then they gotta do something else with it. Hopefully build units.

We've had this before, but I'm still a supporter of simplifying storage away. Add it to every economic building so that you automatically get a sensible amount of storage. Outside of FFA I don't think storage adds enough gameplay value to warrant a unit. And in team games or FFA where you want to plop DDMs you could build a singu that should come with a lot of storage.

Currently, energy sharing doesn't work if you're out of storage. In team games you're completely reliant on teammates to gift you a storage if you didn't build energy. When you're on your own it can also be very cumbersome to rebuild a storage if energy/metal is scarce. These interactions feel more like fighting the priority system/interface than your opponent.

storage is fine, lots of times when players excess metal they would not have done so if they had a pair of storages build somewhere.

Besides instantly "plopping" the factory the commander could be able to "plop" part of the vanguard economy pack's income on the first storage it builds.

#giveStorageDgunSidearm

The minimum storage isn't zero, it's just not shown.

Now that builders do not make metal storage should be more useful.