I don't see it having much of a impact since I can easily have 3k storage and need it because in 10 seconds it fills up from reclaiming, also it perfectly usable for good con mass def spam and not to mention it nice to have some metal on the side to quickly counter stuff.

My honest opinion. I really don't see it making a difference to me. Lastly a newbie could be spamming dirt-boxes and he could get more income.

I really don't see this as a solution. The solution is to tell them to use it up. Then again you can't punish people for playing differently in games where people try to play on a competitive level when the developers try to promote a casual environment for the game.

TL;DR:
+ no income share for players with metal>=500
+ no reclaim share (current)
? 5% private mex income (current)
? no other units' income share (current)
+ no OD investment payback
+ better energy share before team OD

Sprung's, actually @knorke's idea is generally good. Still it would not be the best overall ressource distribution yet.

AFAIK currently metal extractors' income is 95% shared and 5% private. If a player has metal income that exceeds his storage, his metal net income contributes to the shared metal income while he is excluded from shared income (Is this currently really correctly implemented?). If a player's energy net income (=sum of the players units' energy rates) is positive, it is used for team overdrive as much as possible and overdrive metal is shared proportionally to the players' overdrive energy investment among the players whos metal storage is not full (not sure about the proportionality, but if it was so, then high energy investment would be rewarded, but not good linking).

What if all team members have >500 metal stored? Then the income should be distributed among those who don't have full storage instead of nobody getting income share. Imo there should be storage states of players: 1. metal<500, 2. metal>=500 but not full, 3. metal=metal storage. All mexes' metal income (or 95% of it) and overdrive except reclaim should be shared equally among the players of the best state. Of course the discretization of states is a bit arbitrary, but easy to understand. Additionally people of state 3 would also give the rest of their metal net income (reclaim + other units' incomes like coms, facs, cons...) to the players of the best state.

Generally the only argument for any kind of share reduction, for example no reclaim share, 5% private mex income, no other units' income share, OD investment payback,..., that comes to my mind, is preventing waste/rewarding good play. But OD investment payback rewards noobs for spamming fusions even though only connected to 1 mex. Excluding reclaim from share on the other hand rewards good play, while it keeps the only purpose of storage. Current 5% mex metal income private share also rewards good play. 5% private share and not sharing reclaim only causes uneven income in no noob games though.

Excluding other units' incomes from shared income is actually arbitrary. Even if their income is meant to keep their building ability without other income, this is not an argument to exclude them from sharing. The best reason to not share other units' income is propably 2nd coms for uneven teams. If the 2 coms player didn't get both coms' income, income would be very imbalanced within the smaller team. Not sharing coms' income also punishes com loss. But should other units than mexes/coms' income not be shared? Those other units' income is correlated to a player's BP, so not forcing him to share it seems reasonable. However it rewards nano spam a bit even though not enough res for BP..

AFAIK energy is currently not shared, but energy excess only used for OD. So when my enegy production is destroyed, I still get metal share, but have not enough energy to spend it. Also if I have a well connected energy production, but need the energy for building already, and another player has badly connected energy production with energy excess, it would be better if his energy excess would power my building while my energy excess is used for OD, where the other player would get his share from, too. (Of course only connected energy can be used for OD, but any energy for building.) In no noob games it would be good if all players' energy gross income rate would be shared equally. (But while a player has at least his energy reserve, his shared energy income rate should be limited to his energy need while the rest is used for OD and if there is still excess, the rest distributed to the emptiest player storages first. Maybe even do automatic transfer of stored energy additionally to OD.) The problem would be that bad players could drain the team's energy by building without own energy production or by spamming cloaking field. So good players would have to build energy productions to also power bad players who don't build power plants by themselves, instead of bad players being punished for not having energy productions. So the best solution for mixed skill games would be that every player uses his energy for own units first. Excess is then given to players with energy deficit first giving all players with energy=0 equal energy rate, then filling energy reserve of lowest player storage first (maybe the minimum of player reserve and 200 instead), and only the rest goes to OD. While the players' energy rates calculated by those principles except OD are held constant, the teams' remaining energy rate would have to be redistributed to all power plants for ideal OD, no matter who owns them.

And of course afk or resigning players should give all their res to the team (/players with best state) (not sure if implemented yet).

just remove it.

My expression about the storaege is taht its simply too expensive. It should be 50 not 100 metal. Why would u spend 100 metal to storage 500 more? Its 600, u could make (almost) 3 nanos for it, and balance your 4-6 reclaiming cons.

Long story short: We need more teaching tools. Suggested: mumble integration (and moderation), newbie teaching channel, and modifying UI elements to assist in learning rates.


I've been using that eco widget @shadowfury333 made and I believe if we made it default and made "Make Workers" flash when income outpaces expenses (>=+9 net income, regardless of metal stored) it may teach newbies what to do instead of storage spam. While this is a more passive solution to the problem instead of actively limiting resources, I believe it may have a higher impact on learning rates of newbies.

I'd also suggest the formation of a teaching channel (#ZKtrain) that autojoins newbies to. We as experienced players of zero-k should stop our complaining and start doing something about the growing issues of player inexperience on a social level. We should also start developing tools to teach instead of tools to correct behaviour (it simply won't work for some things and drains valuable development resources).

Thirdly, I highly recommend development of mumble integration (as well as making a moderation system for those who are abusive (eg: speccheat/verbally abusive) on mumble) for reducing the demand that teaching in-game puts on the teacher.

However at the end of the day, its up to the newbie to decide if he/she wants to learn or not. Those who simply wish to not learn are simply lost causes, don't waste resources developing silly game mechanics like this on them. Let them play horribly in peace. No amount of resources poured into development of good tutorials, proper teaching channels, or other methods will pay off if the person is unwilling to learn.

by executor: we must construct additional pylons! see from 0:12 executor is right!

quote: Anarchid : Solution to storage/flow importance debate: Remove storage as a phenomenon.

Bump for great justice!

quote: BlueTemplar : 2.) What does having limited storage bring to Zero-K?

quote: Pxtl : I don't think punishing excess is a big deal - having metal locked up storage instead of deployed on the map is its own punishment. I think funneling unspent metal into teammates is the most important feature of limited storage.

I'm going to throw an idea here :

Why not follow the Zero-K designs of 1 energy = 1 metal and Overdrive to their logical conclusion?
- No arbitrary 500m cutoff as in OP.
- Remove the storage building.
- Make both Energy and Metal storage unlimited.
- Make Overdrive Energy cutoff = your current stored metal
- Make metal (and energy?) share ratio depend on how much metal you have compared to the team (weighted?) average.
(- Make teams pool energy for Overdrive?)

Additional idea for Overdrive to be more easily understandable by new players :
- Make so that when the energy bar reaches its maximum, you see some kind of glowing animation at the tip or yellow nanoparticles or something... going faster when energy flow to overdrive increases. At the same time make a small GUI widget (probably separate from the resource bar) displaying a Mex spinning where you would see the same animation of glow/nanoparticles/something incoming on that mex and it spinning faster.

I find your lack of faith in storages disturbing.
In fact storages are so OP I was once banned for building them

quote: Storage : cost 100

50 if you're efficient

Why would you want to make rushing antinukes easier to players?

If you have zero energy storage then as soon as you e-stall, all the very important things that use energy to function like shields, sensors, big fixed weapons (including defensive ones), cloak, jammer would shut down. This seems WAY too harsh as a penalty to me.

And you probably won't have time to react to self-destruct that building. Unless it's programmed to self-destruct automatically when you E-stall? That might actually work... and even give a weakness to exploit against porcupine strategies.