morph tree discussion

its another morph thread!

the point is to seperate the discussion about how a morph tree could look like from the rest of the discussion. feel free to comment or post your own ideas but dont discuss if you like/hate morph or what kind of system should be used or any kind of stuff regarding the mechanics of morph.

updated my tree and slashed a good deal, changed some. also to be found are GoogleFrog's, Aquanim's and Brackman's trees as well as some suggestions made by other people.

as before, the green part is the basic tree as laid out by the person in question, the red part are ideas, points of discussion, uncertainties, ... that should be discussed further. thanks so far for your participation :)


Aquanims latest suggestions:
[Spoiler]

Googles latest suggestions:
[Spoiler]

this is what Brackman had in mind:
[Spoiler]

My latest suggestions:
[Spoiler]

My previous suggestions:
[Spoiler]

other suggestions and ideas:

quote: Pxtl: I'd keep a few heavy inter-fac morphs - I like Zeus-Jack for example, Felon-Grizzly seems reasonable too. Firewalker would be a great morph target for skirms.

quote: sprang: Lastly, one fun morph that could be added to GF's chart comes to mind: Moderator->Placeholder.

quote: Brackman: Moderator -> Sharpshooter

Pxtl and luckywaldo7 suggested to make a two-part expansive tree and use the crazy half of it as a modoption.

There's a few morphs that I truly feel that wouldn't fit. Other than a few weird choices and whatnot, I say this morph tree is pretty solid. However... a Recluse morphing into a Felon? (I know that's a more eccentric choice.) I can already see exploits happening there unless restrictions are in place.

The Raven and Phoenix morphs... Eh... Raven should morph into a Licho or whatever it's called now. And Phoenix morphing into a Thunderbird is actually a pretty good idea. But ofc, morphing air units, restrictions have to be made. If they were to morph, they DEFINITELY need to land at a landing pad or the Air Factory before they can morph. You wouldn't want a flying Raven that would technically cost you 2000 metal to be shot down suddenly or the fact that how is a flying unit supposed to stay in the air?

Then also, does anyone else think that Morphing should have a resource "discount"? I mean, I get that Morphing is simply an "Investment for a higher tier unit", but you intend on using -insert morphing unit-, right? Chances are, you're gonna lose that unit because morphing definitely needs to be experience-based. Especially if morphing costs less to do in the long run.

Nothing too major or too minor. Like the Raven for instance, if it was able to morph into a Licho... you already paid 300 metal into it and then you spent time making sure it didn't die and gained exp, maybe the morph cost should be 1200-1500. That's a 500-200 metal deduction. You put work into keeping the unit alive while probably sacrificing other units too. So, you may have sent metal to the enemy in the process.

Morphing is like I said, "Investment for a higher tier unit" but it has a lot of risk. Especially considering the time it might take for it to morph completely. Defensive buildings however are a different story, they are less likely to be destroyed and more likely to gain experience. So if we were to add that discount to defenses too, then the absolute maximum the deduction should be is 10% the morph cost. Popularly the Stinger morphing into a Doomsday Machine. Stinger costs 420 metal (lol)and the morph cost is 780. It would be 702 metal after the deduction.

Reason why the deduction should be lower is because, all you need is for the enemy to foolish push units into the Stinger and you'll be farming exp for a Doomsday Machine in no time with less risk of it being destroyed. Morphing needs more incentive to be used, this is a way to make it more favorable towards unit building, than people constantly porcing or playing "Simcity" as others would call it. Even if people may not know about it at first, it's a great incentive for those who want "more powerful" units once they do learn about it.

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"Nothing wrong"? There are plenty threads about the morph system in general; this one is about the upgrade tree specifically, and there is an explicit plea to keep the discussion to that topic.

The wrong of the post is that it causes the thread to drift away from its original topic while not contributing to it (yes, I am aware of the huge hypocrisy of this very post so far, and will attempt to remedy that).

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The tree looks like a superset of the old one. That means it keeps most of its problems (and it has even more of the problematic bits).

Raiders being able to morph to both skirms and riots directly (eg. Glaive -> Rocko/Warrior) means that raider spam becomes self-sufficient, as you can get counters to everything from it (if raiders come, morph to Warrior - if riots come, morph to Rocko - if skirms come, keep being Glaive). This also applies to the classic problem morphs (eg. Zeus -> Crabe), but raiders are the bread and butter of most games and can get XP quite fast so this would be even more prominent here.

Some seem even more arbitrary than previously: for example, the Hermit -> Redback -> Recluse path keeps shuffling roles around, and keeps reducing health - this wouldn't really feel as if the unit is progressing. Same for Pyro -> Placeholder: it looks totally off and the only reason seems to be "helps synergy" which could be a reason to justify anything.

Some take a different path from the obvious one: why does Outlaw morph to Aspis/Felon, and not Thug? Of course an explanation might exist (eg. both Outlaw and Aspis have some area-based effect) but it would be good if the paths were somehow intuitive. This is a problem with any tree that uses existing units - not all of them keep visual coherence that would make morph intuitive.

Overall I'd say that it has its merits but it doesn't really answer one of the main problems with the old tech tree, ie. they are both applied to pre-existing units who were designed without morph in mind.

What I've always seen as the biggest problem with morphs are the cross-factory morphs to heavy units. Zeus->Crabe, Ravager->Reaper, and Leveler->Banisher come to mind. The way I see it, the factories that don't have heavy units do that for a reason. When you pick cloakies, you make the choice to not play using heavy units, but morphing a Zeus lets you circumvent this, which breaks factory identity, and is an effective 600 metal discount for getting that Crabe. A single heavy unit can make a significant difference in a composition of light units, since it can act as an anchor/spearhead for the other units to revolve around.

Tbh, I'd be perfectly cool with even a wonky morph system, if the morphs to cross-factory heavies didn't exist. Strider morphs aren't that big of a deal, since it's heavy units morphing to other heavy units.

Malus points worth noting (things i dislike and which score a lot of decrement)

There are too many morphs, and are too few explanations. The redesign specification stated that every morph should have an explanation.

There are no design principles i can infer from this graph, and none are stated - except "let's have a lot of morphs", which is barely admissible.

Jugglenaut is not accessible to be built directly, and is a 3do model. It is not coming back unless you remodel it, and probably not even then.

Glaive and raiders in general have too many morph options. Insult to injury, the ones with most morph options are also the strongest ones already.

Flea to Roach changes movetype, and gives Spiders access to something they don't have easily. Suggest change to Tick.

Redback to Recluse is just 20 metal difference. Instant transformation much?

BD to Krow is over 400% cost difference. This is maybe acceptable on Flea, but i don't think it's ok here. This is a significant buff to BD.

Zeus Crabe is self-synergetic role-transitioning movetype-changer of above 100% cost change.

Mace Grizzly is role-transitioning movetype-changer of above 100% cost change.

Bonus points worth noting (that is, things i liked)

Swift morphs make sense to me.
Submarine morphs make sense even while being role-changing and over 2x cost.
Firewalker to Catapult is one of the few transitions that are clean of any malus points (not movedef change; no role change; weight change within bounds)

Other notes
This graph requires disarming and paralyzing units to be capable of gaining experience from inflicting damage. Expect resistance, or be ready to get dirty with code.

Suggestions
Start small. The specification requirement that morphs should be more or less evenly distributed across factories does not mandate that there are a lot of them. Get rid of as many problematic ones as possible, and retain only the purest. This will maximize your chances of acceptance, and from that point you can work further.

That is advice.

Also: Dominatrix is not in this graph! Any graph without Domi has no purpose!

That was a joke.

I'm not sure how I feel about a large number of morphs. Hell, I'm not sure how I feel about morphs at all; but for the sake of argument I took a crack at a simple system of morphs (no strider, air, gunship or cross-factory morphs):

[Spoiler]

I feel it retains at least some of the "coolness factor" of being able to morph your successful raiders into something useful while mostly not being a balance problem. I'm mostly offering this as an alternative for the sake of discussion.

Aquanim has posted the most reasonable morph system I have seen yet. It's streamlined, consistent, and allows that single key for morph.

panthers do quickly look bad in the face of turret spam or anything that actually can catch them. so spamming reapers directly will over the long run still be better. the morph options just helps to a) make the transition to reapers b) recycle panthers in later stages.

otherwise, i dont see a reason to cut the tree so massively other than the ui, but the benefit of having units morph into different things outweighs suboptimal ui implemnetation imo.

its a good reason not to add any morph, because every possible morph will counter something. and it will likely be something that the base unit doesnt counter. zeuses counter defender spam too, warriors dont. halberds counter defender spam, daggers dont. the list goes on.

your second point is also applicable to pretty much any morph. the fact of the matter is that tanks suffer harder from the problem of bad choices, because their units are very expensive, and panthers in particular suffer harder from beeing outdated, because they have this glass-cannon winner-takes-it-all mechanic.

this goes a bit into the general design of the tank fac, which has to rely on panther monospam anyway because their "riot" is unaffordable.