Cost of production in Strategy games

[dbest]

I was thinking of a game design for a strategy game and was wondering about how to factor cost of buildings, units, etc. across levels.

A player can reach the next level by performing certain tasks. At each level the output of a building, unit increases...
For instance:
Level 1 - Factory costs 40 gold to produce, it produces 20 units of machine per minute.
Level 2 - Factory costs ?? gold to produce, it produces 40 units of machine per minute.

Should the cost of Factory be higher or lower at Level 2?

[Nox]

Since it's dependant on level of player and not factory, then...

Given these are ALL related stats then it should be a little less (related to production).... so I'd say 79-75, depends on number of levels/speed of leveling etc.
There isn't actually a solid reason to modify both other than visual ... it could be 75/40 or 37.5/20, would be the same

However with other things to consider it would become more tricky

Say we have maximum build area -> then cost/production 10000/5000 is overall much much better than 40/20 provided area for factory stays the same, if not, then yea again more difficult

So whatever stat you're talking about - imho overall if it's dependant on player's level than it imho should be a little more efficient

In other games the cost raises exponentially, but it's dependant on the level of building and player has an option to build another one on lower level
Should we implement rising cost/performance, it would be disadvantage to level up

[Sinzygy]

what do you mean by "Factory costs 40 gold to produce"? Is this some sort of upkeep you continually pay while the Factory is making machines for you, or is it the upgrade-cost you only pay once?

One formula I've seen used quite a bit in popular building/resource management games is something along the line of

Code: [Select]

int production_at_level(int current_level) {
    return 30*current_level*pow(1.1, current_level);
}
this means that with each level, the building produces a standard amount of a given resource(30*current_level is linear), but is increased by 10% each level.

For upkeep(cost) you can use the same formula, but with different values... let's say 10 instead of 30.

This gives the following table:

Level	Cost	Production
1	33	11
15	627	1879
30	4601	13800

[Chris]

Nox, he meant cost of producing/purchasing the factory (means to increase production capacity), not cost of producing 1 unit of goods.

The factory cost can be constant or higher. It should NEVER be lower gameplay wise. The purpose of inflating the cost to efficieny ratio in further levels is to avoid making high level (snowball effect). Imagine that a factory is making more factories, without inflated cost soon you would be producing millions per second If your game do not suffer from accumulated goods you might go for constant (like when factory is making spies). Also, you need to take note on your production increasing capabilities (gold inflation). If your gold per hour can rise during gameplay then you want (actually have to) make higher costs of higher levels.

Short answer, make everything constant, launch the game, then fix the cost if/when broken.

[Nox]

I know... but inflating costs based on a player's level and not on factory's level doesn't feel right to me
As I said - in the common mechanics when you have high level buldings you can also choose to build weaker one with a more pleasant cost/production curve+other buildings and "colonies" are not affected, but here should you level up then all the options everywhere only get worse?
This way I think you'll very quickly run out of options

Not talking about 'the higher level I am, the worse factories I am able to produce' weirdness which could be just ignored for the sake of balance
(in building-leved based system is 'the higher level the factory is, the more difficult is to enhance it' which is ok)

But starting constant and then adjusting seems reasonable

[Chris]

Player's level? In strategy not RPG? I think such concept to exists in strategy game would be very weird...

dbest, I think you should make clarification of your question, it can be interpreted more than one way.

Anyway, my answer above is assuming that factory level is increased/upgraded.

[dsheroh]

Player's level? In strategy not RPG? I think such concept to exists in strategy game would be very weird...

It's not that uncommon to have some kind of "the more battles you've won (or the more enemy units your army has killed), the more new units and/or special abilities are unlocked" mechanic in strategy games.  They may not call it a "level" and the way you get there might not be called "experience points", but it's basically the same thing.

There is also a branch of strategy gaming which is sort of a RPG/strategy hybrid, in that they are primarily strategy games, but you have a "commander"/"hero" avatar on the battlefield who gains RPG-style XP/levels as the game progresses.

[Chris]

It's not that uncommon to have some kind of "the more battles you've won (or the more enemy units your army has killed), the more new units and/or special abilities are unlocked" mechanic in strategy games.  They may not call it a "level" and the way you get there might not be called "experience points", but it's basically the same thing.

It's called disagreeing for the sake of disagreeing I know you can prove *anything* and you can always find some small tiny exception. But speaking reasonably, no, it is not the same thing as character level in RPG

sort of a RPG/strategy hybrid

Strategy/RPG hybrid and strategy are two completely different things. He asked for solution for strategy, not for a hybrid.

If we start deliberating on semantics and invent some exceptions and rare possibilities that could exists in some cases we will never reach any conclusion in any discussion and no problem will be solved then

[JGadrow]

There is no exact answer to this question. It depends very much upon your game and the balance that you're looking to achieve.

If you're allowed to create multiple low-level buildings, the cost of an upgrade should be equal to or less than making a level 1 version of the building. Otherwise, there is never a reason to perform the upgrade unless you've also limited the "space" available for buildings and upgrading is the only path available.

Once that has been decided (I'm going to assume that players can never build a new building once it's built, only upgrade), you make the cost proportionate to how you want to see the players' incomes grow.

Do you want a game where the "machines" are a fairly uncommon resource? Do an exponential increase:
20 ^ level.

This would result in:
Level 2 = 400
Level 3 = 8000
Level 4 = 160000
Level 5 = 3200000
etc.

If you want them to be very uncommon, a simple linear increase could suffice: 20 + level * 20.

This would result in:
Level 2 = 40
Level 3 = 60
Level 4 = 80
Level 5 = 100
etc.

It's all about how much value you want each of your resources (or the output of the building) to have in your game world.

[dbest]

Sorry for not being very clear in my earlier email. I will try to explain it a bit more:

In my game, a level = era or technology stage that the player reaches.
A player has to reach the 5th level to win the game or to gain access to better units, etc.
At level 1, the "Factory" produces lower units than at Level 2. However I would like to vary the cost of building the same Factory across levels. There is just a cost of building/creating and no cost for upkeep.

@Nox - "Should we implement rising cost/performance, it would be disadvantage to level up"
That is my main concern, how to remove this disadvantage.

Also, if a player reaches Level 2, he cannot build a factory of Level 1,... but only of Level 2.

@Sinzygy - I like the formula and will try to implement it in my game.

@Chris - The issues that I am currently confused between the point raised by Nox and your point..Lower or Higher at each level. But as you said, it makes more sense that the cost is either higher or constant.

@JGadrow - the output of the factory will increase by 10% across each level, but the player has the option to further increase it by customizing it. However it is the cost of creating that factory, I am more concerned about.

Also, thanks to all for responding and I apologize for not being very clear in my first post. If in case I have still not explained my query, just let me know.

[Chris]

"win the game"? So, you are not making MMO?

If you have ages like in AgeOfEmpires and you have only 5 then I would not touch the building cost. Actually, I would discard multiple levels of the same building as well. More sense is to add more buildings (new resources per age and more buildings to process them).

Age 1: start with clay, wood, stone
Age 2: add brick manufacturer to make clay pits more effective
Age 3: iron = weapons
Age 4: iron + coal = weapons
Age 5: iron + coal = steel, steel = weapons when processed in some factory

[dbest]

Na, am not making an MMO... [i wish i had clarified that first... and i didn't realize that MMOs are not winnable. ]

Ages is the exact concept I was aiming at...[again wish I had clarified that first]

I am working on a simple RTS, wherein we have only a single resource (water) to be processed.. So everything requires that single resource. I guess that makes it tough to balance but that's exactly what I am trying to do.

So maybe the best way to go about this is to keep the build cost constant, and just the production rate increases across levels?

[jannesiera]

Euh... just out of curiosity, would you mind explaining how your game will rely on only one source? That seems quite uninteresting for a strategy game to me... so I wonder how you see that.

[Harkins]

Euh... just out of curiosity, would you mind explaining how your game will rely on only one source? That seems quite uninteresting for a strategy game to me... so I wonder how you see that.

Works OK for games like WeeWar and Advance Wars, though those are TBS rather than RTS. It shifts the game to be more about movement, unit tactics, and build order than resource collection and management.

[dbest]

I have seen two sides of reasoning for how people wish strategy games are handled. One that wish to have extensive resource management and one that has less of it. I have chosen the latter.

I believe Starcraft did a fantastic job of using a single resource.

[Nox]

SC has 2, resp. 3 resources ... can't think of single-resource game right now

[JGadrow]

The only one I can think of was Command & Conquer. But even that had power in addition to Tiberium which I think counts as a resource.

[dbest]

Sorry, I meant CnC as rightly mentioned by JGadrow. Anywayz, that is the path I am trying to follow for now. Maybe I might have to add a few more resources, but that would mean a complete re-write of the design.

[dsheroh]

@Nox - "Should we implement rising cost/performance, it would be disadvantage to level up"
That is my main concern, how to remove this disadvantage.

It seems like an obvious answer to me, but:  The way to avoid making it a disadvantage to level up is to increase performance faster than cost, so that the cost/performance ratio decreases.  A tank may cost as much as 100 archers, but it's more than 100 times as effective, so you'd rather have the higher level and be able to build one tank instead of 100 archers, despite the cost.

SC has 2, resp. 3 resources ... can't think of single-resource game right now

There are a ton of them with a single resource called "gold" or "money" or (less frequently) "points".  The first that comes to mind would be the Total War series.

[jannesiera]

Like Harkins mentioned: Weewar and Advance Wars are TBS games. Where the focus is less on managing an economy but on unit movement. The same goes for the Total Wars series.

I was wondering about how one resource managing would be interesting in an RTS because usualy unit movement is less of a gameplay element (since it's fast paced). I'm certainly not saying that it can't be fun I was just wondering how you make it fun. Since I never played Command & Conquer I can't really rely on that as a source of information.

Can you explain the game design choice you made? Or why exactly you made that choice?

[dsheroh]

Like Harkins mentioned: Weewar and Advance Wars are TBS games. Where the focus is less on managing an economy but on unit movement. The same goes for the Total Wars series.

Fair enough; I was just thinking strategy in general rather than RTS specifically.

However...  I think an argument could be made that the Command & Conquer series, Dawn of War series, and Total Annihilation/Supreme Commander series are single-resource.  Although all three are superficially two-resource games, the second resource is "energy" which is limited solely by your ability to construct energy-producing structures, which allows you to gain effectively unlimited energy if you choose to spend your resources that way.

• In C&C, you gather tiberium for money, then spend the money on power plants.  Also noteworthy is that power is never "spent" for anything, it just provides an upper limit on the number and type of other buildings you can construct.  In this sense, power in C&C behaves more like a unit-producing building (having it allows you to build more, but you can lose that ability if the building gets destroyed) rather than a consumable resource.
• In DOW, you gain requisition by controlling key points on the map and spend the requisition to build reactors.  The number of reactors you can build is capped based on the number of command centers you have built; if power is a resource, does this also make command centers a resource?  Both are structures you build which then allow other things to be built, after all.
• TA/SupCom take this to the even greater extreme of becoming no-resource (or, more accurately, "time is the only resource", but we're not counting time as a resource anywhere else) in the late game, when you're able to build as many fusion reactors and metal makers as you like, limited solely by land to build on, time for construction, and the max unit cap.

[Nox]

@dsheroh
DoW/DoW2 actually is 2-resource system (unless you play necrons) as the reactors are not resource but they produced energy, which is a normal resource ... so usage-wise it's equal to SC... requisiotion=mineral, energy=gas
Good thing about DoW is that it shifted the resource points from your base to battlefield so you need to really fight for controlling it
DoW2 also shifted energy to special points too so generator bashing/defending is one of key tactics

@Jannesiera
You simply focus on gameplay and mechanics related to managing units and put eco to background

The thing DoW2 did (as an example) - they removed almost all buildings, you have HQ for purchasing all (except summonable) units and then you have generators and turrets etc. and that's it, requisition and power points are part of battlefield
...so there's not much point in staring at your base at your one building, you rather focus on moving units, positioning, using abilities etc.

[dbest]

I was wondering about how one resource managing would be interesting in an RTS because usualy unit movement is less of a gameplay element (since it's fast paced). I'm certainly not saying that it can't be fun I was just wondering how you make it fun. Since I never played Command & Conquer I can't really rely on that as a source of information.

Can you explain the game design choice you made? Or why exactly you made that choice?

I made the choice coz of keeping the game simple and not getting the player bogged down with too many resources to collect.

How I hope to make it fun is by:
- Focusing on different upgrades to customize the army
- Using Morale as a factor in judging battles
- Balancing the number of units a player can manage at a time
- Effective use of the Hero concept

I would admit that I could do the same with multiple resources, but I prefer going down the single resource path.

[Nox]

Seems pretty good

I think 2-3 clearly defined resources are managable without too much focus on economy, but single-resource game are obviously okey (see dsheroh's post)

I can even imagine purely zero-resource strategy game (strategic != economic), similarly as dsheroh mentioned with time being an essential thing ... probably maybe even without time, using some capture mechanic

[dbest]

Could you briefly explain a bit more about "capture mechanic"?