How should buildings be constructed? Does building take time or do structures spawn instantly? Do you need to stay close to the structure being constructed? Can you speed up the building process somehow? Should there be a timer that limits the rate in which a player/team can spawn buildings? Should building differ between the teams?

The question how buildings should be payed for belongs in a separate thread.

Unvanquished is a game that features very dissimilar teams and I see no reason to let them construct structures in the same way. However, in order to balance building there should be some shared constraints which I colored in my proposition:

Alien Building (Pretty much a summary of how it worked in Tremulous)

• Grangers can plant a structure seed that grows to full size and starts to be operational without further action by the player. A building in construction can already be destroyed.

• If constructing the building has a price it is paid instantly.

• A single granger has to wait until a timer experies before it can build again but there's no team-wide timer that limits the rate at which aliens can build structers so a higher number of grangers can construct a base more quickly.

Human Building

• Humans can carry a construction kit. (This does not imply that they can't simultaneously carry a weapon.)

• Humans can designate buildings for construction at any rate. The building shows up to every player as some form of preview (like the ghostly glow in Tremulous) but isn't yet functional. The building can already be destroyed.

• If constructing the building has a price it is paid instantly.

• Humans hwo have a construciton kit equipped can stand next to a building and focus it in order to advance its construction.

• The construction rate of a building increases with the number of construction kits pointed at it, so a higher number of human builders can constrcut a base more quickly. The relation can be either linear or described by a sigmoid function in order to enforce a maximum rate even with a very high number of players. (We should try linear first.)

• If a structure designated for construction isn't worked on in a while it starts to deconstruct with a fixed rate and disappears eventually. The full price of the building (if it had one) is returned in that case.

As you can see, two constraints are different between the teams: Grangers can't focus on building another more important structure while their build timer is active while humans can't go away from the building they want to construct (but can focus on another building if they like).

EDIT 1
This proposition allows the following optional gameplay element (thanks to Cadynum for inspiring this idea):

• While humans can exchange their weapon for a big construction kit as in Tremulous, give them a smaller construction kit in addition - either as a (buyable) replacement for the blaster or simply as an additional item you get on spawn. The smaller ckit can designate any building for construction but constructs significantly slower than the big ckit.

Sounds good Viech, I was going to suggest something similar. Your suggestion is in line with many other RTS games.

I'd like to add that repairing a damaged structure should be less costly than rebuilding one from scratch. It might be a good idea to punish poorly thought out building by *not giving back the full amount of resources when you deconstruct buildings. Another idea would be to allow buildings to be moved instead of deconstructed. Rearranging a base should be faster than rebuilding a base. At least in the case of the humans.

#edit: * My reasoning behind this is that rebuilding structures takes time, time that could otherwise have been spent playing the game against your opponents. That time is taken from the people you play with. There should be every incentive to get on with playing the game, not just sit around in the base optimizing stuff.

I've been thinking about the way buildables are built as well. At first I was against forcing builders to stand near their buildables because doing this will make building more boring as one cannot do anything else while building, making builders extremely vulnerable and force a whole lot of teamwork, even during public games, but I dislike the idea of a build timer when using resources (which I believe is the optimal system for building costs in Unvanquished). This is an idea worth play testing.

janev wrote:

I'd like to add that repairing a damaged structure should be less costly than rebuilding one from scratch.

Reparing isn't covered by this thread but I agree that buildings should be either reparable or self reparing (or both) and that active reparing should be noticeable faster than rebuilding (read: moving the damaged structure to the same position).

janev wrote:

It might be a good idea to punish poorly thought out building by *not giving back the full amount of resources when you deconstruct buildings.

I had this idea, too, and proposed that there should be a (freely configurable) refund ratio in [0,1]. However, Norfenstein convinced me that the (default) value should be 1.

norfenstein wrote:

Build point refunds - I know this is fairly common in strategy games, but I dislike partial refunds for moving or replacing structures. I would much rather there be no extra punishment for misplacing a structure (if it's misplaced you're already suffering from it not being optimally effective, and will have to waste time building another structure), or simply a time penalty for deconstruction.

janev wrote:

Another idea would be to allow buildings to be moved instead of deconstructed. Rearranging a base should be faster than rebuilding a base. At least in the case of the humans.

I don't think there should be any non-obvious differences between deconstructing and mark-and-rebuild-moving (in particular the latter shouldn't be any faster). But if you're talking about picking up a structure with your hands and slowly hauling it to a close place that sounds like a nice feature to have.

Ishq wrote:

At first I was against this because doing this will make building more boring as one cannot do anything else while building, making builders extremely vulnerable and force a whole lot of teamwork, even during public games

Human builders in Tremulous were extremly vulnerable even though they could step back and draw their blaster while the building constructed automatically. I can imagine giving the Unvanquished builder a more powerful sidearm weapon and thus limited abilities to defend himself on his way to a building site. It should be weaker (and smaller in size) than the rifle but strong enough to kill an incautious dretch. That weapon could be available as a general (buyable) replacement for the blaster that both builders and offenders can buy. I'm thinking about a blaster with less damage, auto fire, a significantly higher fire rate and slightly faster projectiles.

Viech wrote:

That weapon could be available as a general (buyable) replacement for the blaster that both builders and offenders can buy.

‘Offenders’? Are we talking civil or criminal? :)

Anomalous wrote:

‘Offenders’? Are we talking civil or criminal? :)

Hush! My randomly generated Rep Power is so much higher than yours you shouldn't be making fun of my wording! :p

The blaster is a very viable weapon against a dretch. Remember, it only takes 3 shots to kill. Even a basi should be wary of a skilled blaster wielder.

Viech wrote:

randomly generated Rep Power

Remember, Unvanquished is a meritocracy. Rep power is given out based purely on personal talent and/or the degree of demonstrated vigilance.

On-topic: I think it would make sense to allow aliens to make buildables heal themselves faster than the regular regen speed. Perhaps, give the granger a healing (speed-up) aura that affects only buildings and cannot be stacked. Opinions?

Offtopic: lol Qrntz

On topic: Accelerated healing for aliens, should it be implemented, should not be free for structures. Further, i think it would be more interesting if there existed a structure which provided this accelerated healing facility as opposed to a player.