Dec 22nd 2010, 17:46:57
The current design of research alliances might be intentional and make sense for clan/team play on the non-individual servers where FA is allowed. A clan can significantly help their casher/farmer netgainers by allowing them to leech tech from their techers. THIS OKAY AND NOT A PROBLEM.
I'm less concerned with people getting screwed over by leechers than I am with leechers benefiting, perhaps intentionally benefiting from illegal collusion on individual servers. This issue has inspired at least one player to cheat at Express.
The current design of research alliances benefits 1) techers, 2) leechers, 3) any strat involving a tech phase. Straight indies, farmers, oilers (lol), and cashers do contribute to research alliances and can only leech.
Basing the amount of tech obtained via research alliances off of TPT or labs/land ratio would fix the issue of countries getting FA via leeching tech and would benefit techers. However, it would not drastically decrease the number of tech points in the game as would eliminating the production of new tech points via alliances. A decrease in supply would help techers in Express immensely as it's currently difficult to get tech points to sell, much less sell at a decent price. Supply would go down, prices would go up. Techers would get a more consistent income balanced by having fewer points to sell. Everyone else would pay more for tech but get a boost in tech effectiveness from their research allies. Sharing a portion of tech among allies would allow all strategies to take advantage of research alliances in a way that always benefits both parties.
The one thing that I didn't fully consider is that this would be a small nerf to Commies since everyone else would get a boost in tech effectiveness.
I'm less concerned with people getting screwed over by leechers than I am with leechers benefiting, perhaps intentionally benefiting from illegal collusion on individual servers. This issue has inspired at least one player to cheat at Express.
The current design of research alliances benefits 1) techers, 2) leechers, 3) any strat involving a tech phase. Straight indies, farmers, oilers (lol), and cashers do contribute to research alliances and can only leech.
Basing the amount of tech obtained via research alliances off of TPT or labs/land ratio would fix the issue of countries getting FA via leeching tech and would benefit techers. However, it would not drastically decrease the number of tech points in the game as would eliminating the production of new tech points via alliances. A decrease in supply would help techers in Express immensely as it's currently difficult to get tech points to sell, much less sell at a decent price. Supply would go down, prices would go up. Techers would get a more consistent income balanced by having fewer points to sell. Everyone else would pay more for tech but get a boost in tech effectiveness from their research allies. Sharing a portion of tech among allies would allow all strategies to take advantage of research alliances in a way that always benefits both parties.
The one thing that I didn't fully consider is that this would be a small nerf to Commies since everyone else would get a boost in tech effectiveness.
FoG