using the ANT to collect resources

[Vanir]

Originally Posted by basti

There are two problems:

1. It would FORCE people to do it.
2. It needs to be repated forever, and always. While there are people that enjoy just driving around, you would end up relying on them. Without them, the entire ressource economy fails.

But the basic idea got me an idea. What about random chunks of ressources pooping up every now and then, that can be collected via ANT, and need to be transported to the nearest base/A sepecifc base/the home base.

Gotta think that one through, will take a few hours.

Each empire will gain resources at a steady rate, depending on how much resources they control. What the ANT could do is is add a bonus to the total amount of resources gained. No one has to do it as resources are already being earned automaticlly, but say someone who is a little tired of combat and wants to do something to help their empire along. Can get into an ANT and try to "harvest/collect" resources in a contested area or sneak into enemy territory and mayby steal some resources from the enemy's resource pool, or divert the resources that are being collected by the enemy from a area into the ANT untill the ANT is full and the ANT will now try to get back and deliver those "bonus" resources to the empires collective pool.

Edit: If there is no empire common pool, and resouces collect go directly to the players. Then the ANT "bonus" can be distributed evenly amongst the players.

[MrSmegz]

Originally Posted by basti

There are two problems:

1. It would FORCE people to do it.
2. It needs to be repated forever, and always. While there are people that enjoy just driving around, you would end up relying on them. Without them, the entire ressource economy fails.

But the basic idea got me an idea. What about random chunks of ressources pooping up every now and then, that can be collected via ANT, and need to be transported to the nearest base/A sepecifc base/the home base.

Gotta think that one through, will take a few hours.

I like this idea too. I think it would work as a partial solution to the whole "rich getting richer" situation heavily discussed here. If you are the Down empire, you need to put together guerrilla style missions into enemy faction territory get more. PLUS, this will create battles in what is generally secure area, utilizing more of the map, something Higby and pals are very fond of.

[Furret]

I'm thinking of this as a sort of merging of all the previous ideas, with a little of my own touch.

Let's say that once an hour (arbitrary amount of time) a deposit of resources shows up in relatively uncontested territory (perhaps its in an NC hex, but its along the NC/TR border of the hex; not near any base or tower). As soon as this resource node is discovered, each empire calls down an 'ANT' at the nearest base. The ANT just sits there if nobody is controlling it (not AI), and is called back up if the resources are taken and captured by another empire. The goal would be to have squads quickly assemble and race/defend their ANT to the resources while slowing down the other empire's ANTs. Even once the ANT gets to the resources and picks them up, they still have to protect the ANT all the way back to the base.

To make sure these don't go on forever the resources can have a half life of say 20 minutes (another arbitrary amount) and are also depleted some when the ANT carrying them is destroyed. Another ANT is then called down where the original ANT landed. This would turn resource collection into a sort of convoy mission.

I'm imagining this to be a 5-20 man mission which happens often enough that there could be small outfits completely dedicated to running resources and destroying other empire's convoys. The resource nodes should yield enough that it's definitely worth the manpower, but if too many people are taken out of the fight, the loss of territory will lose more resources than are gained in the ANT run.

Example
One node appears per hour, and yields 1000 auraxium.
Holding a hex yields 1 auraxium every second (60 per minute, 3600 per hour).

With this method, capturing a node would very likely not be worth the loss of a hex, so if your empire needs to defend a hex, it would be better to defend the hex rather than to gather the resources and say 'screw the base'.