Respawning Balance

Squeetus

One thing I've noticed throughout my invasion games is that as soon as I lose a single unit (or more) to a wave of enemies, the entire game begins to spiral out of control. This is because respawning a unit takes the same amount of time/wisps as spawning a new one. I think it's worth discussing the balance of this mechanic.

Do you think the game should be that punishing or is there room to tweak the respawn cost?

Shatojon

Hey Squeetus, there's definitely always room for improvement. Can you elaborate on "spiral out of control"? What are the consequences you've observed from losing a unit?

Squeetus

It's a little hard to quantify due to the overlap with the performance issues with later waves.

In general, it seems like each wave of enemies becomes more difficult at an approximately linear rate, so an 'optimal' defense strategy necessitates a similar increase in damage output (assuming a reasonable building strategy - one cannot wall off entirely, but must instead engage the enemy units in some way).

Losing even one unit during a wave of enemies means you will always, for the rest of the game, be one unit's worth of time/wisps behind an 'optimal' defense without any way of catching back up. In fact, losing a single unit is often enough to make me lose within a couple waves, as I am increasingly unable to mitigate the damage the corruptrons cause to my units and my buildings.

In addition, if the lost unit happens to be a worker, not only do I lose one worker's worth of construction/repair/resource collection, but I am doubly hindered behind because I now cannot spawn an additional archer or warrior to bolster my damage output (because the lost units are prioritized for respawn).

Long story short, I am not wholly convinced that this mechanic is imbalanced - I don't dislike the idea of being as optimal as possible and being punished for losing a unit due to miscontrol, sub-optimal building strategy, or unit placement. However, with the drastically decreasing performance issues as the number of waves increase, I cannot continue to build or micro at a rate that matches the increase in strength of successive waves, and the game 'spirals out of control.'

Hope that helps - please let me know if there are any other thoughts or details I can provide! Cheers.

Shatojon

Thanks Squeetus, I'll forward this to our designer.