Remember that the details of IDEAL production vs. lower or increased production are tools you may use to balance the game after it works ... if you just set the code up where you can benifit or penalize each buildings production, if you need to ... then you can try many things out in beta test ...

For example .. is a plant with 1/3 power really 1/3 of a plant ... or is it 1/4, 1/6 or even 1/2 of a plant ...

One really cool balancing effect I''ve seen, is to have a sweet spot are ... like say 0-30% power, you get no production, between 30-80% power you get linear production increases, and then for 80-100% power, you get LESS extra production per power point ... so when the player doubles his power from 30% to 60%, he gets double production ... but when he adds that much again .. he gets slightly less benifit ... and if he added it again .. he''d get nearly none (but be safe from loosing a few plants).

This lets a player behind, catch up slightly easier, but still gives the ahead player a defensive advantage ...

Wow, there are a lot of good ideas here! Here's my newest plan based on many suggestions:

Players can, if they choose, place a devices on any buildings that they decided should be the first buildings to go out. If the power plant is still overloaded with all of the user specifies buildings automatically turned off, brown outs occur at random buildings. If a brown out occurs, it, based on the ratio between the amount of energy it needs and the amount it actually gets, will have some form of reduced production time.

I'm still kinda having trouble trying to figure out how to implement some of it, but I don't think that that kinda thing belongs on here... besides, by the time I posted the problem and somebody posted the answer, I'd prolly already have it figured out...

Thanx for all of the input!

Dwiel

Edit: Spelling

[edited by - Tazzel3d on March 21, 2003 12:27:06 PM]