I don't know if this currently happens, but occasional random blooms to keep spice available somewhere on the map would be nice.
It's pretty tedious when BOTH bases are out of funds and you've got the last four vehicles cleaning out towers with no capacity for repair or replacement, at risk of a stalemate.
That's true and was a real problem in Dune II. The only way out was using the palace weapons but this takes time. Currently no mechanism to prevent this problem is implemented cause it is not yet clear how to make this balanced. Where shall the spice bloom appear? Shall it only happen if there is no spice at all on the map?
> Where shall the spice bloom appear?
Random unoccupied patch of sand. Though AI might be unable to benefit if it doesn't know how to pop 'em other than by accidently driving through.
> Shall it only happen if there is no spice at all on the map?
Typical harvesting rates should outpace blooming. So it'd only be worth fighting over those meager short-lived patches when the normal fields are exhausted.
You wouldn't want blooms to happen from the beginning, or they'd build up while players are still tackling the normal fields, which'd be like starting out with more orange sand.
> The only way out was using the palace weapons but this takes time.
Another way I just found (playing Legacy) is to blow up enemy harvestors as soon as they start collecting. They paint surrounding sand orange as they explode. ; )
> blow up enemy harvestors as soon as they start collecting
You could probably marginally profit off your own if more spice appears than it cost to replace each harvester.
> You could probably marginally profit off your own if more spice appears than it cost to replace each harvester.
No. That will not work. When a harvester is destroyed, 25% of it's collected spice gets ultimately lost. And the remaining 75% of spice is spread on the surrounding sand tiles.
But there exists a way to get credits from "nowhere". Destroy all your harvester. After the last one was destroyed it will get replaced by a new one with 5 credits in it. I think this is the same behavior as in D2.
> That will not work. When a harvester is destroyed, ...
> the remaining 75% of spice is spread on the surrounding sand tiles.
So the AI kept getting 5-cred pity harvesters, which I blew up about a second after it dropped in the field, and the surrounding sand spaces only got maybe 1 credit infused?
*Loads a saved game and tries harvesting my artificial field*
*Wimpers as my harvester clears the area in no time*
> So the AI kept getting 5-cred pity harvesters, which I blew up about a second after it dropped in the field, and the surrounding sand spaces only got maybe 1 credit infused?
No. The new harvester is brought to the refinery first where the 5 credits are extracted (takes approx. 1 second). Thus the AI got 5 credits every time you destroyed the harvester. It is then brought to the spice field where it starts harvesting. Then if you destroy it you get back 75% of the harvested spice.
IMO, there is no need to respawn the spice bloom!
The whole idea about dune is actually to race in harvesting spice. With limited spice will encourage aggressive spice harvesting.
> With limited spice will encourage aggressive spice harvesting.
Er. Exactly. Respawning small blooms would maintain a persistent scavenger hunt for a limited resource to fight over. When the spice stops altogether, it's the opposite of aggressive.
Another method was to kill sand worms in D2, but this was tedious.
If it was up to me, I'd implement it as very small patches of spice turning up at any random place on the map, but only when all other spice patches have run out.
And this feature should definitely be a game option.
And I'm sure some would like to play a game with endless spice too, with a large amount of blooms popping up every now and then to replace old ones.
Some backstory: There's a connection between the sand worms and spice, therefore some believe that it may be the sand worms that excrete spice.
If this were true, the spice would likely grow and increase around the central habitats of worms.
Last edit: Nabeel Sowan 2013-11-16
Killing sandworms in DL is good enough, however had to do some rebalancing:
1) Made the spice field much larger, random radius between 4-8
2) The worm spawns spice ONLY if there is no spice left on the map (ie harvesters dont wander towards new fields anymore), to prevent worm farming with turrets at spawn point early in game.
This is all hardcoded, rebalancing factor is now worms HP. With HP lowered to 300 or so, even the AI will farm sandworms inadvertently, simply by having good chance of killing it near spawn point.
This leads to new strategy of "capture the worm in a turret trap", which is imo consistent with rest of the Dune universe :)
For anyone interested:
https://github.com/katlogic/dunelegacy/commit/dc52a58ab60d25dfc825ed7e69e65a73fc409b77
(the fork contains numerous game rebalances in similiar tune, along with hotkey/ui enchancements..)