A "No Commie" Lobby Road Map

[keithharvey]

Resource & Unit Sharing Roadmap: The Why

The current sharing system suffers from two extremes that don't match how players actually want to play:

Current Problems

1. All-or-nothing sharing restrictions: When enabled, these prevent essential team cooperation. Taxation hampers T2 tech progression, frustrating players who rely on role specialization (like having one player focus on tech).

2. Informal workarounds: In "OP lobbies," players use unreliable handshake agreements and lobby names to enforce "no commie" game play (commonly understood as "no boosting except for T2 constructors"). These informal rules are frequently misunderstood or broken.

Proposed "No Commie" Defaults

• you can still transfer t2 constructors
• you can still send tech (or anyone) up to 440 metal
• resource sharing tax of 40% (0.4)
• disable assist ally construction
• unit market disabled (until performance problems are sorted out)

Tasks

Phase 1

Introduce options to match community expectations:

• unlink resource sharing tax and disable unit sharing
• (Waiting on Design) Disable Unit Sharing except for T2 Constructor Sharing
• (Waiting on Design) fix /take when disabling unit sharing (for both disabled and t2cons only)
• (Waiting on Design) metal send threshold
• "Restrict Sharing" button or command in Chobby to quickly set the dev team suggested defaults for sharing/taxation

Phase 2

Community experimentation period with new options. Investigate unit market performance.

• Investigate and resolve any Unit Market Performance

Phase 3

Respond to community experimentation:

Possibilities:

• Enable the unit market by default
• Lower the default metal share threshold to 0

[keithharvey]

Proposed community polling (probably best in discord's #coop-problem):

/poll question:What's your opinion on ONLY allowing T2 constructors to be shared between teammates (while disabling sharing of other units)?
- Perfect as proposed (only T2 constructors can be shared)
- Allow sharing of ALL constructor types (T1 & T2)
- Also allow sharing of additional specific units (Commanders, etc.)
- No unit sharing restrictions should exist at all
- Keep current all-or-nothing system

/poll question:What do you think about the proposed suggested 40% (0.4) resource sharing tax?
- 40% tax is good
- Tax should be lower (below 40%)
- Tax should be higher (above 40%)
- No tax needed (0%)
- Resource sharing shouldn't be allowed at all

/poll question:Regarding the proposed 440 metal send threshold (allows small metal transfers like purchasing T2 constructors from tech tax-free, prevents large-scale boosting, amounts above are taxed at normal rate):
- 440 is a good threshold (enough for T2 tech)
- The threshold should be lower (below 440)
- The threshold should be higher (above 440)
- No threshold needed (all transfers taxed normally)
- Metal sending shouldn't be allowed at all

/poll question:Overall, regarding these "No Commie" defaults:
- These specific defaults are perfect (T2 cons only, 440 metal threshold, 40% tax, no lab/blueprint assist)
- Sharing restrictions are needed but with different defaults
- No sharing restrictions should exist at all
- Keep the current all-or-nothing system
- Only implement some of these changes (specify in comments)

[WilliamPas]

Rejected by the GDT: This is counter to our desired game design, we want to address co-op issues via balance rather than arbitrary restrictions.

[drivver44]

im going to assume that this should be reopened
@keithharvey

[sprunk]

relevant #5649

[keithharvey]

This is articulated more completely here (and implemented): beyond-all-reason/BYAR-Chobby#1040