Cortium Stat Padding

If you are having trouble finding the 35,000 pond stacks of Cortium lately, let me tell you why. Players in ANT's are driving around looking for them collecting Cortium along the way, until their ANT is full and then searching the continent for the large 35,000 pound stack.

Once found, they place a silo next to the 35,000 stack and simply mine and deposit it into the silo they never intend to use for building a base. Then they move on to new stacks and repeat. Which explains why we are seeing silos all over the place with no bases being built around them.

This is called Cortium stat padding for XP and it can pay pretty darn well at times. While this action is not illegal, it does not honor the intent of the game which makes it harder for real base builders to accomplish their goal.

Developers Solution: No deploy zones in areas where Cortium grows, minimum time limits between mining and making a deposit into a silo, or simply reducing the amount ox XP for Cortium mining and silo deposits so it is simply not worth their time. TRUE builders don't do it for the XP anyway!

I'm not defending this, I barely use an Ant never mind constructing anything. But surely in a real war, denying the enemy access to resources is a valid and very oft-used strategy?

A valid tactic I reckon.

While I see your point, the way to deny the enemy Victory Points is to destroy their base taking their points for your own faction, not by keeping the enemy from building one in the first place.

That works if you harvest the resources the enemy needs, yes.

But it sounds like they harvest (and waste) everything.
Imagine playing C&C. For some reason half of your harvesters don't drive to the refinery, but instead dump the tiberium into the next crevice or river and continue harvesting.
Thats how I imagine the problem right now.

Very simple solution here: Abandoned Silos can have their Cortium leeched by both allied and enemy ANTs. What constitutes a Silo to be abandoned could be based off of it's influence, if there are less than X amount of constructs around it(Within reason for a newbie base to be permitted as non-abandoned) then it can be stolen from... this is also on a timer so of course if you place the Silo first you're not instantly getting resources taken from you.

I think JKomm's solution would only open up a host of new and yet undiscovered problems prompting unfounded accusations of theft and infaction fighting.

Can't "steal" if the Silo doesn't meet the time and lack-of-construction requirements. Say you build a Silo, you have 20 minutes now to build a set number of constructs within it's influence... this would be items such as: 2 walls, 1 turret, 1 module... not set in stone though, I want it to be small so even new base builders can meet the requirements.

What this means is, unless you meet those requirements, your Cortium is safe in your Silo... if you don't meet those requirements within the 20 minutes it's very likely you have no intention of building a base near that Silo. Why waste the resources? It unlocks and anyone can siphon the Cortium from it... you would get XP if it's an Enemy Silo though, but nothing for a friendly.

I like it. Two thumbs up!

I wouldn't necessarily say it's cortium stat padding in as much as it's actually people trying to work on their harvesting and refilling directives. For some people playing the game and getting them through regular gameplay is far too slow and this method provides them with a way of completing it faster.

As I've said in a previous thread, there should be a function to allow us to withdraw cortium from abandoned silos with ours ants. Or alternatively, if a silo has been inactive for a certain period of time, have it degenerate back into a cortium crystal. That way the people who do want to make better use of the cortium will have the chance to do so.

Aren't you denying friendlies access to resources as well? In which case the XP payout should reflect your net contribution (i.e. zero).

How bout access opened to silos additionally spawned. Like how you can give friendlies your tank and you spawn a new one, it becomes theirs. So you can take cortium from silos that aren't going to be used?

even in the later C&C games you can engage in resource denial by special abilities (nod) and vehicle ability (GDI MARV) or using units like flame tanks to destory tiberium crystals.

i don't care how many people use ANTs to gain exp, the way i see it is, it's useful for low BRs to gain some certs and deny the enemy resources in hot zones.

we all know how it is to start out with default gear, is it really that bad if new people get a few certs here and there while denying resources to the enemy?

If an ANT is in a hot zone just to deny resources and you fail to destory it then it's your own fault when there is no cortium left to harvest for your allies

What if they added a big silo in each warp-gate that can hold X ( Large number ) amount of Cortium:

• Whenever an enemy silo is destroyed by your faction you get 50% ( just a random number ) of that silo's Cortium added to your WG silo.

To prevent the obvious abuse that you can already imagine would happen there'd be some restrictions to using that silo:

• 250 Cert ''Warp-gate Silo Permanent Access Key'' which can only be bought after BR 40.
• Silo is locked upon login and unlocks after 45 minutes of playtime, locks up again after being offline for 20 minutes.
• Can only take out 1 item every 5 - 10 - 20 - 25 minutes ( resets back to 5 minute waiting time after reaching the last one OR after not taking anything from the silo for 30 minutes )

The idea would be that any somewhat organized squad / platoon of base builders would get the ability to, in times of drought due through allies wasting the Cortium, the enemy zerg making it impossible to gather or any other reason, at least utilize the salvaged Cortium from defeated enemy bases to set up a small ( or large if you get enough people together which would be good since it promotes teamwork ) base to start making a comeback from.

It's probably not a great idea but I felt like writing it down anyway.

I'm not sure what's worse. The players that do what the OP is insinuating or the trolls that deplete an entire region by leaving a small amount of Cortium in each node.

This. I really don't give a crap about building bases. There is literally 0 penalty for building a silo in the middle of nowhere (near cortium), mine the nodes, dump the cortium, deconstruct silo, repeat. It does, however, give you progress on extremely slow-to-farm ribbons required for the ANT directive. Why would I waste a lot of time driving to a possibly contested area if I can just dump it 5 meters next to me for the same reward? And to be fair, the harvesting/depositing cortium reward is pretty big. I can get 20k/hour by just mining and occasionally defending myself without any boost/membership. This xp gain is only reduced by actually driving to a base. Reducing the cert gain, however, would be futile in my case. I really don't care about xp/certs anymore.

Hate on me all you want, I won't stop doing this until I got my 250 ribbons each. After that, off to farm all dem kills.

I thought any stat padding was illegal, if that is what it is. But I could be wrong and I imagine the rules have not been updated to keep up with new content.

Mining and depositing cortium doesn't affect any stats except SPM. Which is, depending on how you do it, most likely going down by just farming cortium.

Does that mean you'd build a justification for destroying ally ANTs? Please focus on what people are saying - they're not complaining about enemy armies denying each other resources, they're talking about allies burning through native resources rapidly and wastefully and denying their own faction those resources.

if the resources are not there then the enemy can't get them, sure your faction gets hurt if you strip mine purely for xp but atl east the enemy can't use those resources ether.

if you spot someone taking cortium just for xp it's up to you whether you TK them or not, i'd jsut pull a racer, radar ant and just go around stripping cortium for allied use, it's more likely someone needing xp won't have certed much into an ANT.

It's a problem, but the proposed solution isn't the only one. For inf's who will skip through a large base flipping everything instead of engaging, after you flip a few turrets, the xp award goes away. I'd humbly suggest that removing the padding mechanic itself might be a more viable solution that an arbitrary change to the landscape and where we can deploy. Likely much easier to implement as well.