Retconomy in Achron game

[bajiraoS]

I realized something about the Grekim recently. No races can chronoport RPs, but Grekim can chronoport octos. Since it is very cheap to convert an octo to an RP (5LC), it is a very viable strategy for the Grekim to send their octos back in time before building an expansion that they could not naturally afford at the time. From what I have read elsewhere on the forums, this seems to be something the devs are trying to avoid. At the very least it seems a bit unbalanced that the Grekim are the only race able to do it. I should note that I haven't really tested the effectiveness of this strategy. Both I, and most of my opponents are new to Achron, so most of my games don't last very long after the first chronoport.

[Amy_i3]

You can do this, and we did experiment with it a bit soon after 0.6.0.0 came out (the patch with Grekim and Vecgir). In general we found that the QP cost of cporting the octos makes it useless unless you cport more than a couple minutes back. Also, it becomes really tricky to use these octos without ending up with wasted cash, as the RPs will take a while to propagate, and the construction event is falling into the UPP.

[Cain]

I disagree on the useless part. Earning 40 QP takes ~50 seconds by my reckoning. Add 10 seconds to actually construct the RP and you have a comfy window to earn additional QP. With proper timing, the only timewave with fewer resources is your playerwave (although that limits how far back you jump). I will elaborate later, and hopefully include a replay that shows how to fully benefit this mechanic.

[JErastus]

While it is good for improving your economy, the extra resources take at least a minute or more of meta-time to reach the point of departure. A lot of things can go horribly wrong in that time, when 40QP could be spent better. Often you will find that chronoporting back something else (for a chronorush or for defense against an opponent's chronorush) will be far more effective in the short term.

[Hadriel]

I think the main reason this doesn't see much use is that we Grekim just don't seem to expand very often in the mid and late game. And when we do we are often focusing on chronoporting other things (even when we have plenty of QP to spare.) However as the metagame evolves I can imagine retconomics could become the de rigueur for Grekim expansions. However I don't think its unbalanced. In the mid to late game CESO and Vecgir have access to teleporters to quickly and safely redeploy RPs and set up new expansions. Grekim don't get that advantage but are compensated by retconomizing.

[bajiraoS]

I got around fixing a quick demo for a Retconomy game start. This is just a showcase for the economic growth. For a sensible build order, add defenses and harassment of your own. Also, there is something strange happening. At around 4m MT, I built a second triad that originally gets sent back from ~5m GT, but in later iterations is sent back with the Chrono dispatch 20 seconds earlier. The new arrival is earlier than the old one, but in this iteration, the orders to go into progen mode and produce are ignored. What's more, I edited the replay, and repeated the orders to the newly chronoported forgetful triad, and the next timewave had them sitting at their chrono arrival location again. Is there anything weird with unit ids going on that I am not aware of, or is this a known or unknown bug?

[Carita Carlos]

That becomes regular retconomy, where your economic strength builds up in meta-time, but also leaves you vulnerable in meta-time. The whole point of the low impact strategy is to not economically disadvantage you for any natural time wave.