It's too weak. In the early stages of the game, energy is more limiting than metal. Also, rushing for the gas giant or T2 is pretty ridiculous in terms of never needing to build energy again at the T1 stage. The problem is that the T2 generator is twice as efficient as the t1 for metal, but on top of that, T2 builders are twice as efficient as T1 builders. This is even worse when considering Jigs, where orbital builders are three times as efficient as T1 builders and Jigs produce fifteen times as much energy for less than five times the cost. The jump from T1 -> T2 -> orbital is too big, and T1 energy is just too expensive to build. The game would be considerably better if the T1 energy plant was, say, halved in cost. At least.
That's what I've been saying for a year or more. Limited by energy all the time. We're supposed to be limited by metal, not by energy :S And no removing metal spots or giving players less metal won't make it feel better.
do agree, your constantly having to build t1 energy and it feels like its getting in the way of playing the game also remember when solar arrays pumped out 20k+ energy?
Initially I suggested cost be 350 (from 450) and production be 675 (from 600). After messing around with it some more I think that cost should be lowered to 300.
For the OP and others who want to try it out at half price, here you go. personally I think it might be a bit extreme but might be fun.
I kind of like it how it is. Early game you need to really think about your resources (i.e. do I go air fabbers?) and late game, when you are managing your army across multiple planets, you don't require so much micro management because resources have become a plenty, allowing you to focus on big picture gameplay, nukes, anti-nukes, laser satellite , annihilaser, etc. which can always benefit from more resources/fabbers, there is never enough, and sometime you even have to switch off factories to give more build power to these expensive units. The reward for jumping to T2 needs to be great because it isn't always easy if your opponent is harassing properly.
I think t1 energy needs to remain as currently to make sure there is a healthy timing tradeoff between macro builds and quick pressure builds. The energy pipeline is incredibly sensitive to tweaking and a very important cornerstone in driving the timings in PA, so I am super conservative about doing crazy things like just halving the cost. PA is also metal limited from quite early on. Not being metal limited is just a sign of an inefficient build order. You use all the metal you can get given the amount of power you have to expand metal, you don't over expand metal that you can't use. Metal limited is entirely a player variable. Halving pgen cost only makes it essentially like playing on a 2x eco modifier - people will rush for more t1 factories and more fabricators to get metal to support these factories. New build order metagame will evolve, and the only result is that the equilibrium pacing of the game will have increased. You won't create a new paradigm of metal limitation, just a faster paced one. As for the arguement that building pgens gets in the way of playing the game, PA happens to be an RTS and as such requires management of resources. No one likes the feeling of forgetting to build energy and then suddenly not having enough resources, but this doesn't mean turning on cheat mode or giving ourselves more resources makes the game fundamentally better. You should need to think about whether you can support any fabricators you build, and build energy in preparation. It's also pretty easy to balance energy right now with some simple rules. If you are doing 2 fabber expand and bot factory spam, you just need 1 fabber constantly building pgens. If you are doing vehicles, you will need two fabbers on pgens or an extra pgen here and there with your commander. When you reach t2, you self destruct all your t1 bots that arn't expanding metal to prevent them from dragging down your energy to metal conversion efficiency rate. I see many people who continue using their t1 fabbers with t2 fabbers and creating unnecessarily huge energy deficits. When you are red on energy and red on metal, you overbuilt fabbers. Stop your factories or stop some fabricators. Get metal, not energy. This is another mistake i see many people doing. What I think the REAL problem is, is the relative inefficiency of t1 fabricators. Both compared to the commander and the orbital and t2 fabricators. I would rather see experimentation done in the direction of reducing the ratio of commander energy efficiency to t1 fabber energy efficiency. Just for example 30/1000:10/1000 to 30/1200:10/900. These numbers were to illustrate the direction i meant, and not representative of actual good numbers. The jump from t1 to t2 however is ridiculous as rightly pointed out by the OP. That was a deliberate design choice by uber, so I don't know whether it'll be easy to see change on that front.
It should be impossible to overexpand metal. If metal only limits you because you're not taking all mex you can it's wrong. It should also not be possible to have "too many fabbers". Buildpower is a resource, you should never can have enough of it.
Then why even have fabbers? Why not just give players metal extractors on all spots from 0 seconds and then make all fabricators use 0 energy? Fabber build power is a resource that is generated from time taken to produce energy instead of factories that produce units. You can't have your cake and eat it too - I like this tradeoff.
The whole point is to get all mex spots asap and start fighting for every last one everywhere. Currently you often have players ignore a ton of mex because "not enough energy, no point in taking it yet". I am not saying you should get unlimited fabbers for free, but it should never drag you down to have too many fabbers. Like "I need to kill these to improve my energy efficiency" That's highly counter intuitive and just soooo wrong.
Fair enough! I can see what you're getting at, and I absolutely agree with the t1 to t2 fabber gap. Though I still think the way to get there is not to mess with pgen cost/production, which applies benefit equally to all types of units that drain metal e.g. factory, fabber, commander, but to directly address the relative t1 fabber energy inefficiency problem.
Reducing the energy usage of t1 engineers would be pretty equal to buffing t1 pgens. Actually it may be better, as it will make t1 engineers better on t2. Fixing the whole energy system to just work like in FA again would probably work out as well. I'd really like to see that actually. The new system is just plain harder to control to me.
I never have a problem with energy. I usually open up with two factories, maybe some extractors if their are any spots immediately accessible, and then a giant line of power generators.
It does, but once you have 100 fabs it doesn't even really matter... (Not to mention metal negative happens much less than energy negative)
The early game, and in fact, all of the game, should be mostly metal limited. I don't necessarily mind that the late game right now feels more attention/strategy limited than resource limited, but if there is to be a limiting resource that isn't player brain power, it should be metal. The purpose of energy isn't to be a really limiting factor but to slow the game down so if you have more metal production than your opponent then it's a little reduced because you have to spend some of it on energy, and also, constructing energy takes time and attention and they require defence. I don't really feel that energy should be a core limiting factor. The energy situation in the very late game is I feel it's a bit too abundant but in the early game it's much too scarce. Fabbers should definitely not consume the same amount of energy regardless of how much metal they're spending.
