For Backers Only: Metal Planet

I think it's a bad idea to mine metal from your superweapon...

Is the super weapons what's needed in your game? If asteroids are available and are more than enough to kill your enemy then the Metal may be more precious than the weapon.

Are you... talking about the same game I am? Not only can we currently zoom out to view a playing field that can, and will eventually hold dozens, or even possibly hundreds of planets in one game session alone, we're looking at multiplayer games that can support 40 players on a massive scale of planets in multiple sittings where players can leave and come back to the same game hours (or even days) later. There's even threads discussing having miniscule to major AI support all the way from helping new players get their bearings all the way to taking control of planets that you're too busy elsewhere to deal with.

When PA that has THAT much going on, in one game no less, I find it hard to believe there will be no real time galaxy scale. The subject we're on isn't really about whether it will exist. It's pretty much more along the lines of how will scale affect whether this one particular thing is going to be broken. I can see the worry that it can possibly be broken, sure, but it's not like it's impossible to be balanced with other features. It's just a matter of time before we get more information on the subject.. albeit once Uber has the information to begin with, anyway.

You're not talking about Planetary Annihilation if you think you'll be fighting on 100 planets at the same time within a single skirmish.

You are never fighting, in real time, on a galactic scale, or anything even close to it.

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The no-metal metal planet also sounds good, but I think a better alternative would be making it less and less effective as a super-weapon as you mine more and more metal from it.

i think there should be a "owner" unit that you have to place on a certain spot to take control of the metal planet. in this scenario you cannot place any metal miners but the planet itself acts like a large metal and power storage unit and a large energy generator once owned.

Here is an idea for metal planets.

Instead of building extractors all over the surface, perhaps there could be special structures on the metal planets that you bring back online, and these structures provide substantially more metal. This way we can have the planet still be a resource bonus target, but not have the draw back of making the metal planet the only planet of value.

Perhaps the bonus material stations could be part of the system that brings the planets weapon system online, and perhaps the resource station resource's are consumed when using the weapon, perhaps they are even part of the charging system.

Well let me quote something from the kickstarter...

----------------------------------------------------

The Galactic War is a replayable single and multiplayer metagame. Play locally by yourself or co-op with your friends against our world class Skirmish AI’s. Or play on the live multiplayer servers and try to conquer the galaxy!

Features include:

Procedurally generated galaxy map, play a different galaxy every time!
...
Online multiplayer mega-battles. Join a faction and plunder the universe!
Dynamic story system that logs your fight and generates exciting counter attacks and special missions that up the challenge level
...
---------------------------------------------------- (emphasis added).

Galactic War is a "metagame." If you have played League of Legends, the metagame is like you, the summoner, leveling up to level 30, and later where you compete with others for ranking and such. The actual games themselves are the matches played with champions.

So, what this likely means is that there will be system wide games with multiple planets, moons and asteroids, and a meta-game (separate and distinct from the fighting going on in the systems) where Uber will track statistics such as conquered systems, win/loss ratios and other information on the players. This probably means the actual Galactic War Achievement in the kickstarter does NOT mean that we will actually be flying across the galaxy and conquering multiple systems in a single game. Such would have to be done over multiple games. That being said, they do promise to have support for up to 40 players in a game, so don't let this news get you down. The scale will still be massive.

- King John VI

I never actually stated a word about Galactic war. I'm not talking about multiple galaxies and multiple games of multiple solar systems. I never was. I'm talking about one single skirmish with up to 40 players (who can join and leave at any time) and a few dozen planets within one solar system. I don't really understand what's so hard to understand. This is somewhere Planetary Annihilation CAN go, irrelevant if we have the technology today to do it or not. So even if you had 30 people in a game fighting over a different planet and or two and a moon (not including the asteroids), or just one planet and it's moon you're possibly looking at 60, if not 90 possible bodies in one game actively being played.

You're right though, no single person can fight over a hundred planets in a single skirmish. But 30 players playing 1v1s on a planet and the moon dual screening can become 60 instances of different planetary bodies in a single game.

Whether the maps will support this large of a scale currently, I don't know, but from what I've heard about the game being 'scalable' to hardware later in time, and there not really being a limit to how large a single system can be other than hardware, I think it's simply a matter of time before what I'm talking about actually becomes possible if it isn't already.

This sounds alright. I've been thinking about the whole metal planet thing, and it seems to me like the images I've seen so far are all planets made entirely of circuitry and machines. Core Prime in TA was described like this as well.

If one would build metal extractors on the surface of a metal planet, they possibly risk damaging the circuitry that runs under the extractor. Perhaps defense grids on metal planets that are activated by damage done to circuitry? That would make it not as viable to build metal extractors anywhere, but still possible. A defined metal-maker type structure on a metal planet would actually be pretty cool, since that would give purpose to an extreme amount of energy. It would also make defending / attacking / capturing the structure a key play. Or maybe there's multiple structures / can be built by the planet itself? Or maybe there are no structures and it's a passive thing the planet does when linked to it? Ideas.. :roll:

Im new around here. but my opinion is if you have a metal planet the whole thing should be minable.
See as i see it as soon as the game starts, most players are going to identify the metal planet as the strategic "must have" and concentrate their endeavours on gaining a foothold... all of a sudden you have three, four, ten, whatever players all focussed on that planet. maybe one or two figured how that would play out and expand to the other planets where they have a relatively safe economy, no losses and are able to prepare very well while the others fighting over the "must have" get their development stunted by the constant fighting.

(love how in the original picture posted you can still see the little metal points!)

Considering the plan was for Metal Planets to be (essentially) Death Stars, I feel there is already plenty of incentive to fight over it.

Mike

exactly. Metal planets should be weapon stations, that can be reactivated (they also should therefore be smaller in a random generated game than natural planets).

Gas planets are for resource harvesting, or did I confuse there something?

So it's ok to harvest an entire gas giant for exponential amounts of resources, but when a metal planet comes into the picture, it all the sudden is overpowered and must be either removed or changed?

Not trying to make this argument with you in particular (if it seems that way, my bad), but just in general. I find that idea quite bias, and not even by a little. By a lot.

Edit :
Don't get me wrong, I'm 100% ok with the idea of metal planets being weapon stations or even Unicron if it comes down to being awesome. I just don't like the bias, and completely disagree that it's unbalanceable as some have previously insinuated.

THe difference between the two is because of the differences between energy and metal as resources. Gas giants providing a large amount of energy is not particularly troublesome because energy is only very loosely tied to territory control. The player could always just build a huge volume of power-plants on any planet, and be in a similar situation (although presumably with less efficiency). Uber has even hinted that solar and wind based power generation may end up being a thing as well, at which point, coating the sun-facing side of a mercury-like world would also net a similarly absurd quantity of energy. It isn't a problem though, because you can always build more power-gens as energy is not your territorially limited resource.

Metal, however, is a different kettle of fish. The main driving influence for expansion is the acquisition of more metal spots. Having a planet with an immeasurably vast metal output turns the game from being territorially limited to "He who get's the metal planet first wins!". THis doesn't happen with energy as energy isn't the hard limiting resource.

Personally, i wouldn't have a problem with metal worlds being proportionally richer in terms of the amount of metal available, but making them like the classic TA metal maps would be a recipe for massive imbalance on any map that contains them.

I do not agree with your argumentation.
You can already build energy all around the planet, the gas planet change nothing about gathering "exponential amounts of resources". Just a constant factor if it is cheaper.
And all that energy is useless if you don't have metal.
Maps are already "energy maps". ( in reference to "metal maps" )

Maybe it would be more balanced to link metal planets with gas giants, assuming the activation of the main weapon needs enormous amounts of energy which can't be produced on 'classic' planets.
This would prevent the "get first to the metal planet to win"-scenario, because you'd need to control at least two celestial bodies which leaves more counter possbilities for enemies.

I like the idea of having metal not be mineable from the surface. It made sense to have everything be mineable in TA because it was just a huge lifeless slab of pure metal. However these planets are supposed to be more death stars than just hunks of metal. I forget who mentioned it, but having re-activate-able systems in the planet that provide large amounts of metal seems like the best route to go. It'd be badass to claim a metal planet and have to choose to invest in reactivating a "teir 3" metal extractor first, or the superweapon, or the "teir 3" power core. Or maybe both all of these resource buildings need to be activated by the same player for the superweapon to become active? This would be intuitive as well since you could make reactivation work just like assisting a building that is being constructed by an engineer.

If you wanted a hunk of metal in space, that could be true for asteroids though? All metal asteroids? I'd like to see those as their small size would make them less OP, but still a cool secret resource base in its own right. And an alternate use for asteroids besides just smashing them into planets.

Ok, that's fair.

I can, however, state that I have found many times that upon an eco of around 600 - 800 metal income, energy is what begins to stagnate.

What I tend to do is build large amounts of advanced construction aircraft, and have groups of around 20-30 build the same queue. Metal tends to drop slowly while energy depletes rather instantly. Yes, it's because they're inefficient, but you can put WAY more of them into one spot than you ever will with units on the ground that can't physically take the same space. They're also faster to move around, more mobile, and aren't restricted by terrain features. (omgbbq aircraft are OP! Wait nevermind. Swarm of fighters.)

- granted that above was before we had the massive energy and metal storage we have now, so it may not be as much of a problem anymore, it's something you don't actually expect anyone to be able to do. Hundreds of thousands of energy into the negative? even having +1000 metal would fund quite a bit. having the energy to power that kind of economy would be essential, and how many dozens of fusion plants would you need to power it? Space in your base you may not have, but Metal extractors tend to be clumped in small areas leaving for easier protection than if they were very spread out.

Having those off-planet energy sources can probably easily power that without batting an eye. Unless you get a planet that's specifically very low on metal, I don't think it would be that much of a problem at a larger scale. Smaller one, though, sure I can see that.

See, this is something I can get behind. I'm not against the idea of metal planets being unmineable if there's an underlying reasoning behind it. (minus Core Prime, but since that isn't multi-planet battlefields, it doesn't have to worry about balance issues)

Wow seeing alot cool ideas here.
Having the metal planet as non build surface would be crazy. You would have to send a force and keep re-enforcing it. Perhaps knocking a resource bearing astroid into orbit of it and pumping forces down onto it. Would turn into a side-round of king of the hill. Eventually cutting off the supply of the other player as the main strategy to gain a more permanent hold on the super weapon in dispute.

Expand on this by requiring the commander to activate it, and it's definitely going to balance out better.