Number of Mass Points on a Planet

I presume features such as rocks and trees (you can see these with the Glowing Mex Shader), will be reclaimable.

We also are still lacking anything in regards to the 'Egg', it's possible it could offset the slower start.

Mike

Indeed. So far, there seems to be a fixed optimal build order for getting a player's economy off the ground. It is my hope that the "egg" produces sufficient resources that these build orders are negated, and the player can jump right into running their first factory. I don't think rushes will be too prevalent, particularly if players can remember to place a T1 turret or two. Beyond this, the egg may be useful as either a substantial reclaim bonus, or a way off particularly low gravity worlds. Either way, I think that the early game will change significantly from how it is at the moment.

Yeah, reducing the income per mex would need an entire rebalance of the early game cost of stuff else it would slow it down too much (its allready a pretty leisure start ).

The issue is imo the distribution of metal with the current implementation (first pass I know ) which leads to massive fields of metal 15+ spots upwards in some areas. Less spots (instead of always having 5 in one place, 4 in one place is better then just lowering the metal income per mex) is a simpler change that keeps those area still important while not slowing down everything.

My bigger issue is the linear increase of metal spots with planet size/surface area. We humans are pretty limited when it comes to multitasking and even very extensive UI improvements can only do so much. There comes a place where a planet is just so big that the metal available is too much for a human to work with to keep it fun. I like the idea of larger planets to roam expand and build bases but the increased metal income on those large planets often make it a pure spam-fest where the metal cost of everything becomes irrelevant. (When you get metal income in the low thousands its just not very fun to keep building economy for me. )

I'd love it if the increase in spots was less linear and would taper off a bit after certain planet sizes. I envision very large planets more of a place with multiple bases clustered around metal rich areas instead of the continues sprawl that covers the whole planet. While sprawl is fun we get that on smaller planets and I'd like to see large planets more being places where you have room to manouvre and hide instead of just a big version of the small areas.

My signature is shockingly relevant to this discussion.

I agree Smallcpu. As you increase the size of the planet you should get a different kind of play, rather than just a scaled-up copy of the play you experience on smaller planetoids.

Don't forget we still don't have the 'Egg' working yet, it would likely be used to offset the slow economic start.

Mike

Wouldn't this be better off as an option in the planet editor? Not saying that your theory is wrong, but if someone wants a giant planet with a mex per inch, that their choice.

Yes, but there still needs to be a basic 'standard' that is used as a reference for balance and pacing.

Mike

And as a reference for the Planet Editor. If Radius 0 actually equated to a planet with a Radius of 0 we would have some pretty funky 1v1s going on.

Dancing on the soles of your opponent's feet.