Hey guys, I know this game just got in beta and all (and I played it for the first time today), but the UI really needs some work to be more beginner-friendly. My main complaint is that the economic displays are useless for a beginner. The most significant numbers that are displayed are the total metal required for a unit and the metal-per-second that I'm getting. This requires some mental math and a bit of stat memorization to make the most important and common decisions in the game: "Can I afford this unit or building?" The constructor (building or engineer) should prominently display the Metal-Per-Second required to build something. I should also be able to see the time it'll take to build a given unit or building - obviously this can only be a rough estimate, because I can speed it up by applying more engineers to the problem. (Unlike in real life, where applying more engineers to a problem slows things down ) Second: it doesn't do anything to show me what I'm doing wrong economically. If my economy is totally stagnant and maxed out at +10 metal per second (that is, wasting metal at the beginning of the game), it shows me happy green numbers as if I were really good at the game. A really quick and easy win for in-game learning would be to change the color-coding. Wasting metal and stalling should be presented as almost equally bad - the only way to get happy green numbers should be to have income and expenses roughly balanced. And I haven't even GOTTEN to the Energy resource. Mostly because I don't understand its role yet. Thanks everyone, I get it now. Now, let's talk about how that can be integrated into the UI so that future players don't have to be told how it works by other forum-goers Sorry for the rambling post, I wrote it in a hurry. Dinner time! I might come back and revise things if things are unclear, misguided, or just plain stupid.
Energy is for powering things. Engineers, factories, radar, and eventually high powered weapons all use energy. The first 3 drain energy at a constant rate as long as they are functioning, regardless of the type of unit/building under construction. Each one uses a different amount of energy based on its utility (air fabbers use more energy b/c they are more mobile).
I agree that this is a problem. I think it would be cool if the game kept record of what your constructors are building, and gave you statistics when you build / assist with one or more construction units & their "assist" crew. Especially: - Total amount of time to construct - Total expected delays because of energy/metal shortage at current income rates (+ possibly stored metal /energy not already expected to be consumed by other constructors) - When construction has been started already: Time lost on delays due to stalls so far This might best be done right under the mouse cursor. Less important information like the +- metal required your constructors will consume and other information might additionally be shown in or near the metal / energy bars. That said, I equally hope we get "base pods" soon.
Stalling energy or metal is only possible if it's red. If your energy or metal is +10 or something small, you are doing everything right, and you are not "stalling". You are merely using your buildpower at relatively good efficiency. Red means you have a defecit, and will "stall" if you stay in red for too long (run out of stored energy or metal).
I agree with what people are saying identifying your resource drain is a key part of you strategy especially if gou have to figure out where you stalling. Hovering over units to shop small info bubles with what they are using would be a nice touch. Another info label could be placed on the new unit selection list at the bottom right. When selecting any fab or commander (or groups) it lists the ones that are using resources and how much.
You're at +10 metal at the start of the game before building anything Not exactly the type of playstyle you want to encourage. Give beginner players a clear problem in the UI (i.e. wasting metal), and they will naturally want to fix it. So, right now the color scale is: Red = Stalling Yellow = Losing resources (More expense than income) Green = Gaining resources (More income than expense) It should be something more like this: Red = Stalling Yellow = Low on resources or wasting resources Green = Efficient use of resources (Income close to expenses)
Energy is supposed to 'run' your army. Currently it has little purpose beyond keeping your Radar online and your Metal expenditure efficient. The more energy you are deficient in, the slower you put down Metal.
I already had a little go at making the economy UI a little more intuitive in the past. Check the link in my sig if you want further details. I've not been able to keep it up to date recently, however that is something that will change soon.
let me give an example, that might help: Lets say you want to build something that costs 600 metal you want to build it with one engineer that can draw 10 metal per second (from your metal storage) so the building will be complete in 600/10 = 60 seconds = 1min now, what about energy? well, a single engineer consumes 1000 energy per second (from your energy storage) so in those 60 seconds, the engineer will spend 1000*60 = 60,000 energy by the end of the 60th second. so: if your input metal and energy was +10m/s and +1000e/s and u had only one engineer building at -10m/s and -1000e/s then your metal and energy bars (storage) in the UI will remain constant = no loss, no gain if you add another engineer to assisit then your metal and energy storage will stall at negative rate of-10m/s and -1000e/s build you will finish the building in half the time = 30 seconds once you finish with the building, your metal and energy storage will add up +10m/s and +1000e/s until it reaches the max storage capacity I hope that helps explain it.
game still lags when resource bar in transition, draining or filling, drops several fps, Its refreshing way to fast, somebody found way to slow it down using math.floor function, but its seems some java to gpu command is racing way too fast
Unless they changed something for the latest patch, I don't believe there's any "yellow". It's green for positive resources (good) and red for negative resource flow (bad). That's pretty simple. +10 metal is because the commander is a metal maker/energy plant on his own, so you can start. When your metal or energy is being used faster than produced, you're doing something wrong, so the number is red.
Speaking of UI, highlighting metal spots would be a very nice toggle. Something I'm looking forward to as they move into the UI phase, whenever that is.
That's odd... people seem to think that the purpose of this post is to ask how the economy works. I'm not asking for that. I'm asking for the UI to better explain to me how the economy works. The game can never appeal to non-hardcore players if it simply dumps them in a game and expects them to know how it works (and press keyboard combinations to fix certain flaws!) It was my understanding that the current UI system is a first-pass intended to quickly give players something to work with. I sincerely hope that nobody, especially the developers, thinks that it's sufficient in its current state. There are tons of simple changes that can be made to the UI which can teach new players how to play effectively while they're playing, which is by far a better experience than scouring the forums for build orders after losing their first dozen games and not knowing why. I disagree with this. Certainly in the long run of the game, you want your expenses to be less than your income (as in real life), but in the short term, especially the early game, you want to basically alternate between surpluses and deficits. That's the purpose of the Storage mechanic. In fact, if your income is always greater than your expenses, you will be wasting resources, which, if I learned anything from FA, is a deadly mistake. Now, it's intuitive to keep your expenses less than your income, and new players will gravitate toward that because they understand it, whether the UI encourages them or not. But if they're to play effectively, the UI needs to nudge them away from wasting resources. Let me say this another way: the current UI makes resource-wasting a silent killer. Imagine you're a new player. The UI has big happy green numbers. It's telling you "Everything is perfectly OK. Keep doing what you're doing." And you're losing, because your opponent knows what the UI won't tell them, and is outproducing you by orders of magnitude. How will you know to correct your mistake in your next game? You don't even know that you made a mistake! Wow. Wasn't expecting to type up a whole rant today. I'm gonna go away and play games now instead of arguing about them...
True. For more high-level economy management, it's ideal to have economy hover around 0 for metal (though it's usually good practice to "swim in energy" as opposed to "float in metal" -- energy runs out really fast and your stuff will stop working if you stall in energy so it's usually good to always stay positive). I would maintain that for new players, a surplus in metal should be encouraged though. Then, once they learn more, they can try to do more advanced econ management, hovering in metal and making sure that your economy is balanced ideally. There was an old thread a few months ago where the same issue was brought up. I proposed an "advanced" economy UI there, something like this: When you're balanced the sides are equal. Both your expenses and production are displayed so you have context for your overall economy. And you still get the familiar +50 denoting your overall profit or defecit. Below would be a storage bar, which I forgot to draw in... edit: this would be geared towards advanced players, who would make use of more information. With something this complex for a beginners' UI, perhaps the simpler, default UI would be better.
Yes, that's pretty cool for advanced players, I guess... although I couldn't say for sure, since I'm not an advanced player. But I like the idea of a wireframe sketch... I'll mock up one right now. I won't stray very far from the current interface; I just want to make a few tweaks:
