Metal Planets - Should Metal Extractors Be Buildable Anywhere?

The most sensible idea.

Although someone also gave an interesting idea. What if metal planets had geothermal vents? It would mean people fought over them rather than metal.

Not my idea but excellent if applied to metal planets. I don't care either way.

Yes.

Optionally.

To be honest, this was one of my favorite things about TA games, and completely missed in TA spring and SupCom. It mixed up the game for sure, and not enabling it because some "purists" think its how the game should be?

Pah. Give it a go. See what happens. I dare you.

You seem to think a lot more people will be playing this game than actually will. Filtering out all the games with stupid options would basically mean waiting half an hour for a game or caving and playing on someone's awful custom game.

That's not how matchmaking works. You'll click a button and get thrown into a game. "Don't like it, don't play it." means "Don't play random games."

Not in any sane game mode. Unless you deliberately feel like handicapping yourself, joining a game where the above is even possible isn't productive. Not that starting on different planets is even all that interesting an option, since it's basically the "20 minute no rush" of PA, and that option was for people who didn't want to have any fun.

I've played many games on metal maps in TA in the past. They were all boring turtlefests because there's no incentive to expand and you can eco up so fast that the travel time for an opponent's initial attack is long enough for it to be obsolete by the time it arrives. Metal Heck was the only sort-of playable metal map, and that only worked because it was tiny.

I wholeheartedly agree. We need to remember this is a niche game, and the community will only get smaller over time (after the initial surge upon release). Options like infinite metal adds a ton of chaff to sort through to find good games. If this gets added as an option, any custom options need to be kept far away from "vanilla" matchmaking.

Casting my vote for this solution as well.

There's an easy justification for random metal spots. They're ancient asteroid impact craters or scars from powerful weapons where microfractures and radiation damage has softened the material. The rest of the planet is made of unobtainium alloy and can't be economically mined.

What about gas giants? If you have planets meant for collecting massive amounts of energy, metal planets could be a nice balance if you could prevent or reduce energy production on it. Didn't over crude oil reduce the solar panel output?

Exactly my point. Metal everywhere is fine as long as energy isn't everywhere as well. Right now energy is everywhere so metal everywhere will create a simple turtle/spam eco game which I agree is lame. Limiting energy production has the effect of allowing metal everywhere on metal planets, allowing tonnes of energy on gas giants to be a big bonus worth fighting over and also increase the interesting-ness of other planets as energy will be a contested resource like metal, not just a massive power generator field for your opponents to nuke in the late game.

This destroys the distinction between metal and energy. We don't need to reduce the number of qualitative differences between them and turn them into Minerals and Vespene gas.

And it makes random planet generation a lot more difficult. With energy everywhere, it's up to the player to balance their energy production against their metal income to avoid stalling. Energy Points takes away any element of balancing one's eco. The map decides whether or not you balance your eco. Adding Energy Points (whatever they're supposed to be, you've got to think up ones for asteroids and other geologically dead planets, so everywhere being suspiciously full of geothermal vents and hydrocarbon deposits won't cut it) basically gives the map generator two chances to screw over a player. Your clumsy attempt at justifying spamming mexxes on metal worlds doubles the difficulty of balancing start positions in the majority of games.

Energy as it stands has no qualitative difference to not being in the game at all. All you need to do is assign a few fabbers to continuously build ever expanding power field(s). That's not really gameplay imo because in terms of strategic/tactical thinking there is no decision to be made here. Build power! that's it, there's no choice, no pros and cons.... no gameplay. You could just remove energy and the gameplay wouldn't really change.

That's just bull you've pull from somewhere. I'm sure it's a lot easier than say... building the rest of the entire game! The guys at Uber seem completely capable of that so far. I'm sure this wouldn't be to difficult for them.

Not true. The player decides if it's worth committing their forces to securing more metal or more energy. The other play can contest them if they also want the same area. Players would also have to seriously consider the energy consumption of things like radar. If energy is scarce then perhaps radar should be forgone. That to me sounds like the players deciding, not the map.

Again, I'm sure the guys at Uber are completely capable of building a decent map generator regardless of the variables.

As opposed to the suspiciously placed metal deposits everywhere including on top of metal... on a metal planet? Fiction shouldn't be an excuse to stop the exploration of a game mechanic if the fiction can be changed. I see no problem with having a variety of methods (in fiction) of generating energy, oil/coal on some planets, geo thermal on some, uranium on others... What's wrong with that? The game can automatically swap the type of power generator depending on the resource you've built it on so the UI doesn't get clogged up with a tonne of different power generator types.

And once more, I'm sure Uber have the ability to deliver whatever they decide is best.

I think like most people that there should be an option for wither you can put Metal extractors every where or not.

But which is the Default?

Saying something should be an option is useless without knowing which should be the default.

Mike

Sorry, you're trying to compare PA turtling to TA turtling?

Take five. Maybe when you've come back, I'll have stopped laughing.

The default should be not having the ability to plant metal extractor every where on a metal planet or that would be unfair in small battles on one or two planets but if its a huge battle like in the galactic war setting it should be an option to turn it on for newer players that really haven't master or played the game yet.

It should be an option.

What about metal planets where the metal has, for the most part, become rusted or corrupted and unusable?

What's the Default?

Mike

Rust is a chemical process that requires oxygen. From the looks of these metal planets they don't have any oxygen... but that's not saying they can't... but yeah... That however is how real life works and real life is boring. Let's find a fun game mechanic first and worry about the fiction later.

You could explain the metal deposits as higher grade metal spots around the planet, but you could still get metal out of everywhere else, just not as efficiently.

Incorrect. A good player will be able to cripple an opponent by taking out their power more easily than their mass if they concentrate it all in one place. Sniping fusions has been a staple of target selection since vanilla TA. The strategic importance of energy is not that it needs to be built, but that it needs to be defended. It creates a potential weak point that other players can exploit.

So, Uber now have the ability to ignore basic probability theory? You can't add more constraints to a random generator and expect it to perform as well, that's not how overspecified systems work.

Haha. Not building radar. You're grasping at straws. For each radar you don't build you can afford to run an extra 0.3 construction vehicles. You're not pulling yourself out of an economic hole with that. If you stall your economy three minutes into the game because there was no energy to claim in the immediate vicinity, you've lost, and it wasn't because of any decision you did or did not make. Energy storage runs down a lot faster than metal storage when you're running a deficit so, unlike the case with metal, any quirks of the map generator result in immediate stalling of your economy. And before you suggest buffing energy storage to compensate, do that and you really have reduced Energy to just Mass by any other name.

If you were actually reading the thread you'd know I'd already addressed this in a different post. But I am amused that you think quintupling the number of art assets required for each energy building for no real gameplay gain is a sensible allocation of development resources.

So am I, as I am confident that they will decide to make the game better by completely ignoring everything you suggest.

I suggest you try actually making counterpoints to arguments, rather than appeal to ridicule. You may find logic and evidence gets you further than well-known fallacies.