What's the point of energy?

At the moment there doesn't seem to be a point to having energy in this game. Almost all of the players energy is used for construction and construction is already limited by metal. I don't mind this dual limitation on construction except for the fact that energy is simply gained by spending metal on energy generators. This means that energy is nothing more than metal + time and therefore in my mind the same thing as metal. So why does it exist?

Before anyone replies, I'd like to answer the obvious rebuttal:

The player has to balance spending on energy to make sure they don't stall... But isn't this effectively the same as balancing metal spend on factories and units for attack and defense of metal extractors? Only with more actual gameplay because instead of queuing a few fabbers to build 50 energy generators in a row you'd have more units for fun and destruction!

The enemy can attack a large group of energy plants to crash their opponents economy... But isn't this exactly the same as attacking the usually less defended metal extractors? Good players seem to run their economy in metal deficit and energy credit so attacking energy generation would seem like the less effective choice. The player also has no idea what state their opponents economy is in and therefore attacking metal extraction or energy generation is somewhat of a 50/50 dice roll in terms of effectiveness.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating the removal of energy, I'd just like to see some restriction imposed on its generation other than metal spent, to make energy actually mean something more than one's ability to remember to keep building energy generators.

Obviously, without energy many things shouldn't work, as long as I know it's still need to be implemented. Few patches ago Uber only start to balance energy usage. E.g if enemy destroyed your power plants and you have limited energy you have to decide what is more important for you: recon information, defense, or fast economy recover.

But so much energy spent on construction that things like radar not operating when in negative energy seems like a byproduct and not a real mechanic of energy. In my mind this would be better achieved if energy generators were more expensive to build and only powered the operation of things like defense towers and radar and maybe factories? This would emphasize energy for the operation of vital systems while construction of fabricators would still be limited as metal is always the limiting factor.

I'm not saying the above is what I want to see either I'm just pointing out that energy as it is, is an over complication for the purposes it currently serves.

Remove energy cost for construction of structures.

But that would... Wait. Hmm. Actually, that could turn out very nicely, and it's not too far off from how TA worked (TA early game structures were very cheap on energy and quick to build). Early game places a large emphasis on base construction, so it gets a HUGE speed boost by not wasting half your time on energy. Mid game depends on unit construction, demanding full sized bases. Late game is a bit weird now, but perhaps T2 stuff might require energy? Or something similar? It's too uncertain to say.

Whatever. Give it a shot. Go for broke. Something cool might happen. Obviously, a huge set of variables have to shift around to keep energy demand relevant, or it'll just be stupid. (I mean, it should be obvious, it's a huge game changer after all...)

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The thing about energy is that while the costs are absolute, the importance between various consumers is always going to be relative. You can't place a critical importance on construction energy AND weapon energy AND utility energy AND other stuff, because bumping any one up the food chain automatically makes the others less important.

Players will always build enough power to run their extractors and their factories. Every other demand is going to anchor off of that.

Yeah possibly. I guess my issue with energy is it's trying to serve two functions, a resource to restrict the economy and energy for powering buildings. Because Metal already restricts the economy then perhaps energy should only be for powering buildings (minus metal extractors because you'd be able to completely stall your eco in that case, unable to build energy without metal, unable to obtain metal without energy).

and require energy for weapons/units, or remove it altogether?

Your commander always produces energy and metal. You'll never permantently stall - just stall really badly, for a long time, until you fix it.

Require energy for the production of units, yes.

Require energy for the operation of some structures (radar, artillery, nukes, etc), yes.

The difficulty of base building is mostly encountered in the early game. This problem can be alleviated by giving the Commander more construction power and less energy use (perhaps even letting the Comm lathe work for no energy). It's not something every constructor really needs.

I do admit it is really strange that Uber's economy system forces base construction to depend the most on having a base. High demand fabbers will do that.

I agree, I'd also include base defences like Point Defence and AA.

The specifics of which gets what isn't important.

It's not the difficulty I'm concerned about. It's the fact that energy is pointless in its current state as its main use is limiting production but metal already does a better job making it an irrelevant annoyance.

I agree with you then, but in future it's will be relevant and as I see devs just don't spend many time on it yet.

Currently it's just "resource #2 placeholder"

I don't know about that. Resources are a fundamental part of any strategy game. Their design dictates the design of everything else.

umm building don't need energy to build but the units that build them take energy to function... most builders require 1000 to run it helps people from spamming builders...

Yep, but at this point we don't even have final units list, so I doubt we can measure things like energy because it's only actually started work in Beta.

No it doesn't, it makes you need to spam more builders so that you can dedicate them to build more energy generators... <- this seems like a useless part of the game to me.

Yeah, I know it's not final. It's Beta, which is the perfect time to start discussing this stuff.

I'm going to have to side with darac on this one (My god, I haven't sided with anyone in months. What the hell happened?). The resource system kind of fundamentally determines how everything else is going to work. Big topics like that need to be solved early.

It is pretty silly for energy to be performing double duty as a construction limiting resource AND a device limiting resource. Metal already serves the purpose of limiting construction, and it does the job better. In that respect, the current "highest energy demand in the game" for building bases is way out of line.