PA Economy Factsheet (for new & improving players)

That gigantic amount of metal being wasted is the players inability to build factories, not a problem with the economy. If you have excess metall income, build factories. if you have no excess metal income, build metal extractors. There is no room for metal storage.

If metal was also used for building projectiles or something other than building and repairing, i could see a use for metal storage, but there is nothing else that it is used for.

Going dry on metal just means that you produce at your maximum metal output and no more. It's actually not a bad thing, because it means you're not wasting anything. You don't 'stall' as you would if you ran out of energy.

oh, but going over your energy production actually slows down how much metal you can use in proportion of how much energy you are overusing, right? Meaning tha overassisting is bad and I should feel bad for doing it all the time.

Overassisting isn't necessarily bad, but stalling your economy as a result definitely is. If your energy output can only support 50 assisting engies, but you use 100 and stall your economy, you'll actually build slower than if you took 50 of those engies off the assist order and has them sit idle. Assisting production is really about getting a single building/unit made as fast as possible, and you pay for that reduction in build time in the extra energy you spend.

I broadly agree here. However, there are two cases where it might be useful: first, as your economy power ramps up during a game, the magnitude of its swings will increase (such as in the time between 20 factories finishing their builds at the same time, idling for 5 seconds to roll-off, then resuming). This increases the likelihood of waste since the swings get larger in proportion to the 'default' metal store, meaning that you'll have less time to react to your metal production suddenly going majorly positive. This means that there's a potential use for small numbers of metal stores as your economy starts to break the +200 or +300 metal/tick mark.

The second is the main reason I haven't talked much about metal stores, and that's reclaim. Metal stores may well have a real early-game use if we ever get into the situation where early game reclaim and wreck fields become a thing, depending on the implementation of reclaim (seriously why does it cost energy to reclaim? I find it highly counter-intuitive). So while at present I'd agree that metal stores don't have a place in optimal play, I'm sorta holding my breath.

This thread has solved a few issues for more in terms of basic ratios for resource collectors to factory; 9 power plants per 8 factories (bot and land) for example. Thanks alot.

I've added a "Build Efficiency with Rolloff" page to the spreadsheet which can be used to calculate how many constructors you should use to assist mass production of a given unit type. If it is correct the results are interesting.

According to the data in the Economy Factsheet, the most efficient way to make Levelers is with T2 Vehicle Factories each assisted by 19 T1 Construction Bots, as long as you power everything with T2 Generators. More surprisingly it says that you should use 17 T1 Construction Bots if you only use T1 Generators.

Thanks for adding that new page: it's a really interesting result, and thank you for bearing with my slightly more messy spreadsheets to make it!

I'm also now not-tired enough to start working on interpreting the results here. More later. I'm in your debt, GoogleFrog.

So there needs to be some sort of drawback to having little or no metal stored up or a benefit to having a large metal store in order to give metal storage a real use.

Something like giving a small bonus to the metal bandwidth when you are producing/building something that you have enough metal stored up to out right pay for. This would encourage players to keep a pool of metal in their store to increase build speed. The higher the cost of what they are trying to build, the more metal they need to have saved up in order to gain the bonus.

I don't like this. Over complicating mechanics to justify a building is the wrong way to design. If metal storage is useless then simply remove it.

I however don't believe it's useless. Yes, if a player is maximising their resources they will run with zero metal stored but the world isn't perfect. Sometimes fabbers die, power gens get destroyed, build queues end. A whole number of things can happen, even to the best players that will mean they waste metal. Storage creates a buffer in those situations to allow players to recover without any lost metal.

Thanks a TON for doing this! Having data like that is quite helpful.

It's not adding an over complicated mechanic to justify a building. It's a simple mechanic to discourage everyone from having the same economic play style of +0 net metal. As the game is, the only reason to stalk up on metal is "just in case".

Why does this need to change? Surely a player's decision of where to investment metal is more important.

Where you're heading with this is where SupCom2 was, not allowing you to start a construction unless you had sufficient funds to complete it. That was annoying if I recall. The only difference is the game won't enforce this and therefore confuse anyone who doesn't explicitly get told/research that this is the case. Tutorials are not the answer either, mechanics should be as transparent to the user as possible without tutorials.

"Just in case" is exactly the reason to have storage. It's not a bank/investment fund, it's the emergency savings stashed under your bed incase the bank/investment falls over.

I explained why. To discourage everyone from having the same economic play style. Where the metal is used has nothing to do with why metal should or should not be stockpiled.

I think you missed my point. I am in way suggesting requirements be added in order to build something.

It stands to reason most players would rather spend their metal on something they know would be useful over something that might be useful or "just in case". Energy all ready covers the "just in case" resource due to it constantly being used to run your units and buildings. Metal on the other hand is a one shot payment that has no real value until it's spent. The "just in case" for metal is farther offset by the fact that's the storage is vulnerable to attack and could lead to the loss of unused metal. That encourages players to run on a +0 metal net income.

Yeah, I see where you're coming from.

Energy gets its balance because not having enough energy = badness as nothing works and having to much energy = wasted metal invested in energy generators.

What you're saying metal is 'missing' is the badness when it's at zero.

I don't like how energy works at the moment so making metal head in that direction is against where I think the game economy should go... I guess we'll just have to disagree on this.

Yes and no. I think it needs something to encourage some type of management. It doesn't have to be a penalty for having low metal. As you said Energy all ready fills that roll of bad thing happening when spend more than you make. Some kind of bonus for having a surplus works too and could help differ the two resources.

I think we need to be quite careful about calling this stuff too early. I have no problem with the current economy, apart from the (clearly incomplete) implementation of reclaim. And even my problems with reclaim are mostly to do with things like interface features (patrol on engies doesn't sweep reclaim, etc.). And I'll be quite honest: I really do think that it's the expansion of the reclaim game that will make metal storage potentially useful, not the system you suggest. Nonetheless I find your disagreements on this point productive and interesting.

This isn't entirely consistent with your statement on the difference between 'using' metal and 'stockpiling' it, ulight. Currently, metal in storage represents a spending 'potential', but if stored metal has a direct effect on the game in and of itself (by giving construction discounts) you actually transform that potential into a use. This turns storing metal into another investment, just like you invest in expansion, build power, and everything else in this game.

I think trying to talk about an 'economic playstyle' is perhaps focusing our attention on the wrong things. The sad fact is that the economic side of the game needs to be sufficiently simple to form a clear reflection of the wider strategic choices and decisions that players make, not a complex and shifting web of decisions in its own right. There are enough things to invest in in the game already, whether that's tech, special weapons, units, or factories, without raw metal (and the storage needed to hold it) being added into the mix. I'd say that accumulating 'interest' from stored metal in the manner you suggest at best merely duplicates the kinds of infrastructure investment that the current economy contains.

Simply put, there are already lots of good uses for metal that actually make the game more exciting and fun; having a particular number of it in the top-left-center of the screen is a long way down on the list of cool things I can think of doing with the stuff. There's more to be said on this subject, but I can't see how to argue the contrary position at present.

By bonus to the metal bandwidth I meant that say a T1 vehicle engineer builds at a rate of 10 metal a sec. If it was building something that cost 1000 metal and you had a stockpile of 1000+ metal the engineer would build it at a rate of 12 metal a sec. Once your metal stockpiled dropped below 1000, the engineer would go back to it's normal rate.

That only happens if you're already at <=0 metal income.
Otherwise, putting a second engineer while you still have metal means it builds twice as fast so both engineers only spend half the time building it and spending half the total energy each.
When you are at no net income though, each engineer gets a fraction of your total economy based on that engineers buildpower divided by currently used buildpower.

Actually this isn't quite correct. If you assist using engineers with a lower energy cost per unit metal spent, you reduce the overall energy cost; if you assist using engies with a higher energy cost/unit metal spent, you will increase the energy cost of production; if they have the same energy/ unit metal cost, the energy cost of production remains the same. And since (excluding the commander) no engineer has a better energy/metal spend ratio than any factory, assisting factories pushes up the energy cost of what the factory produces. This occurs no matter whether you are at positive or negative overall metal income.

However, since energy plants cost metal to produce, Googlefrog has pointed out that it is generally cheaper to build the extra energy production and use cheap T1 engineers (180 metal!) to assist rather than invest in (sometimes very expensive) extra T2 factories. The effectiveness of this is limited by factory roll-off times, but there is still an optimal number (usually >0) of assisting T1 engineers for each factory, beyond which it starts to become cheaper to build extra factories.