Expanding the Energy as Ammunition System

Currently the bomber in PA is the test case for a new type of "ammunition" system which uses recharging energy instead of an ammo count. This is a simple system that can be used to bring a wide variety of new unit roles and strategic considerations into PA.

The cardinal feature of this system is a decoupling of the weapon's maximum rate of fire from its current fire rate. A unit that has full energy can fire at its maximum rate, but does not need to fire all its energy at once. However a unit that has exhausted its supply of energy must recharge enough energy to fire before it may fire another shot. Consequently, the unit's rate of fire is massively reduced when it has no remaining energy. I think this system should be expanded to a variety of other units, as it is a quite simple mechanic which can be used to represent a wide variety of logistics behavior.

I would like to see this ammo system expanded upon, including to other types of air units, and possibly even to ground units. The energy bar mechanic can be used anywhere that a unit should be able to use a high rate of fire for a short time, limited by a number of shots. It would not be suitable where a unit is meant to use a steady rate of fire at all times, such as a tank's main gun. It is very useful for allowing units to be designed with more sophisticated fire rates than a single constant period in between each shot, and should be used wherever that functionality is desirable.


Ground Strike Craft

Any type of unit which uses multiple individual shots in an alpha-strike type attack, with a lengthy cooldown in between volleys, would benefit from having an energy bar. This includes strike bombers, close air support planes, gunships, helicopters, and a variety of other craft which rely on their mobility and firepower instead of armor. These craft get in, unload, and get out in a hurry. Fast strike bombers might be able to drop multiple bombs or fire several missiles, but will have a lengthy cooldown before they can do so again. Gunships with ATGM's or air-to-air missiles might be able to carry a limited number of missiles which can be fired in rapid succession, but require a lengthy recharge time in order to be able to fire another salvo.

The energy bar acts as a check on the otherwise unlimited mobility of fast air units. It also acts as a check on their firepower, enabling them to have very powerful weapons that cannot be used at a steady rate like main combat ground units. And lastly, limiting their use of weapons acts as a check on their cost, enabling a larger quantity of lower-cost craft to have higher specs. Instead of using one individual continuously, the player is using many individuals intermittently.


Air Superiority Fighter

The ASF has been a huge problem in previous games, especially SupCom. Making the ASF exceedingly lethal against multiple enemy aircraft should curb their serious deathball problem. The energy bar can be implemented on the ASF to give it a limited count of powerful missiles that can be fired in quick succession, but with a significant amount of time delay before it may fire another missile.

Limited medium-range missiles and a decent main combat cannon secondary make a versatile fighter that is ineffective to deathball with because a smaller group of the same unit will wipe it out (while also being destroyed). Small wings of these fighters should be optimal, of size varying by the size of the air groups the enemy is using.

If each ASF has 6 missiles, a group of 6 is very effective at engaging enemy air groups of up to 36 ground strike craft. However, that assumes perfect efficiency, and will be sharply reduced by missile inaccuracy, overkill, and when fighting enemies that shoot back.


Artillery & Mobile Artillery

Other units which fire in a salvo pattern would also benefit from an energy bar. Instead of a regular firing pattern of one shot every X seconds, with an energy limitation a unit can have a rapid rate of fire for a limited duration, followed by an extended cooldown during which the unit can relocate or perform other tasks. Constant fire is also possible, but is governed by the unit's energy regeneration rate instead of the maximum possible fire rate.

An artillery battery can be much more active when it fires in salvos instead of at a fixed, constant rate. After a volley, it should relocate to avoid counter-battery fire or an air strike. This pattern of fire also creates much more saturation of the target area, with lots of shells falling quickly in succession, especially with large artillery batteries that are inaccurate and can have considerable splash.

Stationary batteries could also be designed that fire in salvos instead of at a fixed, constant rate. However they cannot relocate, so this design is less significant for counter-battery avoidance. Instead, a fixed artillery position can be assisted by using fixed resupply capability to ensure the gun fires at its maximum rate whenever possible. This offloads some of the cost of the gun into a separate expenditure to increase its effective rate of fire, and allows the guns to be made cheaper. As with automating aircraft resupply, a resupply structure within range of a fixed artillery structure minimizes micromanagement. Multiple cheaper guns complemented with several (optional) resupply units gives the player more options for how to construct their artillery. And an energy bar gives the player more options as to whether to constantly bombard, or to use salvo fire, for both static and mobile artillery, which can relocate in between volleys.


Resupply Capability

The key advantage of using any kind of ammo system is that it introduces additional strategic considerations in the form of logistics. The energy system can be made equally capable, without keeping track of individual loadouts of each unit. Instead, resupply could work in a very simple way; it acts as buildpower for a unit's onboard production. A unit will cost a certain amount of energy to recharge itself constantly, and a resupply unit will expedite the process for proportionately increased cost. Units which also cost metal to replenish are treated in exactly the same fashion; the unit replenishes its stores faster, for a cost which is proportionally greater.

An aircraft carrier repairs aircraft, and also replenishes the energy of any aircraft stored on board very rapidly. This means moving an aircraft carrier closer to a target area makes your aircraft more effective, by allowing them to arrive at their target sooner, and return to resupply more quickly. The management of aircraft and airbases should be a highly automated process. Otherwise the player would be required to manually order every aircraft to return to its base or carrier every time, which would be extremely tedious micromanagement and would get old very quickly.


Designing Rate of Fire

Of course this means it is possible to make certain units fire faster by throwing resources and build power at them. But each unit of this type should be designed with this possibility in mind. No unit may ever exceed its actual maximum rate of fire. Resupplying the unit merely allows it to maintain its maximum rate of fire continuously. It costs an equal amount of resources to fire, but those resources are spent more quickly.

Furthermore, any resources spent on increasing the fire rate of your existing units could also have been spent on more units of that type, which also has the effect of increasing the fire rate of that type. However a larger number of energy-using units has a different fire rate dynamic than a smaller number which is being continuously resupplied.


Economic Impact

In addition, replenishing units costs resources, and resupplying them only makes the expenditure more rapid. Energy, and potentially even metal, spent on shooting again could have been spent on producing more units. This has the effect of imposing diminishing returns on using large armies with respect to increasing the size of that army.

In conjunction with reducing the cost of units which use energy bars to fire and which consume resources to replenish them, a player who loses some of their units has actually lost a resource sink as well as a military asset. A player with a large army is paying to use it, and a player who has units destroyed can instead pay to catch up in army size.


Conclusion

The energy bar currently implemented on the bomber has a lot of potential as a mechanic. It is a great idea for bombers, and it can be used on many other units as well, including other aircraft and even ground units and structures. Bombers and any other units which use energy to limit their use of weapons (or certain weapons) should be significantly constrained, and designed with that limitation in mind. All kinds of unit designs result from that limitation, from missiles on fighters or gunships to salvo fire from artillery. The energy limitation lets them have higher specs for lower cost, and more power in quantity.

The critical feature to add to make the most out of the slowly-recharging energy bar is a method to recharge it more quickly, such as using an airbase or aircraft carrier to re-arm your bombers. Creating access to resupply (i.e. well-positioned airbases) and denying such access to the enemy becomes a new strategic dimension on top of the economy and conflict between armies. The energy limitation has strategic and tactical implications, as well as economic implications where a large army consumes resources to be active, making it somewhat easier to catch up in army size.

I've glanced over this and will read it in full later, but from what I see I would really like to have this implemented.

I like the resupply component.

Rewards players who use more strategy to resupply their units.

And if they're alpha style ground units or maybe anti-tac-missile units or something that have energy as well, there could be a resupply unit that increases their recharge rate.

Maybe even logistics units and buildings could be faster/more efficient at recharging units than if the unit recharged on its own.

I pretty much agree with everything here and hope to see it make it's way onto more units in the game.

Also all the talk about resupply makes me think of the Generator trailers seen in various Mecha Animes! xD

Mike

This idea could make energy storage more viable. Once your army engages in a big battle a large energy storage capacity would help maintain your rate of fire for a longer time

I am a proponent for using energy reserves to recharge some unit weapons as well. I loved the Big Bertha in TA costing 10k energy per shot, or whatever it was. Aslo the rumble it made right accross the map

I like the idea of energy and mass from the economy can be used to overdrive or increase fire rate of units or change fire patterns... ( sort of like a toggle currently for pausing construction). But isn't this the same thing as a...deployed/click to activate bonus?

Ultimately changing the way a unit fires to compliment a certain strike style is increasing micro . Rather continuous fire rate or stepped fire options for artillery or aircraft... eventually one option will prevail over the other... At the same time... Having units that have multiple functionality can in turn limit possible units. Why have 3 mobile artillery units that utilize different fire rates and damage output when you can have 1 unit toggle its attack rate energy.

an example would be
1 Missile Launch Rocket System being a Salvo unit type or Constant fire speed
or
1 Shell based Artillery platform(With Three Barrels to have salvo capability) being a Constant fire rate or Salvo

Why have both when 1 can do the job of the other quite effectively. I think in a Macro style game like PA it would be beneficial to have simplified unit characteristics then options that can be preferred one over the other.

Not sure what is implied here.. maybe you can elaborate on how resupplying units is increasing strategy..

I think the "Alpha Strike" mechanism might work better as a unit ability than something it naturally does. Or perhaps a mode you can activate? Regardless I don't know that I'd want it to automatically always dump everything it has into it's target. Sometimes you might want sustained damage rather than fire-everything-now-and-be-screwed-later damage.

However, depending on the unit a sort of "fast dump" of all of it's energy is probably preferred, and this is where the resupply mechanisms you mention later could be very handy. The faster it's 'refilled', the faster it's back out blowing **** up.

I'll get to this when I get to the resupply part.

I VERY much like this part. I love the idea of Artillery firing in salvos(Like actual artillery does) and requiring resupply as it continues to fight. Resupply costs for actual artillery are very expensive and extensive, so I'd love to see this reflected ingame.

I really really really like almost everything in this section. I would love having supply of energy/metal be a big part of the matches. I'd love having to base your planes/bombers, either on a carrier or an actual airbase(Maybe the air factory could double-duty as an airbase), as long as you could 'assign' planes a base and then they would automatically return to whichever one you assigned them for resupply without any further micro being necessary.

On the other hand I would not like it so much if planes became useless without a base. Resupply slower? Sure. Be useless once they drop their payload? Not so much.

The rest of it I basically agree with and I don't have any further comments or concerns that haven't already been touched on.

This will depend on the type of unit. Some units will pretty much always want to fire everything. An MRLS unit will pretty much always want to fire as many rockets as possible at once. The energy bar gives the player the option of firing with an incompletely recharged MRLS with fewer rockets. But I don't see a need to give the player options to fire less than a full salvo.

The same goes for a strike plane; such a craft only carries a couple bombs that it drops together on a single target area. Even though it might be carrying four bombs, the intended behavior of the unit is to drop them on one spot. Not like a large strategic bomber that drops a huge string of bombs over a large area, and which arguably should be able to drop only some of them at a time.

For other units it will make sense to stagger its use. A ground strike craft with anti-ground missiles will probably fire its missiles one at a time at different targets with a short pause in between. However it could still fire all its missiles in relatively quick succession compared to the time needed to replenish one missile while in flight.

Unit design will determine how the unit behaves and how it uses its weapons. The energy bar is just an extra mechanic that can be used to give them flexible or variable output.

Sounds reasonable.

I like the idea in principal.

But I don't like the implication that an enemy who gets to your power generators has completely won the match. They don't just gain tempo from you having to rebuild energy. They also gain tempo because your army is now essentially worthless, along with your static defenses, so they can do whatever they like and you're powerless to stop them.

I do like the idea of logistics units which increase fire rate when they are in close proximity to other units.

I do think that it should be something that is representative per unit, rather than something which is attached to your universal economy.

Sounds great.

The resupply mechanic could also be used to resolve some of the redundancy issues the game currently has. For instance, instead of the Slammer being a straight upgrade from Dox (or downgrade depending on your perspective), if it instead had a ridiculously high fire rate in comparison to Dox but with a finite magazine limiting it's endurance at said fire rate unless augmented by a nearby ammo-generating unit/structure. Then, switching to Slammers as a primary assault unit would be worth it, but only if you can maintain the infrastructure to support it.

I am pretty sure the advanced units are going to be entirely redesigned, as well as the advanced economy structures. It seems very much like Uber just whipped up a skeleton for these features. A moho mex costs exactly four times as much and yields exactly four times as much as a basic mex, making them strictly superior. Advanced units are strictly superior to their basic counterparts. All this will hopefully get changed to make all units viable at all points in time. Ideally by flat-balancing units, and using factory cost to delay their arrival rather than as a balancing mechanism for more efficient units.

An assault bot using energy as limited ammunition is actually a good idea for a unit though. A large pool of energy limiting the fire duration for a weapon like a machine gun or autocannon would go well with an assault role. Whether that is the Slammer or not is not really relevant.

It's simple really.

If someone invests in a non-offensive unit for re supplying other units, he is rewarded for it.

However, he also pays the penalty of less metal invested in offensive units.

So a player must weigh his options. He can increase the long term effectiveness of his units by investing in a logistics unit, or put more metal into offensive units.

Also. Players can be punished for making a poor strategic choice if he uses logistics units poorly. For example, if you send your bombers on a suicide run, then there's no point in building that aircraft carrier and a player just wasted metal.

So. Those are reasons for having logistics units.

But now I am going to tear down my own idea.

More units and choices are not always a good thing. The benefits of a logistic unit must actually be enough to be actually useful. If they don't provide much of a benefit, then they shouldn't be in the game.

Maybe logistics simply won't have enough of an effect to be in the game.

For example, back to the carrier, if you send in bombers on a successful run and then pull them back to the carrier to recharge, but neglect them for several more minutes, then there's no point in having the carrier. That's partly a poor strategic choice. But maybe having a carrier is just too much micro. It takes too much checking up on to make sure bombers aren't sitting around. Since it involves a lot of micro, it takes away from your overall player effectiveness, making the unit completely worthless regardless of balance.

So.

Logistics units could be a good idea. They might not.

A way to (possibly) ensure they're worth the investment is to have it so units that recharge with the logistics unit recharge more efficiently thanks to the logistics unit.

I didn't even know that bombers had an ammunition system. I thought we just had a reimplementation of the energy-drain-per-shot system. Instead of using X energy when they fire, the units drain a total of X energy of the course of their reload time. If the energy cannot be supplied fast enough their reload rate will be slowed.

Is this right except that bombers also have a personal energy storage which can be filled at a certain limited rate?

Some units in TA generated their own, small amount of power, you could do the same thing here so that even if all energy storage is empty, the unit can still manufacture ammo from its own power source. You could also let units regenerate ammo at a lower rate without energy, so that energy is only a catalyst, just like air units without fuel could still fly in supcom, albeit much slower.

I'm not sure the current system is fully implemented to be honest, it's hard to tell because of it's currently limited use on units. If I'm reading things right for example on the Basic Bomber, it just lists that it drains 2k energy per second and that each shot costs 1K but doesn't say anything about any kind of capacity, based on that I think that in theory given high enough APM and precision and enemy position it it could drop a bomb every .5 seconds so long as it had the energy to do so.

Where as if I understand Neutrino/Scathis' proposal correctly it'd be more like this;

The Basic Bomber has a Max Capacity of 4 bombs, every time it 'fires' it's weapon it drops however many bombs it currently has. So on the for run it'll drop 4 bombs, lets say in order for the bomber to make a second pass over a target takes 10 seconds and it takes 5 seconds in order to build each bomb. So the Bomber would 'Alpha Strike' with 4 bombs, but if it maintains it's attack each pass will have 2 bombs, it would need to pull back for an additional 10 seconds before it could 'Alpha Strike' again.

The one thing that comes up if this system sees wide spread use among air units(in particular ground attack air units) is that AA will need to be balanced accordingly, being able to do decent damage during that 'Alpha Strike' period as a player having good control would only do bombing runs when the bomb racks are full given a scenario like the one I just laid out.

Obviously it all depends on the exact implementation, a setup where a Bomber can make 3 'Alpha' runs before doing less damage wouldn't require as drastic of a change to AA for example.

Mike

I actually think 10 seconds to replenish a set of bombs is far too quick to incentivize players to use airbases/carriers. After dropping a set of bombs, a plane should have a very substantial cooldown. Large enough to make it want to fly home and wait rather than linger in enemy airspace. The concept being that this limitation drives down the price of the bomber, meaning instead of using one bomber that fires every 10 seconds, you use many bombers consecutively, with only some active, while other bombers are re-arming, and the rest are on standby to be called in. And the delay needs to be considerable enough to make it worthwhile to start building airbases and even very expensive carriers to shorten the wait from a very long delay to a quick pit stop.

Regarding how aircraft and anti-air interact, aircraft should be very fast, very high-damage, and very quickly destroyed by anti-air weapons. Lots of HP means the unit has a lot of time where it can ignore enemy weapons, and aircraft are so mobile, and so fast, that they don't need that much time to travel a huge distance into even heavily defended territory. Instead, aircraft should be deployed judiciously by their owner, not as freely and independently as ground units. Having aircraft available gives the player the ability to send them out to strike a target or intercept enemy aircraft, potentially getting a kill on-demand, or potentially losing one or more birds very quickly. Every air action should be a careful and deliberate weighing of risk and reward, and if the player decides to execute, it is resolved quickly. Land wars should be much slower, with large, inexpensive land armies taking a great deal of time to fight it out, gain ground, with varying intensity of rate of losses and both sides receiving reinforcements. Aircraft should play very differently, acting as lightning support, but not a staying-power army, fast invasion force, or assault group.

Realistic anti-air can take down planes very quickly and certain types of anti-air can have incredible range. However despite its extreme effectiveness, you are basically never going to be able to feasibly prevent a concerted air strike from hitting its target. You can, however, make it extremely costly to do so using a smaller investment in anti-air than it cost to build the planes lost in the "successful" strike. Anti-air is meant to work as a defense in depth, not as a hard line which "you shall not pass" which is generally how ground defenses work. You can't stop an air unit from entering your air space, but time spent within an enemy's air defense network is painful. Even a very large air wing cannot penetrate a sufficiently deep air defense grid indefinitely. Instead the planes should want to dart in and out in small strikes, not act as a huge blob. That option is available if the player wants to use all their planes at once in a huge strike, but there had better be a very juicy target to justify losing so many planes before they can unload.


I think aircraft and anti-air would benefit (in terms of gameplay) from being more realistic. I normally would not make an argument based on realism, however past TA games have had unrealistically independent and flexible air units with steady-fire weapons with low but land-comparable amounts of HP. The results have been mixed, but universally mediocre. From highly-pathological units like Hawks/Vamps in TA to the ridiculous ASF blobs in SupCom, to whatever the hell happened in SupCom 2. And even without the pathological gameplay issues the air play just wasn't that interesting, largely being a numbers game instead of a complex set of decisions about where to use which asset.

By contrast, a semi-realistic implementation of fragile alpha-strike aircraft like in Wargame: Airland Battle is actually extremely engaging, strategic, and deep in terms of decisions about when to use your aircraft, what to attack, scouting for targets, the strategic placement of different types of anti-air to deter helicopters and aircraft and to shoot down attacking craft. Every time you call in a strike is a decision with many factors which both sides can affect. Extremely different from large 'normal' unit blobs that are RPS'd by anti-air.

Wargame does such a good job of making air units play well compared to the blobs of Hawks or gunships or ASF's and so on that a limited amount of realism may actually be a good idea for PA gameplay. Realistic limitations and realistic aircraft designs and behavior, as well as realistic behavior of fighters and anti-air will make aircraft function and play very differently from ground units and ships, and act as extremely powerful support assets instead of a ridiculously fast independent army.

Yeah my example was just that, an example using simple numbers to focus on the implementation rather than the balance.

Mike

One of the biggest arguments against using the system is the current crop of 'insta-kill' unit encounters - you're never going to want your units to *not* alpha, because otherwise they will be dead.

Of course, I'm hugely in favor of making the unit battles actually be tactically interesting instead of the current 'CHARGE THROUGH THE EXPLODYNESS'.

Other than that, a standard unit setting similar to firing stances (fire at will, hold fire) could make it consistent and understandable across all units:

1 - Alpha Strike - Unit fires as fast as possible in order to drain their reserves
2 - Salvo fire - Unit fires half its reserves in a salvo
3 - Sustained fire - Unit fires at a rate that will not drain its reserves, possibly at a rate that drains the reserves over a longer period of time (1 minute?)

Of course, this makes balancing much more complicated (albeit much more interesting as well - small reserve units within range of resupply could be deadly defenders and crappy attackers)