The Advanced Metal Extractor Specialisation ideas

Devs are busy building the rest of the game, and doing a great job!

I am sure that once the main framework is done, that they have many balance changes that they will want to implement.

This thread I thought, would be good to discuss what ways the AMEX (Advanced Metal Extractor) can be changed from a direct upgrade, to a more of a specialised building. Please don't discuss how disgruntled you are about the current implementation, as there are plenty of discussions about that already.

I have no doubt it that the AMEX will be reiterated in the future, and that the devs will make it according to their ideas. Personally I don't mind how the AMEX is currently. This is just an Idea that would make for some interesting play.

Reduce AMEX production amount to 2x or 3x the BMEX (Basic Metal Extracter).
Keep current hitpoint amount, cost to build and build time.
Put an AOE Turret on the sucker that has a medium range (Extremly fast Minigun would be good as that would simulate using up produced metal), and when its shooting, make it halt metal production.
Call it the TAMEX (Turreted Advanced Metal Extractor) or something, hehe.

Anyway, anyone got any other alternative ideas floating around, instead of just nerfing the AMEX?

I can see where this would be useful, especially where "advanced" offer different things than a "simple" unit. However, I personally think that the advanced metal extractor needs to exist on its own. Instead of expanding, you can increase the production of the land you already own. Why bundle defenses into the extractor? Just plop down some towers next to it.

Some alternatives to what you suggested could be radar stealth extractors and vision-invisible extractors. I think things like this might add too much complexity, though.

Nerfing it is desired. However, in a way that specializes.

Normal metal rate, and hardened health. 80% more metal, and same health. Giving it cloak, or a powerful turret that stops mex to use.

All good ideas.

I would mix the advanced mex with metal makers.
Bascally, they should need quite a lot of energy to be fully productive. ( perhaps they should still produce the same amount of basic mex when there is no power. )

edit: and producing 4 times as much as a basic mex is too much ihmo

i like the idea of having a turret on the AMEX

I'm glad this topic has come up. I've been banging on about these for the last week or so

Remove the Advanced Mex altogether. Have several different varieties of 'Basic' Mex.

Keep Metal extraction rate completely in parity between all the different varieties but give them specializations that alter the thought process behind each one you place.

• Armoured Mex
• Armed Mex
• Cloaked Mex
• Boobytrapped Mex

and one of my favourites

• Mobile Mex

Yes.

Yes.

God no. If you want to make a turret, you can build a turret (the fabber is near it already, even I still didn't lose the hope that Uber drop that and make a simple "upgrade" button that remove useless and tedious micro, something the game badly need).
Doing a turreted mex that actually fire (outside your base?) would always be a really bad choice as it will cut your metal production.
Either way, you will either never build the mex outside your main base for efficiency and safety, so the turret would be just a gimmick.


That's funny, except the turret part, you are describing exactly the T2 mex of FA (same production ratio, same heath ratio), that most of the people consider being "a direct upgrade" and not "a more of a specialised building".

Maybe this will make realize that some ideas shouldn't be dismissed because they are called "upgrades" (burn the witch!) in another similar game.

If Uber wasn't so obtuse about it, they would have copy stuff that work perfectly elsewhere for a lot of thing (ie. nuke and anti nuke range lower than actual blast?), and the balance would already have been way better than it is currently.

Doing things differently for the sake of it is not really smart.

I see two options:

1. Make the advanced metal extractor more of a risk. Make it take longer for it to pay for itself. Give it some disadvantages. In TA they were expensive, weak, and exploded on death.

2. Remove advanced metal extractors altogether. Have different types of metal extractors other then the basic. They don't produce any more metal, but they come with interesting features. Things like an armed metal extractor. It looks like a normal extractor until it starts shooting you.

I like nano's idea.

I still think it could come with the t2 though. Have a "does nothing but mex" kind of mex as t1, while having a "more health normal mex" as t2 along with a "having more metal with less health" t2 mex and having other neat mex usefulnesses.

Are you guys advocating for removing of "investing in econ"?
I'm assuming this is all theoretical talk right now since we still don't know what Uber has planned.

But I would advise caution.
There's a very large playerbase that will be alienated.
A lot of players find that fun, myself included.

I've liked eco/teching in TA, FA and even StarCraft 2, harass, strong defense, but macro hard.
It's a playstyle that is more focused on the long game return rather than the immediate victory of "oh, it's another mex point, yay!".
In the "long game", you put your opponent in a position where they are forced to act.
Maybe it's to expand faster in a way they may not be used to.
Tech hard than them with a skeleton-crew defense force.
Or ins a way they aren't sure how to defend.
Or you just split their attention into too many places.


Turtle/Tech/Econ is a still a very fun can bring a lot of emergent gameplay behaviors such a timing attacks.
As long as expansion > turtle, the game can be balanced.


Esp if scale = big.
We won't get Fields of Isis turtlefests already.
No bubble shields, and no square map.

Why would you feel the need to remove econ investment still?

I'm not advocating for the removal of economic investment. What I am advocating is the removal of the requirement for players to 'tech up' in order to keep pace with their opponent's economy, and to keep PA's economy tier system in line with its unit tier system.

If we were looking at a T1 < T2 < T3 style system for the final game, then yes, I can see why you would need more powerful economy buildings to keep the pace. However, we have been told that that is not what Uber are shooting for in terms of their military units. They have said that Advanced will not be better than Basic in every way.

Extrapolating from this, I'd suggest that Advanced units need not be more expensive than Basic units. So there is no need to grow the economy in this fashion. This gives us room for a more creative approach to Advanced economy buildings which are specialised in some way for certain situations. For example, mexes which it makes sense to build on contested frontlines, but not elsewhere.

As Nanolathe might say, at the moment, building an Advanced factory is a calculation. It's something you have to do at the right point. I'd rather have it being a choice.

It doesn't have to be T1 < T2 < T3.
There can be T1 units that's very, very strong, but very very expensive.
Tiers and tech levels really don't mean a damn thing.

Consider TA, the Krogoth is a Tech 3 unit.

Climbing to Tech 3 is one thing, but let's say you can build a Krogoth right away with your Commander doesn't mean that's a good idea. You just can't sustain while still having a decent standing army.


I have also played my fair share of custom FAF games where we start with SCUs.
Yes, you have T3 econ access, but you sure as heck can't jump the gun and start with that.
You have to take your time, carefully calculate what you can invest and slowly build up momentum to climb the econ curve.
Building a T3 mex too soon will bankrupt you for mass and power.
Or just leave you with too little firepower to repel an attack.



Likewise, for PA, you can still have an econ curve regardless of tech levels or tiers.
Theoretically speaking, we could have all "Tech 0" and do away with tiers and prerequisites all-together, but that's not what I'm asking.


I just wanted to double check you guys aren't asking for all removal of an econ investment climb.
It's incredibly fun to walk that razor's edge of "omg, did I econ too hard?"
And it's even more fun when you introduce that to a multiplayer game. It's just one more variable that makes for crazy fun shenanigans.

There's no reason you can't invest in Econ with an essentially tierless system. To 'Econ' in our vision of the game you must expand, rather than consolidate on space. There's no change other than an Econning player taking up a lot of space.

Still better to have choices. It allow more strategies instead of removing them. It's usually a good thing for a Strategy game.

You are assuming that having T2 mexes will bring mandatory upgrades for the players.
That's a false assumption, and already proven wrong. You can read this for more details:
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/get-rid-of-the-tier-2-3-mex.53542/page-3#post-819945

The "it's an upgrade so it's bad" way of thinking must really stop, it's getting old.

Pop cap of a 1000 in supcom is a sin your building a community of players who don't know how to play

I hope they add linkage in this game as it seems very simplistic at the moment with managing your economy and I believe it will add more to this game.

I enjoy playing this game to a 20 minute nr period, it allows for more use of all the game functions ie , going through techs and building base. I am looking forward to this game being completed but have reservations in some areas. these include : Where is the galactic war we was promised can it be done ??
That lovely system overlay
Commanders with a use other than looking pretty
This being more than just a rush game

Normal metal production but they also produce a new resource: Plutonium (or uranium or "unobtanium" or what have you).

Certain advanced structures (nukes, perhaps all orbitals) require this new resource.

So for a ground war on a single planet you don't really need advanced mex at all. You only want them if you expect to build these advanced items. If you want to spam nukes, you'll need to spam advanced mex first, so you can get the plutonium you need.

Booby trapped mex, like what nanolathe mentioned would be interesting, make it go nuclear when destroyed, hehe