Should metal extractors consume energy :

The energy cost is to build them, and the time to actually build them.

Then you have to hold them.


Additional cost is just adding in complexity when I am managing troops and planning new bases.

I was talking about not spending. Others may have been talking about stalling, it'd be good that you read thoroughly and respond to the right person.

If this is already true in the current gameplay, why do we need to change the mexes to consume energy when the effect you are striving for already exists. If you make mexes consume energy, then you need p-gens to run them and you need EVEN MORE p-gens to actually spend the metal they produce. The problem you are striving to solve (teaching players about energy being important) already exists in the form of fabbers requiring energy.

Please, we BOTH know I'll (And most people) never do that.

And as towards not spending, lol, just build more factorys.

Why introduce new mechanics when people should just build more factroys.

the complexity of which you speak is called 'eco' a large component of 'macro' otherwise known as the trait which defines this game, and the strand of talent the community from the TA-FA-PA game lineage look to in their pro players.

Now you are just being condescending because I don't agree.

Adding more complexity into the economy won't net the benefit you seek, when that can only be achieved with experience.

Extractors are far too expensive to ALSO require energy.

I'm not looking for benefit I'm looking for more depth. ...which works both ways. down and up.

If there isn't energy consumption in mexes it is ok to energy stall because it doesn't really hurt you that much, it acts just like mass stall... you don't really lose anything (except, radars. And some energy consuming heavy arty perhaps), you just have too much buildpower. If the mexes consumed energy it means that you never want to energy stall because it actually makes you lose resources, which is a good difference between energy and mass stall imo.

wake up call.
there isn't energy consumption on mexes ...kinda the reason why this thread exists. so vote vote vote!

The voting doesn't really mean anything though... the decision should be made based on which arguments are better, not the one which receives the most votes. If everybody voted yes for the ability to delete enemy commanders, that doesn't mean they should add it.

Uhm... I know that
edited my post, maybe it makes more sense now.

I also believe that in TA, a moho (advanced extractor) used -20 energy at all times, the equivalent of a single solar plant. At the fusion stage, you wouldnt notice the drain unless you lost your energy supply.

If we want to stop metal production from consuming energy to operate, we may as well ignore all resources and just have build times because its easier to understand.... /sarcasm Man clicking is a pain in the *** the AI should just move my army for me. See where I'm going here? Many of the people against the drain were also for AI controlled battle lines. How easy do you want this? =(

kiddy play-time easy, I guess

Just hope its not the 20min NR battle for thermopoop mess again.

Really? The ease/difficulty of the game hinges on whether or not mexes consume energy? Give me a break, as Sleepwarz said, even in TA the amount was minimal at best, it might as well have been non-existant. You already have to carefully manage your energy economy because of other factors in the game. Unless mexes consumed a rather large amount of energy these other factors would override any energy drain that mexes have. If you make mexes draw a non-trivial amount of energy, suddenly you have the problem where you need energy to get metal, and metal to get energy, how would anybody climb out of such a deep hole?

this teaches rookies at every level not to waste mass, not to neglect energy and basically to be conscious of their eco, what's to ditch? its not like that could have translated to more tanks, I don't see you surfing energy.

I have no problem at all with mexes using power to run, all the other games like this have, so why not. But trying to argue that they should draw energy because "it will teach players to manage the economy" is silly, especially given the amount of energy they used in previous games.

Players already have to learn to not waste mass, because wasting mass is akin to deleting units. Players already have to learn to manage their energy, because if you don't have enough energy you will waste mass (because you can't power fabbers) and radar won't work. There are far more important mechanics already at work that already punish players for poorly managing their economy.

And since there are only a few circumstances we just skip them all?
If you want to maintain metal income for faster production of units for a counter attack you might shut down some radar or stop orbital lasers recharging or whatever. Its just an added option.

The need for fast micromanagement, close to nil.
Group some extractors up beforehand, hotkey for on/off toggle and maybe an option to quickly select all extractors for a "global" shutdown. I fully expect the upcoming new UI to support such things. Around two or three keystrokes.
Maybe, for players that find that too much effort, there could be a selectable option for a mex if it auto-shutdowns on enery loss or not. PA has one of the, if not THE, most flexible UIs out there in this genre, make it happen.

Building lots of extractors and not building energy is already very suboptimal because you can't use the metal to do anything. You have to build energy in order to do anything useful with that metal.

I don't see an advantage to having mexes cost energy. All that would result is that you build a lot of mexes, and then you have to build slightly more energy. However, the punishment for not building that energy goes from having a highly inefficient economy, to completely losing the game because you are locked in a hard stall death spiral.

If not having energy means your mexes don't produce metal, then as soon as you get stuck in an energy stall, you have no energy, no metal, and no resources with which to construct energy to save yourself.

And toggling metal extractors on and off is incredibly tedious, and completely unnecessary micromanagement. Especially if you have dozens (or even hundreds) of mexes.