Economy,spam and game progression

Now before I continue I just want to put out a disclaimer that I enjoy PA, and think it's really a lot of fun, I even went along the lines of buying 2 other copies just so friends could play with me.

Now with that out of the way; Me and I'm pretty sure several other people who have played PA have probably played TA, I actually played TA after PA because I never really was interested in the RTS genre until PA came around.

With that being said, I'm curious as if the economy is going to be expanded on, which it has with the newer build(structure atrophy and such), because at the moment it really feels like build 24 vehicle factories and spam as many tanks as you can to win the game, and with how dipping into the negatives with economy really doesn't effect spammers other than slow down production, it really doesn't feel like it matters becuase if you have about 40 factories you can still pump out 40 units within the same time it takes to produce 1 unit in a negative economy.

In Total annihilation if the economy crashed than production was brought to a halt until you could produce enough metal and energy to be above the negative amount to produce, and then it would crash again,

That really discouraged spammers because you couldn't just pump out 24 factories without having negative consequences regarding it.

What are your thoughts on this?

I know what your saying but this is still very much beta, I'm not too concerned about this type of issue yet, it will come with all the balancing later,

I don't think your eco should crash if you go negative it doesn't make any sens (for metal). I for one always run negative metal because thats just efficient play. However I do feel a power stall should kill your eco in the form of metal extractors functioning at a reduced rate, as seen in sup com. (this might already happen I don't know)

Spamming into negatives is a false economy.

Yes, if you have 50 metal income, it's theoretically better to build 4 vehicle factories than 3. Because then your build rate is 83%, so you really have 3 & 1/3 factories.

In other words, 3 seconds after your opponent you'll have an extra Ant on the field.

You'll always have more units on the field than your opponent.

But everything takes 20% longer. 3 ants next to your factories are able to do 20% more damage. Fabbers take 20% longer to build stuff. Your opponent is able to build extra economy to support extra factories 20% faster than you can.


Power stalls reduce the amount of metal you are able to spend. I.e. if you're in a 80% power stall it's exactly the same as being in an 80% metal stall.

total agreement at the moment my six year old can beat two people with rush tactics at the same time. this is because he does
not need to worry about economy

THIS SOOO MUCH THIS!


People keep coming to this game taking the crap that is SC2 or many other current RTS "strategys". The rush. This needs to be killed, and eco is the way to kill rushing. This game is not made for rushing, by ANY means. Just because right now we can't start on separate planets, doesn't mean this is a rush style game. There is SOOO much more to this game, then just plowing out 40 tanks in the first 2 min of the game, and running over to your opponent who barely has a working defense, much less defending units.

The dribble that is SC2 needs to go.

Like in the OP I mentioned where in TA if the economy crashed production would stop completely.

That would seriously kill rushing as a strategy all together, or at least lessen it.

Having the economy ground to a halt because you are running negative metal or energy would mean a lot of eco micro management, but if this is implemented I hope energy and metal storage capacity increases at least tenfold so one would have time to make adequate adjustements before you run out. This would make storage facilities more useful targets as well.

I don't see what you're all complaining about. I build a lot of tanks too, but I certainly don't consider this a "rush." If both sides are expanding their economy at the same rate and building the same number of factories, the end result is just two players with huge armies of robots fighting. The goal of the game is obviously to build a larger army than the opponent, which you generally do by sending bots around to raid the other player's eco while simultaneously defending your own and continuing to expand. Once you get far enough ahead, you can start taking out their production directly with tanks. How is this in any way a cheap strategy?

I agree that we could benefit from more unit diversity, but mostly at the advanced level. Basic units are supposed to be very general purpose, which means ants and doxen should always be the bread and butter of your army. Advanced units should be the type of thing you build a small group of to mix in with your bots and tanks to give you an advantage in a single battle to exploit a weakness you have found.

Scaling back the game to use less units doesn't change the gameplay; you would just get attacked with 5 units to your 1 instead of 50 to your 10. PA encourages massive armies of units so that players gain less of an advantage from micromanagement, so scaling this back will actually allow for cheaper tactics than the ones you are complaining about. Instead, try killing some of their mexes if you don't like how fast they can build tanks.

I agree with the OP

its just spam factories and Tanks/planes forever even if your in the ( - )

The problem is that the end result isn't two different sides fighting each other with big armies, it's that the end result is you wind up having over 24 factories constantly spamming units at a slow rate but it almost doesn't matter that they're being made at a slow rate because the amount of factories makes up for that.

Yes, the goal of the game is to build a large army, but not spam a large army.

It's not scaling back the game to use less units.

It's discouraging people to build 50 factories right off the bat and build a big army quick quick enough to rush the enemy, while staying at an almost -50000 energy or just as low metal.

PA may encourage large armies of units but once again, when you have a reasonable enough economy to actually run it, it doesn't make sense for a person with a negative economy to have a bigger army than the guy with a positive economy. When you also think about it, it allows for more strategic tactics than cheap ones because you have to play smart and wisely with your units rather than just using them as meat sponges that you run through the ringer as you pump them out.

Except it doesn't matter if you kill their extractors, that's the entire point I'm trying to make, it doesn't matter if you're in a negative economy because you will still build things regardless.

Before the clone was the original thread: https://forums.uberent.com/threads/planetary-annihilations-economy-system.44173/

TLDR; Letting energy stall halt unit and economy production is a very punishing limitation to have in the game and difficult for newcomers to understand. It let's experienced players rush them even more mercilessly that they do now.

It wasn't difficult to somebody who rarely played rts games(me)

Come'on, if someone is running -50000 energy they will not have radar coverage rendering pelters and other bombardment unusable.

If you are not able to win against someone running -50000 energy then you are not that good simple as that.

They don't need radar and pelters with a massive ammount of units.

On a point of information, in TA your economy didn't completely stall if you ran negative. It just had a different visual way of displaying that your production was being pro-rated.

Instead of building with 80% efficiency, it just had you building at 100% efficiency only 80% of the time, cutting off at regular intervals to achieve this effect.

As far as I know, there is no difference between PA and TA in terms of one or the other stopping production when income is low. In TA, the nanolathes would turn off and on as resources came in, the nanolathe was always at full power when on. In PA, the nanolathes are always on, but production is slowed by some % based on income.

Edit: above post says basically the same thing.

An adequate defence of few pelters and at least 5 medium lazer turrets+walls can take out 500 tank blob. Not to mention bombers can take care of tank blobs pretty easy. Though there is some merit to the argument of more penalties to negative economy the whole make rush extremely hard plz and make huge tank swarms impossible is just nonsense imo. Scout your enemy and act accordingly. You know the enemy is coming with thanks after all.

With metal extractors running on energy and with metal makers in the game, loosing energy income for 2 minutes of a 10 minute game was a game breaker. Stalling e meant you stalled on all metal production / income, not just unit production.

To be fair, if you're stalling energy for 20% of a game, you're probably destined to lose anyway