"Energy Generator" is not good enough.

What I liked in TA was that it had a multitude of energy sources available, such as Wind, Solar, Water and Geothermal. What I liked most was that the efficiency of collecting energy from these different sources always altered depending on the map/planet you played on. This applied for metal as well to some degree. (metal maps vs earthlike maps with just differently sized spots of metal)

Some planets were windy which promoted wind power, others large oceans with underwater streams in.

This type of game mechanic will benefit the players that may adapt to the map they are playing on. It will also add variety and complexity to new different strategies.

I am strongly suggesting this will be implemented in PA, as the interplanetary maps combined with this mechanics would have potential to enhance gameplay significantly.

This would, too, also legitimate the different planet types, having different properties that affects gameplay directly.

Having the sun as a factor determining warmer/colder planets is for me a certainty. The nearer a planet is to the sun, the warmer climate and increased potential energy output it has. More far away from the sun planets will be colder and will not have as much energy output, but with more metal and habitable ground. Other factors should also apply as well. These factors together will create a product determining the amount of each source of energy (wind, solar, ocean e.tc.) on the planet.

I will be in touch.

I did a search with the title Energy Generator.

Ledarsi did a decent write up on the different energy sources that TA had.

Ledari's post Solar panels, Wind/Tidal, FUsion.

I personally would like a geo thermal energy plant for lava worlds that is built into the lava.

Id love wind power too.

I like the idea of the basic generator staying as is and using different collection types as advanced generators.

Mike

Oh, yes. Good that others think similar. He didn't mention though my last point, that the solar system and different planet types should affect these yield rates of different energy sources. This would integrate this game mechanic in PA:s solar system map nicely.

I disagree because an early game energy economy needs to be composed of a larger number of smaller pieces than a late game energy economy. The reason for this is that each generator can be built or destroyed individually. A player has more control over their exact investment in energy generation, and they can lose one or more structures to raiders without having an overly decisive effect on the game.

Later in the game it makes sense to use the relatively "boring" single, large, automatic energy generation system like the current Energy Generator or the TA Fusion. There is no reason to require players to build thousands of discrete structures each with tiny output. Instead, it makes sense to consolidate energy generation into valuable targets that you can seek and destroy, and which you must protect.

Yes! I was just thinking about this myself. I think the different types of energy really contributed to the immersion and atmosphere in TA, and comparatively the Energy Generator is very generic. That said, all the units are very generic at the moment as the game is still in Beta and lacking a whole load of stuff. Maybe there are plans for more energy types?

Either way, I wholeheartedly support the idea of having different types of energy sources and having them somewhat planet dependent. Would be good for metal too, I seem to recall that in TA some of the metal spots were more powerful than others.

I pretty much agree. We need more variety in this area.

Aww yeee, I look forward to it!

Looking at the last picture in the biome concepts https://smnc-cdn.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/pa_images/PA_biomes_concept_public.jpg it came to my mind that it would be interesting to have gas planets that contain no metal, but are a source of epic amounts of energy (with a special energy generator). They might make galactic warfare more interesting, though we'd also need new units and structures that would benefit from all that extra energy compared to traditional energy sources.

How about an ability to convert a metal planet into a Deathstar? After building the Deathstar cannon on a metal planet, you would need shitloads of energy to charge and fire it - the more energy you have, the faster you can shoot and destroy planets, or alternatively the amount of energy would determine how powerful the laser is.

As far as I know, both the gas giants and the metal planets are planned to have special features added to them not available on other biomes. Gas giant energy harvesting and metal planet "death stars" seem to be two of the most popular community ideas on how this should work. I can't remember for sure if the devs hav said much about them, though.

Well....I never said that really, I doubt they'd all be perfectly even, chances are a 'Solar Generator' would need higher than average energy production(possibly combined with some storage?)as they'd only work about half the time. The point is that while the Basic Generators are Consistent, the advanced ones are less so but have other benefits as well.

My understanding was that those elements were core to the design of those planet types right from the very beginning. Also worth no0ting is that Gas Giant themselves will likely be Orbital Only, but may have a large(er) number of moons which could have some interesting effects on Gameplay.

Mike

Why do we need more variety in that area?

Why do we want to put more emphasis on the economy and subsequently less of an emphasis on combat?

(Genuine questions. I'm curious why we need more variety.)

throwing my opinion out on this one.

Making energy rely on "strategic placement" compared to "anywhere you want" gives the user a more dynamic approach to energy then just "build more because you need more".

Let there be

• Wind
• Solar
• Geo Thermal
• Hydro carbon
• Fusion
• Water Tides

With each one, they can have their arbitrary Pros/Cons to,

• Placement
• Cost/energy
• Risk/Reward

These pros and cons are basically the "Complexity" that is added to energy placement and procurement that defines how a battlefield is shaped. A landing spot can have very good placement for Geo thermal, but they are hard to defend. Another landing spot could be a potential high wind area that would give more benefit to building regular fusion but doesn't offer consistent power.

It might be said, "why does it matter if all it is doing is cluttering up the economy". Well in the effect of cluttering it, it gives the user Choices. With more choices, they have to plan their attack/economy/defense to match the play style they are willing to choose on a planet. Because if they leave their High risk energy out in the open, it is vulnerable to harass, or they can build regular fusion reactors that have low energy output but not risky leaving them open to being behind in the econ game.

Imposing risk on a user is something I would like to see happen more in the game then just building Energy power lines like we saw in Supreme commander and FA. where both teams or commanders just have 1 engineer build 1 large power line of power to support the expansion of the base with no real worry or care since it was well protected in the base. That is Boring in my text book. Energy should be just as difficult to obtain as metal, not just some issue with not enough land space.

I don't think positionally limited energy has worked all that well. Geothermal in TA and hydrocarbon in SupCom lead to nothing at all similar to metal-driven expansion.

Energy should not be a positional resource. But it should be an expensive resource. Your energy economy is the bottleneck for how quickly you can do things, even if you have tremendous map control. The cost associated with building energy infrastructure slows down the rate of development, but also gives your economy considerable resilience to fluctuating metal income as mexes are created and destroyed.

More different types of energy generator are potentially interesting. But the real choice should be the rate at which the player chooses to invest in energy infrastructure. Especially early in the game, a more continuous energy growth results from cheaper structures that generate less energy. The player can build a more variable number of smaller generators, and can raid the enemy's energy economy and be raided.

With only a few expensive generators, it is difficult to kickstart your energy economy in the very early game since there is such a large difference between zero and one, or one and two generators. An energy generator is 450 metal, and the player only begins with 1000, for example. And losing one such generator is a major event in the early game. Smaller generators can be created and destroyed in more diverse quantities. Suppose an energy generator was 100 metal with proportionally reduced output, and the player would build many of the smaller generators in the early game.

There's another Con to the bunch of different types of energy.

Now we have a whole new set of randomized economy spots that have to be balanced.

When the luck of the good spawn is there for both metal and energy, we run the risk of PA turning into "I hope I get a good spawn or I lose."

Right now metal spawns are very well balanced. (HUGE bravo to Uber for this) But then adding an additional randomized resource location...

It would be very very difficult to equalize due to the random nature of planet generation.

Personally, I would much rather focus on combat than economy.

I get what you're saying about risk. Risk vs reward is ver important in video games. Something that many video games neglect (like WoW). I think metal spots add enough risk to the game that we don't need another economical risk to add to the game. It's just too much of a focus on economy IMO.

Can we have more than two kinds of metal extractors? Like open pit mexes, and strip mining mexes, and quarrying mexes, and then subsurface stuff as well, like shaft, slope, long wall, etc.

I like Tidal and wind on planets, like making more or less than a Pgen and some source of GeoThermal/Hydrocarbon that make more than a Pgen, but can be placed on top of GeoThermal vents/Hydrocarbon deposit

Solar on planets is not good when you need to wait until is day on your side of the planet...
but in Orbital is cool

Increase the relevance of terrain/biome from a strategic perspective
Make energy more tactically interesting than blob of buildings
Put further interesting decision making into your economy work
Provide new avenues for players to approach the game and differentiate from one another
Provide additional options for team games and possibly reasons to take different spawns

I don't want to spend my game fiddling with it, but the idea of some high level decision making in this space is appealing.

Well, if Uber can do something well balanced then I think geothermals (or similar) would be really good, but I can see how they would make the game a little luck based if they can't make the placement balanced. Seeing how good a job they're doing with the metal I would imagine they may be able to do something good with power sources too.

Wind, Tidal and Solar however are not position dependent, so I think there is no problem with these, although solar seems a little tricky to get right if it is dependent on planet rotation. I think we would have to go for gameplay over realism here and have solar produce consistently. I see things in game as a representation rather than an ultra realistic scale. If everything was somewhat realistic we wouldn't be able to see anything because the units would be really really small compared to the planets, and the planets would rotate much faster, which would not feel nice for the player. Either that or find some equivalent to Solar that isn't light dependent.

My real main reason for wanting varied energy sources is immersion/lore/atmosphere though, something about TA felt very real to me, maybe partly because I was 12 at the time, but I think it was the way that every unit had a certain character to it, it didn't feel generic at all. Each map type also felt like its own world, with different amounts of wind/metal etc. I think just changing the existing Energy Generator to something more exciting would already go a long way. What do you find more interesting 'Energy Generator' or 'Fusion Reactor'?

EDIT: OK, I can see how I contradicted myself maybe a little bit with one paragraph saying how things aren't meant to be realistic, and the next paragraph saying how they should be, but hopefully you get my general drift. I'm talking more about 'vibe' than actual realism.