Internal Playtest – Econ Balance Changes and New Teleporter Model - 3/27

Apologies, wrong calculations made me think they were going for 'efficiency of commander but spammable', which imo would be neater and less arbitrary.

My point still stands with the correct figures. The commander typically works on energy early on because he is the most efficient at that point, so an energy plant pays off in energy quicker. Now the T2 works on energy later on for the same reason, but this is much more powerful because they can be spammed. This alone makes T2 imperative, let alone being able to build everything T1 much quicker as well.

I'd like to see this paired with T2 energy being just as efficient as T1 (like solar arrays are just as efficient as T1 energy now), taking the same floor space as T1 energy, with a double stacked model, and strong enough to withstand a nuke. We'd then have three types of energy production to play with: weak static early on, weak mobile later on, and strong static later on.

I still maintain that the econamy needs to be scaled back rather than increased. I'd really like to know if this is something that's been tried and diguarded, or if it's something that you're plannign on trying out before making a final decision.

The reasons I'd like to see a reduction in metal production in particular is:

1: It will slow down the pace of the early game a bit / make the t1 stage last a bit longer.

2: It will add (in my opinion) a bit of depth in the early game as you will have to work with less factories. At the moment I don't view it as much of a decision which factory to use as you have more than enough resources to have everything (and you need to if you want to win). With a significant reduction in metal production in relation to cost of things you'd have to decide what's most important, at least until a bit later into the game. The economy does expand exponentially after all so this is really effects the early game.

3: It will increase the importance of metal points.

Alternatively I could see something like this being achieved by making metal spot output variable, as clusters of high output metal spots would then become points of very high strategic importance.

Don't get me wrong, I find the current build fun to play- and I'm generally very happy with the game overall. I'm also happy to accept that you totally disagree with me and think the economy and pace is as you envisaged it, I just haven't seen any tests or otherwise come across any info about tests looking into this (as far as I can tell the basic T1 metal output hasn't really changed since Alpha).

That is precisely what is worrying me, T1 STAGE.

That goes against the entire point of the game, that you have stages of units, rather then additions to units.



And even if PA was about progressing to a next tier of units, it's hardly going to be better then it's competitors in that regard, progressing through a tech tree has been a RTS tradition for over a decade, PA cannot even hope to have a better/fun/more competitive tech tree then StarCraft, Age of Empires, Empire Earth, Rise of Nations, Dawn of War, Command and Conquer, Sins of a Solar Empire.....and well.... most of the others too.

No way PA can compete with that much history of unit upgrades, tech trees and mammoth tanks.

By 'T1 Stage' I'm referring to is the early game where you can *only* afford t1. That doesn't mean you stop using t1 later. Also if resources are reduced then it should encourage the use of t1 units through more of the game as they are cheap and have less impact on your economic.

The price tag to build T2 factorys doesn't make T2 units less common, it just makes assisting better.

You won't bother to build and manage 20 T2 factorys, when having 1 T2 factory, with over 100 engineers assisting it can match or even beat their production of, at this point, outright better units.

Having a swarm is fine, but not when its a swarm of units that are beyond hopeless without their fellow meat shield.

Now I don't want to be a doom sayer, but little has actually changed this in the games development, in it's second beta and from what is being tested as a possible solution, the very idea that "balance requires straight up upgrades" does lead to the conclusion that little effort is actually being made to make the game into what we have all been think it was supposed to be.

If it's supposed to be something else, then why has there been no declaration, if even vague?

And if the game is supposed to be a upgrade teching focused game, then PA is going to be a very pale implementation of a decade of RTS games who have done it better and more creatively.

Anything to improve planetary invasion.

How exactly are you going to get anti-air bots on a planet you can't even finish building a teleporter on?

Well if you have like 5 orbital fabbers and land on a emptyish area of the planet you can build one very quickly. I should of said it work 100% as someone could cover the planet in umbrellas and have 100s of bombers patrolling it but its unlikely.

FYI, the new Orbital Fabber model was shown in the playtest. ><

No it wasn't.

Sorian said it was in a different build.

Yes it was. I couldn't get a clear image from the stream, but I tried my best.

Well. Sorian said it wasn't.

It looks like he was wrong. I saw that model many times during the stream.

On a tiny radius moon/asteroid, it's very easy to have not just 100% umbrella and bomber coverage but catapults on top of that.

And the terrible thing is that if someone enabled them to launch with 1-3 engines, they are the deadliest superweapon in the game. (This is why I refuse to play any setup that has any planet that can be launched with less than 5 engines. When I make launchables in my maps, I make them decent sized and require 15 engines.)



You know, it just occurred to me: maybe catapults should be physically about 4-8 times their current size. Huge structures. Not necessarily more expensive, just huge. This will make it somewhat harder to place them and once placed, they will take up a lot of real estate. On a really small moon you may have to decide between "umbrellas" or "engines" because there's not enough room for both.

Kinda like how the old teleporters were really hard to place on small planets just because you couldn't find a flat piece of terrain big enough to hold it.

All these small changes make me wonder how close the game is to being "feature complete". When they first appeared in the game i assumed astreuses to be mere placeholders for whatever actual orbital transports would be in the game later. But they survived relatively unchanged for all these patches... (I still think shooting something up with a rocket if it literally can float up and down indefinitely is kind of lame)

So is that because their time hasn't come yet , or is everybody so used to them already that they will stay like they are.

This is my concern exactly.

Sins is closer to how I envisage PA than Age of Empires or Rise of Nations, however. At least in Sins you have the early game units that are still valid options late game. It's really only Titans that move the game out of a "frigate stage", and even then corvettes are still a good option, in systems without titans light frigates are the most cost effective solution to chasing down carriers, (even more so considering that light frigates can all gain abilities to attack the carriers ability to deploy strikecraft)

Yip absolutely. With the correct figures, it makes even less sense.

Especially if you consider - the commander is the only thing in the Lore that you expect not to die during an engagement. So why wouldn't it self-upgrade itself so it had the most efficient nanolathe?

ONCE AGAIN

For the last time.

If you let it get to this point, you are doing it wrong. The whole point is to attack before this happens. The enemy cannot cover all the possible ways to invade at once. Haven't seen one person do it in less than a half hour. Scout, find the one that isn't done yet, and exploit it. If they get so focused on defending they are blind to everything else, carpet-nuke them or halley them. Or en-masse vanguard drop. Or build 10 teleporters at once. One will get through, believe me.

There needs to be more options than annihilating /nuking. Vanguard drops can be good against a base, but are useless for gaining a foothold on the planet because they won't take care of the aircraft the defender has. Teleporters are good option in theory, but they get nuked/bombed as soon as they are done if the defender is paying attention.

You are missing the point. Conquering a planet after someone has arrived, especially if they have any kind of foothold, is very difficult, but it is doable.

At this point in the game, forget going for a planet to take over. Go for the snipe. If you cannot kill their comm, go for their energy or t2 production, then hit the comm.

It's not about taking something over. It's about winning. Concentrate your forces and go for the kill. Your problems will disappear, and quickly too.

Bad gameplay in a nutshell. "If the turteler turtles he is invincible".
Not every game is about 1v1 - there will be FFA games or bigger team army games where you have zero chance to prevent someone from taking over a planet and fortifying it.