Economy Balancing: The exponential curve

I'm not sure what you mean by manageable exponential growth. Manageable for whom? The newb?
What do you identify as a problem in the first place? Is the economy too hard to manage?

Removing T2 extractors will certainly increase the importance of t1 and early map control if that is what you desire.
Buffing t1 units and slowing down the economic growth will increase the importance of a standing army which will lead to more focus on armies clashing and less on economic growth.

I assumed exponential growth to be desirable for the majority of the audience so I tried to rationalise why the current form of it still leaves us with things that I perceive as undesirable - i.e. decoupling of map control and growth potential with the advent of T2 extractors.

Tangentially related question: does this remain true for localised economic models (ie. you have to build bases and units at the resources, and you can't 'magic' them across space from extractor to factor)?

Exponentials are so mainstream. This is way better:



Bonus points if you can get the equation for it.

Play Anno 2070, and get back to us on that.

That is great idea for game mode.

I think we could counter and balance that exp growth with better control of metal spots and option to remove T2 mexes.

Sometimes single start position has 2 or even 3 metal clusters together while other spawn point has one. Would be nice to normalize number of metal spots around spawn points (ie. everybody gets same number of metal on spawn point, then same radius of no metal at all outside spawn area)

I would love to have maps where only metal spots are at spawnpoints (like 5-6 per one). and then big metal clusters somewhere in remote places, while number of those clusters is always less than number of starting players.

In short: give us more control over metal spots, and maybe metal map than we can manually edit.

Why would that be? It might be the case, but with the current system paying for an army early has little payoff compared to the potential economic boom of rushing T2. With a truly exponential model, the longer you can wait before spending resources on combat units the better. That leads to turtling, and players racing to the critical economic income that will allow them to snipe or run over the enemy.

I do have to wonder, whats so bad about base building? In these Eco threads people talk of having to base build like it was some horrible thing, a kin to getting your teeth pulled. I can't be the only on that likes building things.

I like the idea of base building being needed, I also like the idea that mex should be a major focus point of the battlefronts. I often wonder if perhaps adding another resources into the mix could help drive people to move around planets more.


Edit:

Example... Radioactive material is needed to create Nukes and nuclear reactors. This would certainly drive people to expand and limit nuke spam right away if you needed a 3rd resource in order to construct nukes. This alone would become a Hugely contested spots on the map and drive combat.

The problem with basebuilding is that it has is very little interaction between you and your opponent and the strategic choices in basebuilding are mostly passive choices where it relies on that the enemy makes mistakes like running into your defences instead of going around them.
It also raises the learning curve as you basically have to learn how be effective in your basebuilding and economic growth before you can actually start competing and make strategically useful decisions.
In my opinion, every choice you make should have strategic implications and should under some circumstance be the correct decisions depending on the map/planet or your opponents strategy.
Like if a rush build is an effective strategy in some circumstances, then the new player can use that and practice on that and will sometimes succeed depending on the enemy strategic decisions and the planet layout and sometimes lose because of the enemy strategic decisions and planet layout. Naturally the new player will learn to perform his rush better and better and the more he plays the game, he will learn why his rush fails under some circumstances and succeed in others and will probably transition from his rush strategy to try out different strategies.

I don't really think a radioactive resource is needed unless the positioning is very different from mexes as otherwise you are just adding another type of mex that is also tied strictly to territory control.

Not everyone plays vs another player. Vs AIs you can't really interact.

Elaborate on this point if you could.

Agree everything you do in the game is a gamble until you have seen how it works. And not everything you do will work twice or work against different tactics.

Aye, you couldn't just slap it down next to mex and call it a day. It would have to be in different spots and harvested in a unique way. But I think it could solve some of the current issues.

You can interact with an AI. If the AI changes plans according to what strategy you are deploying, like avoiding your defences or making fighters when it see that you have bombers, you do interact with the AI.

Imagine playing SimCity where the money you gain from your city is what you use to make an army. Imagine also that the battlefield doesn't directly affect the city. Once you win on the battlefield, you win the game.
How you manage your city is a completely separate skill from controlling your army. In order to compete in this game you have to become good at managing your city but the actions in the city doesn't directly affect the enemies city. Practising on your city management skill is basically practising a separate game which is likely to hold no to few strategic implications on the battlefield. If players are forced to practice a lot on their basebuilding skills before they can actually make strategic decisions then I think that is a bad thing.

I'm not sure that nukes are a balance issue in the first place. I've been on the receiving end of nukes many times and come out on top even in high level games. Spread out, rebuild and keep fighting. Nukes are so expensive that it is usually hard to make cost with them.

A good joke for the fool's day. 10*10 = 100, 9*9 = 81.

Exponential growth was actually both huge problem and feature in SupCom too (SCU RAS spam, for example) and was drammatically nerfed by restricting resources on most maps and making fabs less effective.

One player's early advantage usually leads to win in all sorts of competitive strategy games, without respect to economy model. One way to deal with it is to restrict game flow with sorts of artificial timings, coming from chokepoints etc.

Still in strategy games, early advantage leads to win most times, giving players with comparable skill. Wierd occasions, when it doesn't are called "comebacks" and widely discussed on forums and become famous because of their rarity. This is one of a few common critic points against all RTS games.

No, that doesn't apply for the economy. Lets say it takes 1 minute for the economy to grow 10%.
So player 1 has 100 income. Player 2 has 90 income. Player 2 has 10 % less economy than player 1.
After one minute player 1 have 110 income and player 2 has 99 income. Player 2 is still only 10 % behind.

The rule you mention is called linear for this very reason.
Your example is y=kx and y=0,9kx.

Let me continue the series. After 2 minutes player 1 has 121 income and player 2 has 108.9 income, 108.9/121=0.9. After 3 minutes player 1 has 133.1 income and player 2 has 119.79 income, 133.1/119.79=0.9.
Player 2 is always 10% behind. The percentage gap doesn't increase over time.

So you're comparing players 1s economy at 10 seconds, to player 2s economy at 9 seconds?

Nice.

Pretty obviously, Player 1s economy at 9 seconds was 90, and player 2s economy at 10 seconds will be 90.

So yes, they are only 10% behind.

Let's prove this with some good old fashioned maths.



Economy A's metal output is M = exp(t)
Economy B's metal output is M = exp(t-0.1)

I.e. Economy B is always 6 seconds behind Economy A's.



The ratio of Economy B to Economy A is a constant. The value is 0.9048, 4sf.


(Actually,if you increase the accuracy of that ratio, it starts fluctuating pretty wildly within a minuscule range.)

I am going out on a leg here but here is my take on the issue: While the relative difference in economic potential stays the same the absolute difference increases. So, as long as both parties simply aim to maximize their output everything is shiny and farting rainbows but as soon as all that economic potential is going to be put to a use other than generating more economic potential - i.e. military units - that absolute difference is going to matter all of a sudden. And since this difference does actually increase over time so does its impact.
I think that is what @madmecha wanted to express. If not, well, too bad. Nice explanations, though, @Godde and @StormingKiwi, very nicely done!

Ya that was my take on the issue as well, I agree that is my comprehension of @krakanu and @madmecha 's posts.

I think you've seen me take that argument? If I'm player A, I can spend 100% of player B's metal spending on military, and I can spend the extra 10% I have on economy. Player B can match me or get even further behind on economy.

Personally I am of the belief that if asymmetric economies cannot be dealt with by other game mechanics, the game isn't offering enough strategy.


Out of interest, I read some unit entries in the supcom wiki and strategies and so on. And it seemed to imply in the supcomwiki that if you were starting to be attacked by T2 units, you should build a particular t1 unit to deal with the situation while you teched up. I do feel that this is an acceptable solution to the issue.

I do understand your concern, however.

Just to specify it a bit more. Sacrificing economic growth to make offensive units is something you do every game and is required in order to win the game. To quote a Zero-K player: "Don't try to make your econ grow faster than his, try to make his grow slower than yours." - KDR_11k
I think you would agree.
It is largely about striking the balance between eco, offense and defense depending on your opponents initial strategy.

Yes I agree, and the issue is when you are sacrificing economic growth to make defensive units because your opponent is ahead of you.

Granted that's a given, it's a necessity. However, if your entire economy is being poured into defence because you don't have any to spare, that's not good balance.

It's inevitable, however it ought to be possible to fight that guerilla war effectively against a larger opponent.

I think scathis would refer to it as having more verticality in the maps. So there's the map component. There's also a unit choice component.

Theoretically next patch, if I were to rush T2, I would invest in vehicles to deal with rushing bots, possibly air to deal with the vehicles, relying on their slower speed to gain me time. And then I would first build the crowd control units, such as the Sheller, the Hornet, and to a lesser extent the Gil-E.