I had idea that may be bit controversial to people here - adding upkeep for factories and units (possibly defense turrets as well). It's a bit common concept in RTS games that your income has been reduced because of logistics cost of having active units on the field... I think that upkeep cost in PA could work as modifier on fabrication efficiency (need more metal than in best efficiency) so players with more units and factories would had less fabbing efficiency than less developed players. This would allow for quicker early game and would made easier to catch up with other players economy and made in some cases comebacks possible... Also in this case it's better to keep units amount low with high production, encouraging aggressive use of units over time rather than collecting an massive blob army. I would be glad to hear Your opinion !
Various forms up upkeep have been suggested off and on for some time now. I'm not a fan of them. PA is supposed to be about massive armies – I don't like any system that limits the number of fieldable units. I'm assuming you're talking about tying the upkeep to energy, so there's also the difficulty of what happens if you lose your energy plants? Well, you're pretty much screwed. I don't like building the game so everything is all around a single hinge. Lose 1 too many power plants and you're doomed – either your units shut down, or you can't build anything, or both. I mainly just don't like any form of system that limits the number of units I can put on the field.
I was more thinking about metal waste rather than spending more energy but I see Your point, maybe power plants and metal extractors (and maybe teleporters as well) could be always build-ed with base efficiency... from other hand rebuilding economy buildings would be much harder only when You already had a lot of factories/units/defenses in the field so harassing opponent economy could be legit strategy to weaken their might. Also I'm not talking about upkeep influencing income directly but modify metal costs involved with fabrication process.
The main problem is, any system that makes having more units be more costly will destory the use of basic units. Let's look at this in a mathematical way. UC = Unit Cost(metal) I = Increase(through upkeep) X = Units built If the equation is UC + (I x X) then: (Increase at 1 Metal per unit(which would be REALLY low)) Unit Cannon: 150 + (1 x 1): 150 150 Units: 150 + (1 x 150) = 300 So, at 150 Units(a relatively small army) I have doubled the cost of a Unit Cannon. It would be MUCH more worthwhile to not build Basic units and actually rush Adv. 150 Levelers are MORE than enough to break into someones base and would wipe the floor with 150 Unit Cannons. Also the cost increase would barely touch them, unlike the unit cannon. Pretty much TL;DR: No matter how you spin a upkeep system it will always push people away from large armies of diverse units towards a large army of the MOST POWERFUL UNITS. It will make Basic worthless and Adv. rush the MOST VIABLE strategy. So yeah, enough of this nonsense! Don't make me come back here again! *Puts on awesome sunglasses, hops into dropship and flies back into space to my awesome capital ship, because, yeah*
I guess that it wouldn't be the case as different types of units would had different upkeep cost, and impacting less on upkeep factor, Army of dox bots would obviously much cheaper to maintain than small group of vanguards.
Than why build Vanguards? In the end Upkeep systems push people to follow an arbitrary path of army composition. Right now in PA risk/reward is measured by three things: Unit Cost Build time Kills Per Life(this is based upon a number of sub factors) You're asking us to add in another factor: Unit Upkeep(based on a preset # equal to a variable) So now people will play with numbers until they find the most effective army composition(AC). Unlike the PA we have now where AC doesn't matter too much, what upkeep does is push a lot to(AC). SoaSE is a good example. As the TEC why should I build any Caps other than the Dreadnaught and Carrier? Also the amount of units you can have in play at any given time is greatly diminished. PA is about hundreds(dare I say thousands?) of units on multiple planets fighting on multiple fronts against hundreds(thousands?) of opposing units. Upkeep would simply hinder this type of gameplay. So please no artificial unit caps(it's what they really are) in my FREAKING GIANT RTS OF EPIC SCALE! So yeah. Explanation complete.
I don't really understand what is the cause of such strong reaction... I know about what PA is and I like massive battles myself, but I clearly doubt that we could ever had larger scale battles than we had now... maybe it will improve later on but game clearly can't keep up when total amount of units reach hundreds and massive battle turn into hour of massive lag. I dont think that it would had bad impact on gameplay, it would allow fairly cheap production in early game that will gradually slow down (need additional metal for fabrication without rising energy cost) as our armies get bigger and bigger... It's not very hard to get largest army than anyone else, but you start to need more metal to grow bigger than your smaller oponnents that could challange you faster than you may think . From other hand you can afford fighting for more metal spots as You had massive army... and probably you already own enought if you reached that level.
Unless you have only an upkeep for T2 units. Imagine that each T2 unit cost 1 metal per second to run. Doesn't it solve the "mass T2" problem? Doesn't it solve the "too much metal" problem? Doesn't it solve the "T1 have no utility after T2"?
People usually don't amass a huge army of Adv(save for like 20 Kestrels). So I have no idea what problem you'd b solving. Also, why would I build Adv units if they'd cost me a lot more to build? It's like paying a "sin tax" or a "we don't want you to use a lot of these so we'll make it more costly". PA is about throwing out tons of units without a care in the world, they'll be destroyed and you'll build a ton more. Upkeep/Soft unit caps/AUC all promote smaller armies, which in turn promote turtling, which is not how PA is meant to be played. I can't see why anyone argues for this stuff. Why not just ask for a unit cap? That's literally what upkeep is in the end.
the problem with this is it makes early gains hinder you. just because you did really well and got ahead of your opponent doesn't mean than your units should cost more. im all about being able to recover, but through strategy and manipulation, not a penalty for your opponent. (what I mean is if I have more units than you I my units cost too much to replace quickly for no reason and yours are still normal price. this is stupid.)
Not sure if static defences use metal and energy to function in the current build but that is upkeep enough for me
