Energy Diversification: Is this a successor to SupCom or Total Annihilation?

This has been raised before and will likely be raised again.
This is moving on from the Environmental Effects Repoll (Part 1) (Part 2) and the interest expressed there in having a more diverse Energy System.

I was just thinking how awesome it would be to have Total Annihilation's variation of Energy Sources, rather than copying Supreme Commander's 'Energy in a Box' system.
We are now reclaiming Trees for Metal, which is a small counter-intuitive indicator of how Planetary Annihilation's economy is less Total Annihilation and more Supreme Commander's system, in which 'Mass' made reclaiming trees make sense. In TA we burned trees for Energy.

Imagine this:

Solar Power pyramids give relatively high early-game Energy output - but only work in daylight.

Therefore you must make a tactical decision early on - big daylight booms with Energy Storage to last you through the night, or the constant power of Wind/Tidal?
This could open up new opportunities in planets' rotation speeds/distance to the sun affecting the economy (I'm not arguing for this here, it's merely an observation - one step at a time).
It would look brilliant to see our Solar Pyramids blooming in dawn, and battening down the hatches when armies came rolling up. This would also reward raiding.

Geothermal energy spots would give us an extra thing to fight over.

Nuclear Fusion (what we have now) could still be in-game as a high-energy volatile energy source.

These things are only a couple of examples, yet they display how the spirit of Total Annihilation's energy system had more depth and strategic elements which could (to my mind) play an awesome role on Planetary Annihilation's spherical, day-night maps with multiple biomes in one system.

I am not arguing that everything in Total Annihilation's economy was perfect, or would work in Planetary Annihilation. I'm looking at you, Metal Makers.

However I do feel Energy Diversification would open up more depth in the way the Energy system interacted with Planetary Annihilation's diverse biomes and unique spherical rotating maps.

What do the community think?

I like how energy works right now, the rest for a large scale game just sounds to complicated. I do not want to lose energy just because my solar plants on the other planet are on the dark side at the moment.

Then you'd build Tidal or Wind, or focus on capturing a Geothermal spot, or pushing out a Fusion Reactor, or burn some trees.
No hassle.

I really do like the idea of multiple energy gathering sources but I understand a lot of people are against it, it'd be a simple mod and I'm sure a lot of TA players would end up at least giving it a try. It should be relatively easy to program, at least for some sources.

I expect it'll be modded if Uber don't do it, because a lot of players seem to want it.
I'm not all that sure the majority of players are against having a more diverse, TA-like system (that's why I'm rabbiting on about it).
The second part of the Environmental Poll shows an interest - just wanted to get further clarification.
We'll see how this poll goes .

I agree that having some energy systems dependent on planet type would be nice. Perhaps geothermal could be a feature of lava worlds, and a wind would only be on worlds with an atmosphere (so not present on metal or moon biomes for example).

This would add a great deal of variety on multi planet spawn maps- do you start on the lava planet for geothermal (where everyone else is probably going to start) or start on a moon in the hope that you get it to yourself even if you have to use less efficient energy...?

Heh, true I know. I'm sure a whole bunch of us hardcore forum goers like it but I'm next to certain that we aren't the entire community, though we like to think we are, who knows how many people would be against it! I really would enjoy more complex energy systems but I'm sure there's a great majority of people who may just find it plain complex and might be against it, you've got to cater to everyone after all... Those people on the forum are more likely to spot a mod than a regular old joe that just wants magic energy. So I'm sorry to say but it may be more practical to just wait.

I'd love to see this!!! I always loved building windfarms on top of a hill and building sollar power which closed when attacks came in with TA. Now we have spinning planets it could be really cool to have a cheap high energy income, which needs storage to survive through the night

I wouldn't mind seeing a more diverse system, that was one of the cool little details TA did well that I missed in SupCom. I also wouldn't mind seeing a return of metal makers but it would have to be done in a reasonably balanced way. Metal makers should supplement metal income from mexes, not replace it. In addition, if more things relied on energy to function, there would be a bigger downside to crashing your eco with too many metal makers... For example if most weapons had an energy cost.

I know one of the big complaints people have about metal makers is it lets you ignore expanding your base (to an extent) buildable map space is limited in a given area so you do have to do some expansion, but not as much as if you are going after metal spots only.

What if metal makers were implemented in the following manner?

1. High end weapons require energy, and that energy actually has to exist in the storage, to fire (all base defenses, some high end units like maybe the sniper bot) Example, a Holkins would require 2000 energy to fire, you must have at least 2000 energy in storage or it won't shoot. Even if you are making 1,000,000 energy but you only have 1500 storage the Holkins won't shoot.

2. Metal makers are both weak in HP and explode violently on death, this means you are going to not want to stick them in the middle of your base, you'll have to spread them out, but keep them separated enough to not cause chain reactions. That way you have to expand your base to have safe spaces to put up metal makers.

3. Metal makers not only consume energy to run, but reserve a chunk of your energy storage. Essentially they act as negative storage whenever they are running, this would prevent simply massing solar panels (which don't really take up space) to power your metal farms. It would also prevent massing huge numbers of metal makers and running your energy in the red because the lack of storage / energy would mean that your base defenses and some units could not shoot. Give them a spin up / spin down time to prevent people from just microing them on and off. The only way to counter this lack of storage when they are running would to be build more storage, of course this requires more build space so you have to expand your base.

I like this idea. Solar gets a bonus on planets without atmospheres and Wind gets a bonus on planets with atmosphere. This can be taken a bit further if nukes and asteroid attacks are allowed to degrade the atmosphere and shift the power balance from wind to solar.

At least in spring ta, the fusion reactors also had low health and very high explosivity, usually taking out one took them all out if they were not spread out very far. I think this would go along well with other sources of power, giving more game mechanics, more things to shoot at besides the commander, and overall add more strategy. (and hopefully fun)

I also really like the idea of variable sources of power.
As for the metal makers, idk, if done right they would definitly add more complexity, but would it be more fun?

my 2¢

Idk, right now that sounds like a lot of unnecesary programming for a small thing.

I voted I would like it, I won't lie. But my followup is that it might be best after launch to work on.

Besides, it would be hard to balance. Literally, pyramid generators would require a lot of power to work, and even then wouldn't be 1st gen viable because the energy storage WOULD run out while expanding unless you build literally 5 which puts you behind on raiding.

I would like this too, atleast as a mod.

that being said, there are still the orbital fusion gens of the gas giants still to come down the pipe.

Granted, the Energy Storage demands might make Solar more of a T1.5. Which would give people more incentive to choose planets with Tides and Atmospheres over barren moons... Which makes sense really, as a barren moon should be outstanding for one thing in a game called Planetary Annihilation.
I don't know if post-release is going to cut it if we have T1 Fusion boxes and T2 Fusion being designed to fit all our energy needs.

Right now energy is sort of a short term resource, and mass is a longer term resource. Mass functions as a gas tank which is potentially generated asynchronously with its use, and energy functions more as a pipe of bandwidth determining the maximum amount of stuff you can do at once.

The way I remember TA was pretty much the same above scenario except energy had more types of buildings to generate it consistently.

• Geothermal is interesting, because it adds an element of map control to your production bandwidth; I can get behind geothermal. Gas giants are basically the same thing, but for the orbital layer.
• TA solar is the same as PA pgens.
• PA solar with fluctuating day/night output fits the gas tank scenario better than the bandwidth scenario, and isn't right for PA IMO.
• PA floating pgens are the same as TA tidal.
• Wind is kind of annoying, because it adds a layer of complexity that ultimately results in a non-decision: do you build wind gens or pgens for max efficiency?

Then you look at the fact that PA has 2 additional methods for generating power in the orbital layer (solar satellites and gas giants) that TA has no answer to and basically no, PA's energy diversity is looking pretty good to me.

Now, if you're suggesting diversifying how energy is used then that's another discussion.

Solar wasn't basically the same as it'd close when getting shot, and you get no energy from it. Tidal also wasn't as tides were different in strength just as wind was. This opens up for more strategic choices, do I build nuclear for consistent power yet volatile if messed with, or solar for strong power at one part of the day, low if any at night, geothermal is consistent power but only at certain choke points, tidal is subject to the seas and you only get good energy with strong waves, wind power is the same.

Geo thermal spots for an early/mid game energy boost are a must in my opinion. They would provide an extra thing to think about, new points of contest.

Beyond that, complicating the economy probably won't add a lot to gameplay as much of a players time is already spent on eco management. We need to bring the game's focus more towards where and what people attack with their units as opposed to the fine tuning and endless scaling of eco.

I dunno. I still have reservations.

It's another factor with the randomness that can very easily screw over players because they get a bad spawn.

For competitive games this is always going to happen unless there is a mirror northern and southern, or eastern and western hemispheres option for planet generation. Having this would solve all competitive play problems with all generation ever.

it being a spriritual successor to total annihilation is no reason for uber to be obligated to put such things like windgenerators or tidal generators in ... and generaly i didn´t like them at all in TA ...
also i rather would like to focus on army prouction and management than to constantly fear a sudden energyloss because of a daynightcycle or tidalchange ...
to me that kind of energy diversivication rather seems to add unwanted complexity then depth
also we will have whole gasplanets for energyboosts later on ...