Why is reclaiming consuming energy?

It sure makes sense that the additive fabber processes such as construction and repair cost energy in addition to their metal cost, but what about reclaiming?

It remotely made sense when you could weaponize Orbital Fabbers, but now?

All it does mean, is that players rarely bother with reclaiming wreckages, and no one does every reclaim natural resources such as trees.

Units such as the combat fabber are now even entirely useless (with their energy cost added in PTE), as they can not even harvest additional resources any longer, even though that is the only thing they were actually good at due to their high nanolathe range (forget about repairing your average paper unit, and also forget about that extensive micro which placing walls in combat was).

For natural resources such as trees it's even essential that removing them does not cost any energy, on the contrary. Right now, they are not even considered a resource, they are solely considered an obstacle which needs to be burnt or avoided.


But while at it, there's also a different question to be answered:
Should the reclaim command actually be able to reclaim live structures? Remember that it's not supposed to be a weapon.
And apart from reclaiming the enemy commander, it was mostly used for exploits, such as reclaiming structures partially once construction was finished to get back part of the metal cost.

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Let's take a systematic approach.

I'm going to list a few basic scenarios which involve reclaiming, and I will ask two basic questions for each:

• Is this even a legit move?
• Should it consume energy or not?

And now for the scenarios:

• Reclaiming natural assets such as trees
• Reclaiming natural obstacles (which don't have a resource value)
  
• Reclaiming structure wreckages
• Reclaiming unit wreckages
• Partially reclaiming own, intact units or structures (aka taking a loan on your Commander)
• Partially reclaiming own, unfinished units or structures (aka cheating around the metal cost)
  
• Completely reclaiming own, intact units or structures
• Reclaiming enemy, intact units or structures (including mines)

(Hint: The answers differ.)

because reclaiming in general has been shown no love at all so far. It isn't broken, it is largely nonexistent.

Reclaiming is messed up.

Armies should leave wreckage.
Trees should grant energy, not metal.
Reclaiming shouldn't hold a penalty. It's supposed to keep the game going. If you're down and out in a ruined base, reclaiming lets you bounce back. You can't do that if reclaiming has a penalty. This means that whoever comes out on top is more likely to stay there, which makes for more predictable games.

The last two of these would be relatively simple to change as far as I can see. Wreckage is a job.

I've asked before for a Resurrection tool to be created too, which would rebuild ruined buildings in a way similar to SupCom. That was a cool mechanic which also allowed people to bounce back.

I like offensive reclaiming - it's usually used if there is no other option. People should also be free to endanger their base by weakening their buildings.

Just switching the wrecks back on does create some problems however.

Espically for the AI who can't even deal with building wrecks, let alone tank wrecks that could trap it's units.

Hence free reclaim with all fabbers, and reclaiming as default idle job as it was in SupCom 2. Or just collision-free / self-destroying wreckages.

I think this is the way to go. The most polished implementation would have wrecks that block paths but turns into collision-free rubble if it takes damage. That way most units in fights would end up as rubble and a few would stay as full tank models. That way fights would yield nice look wreck fields that have a meaningful gameplay effect. For the gameplay effect it probably would need a further t1 pgen buff (maybe just make them another 50 metal cheaper or so) as well as a reclaim mechanic that is bug free (reclaiming an X metal wreck should yield exactly X metal no matter what unit you use to reclaim) and has at minimum units like the combat fabber that can reclaim without energy costs.

I think adding these features should be pretty easy to do and would yield a massive improvement to the game:
- it adds a lot of "feeling" to fights: they don't just leave a few black spots on the ground, they leave whole fields of wreckage
- that wreckage would have positive gameplay implications. The stuff I wrote in my essay about energy and reclaiming still holds true, see my signature
- to implement wreckage there is not much extra work to do, the game already has wreckage. Two things need to be added:
1) the ability for wreckage to turn into generic rubble. For this we need some generic looking metal rubble 3d model and some extra code to handle the conversion of "full wreckage of unit with collision model" into "collision free piece of rubble".
2) the code that handles the reclaim process needs to be fixed so the amount you can reclaim from a wreck is not depending on the build speed of the unit that reclaims anymore
I don't think either of these points is a lot of work.
And then it needs to be balanced, but I am sure by making energy a little cheaper and reducing the metal income of mex a little we will quickly see a working balance in PTE.

I think adding proper wreckage and reclaim mechanics is a low hanging fruit in terms of improvements to PA.

EDIT:
Oh also trees obviously should be reclaimed for a little energy.

Yes I also disagree with the latest change to fabber draw rate. It's an overly reactive change to an issue we haven't seen fully fleshed out. And it is totally true that something needs to be done about reclaim. Here is the role I envision for combat fabbers:

• Cheap enough to mix a few in your blob, providing a nice (and potentially suprising for your enemy) boost to your blobs longevity and punch, but at the risk of less forces and the potential to have them quickly sniped. This makes battles more dynamic with more options
• General front-line reinforcement and support - quickly building walls and Laying and detecting mines but with some cost (less than now, maybe 800 energy/s?) - also I believe fabbing range needs to be slightly buffed for this
• Reclaiming wreckage and trees (automatically) - trees should give just enough to offset the investment into the fabber, not enough to drive your entire economy. Wreckage on the other hand should be quite tasty.

This gives CFs a multifacted role. You can use them defensively or offensively, and both have some trade-offs. When used skillfully they should enable a smaller force to go up against a reinforced position or larger blob effectively, and make it easier to set up proxies and forward expansions. They need to have some cost for additive functions but it can't be more than a regular fabber or I just don't see them being used. I think it is much better to slightly increase the build cost and draw rate then to drastically increase either.

Well, because the alternative might be remove reclaim altogether.

Yea the energy drain might be too high. Only way to know for sure is to either to do some maths or play pte games though i guess.

I am certain that it wasn't a automatic job in SupCom 2, but you could make them patrol to do it.

Yeah for me the automatically part isn't essential, as it's not so micro intensive to put them on an area patrol. But either way they [combat fabbers] need more fabbing range (just a bit).

Although that can cause issues with assisting.

But Im just adding to a already well known pile at this point.

You mean assisting teleporters? CFs can't assist production right now (I meant the CF fabber range specifically needs to be buffed, not regular fabber which is fine as is).

I don't think removing reclaiming is the right way to go at all. It would solve the issue of "oh we broke the reclaim mechanic" by simply removing it. Totally wrong call. The reclaim mechanic of TA and FA was very very valuable to the game.
It should be fixed so that early reclaim possibilities on some maps yield other ways to start the game. If your impression that it forces too much air turns out to be correct then the problem is with air and not with reclaiming. Extra resource-pushes on maps through reclaim possibilities should not force a single way to play the map. They should change the way a map is played to offer varation compared to maps without extra reclaim possibilities.

Honestly, they left it in the game, but removed a lot of the broken things like wreckages. Reclaim itself is a good way to recycle a building you possibly accidentally built. Besides that, trees reclaim, and combat fabbers take no energy, so there is what you are wanting.

You can't even use the "combat fabbers cost 720!!1!" excuse anymore, that was such a big problem and now it's fixed, so this has became a very mute point.

Possibly could use work in the future, at a good point right now though.

Trophy, you may not have seen it but there is a new PTE up where combat fabbers now draw 1500 energy/second (largely the impetus for this thread).

in the pte the combat fabbers needs 1500 energy/s to do anything.
Also just because wreckages have been shown no love and "broke" doesn't mean they are bad. Quite the contrary they just need a few more tweaks to be a very important part of the game.

I will agree that reclaiming was important for both FA and TA, but I am just a lazy fucker and never reclaimed :>

Let's take a systematic approach.

I'm going to list a few basic scenarios which involve reclaiming, and I will ask two basic questions for each:

• Is this even a legit move?
• Should it consume energy or not?

And now for the scenarios:

• Reclaiming natural assets such as trees
• Reclaiming natural obstacles (which don't have a resource value)
  
• Reclaiming structure wreckages
• Reclaiming unit wreckages
• Partially reclaiming own, intact units or structures (aka taking a loan on your Commander)
• Partially reclaiming own, unfinished units or structures (aka cheating around the metal cost)
  
• Completely reclaiming own, intact units or structures
• Reclaiming enemy, intact units or structures (including mines)

(Hint: The answers differ.)

• Reclaiming natural assets such as trees

trees should give energy, not metal. Rocks are preplaced wrecks should give metal for free.

• Reclaiming natural obstacles (which don't have a resource value)

should cost energy. I don't know of any obstacles we have right now. But sounds like an interesting idea. Might raise the question of: "why not should it for free instead?"

• Reclaiming structure wreckages

yield metal for free

• Reclaiming unit wreckages

yield metal for free

• Reclaiming own, intact units or structures partially (aka taking a loan on your Commander)

reclaim on live units should not yield any resources. It should only damage the unit. Once it dies it turns into a wreck. Then that wreck can be reclaimed. Not sure if the damaging process should cost energy. Depends on how much dps it has I guess.

• Completely reclaiming own, intact units or structures

See above

• Reclaiming enemy, intact units or structures (including mines)

See above

We don't have such, but th other possible choice would have been to declare these entities as invalid targets for reclaiming, so you are forced to use weapon fire.

Same goes for enemy units as well, with the options to either capture (no, we don't have that option yet) or to destroy with regular weapon fire first, as an alternative to dealing damage by reclaim.

And as for your own units ... there is the self destruct option, so is reclaiming of intact units even required?