Resource system - suggestion to add rare resource types

Just calm down, you're pulling numbers out of thin air and you're scaring yourself with them.

How ever Many Metal Spots end up on a planet(and it's vary of course) it will balance out in all regards.

Mike

ahahaha that's brilliant. Extend this to ideas and it covers half the threads on the forum.

i'm not scared but there is a real issue with resources when you take an entire solar system into account. It is like in FA on the largest maps. there are so many resources that very early on you just don't need anymore. if you had 10 t3 mass extractors then that would get you just about anything very quickly. what do you do when there are 200 more? how can you effectively strangle the enemy of his resources? I'm sure that uber has some ideas but the core mechanics can still be debated. At this point there is nothing to go on and everything is speculation. i understand that, but its fun to think about.

Dude, you're doing it again, just stop making up stupid numbers off the top of your head and scaring yourself.

Also, it's pretty short sighted to say 10 "T3 Mexes"(which there won't be in PA FYI) can build you anything you need, I mean think about it, it';s not like those KEW Engines will build themselves and such, you'll need more eco the bigger an area you're playing on.

Mike

I am pretty certain they are going to stay with just the metal and energy. it is nice, simple and proven to work.

one thing i would like to see are maybe resource rich asteroids (think gold minerals from SCII) plant a metal extractor on it and BAM get double the output from it or something.

i know that we'll be having some sort of extra energy output from gas giants as they have said.

edit: i just realized that metal planets will probably do exactly what i am referring to lol


although i have to wonder if there are going to varying metal outputs from certain deposits like in TA. i personally liked that about TA, not sure how it would pan out with something like PA.

I preferred TA as well, made placing extractors just 'that' bit more interesting than click-click. Seeing how good each patch was, then deciding which one was best suited for an upgrade.

As for metal planets, I'd MUCH prefer them to be military weapons. Using them for economy should be a backup measure.

It'd be interesting if you 'invest' metal into your metal planet for use later. They mention repairing it and reclaiming it. Could act as a massive storage site.

dood, i think i have the right to discuss concerns that i may have and get the feed back of others. considering we don't know crap about the game, i think it's shortsided of you to say that it won't be like that. I am simply using examples. don't get so bent out of shape. if i didn't think these guys knew what they were doing i wouldn't have dropped the cash that i did. instead of just saying my ideas are stupid, perhaps you can offer your own theories. I joined this board for thoughtful discussion and speculation of game mechanics not to get bashed for offering some insight into a potential challenging game issue.

Your concerns are not the product thought deep thought and complex considerations, you are creating problems out of THIN AIR, the shear idea that you would only need 1 planet's worth or resources when fighting across multiple planets is shortsighted at best.

You arguments are just like this;

Guys we need to balance T2 units, they are so strong only 20 could kill everything on a planet we need to nerf them to we can use T1 units all the way instead of every building any T2 and I 'm worried about building lots of factories so I think 1 factory should be enough to produce units all game but that will mean we don't need to take other planets so we need to fix that to and and and and......

These issues you are coming up with aren't even issues, very idea that you only need 10 Metal spots to fuel your economy when there are hundreds more available is just ridiculous, do you really think the devs would create such an obviously flawed system?

Listen, I'm all for serious discussions, but they need to be about serious topics, there are plenty of topics about resources and economy already, give them a read so you have a better basis to form your thoughts from.

Mike

ah, well the problem i am thinking about has more to do with choice of gameboard so to speak. the devs said you can choose to play on a small map of a single planet or a ton of planets of as big a size as your computer can handle. that is where my interest lies.

I'm still not seeing the issue, in FA larger maps (especially when it's 6-8 players) have waaaaayyyyy more mass than the smaller maps, and they still get used and capped, I don't see at all how it will be an issue.

Mike

This has probably been covered in 11 pages... but instead of "special" resources I'd be happy with "Rich" planets and Asteroids.

Let's say some water planets have really strong tides for lots of cheap tidal generators, obviously lava planets would probably be rich in metals. Certain asteroids are richer in metal than others and etc.

The only question: Do planets have standardized values (like one lava planet having the same resources as every other lava planet) or do we allow for randomized richness of resources on planetoids. Perhaps the richer ones being spawned towards the middle of maps to give us hotly contested resources and natural staging grounds.

Thats it, there is waaaaaaaayyyy more mass but you don't need near that much to field tons of every unit type, even experimentals. they get captured but it isn't vital to winning. i guess i just want to be able to do new and cool things late game on larger solar systems without compromising the smaller maps as well. I guess this could be alleviated by the algorithm that generates the planets by knowing how much to put where based on solar system size and player count. i'm simply curious as to how people see this being implemented and offering some counter points.

If you aren't spending all your mass you aren't building enough production facilities obviously. If you were against me and you tried to win with just 10 T3 Mexes and let me have the rest, you wouldn't win......not by a long shot.

Mike

Of course you have to use all provided ressources if you want to win. But I prefer thinking of how to use a limited amount of ressources to just having to rush for throwing out everything. In supcom I didn't like playing on giant maps with too little players, as it is all about capturing more mass fields as you actually need for a balanced gameplay. But I also think that after having built up highly, further significant improvement of economy should require expanding territorially (one of the few good points in supcom 2 (without mass producers)).

In my opinion rare ressources would not be good. Units that only make sense on certain planet types would be a bit better.

So as soon as you get a rich metal world, suddenly all the 'average' or 'cheap' metal worlds become greatly devalued.

And 'rich' worlds lead to the problem of runaway resources, and an energy world (ie: tidal) would be especially useless. Every planet will have to be capable of generating energy, and as of the last 2.5 games, the only limit on energy generation has been how much land you have to cover with T1 / T2 / T3 power generators.

So you get your 'rich' world, and now we're right back in the land of Total Annihilation, with +42,000 energy in, and firing a full-auto plasma cannon does nothing to dent your pretty much unstoppably large energy pool.

Three resources were needed in SOASE for a reason. And SOASE had the same problem of runaway resourcing. A small and medium sized map would have decent economics and work well, but large and huge - where players were expected to control ten or more planets at a time - could end up with some serious problems. In the longest games, resources became useless and it was just about you smashing infinitely replaceable fleets into infinitely thick defenses.

I agree but how rare is rare?

In Red Alert 2 there are only 2 resourses. Power and money. You mined ore and for that you got money.

But there were smaller places where there was a "rare" ore. With that you could temporarely boost you economy because ther would only be a little bit. The ore was usualy on an annoying spot on the map, and you would have to defend it.

The real profit you would have was minimal with all the defending and refinement buildings. But it was fun to mine else, something shiny.

All planets would be random so discovering something like this might motivate players to scout more.

The danger of adding anything rare is the idea that everyone would fight over it. Sometimes that's good, sometimes it's annoying. Something the guys at Uber seem to emphasize is trying to NOT make cookie-cutter ideas. They want people to choose things like build order and strategies. If there's a rare resource, it might be default that everyone wants it and then you lose options.

So if they do have something, it would need to be worth your time to get, but ALSO worth your time to ignore, depending on circumstances.

I do not like the idea now that i think of it for having a rare resource to work with. I want to have land to fight over not a point. if i have just one spot to fight for then the rest of the planet or land is useless or "less" important for winning.

It Uber were to add rare resources, I would prefer to have them in the form of factories.
For example ancient factories with some T1.5 units.
You could do well without theses units, but they could complements certain strategies.
And of course if you want to produce more than a few units, you would have to bring engineers to help. So you couldn't not 'just' take it with a lone building.