Scarcity of Natural Resources and PA

Edit: To be less pandering and put everyone who wants to put their two cents into this conversation on the same page here's the quick and dirty it;

What if mass extractors lost some of their output over time? Consider it a refinement of the TA/Supcom flow economy, not a radical new economy model. For example, a mex drops down to a 1/4 of its initial output after 30 minutes of continual mining. A slightly more sophisticated example is outlined below.

What it would add to PA is a pressure from within (the player's own economy) that previously did not exist in TA/Supcom, and adds it to the usual (and obviously much greater) pressure from without (your opponent).

More pros and cons in my original post below.

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Even though we mere earth mortals know natural resources are quite limited, the robotic future seems to have missed that memo.

Human hearts may be swayed from exploiting natural resources because it would make nearby bunnies cry, and being subjected to pictures of bunnies with tears running down their fuzzy cheeks will make meatbags install solar panels on their houses and ride bikes everywhere instead. However, robots would just strip mine the *bleep* out of that mutha*bleep*er. So how come they're not actually ever depleting their mass/metal/what-have-you in PA's spiritual predecessors?

The REAL question is of course, does depleting natural resources add something to the game?

It changes the worth of locations over time; depreciating fixed defences (turtling becomes less attractive) and moves the battle across locations/planets as armies go where the resources are. Creating a more dynamic battlefield and more strategic choice.

As resources dwindle across the board the game moves towards a climax. It creates a soft end-game timer, of sorts. This leads to mounting pressures and possible desperation near the end leading up to a hopefully epic conclusions of the game. Of course, there's always fabricators, but pressures are still mounting.

On the flip-side, less abundant resources curtails the ever increasing scale of battle. Something the game promises, perhaps above all else. That's not a good thing. Of course, there's no reason why dwindling resources can't lead to really large scale battles, the thing is, there will at the very least be a slowing down of scale-growth and quite likely a decrease in scale at some point in the game. So you might end up with a game reaching a peak in scale. Frankly I believe this can be fine as long as it happens late enough, where your average game ends long before the peak, and perhaps only some really tight games go on beyond the peak. Something which could be balanced to work out.

Depleting resources also increase complexity of the economy, it depends a little on how you'd implement it, but managing a streaming economy without slowly running out of natural resources is hard enough, adding more economic headaches might be too much.

Eitherway, its something to think about. What does the community at large think?
Could it be a competitive tournament/eSports mode (a soft timer on the game and less effective turtling could make it more pleasurable to watch, maybe)?
Should such changes to the game be left to modders who feel the need to fiddle with the economy?
Or, actually, should Uber consider adapting the economy to reflect greater scarcity of natural resources?

You tell me.

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As an example I'll go ahead and note how I think I'd implement scarcity of natural resources. There might be far better ways of doing it, though.

I'm not actually a fan of having natural deposits run out completely. Despite huge machines mining away without concerns about the ecosystem, they'd probably be unable to actually suck a planet dry within a short time frame. However, they'd probably be able to gather resources close to the surface extremely quickly, and those will run out fast.

More numerically (though completely arbitrary); an extractor on a resource node will produce 100 resources per second when first built, but after, say, 10 minutes the most easy to reach resources have been mined and it slows down to 75, given another 10 minutes it then drops to 50 and after half an hour of continual mining it will reach the 'depleted' stage where the node will only yield 25 per second for the rest of time.

If an T2 extractor is twice as good at mining it will cut all stages down to 5 minutes, but it will also produce double the amount of resources a T1 would once the node reaches 'depleted'.

To help make sense of all this the UI would need to feature some things to make it easy to see how your resources are doing, perhaps a light at each extractor can tell you at what level they are operating; green for 100, yellow 75, orange 50 and red for 25. hovering over an extractor might give you such information as how far along the node is until its next depreciation as a percentage of progress and perhaps also a clock that counts down towards the depreciation. On a larger scale it would be useful if your income statistics could give you a prediction of how your income will look in, say, 5 minutes if nothing else changes so you can plan accordingly.

I don't know, but I can tell you what it takes out of the game - the amazing uniqueness that sets TA/Sup and now PA apart from other RTS titles.

It's been discussed before on these forums. Very few like the idea, for reasons that you've pointed out already.

The main point of depleting resources is that it places pressure on the players. Pressure to avoid building superforts. Pressure to expand. Pressure to move towards a more fragile metal maker economy. Pressure to finish the match. These things aren't necessarily bad for the game. All it does is set the pace.

I'd like to point out that these planets did exist to some extent in TotalA. Urban maps had huge caches of resources with massive industrial wrecks. However, there were very few metal patches to work with. Players started with a glut of metal that was definitely depleted towards the late game.

Bad idea. Encourage expansion by making things more expensive, and by needing to have more than your enemy.

Reclaim can already let the mapmaker achieve this.
If reclaim of map features will be present in PA like it was in TA and Sup Com this could let the mapmaker decide if resources can become depleted if metal makers and mass fabricators are absent.(maybe the mapmaker can make them unbuildable on his map if they exist).
If you look at map like Daroza's Sanctuary in Sup Com it has more than 100 000 reclaim. If you can get half of it, which is 50000, you can easily get a to tech3 and get an experimental just by reclaiming. This is a map that is usually won by them whom can grab the most reclaim.

An interesting option would be to let the mapmaker decide at which rate builder/engineer/construction units can reclaim features.
In Sup Com a t1 engineer can reclaim at the rate of 50 resources per second. This is equivalent to the production of 25 t1 mexes but only 2 and a half powergenerators production. This makes reclaiming mass much more efficient than reclaiming energy.
The only way for the mapmaker to decide at which rate resources can be reclaimed in SupCom is how far spread out and what quantity each reclaimable feature gives. There is a delay between each feature that has been reclaimed so features that contain small quantities will provide resources at a lower rate compared to features that contain more resources.

If mapmakers can decide at what rate features can be reclaimed they can control the growth of the economy without having to worry about spreading out features or how much each feature gives.

Lol, resources are pretty much infinite if we use the universe as a scale. Not enough mass? Tap the molten metallic core of a planet.

Mortals are completely confused, and have no REAL idea of whats going on despite what we have been told.

Darozas was a great example of what broke the flow economy, by providing that much mass to intake it came down to who was the best at Min maxing. BTW minmax gameplay is one of the things killing the industry, by sucking the fun right out of games.

Besides PA already has a method of limiting the resources on the map, throw an asteroid at them.

You will have to explain "Min maxing". I can only find it barely among Starcraft threads.

Also even a planet could have limited resources. Basically mass extractors could tap into a pool of say... 1 000 000 mass.
Once you have finished your deathstar, the planet might have run out of resources and you have to drift in the solar system to find more.

Given that Uber is working on a procedural map generation thingemajig I'm not sure we should really get into relying on map makers for anything yet. With a sufficiently powerful procedural system that makes random maps I'm not sure I'd ever spend a long time playing a specific custom map ever again. I suppose, though, that the generator could also come with a slider for how much reclaimable wreckage there will be.

Regardless, reclaimable map features are a very crude way of doing the same thing a depreciating metal node would. A mex creates a predictable stream of income, whereas engineers reclaiming create a stuttery and far less transparent amount of mass per second. Not to mention it takes more doing to set up and maintain a reclaiming route than to plant an extractor. I don't see how reclaimable map features can really measure up to depreciating mexes.

Destroying a planet with an asteroid also isn't exactly an alternative. Sure, just like reclaimables it can increase scarcity, but its an extreme measure. A measure which will rarely be taken by the motivation to slow someone's economy down but much rather by a motivation to end the game in one fell swoop. Its also something which can be defended and which isn't likely to happen early in the game, imposing no scarcity until the late game and when it does so, its rather extreme. It really doesn't do the same as depreciating mexes, now does it?

Regardless, this topic is not so much about (the shooting down of) specific suggestions, its about whether or not the concept of dwindling natural resources (e.g. the slowing down of mexes) --the pressure/motivational effect it has on players compared to the complications it brings-- has a desirable effect on gameplay.

I think it could have interesting effects and be quite fun.
Although I do think there are some things that the TA and SupCom playersbase would not like to give up:
Escalation.

Without a constantly growing economy armies will have to remain smaller and if there are escalation it would have to happen in other ways than just more and bigger units. Teching could be a kind of escalation were you reach more and more gamechanging units with the ability to give harder and harder blows to the enemy.

If mexes are cheap/have a short payoff time:
Start of the game plays the same you expand quickly and aggressively and try to prevent the enemy from doing the same.
As the income in your base starts declining you have to fight for the mittle mexes because if you don't take them the enemy will.
Fierce battles erupt where the battle for reclaim and mexes in the mittle are vital to victory.
If the battle hasn't been decided by the time most of the mexes are depleted/have very low income I'd expect the players to have few forces remaining where the players use a few hightech units to kite, bomb and outmanouver the enemy where possible. The risk of ending up in a deadlock could be quite big.
If planet hoping is viable maybe you have to challange the opponent on the other world and as the resources deplete on the first world it losses its' importance.

If mexes are expensive/have a long payoff time:
In the start of the game you only grab a few mexes that can be easily defended. Maybe you can punish your opponent with some rush if he was greedy and made too many mexes.
You push out with engineers and raiders to reclaim whatever resources you can get on the map.
If a player gains mapcontrol he might be able to contain the other player but making alot more mexes is risky so he wll propably expand slowly and try to prevent the other player from doing the same.
You try to secure more easily defendable mexes in your territory and move out.
As time pass by you fight for different areas to try and secure them. Players will propably try to make effecient attacks so they can expand safely while still maintaining
a large army ready to respond.

This would strike at the core of what differentiates TA/supcom from other RTSes. Dwindling mex output puts a hard cap on how long a game can continue, and how large an army can grow. As has been pointed out, you can create a map which will give game play along those lines if you want by providing massive amounts of reclaimable terrain features and very limited metal spots, if you make all mex output fall off over time you eliminate conventional TA style game play entirely. Neutrino has confirmed PA will feature area commands, which should address the UI issues associated with mass reclaiming.

Metal makers.
Reclamation/capture.
A whole damn galaxy ripe for pillage.

You're confusing limited resources with "20 minutes until game over". It can include any number of factors such as vast reserves, a minimum threshold(50% for example), and alternate sources of revenue. One of the biggest benefits is that it helps to throttle an exponential economy, by reducing the value of old/moldy planets. Another bonus is that it actively encourages expansion and contesting new worlds, where the biggest returns can be equally met with the biggest risks. Yet another bonus is that it allows a metal maker economy to behave VERY differently from an extractor economy. Metal makers demand expensive, explosive infrastructure that is very difficult to defend and not suited for frontier worlds, yet they would be ideal for strip mined worlds. They create blatantly vulnerable and valuable targets inside territory that would otherwise be an impenetrable fortress. A big enough complex might even crack a planet all on its own if it chain reacts. How many of these things don't sound they could be good to have?

Dealing with exponential anything is going to be a MAJOR problem throughout the game design, so it is immature to discount the finer details of resourcing at this point.

Well, it can certainly be a selectable option, surely this can be an opt-in, opt-out decision made by the game host.

Pros:
Turtling would be a tad less viable
Limits end game mega structures

Cons:
Turtling would be a tad less viable
Limits end game mega structures

Oh, and one thing, by limiting the output to a time limit, you force everyone to upgrade to T2 ME right way.
T1
100 units per second (ups) for 10 mins = 60,000 units
75 ups for 10 mins = 45,000 units
50 ups for 30 mins = 90,000 units
total mined before depletion = 195,000 units
Early T2
100 ups for 1 min = 6,000 units
UPGRADE cost 6,000 (let's say)
200 ups for 9 mins = 108,000 units
150 ups for 10 mins = 90,000
100 ups for 30 mins = 180,000
total mined before depletion = 378,000

That's 183,000 extra units, as much as TWO tech 1 ME's can gather.

We don't know if there will be Tech2 Metal/Mass Extractors in PA. Maybe there will only be Tech 1 Extractors.

Anyway. Here is how depletion of metal deposits could work with two tiers/techs of metal extractors.

Lets say a metal patch contains 10000 resources.
Tech 1 extractor cost 50. Extraction rate:2 * (percent of resources left in metal patch) per second
Tech 2 extractor cost 200. Extraction rate:4 * (percent of resources left in metal patch) per second.
Now I can't be bothered to do the complete math.
After roughly 25 seconds the t1 mex has paid for itself.
After roughly 50 seconds the t2 mex has paid for itself.
After roughly 75 seconds your t2 mex has paid for itself and outproduce the t1 mex.
When the mex only contains 5000 resources the Extraction rate is halved.
If you would exchange the t1 mex for a t2 mex at that point it would take roughly 150 seconds for the t2 to pay for itself and outproduce the t1 mex.

Edit:

In the system I presented the metal patches would never become mined out. OP also suggested that.
Anyway. T2 mexes wouldn't be anymore mandatory with this system than they would be in FA.
If you can make 3 additional mexes to get +6 additional compared to upgrading a mex to get +2 obviously it would give you more income to take additional mexes.

I don't see how this even holds a match to Real Flow Eco, which doesn't impede Expansion in any way, I mean look at FA, the game had a huge focus on Map control(which is the TA/SupCom equivalent to bases in SCII type games) because while each Mass Location(or Metal Spot) is infinite, the EXTRACTION rate is still limited. So sure you could just camp on your 4 initial Mexes(in terms of FA standards) but you'll be outpaced so quickly by someone who caps other mexes.

And FA was dynamic as all hell, with how quick, cheap and easy it was to build Extractors there was little risk to capping new ones, but HUGE gains to those that held them.

I'm having a hard time seeing any core faults to this system, and look what happened when they flipped it around in SupCom2, with expensive mexes and certain research choices expanding control over the map was slow or non-existant in terms of Mexes as it put you so far behind on things like unit production(which was even worse when you factored in Factory Vet)

Mike

In Starcraft 2 you can't just grab additional bases on the fly. There are alot of buildorders you have to learn to expand somewhat safely and there are alot of rushes that can make you lose from expanding. The cost and time of setting up a base is huge compared to FA mexes and the risk of losing harvesters is far more hurtful than losing a few mexes in FA.
The dynamic in Starcraft isn't about how fast you can expand and how well you can harass, it is about buildorders and timing where you counter their buildorders.
The dynamic in FA was much more about how you push out on the map and seizing control of the map.

If mexes run out you have to expand at some point like in Starcraft. You can't just sit in your base forever.
Now I don't know how dynamic the buildorders are nor how important timing is in SupCom 2 but I know a similar system wouldn't work well in FA since the countermechanics are much softer in FA. Rushing some t2 tanks to enemy? The commander can overcharge them and they are only like 30% better for cost.
Rushing t2 bombers? T1 Interceptors beat them. Trying to creep the enemy with t2 PDs? Easily overrun by t1 artillery.
An interesting map for buildorders and timing attacks in FA was WinterDuel. You had ghetto gunships, gun upgrades, t2 rushes with hoplites, t2 PD creep.
However at the time I concluded that the most efficient strategy was UEF commander rush supported by Lobos.
Anyway TA, SupCom, FA have so many different maps and such alot of available units at each stage of the game that few hardcounters exist to base specific timing pushes upon.

Uh thanks I guess? i'm not sure what you're trying to say here, really it's just reinforcing my point no?

It should be worth noting that I'm talking about FA's system here, which as we already agree allows for a much more dynamic game.

Mike

Keep in mind that the known economy works GREAT on a single map. That may not be true in a multi-map environment. In fact, trouble is virtually guaranteed.

In FA, you are given a small number of local resources. They are easy to use and easy to defend, since they're directly in your territory. The vast majority of goods are spread across the map. Without aggressively claiming them, you'd simply lose the numbers game.

In PA, a small number of local resources can quickly become a large number. It's much easier to secure an entire planet's worth of resources when players have to contend with the isolation and potential obstacles between worlds. The reward for owned planets is very high, and the long term risk is very low due to a natural defender's advantage. The chance of eco racing is much higher due to the exponential nature of any game economy. The chance of stalemating is also higher as the biggest economic targets are on the least volatile core worlds.

There are two solutions to this. The first is to lower the reward. By the time a planet gets depleted, it should be fairly obvious who has dominance. When a world is conquered the fight over extractors ceases, so their output doesn't matter. Instead, it should remain important to fight over fresh worlds, both to deny easy rich resources and to prevent a foothold that is nightmarish to remove. Depleting the planet's resources does this. The reward for winning and the penalty for retreating goes down, dampening the exponential snowball effect. Simply fighting over the ground is a form of victory. The chance of stalemate or idly turtling is also reduced, as the fastest economic growth happens on the most easily contestable worlds.

The second angle is to increase the risk. By depleting the safe economy, a more expensive and volatile one can take its place. The choice of makers becomes less of an option and more of a requirement to maintain the value of a conquered world. This creates difficult targets to defend, and glorious targets for sabotage.


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You might claim that the same thing can happen with unlimited extractors. That's partially true. However, the primary design decision of how an economy evolves becomes much more difficult to manage. A static resource means that no other other source of metal can become relevant without exponential growth.

For example, take an planet that starts with 100 extractor income. I want... say... 60% of a late game planet to be metal maker income, because they go boom and I like that. This can be done by adding 150 metal maker income, giving 250 total income. However, another solution is to have the metal income decay down to 40, and then add 60 income from metal makers. Either way the same economy happens, but the latter is no better off than before.

Say I want 20% of income to come from new, virgin worlds. Suffice to say, a static extractor income can only accomplish this through what is essentially DragonBall Z escalation. Depleting the old economies helps to keep new economies as relevant and important battlegrounds, until one side gets sick of it and blows everything up.

Next, there's the matter of how the prices of super units and planet killers change between a more linear vs. exponential economy. You don't need another two pages of text, so I'll keep it simple. A more linear economy keeps superweapons accessible, but not spammable. A depleting reserve of income makes "**** this, it's death star time" a more likely endgame. If those dead worlds turn into new rich asteroid belts, that's all the better.
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TLDR: It's not a bad idea. It addresses a lot of potential exponential issues, and forces an evolving metagame over the course of a match. Don't be hatin'.

It might be intressting, but if they add it i suggest only adding it as a custom game option and not as a standard in any game type or ranked gameplay (and off by standard in custom games). Atleast not until it has been tested out ingame for a while.

I could see depleting resources helping with turtling, but it doesn't facilitate expansion anymore than an non-depleting resource eco. In a streaming economy, how much you're making is much more important that how much you have. So it's always more important to get more, even if you're resources never deplete.

Anyway, I could see it being a game mode; "sudden death" or maybe for ranked games to speed them along. I wouldn't want it as the default game mode though; I like my ever-expanding armies of death.