Persistent Resources

Offence/defence was pretty well balanced in FA, turtling was only viable on maps with serious choke points - see Seton's Clutch. Try it against a vaguely competent player on a map not built specifically to support turtling and they will quickly claim the rest of the map. The vastly greater mass supply that grants them enables a wide range of options to crack even the most formidable defences.

Handing your opponent economic dominance on a plate is suicide, and that's what you are doing when you choose to turtle. Hell, even in vanilla supcom with incredibly efficient mass farms it didn't work too well as they grew enormous as your economy developed - a huge field of fragile, highly explosive mass fabs isn't especially easy to defend.

I don't think turtling will Be the best idea in this game considering your opponent could simply smash a planet into your base.

Hard to say at this point. If you're turtling and someone throws a KEW at you, then you probably won't be able to attempt to send some units to the KEW to capture it. Though other defences, like missiles would work.

Turtling isn't bad gameplay if your playing along set parameters like with friends and a 10min no rush rule or something or if your a good defender and they are just bad at rushing.

In a competitive match Turtling can be more or less suicide unless your really good at raiding, while you concentrate most of your resources on defenses.

On a side note, I had great fun in showing my Dad up on CoH when he said I wouldn't be able to break through his Wehrmacht defenses, I had near full map control within the first 5mins and his semi-built defenses weren't very good against British Commandos.

As for the Persistent Resources, i'm in the "Not bothered which" Camp as both have good and bad points.

Non Depleting Resource points can make for an Epic endgame but can also lead to long stalemates.

Depleting Resource points counter turtling and encourage fighting for map control but also make for weaker long games as the resources dry up.

Personally I think it should just be a tick box at the beginning of the game then everyone is happy.

I think the best option is (sort-of as you say), a split infinite/finite economy. BOTH for metal and Energy.

Finite metal:
Surface deposits (early-tier, low content, easy access), deep-layer deposits (higher-tech, high content, moderate access).

Infinite metal:
Core deposits (as in: the actual planet core). Infinite supply, but has a high investment cost, high energy cost and moderate metal production.

Infinite Energy:
Solar, tidal and wind, obviously. (all of roughly equal power but with obviously different pros/cons). Deep-layer geothermal energy as a high-tech, mid-range power supply.

Finite energy:
Hydrocarbons, chemical vents, organic deposits, geothermal vents (infinite energy but finite "nodes")


Basically:
Early game:
You build infinite sources as a low income source. Energy and metal nodes provide a significant boost. They're military-economical targets.


Mid-game: the finite sources are running out: higher-tech solutions allow for infinite versions of the finite materials, at a significantly lower income (ie, place a deep-layer geothermal station anywhere, place metal extractors anywhere). Expansion is becoming viable.

Planetary game:

new sources on other planets allow for a significant boost again. Whoever "wins" the planet has to build the high-tech infinite sources to make use of it, as the finite supplies are exhausted.



Local vs Global economy:
I think a Local economy is better. I do think the "space port" type building is important. basically: it creates a mass-energy stream between planets. By default, it does nothing. when one of the "linked" planets needs energy, it gets a boost, while the other planet has redced flow. ea"link" station would only allow a certain upper limit of flow.

A finite economy makes planets worthless eventually, but drives expansion.

an infinite economy makes planets fortresses of doom and destruction.

Why not have the best of both?

For those who cannot read internet, here is the translation of the above post.

Either you messed up your finite and infinite or you really haven't thought through your own system.

For metal you have said cheap finite amounts and hard to get to end-game infinite amounts. So what happens if your finite amounts dry up before you can tap into the infinite stuff? This could happen if someone is harassing your economy or if you are in one of those mega games we have heard of where people can join mid-game.

All I can see finite mass sources doing is removing strategic value in an area over time. The fight should be about destroying the enemy not about grabbing onto what mass is left/the shiny infinite deposits.

Also your "finite" energy should be better than at least the lower tier energy generators, providing much more power/m^2 of space the building takes up. This is what makes them valuable (optionally a lower construction cost too), otherwise there is no point.

Your early-mid-endgame scenario isnt particularly effective, especially if you want your local economy. Local economy means that every time you go to a different planet you are essentially starting from scratch. Sure, you may bring high-tier units, but you only have a Tier 0's worth of economy to work with.

I am of the opinion that the need to prevent and protect against superweapons (asteroids) will drive expansion. You want to build fortresses on multiple planets so you cant be screwed over by a single impact. Likewise, you want to expand to as many of those asteroids as possible to provide those weapons for yourself and to deny the enemy.

Excuse me. The text editor was being funky and i got extremely distracted by it.

i guess the only legit answer is "you're screwed".

Yes, yes, this is exactly the point.

I am of the opinion that whatever rocket is used to get your engineer there, can be used as a mass/energy "storage" so you have an initial resouce boost. And yes, you'd need to start from scratch. I also believe it might work to add "freight" rockets. essentially, you shoot a couple of rockets to the asteroid and they give a local deposit. It wouldn't be "send high-tech engineer and bring the asteroid home", but it also wouldn't be "start from square one".

This is a good point.

That's easy. Metal extractors can do both. They tap the rich surface ore. After the planet's surface ore wears down, they only provide limited income. This can be instant, it can be gradual, or it can be a staircase of reduced income.

Metal makers can provide the more expensive "infinite" economy you speak of. Generators and makers can be very expensive for low yield. They can also be easy targets. As extractors lose yield, it becomes increasingly important to fill the economic holes with metal makers.

Another option is to adopt a bit from the Zero-K overdrive system. The major difference is that instead of increasing income, extractors use overdrive to tap deeper reserves for the same income. Tapped worlds can demand huge power plants to work properly, which are both vulnerable and expensive to replace.

This gives early game a glut of resources for players to fight over. Expanding to fresh ore deposits is the best way of increasing income. Existing planets become more expensive as their economy shifts to metal making or deep drilling.

As for late game stalling, I'm not sure that's really possible. Any time a planet is conquered, the resources simply change hands. Every time a planet is destroyed, commanders are forced closer together for battle. Dead planets and units also have potential scrap that can be used to support a strong economy despite the pillaged worlds. In the end, all that the game needs is to let two commanders reach each other for the final showdown, even if there's nothing left.

I suppose one option is to allow some kind of deep space resources. Easy to grab, annoying to destroy, immune to planet busting. That way the game always has something to work with. Even dead worlds can be rich asteroid belts, only without the land for a base.

Nope. Pure local wouldn't work. An invasion NEEDS free access to the game economy, or the attacker is helpless. At the same time, a pure global economy limits opportunities for planet based tactics and sabotage.

A mix of both can give the best results. Global metal lets money be spent anywhere, turning every base into a potential front. Local energy lets bases be vulnerable, as they can be blown up to create blackouts or stall production. It also performs the same role as the "space dock", effectively putting a tax on and limiting the rate at which metal can be spent. The only catch is that the first power plant needs to cost 0 energy (or engis provide the first energy), which isn't a big deal.

It is unlikely that a new player will start fresh. They'd be too vulnerable. It is more likely that another commander will jump onto a team, and will be given some units and planets to work with.

Never played a RTS before? Destroying the enemy is ALL about fighting over resources.

The economic system is not about scavenging. Rather, it is about using money as a carrot to draw enemies into battle. If a place is not worth expanding, it's because expanding isn't worth it. If a place is not worth attacking, it's because the damage potential is not there. If everyone can sit pretty on their own caches of income, then a large incentive to fight is lost. Perhaps planet killers can take care of all that. Perhaps not. I guess the only real difference is how money affects the game's pace.

That's what i meant the Spaceport was (a system to transfer energy).

Also: again, i would make it so mass and energy can actually be transported.

And lastly: you're gonna need a beachhead anyhow. You probably can't waltz in on a planet with a couple of tanks and expect an engineer to build your army...

This conversation has been done before. Seriously, check out the monster thread.

Your beachhead is entirely dependent on building a single key structure without ANY resources. It is also a single point of failure, causing the attack to catastrophically collapse if destroyed. It just won't work. Besides, there already is a limiter on how many resources a planet can use. It's called "every available factory and engineer". This makes the central resource node redundant. Don't need it.

An attack needs immediate and unlimited access to the strategic resource pool, because the defender is always going to have at least a whole planet's worth of resources to work with. If the attacker can't bring the same resources to bear, he's kind of screwed.

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It would be nice to have an option to stifle enemy production. It also would be nice to have a way to shut down enemy defenses and artillery. You might be able to shut specific targets down with EMPs, and you can certainly kill everything to stop it as a threat. But there is no middle ground to bringing a base off line. Stalling a planet is very different from stalling an empire, in both challenge and lethality. That's where a local, more tactically oriented resource becomes useful.

Energy can work as local. It's a great choice for the role because it's not just an economic resource. Across the games energy has been used for building, repair, sensors, cloak, base defenses, artillery, superweapons, teleporters, shields, extra money, and all manner of special abilities. Basically everything that a base or a special unit can do is dependent on energy. So an attack on generators is not just an economic threat, but it causes immediate damage to every other option and ability at the player's disposal. On a galactic scale, that's game ending. On a planetary scale, that's really cool. A ton of good things can happen if energy is treated this way, such as making the most powerful Commander tools dependent on getting energy from a base.

So we have gone back to the old diminishing returns idea? Don't want to start that argument again, just highlighting what it is.

That statement was based around my interpretation of his infinite/finite mass, which roughly was that there would be a very small number of valuable deep-core deposits. Your interpretation is much better and makes my statement irrelevant.

Isn't this where the unit cannons and interplanetary transport stuff comes in?
And again: if you can transport units, you can transport resources.

To be more precise, it is a decaying economy. Tons of RTS games have some form of decaying economy. In starcraft, the money runs out. In CnC, spawn points reduce income to a trickle. In Age of Empires, gold can eventually only be earned through trade. There are many ways to do this, and the goal of every system is the same- force conflict, create risks, provide rewards, and create an endgame.

"Diminishing returns" is when your investment is not linear with its payoff(the returns are diminished). In this case, every extractor is still an extractor, so there are no diminishing returns.

Resources aren't units. Why transport something that has to be turned into units anyway? It's a complex step. It's a vulnerable step. More importantly it is a redundant step.

It doesn't matter where the resources are, because nothing gets built without a green hose. Engineers and factories already represent the player's ability to both access and spend resources. The only thing an extra step adds is an extra step. Is there any reason to force players to bring both the money AND units they need to win, beyond making an invasion more difficult?

/fixed. Even that way, @bobucles?

And the lack of that is one of the defining features of the TA/supcom games. Infinite resources with per-map finite bonus reclaimables is one of the hallmarks of PA's predecessors. I dunno about you, but I backed PA because I want a game built on the principles that made TA/supcom great, not yet another game like all the other RTSes.

Damnit, I knew I overlooked some analogy. No wonder I wasn't any good in FA.

Not really. Look at it this way. For an attack you can:
A) send units
B) build a base to get more units

The point of building a base is to have more units and options available. Forcing a supply line drastically limits the ability of a base to perform that role, especially one embedded in enemy territory. It means more work on the invader, and even more vulnerability for the defender to exploit. Both things make invasion FAR more difficult, and if it becomes too difficult, the only other option is to blow it all up. Blowing planets up should really be a last resort.

I never said any of those examples were appropriate for PA. It merely illustrates that resource systems come in all shapes and flavors. Rather than bore you with 3 pages of exposition (yeah, I deleted quite a bit), I'll just make a few points:
1) The game is going to span a vast scale, from one planet to lots of planets to perhaps entire sectors.
2) Players can only manage a finite amount of money and units. The UI can help, but ultimately there is a limit to how intense a game can be for one seat.
3) The economy can span a vast scale between one world and potentially dozens.
4) Tech gets "unlocked" when the economy can support it.

Whether those things fit together or fundamentally clash is a matter of what you want from the game. If you want an open game where a bunch of players join in and blow stuff up, then keeping things simple can be a lot of fun. If you're looking for a more serious experience, there are a lot of flaws with it.

Economy has the fundamental role of determining the game's pace. It directly determines what actions are rewarding and where a player's focus should be. For a casual game, those sort of details aren't that important. For a more competitive title, it's the hardest thing. An economy should encourage players to struggle with each other as often as possible. Players should have hard choices between where to attack and defend, which is amplified by having less money than choices. Tech should be given the greatest opportunity to be successful, which means keeping money levels stable as long as possible. An overly steep economy can turn superweapons into play things, which ruins the importance of everything else. Supcom proved that.

Most importantly, an economy needs to be within the grasp of its players. One planet's economy can quickly turn into 5 planets, then 20, and eventually become too much for one person to handle. It can end up feeling like a money map. The challenge stops being about the struggle between players, so much as a contest for who can spam the most stuff. One might argue that a large game should simply have more players. I guess that's true. And the UI can help simplify strategic management in a large way. But things can also be kept sane by changing the flow of galactic resources, so that it is optimal for every stage of the game.