How is metal/mass/energy going to work in PA? Metal/mass: In TA, you could build mexes anywhere you liked, but they produced very little metal if they were not on a metal deposit, and different metal deposits varied in the amount of metal they produced (large deposits = more metal/second). You needed more metal, you could build random mexes for a tiny amount of metal, replace the standard mex with a moho mine, or build metal makers. (or reclaim wreckage, but that's hardly reliable for a demanding economy.) In SupCom, you could only build mexes on mass deposits, that was it. You could not build them anywhere else. They also had a fixed income depending on their tech tier. The only other way to get more mass was to upgrade the mexes, build more mexes, or build mass fabricators. From the Kickstarter trailer, it seemed to me that what appeared to be mexes were not built on any sort of deposit, or if they were on the planet, they were very neat deposits. On the asteroid, they seemed to be built willy-nilly as well. Seems kind of like Uber went in a TA direction regarded metal. But there are no deposits. So that begs the question, is metal as easy to obtain as energy now? Is there no required expansion to capture that one extra mex? Has metal creation been done away with? Energy: In TA, there were several different methods of obtaining energy. First and foremost were solar panels. They always worked (to my knowledge, can't remember), never fluctuating in the power that they gave you. Geothermal generators were another reliable option, as were fusion reactors. You could also build wind mills and tidal generators, but they could give you a lot of energy one moment and peter out the next. In SupCom, it was mindnumbingly straightforward: each tech tier got a different, increasingly more powerful, volatile, and space consuming generator. They all gave a static income. SupCom 2 was worse, I'm not talking about that. In the Kickstarter trailer, it seemed to me that Uber took the idea from SupCom 2 regarding power generators: one type is enough. EDIT: went back and watched the trailer again, and some of the "power generators" were twice the height of others. Different tiers? Personally, I liked the diversity TA had. You could have some maps that were windier that others and such. I would hope that the diversity play a role in PA as well.
search.php?st=0&sk=t&sd=d&sr=posts&keywords=%2Beconomy+%2Bmetal+%2Bmass+%2Benergy&fid[]=61 a Good way to find threads focusing on the economy. Otherwise at this point, not much in terms of details have been confirmed yet, a lot is dependant on other gameplay factors and could easily change as things are tested. Do not use the Visualization as any kind of hard fact, just like with the original SupCom trailer, it's more so focused on looking good then being 100% accurate to gameplay. Mike
I would not put much stock on what you see in the video since it was a kick starter video designed to encourage people to pledge money With no game play made yet so the base would be all place holders with so you can say the base is fake as is the mex or mines you saw in the video
Very good point, I was being over-analytical [of the trailer.] EDIT: Perhaps I should rephrase the question. Should PA do away with deposits? With randomly generated maps, one player could spawn with 10 deposits right next them and another could have squat. And then is TA's energy generation better than SupCom's tiers?
There are degrees of "randomness". So why assume mass point locations would be truly random? In concept it's like the terrain, it can be procedural generated to a set of rules aiming to achieve balance, but with an element of randomness to create something seemingly fresh each time. Can you imagine a truly randomly generated terrain? It'd be impossible to play on in much the same way as your concerns about mass points.
There are several levels to randomness, naturally something like resources needs a more delicate touch. Mike
That is a good point if every commander gets on planet to them self it would not matter so much as long the depoits the same but... If more then one commander start on the same planet resource placement would matter then. All i can think is to have the depoits seeded in groups of three for example and every plant equal same amount of resouce deposit as an option to tweak in map generation.
We can always spray resources around peoples start point. Regardless I'm also intending on "the egg" being a partial solution to this. We'll see how well it works in practice.
On TA, the metal spots allowed to design a huge and dynamic war front. Instead of SupComFA unfortunately with 4 metals spots to some places
http://img362.imageshack.us/img362/7119/58924943et3.jpg Not very many. Kind of small, but still shows that it's not just clumps of 4.
And it's not all that surprising given the amount of land available and to top it off teh actual spawns on have 3 mass points instead of the usual 4. Mike
