Nanogel: Economy & Logistics at Unlimited Scale

+1

Radar more effective at detecting air units than ground units, I'm all for that.

idk if this has been said but what if there is NOT just the one nanogel? what about like better gels that either build faster or can make the structure or units better or even has to be used for T2 or higher things

What benefit does it bring to gameplay? What are the downsides to it? There's several arguments in this thread that adding one type of Nanogoop is adding too many. Why should we want/need two?

Just to put in my two cents:

Two resources are enough as it is. I really don't see the issue that people have with transporting resources. Sins works just fine and there was no transporting of resources. It also had three different resources to gather, and that was plenty as well. PA will be just fine with metal and energy. If you want nanogel, then why isn't there a building which is a metal extractor that has a generator strapped to it? It would make nanogel with half the buildings, and thereby we would only have one resource.

well then idk i thought there would be like a storage for engineers that will be upgradeable and a refilling station

A) Sins of a Solar Empire had resources in orbit of most planets
B) You did not build and fight over individual planets in the same detail you will in this one
C) There was a limit to the number of structures you can have at each colony
D) You do not have mobile engineers that can increase the construction ability of a single shipyard so it starts spitting out carriers and dreadnoughts like its Tier 1 again

Your comparison is no comparison at all.

A) You don't say? I fail to see the value of this point.
B) No you did not, but there was interplanetary combat. I was comparing how transferring resources between planets is not an issue.
C) Yes there was, but I was not comparing that.
D) What does an engineer's ability to assist with a shipyard have anything to do with this?

I was comparing the economy, not the genres.

EDIT: You seriously thought I was comparing every aspect of the two games? Did you not even read my post?

voligne is right.

Sins forced decentralisation (which I consider to be a good thing). Points C and D are the key.

It was the building limit and the map size that forces decentralisation.

I suppose looking from the desert biome shots that building a mega base would be exceedingly difficult without just walling off your entire base.

But then again, you would just end up wit a sprawl.

I should rephrase what I meant to say in my first post.

Why should we have a third resource which is the combination of the other two? We may as well just have one resource which is made from one building.

I understand that Sins plays completely differently from TA, SupCom, or PA, but how does its lack of moving resources not pertain to PA? That's what I was asking.

Drsinstar, you have no idea what you are talking about. For the last time, combining metal and energy into a local resource is not even close to the same thing as having a single resource.

If there was only a single resource, you would just spend it to acquire more of it. You would build depots and use the resources they create to build more. Single resource systems are boring. Spending metal and energy (two global resources) to get one local resource means you cannot manufacture more than you have metal and energy. There are still two resources acquired by different means.

If you capture additional mexes, you get more metal. If you build more energy generation, you get more energy. If you have more of both, then you can manufacture more nanogel. However when you do so, you are determining where that metal and energy must be spent, unless you transport it.

Nanogel essentially acts as prefabricated build power. It creates the possibility of separating expense and construction. It allows construction without draining from your global economy at the time, and it allows draining your global economy to create prefabricated build power in a localized area that will be spent later.


Sins of a Solar Empire literally forces decentralization by imposing a hard limit on the number of facilities that can be built in each system by arbitrary decree. The game would be extremely boring without this limit, as you would have little reason to expand. The question is, can we create a more elegant localized economic system which creates interesting incentives to decentralize? Nanogel may add a small measure of complexity, but I think the depth it adds easily justifies the additional complexity.

Well, you can also only spend the metall and energy you have or gain. So i dont see the point there.

Easy there, don't hurt yourself. You could have explained that more gently.

Thank you for the explanation, I see your understanding now.

You know....other then for resources like SupCom.

Even with refinery's the resources that can be gotten from even a few planets cannot match the economic juggernaut that players can achieve by expanding.

So the reasons to not be centralised are for resources and transportation (to build factory's on the field).

And reasons to not expand are to have greater defence, and more clustered build power.

So if players building in one spot is something we want to avoid then really we need to help out a players defence in the field, or to give another incentive to actually go and build in the field.

Not to change the way resources work, because that doesn't affect the issue.

In Sins of a Solar Empire the number of resource facilities is also a hard limit per system, but it's not as arbitrary a rule as the number of research labs and other facilities. True, if you could build research in a single system without limit, you would have no research reason to expand.

However there is also economic forced decentralization, because if you want more resources, you are going to have to expand and create more risk for yourself which requires expense to mitigate. If you could build economy in a single system without limit, you would have no economic reason to expand. The forced decentralization of economy is actually more important than the forced decentralization of other aspects of Sins.

The arbitrary rule system certainly works for creating interesting gameplay, although it is a bit heavy-handed. But a more nuanced and subtle decentralization incentive could be much more interesting, as it allows players the option of degrees of centralization or sprawl to suit their style and needs in each theatre of war, or even areas within a theatre.

The question that I think, that needs to be asked, is how do we allow the economy of one planet to be able to defend itself against the economy of 10? Why not just abandon your orignal planet, colonize another and some asteroids and then expand as fast as you can so you can overwhelm your opponent? With Mass deposits tied to the landscape, it could turn into one big early game land-grab.

On larger scales, the solution is to turn each solar-system into its own game. This creates the meta-game. However on the solar scale we cannot do this.

The issue is, we want someone who has conquered the vast majority of the solar system to be able to reflect it in what they can do, but we also want to allow players the ability to remain relevant and give them an opportunity for a come-back.

We dont want someone who has even a slight advantage in the number of celestial bodies held, to be able to just steam roll their opponents, but we dont want to nerf them into equality.

I believe nano-gel solves this, that and possibly limiting or even eliminating engineer building support. This way you cant just throw up a factory with a hundred engineers and spit out T3 like your a vicious rapper in a rap battle.

Before we ask this, I think we must first ask: should we let one planet defend itself against the economy of 10? If your oppoenent has 10 planets and you have 1, why should you be given a sporting chance? He should just crush you completely, since he's basically already won.

What is the point of creating Nanogel as a third resource when you can create efficient mass/energy storage structures like in supcom that would store a certain amount of income overflow from the economy for use when your income goes negative from various projects.

Also what is the point of forcing localized economy for bases when that will only really result in backline bases being over abdundant in resources when those resources are much needed at the frontline bases which are constantly low from protracted combat? Because you try to force in a localized economy, you then must create the means to transfer between bases, which only serves to complicate things, rather then add any real depth.


It is better to keep the economy simple, but still true to its roots. Nanogel and resource localization to each base are not something we need in a game where it really should have a simple and easy to understand global economy.


If you really want to force people from centralizing all of their resource production then the way to do it would be to implement resource depletion levels and resource harvesting range like in TA. The more mass production structures in an small area the worse the amount of mass you will get in the long run as you deplete it faster. Resulting in an eventuality where your income will plummet if it is too centralized and bringing your economy to a crash because your mass production has already depleted the area within its influence.

Though that could possibly be used as a tactic to jump start an economy for rushing by mass extractor stacking. However unless expansion and storage construction follows suit it is a double edged sword.

We don't allow him to defend himself. If its 10 planets versus one he's screwed, there should be no way out. If they make it so the economy of one planet can defend against the economy of ten, then something is seriously wrong with the game