Planetary Annihilation's Economy System

Will energy costing defences and units be able to store energy equivalent to a extra shot or two?

That's a per unit decision. So yes it's possible, there are a few cases where this has been considered but we'll see.

I like this economical system. It's an elegant solution to some of the issues in TA/Supcom, while remaining true to the overall concept. And unless I misunderstand it, this system discourages players from running metal at < 0 because it reduces the efficiency of energy usage, which would be very important early game.

Dream come true, all i can really say. hope that this stays relatively the same as proposed as the process goes on.

I think this is a solid, safe development on top of the TA economy system. It will function in virtually the same fashion in almost every respect, and it should indeed be simpler for newer players to understand.

The major concern I have is that as the scale of the game increases this economy will exhibit the same pathologies TA did. Especially in a few years when we have much more powerful hardware, and want to play on maps that are huge compared to what the game launches playing. Especially considering PA will have entire planets, I think it is important that PA not constrain itself to a "planet" being very small compared to an actual planet.

I am glad PA has a much better system than SupCom 2, and seems to be simpler than TA and SupCom without sacrificing depth. Overall I think this is a great system, and am very pleased there will be a new game which genuinely follows the TA paradigm. However a huge global economy on a huge map is going to exhibit some very weird behaviors with the described system.

Making up some numbers for an example:
-tank costs 100 metal
-tank factory uses 10 metal and 5 energy per second
-bot costs 100 metal
-bot factory uses 10 metal and 20 energy per second
-engineers use 1 metal and 1 energy per second

Using just a factory:
-tank costs 100 mass and 50 energy
-bot costs 100 mass and 200 energy

Using a factory and 10 assisting engineers:
-tank costs 100 mass and 75 energy
-bot costs 100 mass and 150 energy

So the relative mass:energy ratios of the factories and the engineers can result in discounts or premiums on energy cost when assisting.

Is that the intended operation?

Edit: not saying this is a bad thing. Just pointing out that it would be inefficient to assist a factory with a higher mass:energy ratio than an engineer and efficient to assist a factory with a lower mass:energy ratio.

The plan seems to be to make all factories more efficient than assisting engineers, even if some factories use more energy than other, so assisting always uses more energy.

Just so I'm clear on the major change...

Unlike in Supcom where buildings/units had a set mass AND energy cost associated with them, in this system units/buildings will only have a metal cost. The engineers and factories will have a fixed energy cost no matter what they are producing.

Is this correct?

Right, which simply means that engineers would have a lower mass:energy spend ratio than any factory. I'm happy with that.

In addition to the engi being bad at mass/energy ratio i would like to see the comander being best at it.

Should ezzz out the start. And make for interessting strategies.

Also assisting facilities with engis is not per definition a bad thing. While facility only goes for mass per energy. Assisting goes for mass per area.

It is interessting how small the step is from a suggestion of a forum member, to a rumor how the game will be....

neutrino confirmed this i think. let me get quote so watch for the edit

That's one possibility. Making factories more efficient with raw build power per cost also accomplishes the same thing.

Energy does count as metal, in a fashion. Generators ultimately take metal to build, and they take up extra land space as well. This would help disperse some of the fabber's expense towards building more infrastructure in the base. In terms of typical tradeoffs you get a unit that is cheaper to field(more to use, easier to lose), while still retaining a high overall cost for factory assisting. Being cheaper helps all its other options as well. If a fabber spends most of its life on the move, or is integrated as an army support unit, then the extra fabbing expense is irrelevant.

The base building aspect might be troubling. It might be a great way to shut down amoeba base sprawl across worlds. It'll limit things, that's almost certain. Any way it's set up, the Commander is still there to tackle the worst of problems.

This will be cool for units to use energy as ammo.

Like a bomber - 10e / bomb, uses a flat 5e/s to regenerate bombs. Onboard storage has 25 bombs - after the first bombing run it can take 50s to get a full load again.

And, btw, congrats Scathis on coming up with a concept that just about everyone likes

I am going to enjoy that more things rely on your energy supply. It makes sense.

This will make energy much more valuable. I like it.

So far so good

Oh cool, this is always the way I figured building things was supposed to work. And I really like this compared to having a building project that is really just two empty buckets of metal and energy that need to be filled before it becomes done.

Nice this will really help new players.

More than anything I see this as the one game mechanic that kind of discourages having a ton of engineers assisting a factory. Which is fine, but it does mean that when your economy crashes it's going to crash hard. Speaking of which....

I think this is a good idea, but it did come up in a thread before (ironically enough talking about new players struggling with the economy). Someone is building stuff in their base, and their economy is pretty tight because it's early game and they are trying to build as fast as possible. Then a spy plane flies over and all of their anti air turrets blow it away. Then as the turrets recharge their economy will grind to a halt.

I like this idea in theory but yeah, as someone pointed out, assisting engineers on some buildings will be more economical than others. This can be totally fine if we realize that it's there and plan around it. So for example bots could be more of a late game thing than an early game tactic because you'd have more spare engineers to sit on the bot factory assisting it.

I would consider this an implausible scenario. The energy drain thing is only for the big guns like heavy artillery type stuff.

Oh nice, yeah that makes a lot more sense.

I've been thinking about something along these lines for aircraft. At least it's something to try out.