The 'new' flow based economy

While I'm not sure where I stand on the issue prioritizing anything in the economy, I'm of the mind that if there is only one right thing to do, implementing that is no longer management, and not generally fun (mileage may vary) or conductive to a strategic game.

A totally different example, unit pathing, units waking around each other is the right thing, so it shouldn't be on the player to 'be better' by having to do it manually.

Should the game be totally idiot proof? No, that's silly and dubs the game down too much. But should we punish people for things that are trivial?

I believe you should be hurt economically if you do not have enough energy. Automating a process that removes this penalty removes a part of the skill involved in managing a functioning economy. I believe you yourself should pause construction/turn off energy consuming buildings if you run out of energy, not the game.
I do not believe making sure your energy production is sufficient to be trivial, so yes, I believe you should be punished if you fail to do so.

What I see is:

Metal - how much you can do per second

Energy - and how quickly

But you absolutely ARE hurt by running out of energy. Sensor systems go offline. Production stalls. Artillery and defenses lose efficiency. The UBER GUN shuts down. Cloaking systems and stealth systems fail. There's no question about it. Stalling HURTS. No matter what system you use, or how it's implemented, an energy stall will always deal damage the instant Energy hits zero.

Keeping extractors online happens to be one of the best responses possible for an energy stall. There are other types of responses as well, but they only emerge in a dire crisis. An emergency demands player attention, where the player is forced to turn things off in order to power anything at all. It's not a simple overdraw from working your systems too hard.

Setting up production should be trivial. The game's interest lies in robot battles, not in sim city. There's nothing wrong with using mechanics that push the game forward.

Base development will always exist as a means to an end.

If this is what we want then decoupling energy from metal production seems like the correct solution.

Yes but we are talking about the flip side of base development which is giving an enemy a way to actually hurt you. It may be that the penalty for losing energy is already severe enough without involving the extractors.

One big concern is that to have your energy stall, you SEE your stuff shut down - production falters, sensors turn off, etc etc..

but you don't see your mexes produce less.

So yes, my vote would be to definitely decouple energy from metal production. Whether that means that mexes don't use energy, or that energy usage is not prorated for mexes, both solutions work for me.

Above and beyond that though, there is a place for 'advanced' economic management such as the somewhat less intuitive prioritization concept. It's not as pretty and it's hard to display on the units, but with a huge sprawling economy you need a way to point at a single project and say 'Build this first'.

decoupling energy from metal may be the right decision that has to be made... but it just feels so wrong.

Time for another spin off thread...

Mexes not prorated is NOT the correct thing if this can result in a situation where your mexes produce stuff but nothing happens with it. Because there is no energy left to actuall do anything with the metall.

So does anybody know how this is going to work across multiple planets?
Will metal be fixed to each planet and energy shared? How will this be visualised?
I already mentioned in the general forum thread (p17, which derailed slightly) the concept of a resource strategy centre to establish inter-planetary exchange. Any thoughts here?

Also will the prorating start when storage is exhausted or as soon as consumption exceeds production thus straining storage with non-prorated draining?

Say your energy production just got annihilated, and the enemy is at your front line, wouldn't you want to direct all your energy on defense? Although I think Neutrino mentioned that simple turrets would not rely on energy, affecting only heavier artillery.

Having energy as the main resource that gives you the ability to run things is great. It makes resource management easier and puts all focus onto actual battle and tactics while retaining some sort of feeling that you must keep an eye on both resource production and consumption.

It's not super easy but it's not ridiculous either. Resource management was always my shitty side, I might actually be good at PA. :lol:

Just a quick reply,

I would like to have global economy... is this something that is already decided on?
Also, it would sound logical to affect mass-extractors once you are running out of energy, but this is something I would like to test out in the Alpha, to see if the punishment is too severe, cause you lose everything else, too (radar, stealth...and so on).

I've seen some talk of 'new players' and 'forgiving' regarding economy. Difficulties in this genre have usually been restricted to changes to the AI. In racing games, there are driving assist that can be switched on on lower difficulties, which also have simplified physics, as many other games also have different predefined setups (BF3 Normal/Hardcore). Why could we not have options to accommodate more people?

Edit- Not read 10.7 pages

What helped most "noobs" in Forged Alliance was that you could enable double the resources... so a regular energy T1 generator would produce +40 (not just +20)... and so on.

This doesn't "help" in any way. It speeds up the game. In multiple threads we've talked about how the economy has exponential growth. This speeds up the growth like crazy. Think of the difference between n^2 and (2n)^2... That's similar to what doubling resources do. It speeds up the game, and makes it easier to mass things. But if you pit a pro against a noob with double resources, the pro is still going to grow his economy faster than the noob, proportionally.

Then the excess goes into storage. It's not a big deal. Metal storage was more significant than energy storage, even with Zero-K's triple-1 system. After energy is restored, it is a simple matter of spending the excess.

But if you don't harvest the resources in the first place, well. That's SOL territory.