Planetary Annihilation's Economy System

I'm back! Did anything interesting happen in the last 8 pages? Other than like, the typical e-drama?

There are certainly more angles to the economy than how resources work during a shortage. There is base development, production, and army management as well. Every step along the way, TA and Supcom have tried to simplify these systems and make them as hands-free as possible. Why? So you can get those big robot battles!

Getting good gameplay from the resource system is obviously very important, but so is sticking to the simplicity and ease of use that has been nurtured from the very beginning. Any choice is going to be a tough one.

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Because the MATH(Warning: Sekrit club backer's only!) says that it's a straight up good idea. Why make a situation worse than it already is?

Things are a bit trickier during a stall, because every metal consumer has a unique energy demand. I don't think there's a happy answer for it. Perhaps the simplest way to enforce priority is to have a fabber that doesn't use energy at all. The Commander, maybe? It'd be a very powerful trait, especially early in the game.

Special engineers might also incorporate their own constructor power source. Since they're merging both generator and constructor into a single unit, they would end up very expensive and probably explosive. But as they are designed to not be energy consumers, they would remain fully functional during a stall, no problem.

Maybe this has already been discussed but I must ask. How are the resources going to be managed between planets or any body in space that you have a base on, with factories and resource gatherers/generators? Do players have to rebuild from scratch every time they settle on a new space body or can they settle on an enemy planetoid with nearly unlimited streaming of resources due to having many gatherers/generators on other bases?

Nothing confirmed yet, but we've had a fair few discussion on that sort of thing already you can check out in the Topic Index.

Mike

Hi I'm wondering if there is going to be any experimental resource generators? Like some of the mods on supreme commander FA? And what are the tech levels going to look like? Like sup com. 1, 2, 3, and then experimental?

Little is known about the potential for 'Experimental' or 'Mega' type units yet. In terms of Tech Levels, you should check out the Topic Index, in particular the first thread in This section..

Mike

So, can I spam energy production on some far away planet/solar system/moon/asteroid and then not have any generators on the front? Or will energy supplies (or possibly mass) be restricted to the planet/asteroid/moon they're built on? If so, can I send energy/mass in supply trains/rockets to other solar systems?

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There has been no clarification of whether Eco is Local or Global, the system proposed at the start of the thread works for both thought so it's still open to discussion, Here is a good place to talk about it and read up on what others think.

Mike

Currentlyglobal. It's possible we may experiment with local. Haven't done the experiment yet though.

Whelp, That settles a 40 page discussion.

Mike

Thanks!

They likely need to be able to, like, host a server with multiple planets and a UI and a functioning economy and units and stuff before they can even determine if global economy is a boon or a curse. heh.

thanks for settling that :lol: :lol: :lol:

Will tanks/ bots be made automatically (since this can be very useful)
Could building be upgraded to produce more?

Just Like SupCom Factories will have a repeat function.

Build more Factories.

Mike

TA only had an "Add 5" function by holding shift while queuing... unfortunately. :lol:

Ctrl I believe adds 100 to a que.

Maybe... not sure if that was in the base game. My knowledge past 3.1 has always been hazy. Wasn't big on Core Contingency... that was closer to the tail end of my TA binge when I had stopped playing TA every day :?

Honestly, the thing that most excites me about the original post?

That it seems we're reverting from 'land factories' of SupCom back to the original Kbot Lab + Vehicle Plant combination from TA.

So when it comes to economy will this game be more like Supreme Commander 1 or Supreme Commander 2? I loved spending time on economy in SC1, but noticed that economy was a non-issue in SC2, leading one critic to say the developers fixed a problem that nobody wanted fixed. From what I read seems like the latter is aimed for, in that nobody should spend time worrying about economy, that even a novice will have advanced units pumped out in no time.

It is my understanding that PA will be more similar to TA than either SupCom game.

I do think that TA, despite having a very good economy system for the day and for the scale of the game, is not the end-all, be-all economy system. Especially for very large maps and at high economy levels, TA's system has some pretty serious limitations.

Zero-K has built upon TA's system significantly, and in my opinion has improved the original TA formula considerably. PA should almost certainly implement the cost/build power simplifications from Zero-K, and might consider other changes as well, such as overdrive or another system to replace TA's flat rate metal makers.