Inter-planetary economy?

Hey everyone,

Got a small question and I hope somebody could help me understand.
Is the player's economy global throughout the map?
Or is it different for each planet?

For example: You build metal extractors/producers and energy production facilities on one planet/asteroid/moon and the metal/energy rate is specific to that planet/asteroid/moon.
If you build another base on another planet, the initial rate of resources is zero (or a very basic rate).

I think that the resource rate must be unique on every planet. I think that it would balance the game pretty well since more advance players would have more of a challenge against less experience players (ex: It would be a bit harder for experienced "rushers" to rush towards an enemy player that is new at the game).

Plus it would not make sense to start a new base on another planet with ALL the resources from another planet...

If this is implemented, we can have 'cargo ships' that take a small portion of a planets resources to go start another base on another planet. Or engineers generate a small amount of metal and energy, just enough to start a base.

What do you guys think?

Via the Topic Index: Should resources be tracked per planet/moon

At this point Neutrino mentioned that they are working under the assumption of a Global Eco, but you'll need to use the entire salt shaker with that because they might not have a fully playable game yet so it could very easily change between now and release.

Mike

Thanks Mike.

Well I hope that they put an option for this in the game at least...

I originally brought up the idea of logistics... I'd hate to say it, but a global/universal economy is probably the best. It doesn't work that way in real life, but real life also has the benefit of a 20,000 person organization working out the logistics problems rather than having a single player try and manage it all.

I don't know. I think there should be at least something that makes a new planet harder to start up. Maybe if you had to build separate metal and energy storage for each planet, but still get the income rate from all of them?

There is, the fewer engineers you have, the longer it takes to set up.

When you look at it broadly, Build Power isn't a global resources in any way. It's entirely dependant on where you engineers are located.

Mike

That's true but I don't imagine it being very difficult to transport a bunch of engineers to a new planet. It makes things go by a lot faster not having to worry about any resources for that planet.

For example, it seems like it could be very easy once you have enough resources to just quickly jump from asteroid to asteroid and building a couple engines and then shooting them off. I'd like to think you need power or something on that asteroid.

Yes, but does making it harder to expand make for a more fun experience?

We also don't know anything about interplanetary transport option(s) yet, there are a couple of topics on that int eh topic Index as well if you want to see some of the ideas for them.

Mike

Personally I like the idea of having to strategize a bit before expanding, I'd feel much more accomplished if I had two fully functional systems compared to having one that just feeds another. It's all preference I suppose.

Yeah I definitely need check out some of the topics. It's been awhile since I've been on here and I'm trying to get back into it.

The only really big negative of a globalized econ is that there will be a saturation limit for the number of available planetary bodies vs the number of players.

For example, a 4 player game with 6 planets with 2-3 moons each, and an astroid belt of several dozen varying sizes wouldn't work. There would just be too much real estate and the game would divolve to the first person to Gantry T2 wins. They would expload out and hide massive resource generation just through the shear number of bodies that would have to be scouted.

The first person to achieve a fully functional astroid extraction base (Moho's on all metal points + fusion + makers) would pretty much dominate on the disputed planets just from having the first runaway econ expansion.

The systems are going to definitely need tuned very well for number of players to permit reasonable scouting of at least a large minorty of available real estate to be possible and economically reasonable. I suspect personally that Gantry T2 rockets (or other forms of interplanetary travel) are not going to be cheap.

Well, as said, we know pretty much nothing for Interplanetary transport at this stage, so we don't even know if there is a T2 Gantry or what it would do compared to a T1 Gantry(the capabilities of which we don't fully know yet either for that matter) and don't forget that Asteroids serve several purposes, yes they may have some extractor points(how many is obviously going to depend on a number of balance factors) and have a very limited space with which to built upon(especially compared to a planet) but also which the addition of KEW Engines can either turn the asteroid into a Large weapon or a platform for potential weapons and unit deployment options. Also that with KEWs the available real estate available in a game with shrink as it progresses.

You clearly have some assumptions you're working on that lead you to your conclusions, but without knowing what they are it's hard to talk about them.

For example I find the idea that the first person to have an asteroid to instantly form a runaway economy is just silly, while it is true that it supplements resources from planets, it seems to me that it would be much more cost effective to conquer the planet you're fighting on as opposed to capturing a tiny asteroid and filling it with resources but leaving it vulnerable to attack...

In an 6 player FFA with 2 players per planet(thus 3 planets and assorted moons/asteroids) I'd be more worried about the first person to defeat or drive off his opponent from his planet compared to the first person to get to an asteroid.

Mike

A few assumptions perhaps. I can't imagine interplanetary travel being very cheap however, given the nature of astroid KEWs. Orbital is also almost certainly going to be quite strong just by the nature of having the high ground. Interplanetary pretty much has to be at least as expensive or more so.

So if you have a 4 player game and 200 planetary bodies... Sending 1-3 T2 engies to one medium size one at random to build a pure resource base would be an order of magnitude cheaper and easier than sending rockets to search for said base on every astroid in the system. You would just gamble that it wouldn't be found or worth finding and quickly have a huge advantage in resources over the player on the disputed planet(s).

The assumption is metal makers will pay for themselves(and the gens to power them) within 15 minutes or so. Any worse than that and maybe it wouldn't really be a big deal claiming the first astroid 5 minutes sooner, but I just cannot see interplanetary travel not being a HUGE investment during metagame econ (0-40 minutes). Thus scouting the entire system would be impossible.

I'm just concerned with the single start strat issue. If rushing to interplanetary is the only way to win, then competitive play will quickly devolved into who can click the fastest. Thats StarCraft.

Well it entirely depends on what Orbital units are capable of, I expect Orbital to play more of a supportive role to supplement the standard Land/Air/Sea play as opposed to overriding it.

200 planetary bodies? What are you basing this on? It seems like something like that is possible from a technical side(with a sufficiently powerful server), it doesn't seem realistic from an intended gameplay aspect.

If there are Metal makers, they aren't exactly well thought of by many players.

Mike

Idk, Mavor has on many many occasions reiteratted his intent to stay as close to the kickstarter vid as possible.

There are a ton of astroids in that ring. Idk, maybe it was just a bit too much awesome and not actually going to be the norm.

The rocket gantries also look big and complicated (expensive) and able to transport a handful of small flatpacked bots or the commander alone.

I also have a memory of metal makers being officially confirmed, but I may be misremembering how strong the actual language of that discussion was.

I'll cave though, cause it is almost completely baseless speculation on my part.

Asteroid belts may just be a bottomless pit of rocks that you can use. Ain't nothing wrong with that. The ability to get resources from those rocks is a different matter entirely. It really has to be tested to see what happens and what system will work best.

A way to expand your metal income is nice. However, unlimited growth is a cess pool of issues to deal with. There are a lot of things to try and some will undoubtedly work better than others.

There already is a strategy involved with expanding. Everywhere you try to go, someone is trying to kill your stuff. Your actions do not go unchecked.

The locality of resources is its own thing. They could be isolated to bases, planets, or be usable across the entire game map. Each way has its own ups and downs, and there's only 2 resources anyway so it's easy to try everything out.

The option with the best "on paper" potential is to have map hax metal and planetary energy economies. It ensures a good distribution of targets, creates good expansion roles for Commanders/asteroids/etc., and adds just enough risk to a forward base without making them unfeasible. I could really go on this tangent for a while, but TLDR- Least annoying to use, fewest game issues to deal with, and most fun potential overall.

I expect it will probably be quite difficult to sneak engineers onto another player's asteroid/planet without them noticing, and they'll already have an army present to deal with whatever you try to build before you finish building it, TBH I'm more concerned that it will be too hard to set up on other planets/asteroids.

What I'm hoping to see is a single economy and maybe 2 planets and 1 moon/asteroid for every 4 players, if there's more planets than players I don't think the game will play so well, but we'll have to wait till alpha to so how it all plays out.

Oh I'm sure it'll be difficult to sneak them on another players asteroid. My assumption was asteroids would be fairly abundant, and the concern was if you could use your resources from your home planet it would be very easy to build a high level building such as an engine on an asteroid and just quickly use them as weapons making it not really necessary to build a base first.

It would just be more balanced in my opinion if you had to build up something on that asteroid first in regards to an economy. That was the original thought, but as others have said this topic seems to be more speculation at this point before other mechanics are set in stone.

It could be global if a planet has supply lines cut off from other planets, other than that It could be universal. Don't know how to implement supply lines but that's half the fun of it.

It also depends on how many builders you can get there.
If it is expensive to send builders to an asteroid you are probably only gonna send a few and build factory on the asteroid to churn out more builders. This drastically increases the time and cost needed to transform an asteroid to a KEW.

To be honest I think if a a players economy was defined planet to planet to planet, it would be over complicating things. Also it would take out opportunities that could be effective in a 'normal' economy where all planets contribute.

For example an invasion of a hostile planet. You send some units to secure a perimeter, and with an engineer, start building up a small outpost. With planet to planet, that sort of strategy wouldn't work because obviously it would be as if you were starting that game again and would be, overall, just pretty annoying.

Not sure if this has been said already but oh well.