Would you like Metal Makers in PA...?

Since the dev team is possibly still deciding whether to add them or not, what do you guys think...?

I've seen arguments for and against, and I'm on the fence, but I'd like to try a few rounds without and see if that's any better.

It's not about personal preference. It's about whether they'd be a beneficial addition.

Seems like the question mostly comes down to if you think turtling is a valid & enjoyable gameplay or not. Metal making is mostly about encouraging turtling/base building.

Not a judgement either way, just the core gameplay it promotes.

Well there are few other considerations. Scouting is going to be tricky in this game since there are going to be multiple 'maps' in most games. Metal makers may not directly = turtle anymore.

For one, no shields. For two no 'hard walls' that you can put one side of your base against that cannot be attacked (map edge). This already makes the turtling problem insignificant I think. Make metal makers fragile like normal and they will pretty much have no place in a base on a contested planet.

Metal makers should be there for stealthy econ expansion. If I can colonize a planetary body without you realizing it, I want to be able to take full advantage and be able to build an econ farm. Without metal makers or T3 mass extractors (and I doubt small asteroids will have more than a few metal points anyway) there's nothing you can really do with your advantage.

Let people play the way they want to play. Some people enjoy turtling. It doesnt have to be the best strategy but it should be a viable strategy. Thats what made TA so great.

Well, I should have clarified.. It's the base building vs. constant expansion model that it primarily promotes, not simply turtling.

And I was serious, I intend no judgement calling it that. I liked Sup Com turtling, but I also like the constant expand or die games. Lack of shields certainly makes turtling harder. Especially when someone flings an asteroid at you.

Agreed, personally I'm all for it in PA, I'd like for strategies like being able to take over metal planets and building engines to crash an asteroid into a planet to be a bit easier to focus on as your primary strategy for victory rather than needing to constantly have to manage production and control of a large army at the same time. Also with multiple planets it's a bit unreasonable to be expected to have to jump back and forward between bases on different planets to be able to defend them, so being able to use static defense and turtling one (or more) of them is going to be a much needed relief from that sort of micromanagement and will let you more comfortably focus on one planet at a time. Of course the metal makes should be significantly less cost effective than mass extractors though not to the extent proposed in the poll, especially given that if it used the same power as a fusion power plant produced it might as well just be a self contained unit that doesn't need power but costs as much extra as a fusion power plant to build.

Thinking on this further I feel metal makers may actually be needed for end game. Mavor has said in the past that commanders in end game will end up being somewhat fragile in comparison to the firepower a system wide economy can generate. Thus creating a solar system wide 'cat and mouse' that will contiuously shrink as planets become uninhabitable through asteroid impacts.

So metal extractor points shrink in numbers pretty rapidly at end game. Metal makers may need to exist, otherwise economies may shrink to the point where you can no longer build up enough offensive tools to handle the heavy defenses built up earlier in the game.

Idk, I think they can be balanced to be high risk/reward. If at launch (or beta) they end up being so inefficient and so fragile that no-one ever uses them (or loses every time they try to use them), then we essentially dont have metal makers in game. Lean that way then decide how to rebalance if it fails. I think they add enough depth to the game that removing them entirely would be detrimental.

I'd like to see them in PA, I always thought metal makers were a vital part of the economy. Metal extractors have to be placed effectively and are more often then not in horribly in defensible positions and higher tier ones cost a fortune in resources and build time. Metal makers at a baseline to the economy kind of like a net or a wall where you can accurately say "Oh hey the enemy is raiding my metal extractors atleast I have a higher baseline then scratch to work from to recover." They are game extenders and a huge tradeoff in cost to convenience through there extreme power usage. They add a dynamic to the game where you have the luxury of placing your base somewhere you don't have to defend fixed resource. It also adds a divide from the resource "mines" of games like C&C and Starcraft where you have to be in those places to grow thus making the game more difficult for your enemies to track your true size.

I'm against Metal maker like those in TA and Supcom where once you begin to build them your economy grow exponentially. For long game, it just become a game where the goal is to manage this exponential grow the best possible.

I think I would be okay with any solution more linear or tied to the metal extractor.
Solution like a metal extractor booster, or overdrive from zero-k ( albeit a bit complicated imo )

That is a very valid point. I think you may have single-handedly proved the case for metal makers.

I say yes, they should be there. Because Turtling is a valid tactic. And it can be counterd with huge asteroids.

Need we remind everyone that these things are floating around too?

Not in every system though. There will also be gas planets; if those are the energy equivalent of metal planets, and we get high-power tech 2 power gen (e.g. fusion plants) anyway, do gas planets serve a purpose beyond kickstarting an economy? Will there be a method for using all that extra energy to good effect, i.e. turning gas-harvested energy into mass via an orbital mass maker?

As a turtler, I absolutely agree that metal makers (as opposed to mass points) enable base clumping, and I also agree that the driven expansion required by spread out mass points is a good thing. I actually like it as well (I think I may be a closet turtle / eco-spammer hybrid :shock: ).

I'd like to try out games with no mass makers, and see how well the expansion system works to engage players (literally :mrgreen: ), and I'd like to try out games with mass makers, and see how they help supplement the economy. The same goes for with/without artillery defense, with/without asteroid defense etc., I'm intrigued to be part of a process where unit balance is still fuid rather than just getting a game at release after all thse decisions have been made

well the growth is the thing that helped balance the mass fabricators out in Supreme commander because it took almost three equivalent tech power generators to get one tech x mass fabricator running "efficiently" which in turn made your base bigger and harder to defend against large attacks, that and the fact the mass fabricators didn't get you very far in your mass economy. T2 mass fabricator = 1 mass! that isn't very much when a T1 mass extractor gives you eight mass. so i think that if metal makers were balanced like this to a point they could still be useful by giving you the economy boost you may need if you control the better part of a planet.

I think they should be available. Everyone plays differently, so it's better to have the option there for people who use them as part of their strategies. Personally I hardly used them in either TA or Sup Com, however I generally built some and left them off; they make for a great, albeit energy expensive, back up if someone focused on my extractors.

Also as someone else said earlier, planets run the risk of being made unusable, that's one planet's worth of resources gone. If you are being pushed back, I know I like them then.

In the end its all an option on if a player uses them or not, some will, some won't and some, like me, use them as a back up. Best to let everyone play their own style. They will be balanced by their power use after all so whoever uses them has to have a solid energy base beforehand. Working out a reasonable energy consumption on them is the only form of balancing needed and IMO required for them.

I thought the T1 mass extractors in SupCom / FA were around 3 mass, even with 4 linked mass storage? The T2 was around 8, and the T3 around 20 IIRC.

I always used to tesselate T3 energy around the T3 mass fab, and intersperse shields to ensure overall shield coverage (I normally play Cybran and the shield is exactly the same size as the T3 mass fab, which is handy )

Then again, I also usually play teamed with a couple of friends against the AI, so it was easier to protect my vast fields of mass fabs than it would have been against human opponents. I'm going to have to seriously upskill to be any good at PA

2, 6, 18 for T1, T2, and T3 unbonused mexes.

Turtling is still an option *if* there are some metal deposits clustered. You send out tanks to guard other metal deposits.

I am still divided by metal makers.. I think they can work if they have a clear disadvantage like huge explosions when hit, making them a risk to have them in your base. Or make them huge so they take alot of space forcing the player to defend a much larger area.