Planetary Annihilation's Economy System

Try reading some of these threads, you may see something you like.

I am glad that the system is a streaming economy system, that is what I think is most realistic and is best. My only thought is that I would like mass and energy storage to actually be possible. In Supreme Commander, I loved the economy system except for the fact that there was no real way to save up energy and mass and use it later. I hope that PA will allow that.

Uh... you were not familiar with the mass and energy storage buildings then nuclear??

What it would be like if instead of simplifying and removing depth, the economy was further developed to create new gameplay:

http://www.faforever.com/forums/viewtop ... f=2&t=3883


(Given that you got planets, creating charge might be a good way to influence their relative motion, but I do realize I am only dreaming here, since you are making a game that people will want to understand)

That is an interesting idea for a mini-mod (a small game based around exploring a single idea) but I don't think it would fit in PA.

For a game mechanic to be interesting players need to be able to make important decisions on the fly regarding how they deal with this game mechanic. Your system has to be fairly intuitive otherwise players will craft a few 'build orders' which set out charge placement for certain tasks. People would probably build the same lattice over and over again.

To make the charge system worthwhile I think it would have to be deeply integrated into a game. Make it affect units in some way and of course make the UI powerful enough to deal with the details efficiently. If it only affects the economy then you've probably just made more complicated build patterns for people to learn.

So either make it affect many things or not be there at all and I don't think PA is going to be about a novel electric field system.

Code:

Square roots
gameplay effects that change with distance
gameplay effects that change with value
gameplay effects that change with opposing polarity
placing real time area effects on everything, everywhere

Wow. Just... kill me now. This does not belong in an RTS. You are creating an iOS game. But it all stems from this single false premise:

Measuring "units of energy" is an awful metric. I can waste a million points of energy by building a single extra T2 generator for a long game. I can waste it by building half a dozen T3 generators and having it chain react in my face. Any reactor can produce any amount of waste, because generators never stop producing energy. So having an arbitrary "X energy waste" doesn't mean anything.

The simple fact of energy waste is that it boils down to metal waste. If you're running an energy surplus, it's because you spent too much metal on generators. So if your average surplus is +500 energy, then you spent 1200 metal too much on generators. If you waste 1 million energy, you actually failed to convert 3400 mass. That kind of information is more meaningful for players, as it allows them to trim their builds and be more effective in the future.

This has nothing to do with an OS, even as mentioned in another thread communicating AI wouldn't have anything to do with OS. OS is about managing tasks(processes, threads) , Storage, I/O, ......

Thats not the same as a changing some eqautions from constant or linear to polynomial or other not as trivial formulae.

Did people at Uber ever try separating the economy system between Metal and Energy.

Keep energy with regular TA bar system. However power generator not only produce energy but provide more energy storage.

Metal with money system like in Command and Conquer 3( slowly consuming resources when producing). There is no need metal storage, so every reclaim counts.

I think this is more simple to manage.

Did people at Uber ever try separating the economy system between Metal and Energy.

Keep energy with regular TA bar system. However power generator not only produce energy but provide more energy storage.

Metal consumption similar to money system like in Command and Conquer 3( slowly consuming resources when producing). There is no need metal storage, so every reclaim counts. when reach 0, production still carry on but very slow.

btw, i also have an idea about reclaim bank, which metal reclaim from engineer store in a as a different resources bank from others. Player can choose to consume it for later on emergency use. When reclaim bank is out, it automatically switch back to metal count.

I think this is more simple to manage.

/thread

Wow not a lot has changed around here in the last 3 months.

Still waiting for alpha to provide some actual feedback instead of some aggrandising theory.

The alpha is in a couple of weeks I think, the recent livestream gives a proper date.

Questions to developer:

1) Is Energy to be free or it comes from some resources like Metal (E=mc^2), hydrocarbons, lava, sun, etc? This makes sense. Energy shouldn't be free like it is in SupCom.

2) Are there going to be Metal fabricators that produce Metal from Energy? (I would prefer opposite. Metal->E conversion makes way more sense according to E=mc^2, the game should have such conversion. The opposite doesn't make much sense. Who the hell would like to convert Energy into mass. Small mass should give huge energy in reactor conversion (E=mc^2), but the rate of conversion could be very, very slow -this makes more sense). To increase energy income build more reactors. They will drain just quite small amount of Metal and give huge amount of energy (E=mc^2). If this is going to make to big need for metal then extractors could produce slightly more metal per unit of time.

Energy = mass * (the speed of light * the speed of light)

What in the hell does that have to do with turning metal into energy.

I am confused :|

Because metals have mass.

So does everything else. You can't convert mass of anything you want into free energy, you need some specific materials. And those are not just "metal".

Why not? E=mc^2. Plutonium and Uranium are metals from material science and Astronomic point of view, and you use them in nuclear bombs and nuclear reactors. You annihilate particle with antiparticle and you get energy. For example collision of iron with antiiron will give energy equal to Mc^2, where M is total relativistic mass.

Then build fusion power plants just like in previous games.

I only just read the OP. I like this because it links firepower directly to the economy and it makes energy the important enabling resource but metal is the important growth resource.

I am still curious about non local economy, after the egg discussion in the livestream.

Oi booly fancy seeing you here.