an SC2/SupCom noobs take on the economy/econ-crash threads

Re: an SC2/SupCom noobs take on the economy/econ-crash threa

Shouldn't we wait till we get our hands on Alpha, or perhaps even Beta, before we draw lines in the sand about an issue as complex as an RTS economy? Economies can break or make a game: Add too many resources or too much complexity and players won't be able to fully appreciate other aspects of the game (strategy, diplomacy, combat, etc.). Some will be intimidated or confused and put down the game in short order. Other than the developers, no one has any idea the amount of attention that will be required by the player on just the economy. Once we get our hands on the alpha we can make more informed assumptions about how the economy should work. For now, it is only safe to assume that simpler is better for development purposes.

Just to put some tough economic questions out there, does anyone know how much time will be spent getting to and managing economies on other planets or surrounding asteroids? How easy will it to be to micro engineers all over a small solar system? Will resources generated on a moon base contribute to a universal pool of resources or just for buildings on the planet?

To put it bluntly and simply, how much of this game should be about building and maintaining an economy and how much should be other aspects of an RTS? The developers have alluded to streamlining the economy, which leads me to believe that they believe that more of the players time should be devoted to smashing large armies of robots together than figuring out how to avoid altogether or rebuild after falling off a galactic financial cliff.

Re: an SC2/SupCom noobs take on the economy/econ-crash threa

I think a lot of it has to do with the sheer number of tourneys. And I think blizz really pushes that aspect of it too. Although, League still has more twitch viewers 99% of the time I check. I know, not an RTS, but I think that if Uber really wants to do well with this after release they'll need to push tourneys. Or easy to install (and FUN) mods. I think it was Mavor that said he wanted the client to popup a "You need [mods] to play on this server. Install?" type deal.

Honestly, I'll be wishing for/looking forward to some of both.

From my experience and a lot of the SC2 streams I've seen, the only time economy "stalls" in a legit game is when you have reaper harass, or a lot of drop plays from terran. If you're zerg you likely have more bases than you can use anyways. Generally games flow in a econ->factory->unit line, whereas (I think I've said this before....) the supcom/ta type econ is more of an always present interaction needed type, with the factory->unit "thread" following parallel. Again, just my noob impressions of the systems.

On another note, one thing I like about the commander destruction being the victory condition is that you can theoretically come up from behind to win. That doesn't happen a lot in SC2 (within a single game), and is something I think is pretty cool.

Re: an SC2/SupCom noobs take on the economy/econ-crash threa

Linking casters/streamers on the main site is always good too.

Re: an SC2/SupCom noobs take on the economy/econ-crash threa

If you want you can have it say
t1 flabber -10 mass max
t2 flabber _15 mass max

But all use the same energy no matter the job so if the job cost more in mass will all so cost more in build time.

Re: an SC2/SupCom noobs take on the economy/econ-crash threa

Okay. Good luck preparing the necessary 100 million dollar budget for development and marketing, physical box sets and shelf presence, tournament coverage, intense artwork exposition and presentation, memorable unit designs and worldbuilding, tireless post-release support and a brand which has accumulated a decade's worth of good will. -- If you think comparing their economy systems will change anything, you're hopeless, mate.

So you don't realise at least one million customers voted with their wallet that this is a good game, and did it before any serious price dropping could happen? which is a lot more than the complainees with their forum posts have mustered. And what untold further sales could have been made after that interview?

A broken economy system could not produce much or any sales, let alone one million, you must realise this.

Being propelled into the 20 highest selling PC real time strategy games isn't spectacular? Maybe not 'Starcraft' spectacular, but certainly no disaster.

I'm not sure what GPGnet and Forged Alliance Forever have to do here.

Really? Because this is the undertone of your initial argument:

What about them? Where do they enter the picture?
Why would they be getting their asses handed to them in the first place?
How does the game bite you?
Why would a newbie need to build a superunit?
Hope to do what in the first place?

All these require answering before answering why the economy ultimately detracts newcomers.

When I was growing up and played Starcraft before I discovered internet gaming, I had no idea putting all resources into queueing unit production was bad. The game doesn't make this obvious to the player, and it took watching a Starcraft II beta caster explaining it for me to understand. If I played Starcraft online, that could cost me many games.

Three workers to a mineral patch wasn't obvious to me either, until very recently I got told on this forum.

"Hey, this is a cool looking unit. Let's try and build one. -- Oh sh!t! This is draining my reserves. Better cancel it. -- There, that's better."



But regardless, you want to discuss needless complexity in Supreme Commander. -- Fine. To that, I do agree that Supreme Commander and Forged Alliance have a lot of design decisions which don't make sense on any level. At the end of the day, Chris Taylor, when designing the game, tried to shove in whatever craptastic ideas he could -- and didn't give a damn about matters like internal consistency. This had further reaching implications than the economy system, as this thread explores. I think I was one of the first people following the development of Supreme Commander to complain about these decisions.

And no, I don't have an argument on variable metal drain rates. When I responded I mistook your question as asking for a viable reason for energy to be represented in unit cost instead of builder drain. My mistake there, sorry.

Yes, but that's besides the purpose Uber Entertainment are making these changes to begin with. They're doing it because of a belief 'a streaming economy is too hard'.

Forget the particulars for one moment and look at the motivation. Instead of persuing the evolution and refinement of mechanics, what's being persued is regression. That's my problem, and it leads to unnecessary, rash design decisions.



As far as reducing economic management goes, the current proposed changes also introduces a new economic management headache which sparked a 30+ page argument in that thread.

Tying energy consumption to buildpower rather than unit costs prevents proper balance work from being done*. And not having hard energy costs to display in the build menu increases the number crunching players must do**.

*Say if I were running a majority assisting production strategy, because I was trading off building cheaper but rigid factories for flexible assisting build power -- only building a factory to access its units -- my production can go into aircraft and other more energy intensive unit types without incurring the increased cost penalty. If the game was balanced around some unit types being more energy costly, assisting production throws the costs off balance.

If the idea then is to make builders use vastly more energy than any factory to nearly diminish the cost balance differences from assisting: doesn't that make bog standard structures the most energy costly, and thus most cost prohibitive units to build? where energy requirements of factory production become the equivalent of a drop in the bucket. -- So if you start from nothing and you need some extractors and energy collectors to lay down some infrastructure -but building those requires the most infrastructure of anything- either you're screwed -- or energy is so accessible to be almost negligible.

**Knowing the total energy cost of things is important if you depend more on accumulated storage than generation. -- The opening stage with the commander setting up his first base being a critical moment. Without those numbers displayed, even if I'm always going to build at 10 energy per 1 metal, it's extra math the player must do in his head instead of the game.

Re: an SC2/SupCom noobs take on the economy/econ-crash threa

Because figuring out exactly how much energy production you need in TA and SupCom was easy. No, it wasn't. The easiest way to balance your energy production is increasing it on demand. You income is 1000 and your expense is 950? Better start making more powerplants before that radar or shield goes online.
I don't think that will change much in PA. I do think it will change a little.
When a player make a new factory he will know how much energy it will drain and can prepare his energy production in turn. Seems a bit easier.

The basic idea is to make assisting less powerful than the factories. A simple way to achieve this is to make factory buildpower cheap compared to assisting buildpower. Factory production could actually drain more energy for the same buildpower compared to mobile engineers and still be more effective if you weigh in the cost of the buildpower and the powerplants.

And how often do you depend on accumulated storage? Yeah. The start is about the only time and even then you are likely to have some inherent energy income on your Commander.
Balancing the equation of draining 10 energy to 1 metal is the same as having a unit that cost 100 metal cost 1000 and if you have say... 5 energy income on your commander you still gotta do the math to figure out if your unit will finish before you start stalling.
The best way to learn to avoid stalls at the start of the game is practicing build orders. Even a 12 year old can develop a good buildorder without having to do math.

Anyway. When the alpha starts you can count on me to calculate how strong assisting is. But really you should come back to this argument after you know the numbers and Ubers implementation and balance of this.