T1 to T2 Metal Extractor without reclaiming?

I was about to suggest the idea where ordering a T2 engineer to build a T2 mex over an existing T1 inserts a reclaim command to tear the T1 down first.

But then I saw several people had beaten me to the punch, and I felt compelled to mention this. Consider it a vote of support?

Didn't the mex in TA still generate like 0.1 when not on metal? Or am I misremembering?

Bad thing was that the old mex turned off while upgrading, so it was actually close to impossible to upgrade several mexes at once.

It anything, than I would prefer the "build on top" variant, whereby the new mex is aligned with the old one and removes it from the game once finished. If the original mex is destroyed during construction, the new one also blows up. No "Self-Upgrade".

Why not something simple and effective for gameplay a la SupCom 2:

Veterancy/similar for mex - mass income increases with time until it maxes out. This removes micro and places great value on raiding mex and keeping them defended.

If the mex is upgradeable then it would be nice to have a UI button to press to simply upgrade the closest mex to your spawn point.

What I don't like about the veterancy concept is that it improve your economy for free. Improving your economy should not be free imho.

Important to remember.

I'm all for TA-Style gameplay but not when it's breaking one of the new "rules" of Planetary Annihilation. There absolutely should be differentiation between T1 and T2, but it should not be a simple increase in numbers.

It should be a situational choice to build T2 instead of building T1, not a mandatory upgrade for the sake of efficiency.

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T1 should be Metal Extractors; they require metal deposits but cost nothing more than the first "payment" to construct. They cost no energy to run and extract metal at a constant rate.
T2 could be Metal Makers; they make metal (with no need for metal deposits) in exchange for excess power, but you run the risk of crippling your energy economy. They are a specialised choice, not an upgrade.

My timed automated upgrade suggestion is for it to not cost anything, other than time. There is no management. It is basically built into the T1 extractor. As the extractor collects mass, it (behind the scenes) takes a portion of that to pay for the new T2 extractor.

If you need a lot of mass quickly, and already have a seasoned economy, you build T2. At the start of the a game, or after landing on a new planet, you build T1. After a bit, they automatically (and instantly) turn into a T2. (no management, no loss in mass, it's just timed to 'throttle' the economy)

Too unintuitive plink and it strays into an area I know Neutrino is adamant that he won't go; your economy managing itself.

another way would be two tiers of metal spots, shallow ones which can be used by either type of extractor and deeper resource spots which can only be utilized by T2 extractors.
It would have the positive side effect, making another map <-> build choice connection.

To be fair it is a reward for holding an area - which happens to be the basis of another anticipated 2013 RTS (Company of Heroes 2). If you held an area because you built static defense or defended with units then you are indirectly paying for the improvement.

Another way to look at it is that MEX are a strategic burden, their strategic value is mass generation and their burden is territorial. As the game goes on their strategic value increases while the burden remains the same which ultimately encourages strategic targeting.

The one detraction I see against MEX veterancy is that it takes away your freedom to decide where your most valuable production will be - in SupCom 1 for example you could defend your most valuable production or develop your most defended production. It's a subtle difference and I'm not sure how important it is.

Yup, I was thinking about how this will apply to power generation as well. Power I think will be easier to specialize though, Solar/Wind/Tidal power can be T2 presumably to take advantage of your environment (near equator, water, or flatlands) while T1 power generators are general purpose and necessary to establish your economy. I could see energy storage (if it's not SupCom expensive) being relatively useful then if your economy is solar based.

We also need to ask ourselves how important micromanaging the economy needs to be, it was extremely important in Forged Alliance and became that game's major detraction. Continuing the solar power example if the equator is generally the most valuable area to produce solar power, then players may end up spending too much time deliberating placement or looking at cosine graphs of sunlight instead of playing the game. We should not overcomplicate the economy for realism either, Spring RTS learned this the hard way with their Metal Map feature and most of their map makers eventually did away with it. In short, I hope we get something more interesting than "better/more expensive resource production" at T2 and that it isn't unnecessarily complicated as to keep the game approachable.

Just because people can spend too long debating between this-or-that placement of a T2 Solar Power Array (should it come to exist) doesn't mean it shouldn't be in the game. Micromanagement of your T2 units is going to be important anyway if UberEnt stay true to their proposed General -- Specialised differentiation between tiers.

There's no reason T2 can't invite a little micromanagement to the table. If you don't want to micromanage then T1 will still suit you just fine in every case. T2 is for those people looking to squeeze every advantage they can based on position and counter-tactics. T1 is a big lumbering beasty that just brute forces its way to victory.

If T2 is done the way I conceptualise it then you can dabble with as much or as little micromanagement as you wish by utilising (or not) T2 units and structures.

This should hold true for any unit, be it Economy, Defence, Offence, Mobile or Structure.

I however agree entirely with you on this point. If realism is boring then fantasy is an adequate substitute.

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To put my postition in the most basic thought that I can;
T2 should never be required for me to win a game at any stage of the game.

T2 should give me a situational increase in power. It is up to me to fight / build in places and times that this power can be leveraged to its greatest effect.

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That is, unless I have entirely misunderstood Uber's position when they said T1 would be "General Use" and T2 would be "Specialised".

Thats right. It should be a choice - do I build more tanks now or do I upgrade my resource collection and build bigger tanks later. Veterancy systems take that away.

In addition, so do T2 resource collectors just producing more of their respective resource for the "cost" of them taking more metal to make...

They cost more... but they're better in every respect to the T1 version.
They are an upgrade.

Sure, I don't disagree. What I meant to say was that if optimal play is tedious the gameplay will be tedious for competitive players and we don't want that. And while not all of us will be playing competitively the competitive scene will attract and keep a large portion of the playerbase which in turn will support the game.

I was channelling this thread when I was referring to Spring's metal maps btw: viewtopic.php?f=64&t=46496&p=727344&hilit=metal#p727344

Another possible pratfall of terrestrial solar power is undermining the strategic decision that is your landing zone by rewarding players who land near the equator. I think there's ways to make solar power generators powerful while not undermining other strategic options though. For example, solar power production could have a "cooldown" or maximum efficiency which would be analogous to modern day solar power capacitors. Mechanically speaking it would mean that placing solar power generators at latitude 0° won't be much more efficient than placing them at latitude 45°. If you really wanted to noob-proof things you could make it only placeable within -45° to 45° lattitude or where ever its maximum efficiency is met if the planet has a weird tilt/orbit. This is all purely speculative though, I can't say how players will react in the long run.

What I can say though is that Spring has experimented with resource overlays and they weren't well suited to this type of game. And of course orbital solar power generators would not have these problems.

I took it to mean that we won't be massing T2 units and instead their value will be situational e.g. your opponent is point-defense creeping - better make some T2 Artillery Bots.

And you say that as a reflexive action... which is exactly what I think T2 shouldn't be about.

To use T2 you should have to think. I should never be forced into using it, no matter what my opponent is doing.

I think the issue is that people expect higher level techs to be inherently more expensive. And this makes sense, speaking from a position of realism. A T3 interplanetary transport missile will always cost more than a T1 Point Defense. People expect this because it is logical.

There are alternatives, you could cause T1 Mexes to produce more over time, which would be an ideal solution, but some of our more OCD players would get a bit ticked because their "repetitive button clicking" itch wouldn't be scratched. You could reduce the price of higher tech structures, but then our more logistics-realism crazy players would complain that a naval drydock should cost a butt-ton more than a short-range artillery piece.

Right now I can't decide on one method or the other.

However, I hope that a self-upgrading mex cannot be assisted by fabbers, or you will end up having both to upgrade the mex and to move fabbers around.
Assisting mexes efficiently in SupCom (and building storage rings around them) was quite hard and overall not so interesting.

I feel like higher tiers should be more effective on a individual scale, but should be let down against a mass of low level stuff.

Always, expansion should be encouraged over consolidation. Turtling does nothing but ruin games, no matter how pretty your base looks when you're done.

Turtling should be a means to a end, not the end goal.