T2 Resource Generation.

Simply making T2 mexes and gens provide more mass and power generates pointless micro and makes T1 obsolete. Increasing the mass rate of T2 mex and gens but limiting them to special resource nodes would promote territory control and fortification.

In my opinion it would be better than marauding gangs of T2 fabbers replacing T1 mexes.

Thoughts?

No, the fact that Mass is already 100% regulated to Mass Points(that will be spread out akin to TA/SupCom) already creates the gameplay you want.

As far as Generators, Ideally there should be a built in trade off between Size, Power Output and Redundancy, so T2 might have more power output, but takes up more space but is more vulnerable due to it all being focused into one building. Not to mention the Build time/cost and the need to have a T2 Fabber mixes things up some more as well, you might have T2 Pgens on your main planet, but it might not be as feasible to start off with T2 in new bases and such.

Mike

I still like the idea of Extractors gaining veterancy and output over time. It promotes motile, nonstatic gameplay.

It has functionally the same effect as upgrading mass extractors without the micro. You might also pay for quick veterancy levels if it catches your fancy.

No it doesn't. Extractor veterancy promotes turtling, because the best resources are in your base. All the contested resources end up with less value, as they keep blowding up and switching hands.

Ideally you want the most value to be in the contested territories, so that players go out and fight over them again and again. Contested mass points can't have greater value without implementing some kind of resource decay, but wreckage also plays a role in rewarding players who win battles and gain territory.

That sounds interesting. I'd have to think about it some more to make a judgement on it. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense as far as logic, but it might be cool as a gameplay mechanic.

The first problem that comes to mind would be losing the need for expansion because the rate of growth would be very high by the time you built so many structures. But I guess that would come down to how quickly they upgrade and to what degree.

Veterancy is a bad idea, every metal spot should give the same amount of metal, with the exception of metal planets. Imagine if you had 3 spots on the planet where you got triple more metal than on other spots. You fortify those areas and turtle into infinity.

Whatever you do in the game you will always need both T1 and T2 fabbers so building regular and advanced buildings is simply a part of the game. Like Mike said, sometimes you will need to build T1 on new planets cause T2 won't be optimal.

Perhaps the T2 energy plant should cause a greater explosion and the T2 metal extractor should need a lot of energy or something to run, then building T2 resource buildings would require a lot of care and thought.

T2 extractors already promotes the idea of ground you hold being more valuable.

As you upgrade from T1 to T2 mex.

in TA t2 mex's took up more space, and were still easy to kill.

Not something you want to replace every 10 mins.

Don't take this as full agreement on the subject, but it also encourages more direct conflict. The older buildings are likely closer to the center of the base, so contested territory would be less rewarding than attacking directly.

Plus I don't think he meant veterancy to the point of it being ridiculous. Like I said to begin with, it would depend on the level of improvement. Doubling income is obviously too much, but maybe a maximum of 10-20% improvement over a long period of time isn't unreasonable.

Still, I think maybe this is one of those features that sounds like it might be cool but ends up not being implemented very well and detracts from the experience. Kind of like the research tree of Supreme Commander 2. I feel like if they had done something along the lines of making a single linear secondary research bar that progresses as you spend points in any tree, they could have balanced the game better. That bar could have contained necessary unlocks like anti-nukes, resource income, and shields, and the regular tree could have had more specialized upgrades.

But enough about SupCOm2, my point is that sometimes simplicity is best instead of attempting to do something that would need to be done just right.

Veterancy on extractors in supcom2 was because of no higher tier extractor.

So the process was made automatic, I like it, but not here.

That's true, but that's not the point I was trying to make about SC2. That said, I like PA's system as it is, so I see little point in messing with it.

I remember reading something about the Cybrans.

"First you attack them from the front. When they fortify their front, attack from the sides. When they fortify their sides, attack from behind. When they fortify all around, attack from above. When they fortify their rooves, your Scathis should be done.

If someone is defending an area so heavily that it cannot be cracked, you have map control. Definitive map control. Or you're loosing horribly and doing everything wrong.

It doesn't really make a difference whether you have upgrades or not, but self-upgrading Mexes give everyone the same potential.

Non upgrading mexes give everyone the same potential, and it's a lot more stable for the economy as well.

The only reason I make that statement is because people expect bigger things to cost more, I.E. planet-thrusters that cause planets to splishy splash their way into puddles of stellar matter. We can alternatively have cheap high-level structures, but that just doesn't logic.

The main detraction against SupCom style MEX and PGen is redundancy. Sure, T1 can be cheaper while T2 is expensive/produces more but then we have thresholds at which older production becomes obsolete. If we want many types of resource production and I'm not convinced we need it, then it makes sense to follow the General Purpose -- Specialization guideline. T2 Power would then be location-specialized for solar, tidal, wind, orbital, etc. MEX are trickier, they could also be location specialized but I'm partial to the Overdrive mechanic in Zero-K. That is, T2 MEX would be specialized in converting excess Energy into diminishing returns of mass - thus being useful only when running a high energy surplus.

As I said though I'm not convinced complex economy infrastructure really adds much to gameplay. And SupCom style redundancy can actually make gameplay worse by overemphasizing economic management.

That segues into the second detraction which is that economic micromanagement is not engaging or good for gameplay, especially as an important facet of competitive play. Good competitive gameplay happens when player attention is at a premium and what demands player attention is engaging. In SupCom economic micromanagement demanded a great deal of player attention because it was integral to success. The overemphasized SupCom eco manangement was not highly engaging and became the game's biggest detraction.

StarCraft II while not for everyone is an excellent example of competitive gameplay that demands attention between engaging tasks. It accomplished this by emphasizing unit micromanagement and having a relatively simple economy. Company of Heroes is another good example, the economy in CoH is essentially automated.

TL;DR: What we have is redundant and redundancy isn't good for gameplay. Making the economy more complicated with specialized production buildings might not be good for gameplay. If we want a fun, competitive game we need something simple so the focus is on engaging aspects of gameplay like battles and strategy.

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Edit: I have one last thought on the matter. Achieving meaningful choice or engaging gameplay should be the most important design consideration here. Yes in SupCom you could choose how you developed your economy, upgrading T2, building storage adjacency, upgrading T3 or capturing another MEX point but the only option that was meaningfully different or engaging was capturing another MEX point. In Company of Heroes it's true you can develop territory points but you have the meaningful choice of increasing munitions production or fuel production and that impacts playstyle. If we have T2 Economy it should provide meaningful choice or be engaging or we shouldn't even bother.

Mass
Essentially what SupCom boiled down to on larger maps was an investment war all the way up to T3 Mexes (and then just building ever more mass fabs). Unless you were rushed, the only tactic that could be employed was this, as once someone out-teched you in resource generation you were trampled due to the exponential mass generation:

T1 - 2/s T2 - 6/s T3 - 18/s (and this is without the adjacent storage (50% bonus))

The T2 extractor that we now have in PA grants more than 300% of the T1, which clearly kindles the game-play stated above. I understand that you might want some way to allow players to improve their favourite patches of dirt but this seems a little excessive.

In my opinion the increase in mass production should be just 50% or so, but for roughly the 500% of the cost of the T1 extractor. This would make it reasonable to build on already conquered planets and inside bases for a long-term resource boost, but still mean that someone with 2 or 3 times the mass points (and therefore map control) is better off.

If this is not favourable my second vote is to axe it.


Energy
On the topic of resources though may I also suggest energy production consuming mass?
If T1 powerplants required little mass to build, but produced energy with reasonable mass drain while T2 was more resource intensive to build (and had a much longer build time) but were more efficient in using mass long-term, then neither would be redundant, just different. For example: T2 for base energy usage but T1 if you suddenly need more energy, you would then replace them with T2 over time. The tendency is that T1 produces nothing compared to T2, this should be nothing like the case.

There would then be a reason to not build thousands of powerplants on conquered planets. In addition, it would make the proposed gas giant power production a much more valuable a resource if it did something the other types didn't (use no mass for energy production).

Just a thought.

You have a solution in search of a problem. Big things will cost what they need to cost, and it doesn't have to be overly expensive. It turns out that expensive, defenseless infrastructure tends to die against things that shoot.

There are other ways to create mitigating factors on their use, such as energy demand, tech tier, size footprint, and so forth.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again.

It is vital that players have SOME mechanism for upgrading their economy without relying on gaining additional territory. This mechanism should be less efficient than territory expansion, but it still needs to be present. Otherwise, the vast majority of games are decided as soon as someone gets to 51% of the available mass. Upgrading a non-expanding economy allows a player to stage a come back by using more advanced technology.

ZK did this reasonably well with it's overdrive mechanic, although i still found a lot of games were decided far quicker than they were finished. T2 mexes are another way of allowing economic investment. They are also one that works quite well, as the more mass points a player has, the more they can increase their economy via upgrading.

To those that worry powerful T2 mexs will encourage turtle-ing, just remember that a non-turtle-ing player will typically have greater map control, allowing them to upgrade more mex points to T2, and thus overwhelm their enemy. The turtle/non-turtle fight is decided far less by the economy, and far more by the relative efficiency of defences verses offensive units.

That works if you think tactics and strategy can account for less than 2% more mass production. Besides, an exponential upgrade system with so significant a reward as 3x mass production is ridiculous (why I suggested 50%). Even worse, the upgrade system doesn't give an alternative to the player with less map control, it just multiplies the advantage of the one with more mass to begin with.

Other problems with too much emphasis on upgrade-based economic investment in a game like this, are the hellish micromanagement and that it doesn't contribute to the conflict directly. If to invest you need to conquer more land or another celestial body, then that is a change to the dimensions of the battlefield and the strategic options of the players, instead of just an increase to capability with no discernible change elsewhere.

Remember that one type of long-term investment in PA will be the space race and expansion through that.

I think the redundancy between tiers is the main problem and it'll take more than value changes for that to go away. Another factor or mechanic must be involved to differentiate tiers. Power generation seems clear-cut given Uber's intent to include solar, tidal, wind and orbital power but I'm less confident on MEX tiers as I noted above.

I'm not necessarily advocating MEX veterancy but most arguments against it are bad. Sure, MEX points in contested zones are worth less but contested areas are also not smart to develop in the first place. The best argument against MEX veterancy is that it takes away the freedom to choose what areas will be developed, leaving you to only choose what areas will be defended. I'm not sure that's a huge loss in depth though, choosing which MEX you develop is not an interesting or engaging part of the game - it's usually common sense.

So let me get this straight, PA is looking to make it so T2 metal extractors are build-able on their own metal point...Effectively making it so T1 extractors can only be built on T1 points and T2 extractors can only be built on T2 points :?:

If this is the case, than I don't like it... I prefer being able to upgrade your T1 metal extractors to T2 or just out-right building T2 on a metal point. It gives you an option if you lose map control instead of just losing control on that planet.

There have been plenty of times, watching Gyle's casts of SupCom , where someone got off to a bad start and quickly lost map control, but while this was occurring the player was investing in his eco and ended up pushing back out to retake lost ground...even sometimes wining the game.

This sounds like more fun to me. So my vote is, do not create separate metal points for each extractor, allow for the upgrades like in SupCom.