When will we see energy cost for structures and units?

Currently PA only displays the metal cost for structures and units of all types. This is detrimental to gameplay when trying to decide what you can and cannot build.

Also, will we see a display for a build's impact on total income? By this I am referring to amount of negative (-) you would gain whilst building. For an example of this look to SupCom1 or SupComFA where they show you the negative (-) impact for everything.

I don't think that's going to happen, the amount of energy differs depending on the builder.

With air builders taking the most energy to build something.

I kinda agree that this would be nice, it just seem a bit random not having an energi cost.

Since you still need to have a builder selected to order a building it can display its energy costs on a per builder basis.

And additionally, I'd love to see its metal cost per second, energy cost per second and the whole thing multiplied by the number of builders selected. Same thing when I send builders to assist.

Energy costs don't work like I think you think they do. Units/buildings don't actually have an energy cost as such, instead individual construction units/factories have a fixed energy cost to run, regardless of what they're building.
For example, your commander uses -1500 energy to build, regardless of what he's building, and the "total" energy cost is simply a factor of how long it takes to build while draining that -1500. Similarly, a vehicle factory uses -675, a vehicle fabber -1000, and so on.
This means once you learn what the energy usage of each fabber is its actually easier to manage economy than each building/unit having a different energy cost, as if you have +5k energy you know you can for example put 5 vehicle fabbers to work, regardless of what theyre building.

If what you say is true then it would still be nice to have that information displayed, otherwise you'd have to have the knowledge before hand. This is especially confusing for any new players trying to get their footing on the resource system and wondering why they can't tell how much energy building something will cost them.

It's still dependent on a lot of variables. Not only is it dependent on the energy consumption of an individual fabber and how long it takes to build a certain structure (which itself is dependent on both metal cost and how quickly a fabber can build), it's also dependent on how many fabbers are working on said structure.

You want to know how much energy you need? All of it. Just keep building energy plants. Even if you start dipping into negative, so long as you've got plenty of storage you'll be able to hold out until you got more energy plants going. Just never let up.

Ya, right now its just the energy/metal you GET from commander/mex/gens in their tooltips, and the energy drain of radars.

Builders/Factories just display +/- 0 on everything. I'm sure they'll flesh out the displayed numbers later anyways. I thing Garat/Neutrino have stated they want the numbers to be readily displayed, and not hidden, so this shouldn't be a worry. There should be a couple of threads around about build numbers. I know I started one, and commented in a better one (it has a link to a spreadsheet!).

If it helps, I have the energy consumption of each individual fabber written down (click on each unit for their stats), but you're still going to have to figure out your actual energy cost by also taking metal cost and fabrication rate into account.

Generally bots and vehicles are the best option for fabbers since they use less power than aircraft. Bots are cheaper but vehicles have a faster fabrication rate..

I'm not really looking for tips, I'm looking to see if we will get an energy requirement display.

I also looked at SupCom1 and FA again and using more engineering units for builds using more resources is the same as in PA and those games have energy over time and energy total displayed for all builds.

If they can do it, why shouldn't PA?

The only problem about getting an energy requirment display is that there is no energy "requirments"

Energy does not work the same way in PA as Sup Som.

In Sup com, units had a build time, total metal & total energy cost.
If you divided metal or energy cost by build time, you got cost per time (for a build rate of 1)
Engineers had different build rates though, so if you multiplied this by cost per time you got the amount of resources that engineer would use while building that unit. This meant that while energy usage varied based on what was being built, the total energy cost would be constant.

In Planetary Annihilation, Energy usage does not vary based on what is being built. A fabrication bot uses -10 Metal and -1000 Energy when building, regardless of what it is building (and even if you're out of metal). Total energy cost will therefore be 1000 x time to build (which is equal to metal cost of unit / 10 Metal, assuming you don't metal stall).

Time to build varies per construction unit, therefore so does the total energy cost.

tl;dr:

It's much easier to think of it like "For each construction Bot, I need 1000 Energy for it to be able to build anything", rather than trying to think in terms of energy cost of individual units/structures.

I'm not a huge fan of this economy honestly, it actually seems a little harder to grasp than supcom style. It also gives you a little less flexibility in build orders and econ balancing because depletion rates are tied to the builder instead of the building.

Actually its easier to use. this way you can control cost.

I certainly find it easier. You can figure out quite easily, once you have the numbers, how many gens/mexes you need to produce from that unit constantly. After roll off time becomes a more solid figure, there will probably be a lot of math about the most efficient number of mexes, like recharge timing.

Just playing around it seems like you can get away with around 3/4s of the metal input you need so that your metal stores fill up on roll off, but you are at negative metal while actually building something.

But ya, OT: Please list fact/fabber info in tooltips!

There´s something I don´t understand about the energy usage... Why if I´m in negative energy and without reserves I´m still able to create buildings/troops and do whatever I want? Does this influence in the constructing time? Or is this just a bug?

yeah so right now it prorates everything, if you add a project during a stall it will slow all other projects down. if you're meeting 90% of your resource needs everything will construct 10% slower.

other similar games use a priority system that lets you allocate 100% resources to high priority projects (like a power generator during an energy stall) and whatever is leftover to the rest of your projects. i like the priority system because it's less micro in those situations.

It makes it take longer to build. In the event that you are in negative energy usage and have no energy left, each tick of energy production is divided evenly amongst everything trying to build stuff. This results in your builders sort of "pulsing" rather than being continuous, albeit pulsing at such a fast rate you won't really notice that it is not constant.

In my opinion this economic system is vastly superior to good ol' harvest and collect RTS resourcing. For one, this system is much more conducive to rapid expansion without necessarily needing an army of builders. While useful, it is not necessary when combined with a build queue. Second, Even if you screw up and have too much building at once, you can pause build orders for a while and finish whatever you find most important. That is much more forgiving than something like Starcraft where you might suddenly have enemies at your gate and no res at all to make units.

And someone asked if Supcom could have it, why not PA. The answer is that PA is not a successor to Supcom, it is a successor to Total Annihilation. While the two games are certainly very similar, they are not the same.

If you run out of mass, but have positive energy, your construction speed (mass usage) is pro-rated, but energy usage stays the same. For example, if you are making 10 Metal and using 20 metal to build, your construction will occur at only 50% normal speed.

If you run out of energy, your mass usage will be pro-rated. If you are making 1000 Energy, but using 2000 Energy and 20 Metal to build, you would instead use only 10 Metal when your energy reserves run out (but would continue to consume 2000 energy).

It's important to note two things:

1. Going mass negative doesn't change your mass usage (as displayed), but going energy negative does.
2. Going energy negative also pro-rates your metal generation, and (should) disable any energy using structures, such as radar. This means running out of energy is a very bad thing. It also means adding additional fabricators to a task when you are already energy stalling only makes things worse.