Economy UI

I'm currently having a look at modding my original suggestions in. If anyone is interested, the efforts are available for viewing here.

Personally I think the concept of 'wasted resources' covers the problem. Colour gradients etc telling you how effectively you're managing your resources is providing a pre-described model of play which suggests there is A right way and many wrong ways. Also I have problems seeing how this system would deal with all of the variables (mostly the hundreds of power plants/mexs I've queued alongside unit building structures with which I'll queue different numbers of different cost units in...) and if it doesnt account for them, whats the point? Or worse if it does, will I know that my economy is balanced even before I've built it?

The green+ and red- should be all a person needs. Just because you're in the red doesnt mean you've done it wrong (mortgages/student loads/credit of any other decription...) it just means you are currently running a defecit which may be bad in the long if not properly managed but could also pay off.

For an ideal game neither bar should ever be full (you are wasting a resource) or empty (your lack of resource is slowing build rate) regardless of red or green indication. The metal used/wasted and energy used/wasted data helps to reinforce this (the post game info and I know it currently doesn't work but it will). It's likely the player with the best economy (read efficient) will beat another player who produces the same/more but uses less of it. Obviously metal more so than energy due to its relative scarcity.

This is all clearly dependant on the players/strategies/unit types etc but that's kind of my point. Games should be learning processes. Tell the players what to aim for in a tutorial (dont waste metal production while managing energy) not how its going mid game... the metal/energy cost should be all you need.

Apologies if this reads disjointed-ly, it's late and I can't make my phone cooperate...

Regardless the big red number has a big "Oh god" kind of effect when you see it. Even if it's -3 and you're actually doing exceptional at managing the economy, it still has an extremely negative effect on the viewer.

However, as probably evident in my mockup, I'm not a big fan of the gradient scale. I think it's a little too subjective and a bit unintuitive. With something like I did in my mock-up, it's really easy to know what's what. You can see visually how much you're producing and using relatively, and visually see your defecit or surplus if the border isn't directly on the +-0 line. It fixes the problems presented, in what I think is a rather elegant way.

Agreed.

I imagine it would also be easier to tell if you need mexes/pgens by how far, and how often your resources end up on either line. Some preperation can solve this, but if I see the metal going to far left, more often than right, and right swings aren't really equal, I'd know I need more. Then, storage would tell me if it's something I can queue up, or something where I need to stop the presses and get on it. With the bars you also get the option of smoothish animation from one side to the other, with numbers it's one number or the other, as having a series of numbers counting at you constantly would be worse.

I really endorse your UI That said, I still think that an option to use both the current and yours would be cool, even if such a choice is handled by a mod. Kindof like casual vs. hardcore modes. Plus, some people obviously prefer the current one

Yeah while I do think changes to the UI would be really awesome (if it's not gonna be in the final version then I'm modding it myself), changing a known constant with TA and Supcom probably won't bear well with some of the more hardcore traditionalist fans of the old games. Which is why it should be an option rather than a mandate.