I don't know if this has been discussed before but man, I gotta say eco is broken and has been broken since Alpha. So if it has been discussed, ignore this post, link me and then forget I said anything. While I don't have an issue with metal:energy ratios as crazy as they are, it seems like there's never enough resources during the first 15 minutes to ensure a free flowing expansion/war efforts, specially energy. Everything takes so much energy to build anything (even build more generators) your base ends up as a big energy farm, which requires micro to achieve, also, defense structures drain heaps as well (arty is fine). So for the most crucial minutes of the game I find myself playing simcity and not enough time playing PA. A single lost generator early in the game can cripple your economic growth, its not impossible to recover but it takes effort. I honestly think its a problem, maybe you don't.
Its been discussed. multiple times on multiple occations. In any case, as most people do and dont know but generally agree with is that fabbers should only take the amount of energy it requires to place the metal. Currently, they use 1000 energy (or however much the fabbers energy rate is at) regardless of wether it can place any metal or not eg. it will use 1000 energy even if it is only using ZERO metal.
It seems to me that a big point of having resources is that the lack of them is a key concern. It's not like you can't avoid running out of energy, it just requires some discipline in your choice of builds. The fact that energy is so important is in my opinion one of the better aspects to the game (knocking out radar in particular). If you have a lack of energy for 15 minutes, it just means you need to adjust your build. Running at an eco deficit will slow everything down, causing even more problems since it also means it is harder to regain that eco. It's a death spiral. That is, in my opinion, the point You need to manage your eco at all times.
I think it is a good thing. It achieves the balance between eco booming and military production early game.
The issue is that the player has three resources: metal, energy and build-power. During the early game, energy is the limiting resource and during the late game build power is the limiting resource. The thing is, neither of these are strongly linked to territory controlled, and build-power in particular is quite micro intensive. The best option is a rebalance of the economy to see metal as the general limiting resource. Now that balance is being looked at, I hope we will see such a consideration soon.
The fact that metal cannot be created other than by metal spots (contrary to supcom/TA where you could, albeit inefficiently, produce metal/mass through energy conversion) is certainly a key feature. However, I worry that if energy becomes significantly cheaper to produce that the important of energy tactically (in terms of knocking out opponent's construction, radar) would be lost if it's too easy to spam out energy too early in the game.
I don't' think the energy cost or production rate is the issue here. I think the problem lies in the consumption rate of fabbers and defensive structures. I can give an example that I think expresses the point of the original post: I've noticed in the games I've played and the ones I've spectated that a balanced economy that sustains a growing expansion and massive unit production, sometimes takes a dive into the deep red (energy wise) just because a few laser towers and AA guns started firing at some stray enemies. These consumption spikes mean that to always keep it in the green, one has to overproduce enormous amounts of energy, hence, forcing to cover large expanses of land with power generators. Or blocking out the sun with orbital solar arrays. Not that fighting in the shade bothers me. In the end, I think that a tweak in the energy consumption of structures/units would be interesting to see. Make it more like TA. If i remember correctly, defensive structures used up power but it was at a much more sustainable rate. By sustainable rate, I mean that to power a certain number of defenses or an army of X size, the player didn't have to cover 100 times the area with power gens.
The energy balance in pa is off. Also generators should explode when destroyed- in particular t2. That was a key feature of ta as it meant you had to think about your base layout carefully....
But that type of energy demand is insignificant. The biggest energy consumer in the game is production, by a rather large factor. Just count the number of times you tanked energy due to radar/artillery/etc., versus the number of times you tanked energy due to running a few more construction bots. It's self evident.
Fabbers pulling full energy and not full metal need to tell us so we can stop them and not wast power and not spread metal to thin making build times to long on production buildings. Or pause there building based on a priority of some type. So we get each building done as soon as possible so it can start production.
I find very damn bad that I have to spend more time minding my economy and laying out energy farms so I don't stall and I hope the balancing being worked on fixes this cause of my playstyle (rush/expand, TA style). It should make sense that a few (4-5) energy generator can support a handful of fabbers building extractors and generators while the comm builds something else, truth is, you need 12!. Producing energy doesn't have to be cheap, but it makes absolutely no sense that for T1 you need 2 generators for a single fabber... just no. T1 energy should be cheap, its T1 after all, and the truth is that you gonna need plenty of generators to afford build an army, expand and get to T2, but not 40 of them. That's the problem with fixed build rate.
Well fabbers can always actually place metal, but only ever a incredibly small fraction during a economy stall. But I DO kinda feel like fabbers should draw energy proportional to how much they are actually working.
I think there should be a range of energy production at the T1 level, currently I think energy plant in PA makes 600 energy, requiring 3 of those to run your commanders build production offset. I can't remember all the stats from TA, but I believe the T1 Solar Plant made 20 energy per tick, and units used allot less energy for the 'conversion of metal to machines' and instead the units had a baseline energy cost in addition to the metal cost. There was also the wind generator that while being cheaper then solar plant it could produce anywhere from 10 - 27 energy per tick making them on windy maps, more viable option than solar which cost allot more metal. I'm not sure how the existing economy in PA will be similar to TA's when you consider the very big differences, with TA's every unit costing an amount of metal and energy to make, airplanes needing more energy than kbots but less metal and ships using allot of both. In PA we simply pay a conversion fee in energy for units that only cost a set amount of metal. As a result of this, I feel that beyond the conversion fee there is very little to spend energy on which is why the conversion rate is rather high at the moment. I struggle to think how uber would balance this existing system when gas giants become a thing. I've heard Mavor say in a livestream that his thinking would be they'd be massive energy generators, With so little to spend energy on it kinda seems pointless right? then again, He did say in the last livestream that he envisioned moons having much the similar role of resource gens. I personally feel energy weapons and artillery should require allot more energy to fire than they do now, However I do like the fact that energy is not required for them to fire now meaning they still work in a crisis just with lower effeciency, perhaps if this was visualised in same way too, like with thicker laser beams for they run at full power (or assisted power rate) and thinner weaker beams on own power (eco stall). Perhaps larger shells for artillery when at full power or longer rage+rate of fire ? Also just as a personal request, I'd like to see lasers in various colours too, possibly indicative of strength.
obviously its not actually zero, but i was trying to illustrate my point. GJ for stating the obvious i guess though.
