Please...Fix these gamebreaking issues.

ill try verifying my cache and maybe the system will work.

I usually turtle. My strategy is to scout or probe with distant radar. I tend to get incredibly lucky, somtimes I will build a radar in a chance location, only to find it is just outside the enemy vision so I immediately plop down turrets and pelters and they never know what hit them.

I prefer that. I build up right close against the side of the enemy early, and I dig in, while collecting all the metal between them and me afterwards. Then, I try to get t2 bots and gil-es and holkins and t2 eco. I also recently favor a commander backed by t2 combat fabbers and gil-es as a hit-party if I can scout the enemy commander afterwards.

If I can't reasonably travel that distance to build against them, I just build distant outposts first and fortify with turrets and outward facing walls and repairmen on the turrets, and I build inward and continue with above.

Really, large armies, turret lines, and tactical weapons used in hit-squads and unit-attrition, are all viable. As long as you establish economy. You need like 18 mexes at least the way I figure, and it is any way you want it to get those, but as long as you do that you can plan out a strategy to win.

The AI right now is actually not that good. They do one strategy. Army blobs. It is mundane to defeat them with gil-e and turret lines with walls and repairmen. I have recently found more challenge in doing that strategy against other players, than with the AI. The AI will throw 200 units at your walls, and one can literally kill them all with no/little losses.

I don't use nukes myself, but if one uses nukes, I think one can obtain a nuke if they repel early enemy AI attacks (which consist of 12 tanks most?), and easily use that nuke to melt an oncoming army with it. Use the first to kill the enemy army-blob, use the next to kill the enemy production, use the following 2 on the enemy commander.

A third strategy I hear works on AI, is to get early air superiority, and simply bomb enemy metal extractors as you find them. Keep them deprived of metal so they can't produce. I hear often enough, that it causes the enemy to suicide commander rush sometimes. If it don't, by time you establish t2 air you can just use 15 bombers to total-out the enemy commander.

You can beat him with army blobs too, if you raid early and consistent enough to deprive his metal more than he deprives yours. I think ZaphodX can honestly army blob rush against them without raiding and still outproduce the AI and win, he is supposed to be good although I hear Cumsume is too.

Point is, there are tactics. There are any mix of them. As long as you get 18 mexes and 25 power plants. Getting those is pretty much all required of it, and how you get them is not important if you get them because then you can do whatever.

Try typing intervals of tenths. So basically, .1, .2, .3... If you do certain numbers, like negatives, it won't read it and will assume 1. Also, see screenshot below, that is where you are entering AI Eco Scale, right?

That's odd. I have found the eco multiplier to work perfectly every time?

Functions for me as well, just checked, AI commander is stalling, I have overabundant resources and only 1 mex/pgen and t2 bombers. Again, refer to my post 2 above. I will post the picture below this again.

I think the issue here is that games like PA "RTS" are games that boil down to giving the player some sort of task ("destroy the enemy commander") that has to be completed by following certain rules ("a factory costs 600 metal").
So basically an RTS is a game that asks you to find the optimal way to solve a task while following certain rules.
It does not allow you to do whatever you want. If your idea of nice play goes against the rules of the game your play will not work. The game asks you to be creative in finding a way to beat the ruleset of the game, not to be creative about how a game should look like. What you are asking for sounds like a sandbox game that allows the player to do anything he wants and get a satisfactory result out of it.
So when somebody gives you a guide on how you "should" play the game he basically explains to you the best way he knows on how to beat the current rules of the game. In PA that is rapid expansion and effective resource usage.

That being said I can understand your urge to do what you want, namely play a game that is fun to you. We all want that and most discussion on the forums basically stems from people trying to push the development (the ruleset) into a direction that fits their vision of how the game should be played.

If you can't get less than 1 multiplier for the AI to work maybe you could just give yourself 3x resources instead?
I've never used non integer multipliers, but integers definitely works. I quite often set myself to 50 and the AI to 0 when I am testing mods.

You just stated the same factor as i stated before this was to be the Soul successor to the TA games, currently it doesnt have anything that represented the value of the TA games due to the restrictions it places, it forces you to rapidly expand and you say it is what the rules of the game are, in a real time strategy game you should be able to have multiple strategies not one single set outline that defines the whole game, does that not sound absolutely dull? I agree. If you enjoy rapid expansion and games that end in 15-20 minutes then all the power to you. Those games are uttlerly dull and not interest to those that wish a more hardcore strategy experience something that gives live to more then one strategy. The developers are working on the AI soon their should be more modes to counter act the difficulty that is currently present and maybe they will make more play styles. Its all about what they will do with what we state. and as the players we want a better system that better accommodates the general audience, not those that like the "rapid expansion" ordeal.

TO: thetrophysystem

Your stating i have to rush for resources again dictating the way i should be playing the game and what i should have, how in gods name does one turtle with 18 metal extractors how does one defend them all? Whats your stating is absurd. All in all i believe it needs a more balanced generation with fewer extractors to allow players time to expand to new building points without being over run by AI. Constantly spreading yourself thin should make you weaker logically your stating it helps you achieve victory

After verifying my cache the resource system works when setting the AI at lower income levels then your own. Must have been a glitch but still I believe set settings would allow an easier time then struggling like we did.

Never mind on my previous post, still at 0.1 the AI still manages to out produce us and over expand. Still far too difficult.

I think a lot of the issue is with this being a beta at the moment. The AI will get far better and you will have options for difficulty and probably options for personality e.g. rushing/turtling AIs. It is very strange your eco modifier isn't working I haven't ever heard of anyone with that problem. If you set it to 0 does the AI build at all?

Please try to be more patient for the game to actually become feature complete. You will get the option to use those greyed out mex sliders in the system editor so you can adjust the amount of mex and how spread out it is to tailor games to your requirements.

I'd like to point out that we can satisfy a good deal more players if the editor UI was fleshed out a little more for us to be able to apply more control over the mass spread and perhaps set their locations. It would be really really easy to do from a UI perspective, and it allows for easily setting up a game where the expansion factor is taken out entirely if you e.g. make a planet with just two clumps of mass points.

I agree completely this would be a perfect addition and quite a solution to the expansion issues. Pre defined bases and set maps designed by you for you, or even limiting the distance between spawned Metal locations in order to make small clusters appear all over the planet in a random sequence, It would be an excellent feature.

I have saw those and I hope when they are implemented they will help balance the game more so then it is now. I guess all me and my friends can do is wait until they add new features to make the game more enjoyable but its beta so nothing is set in stone. We got time to wait and see how they improve it. I'm sure the devs who worked on previous titles that me and my friends quite enjoyed will defiantly figure out how to make the game like its predecessors accommodating for everyone.

If it hasn't already been mentioned, the economy scalars only work in solo vs. AI games. They don't function in team games, for whatever reason.

Mind you, the AI doesn't cheat. Everything it does, you can do, and there are a few things it can't do that you can (use naval, build offensively with orbital). Thus, I don't think of it as unfair or overpowered. It's aggressive because it is trying to win the game. Even though I lose almost every game online, I can beat the AI fairly effortlessly. (I've been playing with defeating it using only T1 bombers, because you need hundreds of them to overwhelm even the AI's meager anti-air and it's good practice for spamming.)

For a laugh, try playing on lava planets with a high water height. The lava acts as an impassable barrier for ground units much like terrain -ought to-, and can make for some interesting arena-like maps with proper chokepoints. It also can't support metal and reduces the number of deposits that can be on the planet, which might help to cap the AI to what you're comfortable with.

Ahhh well that explains why its not working when me and my friends play a game together against the AI in FFA.

And well thanks for the suggestion with Lava Planets Ill look into that

Yet to your point with Orbital weapons, We sorta dont get a chance to even reach that stage haha we die before we can.

if it makes you feel better, this is less fun as it doesn't feel spontaneously generated and requires less adapting to a new map, however I do endorse personal options on metal point concentrations, metal point income, and map editing to a further extreme.

I don't find that to be logical or reasonable. You might as well say that as the consumer of a book, you should be able to change the ending to suit your desires. Or change the lines of an actor that you didn't enjoy in a movie. Games are art. They are meant to be played the way the designer intended. You either enjoy them or you don't, typically. (I find Skyrim to be boring but apparently several million people disagreed with me. I would have changed a lot, starting with the lack of online play and PvP.)

Of course, in this case, the designer intends there to be a lower difficult mode to play in (by adjusting the AI's resources), so when/if that works you'll be covered there to some extent but if you ever plan to go online, you'll have to learn to play the game the way it was intended to be played. Learning to beat the AI can prepare you for that.

With the latest patch the Orbital Launcher and Orbital Radar can be created by T1 fabbers (not sure about commander).

There really is no excuse for not being able to dominate the AI. The AI is terrible at planet colonization so all you have to do is fly away to a new planet where you will be safe and take your time. I think it's reasonable to achieve this task within 5 minutes of starting a game. The strategy from then on is the same as in a game against real people (except it will be easier because the AI, again, is stupid): Cover the planet with scouts and bombers so that you can prevent teleporters from popping up and hitting you with armies, and make a few Avengers to protect orbital space. Unless you are on a moon of the home planet, nukes are not a threat.

Honestly, even nukes arent much of a problem provided you can keep up a reasonable fraction of the opponent's economic production. If you like to turtle and don't expand much, usually a single antinuke can protect your entire base so as long as you can feed in the missiles fast enough, it will be fine. Fine until your opponent outproduces you 2:1 and starts to overwhelm the antinukes.

The one constraint is that the AI will spam armies on the home planet and lag up the game a good deal. So you could try playing on smaller solar systems.

Teleporters and orbital fabbers really helped with this because it's now pretty easy to move some forces around e.g. to thin out the AI's ever-expanding army blobs. Before, the only thing you could do to fight an enemy entrenched on another planet was spam laser platforms (only to never be able to get a lock on a constantly moving commander) or twiddle your thumbs till the game crashed because the AI built too many freakin' Levelers. But now that Levelers are just fat Ants, that works in your favor. The AI isn't smart enough to figure out that they should be spamming Shellers instead. The counter to that would be Catapults rather than laser towers.