Metal Planets - Should Metal Extractors Be Buildable Anywhere?

But that's not what you suggested at all, you suggested something lacking limits.

Mike

Metal everywhere makes metal less limited than it is now. Your own idea makes your own points moot.

In an ideal scenario, 2 people arrive at the same time. In reality, 1 person will get there first and gets a metal spam going. Anyone else on any non-metal planet simply can't keep up, because they have at the very least travel time and finite deposits to care about, whereas the metal-planet player can just build rows upon rows of mexes.

400 of 40k backers is not representative, especially since the real player pool has gotten a LOT bigger now.

I still haven't seen anyone object to my solution, so why not simply implement that.

Good post, I can see your reasoning but I still don't understand how you don't think this will already be the case since metal planets come with planet destroying weapons. It's going to be a race to get there either way, so with that established the points about it being just a race to get there are moot because regardless of the extractor situation that will be the case. So what are we left with for cons?

That said I'd love to see adv metal extractors come with defenses attached and an operation energy cost anyway to differentiate them from regular extractors. Combine that with a wider building footprint and allow only advanced metal extractors on metal worlds and I think you'd have a solution everyone could be happy with.

There is a major difference between having to go metal planets, to SPEND resources to activate a weapon, compared to having to rush there to gain INFINITE resources. A major difference.

Rushing metal planets in the first case will definitely be a very late game thing, especially if it costs crippling amount of resources to reactivate the lost technology.

We should be making fighting over metal spots more integral to the game, not less, and wrecks should be sturdier and be reclaimed at very low power cost to promote salvage.

You will have to do a better job explaining that difference, because they both sound like a rush to me. You feel 1 is more urgent than the other? So what? That's subjective. They are both still rushes and the faster player has the advantage both situations.

There is a MAJOR difference, and that is timing.

Infinite Resource Instawin Metal Planet

If a metal planet has infinite resources, you need to claim it first, or be at a major disadvantage resource wise. It can also be grabbed early, at Tech 1.5, as opposed to 2.

Once grabbed first, you win the game due to being able to simply expand exponentially without any remaining risk.

All threats can be countered by 'build more' due to the insane amount of eco available. Soon you have infinite air, land, and naval units at your disposable only limited by how many fabbers you can allocate to any given task.

Players without metal are screwed, players with metal also dont have to really bother with eco being part of the game anymore.

Boring, broken and can be rushed early.

Massively OP Mega Tech Instawin Metal Planet

In the reverse, to actually activate a metal planet, you would probably need an entire planets worth of resources simply to accomplish such a task.

Therefore, to actual make use of it, you would need to take a metal planet MUCH later in the game, or at least build metal extractors on all of its mexes, before you have the resources to begin activating it.

All the while, this is draining resources from your ability to attack the enemy, leaving you very vulnerable until it is activated as all of your eco is directed to activating the metal planet.

Also, once activated, if we assume its a giant laser, it will probably require masses of t2 energy and storage to be even able to fire it.

so HUGE investment, and not exactly a very easy strat to pull off compared to simply 'free metal' and that is assuming the metal planet is an autowin, just like infinite metal extraction, which i highly doubt it will be.

Cannot be rushed, due to the amount of effort needed to make it effective. Same amount of effort probably also makes alt strats also as viable, such as interplanetary nuke spam etc

Conclusion

Its very different, imho, as you can see. Whilst i hope the second isn't shoddily implemented, it could still have a place. The first doesn't apart from in joke games.

In this situation you have all of your eggs in 1 basket. If the enemy player decides to go for that 3 halley moon instead they only have to launch it at your metal planet to wipe out all of your gains and take it for themselves...

That is a huge assumption you are making out of nowhere. Never has Uber divulged any information about how to activate a metal planet and for all we no there is no resource cost associated. You are speculating huge here...

Well said Sypheara.

It's not any bigger than your assumption that there won't be any cost. Frankly to me that would just be a very bad way to design Metal Planets. Also it's worth noting the difference been making confirmations and simply talking about it, Neutrino has talked about it on a few occasions and thus far he seems well aware that there would need to be some effort put forth to make use of Metal Planet so long as they want them to be effective. So yeah, while we don't know yet the EXACT mechanics regarding a Metal Planet's weapons, there are a great number of potential setups of varying difficulties.

Personally I like the idea that this war has been going on for so long that all these abandoned Metal Planet's Reactors are totally dead requiring Commanders to build Generators in special sockets to shunt all power directly tot eh Metal Planet instead of their Economy. Further more specific Sockets would power specific Features like Engines and the Laser itself. And maybe these could even be progressive, no "X amount of power required to turn on the engines", simply have it so that the more power you have going to the engines the faster the Metal Planet goes. This would be a great way to scale the laser as well, it can start off being just a big Orbital Satellite type thing and build it's way up to being a Planet Cracker.

Mike

But you still have more resources than the other player letting you do more, you can harass his economy, land on all the other planet/moons/asteroids setting up defenses and factories. Yeah you might get lucky sometimes if you don't get to a Metal Planet first, but that's not exactly the most fun gameplay.

Mike

Mike, you must have pulled that idea out of your back side because that is never something I suggested either as that would also be an assumption... I am simply going by the facts. We don't know either way so don't go around assuming something is either black or white when it could possible be either, or even grey! You putting words in my mouth in order to straw man me is very pathetic. I thought more of you than that mike...

Anyway, you would be hard pressed indeed to

• land on a metal planet 1st
• lock it down
• abuse it economically
• build a force
• then harass another player on a separate planet effectively

before they had a chance to

• lock down the 1st planet you abandoned in favor of rushing to the metal planet
• abuse that 1st planet economically
• land on a moon
• build 3 halleys
• launch it...

1 of those options is FAR easier to achieve than the other, economics aside

Why would you abandon the planet you left behind? Leave factories behind and suddenly you have an outlet for those infinite resources that can harass and keep an eye on the opponent.

Mike

Because we are talking about a no-holds-bared race to the metal planet as a de-facto strategy for maps with metal planets... Keep up!

If you aren't focused on the metal planet you won't win it, and if you are you will lose the starting planet against an equally skilled opponent. Doesn't matter either way, since it doesn't take a whole planet worth of eco to build 3 halleys fast.

Even if it's no holds barred, you still need to build factories and economy in order to leave the planet you start on, and you won't be destroying them once you leave, and you can still do things while in transit.

Mike

ok but when you get to the metal planet the starter world will be running on inertia. Assuming both players are of equal skill you will control half the planet until that point. Meanwhile if the other player chose to travel to the moon 1st instead of the metal planet he will already have that moon locked down with a teleporter and building halleys by the time you land on the metal planet...

Even if the moon is as far away as the metal planet you will both land at the same time. You need to still build an army and travel to his planet to harass him before he can build the halleys. I doubt even then you have a chance of winning...

Actually it's probably as close to ideal for the Metal Player actually, because his opponent is also focused on getting off planet he is under similar constraints as the Metal Rushing, making Raiding all the more viable, if his opponent "hunkered down" and focused on removing the metal player's presence from the starting planet he would have a slight advantage for a bit until the metal planet Eco started picking up from scratch. Not to mention that just because he as a KEW doesn't mean he wins by any means, he might be able to wipe the metal planet of enemy structures/units but so far the metal planet would still be usable, some commander hopping allows the enemy to try again among other things.

End of the day, Infinite metal is just not all that great for gameplay.

Mike

Opinion time! That's fine, just don't pretend it's anything more than that. There is nothing inherently broken with the idea.

You mean aside from everything brought up over the course of this and other threads?

Mike

The flaw in the idea that the abandoned planet can be fully exploited for it's resources is that it's a 1v1. In a multi-team game, that potential doesnt exist untill the rest is defeated. Then, people can simply rush to the planet, and whoever's on it has an economy boost. Even if that's multiple people having a presence, whoever's not on it can't mass-spam mexes.

The difference between a metal planet super weapon and infinimetal is that attemtping to control the weapon doesn't make it easier to hold the weapon. Infinimetal makes it easier to hold that planet the longer you have it in a way that is far, FAR faster than a traditional game.

The game should be balanced in itself, not by group dynamics and psychology.

How about, you can build mexes anywhere, but the closer a mex is to another mex, the efficiency drops. Having 9 metal extractors side by side would only produce 1 metal each. having them spread out sufficiently would make them as efficient as (or slightly more than) normal mexes.

I'd go so far as to say that densely packing them should make them collectively produce LESS metal than a single mex.