I recently read on the forum that there are going to be mass extractor points in game. That's great, but it then begs another question. It doesn't seem like there are going to be any upgradable units in game (commanders are confirmed to be non-upgradable). SO, are mass extractors going to be upgradable? As there are currently two tech tiers - it seems pretty ridiculous if you have to reclaim all your tech one mass extractors to build tech two ones! If it is the case that they are upgradable... I really hope they introduce more than two levels for upgrading them. I feel like it would be a shame to hit the ceiling as soon as you've upgraded once. I constantly feel like I'm stuck at tech two on Supreme Commander! Although maybe that's just me, I do already dislike only having two tech tiers!
There are several options for dealing with economy structures, as somewhat outlined here and here. In short, I hope T2 Mexes can just be built Over top of T1 Mexes, and for Energy I hope instead of T2 being a Bigger T1, they do things like Tidal, Solar and Wind in T2 instead. Mike
I don't think we need additional MEX tiers or upgrades. I do agree we need interesting, engaging and impactful economic choices. That's harder to achieve though. PA may have more interesting energy options e.g. solar, tidal, wind, orbital. But I can't say how engaging or impactful those choices will be. Creating interesting metal generation options is more challenging. Sure, there's metal makers but they have their own issues and I won't get into that. You could also emulate the irregular nature of tidal/wind energy with a MEX that produces metal at an irregular rate but that would necessitate irregular production and I'm not sure that would be good for gameplay (storage would be a necessity). You could also marry metal makers to MEXs, such that T2 MEX convert excess energy into metal by "overclocking" production with diminishing returns. Ultimately what matters is how engaging and impactful these choices are, if they're not engaging or impactful they aren't worth adding.
