A small gripe: Bring down the numbers

Hm. Someone should let Activision know that

The key difference here is managing a real-life budget can be done over hours. Managing your economy in PA has to be understood as fast as possible, preferably in seconds if not instantly.

It's not that PA is unmanageable it's that I simply have better decisions to make (attention to allocate, remember that post saying the most important resource in PA is 'attention?'). If you view video games as tools to sharpen your life skills, like math, then you should understand that often the goal of math is to represent logic. In logic, the scale of numbers is absolutely insignificant, all that matters is how the numbers relate to each other. Simplifying the numbers would make it easier for players to get to the logic without having to go through all that ******* math. It's so much I don't even bother other than saying "i'm under power this much, add this much factories and it should be ok".


I should also like to call on those who say that this will complicate or even result in a nil nothing result of simplification for how the game works if we reduce it down to a scale of 1/2 and such:

Currently, yes, a 1 or 2 scale does not fit with the game's current logical balance as far as flat nmbers go, because shoving a +1/+1 scale into the game would cause fabbers to consume decimal levels of mexes per second.

The real problem here lies in the very fact that fabbers take 1.4 mex to operate, or the commander takes himself+0.8 T1 power to operate. Why not 1 mex for the fabber? or 1.5, and we use a +2/+2 scale? Even a +3/+3 scale would be simple and able to closely model the relationships we have in the game (dunno about you but I work well with 3.. as long as everything fits into the 3/odd scale). Simple balance like this would be very easy to logically grasp what's going on as far as the economy goes, so you, and the devs, can model these things out near-instantly and quickly understand where things are efficient, too efficient, and vice versa.

You'd have to change things to fit such a small scale. Whether or not that's desired is up to you, as long as the scale is even and easy to grasp. Even scales like +10 and +100 would perform the same task as far as the numbers go.

I mentioned this a while a go. I personally dont think the metal income is too much of a problem, but seeing the huge energy numbers fluctuate between positive and negative values makes it hard to keep track of what I need to do to fix my economy.

I think having smaller numbers for the energy value would make it easier to understand quickly how to help control your economy.

Hehe, I just thought of a good pun:

f(mex)

Geddit? Hehehehehehe.

The key difference here is I prefer not to spend hours walking around the supermarket, or take minutes walking around the supermarket with a calculator/my phone. Taking a few seconds to keep a running total is fine by me.

Can I just point out, it isn't all that maths? It's division, subtraction, addition and multiplication. I'd understand if it involved complicated maths, but well, it doesn't.

It's a practice thing. We're really used, in the age we live in, to just asking Casio, or Google, or our phone, or whoever else to do a whole load of really basic calculations for us. Actually, they're perfectly manageable, and very quick for the brain to run.

Your last line confuses me. Simple scales like +10/+100 in a divisible by 3 system? Err.. we've already got that - it takes 5/3 power generators to run a fabber.


Honestly, I think this whole argument is overthinking the economy. If you're negative spend less and build more eco, if you're positive, spend more, build more factories, if you're fluctuating wildly, build more storage. It's really that simple.

Build more storage, gives you more of a buffer. If it's fluctuating. If it's not fluctuating, build more generation.

It's a separate statement. It's in a different paragraph, so, it's not meant to conjoin with that idea. What I meant is you could bring simplicity to the system without changing the logic of it by changing to +10/+100. If you have +3/+3, you'd have to change the logic around a bit.

There is no doubt about that. I just want the numbers to line up so I can form strategies better and understand what is going on faster.

That's real life.

In this game, we're managing armies and balancing tactical and strategical decisions every second in order to win. The less attention we have to spend on grasping what is going on, the better, for everyone involved. I would like to increase the amount of mental space I have in the game by simplifying the logic and numbers so that I am managing my own base economy less and can focus on understanding the benefits of expansion or attacks more.

I hate to bring it up here, but take a peak at StarCraft 2. You can deny the game's value as an RTS but you can't deny that it is balanced and successful. The core of the game is that each tick of a harvester brings back 5 minerals, Marines cost 50 minerals, and a Supply Depot costs 100 minerals. The game's economy is set up completely differently so a linear comparison of PA to SC2 won't work, but understanding how having those flat, easy to process numbers makes the game better is crucial to understanding why having a reduced number scale in PA will benefit the game in the long run. (and yes, I'm aware I didn't bother to explain SC2's economy)

Purely from a convenience standpoint having to multiply by 7 and 6 all the time annoys me.

Agreed, 5 and 10 or 10&15 would be better.

But there is very high probability that if they change basic mex fro 7 to 10, something else will change from 10 to 17 just to keep balance. They cannot go for lower numbers for reasons i posted before.

I think simple gui addon wold solve all that. Something like when you hoover mouse over metal or mexes it displays number of T1 and T2 mexes and formula x*7+y*15 = total metal. And similar one showing how many mexes you need to build structure without draining economy. That is much easier than rebalancing whole economy because numbers look bad.

Correct. And guess how you simplifiy logic?

If (I am running deficit)
{, spam more economy}
If (I am profit)
{spam more factories}

IT's really no more complicated than that. I mean sure, you can calculate all the values if you want... or you could just spend more time playing the actual game.

Most sensible idea in this and related threads!

I'm not sure I agree.
http://taguide.tauniverse.com/unit_pages/units_1.php?unit=Metal Extractor&side=CORE
http://taguide.tauniverse.com/taguide.html

I don't really think it would matter if they changed the balance just to normalize the numbers. The balance isn't that sensitive to such small changes yet although it might be more sensitive in the future.