A Written Tutorial to PA Economy.

I wrote this yesterday and hope it will help those of you who are new to PA. All feedback is very welcome. If i write another section what would you want it to be about? Feel free to use it in any way but i appreciate a link back to this thread so i can get feedback if people have any.

Cheers from a fellow gamer.

edit: Thanks for the heads up.

E + M = KABOOM


Before we get to smashing planets into each other, we're going to have to learn how to deal with the economy in this game, because the planetary jet thrusters are very costly. Also the economy of PA is what sets it apart from the rest of the RTS you might have encountered (with the obvious exceptions of it's predecessors, Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander).

At the top of your screen are two sets of numbers and bars, one for each resource in the game. The numbers indicate the income and spending of the corresponding resource. It could read that you have an income +100 of something at the same time you are spending -300 leaving you with a sum of -200 hitting your storage. And that's the final item on the top of your screen, the bars represent how much storage you have of each of the resources. With a large storage and a short burst of spending maybe -200 isn't that bad, but with an empty storage it's going to have effects on what you are trying to do.

I'm going to start with ENERGY. Think of it as the electricity in your computer, without it nothing would be operating. In a similar way most of the things you use in game, for example the radar, are dependent on energy.

But to build a new computer you need parts and the parts need raw material, like minerals and plastic. This is represented in the game as METAL. Things in the game run fine without it, but you can't build anything new. And seeing how the most common way to win this game is to produce more tanks, robots and guns than your opponent, you are going to need all the M you can get your hands on. More M means more factories, more rockets and more things that go boom.

Another good point, if I might get slightly ahead of things, is to deny your opponent their resources. Maybe we will cover offensive play at another time.

ENERGY is fairly simple to acquire. You go the build menu of your commander or your fabrication unit, locate the building named ENERGY PLANT and build it. You can build it anywhere you can put a building on any planet and they start producing E as soon as they are done.

MASS comes from the little patches scattered about the map. (If you have default key bindings ctrl+n is a great visual aid to locate them). To get the M from the patches you have to build METAL EXTRACTORS (i'll just call them MEX) on the little patches. Same as with E, as soon as the building is up you get a steady income of M. So kind of the same but a bit more specific.

The way resources are structured in this game has the effect of forcing you out in the field to get more M. One of the most common mistakes I see beginners make is to build 4 – 6 MEX and then start building little square bases. Complete with walls, defense towers and everything in neat little order. It might look pretty and feel great, but the downside of this is that leaves your opponent with the rest of the planet and the all the M scattered about it. In other words, they get all the M and can build all the things that go pew pew and kaboom while you get a tight little square.


So, recap time. The economy in game is fluid, you have to balance income with spending and there is storage to help you create buffers. With set income at set times the natural consequence is you can't build everything at once. There are a few ways to deal with this. The most basic one would be to focus on and make choices about what you want built and when. Maybe if you build some more MEX first, your income will grow and you can build all those factories later? Or maybe you really need a few more energy plants and have to halt the production of your factories?

Stalling in METAL means slower build times How bad this is depends on the situation. If you have +100M income, no storage and spend -120 you will notice slightly slower build times. At +50 -500, nothing gets done and you are going to have to make some choices on what to build first.

Stalling on ENERGY is far worse. Suddenly you have no radar and factories won't build, no matter how much M you have. No E in storage and big negative numbers will effectively cause you not to be able to use the M you are gathering so make sure that you at all times have a decent +E income and plenty of storage to deal with fluctuations in your economy. As the game works in it's current build, an ENERGY STORAGE isn't very expensive, gives a huge storage and is very helpful. On the other hand, if you are pondering building METAL STORAGE, you should just build another factory or more energy plants or something useful. M has to be put to use to get you to victory.

To try and sum things up we could say that shortage of METAL has long term consequences, whereas shortage of ENERGY has more acute, short term consequences. Since everything costs resources you have to make choices. You can't build everything at once, work on your priorities.

It's a good write-up. My one criticism is that there is no 'mass' in this game - the resource is called metal

Heh, I'm not even going to try to explain how i messed that up.

This isn't a good tutorial. I'm missing a standart build order like: at first build an energy plant, then metal extractor, factory and so on.
Furthermore i would be interested in some numbers, like how much energy you need for building tanks in a factory and so on ...
You are just using random numbers like 100 metal income, thats not helpful.

My point of doing that is that everything is still subject to change. Beta was very recent and there has been a number of patches already so if i tell you to build mex, energy plant and then your first factory, as is viable in this build, that might change with the next patch. I'm just trying to capture the basics of how economy works, no regarding build order details.

I don't think this was written for players like you. This seems to have been written for people completely new to this genre / style of RTS, and very well so, too.

Stuff like tactics, build orders and strategy are near useless to write down at this stage because of how much the game changes with each patch

A good primer! Take my likes!

Ok you got a good point. It's a beta, so numbers can change.
It's good written for realy new players who never played with such an economy.

I hope someone will write a tutorial for "pro" players.

I've no doubt they will. But I strongly suspect it will be done after release and when we're in a 'stable' period of development where balance isn't going to change too much!

In the meantime, you're best to just chat to people who are somehow just good at the game, and see what sort of thinking you need behind you. www.pa-db.com is quite useful.

One can always rephrase a sentence and be polite while giving constructive comments. Next time, try "Hey mate, it's wonderful you took the time to write this up because I am a lazy sob and have nothing else to do but waste bandwidth on pick on your article/tutorial, however you might want to add point 1,2,3 because of point 4,5,6. Again you don't have to but I have no life and annoying you is a lifetime goal of mine".

voodoomaster said: ↑

Surely a "pro" player won't need a tutorial?

On a side note I've been to the internet before and I don't mind people being blunt. voodoomaster got his point across and I got to reply to it. No harm taken, no harm done.

Edit: I've posted this on reddit too, but if you hang out somewhere I don't (steam and facebook for example) feel free to post this text where ever it might do some good. I'd appreciate a link back to this thread so I can get feedback, that's all.

I didn't insulted someone, i just wrote a feedback from my personal view. Because someone offered the time to write something doesn't mean that it's automaticly good.
But it looks like you won't discuss it. I feel already insulted and won't post here again.
Maybe i have an other view about this game as old TA and supcom player. I'm sorry if anyone get me wrong.

A pro player don't need a tutorial? It would save me a lot of time if someone can tell me how you can spam tanks as fast as possible. Otherwise i have to test it my own which needs way more time.

Watch livestreams from Gunshin, Neptunio, Clopse, and Cola_Colin. They are top players and have efficient build orders.

Probably the most efficient start is mex, pg, 3 mex, bot fac, 3-5 pg, e storage. You need minimal walking before the first factory. This often isn't possible with current mex placement. Long walks will cause you to regen your eco that can make it fine to only build 3 mex total before the bot factory.

build order really needs to be varied at the moment, even the first buildings. Especially in team games, where you share eco, and one Commander might be able to build 5 mex fast, while the other one maybe only can build 2^^

So, you are/want to be, a pro player, but without investing any actual time yourself, and by letting others do your "testing"?

If everybody played exactly the same way as each other, what would be the point? I imagine that being a pro (I'm not one, never have been, never will be, don't care!), involves being able to change your preferred strategy to suit the strategy of your opponent(s). Or, in other words, being flexible, not learning stuff by rote.

That's certainly the aim. Not all RTSes have been able to achieve this, though. Especially when you get to 'high level' play like that, there very often tends to be one or several 'best plays'. I, and I'm sure most people here, are extremely hopeful that Uber will be able to deliver a game which rewards thinking and strategy over APM and rote-learned executions, but it's a difficutl task.

Things like procedural maps in PA help tremendously, of course, and we've had plenty of discussion so far on how to avoid this sort of thing.

Or instead of starting out and wasting hours trying to work out how to play efficiently someone could just tell you.

Someone somewhere has to try something new, somehow (What a lot of "somes...").

I personally can't imagine only playing the accepted efficient way. You have to be able to throw something "different" into the mix.

Of course, "efficiency" isn't necessarily the same as rote.

But by the same token, how do you know that what you're trying is actually new unless you know what the 'accepted efficient' way is?