Another Economic Thought: matching mass and build times.

Have you even played the game? If you build things beyond your income, your economy will stall. If you are building more than one thing at a time (and one of those things will stall your economy), a stalled economy is very hard to manage. A powerful UI could fix this is you could manually throttle construction speed for a given factory/engineer or unit under construction.

You did not say needing a huge number of engineers to build anything in a reasonable time is a problem. I used it as an example of a issue (that some are unhappy with) that it could fix.

Ignoring that the resources are generated differently, they are effectively the same. But the resources will are generated differently, so that question is meaningless. You need a mass/metal deposit and mass/metal extractor to get metal (a lot of extra energy and a metal/mass maker, or a huge hunk of metal and a unit that can reclaim it). You need wind/solar/fusion/tidal/geothermal/OTEC/oil/coal/whatever energy unit and its associated resource to get energy. Also some planets are rich in energy (gas giant), some are rich in metal/mass (maybe a metal planet), some are rich in both (a lava planet probably), some may be poor in both.

Heh. I see that you did give an example in your post, but no one else seemed to discuss it. Alas, I am in favor.

In case anyone doesn't remember, this system actually was pretty close in FA, as in, factories, for the most part, actually did follow this line of thinking. Once you upgraded the factory, it in effect simply was able to spend more. There were a few exceptions, like with the T1 land scout compared to the other units, but usually it was only energy that varied, with mass remaining the same throughout. It proved to be effective, if memory serves.

As a counter example if you look at Tech Level 3 Cybran aircraft (in FA), no two have the same metal cost per second. It varies from 8 to 15 when built by a tech level three aircraft plant.

I checked in normal SupCom first and for Cybran aircraft (constructed by a T3 aircraft plant) they vary from about 2.67 to 16.5.

I believe the outliers cause most of the problems (ie. those that are high M and low T, or vice-versa). Not being fixed and consistent makes it manageable but unintuitive. Air is probably a good example of why at least one of the variables should be aligned.

On the topic of T3 Air in FA, the variation between mass-rates is (at its worst) is 87.5%. If you want to build ASF and bombers in equal number, you need an economy that is 65% higher than building ASF by themselves.

That reminds me that a friend I was talking to about this thread mentioned how he liked that looking at a player's economic units could give you an idea of what they are trying to build.

Oh, the coloured lights on factories and storage? That was a nifty feature for observing your opponents. Didn't actually change how easy it was to not tank your economy.

That would probably be a good thing to have return as a feature.

I know small BT can be a problem in supcomm because the UI is bad. My question was for a powerful UI. I'm assuming they can make a UI this powerful (because I have) and at worst it would be a widget to spam wait commands.

Sorry I was a bit unclear. I treat BP as a resource and whether you do was the point of this question. So is there a difference between E, M and BT?

I admitted that a powerful UI could negate that "problem", but I do not see that as a problem. I think it can be used as a balancing point. Though I find it strange you would want such fine control of the build power of a unit (increasing the complexity of the game) but the only good argument for making E = M = BT is that it simplifies the game.

It is a resource in the way firepower is, but it is intrinsically different than Energy and Metal. Energy and Metal are materials, BP is the factory.

the flowsystem is fine in TA und SupCom, it is actually a pretty easy system that is just hard on people who are used to the pay up front concept of games like Starcraft. SupCom2 tried to simplify the resource-system to make it easier on such people. It failed horribly. Lets learn from the mistake SupCom2 did and not fiddle with the resourcesystem again. PA is supported by people who love TA and SupCom and therefore love and understand the flow-based economy, too. Therefore there is no need to change it. If you want a "simpler" resource-system, go play Starcraft.

They want to fix the system by making the unit cost and build time attributes linked. (So for instance the T1 engineer always spends 5m/s and/or 5e/s but maintain the flow basis of the economy. Starcraft is hardly like that. I think Zero-K (a Spring engine game) is more like what they want.

I understand that.
My point is that the system is fine like it is and needs no simplification, there are more than 30k people now who pledge for game that uses a system like it was in SupCom/TA. So why change it in any way? PA is not about reaching out to bigger audiences.
People who have troubles with the system can just play other RTS.

Hahaha, you assume that all pledgers want an unadjusted economy... almost as if they pledged because of an unchanged economy.

That, sir, is a foolish assumption to make.

They pledged to this game, because they think it'll be awesome. Each of them will have their own definition of awesome, but it's not likely to be your definition of awesome.

Yes and their definition of awesome is likely to be near the concepts of TA and SupCom:FA.
They pledged a game that says: "I am gonna be like TA with Planets" and that is confirmed to use streaming economy. It is just the logical conclusion that must people will assume that the economy will be very much like in TA and make their pledge with this assumption in mind.
So why change anything about the system? The only reason to do so would be to get a wider audience. And like I said: SupCom2 tried that. We all know the outcome.

Is my proposed idea very much like in TA?

Or do you think people want it to be identical?

I suppose most people who liked TA and SupCom wont feel a need to simplify anything.

In my opinion your idea takes away an important balancing tool.

I meant:
"Small BT can be a reason for not choosing to construct a unit", here the players is trying to build a unit and 'has a problem' with the low BT cost of a unit so chooses a more expensive one.

Also the UI does not have to be particularly complex. You only have to control how fast the unit builds, not the BP of each con. Also a good way to control spending is through construction priorities.

It is a resource in the same way Energy and Metal are. Some of it's mechanics are different to E and M but it is still spent in the same way and you can consider your BP income. BP has these main differences:

• It cannot be stored. It effectively has 0 storage. Note that M should not be stored so the ability to be stored is not a major thing for resources.
• It is spent locally. As in 'generators' have to be within a certain radius of a construction to contribute BP.
• Most sources cannot spend BP on anything they like. As in for example factories only build units.

Given these differences I think treating BP as a resource the same as E and M is a justified abstraction.

That would work well for constituting single expensive units but not for constructing many inexpensive units in a row. If the toggle is at the builder or unit being built, it does not change much.

I think those reasons are enough to consider it different. Even if it were treated in the same way, how would that change anything? Look at firepower, it is local, often has some limitations on what it can target (for example long range artillery is poor at taking out fast moving aircraft), and it usually can not be stored (except for units that use ammo)."

BT and E are only minor constraints to production, if you have too little build power or energy production you simply invest your surplus metal and make more (and really you'll want to have a surplus of both anyway, BP for repairs, energy for weapons and shields and stuff and of course in case of sudden M windfalls due to reclamation). Metal is your real constraint, it's ultimately pretty much capped so you gotta work with what you have (or conquer more). Thus BP and E are secondary concerns no matter how high their costs may be, as long as construction assistance exists.

No matter what your metal income is your goal is always to have BP and energy output to match it, a 1:1:1 ratio only makes sure that you know when you're short on either BP or E.

Also when producing units you will always build the ones that are the most efficient for your M income, if you can't afford the E or BP you'll rectify that quickly. Yes, extreme edge cases may not be so easy to rectify (e.g. a unit costing 1000E/BT) but I kinda doubt that they will be terribly common.

High E/low M as a fallback is rather unlikely since building that E production costs resources too and when you're M-starved you can't simply pump out a bunch of high-powered E producers, at least not moreso than your opponent. And if spending a ton of E per M increases the firepower you get per M then a well-funded opponent will strive to build the same units, he'll just be more capable of building the E producers for it.

Costs of zero are special cases, specifically the metal maker's 0 M cost allows it to be an emergency structure that you build when you're all outta M. That's an edge case that's not terribly interesting for regular combat unit production though.

Arguing about balancing it's actually easier to balance when the cost has only one variable rather than three. That way you know X units of type A cost as much as Y units of type B. You can talk about strength per cost.

For example, if 10 of unit A and 8 of unit B are roughly equally powerful but A costs 80M, 80E, 60BT while B costs 90M, 200E, 80BT is that fair? Much harder to tell than A costs 80 EMBT and B costs 100 EMBT. And outside of the short periods where players are busy with E/BP econ buildup they'll only care about M cost so they'll spam unit B (costs only 720M for as much power as A would deliver for 800M).

The second factor is usability: If you have a factory on repeat build to produce, say, 2 tanks, 1 flak then your economic process is much easier to understand with 1:1:1 because no matter what the factory is making your resource drains are identical. If it's not, well, you'll have to check which unit your factory is currently making to see whether that +2 M production is actual surplus or going to disappear the moment the factory switches over to the other unit.

As for edge cases like loooooooong build times, with con assist you can just stick more workers on there until the production actually takes up your resource budget.

A nuke costing 3000M in Zero-K isn't actually that crazy. TA nukes take 180 seconds to make at a drain of 12M/sec for a total cost of around 2000 metal IIRC and Zero-K nukes are stronger while the value of metal is about equal or maybe slightly lower. The missile prices aren't too far out of line.

And yes, you can calculate how much it would cost to put constructor X on project Y but these are rather large numbers, calculating that in your head isn't feasible. Good luck calculating how much M it would take to put another construction K-Bot on that Guardian if you don't already have one working on it that you could crib from.

Metal being the primary constraint does create a slippery slope but slippery slopes are common and really belong in RTS design. There HAS to be a slippery slope once one player is pushed past the breaking point so the game will actually end.

Only when the rates are 1:1:1. If the ratios change between units, it does define your strategy a lot, how much you invest in them. Then there's different paths to take than mostly just the optimal way and suboptimal ways to build your infrastructure, which happens when you simplify it like that.

For example, a long-range cannon costs a lot of metal, but I don't have enough metal atm for it without stalling (-> inefficient use of BP resource plus possibly energy excess). Now I could just go on and build it anyway, to get it done asap (or maybe reclaim some unneeded energy structure I built to get more metal - this give both use to my BP and more metal to quickly complete the cannon), but there's other ways - I could for example build an airlab and produce planes, which are of low metal but high energy cost. And that way build up the needed metal to soon be able to build that cannon in a fast manner.
Or in a game where one player expands his metal economy faster but the other one builds more Energy instead - now they are in quite different positions, but neither is necessarily superior, they can produce different units efficiently and one has a wider area to defend. This kind of unsymmetric but even play is what makes things interesting. Also when scouting this, both can deduce a bit to what kind of sensible options the enemy has and act upon that.


People mention Zero-K here, and yeah... To me this simplistic economics is exactly the reason why that game is not that interesting. You can always switch to any thing you like without preparing for it economically, and the enemy has no way to scout marks of it in advance either. This doesn't reward long-term planning as much as the alternative.


Would AoE be a better game if each unit cost fixed ratios of wood, food, gold and stone? Or Starcraft if mineral:gas ratio of every unit was the same? No, that'd be dumbed down and boring.

People want to fix how unintuitive the system by trying to fix the system. What if the issue is transparency? There is a hidden mechanic going on, and it's make more sense if people could see it I think.

Show the BP of the unit, and show the BP/s of the builder, give an estimate of the time, a little trivial math in your head and it's obvious I think. Then when you tack XXXX BP/s on a factory, you know it'll take mass*BPrate/BP mass/s to build it.