Hi guys, I have been reading a few posts about the economy and resources in general. Currently, energy/metal storage isn't used/hardly used much at all (particularly metal) due to the fact that it just isn't needed when you have, say 1000 metal storage and your generating 1000 metal per second with an advanced economy. Energy is similar except with different proportions. A proposed solution: How about making certain buildings/units cost an initial block of metal or energy or both before construction can begin. Build time and price would still be the same. For example: (Disclaimer: All resource costs below are made up for simplicity sake and because my brain cant handle the maths at the moment ) Nuke Launcher - Build cost 100,000 metal. Start cost 15,000 metal 1. You must have at least 15,000 metal/energy storage to place the NL in the build que. 2. When the fabber starts construction, then the resources are deducted from your resource pool in the initial chunk, and then the remainder is used during construction as per usual. Construction time stays the same and build cost stays the same, and storage is utilized. This would mean that "storage farms" would need to be protected and it would add a vulnerability to a strong player. Thoughts...?
Why, for all that is, would we want to put a streaming economy and a stockpile economy together? That would mean you can build nothing if you are in the red. It will not WORK. I've played/casted many games, being in the red for metal(and sometimes energy) is normal. With this system if you lost anything, that would be it. 100k M for Nuck, if you have 0 in your storage how would you build it? Where does this begin and end? Advance buildings? All buildings? Economy buildings/units? Units in general. Storage is a buffer. Not a stockpile. PA is not about micromanaging your economy but instead having armies battle it out. If you want to micro an economy play SupCom/Sim City/Sim game. I mean this in the nicest way possible, but honestly, the two don't mesh.
If there's one benefit to a continuous/streaming economy model, where you can slap stuff down and only suffer if you're in a deficit. In fact, as long as you're in the green and have some kind of economic expansion in the pipeline, you can ignore economy completely - leaving you more time to build and destroy. Having to count out how much metal you have in the bank when it's fluctuating all the time kills that benefit.
This would mean giving up part of the PA/TA/Supcom economy system that I believe is superior to other RTS games (pay upfront) so no. Although yeah we need more incentives to make storages, right now making them is a sign that you failed with managing your economy and you cant spend all of your resources.
Theres enough incentive to make a couple energy storages, but there is _no_ incentive to make metal storage. I made a post about changing metal storage back in alpha, but it didnt get much traction =__=
To be the most efficient, no metal storage is needed. As why players like gunshin can't understand why anyone would.
Storage only matters if there are major fluctuations in supply or demand. Storage mattered a bit in TA because of reclaim. Wreckage created bursts of income and spending it was difficult. Most facilities had just enough bonus storage to keep you happy as the match scaled. Storage did not matter in Supcom beyond the adjacency system. Any storage you built was strictly for the income bonus. While reclamation can create huge surges of income, experimental bots also consumed resources at a huge rate so spare resources did not linger long. Metal storage doesn't matter in PA because there is no incentive to reclaim. **** blows up too quickly and basic income levels are too high. Match up income with expenses and go. Energy storage is a different beast entirely, as PA uses unprecedentedly high energy fluctuations with the genre's smallest storage yet.