I'm a bit worried about them costing more energy. Energy becomes cheaper as the game goes on so this would bias bots towards the lategame. Furthermore you don't have independent control of all three resources. How are you going to make bots cost more energy now that energy drain is linked to the constructor? The bot factory could have a worse energy ratio than the vehicle factory. Factories could even be the most efficient source of buildpower. But space will eventually require you to use assisters. Bot constructors could have worse energy efficiencies but in a mid-lategame situation players will have a variety of factories and just use the most efficient constructor for base assist. On a related note the buildpower efficiency for factories are likely to be overestimated. A constructor can switch between multiple factories to minimize downtime whereas a factory has to wait through the rolloff time of the units it produces.
can someone help me to understand better? I have only understand commander is the msot efficently builder same Total annihilation. Fab. bot consume more low resources that vehicle and vehicle more low that aricraft. Bot > Vechicle > Air But at start if I want to build example 4 fab. Bot or vehicle how many power plant or metal extractor must make for a good production?
One Vehicle Factory or a Bot Factory drains almost the complete production of a T1 Power Plant. However if you factor in the roll-off time of 9 seconds you only need about 0.65 power plants for every factory. So 3 power plants are more than enough for 4 factories. Each bot factory drains on 12 metal. Same thing here. The bot factory is only busy 68% of the time when building the most expensive unit, Spinner, so we can multiply this by 0.68. 12*0.65=8.16 8.16*4 = 33.4 A T1 metal extractors make 7 metal per second so you need a little less than 5 metal extractors to run 4 Bot factories making Spinners. Each Vehicle Factory drains 15 metal but is only busy 60% of the time when making Ant tanks or Fabricator Vehicles. 15 * 0.6= 9 9*4 = 36. 36/7=5.14... So you need a little more than 5 metal extractors to run 4 Vehicle factories making Ants or Fabricator Vehicles. Expect those values to change during the Alpha and Beta.
Am I btw the only person who has the feeling that the economy changes in PA make it harder and not easier? Maybe it is just me being to used to the way SupCom works or it is the pretty unfinished gui that makes it hard, but I crash my economy far harder than I usually do in SupCom. The main issue is that adding more engineers while energy stalls is very very bad as it just slows down everything and achieves nothing. In SupCom this is prevented by the energy drain going down once the massstorage is empty. So the SupCom concept can balance itself out, the PA concept requires the player to do it. At least in combination with the current gui (no way to pause excess engineers, very hard to get an overview of what is building where) it is very hard to effectively build up without wasting or stalling resources.
Well cheaper energy have typically been a way to make air production relatively cheaper at higher tech levels in SupCom. A simple way to make bots have a relative higher energy drain with about the same infrastructure cost with t1 power plants is to reduce the price of the bot factory to 450. I'm not sure it is such a bad thing that energy sources with different efficiency promote different types of production. With this high roll-off time assisting T1 factories en masse is really not that viable unless fabbers automatically switch between factories with minimal delay. Mm... I don't think it is a factor until it can be done without micromanagement but yeah, I think that factories should be the most efficient source of buildpower too.
I think it's a function of the factors you mentioned. We take for granted how well developed the GUI in SupCom was, especially combined with UI mods. I do agree though that stalling energy right now is very easy.
Keep in mind this is alpha and everything is subject to change. Balance isn't done by just putting in numbers and declaring it balanced. It is: 1. Put in new numbers. 2. Play test and gather numbers. 3. Decide on changes. 4. Goto 1 until ship day... and sometimes after. For those who were around for Super MNC's alpha/beta know that things can change drastically right now.
Well, yeah an energy stall is very bad currently in PA. Adding more fabbers during an energy stall is like adding fuel to the fire. Your metal production goes down even more and your build rate goes down on all other construction units as well.
I think that is especially problematic because it acts as a noob trap. With energy being required to run things (and use air at all) energy stalling is already plenty punishing without also crashing your metal production.
No, this has been discussed a bit in the massive economy thread. I made a post about it here: viewtopic.php?f=61&t=44173&p=710163& It is in some ways harder than FA and in other ways easier. But it is definitely harder than the economy in ZK.
It's not a fire and forget economy, but generally it's easier then FA. Just try to spend all your mass, and keep energy just in the positive and you should end up fine. Usually if I find my self not spending, just start building more of the AA towers, as they make good perimeter observation posts due to their vision range.
I'm going away for a month or so I won't be updating the spreadsheet. I have only noticed one change since v.49186 to v.50083 and that was that Sea Powerplant was buffed to match the output of the land Powerplant.
Sorry i wasn't here to help T.T 20% of 100 is 20 100-20 is 80 20% of 80 is 16 80 + 16 is 96 96 is unequal to 100
Another way to put this: If 100 tanks cost 100 metal (1m per tank), 100 bots should cost 80 (0.8m per bot). That would make 100 metal worth of bots = 100/0.8 = 125 bots. I think scathis was talking in approx figures though. 18% less metal = 22% more bots (100÷0.82=121.9). I imagine final ballance will be something like that, splitting the difference from the 20% goalpost.
