Economics needs more complexity

Going back a bit, but hey, I'm still alive (we're doing science and I'm still alive~).

T2 is slightly "overpowered" in my eyes, the bigger issue is T1 lacking utility. I'm more in favour of the latter, given that how fixing that will further incentive use of T1 even over the T2 upgrades.

And yeah, here is fine. If people can get over themselves, from what I've been reading

Sorry, but deathnukes are a horrible way to balance high producing economy building. It massively increases the damage an attacker can do. When I'm slightly stronger then you and have you on the defensive, attacking your exploding t2 will result in massive loses on your part while I can savely build those t2.

So not only do I gain an economic lead over you I also destroy your economy with catastrophic consequences for you.

See thats my issue... I asked you what you wanted in regards to t2 mexes and you posed an example with increased output that was weaker in its defensive stats. Now you agree to a post that says it shouldn't have any increased output at all.

See now why I don't know what exactly you want?

I'm just open to different ideas on how you could manage it. I'm not necessarily opposed to "vertical" expansion... but I'm not for it either.

What I want is balance, rather than "upgrade"... and I think I've been VERY clear on that.

The more I think about it, the more I'm in favour of Metal Extraction having only one rate of extraction. But I'm open to your trying to sway me. I just don't see the qualitative change in gameplay when all you're doing is upgrading your metal points.

As you upgrade Energy I can see a change in play. You can afford to be more and more inefficient with your metal use, and keep your base running at the same time, operate using Air Fabs whilst still having all your point defences and bombers and whatnot recharging from your vast energy stores. It changes the quality of play.

With Metal... you increase production. That's it. No qualitative change... only quantity.

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Suggestions?

I agree that T2 should offer qualitative differences to T1, but i'm of the opinion that increased metal production should be part of those differences. I understand such thinking that it is a pretty hefty advantage to bestow, but there is another important dimension to this.

In ledarsi's old but most excellent analysis, the topic of board development is discussed. This is quite simply that the game should have mechanics to drive the game towards a conclusion, as oppose to a stalemate. One of the key mechanism that TA and SC have always relied on is that there should be a tendency for the player's holdings to increase over time. Thus, in order to escalate conflict, make bigger armies and unlock new weapons, players economies must grow. Generally, most people would prefer that this development is driven by the acquisition of more territory. I concur with this assessment as this does generate conflict, however, I can foresee that many games might hit a point where expansion is no longer a viable option. Although many games will take place in large systems where expansion is always achievable, we want the game to be as scalable as possible. Thus smaller maps can hit a brick wall in terms of development when expansion is no longer available, causing stagnation. Being able to increase metal production for a given territory delays this onset. Not infinitely of course (theres only so much one can "upgrade"), but hopefully enough that other "board development" mechanisms can come into play (e.g. asteroids).

By all means, balance the T2 extractor with ideas such as greater cost, greater payoff time, increased fragility, energy consumption, or some other weakness, but I think increased metal production has to be part of it's repertoire.

I'm not convinced. It really depends on how asteroids are implemented and costed. If you can reach asteroid flinging capability on a T1 Metal economy then there's no need for T2 to be more powerful.

Honestly I think it's important to be able to reach such capability on a T1 Economy. Otherwise you have more race-to-the-top gameplay again...
:evil:

you can allways reach the top with t1 eco units, only slower

but for example you cannot build the nuke launcher with t1, because its too powerfull to be a t1 building, and thats what t2 is : more powerfull (ok nukes are atm in alpha mostly not implementet, so dont argue about that plz). i dont understand what you have against upgrading eco buildings in any way. without that you totaly deny the turtle strategie, because if will not work anymore, and thus taking possibilities out of the game, and even if i am not a turtle player, i dont want to get limitations like that. i even would be for an experimental eco that even gets MORE resources like we have with t2 now....at horrible costs and whatever (not the unlimitet like paragon ofc) but to be able to even get stronger again.
you NEVER EVER get too mutch metal, if you have you dont produce enough because your enemy is too weak, but thats no game mechanics problem, you can spend metal endlessly in this game since there is not rly a unit limit like starcraft has it for example. (ok i remeber something about a limit of 40 players and 1 million units witch makes 25 000 units as a unit limit, but i dont think you reach this that often).

and your t1 eco can have stealth more hp or whatever, as long as you can produce MORE (in quantity^^) resopurces than t1 with t2 eco if will allways be stronger since you can build more other things in the streaming economy the game has.

... I really need to spell out that I'm aware that Nukes are T2 structures? really?
You think I'm that oblivious?

:|

I give up with you carnilion. If you think the "Turtle Until I Get Nukes" is a strategy that should be unpunishable, If you think that a player should have an increase in their Economy without fighting for it, then you are missing the point of RTS games, sir.

An RTS of PA's ilk is pointless if you don't have to fight over resources.

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Sorry Gorbles, I'm getting bogged down here. I'll try to get back to your points asap.

Sidegrades that mitigate weaknesses or specific counters, or even upgrades that are linked to the biome and type of terrain they're built near.

These sidegrades could even require T2 in some situations depending on how they work out. I've already mentioned some ideas in passing, but stuff like:

1. sunken generators (land or sea), providing defensive benefits and/or even regeneration to the base structure (promoting increased harass or outright destruction, which again they're shielded against to a certain extent).

2. cloaked generators, perhaps even forming a network with positioned generators in a specific manner. As cloaking is an incredibly problematic mechanic in terms of balance, venting and/or downtime may have to be implemented as a further counterbalance. If you wanted lore reasoning, T2 generators can't be cloaked because their power output is already too high and thus cannot cope with the restrictions cloaking places on output (i.e. they'd have to be venting 100% of the time, and thus cloaked 0% of the time).

3. generator caches; addons that increase the storage capacity of the resource. Provides redundancy in case of storage structures being wiped.

I mean, I could probably go on for days. Design is something of a soft spot for me.

basicaly yes i want to point that out to you nanolathe, because you allways argue that no t2 unit should be better than an t1 unit in all aspects except cost/build time. but thats what t2 is. it still has not to be overpowerd since you can produce way more t1 units to counter if effectively, but that seems not to be counting to you.

yes in late game cost/build time issnt that big of a deal anymore for a disadvantage for a t2 unit, but the same amount this gets less important for t2 it gets less important for t1, so it doesnt matter if you have 100 metal to produce or 1000, the balance betwen t1 and t2 stays uneffectet from the eco number, you can just produce more of both of them.

and i dont think the turtle strategie should be unpunishable, it never is, turtling needs one very important resource in every rts game : TIME. if you let the turtler enough time to build the nuke without having to fight over the resources needet for it it is YOUR fault, not the game mechanics fault.

while playing the alpha i didnt have a single interresting game against a turtle player. except the one where i made the mistake with the missing air defence i allways won...mostly very quickly due to small maps and not mutch time to turtle.
if you increase your eco to t2 with a low number of t1 eco buildings it takes simply too long, that is the punishment for the turtle player for trying to increase his eco without fighting for it. and if he choses to do this (as bad as the choice ever may be) why preventing it?

Read my posts correctly, you have not.

I have an amazingly terrible idea... (yes I should have stopped here)

T1 mex is as is, T2 is metal fab

You are correct. That is a terrible idea.

this time i totaly agree with nanolathe...that is a terrible idea....see eco of supcom2.

nanolathe>if so you dont mean that, than it all is a missunderstanding. but since we have things we have different views that seems not to be the case, so point it out

I think T2 should instead produce waffles. It would be more productive than it being a metal fab.

T2 mexes will have blackjack and hookers.

Although I don't think Nanolathe will like that at all, since it is pretty much a straight upgrade.

right! and t2 bots will have shiny metal..er you know what

T2 fabricators will solve all remaining NP-complete problems within 8 CPU cycles.

Forged Alliance had it that the T1 Mass and Energy plants were very cheap and quick to build. T1 Mass extractors were the most cost efficient mass extractor in the game and later tiers or "upgrades" were more and more expensive and not as cost effective to build. It was a much better tactic in the early game to claim as many mass points as possible, to build T1 mass extractors on them. Upgrading straight to T2 without expanding was risky since it was expensive early game and would only start to pay off if you can keep them alive for long enough.

Wouldn't the nature of T1 Metal Extractors / T1 Energy Plants being very cheap and cost effective versus the nature of T2 Metal and Energy Plants being prohibitively expensive and not cost effective be in its essence the distinction between the two?

That way you have a few strategic choices :

- Do I expand to claim more metal spots and build T1 Metal Extractors on them, can I risk some forces and expand my defences out?

- Or do I hunker down and build some T2 metal extractors in the core of my base but waste a lot of resources (which could be spent on units for the front lines / defences) on getting the thing operational?

Both options have pros and cons, which is in essence what any decision should have, if there's no risk involved with any decision then by simple logic alone, the decision would have to be made, and in turn that just encourages one play style rather than allowing anything to be viable.

High-investment Mexes are all-around bad. Remember how players would often use the 'Phim ACU to walk at 10km around the enemy base sniping T2 and T3 Mexes, almost instantly crippling the other player's economy and then walking over them with their now superior war machine? That is bad.

The reason it is bad is because it encourages raiding yeah, but it also rather heavy-handedly discourages expansion. This results in players curling up into a ball any time their mexes are raided, especially if the mexes have the crappy survivability of SupCom mexes (the excuse for which was "YOU CAN ALWAYS BUILD SHIELDS!, which is another layer of stupid on the ***-cake). This isn't a huge issue for "pros", but it presents newbies with the choice of playing it safe, sitting in their base and hoping nobody attacks them, or risking it all on expanding and attacking their enemy early on. Most newbies instinctively take the safer route. Which is bad, because it teaches them an illogical strategy without them even knowing it.

So the obvious solution is to have a T1 Extractor with relatively speaking instantaneous repay and low survivability (T1 extractors currently pay for themselves in 7 seconds, it might have been 18), and a T2 Extractor with a higher cost and lower repay time (something like 40 seconds to over a minute). However this results in the previously mentioned issue where new players will just sit in their base doing nothing because the T2 Extractor *technically* has a higher payout.

well going t2 too fast is a typical beginner misstake, but to remove a system witch is at least nice to have if not even a must in later game to support greater production only because a beginner can make misstakes is a strange argument issnt it?