Economics needs more complexity

I was going to write some more but I actually forgot what my leverage was. Nanolathe can probably figure it out. Nannie?

That depends on what you call fast.

You need sufficient energy and metal to cover T2 building production and the resources that's needed for T2 engineers to build T2 buildings. It is highly effective in a situation where the enemy can't or chooses not to attack you.

Image this, when interplanetary combat is out, and both players spawn on different planets, there is no immediate danger so going for a quick T2 would actually be smarter as long as T2 remains a straight upgrade from T1.

This poses an issue, in the current model why would you even use T1 in interplanetary warfare? All the more reason for T2 to be something of a sidegrade instead of an upgrade.

I am all for higher hp = lower mass/energy income, lower hp = higher mass/energy income. Atleast this would make multipronged attacks an interesting strategy as you need less units for low hp buildings. So it becomes a choice what percentage of your army should head in each direction.

Thank you ghostflux! That was what I was going to write but more eloquent and straightforward. And with less parentheses.

I think T2 mexes which yield greater income can be implemented well and I prefer this to a system which lacks any way to increase income independently of territory.

Here is a rough outline of my T2 mex:

• About 1.5x the income of a T1 mex.
• At best pays for itself in 5 minutes (could be longer).
• Health similar or less than T1 mex

The purpose of this mex is to encourage penetrative raiding. It should create a second expansion and raiding game which plays out long through the midgame.

T1 mexes are cheap and pay for themselves quickly so there is little point in defending T1 mexes which are out in no-mans-land or some similarly awkward place to defend. There is no point in keeping them alive if an army rolls through. The army will have to be killed but that can be done with your own concentrated army, not a widely spread defence force. T1 mexes are easy to rebuilt with a swarm of constructors.

The much longer payoff time of T2 mexes should create a second wave of expansion in which the player upgrades mexes only as it becomes safe enough to do so. Upgrading should not yield a massive advantage but in a game such as this any advantage is useful. They are an incentive to secure territory against heavy raiding as harvesting territory with T2 mexes should be quite a large investment. This in turn encourages raiding. Games with T1 mexes only will reach a point where it is not worthwhile to penetrate the front and raid the mexes behind because they are so easy to rebuild.

Energy drain is an important parameter for T2 mex balance. It seems to be an accepted fact that high cost or tech things should drain more energy and this removes an important balance parameter. Maybe the best implementation would be a drain-free T2 mex, it would be more raidable this way. The way I see it a unit's energy drain is simply another cost which can be translated to metal. If a T2 mex costs 800m and drains 1000e and the best powerplant efficiency is 2e/m then it costs 500 metal-worth of power plants to run the mex. Each new T2 mex will cost 1300m but 500 of that metal is safely tucked away within the player's base. Saying that there is a "best powerplant efficiency" is an oversimplification of this situation. The best ratio of e/m which can be constructed tends to increase during a game (due to maybe T2 power plants or gas giants) so energy drain causes a unit to become cheaper as the game progresses.

So, in a no rush scenario players ignore the more basic elements like early base defense and early units to go straight to the top.

And that's a new issue because of t2 mexes... how?

If you want to play no-rush you always get this. That's why the general consensus among the more competitive players is that no-rush matches are utterly boring. (Note: General just means general, it doesn't mean absolutely everybody. )


And for the argument that their increased ROI is noob-unfriendly... well, noobs can and will still rush for t2 ruining their economy with it, they still won't expand and still will make all the noobish mistakes that makes them noobs until they learn to do otherwise. Arguing on that behalf makes any high-investment unit/building a noobtrap.

The point isn't so much to go straight to the top, also it's not a new issue, many games have had this. Take for example Supreme commander, if you had T3 it becomes entirely pointless to build T1. The point being that advancing in tiers should not invalidate the previous tiers in any way.

Even if the player is not a noob, but one who does expand and spams out catapults nukes and lobbers instead of attacking creates a type of gameplay that completely invalidates land assaults. It is incredibly stale and boring.

I imagine catapults as being a complimentary weapon used to stop small raids of only a few units that pressure weak parts of your base. As a defender, it forces the enemy to send a decent force in to even damage your buildings and it gives you more time to react to attacks effectively making it easier to manage. But this only goes if catapults are used sparingly. As a result turtling becomes less effective, while actually managing units becomes more effective.

smallcpu answerd for me - thx^^

thats exactly like i see catapults. they are 1-hit-per-shot units who mostly can take out small tactical groups who want to raid your eco. only other reason to have them is by building them offensively near your enemys base if he is a turtle to take out some of his defence, but that only works if he has weaknesses in his own catapult/lobber-def.



also what about the sulution in the new patch 51853 now? it consumes more resources and therefore more time to get to t2, while letting the bonus from t2 eco untouched. so it may be more problematic for our beloved noobs, since a too early rush to t2 in combination with turtling hurts even more, but in any other case it will make t1 longer the standart eco buildings, and gives the chance to get more eco in late game - i'm fine with that so far, could even be more expansive to get to t2.

It reduces the problem, but it does not completely mitigate it. I just had to put double the amount of engineers on the task and it would still complete reasonably fast. It is still a good change though since it increases the amount of metal needed to sustain so many engineers. However, it wasn't really hard to compensate for this by putting a bit more priority on getting those T2 metal extractors out.

But you're right, this change will crush noobs even more.

All I will say is that I hope that T2 extractors will give value to holding ground but without taking away the point of taking ground.

i think you can never erase this problem completetly except for having only t1 eco buildings, witch would be worse for lategame. sure you can bypass by doubling the amout of engineers to complete it, but you need more t1 eco for it, witch is then missing for building units or defence buildings. i have to play more games to see how it fits, but for example doubling the value of mass needed another time, and the problem should be nearly vanished.

This doesn't actually result in good gameplay though. Currently with double the build time, it becomes very hard to even progress to T2 if you're constantly being attacked. You can't just fix this issue by making things more expensive. Low costs make it too easy to produce, and high costs are often not worth it to produce it at all.
That's why the penalty can't be cost, it should be something else.

well it may make it not worth building on rather small single planet maps we have at this stage. most games are finished in 30-40 minutes now... but on larger maps with battles taking 2 hours and more it is completely different

Playing 1v1, or 2v2 on the same planet, should not restrict you from going to T2. If you can't build T2 fast enough, then it's T2 that gets invalidated.

as of it is like now, you can get a game to nuke shotouts and end in 25-30 minutes. witch is still very fast. so making t2 even more expensive is no problem without removing it from small encounters.

I'm back from my weekend getaway. First impressions on my return is that I am kinda disappointed with Uber's 'change' to T2. Alpha is alpha, yes. But this is so obviously a band-aid fix. It's obvious they know T2 is a broken mess and their chosen way to change T2 play... is to make it harder to get there?

The underlying problem with upgraded Metal Economy buildings remains. They're still just changing the quantities of play, not the quality of it.

Give me a little bit to catch up on the past three days of comments and I'll come back with something more substantial.

t2 has to increase the quantity, else t2 units had to be producable like t1 units, since you dont have an increase in resource gaining. and nukes, lobbers, catapults for example, witch all increase the quality not only the quantity have to be more expansive, so we also need the increase in production quantity. for me its as simple as that o.o

You're not understanding the terms I'm using.

"Quantity" does not refer to the absolute number of units themselves, but the numbers that make up a units attribute profile.

"Quality" does not refer to a unit's capability or power compared to another unit, but rather the interesting ways in which changing the numbers of a unit's attribute profile (the Quantities) can change the way in which a unit is used and what areas it is specialised in.

When I use the words "Quantity" and "Quality" I am not using them as synonyms for unit Numbers and Power. I'm using them as indications of Raw Power being offset by Versatility.

A Bots Health or Hit Points is a quantity as is Speed and Turn Rate.
Overall durability in a fight composed of many units because of the interaction between HP, maneuverability and speed is a quality.

A Tanks DPS (damage per second) is a quantity.
Whether the unit has to reload after each shot, does AOE damage or fires in an arc is a quality.

A Metal Extractors Metal Extraction Per Second is a quantity.
The difference between a T1 and T2 Metal Extractor is one of simply increasing ALL of the units quantities. It does not change the unit's quality.

The T2 Mex is a direct upgrade. That is bad for a strategy game that should be enabling strategic choice, rather than mandated build orders.

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There would be NO problem with building T2 units as fast (or nearly as fast) as T1 units...
if they were balanced as specialised units, rather than Direct Power Upgrades.

They are not balanced as specialised units (yet). They are Direct Power Upgrades.
Direct Power Upgrades do not promote strategic thought or choice.
They promote build orders and logistic calculations.

I argue that Strategic thought and choice are more engaging in a Strategy Game than logistic calculations.

I'm new here but I have to agree with the original poster and some comments spoken earlier, after finally finding the time to play the Alpha today... I honestly got a bit disappointed with how the economy panned out for me, it was like playing a straight hash of SupCom. Which isn't a necessarily bad thing, but I liked PA when I saw it in kickstarter not because it was like a cooler rehash of a good game but because of the possibilities.

I mean, I get it. We're in Alpha, it's not gonna be super complex. But just 'cause the planet-skipping dynamic still isn't in, I shouldn't feel the need to replay the good ol' SupCom strategy of epic spam of resource collectors to substantiate my epic spam of fabricators in order to speed up my spamming of nukes, defenses and units to undo their defenses so my nukes hit better and harder. Because yes, I love nukes... Sue me. It'd be nice to see a bit more intricacy to how you work economically, instead of just increasing incomes across the board and slowing down productions.

Another thing I'm afraid will happen is that different planets will just be different places to rehash the exact same strategies. For example, if I'm gonna play a lava planet, I don't expect to just spam production and annihilate like I'd do on an earth-type. I want it to be somewhat unique in how it works, but that remains to be seen.

All I can hope is for a bit of complexity in terms of how each planet folds out economically in the long and short term.

PS. Sorry if I'm all over the place, lots of pages behind on this thread

They should even take out some of the complexity. Removing 90% of the metal spots n making them more worthwhile.
It would be a good idea, even though it fights their idea of "NO UPGRADES", to be able to upgrade t1 metal extractors and t1 / t2 to different kinds of economy producer. Like making a t2 mex double their income by using 2000 energy all the time.

Strategic choices for the economy are just not ... there. It is not even like C & C where you have at least the choice when and where to expand, but in PA you have to spamm metal extractors and energy plants all day.
Theres no strategy in this.

If they do as i suggested at the beginning of my post, at least the economy will be a smaller factor in the game, making battles focused on the few metal spots which are there, and making it easier to control a whole planet and moving on to the next one.

btw: 90% of my games i win with t1 energy plants and t1 metal extractors only. I just dont have the time destroying my metal extractor and replacing em with t2 when i have like 30 fabs all over the planet spamming t1 extractor.

This game needs a lot more economic structures. Plus does taking away upgrades on the main guy remove the soul as well. I'm most upset about the removal of shields, linkage and upgrades on the main guy.