I think it's already been established that PA will have a "flow" system, in that all production will be in units per second (ie +100 mass and +1000 energy per second) and that consumption will follow suit, so this is to talk about the other details. Specifically, what all the ratios for costs and performance will be. Economics heavily influences balance, pacing, and over all fun, so it's very important. First subject is initial resource production, as in, when you're using only the resource production methods immediately available to you at the start of the game. Take the example of Supreme Commander, Forged alliance. Tech 1 Power generators can be built anywhere and provide their own energy cost in production in 37.5 seconds. Tech 1 mass extractors can only be built on designated "mass deposits" but pay for their own mass cost in 18 seconds. The result of this: Map control was extremely important. With such a rapid return on investment in the limiting resource (mass) you couldn't afford to not build on any mass deposit that was available. Contrast FA to Supcom 2, where mass extractors paid for their own mass cost in 167 seconds. The result of this: Map control was much less important. I recommend that initial resource production follows something between supcom 2 and FA, and that resource producers pay for themselves in around 60-100 seconds. Second subject is upgrades/tech advancement: How resource production can improve, either through unlocking more efficient production methods, or through upgrading initial production methods. In FA, Tech 1 energy producers cost about 4 mass per 1 energy/sec production. Tech 2 cost about half that, and tech 3 cost about a quarter. However, because higher tech units also provide greater combat efficiency per cost, what happened when you turtled was this: You produce more resources more cheaply and more efficiently transfer that into more combat power. The result? FA strongly, strongly favors turtling based upon economics alone, because even small advantages tend to increase very rapidly (called "snowballing") In supcom 2, research worked very similarly: You gained research via killing things, research allowed you to make your units better at killing things, snow-balling into an enormous lead in a short time. I recommend that economic advantages provided by tech improvements be small, and/or unrelated to economic function. IE, a low-tech power generators produces 1 energy/sec per 100 energy cost, and a high-tech power generator produces 1 energy/sec per 90 energy spent, but also has higher health, and a built in radar/point defense/anti-air gun to make it harder to kill, or improves the build rate of nearby factories, etc.
I always found that with supcom 2 the early research from attacking was really useful to counter turtles before they got into full base invincibility mode. Other than that I like your thinking, map control should be really important.
While I agree with you, the only reason combat power snowballed in FA is because of mass fabs. So basically, in addition to your ideas, I wanna say "no mass fabs". Or at least have restrictions on them (in the sense that mexes are "restricted").
mex should just produce as much mass as in FA. Fighting for mapcontrol is what is the best about the whole game. Cheap mex are the key to this. Whats bad about fighting all over the map? Nothing!
I didn't play SupCom 1 or 2 enough to judge, but I thought that Total Annihilation (with the expansions) was pretty well balanced enough for economics. I would support something like that.
You're thinking of the original supcom. In FA, mass-fabs are rarely used because they produce mass much less effectively than mex. I think map control should be important, but it shouldn't be everything. In FA, it's pretty much everything. A middle-ground between FA and supcom 2 should be pursued.
In my opinion, the problem wasn't necessarily that they paid themselves back quickly, but that also they had virtually no initial cost- a T1 mex was only half a tank and built in no time, even by a T1 engineer. If PA uses something which is more expensive, but gives a higher return, you'll lose a lot more if you get interrupted, and sinking that mass during the build time is much more of a penalty in combat forces- even if the return time is relatively low once it's constructed. In my opinion, something like 20-40 seconds payback once operational, a relatively long build time (40-60 seconds), a relatively large initial cost, and relatively fewer mass spots. This provides a bigger penalty for losing one, too, because even if you have an engineer on site when it goes down, you have to wait a non-trivial time before it's back up and running. I also believe that teching a spot should not provide a serious economic boost. Ideally, I'd say that they should grant things like faster build time in a medium radius, or additional protection. I'm a big fan of the self-defending mexes/self-repairing pgens UEF had in SupCom2. I am, however, a big advocate of large starting resources. Possibly even variable per-map. The player should have sufficient funds to grab his "initial" resources and begin constructing his choice of combat/tech/risky extra resources immediately. Having to delay the beginning of combat because the initial are too low is no fun. This would also imply that the Commander can whip up a factory of his choice in not too much time.
a long buildtime for mex would slow down the early game quite alot. huge starting resources could make up for that, thats right. Still I dont want "build a mex in PA" to be equal to "upgrade a mex to t2 in FA". SupCom2 was terrible because of it, I played around with a mod that made mex cheaper in supcom2 and the game felt way better immediately.
Definitely agree with this part. Limited starting resources works with some games, but not in a game like this, with battles eventually raging across multiple worlds.
I'd like starting resources to be configurable, ala Total Annihilation. The defaults were low enough that you had to spend some time building up before you could attack, but you could swap that for even lower resources (I think), or much much higher ones.
