Economy Balancing: The exponential curve

So, what do I mean by the exponential curve? Go to pastats.com and load up the stats for almost any game and checkout the metal/energy income gross tab. That's what I'd like to discuss in this thread.

Should it exist at all? I feel like the game escalates extremely quickly and the main thing that contributes to this is the exponential curve. If left alone on a single decent-sized planet, you can go from a single commander to enough units to significantly tax the server, in about 25-30 minutes. I know the game is all about scale, but this seems a bit extreme.

Another major drawback of the exponential curve is that it quickly creates economy gaps between players of different skill levels. If you fall just a little bit behind at the start, that loss in resources gets magnified as the game goes on because you are missing out on potential future income. This means a slight difference in skill causes a significant difference in economy performance in the late game, which means it gets extremely difficult for the deficient player to catch up the further the match goes on.

However, the curve is not without its benefits. Matches end more quickly instead of turning into drawn out slug fests, and players gain access to the more powerful and "fun" weapons faster. Although it could be argued whether or not this is actually a benefit. I usually prefer long drawn out slug fests, but I know most people don't want matches to take forever.

What do you think? Is the exponential curve for resource gains a problem? If so, what is the solution? If not, why do you feel that way?

If you couldn't tell, I feel like it is a slight problem, for the reasons listed above. The only solution I can come up with currently is to enforce some kind of diminishing returns on resource income so that the curve levels off some instead of continually climbing, but this feels like a poor solution, since it is an arbitrary mechanic and not obvious at first glance. Can anyone come up with a better solution?

I don't see a problem here, logically it makes sense. The larger the economy you have the faster you can grow this economy resulting in an exponential growth. And the problem with differentiating skill levels isn't much of a problem at all- it typically goes in most rts that the player with the higher skill set wins the match.

Edit: "...enforce some kind of diminishing returns on resource income so that the curve levels off some instead of continually climbing" seems a bit unnecessary. There is only so many resources on a map, once all of them have been capitalized on there's no where else to really expand. That's a natural enforcement for resources to "level off".

The OP will be happy to know that today Uber were playtesting changes to the T2 eco designed to slow down T2 ramp up.

http://www.twitch.tv/therealsorian/b/514797603

http://www.twitch.tv/metabolical/b/514816671

Remove engineers. If the only builder is the commander, then you'll never get that growth curve. Instead, all the resources will be spent building units.

How would multi-planet games work?

Hey, I never said it was a good idea. ;P

i'd say in a streaming economy like this the exponential curve is always appearing, you cannot eliminate it without changing the whole eco system. it is stopped only when you hit the max of the limiting resource (here metal).

but in general i do see your point since i think the game plays way too fast now. you get to t2 rly rly fast, and you can start to spam the "t3" nuke before the game even lasts 20 minutes, or use the most powerful action (throwing around moons on planets) before 40 minutes have passed. that massively leads to normal units (especially the t1 ground units) to be nearly useless since the time where you can efficiently use them gets reduced to a few minutes.

i dunno exactly how to solve this problem without breaking some of the essential mechanic rules of the game (like making nukes not assistable for example), or just making the jump to t2 WAY MORE resource-intensive (and therefore time-intensive) than it is now.

the problem with the different skills...well i dont think it can be eliminatet. i still hope they reduce the amount of micro you have to do when controlling the units in fight (to make it easier/possible to fight on multiple planets), but i dunno where you can make a diff in base building. the awesome area commands alrdy made things mutch easier.

Make T2 eco closer to T1 and that curve won't be so drastic and create less problems in game play.

The more linear the economy is the more you shift gameplay away from combat and towards base building.

Make commander clones buildable for 10k metal with no comm explosion or uber cannon. That actually sounds like a fun game mode.

Could you expand upon this more? I'm not sure I follow...

Currently the economy ramps up very quickly between T1 and T2, which means the focus is on base building to get to the powerful T2 economy as fast as possible. If T2 economy wasn't a massive jump, there wouldn't be a rush to get it, hence there would be more of a focus on combat in the early game and less focus on rushing for the stronger economy buildings.

Also, if what you say is true, is it necessarily a bad thing? The planets we are playing on are massive and there is a lot of buildable area especially when you begin to throw extra planets into the mix. Shouldn't players be encouraged to use that space for base building?

The more exponential it is, though, the higher the focus on economic efficiency instead of combat efficiency. I was of the impression that PA promoted focus on epic battles, not on sprawling industrial landscapes.

A linear economy would mean taking that much longer and that much more effort put in to get a significant enough economy to be confident at having enough units to beat an opponent. You can argue it either way.

Yes, but an exponential economy means it is that much easier to simply "out-economy" your opponent rather than to "outwit" them. It should be difficult to ever amass enough units that you are confident that you have enough to outright beat your opponent. This means the match is much closer in terms of army/economy sizes between the opponents, which lends itself to a more interesting match, don't you agree? It's not that interesting if every match is one player steamrolling over the other with a massive economy.

Falling behind in exponential growth does not limit your economic growth later in the game.
If you sit idle 1 minute at the start of the game you will only be 1 minute behind in economy. The time difference between you and your opponent will not grow as your economies expand.
If your economy is 10% behind your opponent, your economy will still only be 10% behind 20 minutes later if both players exponential growth continues unhindered.
It is "only" when the players interact that the slippery slope starts.
Like your enemy have a minute lead and he can drop Vanguards at your base 1 minute before you can drop on his base.
Or if your opponent have a 10% bigger army than you and he can kill your army while the surviving units continue to push on to take even more of your territory so that when your armies clash again he will have an even greater lead.
So rather than saying that we should combat exponential growth we should say that we strive to decrease the slippery slope. A good read on that: http://www.sirlin.net/articles/slippery-slope-and-perpetual-comeback.html

Of course, diminishing returns on income growth like the overdrive system in Zero-K or mex upgrades in SupCom:FA helps combat the slippery slope somewhat. Like if you are 10 % behind in economy now, with diminishing returns on economy, that gap will decrease as time goes by. Of course that doesn't prevent that a bigger economy can create a bigger army which is another source of slippery slope mechanics.
Although there are ways to make prevent slippery slope in army advantages as well.
If you look at Peregrines, they deal damage so fast that 1 Peregrine is likely to kill more than 1 enemy Peregrine even when you attack a bunch of enemy Peregrines.
Even if you have a smaller number of Peregrines than the enemy, it is likely that if both groups, if engaged head-on, will result in the destruction of both groups.
This could be considered an anti-slippery slope mechanic(although I really dislike the current Peregrine balance).

The question about making economy versus making an army are more about how fast the economy grows.
Spending resources on army units doesn't yield any return on economy. However creating Fabbers increases your build rate/potential metal output which is an important part of your economy along with mexes and energy plants.
A tank could be seen as a tool to deny the enemy from territory and to destroy enemy infrastructure.
Fabbers are mainly for taking advantage of territory and creating infrastructure however they can also consolidate territory and even deny enemy territory by creating turrets.
When an army can't contest or deny the enemy territory before the expenditure of the fabbers and mexes have paid off, the balance shifts in favour of the fabbers. If economic growth were slower, the balance would shift in favour of armies as an army would have more time to deny the enemy of territory and limit the enemies economic growth, . However since that advanced mexes are so good, the inwards economic expansion coupled with that t2 mobile units in general are better than t1 units, an early t1 land army denying the enemy of territory doesn't really prevent the enemies inward economic expansion with advanced mexes and energy plants and the initial t1 army gets obsoleted with no economic return and little effect on the enemy economy.

You can only "out-economy" your opponent if you are better at economic management than your opponent which means that you probably are a better player than your opponent.

I agree that the learning curve is pretty steep with the current balance as the economic management is a big hurdle before you can get compete against a player that knows how to handle their economy. Decreasing this learning curve to give new players more effective low level strategies at t1 could be a good thing IMO.
However in high level games when both players know how to tech to t2 it doesn't just come down who is best at economy but rather how they transition into t2 with little or no raiding, about what t2 combo they go for, how they push out on the map, dominate the map, attack from unexpected angles, air control versus ground control, and if they are going for piercing attacks, central map-control or spread out map-control.

10% with an exponential economy is much higher than 10% with a linear economy. I looked at a few different games on PA stats, and the difference in metal produced between the 19 minute and 20 minute mark equates to the cost of a nuke at least, sometimes multiple ones. A nuke usually won't win you the game, but they are usually game-changers. This means that a one minute difference in economy can be a game changer.

I don't find exponential growth much of a problem because there is a upper limit to which it will inevitably sit.

The max amount of metal deposits you can obtain.

At which point you are not growing any more, and must play off of what you have.


However T2 economy buildings throw this off, as they take what would have been the upper limit and then add a building that triples each deposit you have, with no real diminishing value.

Turning it into a exponential race to get to the T2 eco explosion that sees players have unlimited economy's that is practically hopeless to catch with macro factorys, and sometimes even engineers.

Leaving players with economy's that they really can't even wield properly without spending it all on single big projects like nukes.


It's exponential, because that's it's nature (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128.....), but not at a rate that players cannot hope to keep up with in a active game.

Players need that stick, that need for more resources to keep them fighting, otherwise it does get kinda boring when no one is bothering to fight till late-game.

Yes, of course.
Actually with a linear economy the difference decrease as time goes by. A 10% lead in total economic production will slowly decrease as the game goes on which is similar to diminishing returns.

Of course 1 minute can be a game changer. That is why I brought up a situation where both players are rushing Vanguards and this could even apply in a game with a linear economy as well.

The abundance of mass spots already creates manageable exponential growth with T1 extractors alone.
I thus think that the main problem with the economy is the absurd efficiency of T2 extractors which allows continued exponential growth decoupled from land gain.

edit: Retired Captain Capslock, introduced minimum reading comprehension requirement.