Economy ideas.

well that's how it usually works for artillery and essentially what is planned for aircraft. do you not like that?

Ok, I want you to listen to what Jon is saying here. Not the exact context... but the general idea behind his words.
Uber Livestream: March 8th, 2013

As a general summary: If it's good for gameplay, it's in. We'll rationalise within the lore later.

Gameplay is King.

Trying to develop scifi lore with a high school background is a dangerous thing.

Total Annihilation already provides a good background for the resource known as metal. Much of a robot is made with common materials, such as silicon and carbon and all that junk you can find anywhere in the galaxy. However, some materials are not so easy to find. They could be radioactive components for generators, doping agents that harden armor or refine electronics, or exotic materials of branches of science unknown. It doesn't really matter what they are or how they work. They are the material you are ALWAYS short of, they're critical to the manufacturing of the best robots, and they are deep down the periodic table. So everything that fits that description is all lumped up as metal.

Transforming energy into metal is not as insanely difficult as E=MC^2. You'd be better off making something useful like antimatter or planet killing death rays for all that effort. All you really need is a particle accelerator, 2 (or more) lighter elements, and a whole lotta spare energy. Smash them together, and you got some more of that critical rare element.

Whether or not the metal maker succeeds as a game option is another matter entirely.

Not really, because there is a "fi" after "sci". If it was only "sci" lore then developing it with hi-school diploma would be maybe only slightly dangerous because in physics everything is possible even you waking up on Mars tomorrow.

Not really, because there is a "fi" after "sci". If it was only "sci" lore then developing it with hi-school diploma would be maybe only slightly dangerous because in physics everything is possible even you waking up on Mars tomorrow.

Soft scifi is terrible. It's just magic that uses the prefixes nano and quantum too often.

Never resort to Technobabble. Either let technology's awesomeness speak for itself ala Star Wars, or go full on Dragon's Egg

Just stay the hell away from Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Enterprise.

ah it's space spring, my space bees are collecting space pollen from space flowers to create space honey

Fixed that for you. ;D

I have to say, parts of this thread are hurting my science gland. Not so much because of outright wrongness, but due to large oversimplifications. Firstly, one mistake that I cannot allow past:

A physician is a medical practitioner. A physicist is a scientist who studies physics. I hate to be a pedant, but as someone has a job in the latter field, i get somewhat irritated by being confused with the former.

Secondly, with regards to energy-mass equivalence in TA style games: it is perfectly physically possible to create any element from energy. I would dread to think of the scarcity issues where producing metal from energy is even considered as a viable alternative to digging it out of the ground. I would also be somewhat surprised to find that one could produce meaningful quantities of metal ex-nihilo using what appear to be only a few tens of square meters of solar panels. Even if they are some sort of ultra-efficient solar panel, powered by technobabble.

However, this doesn't really matter that much. The fundamental question is "does adding mechanic X make the game more interesting and fun to play?". Are realistic mechanics necessary to satisfy this question? There are three reasons that spring to mind, as to where ignoring realism may have a bad effect on how a game plays:

1.Consistency and suspension of dis-belief
The human mind is a funny thing when it comes to how we view reality in media. People will quite happily enjoy a high-fantasy film with magic and elves, but be up in arms when they see an F-16 in a movie fire the wrong type of missile. The difference is consistency. If there is an inconsistency in how the rules of a piece of fiction operate, people will tend to reject it as poorly thought out, and will not accept it as a plausible narrative. For example, if your Sci-Fi space opera features easy teleportation, there needs to be a reason why most space battles aren't ended by someone teleporting a bomb onto the enemy starship's bridge. Reality is a useful tool here because reality is, to most current observations, fairly consistent. If you stick to reality, chances are that you won't unintentionally run afoul of an unintended consequence of your super-tech, and trigger your audiences' dis-belief response. This doesn't mean you HAVE to stick to reality. It is possible to be perfectly self consistent whilst ignoring a lot of reality's more unfortunate quirks. But if not, reality does present a useful guideline.

2. Reality is Familiar
Games have a lot of mechanics that might be unfamiliar to people. Try as a might, I cannot seem to make people move to my command by moving my hand in front of them, making a clicking motion, and then doing the same on where I want them to go. All these unfamiliar mechanics need to be taught to people if they are to get the most out of the game. If someone isn't familiar with a mechanic, then teaching them might entail taking time to write a tutorial, which would be better spent developing new features. However, if you borrow features from reality (e.g. shells following parabolic arcs or basic unit moment over terrain and around obstacles), then people tend to be already familiar with them. Of course, if a key feature is fundamentally important to how the game plays, then it's probably better to teach people how to use it. Otherwise, reality can be a useful teaching aid.

3. Sometimes, Reality can be interesting
There have been 101 threads about making aircraft carriers relevant to supporting aircraft at range, like in real life. Why? Because it's an interesting way of coupling ground and air combat in such a way that a synergy of the two is better than one overruling the other. Occasionally reality does offer interesting ideas. The point here, is to use reality as an inspiration for interesting mechanics. Not as a holy text.

I've spent a long time now detailing what reality can offer to games, despite the fact i started by saying that it isn't necessary. The reason why is because it is a lot easier to list the handful of reasons where adherence to reality helps, than the trillions of examples where it hinders.

As long as PA's Sci-Fi fluff doesn't run afoul of these three reasons, then there's no problem with it. Thus, I have no serious problems with Metal-Makers based on these grounds. How they alter game mechanics and territory control is a different matter.

How? I am not saying it is not possible, but asking how it is possible?

I sign under what you wrote. That's why I want some sort of E=mc^2. "Some sort" means game c doesn't have to = our world c. It can be smaller than our world c but still sufficiently large (like 300km/s instead 300 000km/s (if planets are 1000 times smaller then c can be 1000 times smaller too)), or masses of objects could smaller or larger than their real equivalents etc. But it should be some kind of justified port of our world E=mc^2 to the game so it seems to be the same equation in game world.

Dude!!! You are at least 100% right about everything you wrote here and above. You said it all for me.

I can't agree with this enough.

I've mentioned it on the forum before.