Economy local to planets?

Plain local or local with global link economy means that:
* In the case of plain local, you have a massive disincentive to invade a planet unless you can send a big enough army to hold while you get a base running
* In the case of local w/ global link economy, it's either trivial to set up the link and you may as well just have a global economy or its not and you need to send a huge enough army that can hold while you get a base going.

Shipping mass and energy storage means you don't need to bring a big commander but you can bring enough resources to jumpstart a base.

If economies were local to planets, perhaps you could bring a fixed amount of resources with you when invading another planet.

I still don't know if I like this idea, though. It would be vastly simpler to just have a global economy, but local economies could make for more interesting gameplay.

I think since it's so hard for people to figure out the seemingly simple streaming economy already, they'll end up being global in PA.

People don't understand flow economies because they can't control them.

I don't know how many different ways I can say it. TA / Supcom / FA all tried to take a small scale idea and make it big, and failed because their interfaces just didn't support it. They worked on a small scale with a few engineers, factories and a commander because it was easy for a player to keep track of what was using resources and where. Once the bases get big and construction starts to happen across the map, this level of control is just not enough.

Complex game concepts that are made easy to manage are to be desired, because they open up possibilities in gameplay that can't be replicated.

Completely agree. We'll definitely ned UI that breaks down visually where income is going in and out by planet, then on a planet by area (getting more fine-grained as you zoom in). Basically the energy and mass icons filter in supcom but not sucking

To this day, I can't understand what is difficult about the idea of a streaming economy. I recognize that it seems in most modern games now, however, the lowest common denominator wins.

This is really the one reason I worry for PA. Slew of games in the recent past have outright failed due to dev's being unable to sort out input from players as either good or bad. It remains to be seen if it can be done on this platform, given the nature of kickstarter

If you're not doing local economies, the planets are just part of one big map. There are benefits and penalties to this, but it does mean in larger maps expansion is going to have a very lopsided effect.

I like the idea of starting local, with a resource hub, and the caveat that a commander also acts as a hub. It gives him a unique strategic purpose, and makes you question wether its worth committing him to any given offensive or defensive action.

Noone seems to get what I am saying.

Let me explain my reasoning for the record just once and then I will shut up, I am not trying to ram this down anyones throat, just want people to understand what they are ignoring.

The devs are micro-conscious and have stated they want to keep the high level strat top of the gameplay agenda. So all the extraneous micro and roleplay stuff will be tested and removed where it does not add to strat play. The micro free alternative to a localised economy is a fully globalised economy. Unless there is a micro free way of doing localised economy then its likely we will end up with globalised, that is the implication. Globalised is also simpler and easier for the devs so you better have a good reason and way of doing localised or in reality it is likely to be sidelined.

The point of localising economy at all is to create a sense of location including a frontier which is difficult to overcome and a sense of safe haven which is worth defending, adding to the significance of terrain and travel. But... to enjoy localised economy as part of the gameplay it has to be micro-free.

Literal movement of resource packs might seem cute on a small scale visualisation, even if we beamed energy and only shipped mass, in real world gameplay its still IMHO too much micro for a game like this where judging from the video you are going to be going head to head with another enemy base to keep your own planet base alive. You would just want to send your bot 'up there' and start to build, sending your bot is enough micro and represents all the other logistical micro, which is superfluous.

Building a transmission building is likewise IMHO redundant micro, it is also economy micro not battle strat and is a diversion into the endless introversion of roleplay and storytelling instead of connecting with the reality of other players through gameplay, which is the point of multiplayer. Single player would be different but this game has to do both.

The simplest way to create a sense of location without micro is to accept the player defines their own locations by where they place their buildings and go from there. That is why the existing buildings should be the direct cause of local economic power by adding to building power in the same location (defined either by distance to the build or by presence within a SOI) and the process of building elsewhere should require no extra micro, simply lacks the benefit of a local economy. Then all you need do is balance build costs accordingly.

No... micro...

I read it all.
Since most of it was recap and scene-setting I'll just respond to this bit unless you have any violent objections?

I agree the concept as I understand it has merit, how do you think the 'local economic power' of each planet/moon/asteroid should be presented to user?
If one of my base somewhere is running sub-optimally how am I told about it clearly and promptly?

Thanks for reading ooshr32 and for your question.

IMHO to see optimal / available, I guess at big zoom-out some kind of mouseover halo/dial per location with energy and mass rings on it on a log scale. ie the percent completion of the blue and orange rings indicates the level of energy or mass production in the location. This indicates the local build boost and also the local balance of energy to mass. Where you are building a consumption dial (distinguished in some way eg counterclockwise as opposed to clockwise or with blips instead of a solid line) could show on mouseover of a building object or individual builder to show consumption.

To advance the discussion, there are variations on the theme of no-micro localisation which I thought of while answering that question.

#1 A basic build modifier, would mean that places with low energy or mass supply would either cost more to build stuff or would have a lower input rate to the build. This would still allow a region of big energy, e.g. gas giant power stations, to contribute to the global supply but would mean slower builds at a remote location. But at gas giants with big energy production units requiring much more energy to build would be quicker to make. That's one way.

#2 Alternatively you could charge a cost in energy for the transfer of any resources across a distance, no micro, no increased cost to build or slower build just a cost to transfer resources. In this example energy cost only. eg at planet Theta the build consumes local energy and mass first and then for excess requirements seeks mass and energy transfer from elsewhere. So then if you build on planet Theta and need mass from planet Epsilon you would need extra energy to move the mass. But if the extra energy came from planet Rho to move the mass from Epsilon, the energy to move the mass costs extra energy because of the distance the energy has to travel to planet Epsilon to move the mass to planet Theta. ie an energy input required dependant on distance resources are transferred.

#3 You could extend #2 to include mass as well, with lower efficiency of transfer dependant on distance travelled and invent a scifi reason like dispersal of the matter stream over distance or geometry of microwormholes required to make the transfer or something like that. If you reached a point where all the resource was being used, if it was drawn equally by all build projects you could eith organise it so distant projects would receive proportionally less due to the cost of transfer over the greater distance or you could organise it so they take proportionally more of the budget and receive equal usable amounts per builder. Either way would make it helpful to watch your production surplus when making long range builds.

I had two ideas that might be worthwhile to think about.

In the video game distant world, they have a system where civilian starships are always picking something from a mining base then dropping off where it is need the most. Every resources had a global/local supply level and demand level. The reason why I am mention this system because it actually is nearly micro free.

You could change the civilian starships to a system where you have mass extractor somehow transfer the mass to a mass storage faculty. Then the factories would have teleport pads which drain from this mass storage faculty. The only micro you have to worry about is do I have enough mass for an *insert hundred of units* army. Since the teleport pads do everything on the micro level.

As for localized economy to another localized or lack therefore of economy, I am not certain how to handle that except perhaps you could have a massive transport starship that carry everything you put in it including some amount of energy/mass and armies for a brench head. It could also act as a "temp" mass storage faculty once the army unload so the attacker have some flexible about setting up some localized economy going. This transport starships will not be able to drain on the global economy, more on that below, only the factories.

This kind of solve the whole dilemma with localized economy giving defenders a big advantage. Also at the same time the massive transport starships can be armored and armed to prevent someone from blitzing it. If defenders can blitz a starship then good chance the attacker need to bring more starships anyway.

To stimulate the global level everyone seems to want without the unnecessary micro. Lets do a "excessive transfer level" that automatic transfer excessive mass and energy above this level to a global level. In this way the only micro you have to deal with is making sure that you don't set the automatic transfer level so low that you can't build anything localized. There is no faculty to drain from the global because the factories can teleport it in. This way you can encourage raiding on mass and/or energy storage faculties to "deplete" his/her global storage.

Yes I agree we need to be able to see what is wrong at a quick look. Distant world did not do this very well and often you would have project locked up because your empire was unable to grab a resource quickly enough. I agree with ooshr32 said about seeing clearly what is going wrong.

I would appreciate any kind of feedback because I thought I incorporate what was best about localized and global economy without any kind of intensive micro.

This is pretty much exactly what I am thinking, minus the RP type explanation. Anyone that can manage watching their own resource expenditures on one planet, could easily manage it on a distant planet with surplus supplies. Even if it has a huge distance penalty, it won't be difficult to keep track of what happening. In current TA multiplayer games, any allied players have a moveable metal/energy resources bar that sits in the top right corner. It isn't pinned, but it gives you a view of what your fellow allies resource situation is. The UI could easily do this as a mouse over option. I'm imagining that the UI will contain a section that will pin all the planetary bodies the player has units on. Mousing over any of these could tell you the local production and also the resource penalty enforced for operations on those planets. This could very quickly identify where your drains are coming from (which isn't a bad idea either.)

Building in good resource sinks is a very valid part of balance.

Do you mean something like that? I just drew this, the dark part at the end of the orangey bar tells you the location (planet in case not recognisable) is lacking mass and importing it while the light part at the end of the bluey bar tells you it has energy spare.

The red and green icons represent bases and the red blob at the bottom reminds you which colour you are playing in case you forget lol.

You could do something similar for constructors.

I really dislike any 'less efficient over distance' idea.

The concept itself is sound (make it harder to transfer resources over a larger distance) but implementing the concept with some kind of efficiency penalty has got to be one of the most unintuitive ways to do it. Numbers are much harder for people to understand compared to visuals.

If instead of a penalty you simply had a rail gun firing chunks of mass into space that took x minutes to arrive, you accomplish exactly the same thing - a % of your resources are locked away while they're in transit, and the farther they have to go the longer it takes.


Secondly, I'd like to point out that adding gameplay features is being incorrectly labeled as 'micro'. Micro in this case would be something like having to manage when your rail gun fires. Deciding that you need to build a rail gun is not micro.

Definitively global resources, local doesnt help and it would simply break the need to build bases there... why would you expand if you cant make use of those resources on your already big and more advanced main base? Micro economies dont fly with me.

Shared between bases however could be limited, for example Planet A (main) and Planet B (mining op) used for different purposes, one is simply there to provide the juice, you could limit usage of the total output to 30% on B where resources are not being used for building units, this way A can benefit from a clean stream of resources. I think this is a viable option, requires little to no micro and it makes sense... or global!

Boolybooly, you have sold me on the idea of a localized economy on planets. So far I have been skeptical about the additional complexity it introduces, but you have persuaded me that the additional gameplay benefits are greater than the additional complexity by a fair margin.

However we do still need to keep the system as simple as possible. Having zero natural transport is an easy way to do this. Each planet would need its own income and expense display, and it is no longer really productive to have a single, unified global tally at all.

Secondly, there needs to be a way to transport resources. Possibly several interestingly different ways, with more expensive ones being more convenient and presumably with higher maximum capacity.

The simplest way to do it would be to open up a direct channel between two planes through a wormhole or something. This would be so powerful and convenient that it needs to be quite expensive to do, and should cost a considerable amount of energy to maintain. This same system might be used to teleport units between planets as well as metal.

A more involved, but also discrete and straightforward method is to simply ship storage capacity. Metal and energy storage should be available- a spacecraft with a considerable amount of storage could be used to carry seed resources to start a base on the surface. Frequent shipments would require space superiority to be safe, and need time to travel.

I would be against any kind of inefficient continuous transfer. It is tempting to have microwave beams or some such that allows energy to be transferred inefficiently. Allowing energy transfer at all, in fact, has issues. Energy could be forced to be localized to planets, with no way to transfer it. However, you could construct a mobile fusion or powerplant aboard a spacecraft, and use that to power a beachhead on another planet if you wished.

Thanks for saying so ledarsi, I can see both sides of most arguments, I am just happy if the no-micro-local idea is registering as part of the discussion, as I dont think the discussion would be complete without it.

I am not personally attached to the idea of resource transmission. I can see the arguments for globalised resources and for shipping discrete packets and can also see the amusement of a resource cannon; eg in Stars! you could transport minerals in ships and even fling packets of minerals between planets with equipped space stations, use them as weapons against enemies and even pluck enemy packets out of mid space and into your coffers with a fast enough ship, it was a lot of fun but resource management was a major factor in the game and it was all about micro and it was turn based 4X so I am not sure how that kind of thing would work in a fast paced RTS. My guess is most of it would not be in keeping with the fluid style of play. I can recommend Stars! though for that kind of thing, it is an old game and very very very basic graphically but has great gameplay.

Just to mention that in multiplayer team games there will effectively be local economies, as each player will end up with a particular territory which may be a planet or part of a planet depending on the sizes of the solar system and the teams.

The scale of PA is well suited to team matches, I'm sure 1v1s will also be possible, but I doubt they'll be as popular.

Well you could argue that keeping resource production seperate is going to have to work for multiple players generally including AI which means it might be easier to make localisation work for each player if each SOI is treated like a sub player, is that what you mean?

Because IMHO its not the same kind of calculation. There must be a player identity property in the multiplayer case for every object owned by a player which is how the resource sources would be segregated/summed.

With transfer cost localisation you are going to have to add distance calculations for every resource source contributing to a given resource sink, distance multiplying the resources consumed for a given resource draw.

If it was a different method like moving 'physical' packets of ore you could either decide which location a resource source belonged to by sphere of influence and if a build is in the same SOI it gets the benefit of all sources in the same SOI or you could work it out by distance alone and at a certain distance a source would stop contributing to a build. Moving a packet to a build would make its content available to the build the moment it got close enough.

These both rely on distance or location calculations on top of player identity.

I agree that this adds a great deal of depth to the economy, and creates a great deal of potential for optimization and management skill. However this just seems far, far too complex for its gains. Every source of resources having multiple efficiency modifiers depending on distance from multiple sources which might consume them is prohibitively complex, and doesn't add enough gameplay depth to justify being that complicated.

However, I am sold on the idea of having each planet have its own resource pool, rather than having a unified resource pool for all planets. This adds only a little bit of complexity- different income and expense values for each planet- and adds massively to the gameplay depth.

Players might be strong on one planet, and simultaneously weak on another, in a way that cannot be easily overcome simply by shipping an army of engineers to the other planet and spending some of your huge economy from the other planet. This creates roles for logistical assets, where resources are spent in order to adjust your resource distribution between planets. It also provides a compelling justification for space warfare. Controlling space allows you to ship resources (and units) between worlds. Also, this creates a temporal barrier between planets. Time is required for movements and operations between planets, expanding the effective size of the map without actually increasing its dimensions (if we consider "map" to be all the planets).

Overall, having each planet have a global economy seems to still be quite simple, and adds gameplay depth. Perhaps more importantly, it also scales with an arbitrary number of planets, whereas a single global economy might produce unusual behavior as the number of planets becomes very large. However, having an extremely complicated localized economy involving individual resource sources, stockpiles, and sinks that get increasingly inefficient with distance, is a vastly overcomplex system that does not add more than it weighs.

I'd just like to point out there's a difference between good, strategic control, and bad annoying micro.

Having to command individual units to use little abilities? Micro.

Having to consider the strategic implications of economy and some buildings? Not micro.

Having to tell ships to cart mass/energy between planets to keep your global economy going? Likely bad, annoying micro.