Economy System

First of all, i'm aware the game is in alpha state, and unbalanced. So most of the following issues are temporary. But i would like to share my experience about it.

I played few games and here is my feedback on the economy.

unbalanced economy
THe most important issue at the moment is that we don't have to fight for metal. This ressource is available everywhere on the map. The production capacity are ridiculously high.
I remember in TA or Spring, if your metal bar was full, that meant you were doing it bad, normaly the bar should be empty. A full bar means wasting ressources. Here in PA (for the moment) if your metal bar is empty that means you are not building metal extractor which is bad. First contradiction.

useless reclaim
That situation make the reclaim completely useless. It's a pity, because reclaiming was a very interesting point in the game previously mentionned. At the beginning of a game the first player able to reclaim the wreckages after the first confrontations, could take a serious advantage, like going T2 before the opponent. This fact gave a bigger importance to the confrontation localization, the management of constructor in the front line, the troops movement etc...

Build power
The build power is the capacity to spend ressources, which an important feature. So important that we can consider the build power itself as a ressource.

nano turret
In spring the main tool to have build power was the Nano Turrets, an immobile buildings which can assist/repair all the contruction around him. It was a cheap and very weak building, the explosion of one of them was damaginig enough to destroy the surrounding Nano Turrets, so a player could lose a big ammount of build power quickly (it was annoying but fair). From my point of view it was a very good idea. What about PA ? Is it plan to integrate Nano Turrets ?

multiple factory
The situtation at the moment, is so strange that players prefer to construct multiple factory instead of assisting one of them. I think that T2 (and T3) factories should be quiet expensive, because they are the technologic progress. Going T2 should be an investment important enough to be taken into consideration. It doesn't make sense to be able to build 12 T2 factories...


End less economy
To finish the issue of endless economy, the question of the limitation. In TA (or spring), energy was an endless ressource and thanks to the converters Metal was also an endless ressources. Some players was able to focus on economy during the 90% of the game, and to build T3 K-bot like peewee (damn too quick). What about PA ? Do the developpers think about this issue ? especially if there is 48 players on a server, that mean 24vs24. It seems possible that in a 24 players team few of them focus on economy during the whole game, and destroy everything in few minutes with a mass of huge units. It could be fun to see it once but there is a risk to have systematic event which kill the game.


I know most of my point are speaking about temporary issues because the economy doesn't seems to be balanced, it is a placeholder which enable the people to play. But we could have an open discussion on some point i mentionned if you are interested by.

sorry for the general level of english, i have to write this long post quiet fast...

Once Metal points get implemented, everything will change.

Mike

This.

And OP, I really disagree on factories. It makes no sense for factories to be glorified blueprints and to surround them with 100 engineers. I'd rather factories make units and engineers make structures. Assist is a good mechanic but it should not be the predominant means of constructing units.

I agree

I think it is important to make assisting factories less effective than even in SupCom.
Building more factories should be the superior choice in most cases because assisting leads to cramped bases stuffed with engineers which causes pathfinding issues and stagnant gameplay.

I definitely hope that metal points well change stuff. making metal more valuable but also actually having stuff to fight over.

What are "metal points?"

>It is bad for players to build more than one factory

WHAT?!

WHAT?!?!

No. That's not how factories work. Rollout time on PA's factories is something like 7-9 seconds. As a result, every single engineer you have assisting a factory actually has a lot less build power because of that rollout time.

You should ALWAYS be building multiple factories because if you do, the effect of that rollout time always stays the same. If you have a lot of engineers assisting one factory, your production capabilities are ALWAYS limited by that rollout time.

Where you build extractors to generate metal, these are usually very specific locations and the only places you can build extractors on.

Mike

I have an idea for an economy system based on metal points and radii

let me explain what i mean.

Each metal extractor has a radius around it and is not built on metal points
the metal extraction speed (metal generated per second) is based on how many metal points are within the radius of the extractor

Multiple overlapping radii over a metal point have greatly reduced efficiency per extractor but has an overall small increase in yield of the metal point.

Higher tier extractors = larger radii/more power cost



with this system you would need a much more plentiful number of metal points on each planet/surface and would encourage spreading out across the map.



random extra idea

also for multiple planetary economy i was thinking about planets being able to "assist" other planets with more metal at cost of power and/or efficiency though warp gates.



just a few ideas

this has been tried and it isn't good

I will try defend my point of view about factories and assisting.

I have noticed that the rollout time was so long. If this rollout time is not reduced in the futur, multiple factories will be the only solution for an efficient mass production. It's is obvious and i agree.

I completely agree with that. The only way to assist in a clean way a factory is to use airplane constructors.

It's not really an argument. But it s legitimate to prefer to use engi to built instead of assist. This idea can be reinforced by the fact that engi are mobile units with their own blueprints, using them as static assistant is clearly an underemployment.

But is it also true for T2 (T3) factories. They are expensive because they provide to the player the T2 (T3) blueprints, which have more value than the production capacity of the factory itself. So we can also say that a second, a third or a fourth T2 factories is a kind of underemployment and wasting of resource because the player has already access to the T2 Blueprints.


Going back on the Nano Turrets
That why i also spoke about the Nano Turrets into the first post. Nano Turrets were created by the community (on TA) and kept in most of fan games running on spring engine.
Nano turrets fill a role that is missing.
- They are buildings, so they don't move and don't cramp the base
- They have great build power, but no blueprints
- Regarding to their limited capacities their are cheap (and weak)

I find Nano Turret is good because, it separate the "Build Power" from the "Tech".

(the automatic repair mode could be also very helpfull to keep player defense line alive, or to create repair area for troops)


An alternative
Multiple Factories could be the main way to massively produce unit. The cost of factories (even T2) would be moderate in order to able player to build multiple T2 factory for a reasonable cost.
In this case the T2 technology will be easier to access, so the technologic "step" must be related to something else than the price of the T2 factory. It is also a possibility that i don't underestimate. Zero K (game mod on spring) shows an interesting gameplay with a quiet flat technology tree.



Nobody worries about endless economy ?

oh thats a shame. could you please link me to it? it is the eco basis for one of the games im working on so i'd like to know what went wrong.

You mean endless tanks? Nah, more tanks is always good. Especially if they are hot pink.

Maybe I misunderstood, is this what you meant? viewtopic.php?f=64&t=46496&p=727344&hilit=mex#p727344

Spring tried a metal overlay system with MEX radius.

Eh. The nano tower was useful in TA because pathing make bases impossible to navigate after a point. That is not true here. Build more engineers.

Anything can be special because of screwed up numbers. Creating a unit that has superior lathe power per cost only serves to nullify the purpose of every other lathe. It's a redundant role that adds nothing new and subtracts from everything else.

Endless economy is only a problem if you have to annihilate every last enemy unit. However, this game has a quick end condition by killing the Commander, and a more gradual end condition of demolishing the planet. Resources don't matter when your army loses its head.

Especially when "loosing it's head" means an instant total-force self-destruct.

Actually, can we have an animation for bots that causes them to draw swords and stab themselves in the chest when the Commander dies? That would make a lot more sense than a self-destruct.

I think a endless economy is still a problem even with PA's kill the commander endgame condition.

A player could park his commander in the center of an ever-growing nest of unlimited units, all courtesy of the endless economy.

For those of us who don't have the rest of our lives to play 1 round of PA, I urge Uber to have a limited economy (or atleast give us that option).

unfortunately i cannot open that forum for some reason
but yeah i wrote my post late and tired so i was not very clear, let me try to explain further

THE NEW METAL EXTRACTOR

you can build your MEx anywhere. it extracts 0 metal and uses 0 power by default.
the MEx has a radius associated with it based on tier (small radius cheap T1, large radius expensive T2 ect.)
the rate at which the MEx generates metal for your economy is based on how many Metal sources (metal points) are within it's radius.
for now we will say that metal points are worth 5 metal/sec each

EXAMPLE:
if i had a T1 MEx and built it within 500 units of 2 metal points it would generate 10 metal
if i had a T2 MEx and built it within 2000 units of 7 metal points it would generate 35 metal.

this means if you build a T2 MEx and it only has 2 metal points within it's radius it would generate the same metal as the T1 MEx in the example. conversely, if a T1 MEx was within range of 7 metal points it would generate 35 metal.

POWER COST

the power consumption rate of these new MEx is based on the metal points as well as the tier of the MEx.

examples (to be balanced of course)
T1 would draw 2 power per metal point
T2 would draw 5 power per metal point
T3 would draw 10 power per metal point ect.

so now the tier level of the MEx influences the build cost, radius size and power consumption per metal point in that radius.

OVERLAPPING RADIUS

in the case of multiple radius overlapping a metal point the metal point gives 1 less metal for each additional MEx in range. this results in an interesting efficiency pattern:
2 MEx on 1 point each get 4 metal instead of 5 resulting in a net gain of 3.
3 MEx on 1 point each get 3 metal instead of 5 resulting in a net gain of 4.
4 MEx on 1 point each get 2 metal instead of 5 resulting in a net gain of 3
5 MEx on 1 point each get 1 metal instead of 5 resulting in a net gain of 0

this means you are at your most efficient with 3 MEx/point and actually lose efficiency past that point.
this means that turtlers can still viably exist but require large amounts of power to squeeze each metal point under their control for every last drop.
note that you require 3x the power to increase a metal point by 80%



GAMEPLAY THEORY

i am hoping this system promotes interesting map control based play but allows for certain defensive styles. the spread/density of metal points can really allow the map generation to create lucrative dense zones that can be extracted highly efficiently with T1 MExs that would be highly sought after in the early game. and as the game progresses, the higher tier MExs will be able to more efficiently cover the sparser regions where building a bunch of T1 MExs for single points would not be worth it but building a single T3 to cover the widely spread out 8 metal points would be.



I hope this was a clearer presentation for my idea on radius based MExs
thanks for reading

and thats why we have T3 bombers and Artillery

also planets kerslpode