Energy costing unit and building weapons

On any thing basic or standard I agree, but for specialty weapons and very advanced units it might still be a good choice.

Like having a way in CNC3 to stop Mammoth and Juggernaut spams.

We are in agreement then

EDITED: To make sure you were quoted in the right context.

Yeah, we can only work from what we know in terms of game mechanics. We can speculate and brainstorm ideas but refering to other games and how well they worked provides us our framework in terms of past successes and failures. I for one am mainly pulling from Supcom, TA and SoaSE for my 'inspiration'. That and my love of astronomy and blowing stuff sky high.

+1 for me

Wolfdogg, I can't say I disgree with anything you're saying about energy / metal, although I'm glad you went farther than 'if it aint broke don't fix it' which is, imho, the worst reason of all not to kick the tires of any system.

On the other hand, there is obviously a drive here to link, somehow, the limitations of an economy, to the player's ability to field units. You call my energy=go model a 'population cap' - but isn't that exactly what the economy is anyways? You don't build something until you can afford to build it. You don't build a buzzsaw in TA without first building the storage and power to run it. Economic limits to players is to be preferred in fact, since it's such an intuitive way of increasing the number of units the player can field.

But, you're still left with the inconsistency of your units firing sometimes, and sometimes not, based on energy that may or may not be available, based on economic units like mass fabs that may or may not be on.

I mean, you had that in TA too - your defenses are doing awesome, and then the enemy bombs your fusions, and you suddenly are thrown into this odd mini-game where in order to fire the annihilator that is key to your defenses, you have to go around and 'hold fire' your HLTs so your storage can fill enough to fire. Being required to occasionally manage your income to fire your weapons is inconsistent and erratic, and that's where the problem lies.

Can you suggest a solution?

How about "Don't build a defensive position consisting entirely of HLTs and Annihilators while running a small enough energy surplus with a small enough storage base that losing a single fusion shuts the entire thing down because that's obviously going to be a problem"?

There are plenty of non-energy-sucking options for weapons, and power requirements for certain weapons rewards players who successfully identify a player that's over-produced on energy using weapons and attack at a moment when they're using a lot of power elsewhere. Tradeoffs are at the core of strategy, and you cant expect powerful options to come with no weaknesses.

Did your energy = go model involve units or just structures? The difference I think is with your model, players would have to fill up bases with power plants to run structures (and possibly depending on what you meant) standard units in the field, which to me sounds unwieldy. I for one don’t want to have power plants for every kind of building I construct in order to run them. Nor do I want the number of units I can field and have open fire directly related to how many generators I possess. Either scenario results in a lot of space having to be dedicated to power plants and I dont want the game to entirely revolve around how much power I can produce.

By contrast the existing model used in Supcom and the like, involved players expanded their economy to increase the rate at which they could produce an army and run energy consuming equipment like advanced defense/attack structures or shield generators. I don’t take issue with this, and it doesn’t appear that Wolfdogg does either.

The situation you have described is perfectly fine. The enemy has compromised the players ability to defend themself by exploiting a weakness (not defending power infrastructure from attack and having enough of them positioned in one place that their loss compromised energy flow significantly). The player SHOULD have to deal with prioritising power if they did not built the infrastructure to support it or did not defend said infrastructure successfully.

Additionally I don’t see how your model improves upon this. From what I gather, your suggestion involved having energy more central to the running of equipment.

You didnt clarify whether you meant to use it for units as well as structures.

If you just meant structures then that same scenario cuts operation of all buildings rather than just advanced defense/attack structures.

If you intended units as well then the player is left even more vulnerable as units would be immobile/unable to return fire until they rectified the energy crisis.

Hmm. Neither of you actually understood what I was trying to get at. Maybe I wasn't being clear.

The point of the matter is, energy is, in the current incarnation, both a resource to build more units, AND it's a resource that makes (some) units do what they're meant to do, and mixing the two results in a rather un-intuitive (not easily understood or well handled) situation at times. Some units' power requirements never even cross the player's mind as they build them. Some units' power requirements are crazy high just to make a dent in the late game economy. The idea is to achieve a system with polish - to look at the ideas in the previous games and identify which areas could use a tweak in order to enhance the player's gameplay enjoyment.

Being required to occasionally manage your income to fire your weapons is inconsistent and erratic, and that's where the problem lies.

It's got nothing to do with whether you're making good strategic decisions or bad ones - the point is, at certain points in the game you will have to shift over into thinking about something that you don't think about for most of the game, and if you haven't run into these problems before, they will come as a jarring and unexpected surprise.

A classic example is the idea of requiring energy storage to be able to fire your annihilator. It's not the fact that the annihilator requires 2,000 energy to fire that's under question here, it's the fact that many first time players would build the annihilator, and then wonder why it's not firing. There were no mechanisms in TA that said "hello, you need to build a gradually increasing amount of storage in order to keep up with the requirements of your defenses".

All I'd like to do is work out a good way to separate the concerns - go vs build. If making some units use energy to fire is a good idea, why don't we make it a decision you have to make throughout the whole game, instead of only at the very beginning of the game, and maybe the very very end?

You realize of course, that your argument has nothing to do with anything I've said. You can have high power / low power usage weapons with exactly the same effect as power / no power. It still doesn't address the rough edges of suddenly requiring from the player a brand new set of variables to balance.

C'mon, that's kind of silly. Suggesting that you need lots of space to make enough power ignores the whole progression of TA from Windgen -> Solar -> Geo -> Fusion. And the other games *already* revolve around how much power (and mass) you can produce.

I'm not suggesting the player shouldn't have to prioritize his power usage, I'm talking about how often the player needs to do it, and whether that could be improved or moved more towards the front of the player's consciousness while playing. Supcom indeed moved the balance more toward this 'power management' paradigm when it introduced shielding. Should it not then be integrated even further into gameplay so that it's not just the first shield you build that makes you consider your energy production?

Very well spoken.
In TA the concept was a bit half-backed with energy numbers put a bit randomly.
But with more though on the subject it could become a nice tool to add and balance strategies, units and buildings.

I’m unsure what you are actually suggesting here. You talk about polishing the system; I don’t think anyone disagrees that finding a way to polish existing systems is a bad thing. How are you suggesting this is achieved, by removing energy as an aspect of construction costs? If not excuse the following but if so I don’t see energy being used as part of construction cost being an issue, it is intuitive that energy would be used by the factory/engineer to construct whatever you are building

Okay I accept all of that, although your example did not really go there, you refer this circumstance where an enemy had blown up your energy infrastructure:

This seems a pretty natural aspect of combative gameplay as I previously stated. If instead of this you had described a gentle progression of energy requirements which is more transparent to the player along with ensuring the player understands the consumption rates of energy consuming units/structures then it may have been a bit clearer. The example did little to illuminate your intention.
To address this, perhaps then the player could have information on what the power consumption for relevant units/structures are in the mouse over information window? Generally the information displayed in such cases are the cost in energy and mass. All it would need is to include information on its rate of energy consumption for use.
An in game wiki could also be useful, with a breakdown of the characteristics of each unit/building that the player could access from the main menu.

I don’t see that this is a terribly difficult concept for people to grasp. So long as people are informed when selecting to build a unit/structure that the nature of its purpose requires that it consumes energy then I don’t see that players are going to find this confusing. The use of energy both as a driving force for specialised units/buildings, and the fact that it is a necessary resource for constructing things is pretty intuitive.

Fair comment, my statement was overly simplistic.

Depending on how this is implemented I may or may not disagree with what you are proposing, but it does require some more specifics. Your previous example of power management issues in the context of a crippling attack on your energy infrastructure, doesn't really touch on the idea of integrating energy in a more processional way.

In addition to this if you are suggesting more things should require the use of energy to go in order to introduce this challenge throughout the course of a game, you are still talking about a situation where more power generation would be required vs the current system in order to operate the same equipment. It strikes me that in wanting to achieve a situation where a player understands the concept that some things use power, you are suggesting that many more things use power, Or that existing power using units/buildings energy requirements are greater in order to make them a consideration. Thus providing an additional logistical challenge to manage within the game.

I can understand why people might want that in the game, but for a suggestion that is supposed to make things more intuitive, this sounds like it is making things more complicated.

I am still uncertain if you are including more/all mobile units in this model, could you clarify this aspect for me please?

It becomes easier because pawn want it to be a rule. ( Correct me if I misunderstood you )
Saying that only annihilators, krogoths and shield takes energy is arbritrary and makes them exceptions. It's harder to understand than rules.
Once you have understood the rule for Tech 1, then you know it for tech 2 and tech N.
Saying that only Tech Y and Z use energy is counter intuitive.

To be clear, I am not suggesting that we never change things and keep everything the same as it was in TA, or SupCom, PA is a new game and has the potential to have conventional systems reworked or polished.

I understand the idea that making it a rule rather simply having exceptions is more consistent. What I am saying is that knowing that a few units use energy is not that difficult a concept to grasp. It is not such a big barrier to understanding game mechanics that it is going to prevent people from playing effectively.

Needing everything to use power may be more consistent conceptually, but it will be a great deal more complex logistically and practically when the player is in game and managing energy for T1 units and up.This makes the player far more vulnerable as power becomes more critical to basic functions, not just advanced defence and offence.

I am unsure if Paws includes units as well as structures in this model but the issue becomes greatly compounded if it does. For the sake of this paragraph ill assume it does. If units from T1 and up require energy to run, then an attack on power infrastructure has the potential to stop the entire war machine dead in its tracks until the defending player can build more generators. Something the defending player would be ill equipped to do because defending units would not be able to rush to defend against the attack effectively. The more infrastructure the enemy destroys, the less useful the defending units become (to say nothing about any forces otherwise engaged on other areas of the map).

Now let’s assume that at least basic units are not included in the requirement of power and it is just the structures that do. Defensive structures suddenly become a lot less useful when compared to units. Why would a player spend resources constructing a T1 defensive structure when it can be disabled/effectiveness reduced by cutting/damaging power generation? Players would be more inclined to just use units alone for defensive tasks as units cannot have their usefulness reduced with damage to energy infrastructure.

If the defence of this concept is to then make sure that basic structures be far more powerful to compensate for the weakness then their role begins to blur with higher attack/defence structures. Which in more conventional systems would be the point to start introducing energy consuming defensive/offensive structures.

There is a need for non-energy consuming basic buildings and units. Or at the very least a compromise where basic structures require a power plant to exist in order for them to run without actively drawing power like advanced structures do.

I realise that I have used somewhat extreme examples to illustrate my point. What I am going for is some more specificity in the examples given in order to better assess potential merits/flaws with the concepts. I hope I have been clear in describing the issues I see with requiring everything to draw energy in a bid do make electricity management more relevant.

That makes sense. Actually, i was more thinking about the laser weapon type.
Which was a weapon mostly used in as static defence in TA. Most of the T1 units were not shooting laser. So, for basic assault units not using energy, we mostly agree.
You have the choice to include energy units or not in your army composition.
For defence, you could still have some building which shoot simple missile.

There was a color code in TA which was quite a good idea.
Red was low energy weapon, green was medium one and blue was high energy weapon.
It's not really accurate, but you get the idea.
I like the idea because it's visual and thus, was a very easy concept to grasp.
Actually, it could be extented to building and units which need energy to functions.
( A bit like energy storage which become brighter. )

If they don't read a unit description which says "Requires 2000 energy to fire" and are confused, it's their own fault for not RTFM. Also you'll never not have 2000 energy in storage by the time you have an Annihilator, given how many units increase storage.

Writing in bigger text doesn't make you more right. And it's combat. Of course it's inconsistent and erratic. Expecting everything to go smoothly while your stuff is being blown up isn't how war works.

Way to miss the point there. Weapons generating a continuous draw is the same as simply increasing their cost by that of the number of PGens required to run them. Weapons only requiring energy to fire allows a player the option of under-producing energy to get units at a discount while betting that he'll never have to simultaneously activate all of his defenses, or that he'll never have to have his defenses running for longer than it takes to deplete his storage.

How is "Only long range artillery and enormous lasers consume energy to fire" not a rule?

Hu? I never said it wasn't. If it's visualy distinctive I'm okay with that rule.

I don't really have much more to add to this topic as I've already said most of my thoughts regarding how I think it should be. Generally just think Supreme Commander. It was well balanced with respect to the energy consumption of weapons/abilities.

The reason for this opinion is that it was easy for the player to interpret how the things he was building would impact his economy. The things that were going to drain his power were all similar and the stats/conditions that would cause this were displayed in the build list.

There weren't so many things that could destabilise the economy that he was always chasing his tail either. Most T1 point defence wasn't laser tech anyway. Normally they were some sort of projectile with the exception of the Aeon. In fact, UEF used projectile weapons right up to T3 point defence. This just wouldn't have been fair if Aeon used energy from the start and UEF never used any.

The important thing with energy using weapons is that they should be of the sort that would need restricting. I think we all agree on that. The line to be drawn is what do we define as needing restriction?

Personally I think if the enemy wants to fill his base with T2 lasers then so be it. Use your arty to take them out. It's a waste of his time and resource while you claim the whole map and then destroy all his hard work with a handful of units. However, if he builds long range arty that is capable of destroying your base from the comfort of his safe haven then to a certain extent he needs to have a limit on what he can do from that position.

That doesn't mean he shouldn't be able to build the arty in the first place, or that he shouldn't be able to run it if he builds the power generators and storage to do it. The time and resources it will take him to do so are penalty enough and it is his choice to do so if that is the strategy he decides to take. Needless to say, that it will consume all of his resource to do this, leaving him exposed in other areas.

Cybran T1 Point Defence: Weapons: Light Pulse Laser
UEF T1 Point Defense: DM1 Plasma Cannon: Weapons: Light Plasma Cannon

Whatever a "plasma cannon" is, it's probably not a conventional slugthrower (and even the UEF's conventional slugthrowers were all electromagnetic, not chemical).

Not to mention the TA Light Laser Tower defense.

Fair comment. Can't really dispute that and it does mar the point I was trying to make, which was that not all point defence types would necessarily require energy to fire. Regarding UEF T2, I am not sure what a gauss cannon is or weather that would be classed as an energy using weapon or not. As for T3 it was basically a giant minigun.

I did get my facts wrong regarding T1 point defence, even if they are all listed as projectile weapons in the sup com wiki. But I feel the point I was trying to make is still valid enough for the purpose of the discussion.

T3 PD is also of the nebulous "plasma cannon" type, which basically means "magic fireball gun". A Gauss cannon is another term for a coilgun, which accelerates a projectile magnetically.

But whether or not a given unit needs energy to fire has nothing to do with physics and everything to do with game balance, so the class of energy-using weapons is just whichever devices have been deemed so fantastically energy inefficient as to not run off a unit's onboard reactor.

Sounds like we are on the same page

Yeah so long as any energy requirements for items like artillery, laser cannons and so on are included in the description then I dont see players having issues. I would probably want more information than just the colour coding, but I guess having it there in addition to specifics would help provide 'at a glance' information.

very good point

For sure, it is all about how it balances in gameplay. I do think however that it would be relatively easy to distinguish the energy using tech from non e tech in terms of projectile type technology and so on. Be nice if it was visually consistent.