I've played supcom FA, but I haven't noticed an energy cost... Basically to me, if you have a streaming economy, by putting in an energy cost, you're basically limiting a fabber's efficiency for that specific building, right? So wouldn't it end up using more metal (if you have 100% metal) because it takes longer to build anyway?
No, the metal actually goes into the project slower. The metal usage would be stretched over time. Build an experimental unit or t3 arty in supcom, then compare how fast metal is going into it compared to a metal extractor. Not only are the costs different, but the lathe's rates get slower to compensate with the energy cost. It's basically completely contradictory to WYSIWYG. It was complex, but interesting.
so you just want a "build efficiency" tag for things that are being built as well as the things that are building them, to act as a kind of, say multiplier to the build efficiency? for example: fabbers have a 100% build efficiency under idea conditions IE 100% metal and energy, but the building they are building has a efficiency multiplier of 0.5, so the fabbers would build this structure at 50% efficiency. Is that what you're talking about?
Essentially, yes! As that's what TA had and it's hard to implement TA's economy as well as correct balance without changing a bunch of metal values.
Wow. no wonder I really couldn't figure out Supcom FA's economy, and hence why I didn't really like it. Sounds like I won't really like your mod either, sorry :/
The key difference between FA/TA and PA is that the former had "build times", with corresponding "worker times" for the builders. Assuming enough resources, units would take build_time/worker_time ticks to complete (for PA this is metal_cost/metal_rate), and the metal/energy they would use during this time is metal_cost/(build_time/worker_time), or metal_cost/<time to complete>, and same same for energy (for PA the metal and energy usage are fixed). This allows far greater flexibility for balancing purposes, since build time is completely separate from build cost - they are directly linked in PA. The downside is that your resource needs are less predictable.
After playing 2k hours FA I still feel I can predict FA economy better than PA economy tbh. But that doesn't matter. It's a modding request, not a balance request and if a balance discussion starts in a thread about such a request I'll delete every single last post about it
Well honestly, I think the wouldn't be balanced very well, I mean you'd have to take all the energy values of the fabbers and I have no idea what I'm talking about, but it's about balance BALANCEBALANCEBALANCEBALANCEBALANCE ok I'm done
It's been a long time since I played TA. This discussion has been very helpful in understanding why energy/metal is classic, yet somehow feel redundant in PA.
