Extractors

Which is fairly positive change IMO. A scouting Quartet of super fast flash tanks shouldn't be able to destroy a T2 metal extractor before you can get a gunship there. (As long as you are in the same hemisphere at least).

Same with bombing. A T1 carpet bomber should have to make at least 3 passes against a T1 extractor by itself. If they commit 3x for an autokill thats fine, cause then they are committing a decent amount for a raid and facing the consequences of a failure in attrition.

Making raiding a matter of being able to micromanage penny pockets of units more efficiently than the opponent is no fun. We need more strategic play where setting up home bases and secondary bases and fire bases to cover several extractor points each with heavy response units is much deeper gameplay (but requires extractors to be fairly robust)

Distinct arm(or)ed metal extractors were invented for a reason - you get an entrenched metal spot at a premium cost.

agreed in the past you could count on your opponent being on one side of the map and yourself on the other - that dynamic is a little different in PA

There are situations where metal storage is useful. If your metal income spikes to 10x it's previous value for a short period of time it can cost less to make a few storages than to make 10x the energy and BP which spending the spike would require. Most of the time your extra infrastructure is wasted.

These situations vary in rarity depending on the parameters of your particular TA like game. There is a lot of variation in important parameters. Some are infrastructure cost, reclaim abundance, reclaim speed, storage cost and economy pace (how punishing it is to spend metal 1 minute late).

If storage is so important then it can probably be an important part of your economic strategy. From this point of view I feel that it is a waste of depth to give all economic units some storage as an added bonus. Although unless the parameters of the economy are well tuned to make storage important then storage construction will be boring makework.

Was there a statement you were trying to make or just pulling up the numbers for reference?

Mike

Does that even matter? If an extractor is exposed and under attack, it's going to die no matter how durable it is. High HP can act as a delaying tactic to slow enemy forces down, but it's one lone, unarmed unit vs. a platoon. It's pretty screwed.

One thing I did like in TA is that extractors disintegrated when they died, leaving no wreckage. This mechanic helps to increase the risk of extractor points, as a large extractor HAS to pay itself off and can't simply be rebuilt a dozen times until it works.

I think a decent sized explosion to remove wreckage can work well in PA, letting extractors injure or destroy nearby troublemakers as a last huzzah. It also adds to the risk of defending one, where you want to keep them safe but simultaneously can't get too close.

Indeed, coming from Forged Alliance this really isn't the case. If you come into a big chunk of reclaim you use it like a bank - spending say 10% more over a longer period and reclaiming as you need the metal. I'm sure storage has use in different TA-esque games but likely only to absorb income spikes and cost spikes as you described, this is problematic though because economy spiking (e.g. SupCom commander upgrades spiking energy expenditure) is something Uber will want to avoid while trying to make the economy more approachable. From what I've read Uber feels the rate based economy is the most difficult concept for players to grasp in this sort of game.

Forcing the infrastructure value of storage via expenditure spikes or adding it ad hoc would hurt the approachability of the game IMO. It's easy to know when you want more metal (always) and it's only a little harder to know when you need power but storage is a far less intuitive.

one thing is promote expanding, another thing is force you to take the whole map as a fast as a possible, i never liked forged alliance or ta for this, expanding should come gradually

Mainly for reference. I took your "wasn't too bad" remark to be "wasn't too different from Total Annihilation". A 6.7-18x health power increase is quite a difference.

Pretty much this. Eco required way too much focus in SC and TA. It should be simple.

-Mexes get better over time to reward a player for holding ground
-Mexes can be upgraded if a player thinks they have it truly secured

No dabbling with adjancency, just reward players for raiding and holding ground. Like it should be.

Perhaps paying for that upgrade should just be a shortcut to the fully time upgraded mex. that way you dont get a near permenant resource hit if you get harrassed once or twice. so essentialy your mexs passively upgrade themselves to tech 2.

As it should be? I don't see why. Ihmo, player should be rewarded for taking new ground.
I'm against increasing efficiency over time because that really reduce the incencitive to build and defend mexes near the battlefield.

strike a balance between the 2, territory control should be emphasized through out the duration of the game though.

It isn't already? Having that extra 5 Metal Extractors over your opponent, and thus a better economy, isn't enough of an incentive?

if a T2 extractor is worth 4.5 times a T1 extractor like in SupCom map control gets less important as the game goes on

Define worth. Amount of metal extracted? Health? Both?

Were Moho Metal Extractors "bad" in TA just because they extracted more metal?

Oh, and in SupCom you couldn't explode whole "maps" into oblivion and shrink the effective space in which play takes place, like you will be able to do in Planetary Annihilation. Map Control will be VERY important in Planetary Annihilation without some arbitrary expansionist "bonus".

Consolidation of land is a temporary thing. Your planet might go bye-bye at any time when a meteor hits it.

There is no need to push an expansionist agenda in Planetary Annihilation. The game mechanics as stated, already do that.

Not if they are regularly destroyed. Firstly they will not necessary reimburse the cost of building and defending them.
Secondly, defending the ones in your base will be really more important because if you just lose one, it could be worth 5 new.

If you don't expand your base will be rubble in however long it takes the other player to build on an asteroid.

You can't Turtle in this game... you just CAN'T. In SupCom you could because turtling got you T2 and T3 which was completely overpowered compared to T1. That's not happening in Planetary Annihilation. T2 Metal Extractors are a gameplay choice... not a direct "upgrade". There are no direct "upgrades" in Planetary Annihilation. Everything has a cost.

Old school turtling is gone.

Lets focus on map control turtling for the future, allowing you to turn a turtle into a steam-roll, or possibly to fund a series of asteroids for artillery platforms or direct bombardment.

This is my hope as well. Controlled expansion should be a viable alternative to aggro land-grab.

The 10 MeX turtle for an hour should not work. But the 10 MeX rush then build toward another mex every 3-5 minutes while you tech up for interplanetary expansion shouldn't be non-viable. Defensive play =/= turtle, and lots of players enjoy this style.

That's why astroids should be at least modestly defendable. If I send 20 nukes at it, it should get broken up small enough to break up in the atmo. If I send 4 at it, then sure it should shotgun me, but super planet killing size astroids should be extremely end game (and controllable/toggle-able in the game creation menu). They should take like 50 engines to get enough delta V (something like ~5 Moho/hours worth of metal)

Idk, I still support the basic + Moho mex plan. If I am the first player to interplanetary and I'm pretty sure you have no chance of getting on the moon in the next 15 minutes, I want to take full advantage of my advantage. I don't want to have to wait for 12-20 minutes for my extractors to ramp up, I want to build twenty Moho's right off the bat and put some serious pressure on you here at home.