Inter-planetary economy?

A supply line is no different from building the resources on site. This is at least possible for energy, which can be built anywhere or shuttled over on asteroids no problem. So there is not much purpose to energy transfer.

Metal transfer is easily accomplished by moving finished units or engineers around. There's no point wasting your time hauling raw metal.

Pretty much. Starting completely over on a new world is bad. If an enemy is there, he easily wins the battle because you came in late.

There are a few ways to even the score. Asteroid bombs break the defender. Asteroid bases support the attacker. And an opponent who doesn't defend his world is giving his extractors away for free. Other weapons may end up stronger against planets like some kind of deep strike krogoth/battleship. They drop down easy but they don't go back up.

I think I would prefer to see a global economy system if I'm honest, mainly for two reasons.

Firstly, having a system where heavy planet has its own resources has to potential for a lot of confusion, especially when you start adding resource bases on asteroids into the picture. You'll have a hard time keeping a hidden resource base hidden if your enemy only really has to look out for the travel to find it. I think this would detract too much from the awesome-ness of massive battles raging constantly with asteroids smashing planets into oblivion..

In the end "We're aiming for awesome."

Secondly, when it comes to invading a world I expect to suffer heavy losses on my initial planet fall, if I then have to pry resources away from my enemy to attempt to recover my forces to continue the war? Well the 'home' player will be able to rebuild forces at a speed I'd be unlikely to match. This would cause an assault to stall and, probably, get repelled quite quickly. True I could attempt to pound an enemy with asteroids prior to attacking but, I don't know about others, I don't want to have to use asteroids for every planetary assault. Sometimes I just want lots and lots of robots exploding things!

Yes there is the potential (I believe it is still unconfirmed) that ill be able to move an asteroid into orbit and use that as a base for my assault on the planet however I imagine it'll be unlikely that an asteroid will be able to match a planet for resources and I doubt an enemy would be willing to let you keep an asteroid in orbit of their planet! I know I wouldn't, soon as I was able I'd nuke the hell out of it!

These things are why I think a global economy is more likely and will better suit the game as it'll allow players to focus more in the blowing up of various animate and inanimate objects with extreme vengeance.

The Anno games have separated economies (except for money) but they are far less focused on combat so that suit the game.

Hi all

I agree that the econ will probably be global...but how about this:

Reducing engineer (fabber) efficiency the further away from power plants or extractors that they are.

Maybe on your planet it takes 3 power plants and 3 extractors to have all engineers run at 100% build efficency. When there are no PP or E then have them run at 20% of normal build time while still costing the same amount of resources to run

That way 5 engineers on an asteroid would have the equivalent build time of one on your planet/main base location, until you can generate power and metal locally.

Alternatively, if you don't want to or cant build extractors and power locally then you can swamp the 'roid with engineers to get the stuff built.

2 cents

Regards,
Nayzablade

I want my stuff to work no matter where i put it. thanks but no thanks for the synergetics

I think the best question to ask is: "In a localized economy, what is the point of having the Gas Giants?"

That stretch goal itself may complicate a localized economy enough to make it unfeasible.

A gas giant represents a huge amount of orbital terrain. Moons offer a chance for richly packed resources with easy access to deep space. The rich energy deposits also favor technology that is high on energy demand; for example artillery cannons may end up very easy to build and maintain.

Not everything has to be about resources alone.

Depends if there's such a thing as a Translocational Energy Distributor in orbit (TED for short)

Edit: wrong word.

I think in order to balance it out we can have several option.

Global economy: Everything is working for the same sysstem and uses that system to build stuff.
Cons: See Supreme Commander and building of mass fabricator and the abudance of ressources.
Pro: Easiest system, and you dont need to think about your "logistics".

Planetary Economy: Every Planet has its own ressources pool so if you extract metal from a moon your mainplanet will get nothing from it.
Con: Everything you do outside of one Planet doesnt inpact your economy, there for its questionalbe to even try get off the planet in the first place to help boost your economy.

Pro: Planetary Control is important, at will give "invasions" a chance landing and taking valuable ressources to feed there own economy on the invaded planet.


Personally i would like to have a planetary economy but with some features.
The ability to "transfer" some ressources from one planet to another to boost the economy. With a "teleportation" link that has high energy cost and only transports Metal. With a lossrate equal to the distance it will get transported.

Having several "Bases" along the way to the enemy planet helps to lessend the loss.

Having a unit that can store ressources and can be taken to another planet as a mobile storage for quickstarting a economy. For those transports there shouldnt be much micro involved. Just sending them to another planet, are one way transport and when crashing on the planet you have some strorages you can take. Like a supply drop.


Eitherway i cant wait for PA to get into beta

Ok, I'll bite. What is a TED and how would it work in relation to what we know about PA so far?

Don't know yet. I made it up, but I'll focus on problems when they arise in the Alpha. I'm not problem solving until there is a more than only a "potential" problem.

Though I would change the name to Translocational for a start.
Damn my Dyslexia. :cry:


A literal "layman's" translation would be that a TED;
Distributes (gives shared quantities of [something]) Energy (self-explanatory) Translocationally (between different places)

You mean one of these? They can already be built anywhere to supply any planet in need.

A potential problem can be pretty obvious up front. It's obvious that energy and metal are their own resources, with their own behaviors and problems. They each need their own treatment to determine what works best.

Ok, so basically it is a satellite that orbits a planet and transfers energy between that local economy to nearby nodes (planets/asteroids)?

A good look at a system like this is the original Perimeter game. Of course, the satellites would need to have line of site to other satellites creating transmission windows. You would want control over what orbital path your TED takes to maximize the window.

Could be a cool mechanic, but since the entire system is in motion... this might be getting a bit more technical than they want it to be. As you start relaxing the conditions to keep the game playable, you start to approach the situation where you are basically launching a satellite to "link up" to the "solar system".

Launching a satellite requires some kind of infrastructure, at least a gantry. Either you have this, and run into the same problems mentioned earlier in this thread regarding how to get energy and metal to a new planet in order to even build the gantry/launch mechanism, or you abstract this part out as well.

At this point you just have a global economy again...

No I don't mean one of those. I mean a device that effectively "combines" the economies of two disparate planets into a single economy.

Why on earth did you think I was talking about a "Generator" when I clearly used the word "Distributor"?

Until someone destroys your TED on or around that planet, yes. This severs the Planet from getting resources from the rest of your economy and puts it back into a vacuum, so to speak. Combining Economies is what I thought was the whole point of a TED.

Because the end result is quite similar either way. You can build excess energy and transfer it with a special satellite, or you can build excess energy and transfer it on a rocketing asteroid. The latter does exactly what you want, is straightforward in practice, and does not create a single point of failure.

You don't have a single point of failure if you build a self-sustaining economy when you get to a colonisable planet. But a TED helps get a Planet stabilised and eventually, a positive and productive member of your economy as a whole when it starts over-producing resorces... and until it is, it's being subsidised until that point.

A TED also allows planet specialisation without the necessity of a system-wide single economy, so you could have a Water Planet producing a Navy without any resource structures on the planet at all, save for the TED in orbit. Hell, you could launch entire campaigns on the foreign soil of any planet without having to do anything more than have a TED in orbit and another planet providing you your "war-chest".

I was responding in a rather specific, specialised case you see, regarding how "separate" economies could possibly work if Gas Giants were only available for generating power.

Devil's in the details my dear bobucles. You're doing that "forgetting-to-read-someones-whole-post" thing again. Someone posed a hypothetical question, and I answered it with a hypothetical solution I thought up on the spot.

There are definitely positive aspects to having some kind of system (like TED) to facilitate localized economies, however there are wrinkles. Ironing out those wrinkles is part of the fun of a thought experiment/exercise.

If we have some orbital mechanism to allow connection between planets' economies, how does that satellite get there? The method whereby you fire a unit at the target planet/asteroid and then build a gantry and launch said satellite raises problems. It is going to be too easy for a planet to become a giant turtle because of the ramp up resources and time required to get connected to your energy/mass network.

Given this, there would have to be a way to launch the TED from one planet and have it orbit another body, kind of like the unit cannon or the engineer missile.

Is it inevitable that it will get there and function? Is it possible to destroy incomming satellites with currently orbiting satellites? Is it possible to destroy these defensive satellites with inter-planetary missiles? Would such a satellite provide only power, or would it also transmit metal too?

Depends on what "fluff" you add. Is it a high energy electromagnetic beam of energy, or a miniature wormhole? I can justify the TED to do practically anything by saying the magic words; "Quantum Entanglement".

Well, since we already know teleportation will work, the mechanism for how the TED works can be attributed to the same technology.

I was wondering, how you would get it there in the first place; and for the defender, how can you prevent it.

T2 Orbital Gantry for insertion
and
T2 SOMs? (Surface-to-Orbit Missiles?) or something similar.

You know what's more effective than a TED? Not needing one at all. An economy is just as easily established by saying "it's already there" and providing everything for a front line campaign by default. Just bring the engineers. The TED idea creates a single point of failure that costs resources, demands management of every world in the network, and adds insult by not producing anything. It does more harm than good, and is better off abstracted out of the game.

If a player needs to seed a new resource base, the best workable option is to do it with energy. Generators can be built anywhere, are simple to haul by asteroid, and they are easy to replace if metal use is not an obstacle. A player practically brings his base to an invasion by default, so demanding energy on site is no major obstacle.

Perhaps the only possible issue is that energy is hard to build without energy, which the TED isn't able to solve. Some solutions include decentralizing energy production a bit (the TA system gave some energy to engis, units, etc.), hauling another asteroid chock full of fresh generators, or making generators uniquely easy to build without energy. A TED can't really solve these problems in any other unique way, so it's not adding much to the table.

It is unlikely that a Gas Giant will work alone. They will likely be surrounded by moons and other orbital platforms, creating a field for metal deposits and using energy directly. It could be a problem if the rich energy is trapped there, unable to be used. But it could also be a unique battlefield for high energy devices that are too difficult to use elsewhere.