Logistics (ammo, fuel, electricity, building materials, etc)

Re: Logistics (ammo, fuel, electricity, building materials,

1. it's not called sol outside of cheesy science fiction

2. it's trillions of times larger than a ground based reactor, let alone a mobile one

3. the inner workings are in fact speculation, fusion is simply the best guess of the day

Re: Logistics (ammo, fuel, electricity, building materials,

The tooltip for the death nuke has read for a very long time now exactly this:
"Meltdown: Explodes on Death"

Changed to simply "Volatile" in FA, why they thought removing the explanation of what a meltdown is exactly was a good idea is anyones guess.

Re: Logistics (ammo, fuel, electricity, building materials,

1. 'Sol' is in fact Latin for what we call our Sun. Latin is awesome. Fact
2. Are you saying Planetary Annihilation isn't cheesy Sci-fi?
3. Why would a Commander need the same amount of power as the freaking Sun? Why is the concept of a miniaturised Fusion Reactor with enough power to fuel a Commanders Lathe and produce a little excess Power and Metal on the side such an anathema to you?
4. Why are you so opposed to 'Fiction' in general? You do know what that word means, right?

Re: Logistics (ammo, fuel, electricity, building materials,

1. Verum est.

Re: Logistics (ammo, fuel, electricity, building materials,

IMO arguing about energy production/transfer methods is kind of without point.

Our scientific knowledge of the universe is growing exponentially so it is practically impossible to even guess technologies available after several thousands of years of development.

Not to mention: this game is aiming for awesome. If you want as much realism as possible then I suggest grabbing the mod sdk as it becomes available and mod it in .

Re: Logistics (ammo, fuel, electricity, building materials,

I have spent the 3+ hours reading all 21 pages of this forum, and here are the ideas I have accumulated. I'm ignoring the discussion on nuclear meltdowns, as it is irrelevant to logistics.

First of all, it is my opinion that power and metal should not be universal. They should be planetwide, but not universal. This adds the depth of multiple economies but does not add the micromanagement that concerns so many players. This forum has dabbled in not only logistics, but bits of economy and the core game mechanics, and I shall try to mention as many as possible.

To all of you who are trying to shoot metal from one planet to another, the game designers have already said that the game will be based on a system of generation/usage with little stockpiling. So mailing your base a hunk of metal will not work or last. While it’s an interesting idea, we’d need a supcom2 style economy to make it work, and trust me, you do not want that. Instead, I propose that there are buildings that stream metal and power. To transfer a resource, one would select the resource beam, target a receiver, and select the amount of each to be streamed. Thus, a continuous flow could come from one to another. Additionally, there could be two tiers of these buildings, such as a lower level but cheaper one that can stream moderate amounts of resources, but for an experimental-sized undertaking, a second, larger one could be built that can stream virtually infinite resources per second provided you have the resources necessary to do the streaming. Or, if the designers want to focus on other areas, you could simply build a number of the smaller streamers. Now, special buildings would also be required to receive these streams. I imagine that to get your base first down on another planet, the landers from the rockets could serve as resource receivers, but would not be able to receive many resources. Once your basic base was set up, one would build more specialized receivers for larger undertakings. This (I hope) provides the depth wanted of localized economies while allowing the player to focus on other things. Perhaps there could even be an orbital unit that intercepts an enemy’s beam and steals the resources. Food for thought.

Nanogel: I think it’s an interesting idea, and could perhaps work in another game, but I do not think it could possibly work in a game like this. In a game with streaming economies and then proposing to at a station store it and have individual units carry it - well, not only is it inefficient, it is very complicated to program (although as I am just learning to program I could be wrong) meaning other aspects of the game would suffer, it oversimplifies the game through making two resources into one, and it is overall unnecessary and a bad idea, if you ask me. The idea behind having two resources is to allow you to do make different combinations with them (yes I am against the 1:1:1 idea). For example, a tank could be metal intensive but an assault bot power intensive. This adds to the complexity and depth of the game. Additionally, and more importantly, it also means that a resource can be required to run something without hurting the overall economy. For example, if there was only one resource, such as, “mower” (a combination of metal and power ) that was used to build and to run stuff, it would hurt the economy as a whole because naturally this substance would be territory based (or else nobody would ever expand and the whole game would really suffer). So to run a turret I would subtract from building offensive units. The beauty of having two layers of economy, however, is that I can have a territory based resource and an infinite resource. That way I can run a turret and it costs me a resource, but it doesn’t subtract from my offense. Now, according to ledarsi, you use both mass and energy to create nanogel, and the mass and energy could be used separately as well. However, this is pointless, because you could skip the middleman of nanogel and stick with metal and energy. Ignore the Supcom2 style economy. We don’t need it, as we don’t need to stockpile one resource when the rest of the economy is streaming. Stick with metal and energy. Trust me, it’s better.

As for restocking tanks and air units and etcetera, and especially to promote forward bases, I have a solution: power fields. Imagine you had a building that emitted some sort of wireless energy, but was only effective over a range (the range would naturally depend on the tier of the building). What this would do is provide perks to your units - perhaps a 10% bonus in fire rate, movement speed, self-repair rate, and damage per shot. In order to receive the perk, however, the unit would need to be in range of this power field. Thus, since the defender will almost always be in range of his power grid, in order to maintain a level battle you would want to build a forward base near the enemy to supply your units with the perks. You could brute force it if necessary - but why would you if the enemy has the advantage. Perhaps a power field generator would consume energy based on the number of units it supplied, or perhaps it would just be a fixed consumption. I’m inclined to the latter of the two, or else only a slight cost per unit. The goal of this function is to promote expansion of the base, so that a player is not focused on just building factories in their base and transporting the units onward, but rather making the scale awesome, and if I do say so myself, planetary.

Note to the game designers: Give shields perks towards long range arty, or else make long range arty super expensive, or else make it suck. I HATE GAMES WHERE ALL THE PLAYERS DO IS BUILD ARTY INSIDE THEIR BASE AND NEVER ONCE COME OUT OF THEIR SHELL! ARTY IS FINE, BUT IT SHOULDN’T SUBTRACT FROM THE REST OF THE GAME!

Re: Logistics (ammo, fuel, electricity, building materials,

Wub Wub, Settlers!

Re: Logistics (ammo, fuel, electricity, building materials,

Also, Stronghold.

Re: Logistics (ammo, fuel, electricity, building materials,

Don't put fuel/energy for units, it will ruin the game

Re: Logistics (ammo, fuel, electricity, building materials,

How.

Mike

Re: Logistics (ammo, fuel, electricity, building materials,

think about it a moment, requirement for units / building etc if they need thier own ressources to opperate will just get impossible and too complicated , how do we refill it ? and late game when you have 600+ units and in a future when you will have a lot of bases, on two planet, moon and asteroid, and in mega-games let's not talk about it 40 players this mean more units and buildings. It's only my opinion, but we don't need this...

I know i'm, speaking bad, better in french

edit : well i'm not alone but the game would be maybe less interesting with ammo and stuff, again it's only my opinion hehe...

Re: Logistics (ammo, fuel, electricity, building materials,

True story. PA is not a dwarfen fortress . Because I am little bit short at spare time I just overlooked the topic. I excuse me if I double post or something like that.

The ammo supply and somesting like that should not be essential. It makes sense for the gamplay that airplanes have to go back to restore ammo or fuel like in for examle Empire Earth and Rise of Nations. And this example rise of Nations has also an other simple way to deal with "ammo supply" The guys of this game created a so called suply wagon wich buffs units in a radius around them in reloading speed and health regenaration ( last if you play the French).
In addition to mass or energy bonusses which could maybe gathered by building combinations or spiecial buildings it could express a complex logistic system without beeing uncomfortable to deal with.

With friendly regards Paul von Hindenburg

Re: Logistics (ammo, fuel, electricity, building materials,

Hey.... Norwegian is not a cheesy science fiction language

Relax, Im not offended

Re: Logistics (ammo, fuel, electricity, building materials,

I'd like that.

Re: Logistics (ammo, fuel, electricity, building materials,

lul

Re: Logistics (ammo, fuel, electricity, building materials,

Thirded. Rearming for aircraft means they can be powerful without being unbalanced.

In general, elaborate logistics would be better off in a mod, though.

Re: Logistics (ammo, fuel, electricity, building materials,

This is an interesting discussion!

Logistics is interesting in RL because it is the main difficulty in war: war are won over control of resources (oil, metal), productions means (ammo factories), delivery to armies (and transport of armies also, but it's less of a problem in PA).

In PA, since the goal of developers is to focus on macro rather than micro, so I guess logistics can't be too detailed, if any.
The best solutions for macro to be implemented in the PA spirit, would be based on area-of-effects building (repair and power distribution for units, metal and power distribution for buildings) and automated rally points for ammo and support/transport units.

I like the idea of having building to stream metal and energy between bases.
Actually, IMHO I think energy and metal storage are kind of silly in a streaming economy (they are just a bonus to how long you can miss-manage your economy),
while having streaming building to distribute power and metal across and between planets would be very interesting, especially if the delivery is delayed (since it would tap into the resources). However, this would considerably blur the macro view and complicate the whole system.
Then distribution would be detrimental to instant access to energy and metal.

Re: Logistics (ammo, fuel, electricity, building materials,

I don't really like this idea. The devs are going for awesome not real. And these super advanced machine units would almost definitely be able to generate everything they need. And about resource transport............... I don't know, its a sci-fi game!
The machines would probably have some portal for small things like supplies and ....batteries?


PS: Wouldn't all these complicated add-ons make an very different game? :?: :?

Re: Logistics (ammo, fuel, electricity, building materials,

Fourth'd. The TA landing pads and carriers were great, though they were just for health, not ammo. Fuel was annoying in PA though, none of that.

Regarding ammunition, I don't know, it doesn't have to be complicated. Earth 2150 had limited ammunition for units and it was resolved by simply having supply choppers that would head out and refill them. You could set the level at which they auto-refill or call for a refill manually. Wasn't a big deal, but it was an effective way to gradually blunt an attack - or at least provide a reason for using non-ammunition-based weapons.

Re: Logistics (ammo, fuel, electricity, building materials,

Fifth'd, having to refuel/resupply aircraft is really the only reason to have aircraftcarriers in the game (since that is why they were invented IRL in the first place).