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

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

Wargame: European Escalation handles logistics very well, but it doesn't have base building.

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

Required Reading: PSA - Awesome VS Realism

Mike

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

Honestly, I would highly recommend everyone look at the technology of today. Nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers have for all intents and purposes unlimited fuel. I am pretty sure tanks and things can have the same as well as aircraft for that matter.

Energy grids in Zero K are awesome. They directly benefit your mass extractors that are connected to the grid, but they don't deny mass if the extractors are not connected. They are also required to fire super weapons such as artillery and stationary BLoDs. Which makes your grids strategically important like oil pipe lines, without allowing them to easily make or break you. Honestly, the concept could use some work in the context of TA, because in TA all BLoDs just cost a lot of energy to fire which is fine and allows you to make them mobile.

The only ammo used in a TA style game that I know of is in Zero K for super advanced bombers. These bombers strike with the strength of a very heavy hit, destroying most units instantly in a large radius. Requiring players to stock pile strategic nuclear payloads goes with the theme of stockpiling ICBMs in Total Annihilation. Maybe bombers can have regular bombs as well as pickup one tactical nuclear bomb that has to be produced and armed on a bomber.

If we do not allow mass harvested to be used off planet then transportation of units and structures will have to be made massively easy. I don't mean cheap necessarily, but I do mean that setting up ferrying for units and resources needs to be relatively easy to manage for the players and the cost of entering space to ferry back and forth needs to be cheap. That puts a lot of pressure on Uber to fill in all the gaps and to forsee all the problems that will make such a system anti-fun.

Ok, so forget everything Funkoff made generalizations about and say we just focus on the one specific issue he raised, which is that he doesn't want players magically using mass from their moon on their planet and vice versa. The same can be said for their asteroids, the moons of a nearby gas planet, a gas planet to it's moons, etc.

I would argue that if we can't magically do it, then we need to be able to do it easily with transports. In Age of Kings there were merchants that traveled back and forth between allies that increased gold for both kingdoms. We could equip transports with mass storage capacity or create units (engineers?) that store mass that can be transported. These could go back and forth between planetoid mass storage locations and ferry mass. This could also work with unit cannons with the proper AI. The important thing is that it needs to be super easy and maybe even automated. The same thing goes for transporting units, because people want to use their units and there is already too much advantage to straight artillery, nukes and now KEWs.

I think this kind of realistic stuff is nice and adds to the immersion, but is the least important part of the design for me and I don't want it getting in the way of the important stuff: cool fun units diversity and a multitude strategic options.

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

What about something that is a mix of awesome and a small hint of realism, in the form of a planetary rail gun that can do two things:

1. Has a construction platform with a build queue, and it can construct different size / mass of 'slug' projectiles.
2. Once the mass slug finishes it is fired from the surface of its host planet to the target planet, which must have a special orbital unit to make use of the slugs.

This orbital unit could be some kind of "Orbital catcher", Circular in construction, but super-magnetic such that the slug is caught and slowed to a crawl when it goes through the center. It would catch the slugs and deconstruct them. And it would have to be upgraded to reclaim the mass in the slugs faster. Once it finishes reclaiming the mass, it will go into the player's ready-storage.

The counter to the Slug catcher would be a radar unit that can scan over extrasolar system distances, enabling other players to see the supply line in effect. The slugs couldn't be intercepted en route, but they could be caught at the target planet, by the other player(s), either by building their own Orbital slug catchers, or capturing the existing Orbital slug catcher set up by another player. Or they could just destroy the poor player's own Catcher and watch the mayhem as their own slugs peppered any units / buildings on the surface...

An alternative to the radar, could be a unit that creates an interceptive gravity well to pull the slugs to planets of their own choosing. (or both the radar and the gravwell)
Another alternative to extrasolar system slug slinging could be a type of variation on the Orbital catcher that teleports the slugs between systems, but can only be constructed at the outskirts of a solar system.

Any slugs that don't have a waiting slug catcher at the target planet will impact on the surface of that planet, potentially damaging any buildings or units it hits. So it could double as a very expensive siege weapon.

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

I have to say that 'bastilean' anf 'mygoodfellow' both bring up some very interesting points. Combining the best of both would make for an excellent system that covers most, if not all, of the bases for this very thread.

I give you both thumbs up/diamonds/(enter misc congratulatory term here).

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

I don't get your points, in TA every unit was consuming a bit energy every second, so if you had too many units you weren't able to build structures, etc. and if you ran out of energy the units could not do properly what you wanted them to do, so I think the system of TA is totally sufficient for logistics, and I hope in PA it will be the exact same.

Also +1 to bastilean

About the space mass and energy transport:

I would be fine only seeing that some kind of energy transport stuff is going on (orbital lasers, etc.), with no actual need to build them myself.
Like you settle another planet, and instantly there is some kind of space connection you can see.
The costs for this should already be covered by the settlement unit you need to deploy.

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

I don't remember the units have a basic upkeep cost, unless it was so low it be near negligible until you got a lot of units. I do think I remember that all the units used small amounts of energy to attack, That would have explained the odd sudden changes in resource consumption I kept seeing. I do like the concept relating to the orbital energy linkup. It reminds me of that one super-defense building in Zero-K and SupCom that launched a satellite once it was built, to attack with. It would be like once the rocket gantry is built then it auto launches the link-up sat, though that wouldn't exactly be the first building made unless it also served other basic functions.

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

I know this is a little late, but I made a thread about the mass driver idea that people were talking about earlier:

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

To me ammo/fuel for land/naval units would be annoying micromanaging and not necessary for realism. But ammo for air units (at least bombers) that can be restored in air staging facilities would be nice. (like in supcom, but not with fuel, but ammo) Because of their higher speed air units can be recharged fast and still you have to plan your air attacks properly. Limited ammo for fighters would be interesting too, as you could catch air units on their way back to the base if no other air units are sent to protect them.

Seperate ressource storages for planets/moons/asteroids that can be connected with a certain structure have some problems:
- Displaying the different storages makes the GUI more complex.
- Selecting the amounts of exchanged ressources manually before building anything would be too much micromanaging. At least there should be the option of sending ressources with certain rates, as you may want to build units in factories with the ressorces of another planet, which would still be too much micro, because it requires permanent adaption.
- You will build such an exchange structure at a well protected place on every planet. it would hardly make a difference to just having only one ressource storage..

..except it is possible to intercept exchange connections with orbital units, like it was said before. But to limit micro, connected planets should just share all ressources, because otherwise you would always have a lot of trouble with exchanging ressources before you can build anything. There should only be a single structure on the ground or in the orbit enabling the connection, which can be intercepted by orbital units. The only thing you can adapt should be the percentage of ressources that remains on every planet if the connection is disrupted. The connecting structures would always adapt virtual exchanging rates automatically in a way, that the storage of every planet equals its designated percentage.

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

So how is it that I can build this shield generator at the opposite side of the map to my base with no support structures?

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

With your suggestion about the mass driver as a siege weapon, maybe it could be an expensive, but strong Kinetic energy weapon, and if you fire it long enough at a planet, you can cause massive damage to the planet.

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

In world of future...

Well, actually, problem is that "logistics" are core game mechanics, so they could not be changed without dramatic change of everything.

For example, Perimeter is RTS with explicit electricity path. And it's mechanics are very different from conventional games. More or less, a lot of resource management reduce possible scale of game. Most insane examples are tactical RTS with limited number of units and ammunition. PA is going to opposite direction.

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

Thanks for bumping a thread that hasn't been posted in for well over 2 months and then adding nothing to the conversation.

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

I'm not going to read 8 pages of comments (sorry) but if you like this kind of high logistics game, here's a few that do it fairly well:

- The Total War series. (Not sci-fi, but it has all the realism, from the optional "you can only see through the eyes of your general" to limited arrows, troops that tire, a realistic morale system, etc)

- Sudden Strike. WWII. Oldie, but it had realistic unit armor, limited ammo (and I think fuel), supply routes, etc. Made for a pretty realistic battlefield.

- Space Empires. Part V has so much in the way of logistics that it gets ridiculous. A micro-managers dream! Really good game. Sci-fi. Turnbased/Realtime blend, like Total War.


But I don't think this kind of stuff belongs in PA.

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

If you can't be arsed to read what everyone else has had to say on the topic why should anyone give a **** what you have to think about it?

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

He can always read the first posts.

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

I didn't say you had to, did I?

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

How are you many to erect forward bases on planets you are invading when you have no resources?

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

If resources are gonna be local, you obviously want a way to transport metals etc.

And if at one point you can teleport units, you definitely can teleport metal

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

This discussion has been done, beaten to death, done again, pummeled once more, and then given another go.

You can find the graveyard here:
viewtopic.php?f=61&t=37176