Metal, Energy, and Build Time

I do like that because planet with 10 Metal spots for the same is a heck of a lot more interesting than a map with 40 Metal spots that only produce 25%, it actually makes them worth LESS because The extractor costs the same, but takes 4 times as long to pay itself back and you'd need a whole more more extractors to boot.

You're worried about a difference that isn't actually a difference. on the 10 Metal Planet if there are only 2-4 Metal spots in no-mans-land even one is just as valuable as 4 of your 25% Metal Spots, but a lot more economic and streamlined.

Mike

Given that we are having battles in planetary systems, I do not think that 10 metal spots would necessarily be a metal poor planet unless you want huge planets all the time. What if you want a metal poor moon? The issue is that sometimes you would need to have a small planet, with multiple strategic resource locations, but still poor overall resources.

The inverse is why should a resource rich planet need tons of metal spots (which it would if all metal spots produced the same amount of metal)? Why not just a normal number but each produces 200% normal metal?

I like the part where you quoted my posts without having read it as you just parroted everything you've already said without actually talking either of the main points I Raised.

Again, it's all about the total number of Metal spots and their proximity.

Back to our "Metal poor" planet with 10 Spots. 1v1 and each player has 3 Metal Spots with 4 in no-mans-land. It doesn't matter that there is only a total of 4 spots in no-mans-land, what matters is that if you can control all 4 you've more than doubled your income, and the fact that even controlling 2 almost doubles your income.

And because you totally glazed over it, here is the other very important point;

Mike

First I said "you can not creating a low metal planet with a large number of metal spots".
You said I stuff about a 1 vs 1 planet with 10 metal spots.
Then I said "I do not think that 10 metal spots would necessarily be a metal poor planet unless you want huge planets all the time."
You also have been ignoring a number of my points:

What is your point?

I am not advocating putting 40 low metal spots on a low metal planet (unless it is a large planet that is supposed to support a large number of players, or the planet is designed to make the players spread out thinly).
Why is less metal spots more interesting? I think what matters is the number of metal spots relative to the number of start locations and the total size of the map, not some arbitrary unsubstantiatable claim.
Also why should not a planet be able to have slower returns than another?

New Argument
By making all metal spots the same value you can not adjust the resources on a planet without effecting gameplay. If you have a map with 10 metal spots, for 1 vs 1, then you can not decide to double metal to have a high resource version without requiring larger or more crowded bases, and making the no man's land spot larger. (Also you can not halve the metal value and...).

Some people like high resources maps, some like low, why not let them change things easily in the planet editor rather than having them alter the position and number of metal spots?

How TA did stuff
In TA (without expansions) there were three or four size metal spots for each terrain type. These sizes were small, medium, large, and huge. To give you an idea of the variability in values for a "Green" planet they were valued at 86, 127, 187, and 223. For a "Desert" planet they were 56, 112, N/A, and 223. For a "Metal" planet there were no metal spots but the "surface" metal was usually 255 (other types of planets also had surface metal but usually very little). Now I like TA, and many others do as well, and one nice thing about was that there were so many options in designing maps, and a wide verity of maps to play. If we decide that all metal spots are worth the same, we loose the ability to make maps like we could in TA.

This is all getting very out of hand.

Look, it is very simple. Every mex is worth 1 metal per second. If you want a "rich" area, then you simply make multiple mex spots very close to one another. There is zero functional difference to having one mex spot be worth more, but that approach is much less clear to the player.

OK, perhaps not zero. You do actually have to build more mexes. But the actual cost of the mex is (and must be) negligible. If you control the territory, you just cap the mex. The cost of the mex should be completely irrelevant compared to the cost of controlling the territory.

SupCom 2 had expensive mexes, and it was retarded beyond belief why they did it the way they did.

Mexes take up space. The more space you have to defend, the more spread out or incomplete your defense are. One some maps there are so many mexes in a small area you pretty much have to choose either to build defenses or mexes. This is fine if you want the map/planet to pay that way, but what if the map/planet creator does not? Should not a map/planet be able to influence gameplay? This map is good for turtles, it has a small number of rich metal deposits. This map is good for octopuses, it has lots of metal spots everywhere. This is a slow map for octopuses, it has lots of metal spots everywhere, but they produce little metal...

I watched the preview a couple times, and I never saw a mex extraction location once. What I did see was a bunch of extractors that looked like they were built right next to each other. Maybe this discussion is moot? Maybe mass extractors are like Zero K where you can't see them without the extraction layer turned on.

It's funny how GPG never used Oil as a resource considering the name of the company, every extractor ever has looked like an oil pump and mass is literally everywhere thus making the idea of a mass node rather obnoxiously silly.

Ledarsi: be quiet if you are going to state you opinion as a fact without defending it. The price of Mass Extractors in Supreme Commander 2 is good, because it made the cost of expansion a tactical decision. You see what I did there?

I think the main aim should be for simplifying things so that people, especially new people to the game do not stall out. We want a broad player base and we want this game to be as enticing to multi-player strategists as Star Craft. I know that is a high goal, but it's not out of reach by any stretch of the imagination.

1. Allow players to upgrade their mexes like FA.
a. Do not turn off mexes while they are being upgraded.
b. Maybe instead have mexes gradually increase to maximum output on their own rather than have a node to micro.
b. Aim for a consistant metal:energy:build time ratio but have exceptions.

Engineer may be building a wall which might require some metal but little to no energy and build time, a Sumo which also requires a lot of metal and a significant build time or a Sniper which doesn't require a ton of metal but is so fracking awesome that the energy and build time cost is very high. I love BLODs.

Nuclear weapons don't require a lot of mass, but they require a lot of processing.

Microchips don't require a lot of mass, but they require a lot of processing.

Food for thought. I think build time and energy should be hand in hand, but that's just me.


As far as mass extractors go, I wouldn't mind having some special 200% ones in clutch locations for fun, but I would agree with Mike that having below 100% extractors is not good. It just depends. We all know we will mass convert at some point in the game anyway if the game is like TA and the planet isn't Metal Heck. I think the tiny extractor locations were kind of annoying, but I can live with them if the designers want them.


Keep in mind that energy will be used to fire weapons or at least they were in TA. Red lasers cost nothing or practically so, Green lasers hurt and cost more, and Blue Lasers generally caused death and cost a massive output of energy thus they were called BLoDs because they were Blue Lasers of Death.


While we are on the topic of Economy. I am at my heart a defender of good **** locations. This concept of expansions is an area of Star Craft that PA could benefit from immensely. There should be reasons for multiple towns and cities of machines on my planets in strategic locations.

I think the main aim should be to build an "Awesome" game engine with decent resources (i.e. units, textures, models, and so on).

Personally I think that TA was more forgiving the new players than Star Craft, and easier to learn. If I had to guess at why Star Craft was so popular (outside of Korea), I think it would have more to do with the company that made it then being a superior strategy game to TA.

I would like that.

I do not know how I feel about that.

For balance reasons, I think that for each type of unit (naval, air, orbital, land, fixed) at each tech level should aim for a consistent ratio, but there should be wiggle room for balance, and leeway to allow things that would not otherwise fit in (like really late game stuff).

That makes more sense to me then metal, but for things with low energy cost (like the wall you mention) it could be problematic.

The low metal ones slow the early game down which is a feature some people like, and can focus the map more on the fighting aspects of war than economics. Some people even like maps with no metal.

I think it would be interesting to explore the effects of a extractor that does not need to be placed on top of the metal spot by rather only near it. I mean, it should be able to drill in more directions than just down, we have that technology now.

There is practically no difference between having one mex worth 4 metal per second, and four mexes each worth 1 metal per second right next to each other. The only difference is you have to spend 4x as much metal on the actual mexes. Which, in TA, would be a break-the-bank sum of 200 metal for the lot. The idea that "they take up space" does not hold water. Even in TA, to say nothing of FA, mexes are not large structures- you can build anything around them easily.

If you want to have a turtle-centric map, then have a few locations with high concentrations of mexes. If you want an octopus-type expansion map, then evenly space the mex spots at a significant distance from each other. There is no reason why the same map couldn't mix this up, or have any other distribution of metal the map maker wishes, without ever using anything other than uniform-yield mexes.

And the only difference between stating something as fact and stating it as my opinion is if I include the words "I think" or some such before the statement in question, and the bald fact that I am writing it should make that sort of qualification irrelevant anyway. Everything I say or write is obviously what I think, and you shouldn't accord it any more weight simply because I elected not to preface my words with "In my opinion." I imagine you must have a very hard time with the written or televised news, if an opinion post on a forum smacks of actual objective fact to you for such flimsy reasons.

That said, expensive mexes discourage expansion, and they make expansion require more time to pay for itself. This has a negative impact on gameplay, because the other player has to build mexes before you can raid them and deprive your opponent of the lost mining time by having a dead mex instead of an operating one. But that is a whole 'nother topic.

Edit: My argument here was based a attributed quote were I confused what OrangeKnight and ledarsi said. Sorry ledarsi.

Look at the attached picture, does it look crowded? I think those moho metal extractors take up significant space. That works for this map, as the hill on "King of the Hill" is supposed to be hard to hold, but what if they did not want to make it hard to hold the hill? (ignoring that many units have trouble shooting down effectively)

You may say it has a negative impact on gameplay but as I stated before some people like maps that have relatively more expensive metal extractors, why not support maps like that. I suppose you do not like maps like Metal Isles, Seven Islands, or Core Prime Industrial Area either, as these really do not encourage expansion.

Don't attribute what OrangeKnight said to me and then claim I am being inconsistent. It makes you look dumb.

Metal maps are boring because you have unlimited resources. Some players like to play them for precisely this reason, because there is no real territory control, just TONS of units on the map, fighting.

I fail to see what the size of mexes has to do with the price of fish. On King of the Hill, there is a lot of metal in the middle. Why would having uniform mex value change that possibility in the least? As a matter of fact, TA, and even SupCom, had a lax standard value for mexes, subject to variation, which is the only reason why there are multiple spots at all, instead of a single one worth that much metal to begin with. In order to maintain the fixed cost of two types of mexes (mex and moho) it was necessary to have a nominal range of metal value, about 0.5 to 2.5 if I recall correctly, I could be mistaken. Most maps tended to have spots worth roughly the same amount across that map, also.

What are you talking about? Extractors must always cost the same, it is one of the parameters of the game. I suppose you could have meant that less profitable extractors yield less and cost the same to construct, making them relatively more expensive. However if this were true it would incentivize expansion, provided there are spots on the map to which you can expand (i.e. Painted Desert- cheap mexes, yield was very low-->expansion to many mexes, relying on distance and lack of intel to keep them safe).

The factor that discourages expansion is low potential gain from each mex, considering time and risk. In SupCom 2 a mex is 200 mass, and takes nearly three minutes to pay for itself. Consequently, building a mex is a large short-term loss (much like building an expansion in Starcraft, which is a large short-term loss, but is much more productive when active). As a result, it is uneconomical to construct a mex if you are not reasonably sure it will live for at least that long. That means building mexes not immediately controlled by you is a bad idea. In FA, a mex is 36 mass. It pays for itself in 18 seconds. You literally do not care about how much it costs. The main cost of it being destroyed is the income lost while the extractor is dead, not the cost of the extractor. Consequently, the player always builds them on any available spot, creating targets for the other player to raid and deprive their opponent of metal. The task of making them also requires constructors, further populating the board with assets, and creating a decision about building constructors to cap mexes or combat units, as both have value out on the board at all times.

I've got to agree here. Map control is not nearly as important in SC2 as it is in FA, and I think using the FA model would work best here. And in FA, you don't actually defend a lot of the ones you cap, simply because it wouldn't be worth it. In fact, most of the mass spots aren't control points at all, other than some expansionary spots. A lot of them are loners. Instead of trying to defend them, you keep capping and capping, trying to maximize your economy. It's easier to get ahead of your opponent, but also easier to lose that advantage. It makes for some very interesting play.

Sorry.

King of the Hill would work with uniform mex values (assuming they are not too high) but if you wanted to make the Hill more easily defendable, without altering the size of the map, you could simply have fewer higher value metal deposits.

I get that metal deposits vary from 56 to 233 (which I stated in previously, which about a 1 to 4 ratio, and is pretty close to .5 to 2.5) but what are you getting at with the rest of that statement?

It varies from map to map, counting only cavedog maps at least.

That is what I mean by "relatively more expensive".

OrangeKnight previously stated that low value metal spots make make metal extractors relatively more expensive. You (ledarsi) later said how expensive metal extractors were bad for gameplay. I assumed you were stay on the topic of resource normalization's effect on gameplay (which you brought up) rather than restating that you dislike SupCom's mex price (there is no argument here about that).

Also back to something that came up on page 2:

You never responded to that.

The poll lacks one option that was mentioned in another thread: Making metal and energy wholly distinct. Metal is used to build stuff, energy is used to keep structures running and to power certain units and special attacks. Like in most Westwood games.

I do not want to add another option (which really just a special case of some of the above options), because this poll has a good number of votes in it (and adding an option clears the poll). If you really want a poll on that issue, ask Pawz to add one to "Rethinking the Resources - Energy".

I prefer keeping metal/energy/build time costs independent.
Some cheap units take a long time to build, some expensive units build quickly. It's down to balance.

I liked Forged Alliance's cheap t1 mexes, as it meant territory control was important even into mid-game.

I agree with sal0x2328 regarding the value of metal spots. Variable spot income can be interesting because it does cost a bit more to expand to a few doubled up mex spots. When you add mex upgrades in to the equation the dense spots are more valuable because presumably upgrades are fairly expensive and need more defence.

Whelp, I think the point I was making got explained fairly well by this point, and from what I've read I'm sticking too it.

A Uniform Metal Value system allows for all the same flexibility with less complexity as the Variable system. That's Win-Win.

Mike

I missed that comment about having planets with variable energy output based on local conditions. That is actually quite a good idea- the difference being that the condition would be present everywhere on the planet uniformly. Planets closer to a star, or in orbit around a star with more intense emissions, would generate more energy from solar. That actually sounds quite good.

Cheap metal extractors with low yield are different from expensive extractors with the same yield. It does make them more expensive, and they do take longer to pay for themselves as a result. However if your mex is 36 metal, the difference between a yield of 2 per second, and 0.5 per second is not enough to ever discourage you from always building that mex on the 0.5 spot. What results from this, is building just a few mexes is a suboptimal strategy compared to mass expanding to many mexes in order to increase your metal income as much as possible.

This is not the same condition as having a high cost mex to begin with, although it does tend in that direction. The main distinction is, as I said before, cheap mexes pay for themselves in a sufficiently short time that the player ignores the cost of the mex. The loss for the mex being destroyed is the metal that would have been mined in the time before the mex is reconstructed, not the cost of the mex. Even for lower-yield mexes, if the cost of the mex is low, then building them everywhere still makes economic sense. Building TONS of mexes in this circumstance actually increases the odds that some of them will survive for a long time, and the structure itself is easily worth the risk to build in all circumstances.

If mexes are expensive, then there is a direct economic harm from having a mex destroyed because it will cost significant resources to rebuild it. More importantly, if mexes are expensive, then you have to decide whether you can afford to risk building it in the first place. This is not territory control- deciding when to expand like this is a simple binary decision: do I need the cost of this mex in other things right now, or can I wait 6 minutes? This is a boring decision, subject to optimization, and encourages very passive, small play because expanding everywhere represents a huge investment of resources into extremely high-risk assets. Your enemy can easily kill those mexes within several minutes. The economic decision of whether to build a mex or not is a boring decision, exciting to people for whom the optimal answer is not obvious, much like Tic-Tac-Toe is fun for people who don't realize it is a solved game.

The fact that the mex is on the board is what is strategically interesting, as it creates a target, and fosters territory control gameplay. During the time in which you control the terrain, provided you have constructors, you earn metal from that terrain. If the enemy pushes you out, they kill your mexes and build their own, at least until you retake it again.

Expensive mexes encourages constructing a few, readily defensible mexes, and then switching over into combat materiel rather than investing in economy that has a negative expected value due to high upfront costs, time required to pay for itself, and the cost and prevalence of enemy assets that might destroy it.

Note that in SupCom 2, a tank is about 40 metal, and a mex is 200. In FA, a T1 combat unit is about 50-55, and a mex is 36. The expected value of additional mexes drops off quickly, and that of combat units rises quickly as well. There is a strong strategic incentive in FA to having a very robust economy due to the higher cost of tech levels, and of maintaining production of higher tech units, whereas in SupCom 2 economic gains translate into numerical strength only.