Metal Makers

It's also a great example of why design by popular vote is a terrible idea.

This is a tough idea to consider... Because metal makers DO open up a lot of options, but they also encourage turtling. If they were to have metal makers, I think there should be an "area of influence" and you could only extract metal in that area from one metalmaker, so having a dense field of them would be pointless. This would make metalmakers a factor of land AREA, meaning if you want to have a decent income from metalmakers, you have to have a decent land area.

Otherwise you get into the issues others have stated about spending money to spend money.

Were there is a will there is a metal maker... or something like that

I'm a turtle, so naturally I like the idea of a metal maker.
However, I also recognize that a fun and interesting game should encourage not JUST turtling and base building, but also fight over resources.

Thus, a turtling player should be allowed metal makers, however, they should clearly have a weaker econ compared to the player with more map-control.

Don't take it away, just make it less optimal (compared to Sup Com).

As long as metal makers cost a lot of energy, players who expand will get bigger profit than those who use metal makers. So, expanding is automatically more profitable.

The advantage of metal makers are you can put them anywhere. Which means you can defend your economy better. The disadvantage is that you are constantly wasting your resources because of their energy consumption. You must build more and more power generators, which means you are wasting tons of energy compared to those who expand. Also, the other disadvantage is that your metal production is now dependent of energy production, which means that if your enemy destroys your power generators, he also destroys your metal production.

If the metal makers and metal extractors were well balanced, both would be useful, both have their advantages and disadvantages. Extractors are more cheaper but more difficult to defend, metal makers are easier to defend but cost a lot more and are dependent of energy production.

Metal makers should not be more efficient to make and use than actually going and getting the mexes on metal points.

I like turtling. But even for me fabricators are representing worst part of this playstyle.

They cannot be balanced and here's why:
Extractor progression is linear. To have N metal you need to control N territory. Yes, you can contest territory slightly faster if you have strong economy, but it also comes at the price of longer frontline and more difficult defense, so it kinda balances itself out.
Fabricator progression is exponential. The more fabricators you have, the more working builders you can have, the faster you can build more fabricators, which in turn give you even more resources to build them.
You can't balance linear progression with exponential. I'm not saying one of them is inherently bad, you just can't have both for one resource.

Metal Makers should be in the game, but be a really risky strategy. Should give a massive explosion if destroyed.

I made this post in a different thread to discuss this in detail, but it didn't really generate discussion:

The key issue is that metal-makers de-couple how powerful a player's economy is from how much territory he controls. In a maker-less economy, the more territory controlled, the more a player can build and the more territory they can win off an opponent. This can lead to an unfortunate situation where the outcome of a game is already decided as soon as a player grabs 51% of the available metal spots. At this point, the only way a comeback is possible is if the winning player makes a mistake. The way many RTS games set this up is to require micro-heavy player actions which promotes a lot of opportunities for that mistake to occur. However, i think most people already acknowledge that this would not be a good direction for PA to go in.

On the other hand, a maker system allows a loosing player to tactically retreat, turtle a little, and come back swinging with a sudden economy boost. On the bad side, it can provide a way for someone to simply not engage in the primary combat motive (struggling for territory), whilst still developing a game-winning economy.

I don't know how this will play with extremely large maps, containing multiple battlefields, but if the situation can arise where ALL the metal points are either claimed or heavily contested, then there MUST be a secondary economy. Otherwise games will become drawn-out foregone conclusions where there is little incentive for the weaker player to continue playing.

Yeah, but you're completely forgetting that while you're retreating to build makers, I'm whoring them out on the LA d that I now control.

I'm not suggesting that there shouldn't be a mechanism to limit the scalability of a secondary economy. I even propose one such way.

I am saying that there is a strong chance that the complete omission of a secondary economy could make multi-player much more predictable and less fun to play.

Metal makers can be made in a good way and a bad way.
The bad way is something like Supreme Commander 2, where you could spam power generators (which were ofc. cheap), make a few mass fabricators and win the game.
The good way is in Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance, where you can use mass fabricators instead of mass extractors, but they are so inefficient that if you can you always go for the latter.

Imo having them (in the good way ofc.) would add to the game. Maybe not enough to be in the initial release, but definitely enough to be implemented soon after.

metal makers are bad. they remove an aspect of gameplay (map struggle) without introducing anything. if they're too weak they'll be ignored, if they're too strong it will undermine map struggle. it's simply bad design, Zero-K's overdrive system is a good compromise that introduces additional mass for energy without undermining map struggle.

Metal makers should definitely be in the game, I would be incredibly upset if they weren't.

First, one of the things that made TA so great was that even if you were surrounded and cut off from all resources, you could still grow your economy, even if it was extremely slowly. Metal Makers also assured that, regardless of your starting position, you always had a chance to survive. In free for all games, you may be weaker, smaller, and with less territory, but given time and a lot of focus, you could come back from the brink of disaster. Without such a mechanic, you can't win unless you expand.

I love expansion. In fact, I play games just for the expansion aspect and I am an extremely aggressive opponent, but I can't convince my friends to play if there isn't any other way to play the game. If metal makers are not in the game, you are forced to play in a particular way, the way of expansion. Expansion should be an option. But so should turtling, base encroachment, teching up, or whatever. Players should be free to play the game as they want.

Does this mean that extractors become useless? Of course not. Just like in TA, metal makers used an extreme amount of energy to create a tiny amount of metal, and they were destroyed easily. Base level extractors were three times more efficient than the makers, without the energy costs. And having these in the game allows for the truly epic scale that TA allowed. TA had makers and extractors just right.

If you get hemmed in either by a mineral-poor start location or a group of hostile neighbors, you should still be able to improve your lot in the game. It will be much, much more efficient to build extractors. But Metal Makers should certainly still be an option.

I too support the concept of Metal Makers, but understand the criticisms being raised here. The times that I played TA and Supcom I would always use them as a way of avoiding territory control.

Perhaps the idea from crixomix should be given more consideration?

From my understanding the Metal makers would require a full circle around them in order to operate at 100%, but when several are placed in close proximity their efficiency drops. If you had two next to each other, with their circles almost on top of each other, their resulting efficiency is close to 50%, making one virtually redundant. However, this could act as an advantage. In the same way people overlap radars to keep coverage in the event of one getting destroyed, makers could also be overlaped. If one was destroyed then the efficiency of the others would increase to accommodate the reduced overlap.

The advantage of this is that it still encourages territory control as the more spaced out the makers are the better the overall economy. Their placement would essentially act as an adhoc arrangement of metal deposits.

This has some similarities to an old Strategy game called Perimeter. You would build these energy harvesters around the map at any location but you only gained energy from the total area they collectively covered, requiring you to keep branching out to maintain a growing ecomony. The concept is certainly sound, although I don't know you would explain metal harvesting in the PA lore. Perhaps they draw in metal atoms from the surface beheath them, requiring large amount of energy, and explaining the inefficiencies when two overlap.

Anyway, I just wanted to post my support for crixomix's suggestion and add my own ideas

IMHO, Metal Makers are an excuse to add unneeded units to the game. Why do YOU build metal makers?

Answer A: Because I spawned on a spot with little to no metal for reasons X, Y or Z. Well, unless you're in a multiple player army, you are pretty stupid. That's like saying you made a cake out of **** because you didn't have money to buy frosting; why bother making the cake at all?

Answer B: Because I am incapable of expanding further and require additional resources. This is a terrible excuse as well because it encourages turtling. It will make building tons of Power Gen and Metal Makers more efficient than actually raiding and attacking, because raiding and attacking will become too expensive to carry out at the point where you need metal makers for more metal. If you have hit your cap, you have to work with that cap, expand that cap, stalemate or die.

Answer C: Because they were in SupCom and TA. Okay. Answer me seriously now. Except for a Seton's Clutch/Thermo/Otherbigstalematey game. In TA they were half decently efficient, but you were still paying for a spare Fusion AND a Moho Metal Maker for a single Moho Mine; it was often more efficient to take enemy territory. SC2 is not a valid argument in this case because I'm pretty sure Metal Mekrs were actually more efficient than Extractors in that game, due to their hilariously fast turnaround.

Until the latest SC2 patch nerfed them and make extractors MUCH better that is.

Shelf em!

I like how they add alternatives to the gameplay.

If you get a bad spawn and don't have much metal access, you aren't at as much of a disadvantage compared to your opponent who spawned by a bunch.

Use them, or don't use them, it's up to you.

Ultimately, I think the stronger strategy is expansion rather than turtling, but it's helpful extras.

Don't see why not, Most people will never use them, once they realise how inefficient they are.

Fixed.