Metal: thoughts and suggestions

This is the place to give your thought and suggestions on metal distribution and quantity.

Before posting know:

• The devs are still iterating on metal distribution and balance.
  
• There are currently 2 sliders in the planet generator to decide metal distribution and quantity but not yet implemented!
• Don't just complain but give your thoughts and constructive suggestion on how metal distribution and quantity should be implemented.

Encourages aggressive early combat to take metal back and forth, over passively collecting tons of metal without needing to go into danger zones for it.

That being said, there is usually what, 6 metal spots around now? I wouldn't mind by 20% you mean 1-2 more. I could dig 1-2 more.

Did they do any other changes to metal? like increase metal-per-point? I feel like I cant get a good feel for mexes-per-buildpower anymore, like it changed a whole lot.

The current version forces players to expand and use metal storage which wasn't used at all earlier. I think this is good.

You can make custom planets with different amounts of metal points soon(?).

I think there is a sufficient amount, just the commander isn't always able to start near several to jump-start the game.

This is way better then earlier, forced expansion is the way to go, or the game will be stale.

I would say that there definitely needs to be a bit more metal by default. I like the whole "encourage expansion" thing, but right now they're just a little too sparce for comfort. I had a continent with 5 metal spots, covering a large percentage of the planet. That was bad.

It is better than earlier. Can't tell if perfect, but it also hides the generator's poor algorithm with making metal spots fair as well.

The difference used to be 6-7 more closer to one player than another. Now, it might be 1 or 2 and the second one is always farther away so it is harder to defend.

I am not sure, but metal got a buff didn't it? I mean per point. The income from 5 metal points seems to remind me of 10 old ones.

Consider that a standard game will have more then one planet, having five on one "continent" dosent look so bad anymore, you just need to spread out more and fight for them early. Thats the ideal situation in my opinion (Some of the best strategy games i ever played uses a simular system where you fight from the first minute to the last over resources, while at the same time trying to get a strategic advantage. It makes a game intense).

We're pretty happy with the overall metal quantity. Not the distribution though. More thoughts in a few hours.

the amount is far better, but uniform distrubution across a planet is a definite problem =p

Garat i'm sure you guys fix the distribution I'm not worried about that. But it would be nice if we could get an option in the planetary generator how rich the planet is with metal, like the options
Metal quantity:
- poor
- normal
- plenty - rich

This way you could change the way to play the game. Some players prefer little quantity of metal some do prefer allot of metal. This could mean a game setting better for turtle or rush games. Also if you could make could chose how rich a planet is with metal it would be an big encouragement to travel to an other planet first to get a huge metal advantage.
lets say (start planet) earth planet - metal poor and moon - metal rich i would really wanna travel to the moon to get to the metal.

Not sure if I like the metal spot placement right now. I'll have to play the game and observe the meta game to see how it works out.

After one or two games I agree with uber here, the new metal placement seems to work well. Air fabbers now have a use (faster to get to them), and it reduces excessive spamming (still a tactic tho!).
The other thing to remember is you are fighting over multiple planets, not just one. and they may introduce the egg still!

and I'm loving this new build, and look forward to more. Also like all the activity on the forums the past 3 days. It has really sprung to life.

It seems like you can do alot more with less metal.

But yeah there arent to many metal spots atm, and for me at least half of them seems to be buggy as in they refuse to place the metal extractor :S that doesnt help it.

I also like the new metal quantity. You actually have to expand and defend territory and upgrade your mex and build storage.

The problem is air atm with the current metal, people who go air can dominate you so hard, they get mobility and can take over the whole map. Even the ai is more or less unstoppable because you dont have that mobility unless you go air as well.

If you look in the system editor you will see there are a couple of sliders for metal. They just need to be implemented.

This. I don't see how you didn't notice the greyed out bars at the bottom of the planet edit.

Would solve 95% of the complaining if implemented... as well as cause only 25% more complaining, because people will like the metal being less when they re-compare it to being more and will want to be warned that they are joining a game where someone turned metal up.

Btw, important settings like that should show in the pregame lobby next to the planet, in case you weren't thinking of it.

The problem is that if everyone is always adjusting the metal aspects of planets it will be tough to figure out the 'standard' for the Core PA gameplay.

Mike