Nanogel: Economy & Logistics at Unlimited Scale

The concept of a consolidated economic and logistical localization emerged from one the huge logistics threads, along with a menagerie of other economic and logistical systems and variations on those systems. I think the framework is a large enough concept in and of itself to warrant a new thread, as opposed to being confined to the final pages of an already many-page Logistics thread, interspersed with a gaggle of other systems.


Nanogel

The core of the idea is that the player constructs facilities which synthesize/manufacture nanogel- the green substance that lathes use to construct everything in the game. The nanogel is then transferred to engineers and factories for construction purposes.

Nanogel-using units and structures, such as engineers, will have a finite internal nanogel storage capacity. These reserves are filled by being within resupply range of another unit or structure with more supplies than the recipient.

As a gameplay necessity, there must exist a unit, probably a structure, which creates nanogel. For the moment let's call it a supply depot- a structure which has a large internal nanogel reserve, and which spends metal and energy to fill that reserve at a continuous rate.

Suppose that 1 metal and 1 energy together yield 1 nanogel, which can then be transferred to a factory or engineer to be spent. Construction and production consume nanogel from a unit's internal reserves, and do not drain directly from your global metal and energy numbers.


Direct Effects

Engineers are the most significantly affected units by implementing a localized economic system like nanogel. Engineers need to be resupplied with nanogel to construct buildings. As a result, it may be necessary for engineers to make multiple trips to finish expensive projects a long distance away, or build supply depots on-site to continuously manufacture nanogel.

Factories and other base facilities will need a continuous supply of nanogel in order to produce constantly. Consequently, it makes sense to build supply depots near factories to keep them supplied.

A single base's total production will be capped by its nanogel manufacturing capacity, and the player will have to decide how that base should spend its nanogel production; generators, factories, defenses, combat units, supply depots, engineers, etc. etc.


Distribution of Economy

The biggest single advantage of localizing the economy is that weird effects resulting from a universal economy at arbitrary scales go away. Most especially, it creates a disincentive for players to stack their entire economy on a single location and build projects serially. Rather, players will build many different projects in different locations on the map in parallel.

With a universal economy, as the game's scale increases distributed production becomes harder and harder to manage. Income and expenses everywhere affect your economy everywhere else. This means if you are spending too much anywhere, everything stalls. On maps of arbitrarily large size this will become a tremendous problem.

Worse than its weirdness, there is pathological gameplay resulting from very large universal economies. With a single universal economy, it is highly efficient to use all your build power in one place at a time, and focus on finishing one project before beginning the next. Larger maps with more resources allow a player to freely spend the entire map's resources in one place, and finish extremely large projects in a huge hurry, and then relocate to build something else in similar fashion.

The consolidated economy style is still available; just build all your depots in one place. However with nanogel and depots, a consolidated style has consequences now- it creates huge strategic inflexibility to have all your production in one location, and makes it quite difficult to build at a significant distance away from your industrial center.


Localization of Economy

Nanogel insulates each local economy from the universal economy. For example, a group of engineers with nanogel in the tank can keep building even if your economy is in the toilet. Conversely, a local economy can only build as quickly as it has nanogel, even if your universal economy is booming.

The local economy is also very simple- in fact it can be represented as a single number. Producing from an engineer's "fuel tank" of nanogel is also very intuitive for new players, and encourages them to build more engineers in an intuitive manner. These engineers function as workers within a local economic ecosystem with finite resources. Each local economy is then a predictable node of your larger economy, and only drains resources at its nanogel manufacture rate, regardless of current production.

A universal economy in the TA paradigm will have constant income from resource sources, and intermittent or variable expenses as constructors initiate and conclude construction projects.

Nanogel manufacture, on the other hand, is a continuous, predictable expense with a fixed constant cost to your universal economy. In much the same manner that metal extractors and power generators create a constant positive yield by quantity, supply depots are a constant drain by quantity. The nanogel production system smooths out the large fluctuations that are par for the course for a universal economy, with many projects at different rates of drain being started and finished over time. Nanogel production also makes expanding an economy a much simpler proposition. Acquiring more resources directly increases the number of depots from which you can constantly produce.

Where you put those depots is a very important choice. Any particular location needs its own facilities in order to build effectively, but having more in one place lets you build more quickly at that position. The decision of where to site each new depot is a significant long-term strategic decision. Each depot creates a board feature for the other player to plan around, and creates another soft target which, if it is destroyed, will reduce local production. Not to mention that soft targets like depots pair nicely with other facilities- and pretty soon the player has another base in a new area.


Streamlined Logistics

So far I have been focused on the economic aspect of nanogel. However the logistics aspect is equally important. Nanogel still makes sense as an economic system without a logistics (fuel/ammo) system, but in my opinion the logistics system is critical to making a massive scale game strategically interesting. Logistics creates a vast variety of additional unit roles, unit applications, and opportunities for tactics, maneuver, territory control, and restricting mobility and firepower to allow them to be more powerful, with more interesting limitations than just build cost. And most importantly, logistics will govern unit roles and interaction consistently for maps of arbitrary size.

Units requiring ammunition, fuel, repairs, etc. will use nanogel to restore their supplies. The nanogel cost of the unit's fuel or ammo is a aspect of its profile, and can be standardized. The fact that nanogel is used to produce means all players will necessarily have nanogel on hand- the only difficulty is where their supply-using units can access it. It becomes a huge advantage to have secure forward operating bases close to the enemy to resupply your troops, and to deny your enemy bases and territory for the same reason.

Logistics is one topic that has been very significantly discussed, so I will keep this section short. Suffice to say logistical properties of units can create strengths which differentiate, and can create weaknesses to powerful assets to bring their cost down. Cutting off an enemy's supplies for an extended period can cause them to eventually run out of supply-intensive weaponry, and might immobilize their fuel-intensive units. Keeping your supply lines open creates territory control gameplay, adds logistical targets to harass, and creates a variety of tactical moves which leverage your own logistical strengths, or your enemy's logistical weaknesses.

I do think it deserves reiterating- this logistics system is simple and highly streamlined. A unit has only to enter resupply range with any unit carrying nanogel, and it will resupply itself from that unit's nanogel reserves. Supply transfer requires no micromanagement whatsoever from the player- just that there are supplies available. Depots are very logical candidates to resupply lots of units easily, and there are many other possible logistics units from trucks to helicopters to drop pods depending on a player's preference, style, strategy, and current tactical situation.


Conclusion

Nanogel introduces one additional step in common production- a depot manufactures nanogel, which is then transferred into engineers or factories to build. The metal and energy spent to produce is removed from your universal stockpile when it is converted into nanogel, not when the nanogel is used to build a unit or structure. This localizes PA's economy, and has a wide variety of gameplay benefits, especially as the game's scale grows very large.

Nanogel would also be used as a universal logistics resource to resupply the units you have, such as arming them with missiles, or refueling planes. Logistical considerations can be very simple, but still create a huge variety of tricks and tactics to leverage the system to advantage, and whole new dimensions of gameplay to maintain your own logistics, and disrupt the enemy's. This system can be simple and lightweight, with no micromanagement required, and still gain the full strategic depth such a system has to offer.

In sum, I think having a unified system for localized economy and localized logistics makes a lot of gameplay sense, and it can quite easily be done in a simple manner to maximize strategic depth while minimizing complexity and micromanagement.

Rename it Nanogoop, and you're on.

I'm biased as hell towards this idea because I want localised economy, but I'm not sure why you need to convert mass and energy into gel when you can just use mass and energy.

Since there's a fixed conversion rate of;

Code:

m Mass + e Energy => g Gel

You're implicitly making structures built with a fixed m:e ratio.

Units (such as aircraft and boats) can be built with additional m or e, on top of whatever g cost they have. This keeps the hurrdurr high energy aircraft and durrhurr high mass navy people happy.

If that's the case, then why have gel at all? Just cart mass and energy around in engineers.

Zero K is a case study in how a simplified build system with 1 metal = 1 energy = 1 build time captures pretty much all the depth of having an arbitrary system. However it is vastly simpler and easier to use.

The primary purpose of having nanogel manufacturing capacity, apart from engineers, is to act as a local production bandwidth limiter and local economy insulator. This would be fairly similar to having a limited rate that metal/energy can be transferred from a source into engineers/factories.

As a result, queueing a huge number of projects at the same time in a single base will crash that base's nanogel economy, but not your global economy. And vice versa, crashing your global economy might not crash every base's economy simultaneously if they have nanogel.

But having one nanogel count is much simpler than having every engineer carrying two resources. And there really isn't much to be gained from having arbitrary costs and build times anyway.

I am against this idea.

Why?

What so we would have a mass indicator, energy indicator, and nano gel indicator?

No. You have global reserves of metal and energy, just like TA. And each depot, engineer, etc. has an internal nanogel reserve.

BulletMagnet is suggesting that constructors have a separate metal and energy count. This would enable having different metal/energy costs. I think this is unnecessary, and a single nanogel reserve number is sufficient, and assign all constructions an energy cost equal to their metal cost.

I'm not so sure this is a good idea. Why introduce another resource that essentially makes the other two obsolete? If this goes through, you would need to remove the metal and energy bars with a single 'nanogel' bar.

Also, unit fuel and ammo is a very bad idea in a game of PA's scope.

I knew there was going to be at least one who completely misunderstood the way the economy works.

The metal and energy economy cannot be replaced with just a global nanogel bar. Metal requires controlling specific metal spots on the map. Energy can be constructed anywhere, but at a much higher cost. These are the two reagents for all production, and one or the other will be limiting.

This two resource system is completely different from a one resource system. A one resource metal-like system, or a one resource energy-like system, are both totally different from needing both, and combining them together to create production.

In TA, a constructor merges the two and builds right away. The nanogel idea is to separate this into two steps; merging metal and energy at a depot, and then using a constructor or factory to spend it.

And regarding logistics, I agree that any micro-intensive logistics system would be unworkable at large scales. A simple, lightweight logistics system, at which the AI can micro the lowest level reliably, will add strategic considerations without micromanagement.

Yes, but lets suppose that we follow that route. 1 Mass for 1 Energy in construction.

Then we can just give engineers 100 Mass and 100 Energy storage, then make engineers localised economic entities.

My argument is that, ultimately, you don't need a gel aspect to localising economies when you can do the same with the raw goods.

The modification you propose BulletMagnet is mostly identical. The biggest difference will depend on how you suggest engineers should have their internal metal/energy reserves filled, and how this rate is limited. Nanogel is produced in a depot at a fixed rate, draining from your global economy at a fixed rate to do so. You can only transfer as much nanogel to your factories/engineers as you have on hand, or are producing constantly, so this rate is limited. Engineers carrying metal/energy directly might behave differently; you didn't specify this behavior.

In addition, it seems unnecessarily complex to have engineers carry two resources that will practically always be spent together, and where running out of one will make the remainder unusable. It is also much simpler to have one internal reserve.

Exactly.

Then have an energy cost to transfer mass from the global economy to a local one, or remove the energy component from structure costs.

Localised economies (with or without 'Nanagel') sounds about as much fun as having fuel on planes, but for every construction unit and factory across multiple worlds and bases. In addition to worrying about normal resource production, you have the micro of having to turn on/off supply depots in areas you aren't building, or you're wasting resources.

You also waste resources everytime an engineer finishes building and is idle, or walks near a generator, or a factory after building (and if they don't automatically fill, the micro factor goes up x10). You lose resources everytime a factory or engineer is killed with Gel in it's storage. You also have the Starcraft model of "Pylons" (supply depots) being a single target that can shut down a base if taken out. You can't build structures on the front lines, unless you build a pylon first. If you increase the gel storage on engineers to compensate, you increase the possible wastages.

It seems an easy way for an opponent to do alot of damage to you, making the game very "brittle" and causing steamrolling to be possible with very little effort - not a rewarding way to end a game.

It's a strictly more complex and difficult system, with many downsides and problems to try and solve. Doing so would probably morph the game to one that is no longer in the TA/SupCom genre. In another game, this could be great - it's a complete and thought out system, just too complex and difficult for PA, and in my opinion, less fun.

I'm sorry, I DO understand how the TA/Supcom economy works. Although, the wording in my post might tell you otherwise.

I understand that you need both to make nanogel in this case. I also understand that the normal system is based on the idea of having a large supply of both coming in at a standard rate, with the player needing to keep both in check.

What I'm wondering is why we need to create a middleman where there is no need for one IMO. We can get to building using the normal system in 3 steps (build solar + build metal + build factory) rather than 4 with the nanogel system (build solar + build metal + build resource converter + build factory).

At least we agree on something; although I wonder what a good logistics system that can exist in a macro scale would be.

EDIT: Said 5 instead of 4. Woops!

If you want simple, why not add in an economy building that boosts production speed of everything in its reach (meaning they'd also use more resources, probably) but only as far as based on the number of metal extractors (and other buildings of its type) it's connected to?

You can have a power-relay that, when hooked to a single metal extractor, lets all engineers and factories within radius build 20% faster, but if you hook it up to 5 metal extractors, you build 50% faster, and if you hook it up to 20 metal extractors, you build 100% faster. And if the extracts are too far apart, you build a series of relays leading from each to your frontline.

That would let a handful of engineers rapidly construct buildings in your base as well as making base factories pump out vehicles like crazy, while on the frontline you'd need many more engineers (so a bigger investment and a bigger risk) to build properly. It would add a strategic target in the form of a row of buildings that, if you shoot one down, cuts building power in the enemy base by quite a bit and best of all: no micro required.

Just an idea.

I think I'm with Bullet Magnet on this one. I desperately want localised resources, and your section on the benefits of localised economy I totally agree with and it reminds me of why I want localised economy so much!
The argument about global economy leading to focussing all your build power in one place for one project at a time is especially resonant and something I failed to recognise when I argued for local economies in my local/global poll thread. Surely that kind of gameplay lacks the scale that PA is aiming for. Any kind of spread of production is lost and despite the multiple planets battleground, we still end up with one uber base (pardon the pun) and how meh is that.
I would like to see battles where each planet is important, and wars are not resolved in 20 minutes. I think ideally each army should require three or four players to manage the resource and production across the solar system. Conflicts should be widespread, complex and confusing. Surely this is the scale being talked about and aimed for!
So, despite all this though, I don't see the need for nanogel. Like Bullet Magnet says, all the benefits can be gained by localising resources without the need to resort to the addition of a new resource.

To address the concerns of wastage of resources, do it like this:

Nanogel costs nothing. When engineers use nanogel, they apply a drain to your global economy (ie. exactly like TA). Essentially nanogel becomes a 'license to build' or pure buildpower.


Oh, and your commander must be a supply depot too. But I guess that was obvious.

No nanogel.

But why?

Metal.
Energy.

Good day.