Nanogel: Economy & Logistics at Unlimited Scale

You cannot on the one hand have cheap, easy to build factories, and on the other hand have a desire to encourage the player to build infrastructure to connect factories to the front lines. The fastest type of unit transport is to build the unit on the spot – if there are few limitations to building units at the location they are required, the player will continue to do so.

I happen to agree, I just don’t think that localizing build power with the concept of nanogel is the right way to go. It still suffers from being able to concentrate your economy in a single location – except instead of building engineers, you need to build supply depots AND engineers.

Why don’t we just go with what makes a bit more sense – raw materials in the form of mass needs to be transported?

So, for a localized resource I suggest the following:

All Mass for Construction takes time to be transported to the construction site.

I was thinking a very simple, very easy way to implement this with zero management overhead yet with lots of feedback to the player and easy visuals:

All mass extractors are fitted with mass launchers / transmitters, and blocks of mass are constructed and launched toward the nearest construction project based on need. This can be a physically visible block flying through the air, or it can be a simple line between the mass extractor and the factory / engineer with bright sparks moving along the line. Make it visible with a toggle for economy overlay. Etc. I kind of like the idea of the mass being physical blocks – it would be cool if the mass an engineer requested for a project came raining down around the corpse of that engineer.

No extra units are needed, no extra management needed, gameplay is the same, but now you have an incentive to build close to your mass extractors. You have an easy to see visual that lets you identify where your mass is going. And, you also have opportunities for units like a planetary mass driver / receiver that can very quickly transfer mass between planets. (Again, without the big mass driver you’d still get the mass from that other planet, but it would take a lot longer to arrive, slowing down your production)

If I understand you correctly Pawz you want a localized resource, only in the form of metal/mass instead of something which the player creates from mass (mostly a lore justification with no gameplay relevance). Extractors thus serve as supply depots, with an internal reserve and the ability to transfer to other structures (possibly units) with internal reserves.

A mass extractor fills its internal reserve continuously over time. It can transfer its reserves to a nearby factory, etc. to spend those resources. The factory or engineer is thus spending localized metal/mass instead of global metal/mass.

However- and this is key- the transfer process is not instantaneous. It takes time. It has much greater range than my proposed system with near-instantaneous transfer, but only within a short proscribed range. However the travel time would make this system naturally less efficient with distance. Whether this is done by throwing rocks, by a connection line, or using little automated demi-units to move the resource is sort of irrelevant.

It localizes economy and production (around mexes instead of depots which can be built anywhere), it could be used to implement a logistics system if desired. It also fulfills pretty much all of the goals which my proposed system does. I like it.

Yeah I could certainly get behind that paradigm also. It has very similar gameplay effects; the most significant difference being extractors are acting like depots in terms of localizing production around themselves. And extractors can only be positioned at locations determined by the map, where depots draw from global metal and can be constructed anywhere. Using extractors somewhat limits where players can produce, but that's not an unreasonable limitation and I can think of good arguments for both sides about why one or the other would be superior.

How do you? Because this nanogel Idea won't deal with it at all.

Yup you got it Ledarsi. The most significant difference being that there are no extra units/buildings required, the global economy is still globally accessible, and yet it gives advantages to the player who spreads out his production across the map.

Also, don't forget that mass extractors don't have internal storage (at most, a buffer to create the mass blocks) - if their production isn't going to a construction project, it would be going to a storage unit. Same exact dynamic as Supcom, except that building with stored materials means you have to wait for the mass to arrive from your storage location.

I fail to see how any of these are problems? If I've invested that much in engineers something else has suffered. If I'm clever enough to hide a resource farm and my enemy is stupid enough to not scout it why should I be punished for that? The inherent problem here is that people are making a few wrong assumptions.

First one is that economy will scale exponentially and infinitely. It's really more likely to be an S-curve rather than a J-curve. It will likely plateau if not become reduced later on as planets are destroyed. In one of the streams it was specifically mentioned as games went on that the playing board was going to get smaller as land was annihilated.

Second is the idea that exponential growth is bad in a game. It's a GAME. It's also a REAL TIME GAME, meaning I'm really not interested in duking it out for days on end for a multi-player skirmish. Games need to happen in a reasonable timeframe, one way of doing that is rapid power scale climb so that a clear winner can be seen. Again, complicated logistics, and localization makes more sense in a TBS empire builder than in an RTS. There's already going to be multiple battle fields to juggle in a single game, why make the gameplay exponentially more difficult. It's supposed to be fun, not tedious.

Hell even one of the best and most fun TBS rpg games I played had exponential growth to absolutely ludicrous heights. Exponential growth is not a problem in a game.

What does exponential growth have to do with anything? I agree it's not a problem- in fact I think it is critical that PA have an economy that grows exponentially, but with a quite high cost barrier before it starts increasing explosively. A high linear cost to build an exponential economy is necessary.

The issue here is how to get players to spread out across a map instead of building everything in the same place. An exponential economy with everything built in one place as opposed to an exponential economy spread over a planet.

This wasn't a problem in TA.

Players could easily build across the map, building factory's closer to the front in order to prevent the need for transportation.

But then again, if players want to build in one part of the map, why should we stop that?


@Paws are you talking about that video that you linked earlier with that suggestion....I am unsure.

But I am willing to see your idea out as I do have a real soft spot for that game's and games like perimeters bas lay out with the connected towers, beaming energy and resources to where it is needed.

Instead of hap hazardously launching mass, why not exchange that with the way we transport energy (Structure required energy).

Zero-k had the idea that energy transmitters would allow power plants to overcharge mass extractors for more mass a second, and I feel we could use a similar system here to turn a mass deposits meagre output when not directly powered into the full scale thing when it is?

Giving the player networks to maintain and control in-order to sustain their mass deposits, run their factory's, and operate the more powerful defences.

Building factory's on the front line as always means that units are closer to where they need to be without the need for transport, and the networks players will build will of course be vulnerable, making the need for external defences and factory's essential to prevent an enemy from lock off the maps metal from you.

My idea is relevant to Harvest:MA only in that I would like to see an indicator for the player to see where his mass is going. No additional nodes to manage a network or anything. You play just like Supcom: build mexes and factories and engineers.. except that factories /engineers close to mexes get their mass supplied faster than factories /engineers far away.

As for building across the map, the problem has never been one of players building all over the map, but rather, players building in one or two locations and leaving the rest of the map bare except for extractors and light defenses.

The range mechanic, I remember you suggesting it before.

:| I am unsure that it won't just force you to build bases at the mass deposits rather then where you want them to be.

Kinda like the adjacency mechanic.

As so you consider it to a problem when people don't build forward bases?......Humm it would be nice to see a better reason in doing that.

Usually it becomes exceedingly hard to build forward positions due to the number of units running around to pick off engineers.

Say for instance the T2 artillery and TML in supcom, if there was no T3 then naturally these would be your choice for bombardment outside of ships and mobile TML (Similar to TA) Now if bases become harder to siege without artillery then players would naturally need an answer to brake without always just funnelling more meat into the grinder.

So then players would seek the use of the TML and artillery in forwards positions to attack these bases? Maybe we could go for something similar? he use of static artillery to siege more fortified bases, requiring more defences and the accompanying infrastructure to function, then providing safe locations for factory's as well.

Does that sound like a good idea? As I currently have no other ideas for reasons to actually expand like this in a game, other then for resources, or for moving factory's to the front. (And advantage to the SupCom 2 factory's who could be equipped with shields, radar, AA and TML all in one, making them slightly effective all-in-one bases).

That's kind of the point - encourage players to build production infrastructure near resource locations on the map, so that your production is linked to the amount of territory you control.

This is different from a 'forward base' - which is traditionally a gathering point with defenses for your troops to launch or defend against an attack.

So in my suggestion, you would have several heavy production center 'bases' in your occupied territory, with infrastructure in place to move any units you build to the front lines quickly. Then you'd have defensive bases along your territorial perimeter, which would consist of several defensive emplacements and sensor packages to detect and slow down an attack. Finally you'd have forward bases just behind the heaviest of the fighting, where engineers build up turrets and sensors to assist the battle.

Engineers reclaiming mass would operate under the same principle, sending small packets of mass to the nearest construction, so if you're in a battle at the front lines you can use that reclaimed metal immediately for combat operations.

I am not sure the idea clicks in my mind.

It just sounds weird to me.

Seems like Uber has an economical system in mind, according to Sorian's latest blog post. And it seems to be headed in the opposite direction of the whole nanogel mess, instead focusing on making it easier for new players. Not sure how I feel about that, as I never had a problem with TA's original system, but his post could mean anything, so we'll have to wait and see.

there are always mods ^_^

That's easy. It's not a problem. The only issue is making sure players have adequate ability to probe a sector for enemy bases.

Energy could be a problem. There are various solutions to it. Why doesn't anyone read my posts?

Exponential growth is unavoidable. And it is bad because it trivializes warfare in favor of more economic growth. That's why every RTS game ever takes steps to limit and cap economic growth, either with diminishing returns, increasing conflict, or by exhausting old resources to encourage ever increasing expansion.

If you take out metal makers, then TA (standard maps) actually had a fairly low economic cap. It was only Supcom and beyond that gave ridiculous heights, even developing the Paragon as a complete money hack.

There's no reason to do this. Like, at all. If resources are worth fighting over, then woe be to the player who doesn't fight over resources.

Removing radar from ground detection is a huge step in the right direction. Why? Because super vision ruins the point of perimeter expansion and base sprawl. Why expand to an area if it's going to be visible no matter what you do? Forcing stealth generators all over the place just to return to interesting gameplay is no good. If an area has to be monitored with real units, then players are going to hold the land with real units. So scattered bases are simply going to be more useful.

Removing radar is a novel idea.

Mind you, removing shields is also important.

I dunno, Supcom games, especially on big maps, tend to have one or two main bases, and then far flung mexes all over the map that aren't really defended or have any other incentive for the player to care about the area. Players don't fight over those areas so much as just raid / counter raid. Once your eco paid itself off, you didn't have much incentive to build near it.

That was because it's simply more rational to pile all your factories and power together in one place, then pile layers of defence on top of it.

It's not fun.

We need an incentive to build factories, power, and logistics in a decentralised fashion.

That is new, and quite interesting. At the very least, remove Omni and reduce radar range on fixed radar structures.

In earlier games, air units were a royal pain to track by using standard vision. It simply wasn't large enough to cover half a second of air movement. While vision was good enough for ground play (sprawling bases and forcing units everywhere), it made air defense a lot of trouble. When Supcom added radar, the biggest change was how important it was to fight air units. AA systems would keep tracking and shooting bombers as they did huge sweeps around your base.

The basic idea is that radar would keep this "air vision" support role, but ditch the ground support role. It would be very effective at spotting air units, thanks in part to their high altitude but mostly because it has a much higher max LoS. Radar systems would be no more useful on the ground than a giant tower would be, so you get the land sprawl and the air defense all at the same time.

+1 to making cheap long-range radar only work on air units, for all the reasons bobucles describes, and others. That way we get cheap long range detection for fast air units which would be difficult to stop with just vision, and we get a tense vision-based ground war sprawled over area with significant uncertainty and maneuver.

It really is an excellent idea to just have radar work on air units in terms of gameplay, and it's realistic as well.