Planetary Annihilation's Economy System

This. I want a supcom/TA game on multiple planets with asteroids as endgame weapons.

I want the interface and economy to work as I expect it to, with some refinements.

Well, I do think qwerty3d and the Zero-K folks are on the right track here.
Personally, I think that whatever can be streamlined should be, for the only thing to be left would be strategies and tactics, player's mind against player's mind. Any artefact of the interface that gets in the way should be removed if possible. Meaning that anything that can be planned in advance or take one less click should.
This, at last, would be a real strategy game.
(You'll note that I'm quite a fan of Wargame: European Escalation which is promising, despite a few silly interface quirks or AI lacks.)

That said, design by committee is interesting only up to a point. If you're sure to be right, Neutrino, then it's probably wiser to stick to your guns.
We will be more than happy to bring feedback, scripts and mods on that from the alpha, so it won't be too late to fix it if it can work better.


One more point, though. If anything, the automation is what makes Zero-K more accessible, not less. Most of the 'hardcore' part actually comes from having to learn which unit is good at what, and especially how to micro' them.

Neutrino, not to be an *** kiss or anything.

But everything Uber has shown, all the interviews and whatever comments have come from your team on the forums is giving me 100% confidence that this project is in the right hands.

You keep mentioning scaleable, transparent and straight forward with a UI that doesn't artificially limit us.
I think you've hit all the points on the head.

100% agree with you!

yea I've got faith in Neutrino's logic. Everything released so far has been increasing my excitement for this game

So, at the end of the day, a slight adjustment could be made to the economy system description:

to:

• When your energy is drained, the amount of energy builders use is prorated. The metal output is also reduced via that prorated amount. Fabbers and then factories will temporarily pause construction to ensure metal extractors stay at 100% production.

Whether that happens via user input or automated UI script.


On to another topic!

If you pause a factory, should all assisting engineers pause as well? I was thinking about trying to manage your economy and how much of a pain it is sometimes to shut down construction of a factory if it has a lot of engineers assisting. Since it's always more efficient to run the factory instead of assist it, should it just be a rule that pausing the factory pauses all the assisting engineers as well?

That makes it sound like any power loss at all will cause production to come to a complete standstill.

I'm not sure how to make it more clear. We're talking about the scenario where you have 0 energy stored, and more energy usage than energy production. It's been pretty conclusively proven that the best option is to make sure you don't affect your metal production, so a good player will briefly turn off his production to make sure his energy isn't < 0, and a good modder will make a script to do it automatically, after which, the point is moot. It's a pretty small use case either way.

I personally still feel like metal extractors should also obey the power generation rules where they work less with less power, while still draining as much power as normal.

You can't 'work less with less power' and simultaneously 'drain as much power as normal'.

Mex: Produces 10 metal for -100e.
You have only +80e, mex will produce 8 metal per second and use all of your energy (-80e)

If you build another 2 generators for +40e more, mex produces +10 m/s and uses all of its allocated energy (-100e), leaving you with +20 surplus

If you then start a construction project with your commander that uses -40e and -10m, your mex will drop back down to 8 metal per second once your energy storage is empty.

This is called an energy stall. You're using more energy than you are producing and you have none in storage.

If you do nothing at this point, you will start losing 2 metal per second. Ow! Not only that, but if you run out of metal at the same time, your commander will build slower (not as much metal available) AND continue to use the full energy amount to build (-40e).

At this point the clever player will pause his commander, wait for his storage to refill, and then begin production again. Net result, both energy and metal storage have more in them and the commander finishes at the same time as the player who doesn't pause his construction.

And then the initially not so clever player will watch the replay, think hard about it, go online, and find a mod that automatically prioritizes his metal production for him. Next time he plays the clever player, his mod list shows a new mod called "Automatic Power Management Mod", and after the battle, the clever player grabs the mod too.

80% production from the available metal is still better then sporadic bursts of 100% metal.

And It is presumptuous to think that everyone will simply be using mods to change this, because the priority to have the factory's pause when you run out of power and thus save the metal production will just end up shutting down players buildings while showing that the player is now no longer in economic trouble, and that would be annoying as anything.

That or your stuff would be constantly flickering as the factory's switch on and off because the system can't decide if it has enough power or not.

You've got it backwards though.

It's not 80% vs sporadic 100%

it's 100% solid vs 80%.

And yes, obviously in any implementation you need something shouting "FIX YOUR ECONOMY ITS BROKEN"

Now I am just more confused.

In your example you said a mex making 10 metal, costing 100 energy.

With power gen making 80 energy, 20 power required per tick from storage till drained, then: 80% energy efficiency, 8 metal made.

That's solid to me.

You called it sporadic bursts of 100%.

I'm just pointing out that it's not sporadic in either case, so 100% solid is better than 80% solid.

But it won't be 100% solid, solid income but not solid production.

So I say sporadic because the system you are proposing would be on-off in-order to try and maintain occasional 100% during low power over 80% stably.

Igncom, it's not sporadic bursts of 100% production. Over the course of sporadic production it's a net of 100% efficiency.

People who think they agree with Mavor's point of view while making statements like this piss me off because it's flat out wrong.

I'm the one asking for a UI that doesn't artificially limit us.

As do statements like "I'm a casual player so it doesn't matter to me."- If you like playing casually(and online) it should matter to you the most. What methods experts use to remain competitive invariably ends up in all other multiplayer matches.

Not time wise it isn't, over time the sporadic production usually end up being much worse in efficiency due to it stutter stepping everything in the economy.

No automatic factory shut down, because as i described earlier it is not the best. I rather have to manage my economy allone or use/write a script for it then using a solution that tries to optimze it but does only in a way i dont like.

After all there are 3 different things to decide:

• 
  how much energy is needed for non economical stuff.
  How to distribute the non economical energy.
  How to distribute economical energy.

Therefor pawz system aint suited best, because it is not true that maximum metall wins you the game. Maximum production does.

In pawz example it would be best to use 85+5/7 energy on mexes to generate 8+4/7 metall a sec and 34+2/7 energy on the comander to drain 8+4/7 metal a sec. Under the circumstance no other systems use need generate metal and no metall in store. If there is metall in store you want to power mexes even more down.

Also some of you seem to confuse distribution of energy with distribution of build power.
Edit: now i got it. And that can be the systems flaw, you seem to want stuff to prorate over metal which doesnt work as good as prorating over energy. Because give something less metal, it still drains same energy. Give it less energy, it does drain less metal.

Yes time wise, Igncom. That's why I called it a net efficiency.

If for example you have a metal production of 10, but build power to the tune of more than that, and you sporadically activate your build power to match your 10 metal production, saving energy to keep your metal production on full power, your result is a net build power to the tune of 10 metal per tick.

If you just leave everything on and it hits your energy supply, and that hits your metal production, so too is your net build power reduced to the tune of your reduced metal per tick.