Planetary Annihilation's Economy System

I like to think of it like a plumbing system: When there's a problem with the pumps or the supply, it's the top levels on the apartment building that lose water pressure first.

Read that idea again, and yeah Funkoff it works if we assume that metal extractors are at the bottom of the chain.

I'd be happy with a system like that, especially if we consider that weapons are going to be working on an internal buffer system anyways - a large artillery sucking up a lot of juice would simply slow down firing if you ran short on energy, in this case.

FunkOff's idea doesnt change anything on the need for manual turning things on and off.
Which is ok if it should be in the game. As in the devs decide.

But i dont get why some of you are jumping on the train that storing mass in an energy stall, and therefore cripple your current building power is good.

I touched on this in my post. Basically, in many situations saving mass is the best thing in the long run. The problem is, it isn't universally the best thing. You do sacrifice some build power, but having extra mass means you can make up the difference in time by building at full speed for longer, later. But you are correct that this halts building, which is sometimes more important than anything.

tl;dr: There's no "one solution fits all" approach as to what should be paused first in an energy crisis.

That is because the metal production was really cheap in SupCom and TA. Saving a few energy per second by turning off mexes simply is a bad choice in almost all circumstances.

1. The problem with FunkOffs idea is that he presumes that "low-demand items" have more priority than high demand items. If the low-demand items are indeed more important to sustain ingame then this system will do well.
2. However there might be critical high demand abilities such as Ubercannon or cloak on the commander that the player might want to prioritize.
3. Then you might also have some unintuitive situations when factories build at a higher metal rate than engineers assisting the factory.
Say that the factory builds at the rate of 20 metal per second for a cost of 20 energy/second while assisting engineers build at 5 metal per second for a cost of 10 energy per second.
When an energy stall occurs the energy will be cut proportionally more for the factory even though it is more energy efficient than the engineers.

Although both point 1 and 2 can be countered by prioritization which can be done manually by turning stuff on and off or by a system which does that automatically according to the players choice.

You have my support there! Personally I don't really have much interest in paying this game modded and such.

I don't like FunkOff's idea. It is some sort of priority system so it has the downside of adding complication. But it also has the downsides of being uncontrollable, unintuitive and non-optimal for Godde's simple factory assist case.

It's impossible to get everything right in the begining, so hope you guys won't mind merging the functions of some mods into the offical version if you find out they are beneficial for the gameplay.

+1

^ Agreed.

I just don't want to get into modded multiplayer games because everyone has their own view on what's best. Vanilla or bust!

General 'game improvement' type mods should and will be the testbed for ideas and concepts that are unproven and untested. With a keen developer / player feedback cycle, I'm imagining that the good mods will float to the top, and Uber will take them on board and integrate them into the main game. And hopefully some good spinoff mods will surface as well, and be officially endorsed by Uber as sufficiently awesome even if they're different from the base game.

I wrote this on page 24 not much changed in the discussion it seems.

If mass is stored on energy drain you will have to build surplus power gen to get it or of storage. You are still ending up building more power gen than regular production needs. Might as well do that in advance then.

I still feel neutrino is right. Making mexxes free of power loss is a good compromise.

Oh and also, reading that some of you guys were suggesting neutrino was making a bad judgement call on this really got me mad.

I am sure there may be experienced gamers and devs amongst you there. But acting like that over here vs a professional game dev is bad manners and it will only help to get the devs less prone to share stuff.

I'm glad to see how resource mechanics are being implemented. Similar enough to classic TA style.

Or... good players find it's good play to micromanage their build power to never use more energy than their metal. Bypassing the 'requirement' for surplus power plants you envision, because it never existed to begin with, everything was just hidden under an oblique user interface.

Good for you, you're mad at me. Now explain why I'm wrong.

I'm sure the devs can tolerance some criticisms, it's not like they never meet them before, and face them during the development process is better than face them after the game released.

ACM I have made my posts around page 24, 26. I am not going to repeat my views. Especially because that is what they are, just like your views are that. Opinions is not something that are debatable like this. I think that is obvious from this thread.

You make this about right and wrong even though it is a subject that is filled with personal opinions about how the game should be played. Looks like to me this discussion was over around five pages ago.

I am sure they can that does not mean we should not be polite. Criticism is good. But what I have seen here is undermining a professional devs choices because some people are not getting what they want. And that after a long discussion where arguments and views were heard and responded to.

But let's leave that anyway, since it is off topic.

Subjectivity is subjective too, what you believe is about personal tastes is about right and wrong in some other people's views, I don't see anything that make your belief better than others.

+1