Planetary Annihilation's Economy System

I don't know if this has been answered yet, is the terrain of a placed metal extractor going to effect output or are there going to be metal points on a map like in TA?

Considering that Mavor confirmed metal planets, means that all non-metal planets will have metal spots.

That is still an assumption. Metal planets may just supply a larger amount of metal per extractor. We haven't actually seen a metal point yet.

Or it's called a Metal Planet due to it's similarity to Spherical Space stations that happen to be made of metal.

The only thing we really know about Metal planets is that they may feature weapons that can be reactivated. Nothing else.

Mike

I can see were it would make sense that metal can be extracted from anywhere on a planet at varying rates based on a couple factors like planet size, location, and building type.

So you're telling me that a x2 resource mod from FA was an expensive stretch goal?
I understand and see why you guys think I could be wrong though.

Read the facts released about metal planets and then see the concept art, metal planets are more like giant space stations then planets made of metal, they may have no resource benefit at all compared to normal planets (can easily be explained with space magic, for example "drawing metal from the planet may compromise its system and your robot army may be programmed to avoid that").

But it may have other things instead making it a worthy stretch goal (like a death star laser ^^ that you can reactivate).

"Other things"?? Wow, never read about it. Which bonuses and abilities will this "things" provide after reactivation?

No idea, as said before, very little is confirmed about metal planets so far, it largely depends how the core gameplay works out, then they can make sure Metal planets are functional and complement the core gameplay.

Mike

From the description of the metal planet stretch goal on kickstarters:

Hmm... After reading it a second time. The "Recycled" part does indicate that you can gain extra resources from them if you choose too. Ohh well :roll: .

How the reactivation process works and what these ancient battle stations do exactly is unknown at the current time, but mavor has mentioned in a interview that the weapons system of a metal planet can take down a astroid (And considering the look of the concept art and the facts released its generaly assumed to have a death star like laser as a main weapon).

However everything about this game (even the confirmed list) is subject to change (well allmost everything, i doubt they will remove the commander for example), and that interview is kinda old.

This.

There are three resouces in FA, mass, energy, and buildpower.

There are now only two in PA, mass, and buildpower, energy and buildpower are now effectively the same resouce

That is going a bit far, it might be better to say that Build Power is dependent on Energy, Energy still has potential uses outside of it's mechanics with Buildpower.

Mike

Hmm. But does it? Correct me if I am wrong, but the energy-mass ratio for all project wills be the same now. You are now only 'balanceing' two resouces as opposed to three

I do agree that energy has other uses, mainly for active abilities or artillery. Ie ovecharge (Dgun?)

I agree some things in supcom were not intuitive, in terms of energy cost. However this should not be a reason to remove a very good mechanic. You can do different things and different stratergies in supcom, depending on your mass to energy ratio, and does lend a new depth to the game. If a mechanic was unituitively implemented, that is not a reason to remove it, it is a reason to improve it, and I would argue that this is a simplification, not an improvement.

The energy-mass ratio will be different between different buildpower sources. An air factory might have much higher energy to mass ratio compared to a tank factory.

[/quote]The energy-mass ratio will be different between different buildpower sources. An air factory might have much higher energy to mass ratio compared to a tank factory.[/quote]


"A factory or engineer will drain energy while active at a set amount of energy per second depending on the factory or engineer"

But if I assit a factory, or use engies to create a building, they will still use the same same ratio, no matter what the factory is constructing, or the building that is being built.

(Once agian, correct me If I have interpreted this wrong.)

Yes that is true. We don't know how viable assisting will be.
1. Engineers might have the highest energy-mass ratio which would make basic buildings cost a lot of energy.
2. Factories might be the cheapest buildpower source. Engineers might still be have a lower energy-mass ratio but it wouldn't really be worth it to assist factories in the long term. However. If you have excess buildpower then you would want to use it on factories with high energy to mass ratio in order to save energy.

I don't think it's so much that energy-mass ratios are all the same, more so that units that a Metal Cost then its the Factory and/or Engineer(s) can build at a rate of X metal/second and a fixed Energy Drain as a cost to Power the Lathe. So while a factories/engineers will always drain metal at a certain rate and have a certain Energy upkeep to do so, there is still lots of room to have variety, like say for example a Tank Engineer drains 1M/s and has and 50E upkeep, a Flying Engineer could also drain a 1M/s, but have a 150E upkeep.

It's not AS flexible as SupCom's system, but it's still flexible.

I wouldn't say they're removing anything really, just streamlining the system, a case of something major being removed is more akin to SupCom2 forcing Pay Up front instead of Drain(which kinda made the rate based income kinda moot at that point), or Removing Tech Tiers in favor of Research.

Yes that is correct, it's the end result of streamlinging hte system, you will always know that adding X Engineers to a project will always have the same drain and upkeep X * regardless of the project whereas in SupCom it changed depending on what was being built. It basically has built in transparency, it does come at the cost of SOME flexibility, but there is still Flexibility to be found.

Mike

Ah, I see now, however now I understand...

Build TIME is no longer a factor, and this IS a souce of depth.

For instance, in supreme commander, experimentals are actually hidiously INefficient, by this I mean they lose halariously in a frontal fight, agianst equal resouces of tech three land.

Tech three land, in most cases, has more DPS and more health. Why then, are expeirmeantals built? They allow you to quickly divert you economy to them, withought a huge amount of buildpower. Thia allows you to quickly capitalise on reclaimables, and eject them into you economy, likewise tech three mex extractors, have a very high rate of drain, and allow the fast and effective use of recliamables withought the need to divert huge amounts of buildpower.

High build rate things also allow you to deliberately "stall" your economy, so you can priortise mass distribution.

This open a a diverse range of tactics and units, and and provides depth, as opposed to purely striveing for efficientcy. A recent MOD has been introduced to FAF and one of the main problems with is tech three landspam, as the mod effectively removed the limits of build capacity you could have on units produced at a factory.

This again!? I thought it was tackled 30 pages ago:

Your entire argument here has depended on this crutch, and I already shown it to be wrong.

There are still three resources to balance. They are gathered in dramatically different ways. Buildpower is even more different because it is spent locally and cannot be stored.