Planetary Annihilation's Economy System

'ey you'll find me in all the best places!

Hi BmB!

Homeworld players forever and all that. I suspect there are a few of us around here.

1. Energy is used to extract Metal for use in the economy. We can't use metal to generate energy if we want to use energy to generate metal. Other wise we get into a weird circular economy where one resource would be entirely use to generate the other (or we just have no profit and thus the entire economy is useless.).

2. In the interests of keeping things simple and minimizing micro, it would be much easier just to ignore the fuel requirements of any power generators (unless we are going to include solar panels, which would be interesting). This way the user doesn't need to worry about "Do I have enough fuel?" "Is my metal extraction adequate for my power needs?". We can just ignore that entirely.

(side note: E = mc^2 is useless here, IF WE DID, go with a energy needs mass solution, we would balance it based on whats best for the GAME, not whats most accurate to scientific theory)

Unrelated to the game mechanics discussion.

We cannot directly turn a whole lump of matter into energy. There simply isn't enough antimatter. Even nuclear fission with Plutonium and Uranium doesn't turn all the matter into energy. in this case its a change of mass that results in a change of energy. Only a relatively small amount of mass is converted into energy. The mass that's lost when they turn into their by products.

In answer to the original questions

1. No energy will not be free... however it will not use a finite fuel source that must be gathered to generate energy. Many games should be granted a bit of artistic or mechanical leeway in-order for the game to operate smoothly. In this case you could rationalize that a variety of metals(Used in the game as a single resource metal) can be used to build a device which converts something (could be sunlight, geothermal, etc.) into energy via some mechanical motion. This is not "free" energy, even though you do not have to gather fuel.

2. E=mc^2 does not apply to this discussion as it is just the representation of the energy potential of an atom or collection of atoms. So the amount of energy released if the atom were destroyed is dependent on the mass of the atom because c^2(or c*c) is just the constant speed of light multiplied by itself. Since they have not defined how the energy is generate, we cannot logically debate if the energy is free, or if energy is conserved. Please correct me if I am wrong.


This is my understanding of how the game works; I start with some metal (which is just used to build things) and then proceed to build power generating device. Now I have metal and energy which I use to a metal extractor which uses that energy to mine metal. Now I have a supply of metal and energy which I then use to power and build more units, buildings and other cool stuff.

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  Sounds well-reasoned, keep the economy simple for new user friendliness (and similar to the Supreme Commander series).
  
  A couple of thoughts on the logistics of streaming, since a match will apparently be solar system (multi-planet spanning):
  
  1. Planet to Planet logistics: Will each planet have it's own pool of resources or will there be some mechanic of logistics/supply lines to allow sharing of resources between planets? Or will there just be one empire/faction pool to draw from for all planets?
  
  2. Will there be logistical limits (e.g. distance) between tactical units and base buildings? Perhaps with tech tree upgrades to logistical units?
  
  3. Will there be logistical units (e.g. supply caravans to keep a pack of tactical units in supply with energy so they can keep firing)?
  
  4. Will there be physical/abstract representations of logistical streaming of economy units that can be raided?
  
  
  I was thinking something simple like this for a logistical system of supply to the economy:
  
  A. Base buildings all double function as supply depots that can stream resources withing a sphere of game space to any tactical unit within the sphere. The radius of the sphere would be upgradeable within the technology tree. This would be a totally abstract function. Pretty simple system without any math to the player, other than some visual geometry.
  
  B. Each planet has a economic unit pool (metal/energy) that is automatically shared on a planet, as long as bases are within a sphere of each other. The economic sphere center of the planet is an upgraded factory called the Capitol. Base buildings outside the sphere centered on the Capitol are out of supply and operate on a local economic pool only.
  
  C. Planetary economic pools can only be shared between planets if connected by a supply route, marked by a space-port building on each planet (or in orbit). Automatic AI spaceships regularly travel between space-ports with a fraction of the shared pool to represent a shipment. These spaceships can be raided. Routing of the interplanetary supply route is by building additional space-port buildings along the way, to guide the path of the shipment spaceships. Guarding shipments requires assigning units to the space-port, or patrolling the supply route.
  
  
  Another thought on special resources: Rise of Nations (RoN) had an interesting system of bonus resources (beyond the equivalents of metal and energy). They provided about 10 to 20% bonuses to specific units, and whatever. Given that this game will be multi-planet per match, I think that will be one additional reason for expanding to other planets to grab these resources to boost a specific unit strategy. There's strategic reasoning in going for hidden bases to hide spammed units at, but special resources would be a no-brainer for causing players to try for a expansive base strategy, rather than just a deathmatch style game with a favored pool of tactical units.

Your idea sounds really complex. I think you should rather make a new thread if you want to discuss this.
If you are really interested you should read similar topics. Use the search function to look for topics with words like global, economy, local, logistics, suppy, supplies, ammo, ammunition, etc.

The developers intention is to have a global resource pool. They might experiment with local economies but hey, buildpower is a local resource.

Probably not.

The devs have mentioned that they intend to make air units store ammunition, bombs or whatever and then be able to use them in bursts. The airunits would then drain from the global energy to restock their ammunition. Maybe they could land on an air pad or a carrier to restock their ammo faster.

Err... What? Powerplants, metal extractors, factories and fabbers?

I kind of like the idea of units energy effectiveness decreasing as they get farther from base buildings. As units move farther and farther away from base building the energy "supply lines could degrade causeing the unit to require more energy to remain at full combat readiness.

This would create strategic opprotunites for a defender if an attacker were push to far to fast without building buildings as he advanced to maintain supplylines. And this way the only relationship to program would be the distance between a vehicle and the closest friendly building.

Yeah, I like the concept as well. I think I've even argued in favor of such a system myself. Anyway. It have rather complex implications in an interstellar economy and shouldn't be shoehorned in on the 63th page of another thread.

I liked this so far. So, commanders and factories will be the builders, an engineer assisting will only add a fraction of assistance to a factory that would already pump it out nearly-as-fast on it's own, and multiple engineers assisting will give a small speed boost without literally doubling production. All while costing the same rate for each builder to run, never any builder costing one thing one moment and another thing the next moment.

The balancing act is going to be tricky however. Say we want heavy energy air. You make the air factories burn more energy to run the lathe. But then fabber assist becomes almost required for good play cause it will bring down the relative energy cost per plane.

Its going to be interesting for certain.

Unless we make engineers use the energy cost of the default builder.

So energy heavy air units cost the same energy wise for any assisting the construction.

I think you should state why you would want energy heavy air to get to the bottom of it.
a. Do you want air production to have expensive infrastructure requirements?
b. Do you want air production infrastructure cost be dependant on the availability of energy sources?
c. Do you want air production infrastructure to become cheaper as you tech up?

Metal is usually the bottleneck resource whereas buildpower and powerplants can be built anywhere.

Here I use infrastructure cost as how much metal you must spend in order to maintain production.


Example 1
Factory cost:500
Factory metal drain:10/s
Factory energy drain:200/s

Example 2
Factory cost:1000
Factory metal drain:10/s
Factory energy drain 100/s

Power generator
Cost:100 metal
Energy production:20/s

Maintaining a production of 10 metal per second requires 1500 metal in infrastructure both in Example 1 and Example 2.
Now divide that with 10 and you get 150 metal infrastructure requirement for every 1 metal usage.
Basically if you want to avoid having an engineer being strictly cheaper buildpower than a factory then the engineer should require more than 150 metal infrastructure for every 1 metal usage.

The difference between Example 1 and Example 2 is that more metal is locked in the factory in Example 2. If you turn off or pause the factory you can use the energy for something else but the buildpower is wasted.

The infrastructure requirements in Example 1 would get proportionally cheaper if you acquire more efficient energy sources.
If you have power generators that produce at double the rate 40 energy/s for the same price then Example 1 would only require 1000 metal infrastructure while Example 2 would require 1250 metal infrastructure. This could make air cheaper at higher tech levels for example.

awesome economy!!!!

Lovin the idea of economy automation! One of the most annoying things to do in SupCom 2 was to manually manage mass fabricators. Aaarhg! I am glad these guys are from the original SupCom.

So after quite a few hours of play I have the feeling that this makes the economy actually pretty hard to manage and crash worse.

Players have to monitor how many builders they have/will have to tell how many energy they need to build. I can kill myself by putting too many engineers to work, this has actually put me in a few "wtf why is my eco dead" situations. I have never experienced that kind of feeling in FA. You can basically have too much buildpower in PA. Take 10 engineers and let them work while you have only one mex and one pgen and you will never get anywhere. Delete 9 of them and you will build faster. This is just weird and strange. I think it would be waaaay better to make energy usage fully depending on how much metal you have. So when I have only very few metal I cant shoot myself by using too many engineers.

Am I the only person that feels this?

If yes I guess I can adapt to this, but I guess asking wouldn't hurt.

EDIT: On a second thought:
What about a UI mod that pauses workers and factories based on your energy income? Just like some mod in FA that managed metal makers. Managing metal makers didnt really matter, but pausing and unpausing all workers and factories (or maybe with the addition of some kind of priority system) would probably give a crazy advantage. It would basically reintroduce the old system, but only for the players that use the mod.
Currently I guess that the UI mod system is not advanced enough for this (also we are missing the pause function), but as soon as this is possible I guess this could be a problem.

Personally it makes sense to me. Think of it like a construction site, but you don't have enough nails for everyone to use, or enough coming in with constant deliverys every 15 minutes, so you divide them up evenly. Can't put up walls as fast, but your still paying everyone 15$ an hour.

Just don't go fab happy at the moment, until:

There is this:

I know it's for energy, and I don't think its implemented yet. I'd like to see it implemented for stalls in general, but who knows (the devs!). This would improve stuff dramatically. Leave some core fabs on normal, but most of them on conserve, especially factories. Then you could use the core fabs to build econ and not worry about slowing them down, and the rest would basically auto-wait for your econ not to suxxor.

My employees are computers that use energy. When I don't need them I turn them of

Good point, well if they implement a working priority system it might remove all problems, true. This is one of the things that would be pretty good to have automated, imho.

If you have 9 reclaiming a structure and the other one repairing, at least you will have +80m from those 9. But hopefully it is fixed soon.

That's just some bug and not related to the problem I am seeing

Ah i know was just messing about. I do however think that if we have the game doing a lot of eco balancing and unit control the game will lose 2 of the main RTS skills.

Well using the old concept that reduces energy usage on mass stalls would make it far less important to have this managed automatically. Basically the new system introduces new complexity to the system and hides it with automation. Currently we are missing the automation part.