Planetary Annihilation's Economy System

well, partially^^

But if you dont want even that, you have 2 options:

1. Have a little step back from previous games, and have total energy stalls making you lose.

or

2. Have engineers' energy drawn being reduced if they have a smaller mass rate.

Oh for goodness sake... again nanolate? You're stifling discussion on something neutrino has stated an opinion on again?

Seriously, what is the point of the forums? We are allowed to discuss things which have probably already been decided upon. You can decide for yourself whether you want to read it.

That said, discussing the distinction between the UI and the economy mechanics is not a waste of time. Skillful players can overcome difficulties introduced by the UI. They can organise their economy to not stall and with good hotkeys and awareness they should be able to respond to stalls incurred by their opponent. Things which look like system mechanics will be circumvented.

Personally I don't see a big problem with energy stalls due to increased metal income. It's far easier to handle than what PA has now. So just by reducing energy usage on workers in relation to the amount of metal you have would already improve things a lot.
Beyond that it is probably hard to find a solution for "too much mass" problem. But "too much mass" is something that occurs not that often, as usually mass is the bottleneck resource. An automation system that reduces energy usage on sudden energy stalls due to too much mass would help to stablize the economy, but it would waste even more mass. I don't think this is really necessary, as the only situation I ever had that kind of eco crash (sudden mass income kills energy) is when I started heavy reclaiming on t4 wrecks in FA. PA does not have t4 wrecks, so there won't be that kind of sudden metal income.

Also with the modability of PA even mediocre players will be able to just mod the UI to make it easy to control. So there really is no point in not having the UI as effective as possible in this regard.

Fair play. We all have our own bugbears I suppose. Only difference is that I'm for the developers keeping to their word, whereas you want them to go back on it.

I'm not saying there's a problem with it, per se, it's just a logic thing. My poor simple brain can't cope with the idea that building an economic building could harm your economy

Wrong. Your economy is actually increased in this case.

Edit:As in your production is actually increased.

This

Funny thing. I also think that metal extractors should be prioritized before everything else. Especially considering that they drain 0 energy. Even reserving 1 energy for them during a stall would keep them running at full capacity.
I don't get why players should be so heavily punished for an energy stall.
There isn't even a choice in turning metal extractors off as there is exactly zero benefit from doing so.

Besides being a proponent of decoupling metal production from energy(as it currently only serves as a punishment) I am also in the opposing camp of increasing the metal extraction cost heavily so that it can be a choice if you want to turn them off in favor of other energy draining sources.

Usually I don't agree with Nanolathe much but... seriously, again with the automation?

Its not needed, the only thing that is needed is the UI to tell the player why when they stall heavily on energy their metal income also gets reduced and thus the whole economy stalls.

Its hardly hard and much micro to remove some fabbers from building or to stop some air factories when you run out of energy. Also the current situation where not metal but energy is the limiter won't exist much longer once they fixed the spawning of metal spots to be a bit more balanced.

And, if in the end it turns out its just too complicated and makes the economy too hard for the average player, the easiest solution is for metal extractors to not prorate when energy stalling. They currently consume no energy (though they produce less when energy stalling) and changing that wouldn't have the biggest effect on final gameplay.

This would be a much more intuitive change for the average player anyway.

Is overspending even much a problem anyway? At least your resources aren't being wasted.

Just try to keep the minus number above -30 and you should have a good economy.

Overspending energy is a huge problem if it reduces your metal income as a result.

Well yes, of course your economy doesn't actually become weaker overall, but let's say, for example, that you're desperately trying to get your energy back into positive because, say, you need your radar back online, or your teleporters have stopped working just when you need to transfer some reinforcements to another planet.

Suddenly a mex or two get completed from your queue and your energy plummets into the abyss, taking with it your ability to use anything energy-dependent.

I know that under the current system, you wouldn't have had that energy anyway, but this seems far less transparent than the flat energy consumption we currently have.

Overspending on energy by a large amount is an issue in as so far as you won't be able to build out of it as metal income gets reduced too, possibly halting all current construction projects.

Going into your allies base and stopping all the air factories they insist to build usually solves this though. :mrgreen:

(But yeah, it needs an UI indicator to tell people that as a lot of people don't seem to realize that stalling energy in the early game totally breaks their economy.)

Metal income don't get reduced, as extractors cost no energy to run.

Spending outcome will however only scale down to what you have coming in, it won't just stop working.

That's unfortunately not true.

Yes, mexes don't cost energy to run but if you stall on energy you still get less metal extracted. Totally unintuitive system at the moment I know.

(Just try it out, build 1 generator, 3 mexes (31 metal income in total with the com) and then spam factories, suddenly your green metal income number gets lowered when you start to energy stall.)

Thats not supposed to happen, that was the whole point of removing the energy cost to extractors in the first place!

That was one of the results of this thread, that they would try that system to prevent the supcom economy bullshit where your economy would fail completely due to having less power then you are spending.

I actually like that your economy completely fails when your ENERGY FREAKING EXPLODES. Because of bots, you know.

It adds some strategy to PGen placement. And makes T2 Pgens slightly less OP than they already are.

It also completely removes the point of a flow based economy when there is a on/off switch.

No?

If only there was some kind of buffer that would expand the amount of Energy that could be stored at any one time.