Resource system - suggestion to add rare resource types

Similarly, in Zero-K you can use "overdrive" to turn energy into metal, but with progressively decreasing efficiency. This keeps the economy from growing exponentially while still keeping grow-my-econ as a viable but not strictly dominant strategy. Also, since overdrive is a multiplier to your basic metal extractor capacity, capturing and retaining territory remains crucially important - the more mexes you have, the bigger your economy will be when you start investing in overdrive.

That said, in Zero-K territory is basically valuable either for the strategic resources (mexes) or for tactical advantage (chokepoints, visibility, height advantage, etc). For PA, it might be interesting to have more than one type of strategic resource, each of which provides you with a different benefit, each found in different locations (different planets!), so that the decision about which planets to capture becomes important - it's not just about more territory equals more metal, but instead "Mars makes carbon which we need for faster production" vs "Jupiter makes hydrogen which we need for interplanetary mobility".

I agree with GoogleFrog that keeping track of stockpiles of lots of different types of resources will be tedious micromanagement. I hope the devs come up with some clever mechanisms to avoid that.

Good point, I like this thinking. That is what this team is great at, options.

Needlessly pointless from a lore perspective. For one these are self replicating robots with a AI awareness that have been fighting for thousands of years. I'm pretty sure a race of robots that can break through the fabric of spacetime to allow the entire galaxy to be one gigantic warzone, surely can master Mass/Energy conversion that allows enough Helium to be converted into Gold and Lead metal into Xenon Gas.

I like and don't like the idea of rare reource types.

To make it short:

[Pro]
-Gives you more options to personalize you gameplay
-Creates more conflict zones because every player tries to get them

[Con]
-Depending on the number and effects it can get very complicated and demand a lot of micromanagement (I'm not that good in it)

Conclusion:

I like the idea, as long as it's not too much, simple enough and doesn't have a big impact (boosts you only slightly; someone with less rare res should still have the chance of winning).
When the 3 bold conditions above are fulfilled, rare res will boost the gameplay (in my opinion).

tl;dr: Keep it simple

I agree with this. I'm thinking of it more as a flavour enhancer and perhaps a tool for advanced players. In reality high level competitive RTS matches are usually won using relatively light units, but in more amateur team games or FFA, having scope for all sorts of different routes to an apocalyptic victory/showdown adds a lot to the fun imo.

So competitive play would probably focus more on getting a lot of the basic resources most of the time, while fun play might branch out into seeking the rare resources for the "wow I actually made one of those I'm emperor of everything" feeling.

Although if rare resources also enabled efficient basic resource generation or specialised light units they might be seen in competitive matches too. What I'd prefer rare resources to focus on, if they ever existed, would be the sort of late game or experimental strategies that people like to do in large team games and FFA, just to add some leftfield options to the gameplay.

There already is a rare resource type.

It's called metal.

I don't think we need even more complexity. KISS.

I'm fine with it.

But only if it's used in the same manner as SC Hydrocarbon Plants, i.e. as a more efficient means of producing one of the primary resources, which is what I think you're describing in you He-3 example.

I'd rather not see the added complication of Civilization style strategic resources (e.g. you need 1 Iron to build a Swordsmen) in this particular game.

Yeah exactly. If "Specialty" resources like Helium-3 are just more efficient ways of creating energy like a hydrocarbon plant in SupCom, go for it. If we have to search for uranium deposits to build nukes, I'll be trying to find a way to get my damn money back.

I think taht TA focused only on metal - as a general building resource, including the rare and common minerals, and on energy because the emphasis was on the battles of huge robots, not fighting for one of 4 titanium mines on the map to build any of those robots.

I used the He3 reactors in a previous example. A very similar strategic choice is presented if there are high efficiency orbital fusion reactors that can only be built in orbit around a gas giant. They can have some sort of animation which indicates they mine the He3 and immediately use it. This preserves the core functionality of the rare resource while removing the added complexity of a stockpile and the need to balance income and spending of He3.

Now that sounds a little more reasonable. We already have that to an extent with geothermal, hydrocarbon, wind, and tidal - and it works just fine. In fact, the more the merrier as far as that is concerned - but there should NEVER be any reason to add a third bar to the top of the screen.

As long as the next resources translate into metal/energy at various proportions, then all is fine.
If you mean rare resources, like He3 or geothermal to produce energy, then I am all in favor of it.
It you mean having multiple bars (energy, metal, He3, He2, CO2 etc.) then I am against the idea.

I wasn't thinking of adding resource bars, rather a system where having an extractor built on a titanium spot (and there might only be one in the average solar system) would allow you to keep building titanium requiring units, which also have metal and energy costs.

If your mine was destroyed then the construction of that unit would stall in the factory until the mine was rebuilt.

Having factories directly on the resource spot as suggested by Googlefrog would be another broadly similar way to approach this, but that would add potentially many special factory buildings and be cluttered, whereas a single generic extractor building could be used for multiple resource spots.

So, build a metal extractor on a titanium spot, and you will be able to build titanium units from a standard factory as long as that extractor exists. Could even be a standard unit with titanium armour if the developer workload of making special units is a worry.

So when you build a rare resource collector you have to link it somehow to a special structure somewhere else? I suppose that works but it sounds overly complicated. Whether the link system is worthwhile would depend on the importance of a remote processor. For example if there is a resource that lets you run a planetary shield you would want to be able to project it.

Of course it just makes energy. As I said, like a tidal generator or geo.

What are we trying achieve gameplay-wise here?

Special resources should only give you acces to certain units (like the geo spots in TA where you can build geos on them). Another thing they could do is make certain units more effective/cheaper. Its nice to have some high value stuff to fight over.

But dont ad a 3th resource bar.

I don't like the whole "you can only build this unit if you have this ressource"-thing.

I like more the idea that you get only a slight advantage like you factories (in a special radius around you rare res) build slightly faster or units build in this radius have slightly increased stats.

Me neither. I like that geothermals are built on geothermal, and He3 reactors are on gas giants, but to fight over a single spot which will be impossible to conquer once the units it enables are built... well... not totally against it, but I would like to see what devs think about it. This may change the gameplay from fighting to eliminate to fighting over a resource which guarantees a longstanding advantage.

Well to be honest I'm not 100% committed to any of these ideas being set in stone, just throwing some possibilities out there.

The underlying themes in terms of gameplay are to introduce diversity and strategic importance to different planet types and to generally add flavour to the game.

I'd be perfectly happy with rare resource spots that allow construction of a particular static building that does something interesting, in the same vein as geo spots, but with more different types found on different planets. I listed a few static building ideas earlier in the thread.

Had one more idea too, a static building that spreads repairing nanobots (nanodes?) through the ground, friendly units standing on the nanode-infested ground are healed and enemy units are damaged.

First, let me say that I agree that managing 'unique' resources isn't what we really want to do. I think we can all agree with that. This isn't Empire Earth where we need to have wood, stone, iron, gold, tin, saltpeter, oil, uranium, etc.

However I do support the theory. As I mentioned, I think it's important to encourage people to really branch out as opposed to settling in their impenetrable Planet of Doom. The gameplay that occurs as a result of unique resources is what we want to emulate.

Now while I can see supporting He3 reactors on gas giants and the like, the problem I foresee is that you'd have to balance the game around *not* have gas giants. What happens if there are no gas giants? What happens if one player is closer to the gas giant? Does this mean if you had a fairly uninterrupted time of it, you'd eventually end up with the 'infinite energy', where you have +190,000 energy coming in per second and not a god damn thing you could do would affect it?

I like what SoaSE did with the crystal / metal resource (as well as some of the mods which expanded it further). Not only did various types of worlds have different types of resource levels (ice worlds only had crystal, volcanic only metal, so if you ended up in a corner with lots of metal, you had to game the economy to sell your metal off to buy crystal, and it made crystal worlds highly valuable), but more importantly, you had the economic tax.

Expanding your unit limit required logistics upgrades, and every upgrade level would tax your income. You started off with 0% tax. The first level would then tax all your income something like 6%. By the last level you had a tax of 80 or 90%. Not only did this mean a permanent investment in your unit count (since if you lost lots of your units, the tax level didn't change, so it had to be a very strategic choice to upgrade), but it meant the larger your fleet, the more you had to expand to fund it. It worked quite well.



I'd like to see many different types of planets and unique reasons to want to fight over them instead of smashing them all to smithereens with asteroids. And simply having more access to metal / energy I don't think is the real answer, since it was always possible before to have a bottomless economy. You eventually reach a critical mass at which point more metal just becomes pointless, where you have a pile of T3 engineers pouring out experimentals in seconds.