Should resources be tracked per planet/moon

Very glad you are warming to it, lets see if I can't assist!

WRT to the difficulty of invading planets, I'm just going to quote my previous posts...

It *should not* be easy to invade a planet that has been locked down by an opponent. It would be silly to think you could do it even if you had an unlimited economy streamed at 100% with no cost to you, because you simply can't put up buildings fast enough.

If you land on a heavily built up planet with intent to set up a base, you're going to have a bad time. There is going to have to be some *separate* mechanic to allow this that has nothing to do with how the economy works.

Some would call that mechanic artillery. Another option might be to build a base on a close enough asteroid and start launching units with the cannon, or maybe there will be multiple unit transport rockets (although expensive, but that's a beach landing for you).

I agree with you wolfdogg. I have read every post, The local economy nuts have ignored every argument put to them, insisting that they're right. This isn't a debate, its a religious discussion at this stage. They have faith in the local economy and the heretics won't sway them. Plenty of people have told them why this is a bad idea, none of them have convinced them. It is a very small number of people posting in here in favour of local economy, everyone else has left.

@silenceoftheclams
I would disagree that this is different to anything that has come before. In scale maybe it is ambitious. But from what I have seen in the videos it looks pretty similar to TA and SC to me. I'm not going to start getting into the realms of have you even played TA or SC. It's not constructive and it doesn't make your opinion any more or less relevant if you have played the games or not. I should however, suggest that -if you haven't already- that you do go away and play these games at some point in the next 12 months before PA is released. It's entirely relevant to what Uber have said they want to make, you'll love them and it will give you an idea of what to expect from PA.

To continue on this theme for a moment: Of course TA and SCFA have had a lot of reference Because they are the predecessors of this game. Those games defined this sub-genre. Along with the people who developed them. Two such people are the creative lead and art director for PA and that's just for starters. IMO it's obvious what direction this game is going to go in. And that's where I look for answers when people ask questions about PA.

As for your particular suggestion about local economies, I think it's going to be hard to make a post that doesn't repeat what others have already said on the matter. So before I do that, I would like to say that it's easy to dismiss arguments as incoherent or irrational when you don't want to listen to what people say. And no amount of back-slapping over how good your ideas is going to change the poll result.

First of all we must look back at why the initial suggestion was made. When we read what the OP has written regarding the reason for the poll, it is a simple question with no real suggestion of pros or cons. Though I do pick up the sentiment from the OP that they feel local would be better. Thinking about it, that probably explains the reason for the poll in the first place. What I am going to do now is go through the potential problems that have been suggested (from memory) could be solved by a local economy after the OP. I think we have all established now that we know what global and local stand for, so...

1.) A global economy of this scale is unrealistic. In other words to have magically omnipresent resources available across an entire star system is just impossible.
2.) A global type economy would promote economic snowballing.
3.) A heavily occupied planet may be too strong to establish a beachhead on when the defending commander has access to a global economy.
4.) Building on another planet (hostile or otherwise) would be too easy with a global economy structure.
5.) With a global economy, how can an attacking commander pull the rug from beneath the defending commander if he has endless resources?

And so now to address these points in order:

1.) While this is a valid argument on the grounds of realism (as we know today at least!), I really think it is more important to have a game that functions correctly and puts gameplay first. So while it's nice to have realism, it's more important to have a game that performs. An example I might give is that if I build a power generator in TA or SC in each corner of the map, they each are inexplicably connected and all will equally contribute to my income. If I built a point defence in the middle of the map it still works even though there are no power plants anywhere near it. This is the same for a 10x10 or an 80x80 map. It's not realistic but if it wasn't like this it would ruin the game and no one ever questions it. So with this in mind I don't think it will be a problem on the grounds of realism since we are already out there with that one.

2.) Economic snowballing is a term to describe the seemingly run-away economy of an player that effectively grows their resources and continues to do so, dwarfing his opponent. Problem is with saying you don't want this is that to a large degree, that is what this sub-genre is about and it is basically saying you don't want this game. That's fine, but please don't come along and mess it up for the rest of us. We all know that resources = victory. And to a large extent that means controlling the map or key areas of the map where the resources are concentrated. For PA you can interchange the word map with planet or solar system. TA, SC and even SC2 require players to use "resources" to build "resource generators." The more resource generators a player has, the more resources he has to build yet more resource generators. As this continues throughout the game, the player's snowball grows at an increasing pace. The most efficient player wins. It's not rocket science. Obviously, combat comes into it somewhere, but that's the other side of the coin.

3.) What we are basically saying here is that if a commander decides to concentrate all his resource in one place then it might be too hard to attack him on the planet surface. To a certain extent, why shouldn't it be? I initially thought that this could be a problem in the game. But really there are several key factors that make it a non-issue:
The first is that if all his resource has been put into one place then why bother attacking there just to die? Go around and pick off all his smaller, less well defended territories and leave him with just the little rock he has chosen to turn into his grave instead. Once he has been isolated you could just hit him with an asteroid or employ similar techniques used in the previous games (see below).
If an enemy is turtled up good, why would you send loads of units to the grinder? Surround him with battleships and cruisers if he's on an island. Hit him with long range arty. Use tac and nuke missiles. Use air. Use whatever you can to damage him. You don't need to go toe to toe straight away. What if you sneak on? Scout him out, find the locations of critical structures. Disrupt his factories. Take out his missile defence. Destroy his resource storage. That's going to hurt a player even if they have a global economy.
No one has said that the only way to effectively assault a planet is to build a factory on it and go from there. Orbital bombardment of some description seems viable. I compare this to cruisers and battleships. Clear an LZ, carve a wedge out of your opponents defences. Then drop in your troops and secure the planet that way. If you have at least an equal strength fighting force it shouldn't be too much of a problem. You can follow up with engineers to reinforce your attack if you really wanted. A lot of the time this isn't necessary just to destroy an enemy. Of course the defending commander has the home-field advantage. But that's only fair. You guys all seem to be of the opinion that you're thinking out side the box here, but really you've got tunnel vision on one idea and are not looking at the big picture. Everyone will have the same type of economy so it is balanced out. If you have less than your opponent then somewhere along the line that is your fault. There is plenty of scope for players to have massive economies either model you use.

4.) So on one hand you want it to be easy to build on an enemy planet and on the other you are saying it has to be harder. Firstly it's contradictory and secondly, what for? To slow the game down? To make it harder to colonise worlds or to make it more difficult for players who are spread across several worlds compared to those who have only one or two? Obviously for the invading commander it would be pointless to build a factory on an enemy planet as no resources will be available. In fact, in that case how would they build anything? This really lends to a play style more like what I described in point 3. Either way, you're just inhibiting the player for the sake of it without realising that there are already elements designed into the game that make the establishment and development of a base a time consuming process that requires thought and planning. Things like tech levels, the cost of constructing and upgrading buildings, transport and obviously the choice weather or not to send defensive units are already present and a punishing local economy model is just pointless. People are worried that if a world is not entirely inhabited that an enemy might sneak onto their planet and set up a base in a matter of seconds. Honestly, if you aren't gathering and keeping an eye on your intel then you deserve what you get.

5.) This is an interesting one really. Mainly because it relates a little to point 3 again. A lot of people have been talking about cutting off the flow of resources from a planet in order to isolate it from it's supporting economy. Basically to make it an easier target. I don't have an issue with the strategy. I just think that again, people aren't thinking enough about other ways to do this that already exist. It doesn't have to be resources.
One key issue here is that there are no shields in this game. So killing off the power isn't going to make it any easier to get into the base.
Secondly, there are plenty of other things you can do to pull the rug out from under your opponent's feet. Like taking out intel structures or possibly satellites in PA. Targeting production facilities, key defensive structures or resource storage. Scouting is always going to be a key issue here.
What about reinforcements? Can we stop those getting through. If we know the commander is trapped on this certain planet, why not look for other easier targets to harass while you have him pinned and occupied? You know, just for lulz? Or maybe establish a base there instead while he's distracted. Maybe there's other things like a galactic gate through which he's bringing in reinforcements. Take that out and stop him from leaving in the process.
I really don't think we need to cut off the planet resource wise. It seems to me like it's already easy enough to get a commander trapped and on the back foot without the possibility to cut the throat out of his economy.

So there we are. Apologies for the long read. It's a real wall of text, I know. But I think I've covered most of the major themes in the topic. I would like to add that while I have politely disagreed with you on pretty much every aspect of your proposal, I do respect your opinion and I am not saying that it couldn't work. I think it could work. But it would have to be so subtle that it would be pretty much pointless and it would fundamentally change the game from what the majority of people expect (according to the poll). I disagree that people have voted on a knee-jerk reaction. I would more likely suggest that the majority of people who voted no are, or have been serious players of TA, SC, SC:FA or even SC2.

Lastly, I have deliberately not referred to SoaSE. Oh nuts, I just did.

Thanks for reading.

Im here to end it all (hopefully). Ok, here we go.
All resources production/harvesting is tracked localy.
To send resources to another platnatary body, you enter a "overveiw" or fulled zoomed out view. You are now veiwing all your plantas with the resource production bars above them. Hey, planat alpha mega cool needs more mass to build tanks, and planat beta super duper has tonnes of mass in storage? simply left click beta, and right click alpha, opening up a "resource channel" so to speak. BAM. Also, the farther away the planet that you are streaming from the the planet you are streaming to, the greater precent of resource dropoff you have, encouraging you to chain link planats. Also, need to invade an eneamy planet? Just stream resources to it. Make it so enemys can use your resouces (they cant in SupCom) TaDa!?!?!?!?!?

How I have ignored every argument put to me. I've written a number of responses to the arguments and no-one has challenged my responses. There is a comprehensive response of mine a few posts above.

I don't see how that is ignoring. Obviously it's the opposite.

Do feel free to respond, or you could just ignore me...

Firstly, Wolfdogg, I have to say how much I appreciate your taking the time to set out your arguments in detail and at length. This is something that's been missing from this thread, and I think it's pretty big of you to take the time to explain where you're coming from on such a contentious issue. I'm not going to have time to engage you on all the points you've raised as I have to leave for work in a few minutes, but I will try to do so at a later point!

First, a bit about my background in this specific region of RTS. I do think that kind of thing helps us to form an understanding of one another, so it's worth going over. I played TA and its expansions essentially from their first months of release, but I was young at the time and I don't think I fully appreciated them. I've come back to them since, but I've only really played a handful of games against players who I'd rate as being good. I did read a lot of the strategy guides back in the day, so I have an idea of what worked at higher levels of play. But probably not as good an idea as others.

Supcom was different. I had that from its first month of release too, but I've played a lot more of it. I had seasons away from the game, mostly as life got too busy, but I've kept coming back. I got on to FA Forever about a year ago, and I go through phases of watching ladder 1v1s, playing matches with friends, and doing a bit of laddering myself. I'm not a great player (I don't practice enough, and don't really have time to) but I'm on the strong side of competent because I understand basic strategic concepts for the game like 'overexpansion' and 'taking the initiative'. Again, I've read a lot of the guides written by high-level players so I understand the game pretty well.

This means that I'm aware of what this game is following on from. It also means that I understand very well the concepts being discussed, like snowballing etc. However, my initial response to the five points raised are that they don't always hit the point. It's obvious that a global economic system will be functional, both in terms of playability and game balance. It's also becoming clear to me that the same is true of the localised model. Both can work, and both will have anti-snowballing mechanisms, both will be equally easy to conduct planetary assaults with, and both will have their expansion rates balanced to somewhere near that of FA, which imo was very well balanced in that respect. If this doesn't happen, the game simply won't be very good. These things, which are the core of the last 4 of the 5 points, are actually only partially dependent on the localisation (or otherwise) of a player's economy.

The crux is actually going to lie in what it means to be on one planet as opposed to another. If the economy is global, it means that the difference between putting a fusion power plant on the moon as opposed to on your home planet is pretty negligible. In order to make that decision into a meaningful one, you'd have to build things into the game that could only work (or be accomplished) on the moon - by allowing unit cannons to be built only there and nowhere else, say. And you'd have to do the same for every single class of celestial body. Instead of making an asteroid engine cheap (since it doesn't take a huge amount of energy to adjust the orbit of even decent sized asteroids - a few bargain-basement nuclear warheads will do it) you'd have to make it stupidly expensive to account for the fact that the resources were teleporting up the gravity well. Instead, if you allow gravity to actually be a game concept (which is where the division into local economies comes from) the application of the concept balances these things for you. You can then invent suitable sci-fi technologies to make the game a bit more playable, a bit more fun, a boatload more awesome. Rather than having to adjust every damn thing in the game so as to paper over the paradox created by having gravity in your game but only applying it downhill.

Totally agree. wolfdogg, I took the time to read your points, and they amount to a defence of why a global economy would work. I agree, a global economy would work but I am not arguing that it wouldn't. What I am arguing is that a local economy would also work, as many people attack the idea of the local economy model on exactly that basis.

We are already moving towards a different type of game here, we have already embraced the idea of many separate maps, floating in a void. I think it would be a shame if we then missed the opportunity to really define these maps separately and make being on another planet really mean something.

I hoped with this thread to get people to explore the possibilities of the local economy model and win them round to the idea that it would make the whole planetary RTS experience richer, more immersive and ultimately more satisfying. In many ways, I think that the ideals of scalability that Uber are aiming for can only be satisfied with a local economy model.

@realtimeshepherd: Ok then.

Your first response is page 3.

Rebuttal:
Micro: your response to the too much micro issue is to play as if your are "starting a new game". I give you credit. You gave gone from making a frustrating micro mechanic to a frustrating micro GAME. Go and play 2 pvp games on any TA style game of your choice simultaneously (but only use the commander on one of them). Tell me how you went.

I am not too fussed about the argument that is in point 2. In many ways I agree with you, so no rebuttal from me.


From pages 3 to 10 every rebuttal you make is simply "refer to page 3". This is annoying. Stop this.

On page 10:

Here as a catch-all rebuttal you go make an example of an island map, likening the establishment of mass extractors on the smaller islands to setting up economy on multiple planetoids. I’ll let you reread the long argument we had there which consisted of many rebuttals.

As an offshoot of this, there is a link to the mass driver thread where you actually approve of my idea of not setting up multiple economies and instead at least visually justifying why there is only one economy.

On page 11 I point out that you attempted to use the SupCom2 trump card in your favour by quoting a dev who said they made the economy simpler, implying A: that supcom2 had a simpler to manage economy, B: supcom2 was bad and thus C: A must also have been bad. This assumption is based on developers not actually having a warped view of their games. Case and point: Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford was quoted a couple of months ago saying that “Duke Nukem Forever … was exactly like Half-Life 2”. Like Pitchford, the Supcom2 dev was very wrong. The economy in supcom2 is a nightmare to manage in the early games, and outright irrelevant in the end game. Even more importantly, the differences in supcom2’s economy are in no way relevant to your multiple-economy argument.

Which I pointed out on page 11. Along with at least one other.

You do not post again until 7 pages later on page 18. Personally I don’t blame oyu for this, as a third of all posts in those pages belonged to silenceoftheclams and were at least 1000 words long each. The only reason I didn’t kill myself is because I didn’t read them all. Your post is the first attack on the “global economy camp” for not making any arguments. Please see above. If you can point to your previous posts throughout the entire thread than so can I. Infact…..

That’s what you do on your next post on page 19. All the way back to page 3. Again. Also to page 10. See above. You seem to be under the delusion that once you make an argument that argument is then automatically strong enough to stand on its own two feet. It isn’t. This is why the “naysayers” have been making more arguments and also why we get annoyed when you ignore them. And pointing back to an argument made before our rebuttal is not a valid counter. You need to update your argument to address our issues.


I play a lot of games. I also design a lot of things, including UI's. And who knows how many games I have been testing since an early stage. A game element that adds nothing but complexity almost never ends up in the final release of a good game. Point out the part of multiple economies that a player would look at and think is cool *to use*. I am yet to see this.

This has been a long post. I hate long posts. Let it be the last one.

OK, elexis, many thanks for coming back.

The reason I keep asking people to re-read my previous arguments, is that honestly I can't find where people have actually responded to them and without them being critiqued I am not able to see the flaws.

OK, so you have given me some examples of responses to my arguments. Let me examine them. Well in fact you appear to agree with me on point 2 (planetary invasion) so point 1 (micro) your criticism appears to consist of setting up an example of playing two games simultaneously as being the same as not being able to magically have resources on a new planet.

I disagree, I see it more like sending an engineer to a remote island to build mass and power. As long as the engineer has colonisation abilities in the form of resource storage and a small power gen/mass fab on board, then it really isn't that different. You then have your econ started and can upgrade etc. including setting up a mass driver to get mass back to you 'factory planet'. Just to be clear, this paragraph forms my response to your first criticism.

I will now address the mass driver issue, which we both seem to approve of. A mass driver IMO is a supporting unit for local economy. To be clear I want the ability to move resources between planets, but I don't want this to happen automatically or by magic. Therefore, we are in agreement about the use of mass drivers, it is only that I see this as a good way of managing local economies.

So, further criticisms. I see one to do with the example of SupCom2 dumbing down being bad therefore simple = bad / complex = good. What can I say, logically you are correct, I cannot possibly claim that and to do so would be a logical fallacy, fair enough. That whole area is much more debateable and I really just wanted to highlight another area where I felt in general people hadn't appreciated the loss of a bit of detail/complexity.

As far as I can see, your other criticisms refer to my behaviour in the thread. I have no intention of annoying or irritating the community. I'm happy to refrain from referring people to my previous posts. I hope I've explained my reasons for having done that at the top of this post.

I will point out that I only see a single attack on the local economy model, that being the 'micro', with you making the example of the two simultaneous games as being a parallel example, which I have tried to address.

I do think we might have more in common than I imagine you do! And I appreciate you responding directly to my arguments. Kind regards.

@re behaviour; just advice, note really meant to be debated

Have more to say, but I just cooked dinner...

This is the point where I stop being able to take you seriously, In terms of the economy SC2 is the same or im my opinion better then SC1.

SupCom2's economy is not dumbed down, its the same thing in every way other then how spending functions, and with patches to allow players to actually que up buildings and units they cannot afford, it is a much more used friendly economy.

If you own the game and did not stick around for the economy patch, I would request that you give it another try, treat the game as a RTS rather then an sequel to SC1.

Frankly seeing as people constantly bitch on other games for having sequels for being exactly the same I would have thought that change would be more welcomed.

OK, well my SupCom 2 comments were based on the pre-economy patch version. To my mind the econ model was ruined primarily because the SupCom 1 model was deemed to be 'too complex'. This was the impression I got from the comments of Chris Taylor during the release.

It is pretty much accepted wisdom that the 'simplification' changes (ie not being able to queue stuff) were awful, hence the patch.

However, that particular point is not one of my strongest, I'm happy to drop it...

From that view, I completely understand.

The game as it stands now is an extremely fun RTS, but not totally a Supreme commander game, more of a nice bridge between games like commander and conquer/star craft and Supreme commander.

Not to mention a Mod or 2 never hurt, like the resource mod: http://www.moddb.com/mods/revamp-mod/do ... ieg-ai-121 That brings back the economy from FA/TA.

If your interested.

Thanks for the long response wolfdogg.

So what I'm seeing here is that you completely missed the point. Or this is a strawman, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.

Nobody is talking about a commander concentrating buildings and infrastructure on one planet. Doing that is cheap. What at least I am saying is that if we have a global economy, all you have to do to 100% capture a planet and make it impervious to attack is land on it with a single engineer and build a strip of factories, put up a couple air unit factories, and you're done. You then leave it. No support, no defenses, nothing. Why? As soon as someone tries to invade you have a bunch of factories ready to jump into action producing units faster than any player can possibly pour an army onto the surface. You have the economy of your entire empire fueling the factories of one planet.

And from the looks of it (of course we don't know), this game isn't going to support sending armies between planets. Small amounts of reinforcements and maybe some sorts of artillery, but it does appear that if you want a full scale war, both sides need to build on the same planet. And that just can't happen with a global economy.


With your response to 4) you make the same mistake. It is actually harder to invade with a global economy. It is in fact nearly impossible. Unless you can suggest a game mechanic that allows a player to invade a planet that can nearly instantly replace its army and is constantly scouting the surface with aircraft.


I don't know. Looking at your response to 5 it sounds like you expect to be able to just send armies around in space even when it clearly takes an entire, large rocket just to move the commander in the demo video.

Sending your entire army around the solar system isn't what I was expecting, and if that's what it ends up being, then sure, global vs local doesn't make much difference. This game loses an entire dimension of strategy and we have the same game we've played many times before. I don't know why we needed a kickstarter project to fund that though, we already have companies churning out that game over and over.

Can you please explain why you think this? It doesn't make any sense.

we know too little information about the game to make this claim, i'm almost 100% sure that the devs will support sending units to other planets, there wouldnt be much of a game without that ability

I disagree that I missed the point. My post was carefully thought out to address the major themes in the topic. It doesn't really address any additional issues, mainly because it was so long already. Also, if you read between the lines I am suggesting that maybe there will be more to the game than you have perhaps assumed.

It's easy to get off track when attempting to understand the scale that a game like PA will be operating on. My suggestion is that we stop thinking of planets as individual maps (even though they obviously are in their own right) and treat them more like islands on a large water map. While this analogy isn't perfect and doesn't always apply, this works well for the purpose of economy and a lot of people have used it in other topics.

Just because Uber have said that there will be no space combat, does not mean that there will be no way to move units between planets. Moreover, if there was no way to move units between planets it would be a complete travesty.

Some of the comments made about how this local economy model will work just serve to put me off the idea even further:

One example of this is the argument that the player wouldn't have to 'see' or even understand how a complicated local economy system (gravity based or otherwise) works. The suggestion that it could all be done behind the scenes with the player never seeing it is laughable. Hiding information from the player is absurd and would ruin the game. If a player cannot see how his actions are directly effecting his economy how can he make educated decisions? You are effectively making one of the most important aspects of the game more complicated and then hiding it from the player, reducing him to guess work.

Another example is all the different ways people have suggested of displaying the income/deficit information for each planet. The game is already going to be information overload as it is, let alone when my screen is filled with bars, icons and numbers that, if we consider the above paragraph, may or may not even be relevant. It just shows a lack of thinking beyond this particular subject. Are there other ways we can address some of the concerns? Yes - I've listed some of them. Are there other ways we can control how quickly a player can expand in the game? - Yes, I have listed some of them. These themes have also been addressed in some of the other topics.

This is preposterous.
Firstly, I seriously doubt that a few factories can make an army in the time it takes to react to an incoming threat regardless of what kind of economy model you use. And air units don't make a planet impervious to attack. It would be an easy target for any commander looking to expand his territory. Did you even read my last post or for that matter any of the other topics over the last few weeks regarding interplanetary travel and combat?
Secondly, the player still needs sufficient economy to support these factories weather it is on that planet or another. Suggesting that we isolate planets from one another economically does not stop a player from using your analogy of making a planet impervious to attack (even though it's ridiculous). At best it just changes the time frame. You also haven't considered that the drain on the rest of the player's economy when all his factories spring into action. What about all the other actions the player is performing elsewhere? If he's any good his resource will be stretched to the limit as it is.

In addition to this, how would you implement this local economy on an asteroid or a moon? I have read that there would be certain exceptions to the rule where moons might be included in a planet's economy. I don't like exceptions anyway, but what if something like an asteroid isn't tied to a planet. How will that work and what if I move it from one planet to another? It destroys the concept of a planet or an asteroid as a resource farm.

Re: Sup Com 2 - I think the idea that the game was made more simple is a misconception. It was mostly just made different. I really don't think it's relevant as to the discussion.

EDITED: Because proofreading is something you should do before you post.

To be quite honest this really exposes the weaknesses in your thinking. The fact that you'd wish to see the planetary map as a water map full of islands is merely a clear demonstration of the conceptual gap you've yet to bridge. You don't appear to be interested in dealing with the concepts that would make the different maps in the game into 'planets'. Instead, all you can think of is what you know: naval maps in TA and supcom. Naval maps, moreover, without naval units, or indeed air units that can cross between islands. If the game were to be conceived as you suggest, it would work. No doubt about it. But it would also be rather dull. The fact that you'd even suggest this false reduction indicates that you're not grasping the point. And just because many other people have embraced the same basic error in conceptualising the game doesn't in any way support it.

Again, your assertions are baseless. There are numerous obvious counterexamples of games hiding the precise implementation of fundamental mechanics from players, both in terms of economy and otherwise, and simply allowing the underlying concept (combined with basic output data) that drives them to inform the player's actions. Here's a simple pair of examples from games whose mechanics I am familiar with:

Economic micromanagement in Starcraft 2: Harvesters in SCr2 mine at a constant rate, carry a constant number of resources per trip, and make the trip to deposit those resources in a constant time. However, two harvesters mine a resource patch uninterrupted in shifts, while adding a third causes the patch to be slightly overloaded, resulting in diminishing returns in terms of collection rate. However, not only does the game never display to a player the information regarding the nature of these diminishing returns, it never displays a player's income rate in-game AT ALL. This information has been calculated by players, and is freely available on wikis. But if a player with several mining bases wants to know how to distribute harvesters, they will have to guess. Not even professional players will be able to make the complex calculation for an optimal solution to this problem in the middle of the game, but they make good guesses based on experience. Starcraft 2 is a popular game. It's also, in its own way, a little masterpiece of design and balance. I'd say it works pretty well.

In Total Annihilation, it wasn't just resource buildings that produced resources, and it wasn't just construction buildings and factories that consumed them. Construction vehicles, kbots, aircraft etc. all produced small amounts of resources, and units and buildings that had weapons consumed them as well. The game only ever displayed your total resource collection rate, and only ever showed your total consumption rate, and the information on individual unit and building resource consumption was only ever displayed in the selection panel for the unit (and nowhere else). Yet managing an economy with multiple inputs and outputs, of varying orders of magnitude, was not really that hard. In my experience, when resources started running low, you never made a calculation as to the things that needed shutting down to make the books balance. No, I did what everybody else did - I started shutting down things that were costing me resources in priority order, lowest to highest, until I was in the green again. Either that, or I made a guesstimate of how long I'd be in the nil-storage state, and if I thought it wouldn't be long, I'd try to ride it out. Or some combination of these two strategies.

This is how players play games. They don't calculate a perfect solution, they guess where that solution lies and they fiddle with things, PLAY with things, until they get it right. Humans learn by playing, by discovering and familiarising themselves with complex systems whose inner workings are not obvious, or immediately observable. The world is complex and entirely non-obvious in its workings, yet we are actually pretty good at living in it. Games and play are a part of that process of understanding complexity. How do you think you learnt to catch a thrown ball? How do you think you'd learn to play a musical instrument? The fact that you're not even able to examine and deconstruct this process in yourself is another reason that you're finding it so damn hard to engage with the ideas expressed by people who don't share your opinion.

@silenceoftheclams

Starcraft is a completely different game from Sup Com and it's predecessors. They aren't even in the same sub-genre. For starters TA, SupCom etcetera, all use a resource streaming economy model. This is vastly different to the resource gathering model games like Starcraft and C&C employ in their games. I'm not saying it's any better or worse than the streaming type, but I can't remember the last time I had to micromanage a mass extractor. It's a redundant argument. The example you gave about engineers generating resource. The manner in which resources are generated and consumed in TA and Sup Com is constant. If an engineer produces +1 mass then it will always produce +1 mass until it is destroyed. This is not a variable figure, decided by how many engineers I have or what they are doing. I know that from this example if I have 3 engineers they will all produce +1 mass totalling +3 mass. How is that a hidden mechanic?

In Sup Com any decision a player makes is instantly reflected in the resource income rate. Players can actually plan what they are going to build, accurately calculate what order they will need to build it and how to get the most bonuses out of adjacency and such like. Entire games are planned around this mechanic and making it secret to the player is going to fundamentally change the way that the game is played. Particularly at a competitive level. And that is where I really have an issue with your suggestion. It's not the nubbies like you and I who will suffer as a consequence of your tinkering. It will be the serious players for whom this kind of thing actually matters. And those are likely the majority of opinions you see reflected in the poll. Your perception of how players play games is only true of the casual gamer. There are a great many players who will analyse the game, break it down and work out the fine details and turn the game into an art form. A casual gamer can play these games blissfully unaware of what is really happening behind the scenes, but games like Sup Com need this intricacy to survive. You would see that taken away. It's easy to say that I don't understand the concept of the game and dismiss my arguments as baseless. Maybe I don't understand your concept of the game. Though personally, I thought I had a pretty good grasp of it. But to be honest, if it really is beyond me have you thought that maybe it's just too complicated?

Besides that, the actual game hasn't even been finished yet and the best we have to go on is the previous games. Referring to them is not a weakness of thinking or a conceptual gap that needs bridging. It's looking at a situation and breaking it down into a format that allows a more familiar point of view. It allows us to take what we know and apply it logically. You have been referred to the other topics that are discussing various concepts about how the game could work by several people and some of them are quite relevant. Some of which I have contributed heavily to. Fact is, you are in a minority of opinion about how the game should work. It's all around you and you refuse to see it. Just go an have a look. Contribute elsewhere in the forum. It's pretentious the way you commend each other for your intelligence and talk to others about how they can't bridge conceptual gaps. You're talking as if you designed the game!

The way you criticise my opinion of how the orbital and space layers of the game will interact is a joke. No one knows how the orbital layer is going to work or if orbital units will be able to traverse space. Simply because someone speculates that there will be space travel (the ability to move your units between planets) and that doesn't fit in with your concept doesn't make them wrong. It just means that your concept is one dimensional and by that I mean only works without space travel. And so what?! It's just a concept after all.

I can't see how the game would be made dull by employing a global economic model. If anything it would be faster with more action as players fight to establish colonies, build thousands of units across a solar system, funded by planet size economies. Local economy is designed to slow the player down and it takes the focus away from the actual battles and makes the player concentrate more on economic posturing.

If I take an unoccupied island in a game of SC:FA then I have basically got two options. Build resources isn't one of them because, unless I am under direct pressure to fortify, I will do this first every time regardless. I would then make the decision: Develop the island into a production facility or leave it as a resource farm. For my enemy it is easy enough to scout that island and see what I am doing there and make a decision to attack or not, even though it might take time. If I only have resources there he might choose to harass them using air or if I have an established base he may decide to bombard the island. In most games an entire island can be purged in this method without ever inserting ground based force. I have no reason to believe that if I didn't bother to defend, or had no way to counter this bombardment that a planet in PA could also be purged this way using the orbital layer. It just makes sense. Everyone is assuming that I would actually need to be on the planet to attack it. I disagree.

The way you portray your concept would serve to divide the game up, making the colonisation of worlds a difficult and risky business. It would discourage players from developing other worlds before their own. IMO it will slow the game down and make the player seem like he is just playing lots of individual games of Sup Com, rather than managing an interplanetary empire. The way I see it, the game should be seamless and moving between planets should be easy enough that it isn't prohibitive. Developing a world should be like developing an island on a water map. We don't need an explanation for how the resources get there and we don't need a mechanism to punish players who make the jump. In fact the opposite - it should be of a benefit that rewards the player for the risk taken.