Should resources be tracked per planet/moon

Not really a random question since I already alluded it on page 21.

Yeah, and I've already been through these in quite some detail. Please note I numbered your points for easier reference. I'll summarise here so you don't have to go searching unless you really want to read:
[1]There are already mechanisms that have been effectively employed in previous games that would work just as well in this one to prevent it being a "space-race victory". Such things include upgrading factories for example (covered on page 19).
[2]I'm not really sure what this means. Resource income is infinite as this is a streaming economy type. And in reference to snowballing (which I've also already covered), that is what this game is about. It's actually how the economy of this game works and it's a non-issue.
[3]This is a point of contention for me. Even if it was free to move the resources between planets or better still a global economy, the player still has to build the units somewhere. The issue here is time. Players will still opt to build units where they are required because time is one of the most valuable commodities in the game. Arguably more so than the resource it requires to produce these units. The time it takes to move a meaningful quantity of units between planets will balance this out naturally without the requirement for a complicated economy. Players will still get caught off guard because a scouting enemy will know where the majority of an opponents units are stationed and identify the best locations to attack. This has nothing to do with economy.
Furthermore, the suggestion that you can "produce counter units whenever, wherever and in whatever masses you wanted" is a pretty irrational statement. This is still going to be dictated to by available resource and the time it takes to produce these units whatever the economic model. You still need to know where the enemy will attack to produce these units and you can't just tell everything, everywhere to build at the same time. No economy will sustain that. Players need to make strategic choices where they defend and where they don't.

Sure if you leave a player long enough to fortify everywhere to the point that it's impregnable (and somehow you're still alive?!) it's your fault. You both start with the same opportunities after all.

I think everything through before I post. I think maybe you should start doing the same. Some of the arguments you made in that post are ludicrous to the point where I'm loathed to spend time on them with a response. Plus I already addressed most of the issues in previous posts. How you can state that "the drain of the factories on the economy isn't important" is beyond me. Besides this, if you allow a player to do nothing but cover their home planet in resource collectors it's your fault and perhaps you need to be reconsidering where you're attacking. I think you summed it up well in your next post:

Sniping should only be a viable tactic against someone who gives an enemy the option. That is why teleporters and that ilk are bad for the game. Equally, having a single building responsible for connecting your planet to your economy is IMO not a good idea. It will be the focal point for almost every attack. Forcing the player to play defensively and concentrate his force around the building.

If you are suggesting that this shouldn't be possible then I think I want my money back.

This I can almost agree on. I can certainly see your logic. The only thing I will pick you up on is a small detail that you neglected to think through:

Forget the economic structure altogether for a moment and consider what my presence is on the planet:
[1A]Supposing it's just factories and a few point defences as far as structures are concerned and a maybe handful of units. So you come in with a 200 unit invading force and destroy my units. What's going to happen to my factories? My point defence is vulnerable to your mobile arty without mobile units to back it up. They're dead regardless of the size of my economy. There's absolutely no way I can produce units fast enough to counter attack.
[2A]Supposing it's all factories and an army of 400 units and you attack with the same 200 unit army. You're screwed. Probably because you didn't scout before you attacked. It doesn't matter how the units got there or how or even where they were produced. just that they were there before you were.

It's not primarily about resources. Of course I require resources to build anything, but the more important commodity is time and situation. Suppose in the case of point 1A that I have 400 units on another planet with which to counter attack. I could ship them in using transport of some kind, but the time it would take me to respond would depend on several things such as distance, speed of travel and transport capacity. I may or may not get them there in time to protect my factories. But I would never have considered building those units there in the first place because they'll be getting destroyed as they leave the factories one by one.

EDITED: I should also point out here that the resources available to me will also effect the time it takes me to produce these units, compounding the issue. Any player who knows how to play the game will be on the limit of his economy at all times. "firing up the war machine" is going to take more than just telling a bunch of factories to build units.

Well then we've found the fundamental disagreement. If moving units between planets is that easy then it really doesn't matter what economic model you have and the game really isn't different than Supreme Commander. I'm sure it will be fun, but it is just an incramental improvement over older games.

Edited to be clear: I'm not going to address any of your arguments because they are moot. I was not under the impression that gigantic armies flying around in space was going to be a thing in this game.

I understand where you're coming from here, but how can it not be different to supreme commander just because the economy is the same and the ability to transport units on a large scale between planets exists? Surely if that were the case then it would also be true to say that Sup Com really isn't different to Total Annihilation. We all know that isn't true.

What makes you think a game that is about travelling from planet to planet, destroying thousands upon thousands of enemy robots and general annihilation of everything you encounter - including planets wouldn't have large-scale interplanetary transport? Maybe because if it did, your whole argument collapses?

EDIT: Think you should look at the Planetary Assaults and Interstellar Transportation topic.

Yeah, you got me. It's just easier to word it that way as it results in someone giving me a nice list of points instead of just hand-balling me to earlier in the thread

Ok, firstly point 1 and 2. I don't really see how this is a problem if everyone can do it. It should be factored into your strategy.

1 - I would assume that the act of going "interplanetary" would involve a significant economic cost. This is a massive risk vs. reward scenario. On the one hand you need to hold off the enemies on your planet, on the other you don't want to be the last into space. Furthermore, the act of interplanetary expansion involves economic costs as well. There are more buildings to build, more bases to defend, more fights to fight. Sure, you could channel all your economic might into one front, buy you are just asking to get wiped out everywhere else. Also, moving to another planet is no different to moving to another part of your existing planet and setting up economy there. Should I transfer resources between different bases on the same planet as well now?

2 - I don't know about infinity, that assumes a lot about the economy that Uber haven't hinted at. Noone knows how metal or gas planets actually work yet.

3 - (first sentence) Well that goes against all logical sense. (rest) It still takes time to build your units. If an army lands at a base of yours and you don't have a pre-existing army or defences then you will take significant losses. Even if you have a wall of factories with a hundred assisting engineers (speculation, don't bring up engie assist topic here) there is still a minimum build time for units and more factories means a bigger base to defend (and easier to attack).

(counter units) This is simply an argument for a well rounded attack force.

(game enders) Game enders are just one element. A person playing long enough to get to game enders is not relying on them alone. Nukes have defences. (From trailer) it appears that nukes can also destroy asteroids so it may be possible to pre-emptively destroy every asteroid in the system to prevent this. But I digress..

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I'll be back tomorrow to discuss any counters to these arguments as well as any other nicely structured lists of arguments that present themselves.

That is true, in my opinion SupCom made huge leaps forward in managing your armies and queuing actions. So this could be a very cool and better game anyway, despite not being what I hoped for.

It has nothing to do with defending my arguments. It's just that from my first view of the concept video, I thoght we were getting a game that gave an interesting treatment of interplanetary war. I didn't think we'd have corny sci-fi transports moving armies around like space travel was easy. I thought the vast majority of armies would be built on the planet they were used on, and only transported in small numbers with a low rate. That's what the video showed, but of course it was only concept video and nothing is known yet.

I know, I found that just today and am very sad about it. I mean, it can be a cool game still, but just not what I was hoping for.

Although, again, that is just random community opinion. None of it is confirmed by Uber. I may yet get my dream game.

@vectorjohn
My impression is that mass transportation of armies should be economically easy or at least viable, but doing so should make your units vulnerable. This would mean that more "creative" methods of invading would be required first (like the intergalactic unit cannon) in order to make it safer for the larger force to arrive.

I feel like moons and planets should have a collective economy due to their proximity.

I disagree that space transport makes the game uninteresting. In fact I would argue that without it you can't really call it interplanetary war. You might as well be playing a bunch of individual games of Sup Com in that case. As much as anything else, I'm curious to know what makes you think space transport is a bad thing?

The video showed a commander building a base. Just like the video of Sup Com did when that was released. I think you'll find that for the most part armies will be constructed as near to where they are going to be utilised as possible. If that's for use on that planet or an adjacent one is not the point it's about reducing the time it takes to get your army to the battlefield.

Now I understand why you feel if you allowed a player to build up a force of only a few aircraft, which could be done in a few short minutes (regardless of the economic model I might add) then as you rightly said - it would make it impossible for any player looking to try and get onto the planet. It's a fundamental flaw in the concept that completely breaks the game. It means that if someone beats you there, for there to be any chance at all of getting onto a planet you have about 5 minutes to do so and establish a rudimentary base or that's it. Even then you might still get wiped off the face of the planet and that was your only chance gone because as you stated, a player would only have to build a small army in order for it to be untouchable by anything but a KEW.

Repeat until all available planets are taken and then it becomes a race to see who can build the most asteroids. The more I think about it, the more it seems obvious there would be space transports. I guess that's why it didn't even occur to me that you would think there wouldn't be.

I don't think it's random opinion, I believe it's what most people are expecting. I think your dream game has some serious flaws. It's just my personal opinion of course. We're going to have to wait a while before Uber come forward with anything on this and many other points of contention unfortunately.

Actually, to get back on topic, this is the problem that separate economies would prevent. It means to really make a planet hard to invade, you have to build up economic infrastructure. Without it, your defending army can be weakened or destroyed by whatever type of artillery exists, if any. And even if you have an economy built up on the planet, that's something that can also be destroyed to make way for the invasion.

I guess however, if there is no planet to planet artillery then you're right, there is no way to invade a planet after it is captured.

I know that my ideas would work well for this game, but if you have a completely different conception it's going to be hard for me to convince you because any one point I make will be completely unworkable in your vision of the game. A game developer can do it because they will show you what they mean with a finished game, and so I have to just hope that's what will happen.

Planet-to-planet artillery has already been confirmed. So have interplanetary unit cannons (via the kickstarter video).

That's the problem with discussing hypotheticals, we very rapidly diverge into our own concepts, which are often more entrenched and less flexible than we think. Discussion of the various merits often becomes more of a linguistics problem than anything.

I would say that (ideally) resources should be tracked per celestial object (If gas giants are viable battlefields, why not stars?) and that resources can be shared using some kind of supply-line (transports, mass drivers a la Stars!, gates, magic pools, whatever) which throttles, exposes, and enforces the snowball principle. The "global economy" is just an abstraction of this kind of behavior, and allowing (but not requiring) the player to interact on a more granular level seems like a win-win situation.

I put down yes but a tentative yes.

I believe resources should be local for the most part but the capacity to share should be open. For example I think energy should be a per planet/moon/asteroid basis since it's impossible to transmit it over such distances. I realize this is drifting out of the awesome realm but it's hard to ignore that.

Mass however is another story. It's a physical, movable resource that could be shared between locations, provided some conditions are met. Obviously engineers landing on an asteroid would have some mass and energy with them to begin building some basic structures, from there things follow normally. Say an enemy destroyed your mass pumps though? And the rest was depleted on repairs. Screwed right? Maybe not.

Perhaps you could research, or meet some requirements to build IP transports that create supply chains in order to distribute mass from areas its not being used to the war front. Interesting right? Now you're base, which would have to have been reclaimed to acquire the mass to rebuild the pumps has some income. Limited though, don't want to make it too much. Enough to cause problems if an enemy managed to shoot down the transport.

More tanks/assault bots/Doomsday asteroids, less space trucking.

Having to manage not only a new economy per planet, but also resource transferring between planets, and having to set up economy chains from your homebase to the front lines would be tedious at best.

Instead of 'resource streaming structures' or cargo ships, etc, I want to build more blowy-uppy BOOM BOOM stuff.

Limited resource nodes are good for gameplay. As a planet loses value, turtling becomes less effective and battles have to move on. A player might deconstruct his base from a dead husk, and move it to a new virgin world. That's good. A constantly moving battlefield means more opportunities to attack and harass. A dying galaxy sets time limits on games and makes attrition possible. That's also good. It also makes both planet killing and assaulting useful for different things. A husk with a huge fortress should just be blown up without remorse, while a rich but fortified world is much more tempting to capture. Nothing wrong with that.

Localized resources are... not so good. Why bother capturing an asteroid if the resources are stuck there? How can you assault a new world without already owning half of it? What happens when an empire stretches across 5 or more systems? Logistics are becoming an exponential headache in a game focused on WAR and big battles. Leave logistics as a problem for grand strategy games, thanks.

The method of resource transit goes back to the nature of teleportation from the TA games. Large scale teleportation was very difficult, leading to Commanders as the ultimate war machine. By extension, small scale teleportation was very easy. That's why construction in TA was done with nanomachines. They could be mass produced and beamed across the planet with ease (likely across the galaxy), then assembled on site into anything that was needed. The limiting factor was energy and engineers, which takes infrastructure to build up.

In this respect, mass should be good anywhere in the galaxy, especially where a Commander is involved. An engineer laden assault should be absolutely devastating if the player diverts his entire economy there. A war on multiple fronts should have to make hard choices on where money goes. That's just another avenue of strategy for the game.

That being said, Energy would be good as a planetary resource. Why? Because it encourages base building and is short term. A giant death ray shouldn't have half of its power plants hidden across the galaxy. Losing a fortress base shouldn't doom every other world to blackouts. An asteroid base shouldn't be 5 extractors and a patrolling engineer. Every place needs power, and every assault needs power. It's easy to build, it makes bases more expensive, and it's a vulnerable target worth exploiting. More importantly, it's a single point of data that gives a ton of information about your planets at a glance. A constantly fluctuating or decreasing power supply means trouble (I miss Big Bertha battles), and the player should respond right away.

In a sense, mass would be the strategic resource, and energy would be the tactical resource. The former is hard fought and the major emphasis of the game. The latter is easy come, easy go, but god help you if a planet suddenly runs out and half its defenses shut down. At the best, players might beam energy within a star system, but little more.

The biggest divide of resources should be per player. Every player needs some private money to work with. If they spend too much, they can request more. If they don't spend it, it spills over to the rest of the team. Worked great in TA, and it could definitely work here.

Unless the AI can manage all this stuff for you. There's no reason that the game can't auto-build support infrastructure.

To offer you another strategic structure to blow up in your enemy's base of course!

Why would you add a mechanic to the game and then make an AI to do it for you just so you don't have to.

If you're already dealing with multiple planets, there's a good chance you'll have access to nukes as well. This already gives you a strategic structure to blow up, the anti-nuke.
There's no need to complicate an economic system that's already too complex for some just to make another strategic structure available.

Why has this topic been revived? As far as I can see, no one is saying anything new. Please stop flogging the dead donkey.

Its forum life buddy, some people like to discuss what they weren't here to discuss the first time.

Just accept it, play nice, and try to keep your most compelling arguments ready so people might change their mind rather then ignoring you because of sarcasm and rudeness.

Okay that's just funny. :lol: But seriously, nothing is dead until...eh 9 or so months of inactivity.

What? Really? This thread is filled with Yay and Nay, and despite 24 pages no one has yet discovered that both a global AND local economy each have their own merits. Fortunately, the game already has two resources to work with- Metal and Energy. That's more than enough to do both!

Metal is the strategic resource. It is teleported between worlds, creating a galactic pool of resources for the game's overarching strategy. Global is simple, easy to understand, and pretty much necessary for any level of sanity in the game. The level of metal is fairly consistent between worlds, so that simple worlds will be adding to the bank while fortified worlds will be draining it.

Energy is the tactical resource. The main purpose is to fuel local(planet) infrastructure, quick to build but fairly expensive on metal. Energy is critical on a local level, making generators juicy tactical targets. Destroying power can give advantages such as shutting down artillery and stalling construction, which is good for gameplay. Simple tech will not worry much about energy while high tech stuff can't function without juice, making energy management and sabotage more important as the game goes on.

Why local? Losing everything in the universe at the same time because of one attack is too damn crippling. If any units at all need energy to function, then global energy just can't work. It's too messy. A local energy indicator also gives a HUGE amount of information on the planet, such as how developed it is, whether the local defenses are active, or if everything has gone to hell. Anyone who has played TA knows you can figure that ALL out from one resource.

No linking structures. No trade routes. No space tax. None of that crap is needed. Each resource does exactly what it needs to do. You see one metal indicator on the top left, and one energy indicator on the planet. Attacking energy wins the battle. Attacking metal wins the war. That's all the complexity you need.