Should resources be tracked per planet/moon

It is. I had to look it up again just to be sure he wasn't talking about some other game that has a remote chance of being relevant to what he is saying.

Whats the word on this actually? Sorry I am new and unable to read these 30 pages to look for a dev response!

You really should read it regardless, otherwise you'll stay a noob ;p

Mike

After a few months away from this, here's my opinion:

Yes to local resources, but there absolutely must be a way to link economies together.

- Galactic gates (non-teleporting) link planet economies
- Commander and advanced engineers act as a mobile links
- Any planet with a link will share resources with any other planet with a link
- Moons use the planet's resources
- Asteroids need links (unless they become moons)
- Basic engineers produce enough resources to slowly start up a base anywhere, even if unlinked

AND/OR

- Resources lose value with distance from supply (based on distance between planets/moons/asteroids)
- Relays relieve distance-cost
- eg: Asteroids can be positioned to link distant planets together to minimize reductions

It's not a popular idea, but I think it'd be a very interesting mechanic to have. Perhaps best be left to a mod.

If this was so then gas giants would be useless unless there was an orbital metal fabricator

I like the idea of discrete resources for two main reasons.

First it makes it necessary to create a tactical beachhead when attacking another planet and gives the defender a way to push back.

Second goes along with the first point. When an asteroid is inbound for use as a kinetic weapon I don't want to see a single opposing engineer on site able to use the main planets resources to quickly spam an army to counter it far out in space.

I think asteroid or gas planets should send cargo ships every x resources to whatever planet they are directed to. Planets themselves should be able to send a larger transport with as many resources as you wish to a specific spot. It would then create a mass/energy depot for use there. If the attacker destroys it they can starve the attacker or even capture the resources themselves. It's important that the resources can't be stopped in transit so you can safely transfer to where you want.

You do know that time is a resource right? No matter how much mass and energy it still takes ages to go from a single engineer to an army (as per your example).

I'd prefer global, but to play devils advocate as to the difficulty in attacking an established planet under a local economy system, there are multiple methods under which this could work so i dont see that as a killer argument, though valid.

land in force, dig in
land pre-built buildings - a must i think
land materials/storage buildings
land, kill a mini base, reclaim/capture

but most importantly, planets are large - pick a spot that will take the enemy a while to get to you - i doubt the entire planet will be covered in roaming armies and entrenched turrets - if it was then their army is likely split up into many weak forces and ripe for the plucking.

if you're attacking their planet you likely have one yourself, spamming an army. i suspect at that stage its not (always) about wiping them out in one go, but more like death by a dozen cuts. as long as you can get a big army to land quickly and weaken them then a foothold on the end game is established.

I would prefer global economy... how else could we be able to invade another planet? I cannot start with a single engy and low mass/energy on an already occupied planet.

If it should be separated than I would like to have a certain kind of building that needs to be build in order to stream/share your global economy to your outpost or so.

If there will be a quantum gateway for teleportation, it could also be used for the economy.

I’m going to throw my vote in for local with linking building.

In part because I want my “old” worlds to still be doing something (other than waiting for an attack), even if it’s just firing of automatic mass slugs across space. Make them feel like they are alive still, give a lived in feel. (Mass slugs could also be used as a way to get resources to a plant to start, small explosive area and mass rich wreck, this or the transport rockets - not a separate “unit” to start.)
Second, the thought of been able to recreate Normandy style invasions appeals to me, sending waves of troops to hold a location/ attack enemy bases while I get a beach head up and try to hold supply lines.
Make the start of a planet battle more interesting, and it could even help attackers if they can cut a world of from supply lines– hundreds of factories aren’t going to help if you can’t get the resources there.-

Both methods have befits and negatives, I just feel that a linked local economy will make the game feel more alive and whole.

Local economy, linked resources via gates or something. Remember the days of settlers? When you had to get enough resources to your boat to be able to send it off to another land mass, and once it had those resources onboard, it arrived and the first thing that was built was a new storehouse? Skip the 'fill up your cargo ship' part, but have it land with x resources and an engineer, and have him immediately construct some kind of link-gate (or new resource extraction/generation buildings) or something.

Depending on the link-gate you choose to create, you either shift resources or troops, but never both... And a troops link-gate could use up all the resources allowing you to shift in lots of units from another location but not build any locally perhaps?

I assume resources wouldn't instantly appear out of a resource-link-hub either... but would take time to filter through (as would make sense rather than 'tada, new link gate, have truckloads of everything').

Having played a fair few strategy games, I just have my 2c to add to the discussion. Forgive me if this has been mentioned, but the thread is now at 36 pages, and I just don't have time to read the whole thing.

Playing Anno 2070 recently, and pondering PA got me thinking. Anno uses an island system for resources, in that each island has a separate resource system for raw materials, BUT, cash is global.

What if PA used a system where energy was global, but mass was localised?

Assuming your builder makes it to a new celestial body, the easiest way to get mass production up fast is to build mass converters, expensive initially in energy sure, but it allows jump starting a new planetary body's economy and then once mass extractors are built the MCs can be retired to ease the load on the global energy supply. This can be pseudo-scienced away by using zero-width, one dimensional wormholes that allow energy transfer, but not mass on a large scale. So it's easy to send energy anywhere, but not true for mass, which needs to be harvested locally.

It provides the game with initial penalties on expansion, that mature after the player migrates the local mass conversion economy to a more stable one based on extractors once they finish building them. Beachheads are doable, but they carry risks due to the vulnerability of MCs and their tendency to explode violently.

Edit: The energy transfer system is implied, and not based on building anything specific. Energy is just global.

How about a hybrid?

We have eggs after all, and my educated guess is that is what they are thinking of.
Every time you want to establish a new base on another planet you send the commander + egg or engineer + egg. Every new egg is loaded with a starter package.
Over time you can upgrade the egg to stream the economy to other bases/celestial bodies with an upgraded egg.

Any sufficiently advanced method of energy transfer is indistinguishable from a death ray.

It's just as important to know where the resources can be FOUND, as to determine where they can be USED. Since there are only 6 choices to really contend with (Sector vs. Planet vs. Neighborhood for energy/metal), it's pretty easy to run every iteration and see what happens.

Metal extractors can only be built at extraction points.
Sector metal:
+ Very easy to use
+ Front line production very easy to develop
+ Very easy to use across worlds.
+ Favors aggressive gameplay as resources can always be directly placed in the best location
+ Logistical challenge still exists for bringing finished units to battle.

Planet metal:
+ Provides overall production limit per planet
+ Some level of logistical challenge
- Conquered worlds have heaps of metal with nothing to do
- May develop turtle style gameplay across worlds

Neighborhood metal:
+ Bases must be spread thin, providing natural resistance to nukes and siege.
- Long conga lines of units traveling across the field.
- Lots of rally points from everywhere, lots of logistics to manage.
- Nuke defense ends up near impossible to justify, while nukes remain fairly easy to use.

That wasn't too bad. Add things if you think there are better arguments.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Energy can be built anywhere. This means players may choose where to build energy.
Sector Energy:
+ Very easy to manage
+ Allows easy development across worlds.
+ Allows multiple planets to be necessary to power various super weapons (like death stars)
- Front line demand may cause issues across worlds
- Causes bad practices with energy. Having a primary energy production planet and then losing it == game over.
- A bit too easy to hide energy away from battle.
- Cloaked Commanders may end up virtually impossible to find as they could be anywhere.

Planet Energy:
+ Very clear understanding of planet status.
+ Fairly easy resource to develop and spam
+ Easily transplanted across worlds (mobile units, stationary gens attached to asteroids).
+ Commander cloak and abilities must always be connected to a visible base
+ Makes weak points available for any type of invasion, anywhere, both attacking and defending.
- Provides some wasted overhead for each world
- Killing energy for 1 world doesn't kill the player everywhere (that's a bad thing?)
- Someone might not like it.

Neighborhood energy:
+ Inherent priority system ensures that energy will always go where it's desired.
- Tons of potential metal waste as every micro economy will burn without sufficient power.
- Very difficult to manage at all levels.
- Defense grids become extremely fragile as they have limited access to emergency reserves
- Units that demand energy for abilities may become worthless on the front (Ubergun, stealth, cloak, etc.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Perhaps you may see different pros or cons which make another option very desirable. But this list should make my opinion obvious. I think sector metal and planet energy give the best outcome for the game.

I'm starting to warm up to resources by planet myself. Using an egg when you want to colonize a new planet sounds interesting and helps slow down expansion a little bit.

Also, bobocules, "someone may not like it" is not really a negative.

I do really like this idea! Sounds like it would make a quite realistic and that you need to move them to a specific planet that lack something!

I don't like it mainly because the idea of instantly transferable resources is a HUGE part of this game, and to make it not work across space seems kinda silly

Logically speaking you can't use resources from one planet on another unless you have a galactic resource transfer machine.(yes logically)

Maybe make it local until you create a super unit(galactic resource transferring device called Viris) and then it can be global depending on the power of the Viris and its connectivity with other planets.

Maybe it's a huge part of the game for YOU. Don't try to speak for ALL PA fans because of your opinion. I personally like the comparison to Anno 2070, where each island has its own resources. I think maybe the eggs which colonize new planets should carry a % of your current resources, or be upgradable in the amount they can carry. The idea of streaming energy but not metal is also interesting and I kind of like it.

Think I mentioned an egg-style thing a few pages back, using Settlers as an example - on there, whenever you built a boat to settle on a new island, your boat took enough resources across to construct a new storehouse and carried a couple of units to build said storehouse with. They then settled in the storehouse, and until you had enough resources to make the new island self-sufficient, your boats traveled back and forth between the two island landings shifting your stone/metal/wood/coal around for you. Obviously we're talking slightly higher-tech here (instead of a little dude in a wooden rowing-boat, we're talking about wormholes and lasers and stuff), but could you not have the 'egg' open the other end of a wormhole to allow a finite amount of resources to be streamed through at a time (science it away with wormhole corridor size limits or something if you must), and then once the new planet is self-sufficient, the egg disables its wormhole and you start producing a separate economy? Or something like that...