Should resources be tracked per planet/moon

The possibility to mod it in, will require a base, or a very open structure. Most games won't let you mod this deep. If the devs would support the possibility to mod this in, I would be happy, even more so if it could be a different gamemode/toggle in the hosting screen.

Still my fear is that once you have a couple of planets/asteroids, your resources are going to be unlimited and nothing is going to matter anymore. That is my prime reason for supporting this idea. Of course if the alpha tests say this snowballing rarely happens, it won't be needed as much. If it does happen, I think this would be a nice way to slow down this snowballing effect and make building resource gatherers important throughout the entire game, rather than the first 25%.

Also remember, that TA and SupCom players are not the only ones backing this, I myself have played neither long enough to say anything about them, though I bought FA today.

I don't think people fully understand the difficulty of invading an enemy controlled planet. In either situation, there will be plenty of chances for sneak attacks and secret bases, but eventually you're going to end up with a situation where your opponent only has fully developed worlds for you to attack. In this case, they know you're coming and they'll have scouts, radar and whatever other detection units spread across their planet, so there will be no sneaking in. It'd be like starting a TA/SC:FA game 30 minutes to 1 hour behind your opponent and expecting a win. If both sides are equal (say 2 planets each) only having local resources would create an unbreakable stalemate.

Quoted my previous argument against difficulty invading enemy planets

Please read the full statement on page 3

viewtopic.php?f=61&t=37176&start=20

The separate economy just adds so much depth, without necessarily adding complexity. It is already going to be the case that if you want a real army on another planet, you need to build a base. So why is that complexity ok, but clicking one source planet and then clicking a destination to point the resources at just too much?

Nobody is trying to make this into Civ in space. A global economy made sense in SupCom and TA when you were on comparatively small maps and all on one planet. But PA is a fundamental shift away from single map battles, and with that change will have to come other changes. I think a global shared economy is something that should change because it just doesn't make as much gameplay sense in a game that is basically made up of many smaller games of TA.

I don't know. You can always say "adding more things will break it". You could say that about how the economy worked in SupCom, and end up with SupCom2. You could say having transports is too complex, take that out, or multiple engineers assisting a building is too complex, get rid of that. The complexity is what makes the game.

I voted no. Global economy would be better than any of the suggestions I've seen in this thread.

Actually global isn't the right word any more. Celestial? Sol...al? I'm not sure the word I'm looking for exists (as global is to the planet we're on, X is to the solar system we're in?).

You can actually mod in local economies to Sup1/FA. It requires you to ignore the engine-level economy code entirely (which is perfectly possible, given all the economic hooks in Lua to play with).

I had 50% of the code written at one point, then real-life got in the way.

Managing dozens and dozens of different economies in an RTS would not be fun.

No, because it doesn't make the game any more fun. Having to rebuild your economy from scratch every time you move to a new planet is pointless tedium, and probably guarantees that you can't take out an enemy who has already entrenched himself on the planet.

A per-system-based economy is probably a better compromise. Each planetary/star system has its own economy, BUT the other systems you control contribute a portion of their output to the current system you're in.

To balance this out, the further away the other systems you control are to you, the less resources you receive from them.
So, for example if you've blazed a path of destruction across 4 star systems, you'll get 20% of the output from nearest system, 10% from the second furthest, and none from the last one as its out of range to supply you.

Can you imagine how impossibly mutable the game would be if every idea that got a ratio of ~2:1 against was made an option!?

In my book you'd need to get a lot closer to 1:1 to even warrant the devs considering it.

How do you know?

Because I have a well-developed, logical imagination?

Well then, hopefully the devs just do their own thing and ignore these threads for the most part. I want them to make a game they think will be good. If they listened to stupid advice like yours, TA and SupCom would never have existed.

For that matter, just about every innovative game would never have existed.

I think we have a bamf over here.

Or they could pay attention to ideas have a broad consensus.

But yes ultimately they need to follow their own path.
Anything designed by committee tends to end up a dogs breakfast.

The ultimate point that I feel must be considered is the issue of strategy. I think too many people hear ideas regarding local economies and the “complexity” that induces and they freak out. Complexity is not the enemy: Tedious micro managing is.

I believe that there needs to be a hybrid of local “planetary” economies and “global” system wide economies. There are a number of threads discussing various mechanisms by which to achieve this in a balanced way so I won’t discuss that in detail here. However, I do think there must be some form of “activation cost” (like building a unit or building that connects each planet to a global system) or penalty (like a multiplier that reduces the amount of a planets excess resources that is available to the rest of the global system) when moving resources from a “local” to “global” economy. In my opinion a purely global economy (where all resources across all orbital bodies are shared without any form of activation cost/unit or penalty) simply destroys a large strategic dynamic that this game could provide.

For example: When I imagine this game I envision launching raids or blockades to temporarily cut off my opponents power stations orbiting the nearby gas giant from the rest of his global economy. This weakens his fortress world’s economy enough that I can land units to create a beach head. Or conversely I wrest orbital control of one of his planets from him, completely cutting it off from his global economy and thus affording my ground units the opportunity to finish him off.

Complexity brought on by a hybrid local/global economy system is NOT the same as adding tedious micro. In fact complexity actually allows for a Real Time Strategy game, while a lack there of produces Real Time Sh*t.

Just going to add an idea:

If there are going to be individual economies, they should be based per planet. Moons in orbit around a planet would share the planet's resources completely.

From this, the 'global economy' could be added. Asteroids would use this modified economy, with penalties for interplanetary resource sharing.

The interface could show the local economy for the planet you are currently viewing. Another bar underneath would show the global economy.

Zooming out to system view (however this is done) and toggling the economy view (if not defaulted) would show bars for each planet showing their local economy, and a large bar for global.

~

Overall, I think the whole mechanic has good intentions, but reality may prove it to be more complicated than imagined, and more annoying than engaging. I'd like to see it at least attempted, though I fear that may just not be worth the effort.

Fido no! Don't eat PA! Bad dog.

Slightly modified into a highly quotable form

You need to cut off the death star's shield generators with a small band of rebels you mean?

This sums it up perfectly. I worry that with a simple global economy the game will become supreme commander on a continents map with asteroid shaped artillery. Not to say that's bad, but I can just play supreme commander.

Great quote!