Should resources be tracked per planet/moon

Also I prefer SupCom 2 to SupCom FA, although FA did do some things better, one of which was flow economy. A global (solar system-al) flow economy with non-upgradeable metal extractors would suit me.

Believe it or not, "off the table" means making it simpler. Making a non-arbitrary number of sub-economies is NOT simpler.

Yes.

Yeah, my point was that Supreme Commander 2 was not improved through the simplification. Instead it made for a more boring and less enjoyable game.

I just think spliting up the economy may be just a feature that many people could find simply not fun and just make less newbie friendly.

I'm sure it will just slow the game down and i'm no coder but I think it is easier to just have globle economy.

Yes.

Mike

.. No I didn't

You have just made an excellent argument to bring back streaming resources, which was what was removed to make SupCom2's economy simplified. I agree with that argument completely. But how exactly does that mean that multiple semi-isolated economies are good?

Sorry, the people for a global economy are just wrong, Supreme Commander 2 was a worse game than SupCom2/FA, and the way to make a good game isn't to remove all the "micro management" (or in other words, content).

Yes it was, but I don't think supcom2 has anything to do with a global economy.

You are supposed to be micro managing your tanks, not your economy.

Personally I prefer the SC2 economy of trickle in, buy out as it prevented economic crashes and allowed players to focus on building and controlling army's over playing a game of "Supreme city commander".

I am in favor of a global economy, and preventing enemy's from snowballing should be easy with interplanetary missiles carrying troops and ordinance.

Non sequitur much?

I think it should be a planet based economy, actually I think per major gravity well, i.e. a planet with multiple moons all share the same economy. I can understand why a lot of people just want a simply economy, it lets you concentrate on attacking the enemy, but I think a game of this scale needs more options for strategy.

I think the complexity comes down to how the information is presented, say a system has 7 planets with some moons around each, when you zoom out to a system view you could get an overview of each economy, it only needs to show the rate and storage values for each resource (mass and energy I think Uber has already said) In addition these could be colour coded for easy reference, say green for a stable economy, red for one that is short in one or more resource, and blue for one that has constantly full storage and/or high income rates, i.e. under utilised.

(on a side note I think this could be used for the military status of a base too, red for under attack and taking more damage then dealing, yellow for under attack but taking/dealing even damage, blue for under attack but dealing more damage than taking and green for peaceful, perhaps the base name would change colour in this case and the sample time would be say over 5 secs)

The limits which trigger each change in state could be alterable in game to what ever suits your style, i.e. you want a planets economy to show red as soon as it goes negative in a resource, but you want the blue to show when its say around 5% (of storage) under utilised. Or maybe red is when it goes to -10 resources (not a %) and blue when it hits +10 resources.

This information could also be shown in a separate window too for easy reference. The ability to sort this list into highest/lowest incomes per resource, highest/lowest storage etc would help too.

Wouldn't you also prefer multiple ways to attack the enemy besides 'throw as many units as you can at it' or launch WMD's (Weapons of Mass Destruction, i.e. nukes, asteroids etc) at it. With a planetary economy you can cut off a bases supply lines to aid invasion, you could pick off easier targets, i.e. newly established bases before going for his main base(s), maybe even stopping any bases from being formed in the first place to stop them expanding.

I think a building that can receive a percentage of the economy from another planet would help too, so a bigger economy can stream extra resources to a new/smaller one via either a galactic gateway, mass drivers, or simple energy streaming from orbit to orbit, perhaps all three options are viable and give the ability to send more resources based on cost to build/operate. The galactic gateway could transfer the largest but cost a lot in resources to use, the mass driver would send less but use less resources but be susceptible to attack en-route, then orbit to orbit would be the smallest amount, say a small but constant stream but cost the least amount, e.g. maybe just an orbital building/satellite.

Also different units can aid with planetary invasion, imagine this scenario:
You already know building a functioning base before attacking is impossible due to the enemies defences. In that case how about combat engineers for instance, with the able to fight if needed but can still put down buildings, albeit slower than normal engineers, also drop-pod style buildings that have limited mobility but can deploy to create a temporary forward base until the engineers establish a more permanent one. What about deploying them right into his base, wouldn't that be cool?

I think the major downside for me is once you have a functioning global economy you can largely forget about it, and that coupled with WMD's means most battles end up going down to who has the most WMD's, or who has them first and normal units are largely ignored, simliar to what happened in the SupCom series in the end game.

Sorry for the large post, but I just wanted to get my thoughts down.

That is a great argument for separate economies. People are just worrying too much that this is going to be some kind of Sim City / empire building game or something. I think they are failing to realize that managing the economy *is the game*. Where you send your units is a question entirely based around resource availability and economy. To take it to an extreme, a game with no collection economy would be one where you get some magical unlimited stream of units (at the same rate of course) or a starting number of units that never changes. That is not Supreme Commander, Total Annihilation, and hopefully not PA. That sounds like a fun little mobile game, but a real game on a PC is a little more complex.

It's like people are deliberately misunderstanding. Nobody is going to make a game where you need to bust out spread sheets and have city planning meetings. They worry that separate economies would make it too hard to invade a well defended planet. But you know what? 1. It should be hard. 2. A separate economy actually makes it easier to invade. You have the option of instead of invading outright, you start by crippling the planet's economy. You use artillery to destroy mass / energy collectors and defense buildings which means they can't constantly rebuild with the weight of a system wide economy backing them up. They might even gasp have to send help.

Global economy makes this game essentially like a large map in Total Annihilation. Separate economies makes each planet somewhat like its own entire game that may go back and forth over time.

I don't know if that point has been brought up, but there is yet another good reason to seperate economics by default:

Teamplay.

Having multiple players controlling the same set of units has already been confirmed, but that usually leads to one problem: One player is enough to drain the whole economy empty, either the global economy or the local on "his" planet he's controlling at the moment. Having the economies splitted means at least, that both players can play somewhat independed from each other while still beeing able to take over each others army / planet. Also screwing the economy on one planet will not take down your whole empire, this also goes for "single player" games.

(To be honest, if never experienced a game with shared resources where the players would have been responsible with shared resources unless beeing forced / organized. But latter one is uncommon in casual matches.)

Streaming resources would solve a lot of the issues with sharing resources between multiple player using the same team.

If you are going to isolate players on the same team to different planets, what's the point? Just have them as two different teams allied together.

Here is a fresh idea. It is sort of a splitting resources among planets, with a side of "doing it the realistic way".

Track money by literal bases. The main structure of the base costs a certain amount of resources, and when deployed it literally starts you off with a part of those resources to begin base construction.

If you wanted a bigger boost, send 2 main builders. They would double building construction and contain twice the resources sent in comparison.

TO ADD TO THIS IDEA, you could also make another unit, whos only job is to go from one main building, to where another main building is, go INSIDE the other main building, and disappear upon entry while the main building recieves the entire chunk of resources sent. There could be a small, medium, and large resource hauler.

Depending on what kind of commands will exist, you could have units group with it and waypoint with it to defend it on its journey, and this will get many of them back and forth when needed with as little micro as possible, as a few clicks would nearly gurantee its arrival at your other base, along with a audio notice when it arrives. Or you could send one with the main building unit when you send it in the first place.

Easiest way to send packaged resources physically from one planet or even multiple bases on a single planet, to another. Send them literally from a built cargo unit from one main building, to enter another main building somewhere else and that main building recieves the resource cargo, and leave resources as tracked by each main structure, where their resource structure deposits it to the owned main base, and must be transfered manually.

BONUS: In co-op games, this would even let you physically send your teammate resources, by sending a cargo unit with the resources literally into his main base. He could even take a cargo unit and resend it to a different main base of his. Supply lines.

That's what I got. Or, leave it as universally shared resources.

in addition to vectorjohn and razorlance's ideas supporting seperate economies is that there should be some way to link economies between planets and automatically trade resources. this gives a compromise situation between the two camps.

1. it allows in interplanetary economy where the resources from one planet can be used on another with minimal fuss, drastically reducing the complexity of managing multiple economies and allowing resource streaming to major construction hubs.

But

2. the link points to a planet with an unbalanced economy (forge world) provide a major structural weakness which, if destroyed, can cripple planetary production and defences while enemy forces land and swoop in for the kill.

possible methods for sending resources are ships, gates and mass drivers. Each of which is discussed in a different thread

There are multiple threads? I honestly didn't see another one floating around.

the threads which touch on these issues are

Planetary Assaults and Interstellar Transportation

Galactic Gates: A Universal Solution To Major Problems

Mass Drivers and Resource Transport

most of those threads are based around unit transit but can easily be modified to include, at the very least metal transit.
the issues are toughed on but not a focus.