That would fundamentally change the game, making combat efficiency matter, more like other RTSs. I would just as soon not do that for PA, where combat efficiency is fairly irrelevant so long as you're able to move forward. It's a unique feature to this line of games. That is, in a game with finite resources, I can potentially win through attrition. You took most of the map but you're taking most of the losses so in the end, I win by turtling you to death. That doesn't work in PA, with infinite resources. If you lose 5000 metal defending something and I lose 10000 metal taking it, that's in my favor so long as I win and have more than double your income with no end to it. Infinite resources still encourages expansion, but it's more about flow than efficiency. I think the problem may actually be more to do with all the sniping and superweapon options. You don't need a lot of metal to make 4 nukes and kill someone through their anti-nuke defense. Or to rapidly build 4 halleys and smash the planet. Or to build 80 gunships and go snipe them through their AA. Of course, a good opponent may see this coming and be able to deal with it but the fact remains that these are powerful options that you can pull off with relatively little metal.
Fair point. My idea Is a game-changer. The best turtler can still counter everything, except for incoming asteroids. (Unless you can destroy those with several nukes) My idea was simply to prevent permanent turtling. By rebalancing sniping, superweapons, eco you could end up with the same result. Though finite resources are your own fault if you run out of them, by not expanding. If you get hit by an asteroid than that's your enemy who decided to do it. I'm not sure if you understood my thing with finite resources completely, so to make clear: Mex run out after a long while. That's it. No change to the streamlining economy. So they're still infinite, kinda? Oh and : ONE DOES NOT SIMPLY RAPIDLY BUILD FOUR HALLEYS
The more I think about it, the more I'd like to try a couple weeks against random people with no T2 mex. Like just remove it from the game temporarily and see how it plays. My suspicion is that one real consequence of T2 mex is it creates a huge gap between skill levels. Going T2 1-2 minutes earlier than someone else can be an enormous benefit mostly because of metal, which drives everything else you want to do. I enter so many 4-6 way FFAs and end up personally killing everyone and I'm definitely not a top 10 player; it's just that the power curve between two players can be enormous, mostly because of T2 metal. It would be hard to become 10x more powerful than someone else using just T1 metal but with T2 metal it's not that hard. I go T2 early, they don't; I expand to grab all the mex I can, they don't. Now I'm literally 10x more powerful than they are whereas with only T1 I might only be 3-4x more powerful given the same conditions. Basically I'm talking about shrinking the gap between "totally new player" and "skilled player". The gap right now is probably bigger than in any other RTS I've ever played.
Thinking more on this... Another problem I see T2 metal causing is a "race to the game enders". On even a modest size planet, say radius 600, it takes a little while for a T2 army to trundle over to an enemy position. In the time it takes you to do this, you probably could have: * Built a laser sat and tried for a snipe * Started up nukespam and tried for a snipe * Built 40 gunships and tried for a snipe Basically given two players: Player A, throwing all his T2 into a ground attack Player B, throwing all his T2 into various game-ending snipe attacks ...player B gets a lot of time to try his game enders before player A can really even get a good attack rolling. If the T2 economy was weaker, you'd have more time to roll a modest ground attack to your enemy without his 1000 metal/second economy rolling out a new nuke.
I made a thread to discuss exactly what you are talking about: https://forums.uberent.com/threads/economy-balancing-the-exponential-curve.58295/
