The 'new' flow based economy

I see in Sorian's blog (and Mavor has also made reference to it) that the PA economy will be flow based but with a 'twist'. I can't find the Mavor reference, but I think he said that Scathis had come up with it.

Sorian's blog http://soriandev.blogspot.co.uk/ says:

"The next thing I worked on was the economy system. My first implementation of the economy system was a TA style flow rate economy. After getting that working Jon had me change over to a new economy style. It is still a flow rate economy, but we are hoping it will be a little easier for new players to grasp while still staying true to the TA style economy fans enjoy."

I'm guessing that Uber are not ready to release details about the differences from the system we are all used to yet (Unless they are?? don't be shy, this is the backers forum!)

So, in the absence of any hard data, does anyone fancy entering into some wild and unsubstantiated speculation about what the changes might be?? Or does anyone have actual information about the differences?

(And Mike, I searched and searched honest, but the search is actually quite frustrating, like you can't search twice in a row without waiting 15 seconds, and I only had 'economy' to search on, which is really generic, and I picked the backers only forum in case they *do* fancy releasing details...)

I would imagine it has something to do with the interplanetary nature of the game.

I am really interested to see more about the planned changes. The system as I know it from SupCom:FA and TA is pretty solid already so I wonder what kind of change they are imagining, especially since it it supposed to make it "easier". In fact all I can come up with are the bad implementations that people always come up with first, so I am kind of proving neutrino's theory of people always imagining the worst implementation first xD
But since UBER is pretty responsive to us and we will get to try it out in alpha and beta to give feedback on the the system I am sure it will either be awesome or just simply thrown away.

I guess I'm wondering if it might be something along the lines of automatic prioritisation of different elements if your economy is stalling.

Perhaps certain types of building might be the first to quit during an energy stall. Maybe engies and factories will slow production, but the mexes continue to run at full tilt...

It could be that fabbers automatically switch themselves off before anything else quits. I'm only making these suggestions based on the idea that it will be easier...

Not sure about what you mean by it being the interplanetary nature igncom1...

Well it depends on how the economy is managed from planet to planet, as we have no confirmed details either way on how that will function.

With easier I imagine things like:

• Better visual feedback on things that use economy, either on the units themselves or in the gui

• A warning when you start building something that might screw with your economy

• When things start to slow down, selected (or maybe in view) units get priority

I can't see other options without breaking the old way or making it more complicated (like making a hybrid of flow and mainstream rts style)

No more metal makers.
An advanced, intelligent system with a powerful UI to (at last) manage priorities correctly.
Only metal is used to build things, 1 metal = 1 buildpower, energy used only to run things.
No general energy pool but energy transmitted by finite-ranged beams from generators/relays (with pylons being able to transfer energy across long distance between themselves).
No general metal pool but metal transported by tiny swarming drones (with telepads to transfer them instantly across long distances between themselves).
Metal is the only resource.
No metal, no energy, time is the only resource (see Spring game Kernel Panic).
Research as a third resource.
Moving now costs energy.
Seven new resources (wood, gold, coal, He3, thorium, cavorite, tomatoes), and a global market (accessible through a special building).

There has been little discussion on how an economy works with multiple players or teams. That remains to be seen.

But yes, the most obvious (and perhaps necessary) changes will be targeted towards the multi planet nature of PA. I suspect that playing on a single world will not be very different from TA/Supcom, and may even be nearly identical. Of course there will be some number and UI changes.

If I was making an economy like TA and only has one twist. I would make the twist each planet has their own economy, and there would be some sort of building that can transfer resources to another planet with the same building.

I have no idea how this would be done, but that is my guess.

Also on a side note: I am really looking forward to the alpha and finding out.

Hmm, I'm very interested to know what this 'twist' is. I really, really like the streaming economy. A bit more control over it would be very nice, some options to prioritize things, but that makes it more complicated, not simpler.

Yes share things! Must know how my economies will work!

There is no "twist." That's just realtimeshepherd's embellishment in his post. All Sorian said was that it was a different system from the traditional resource model. It might not even be that large of a change, just something like normalizing resources to the 1 mass = 1 energy = 1 time unit, like Zero K's model.

But that change doesn't require any re-coding. You can make ZK's 1:1:1 ratio in TA, and SupCom, by fiddling with levers.

If I had to guess, it would actually be a different economy system of some form.

Of course, I'm just saying the changes are just as likely to be small ones, rather than large ones. (Probably more likely, to avoid ruffling the feathers of classic TAers.)

Can anyone link me to an explanation for "flow based economy"?

Please don't let it be how Warzone 2100 handles it.*

*Expenses in Warzone 2100 are technically flowed, but it tries to mimic a pay-up-front system, by separating cost and build time into two phases.

Let's Play Total Annihilation - Arm Campaign Part 2

Oh good, I had totally forgotten where that was.

Mike

Some option to make it newbie friendly could be to keep the current FA system in background but display percentage on frontend.

SupCom/FA already had this ability (just click on the numbers on the economy UI display to toggle between numbers and percentage).