What's the point of energy?

I agree with this but not really with the rest of what you said.

There is a difference between economic micromanagement and economic choices. Currently the choices which you express through your economy are buried under a mountain of micromanagement. Often actions are taken just because it is cheap to micro, not because it's actually good. So there is a bit of a gap between how the economy is used and how the economy should be used. It could turn out that the economy is a degenerate and all difficulty comes from the micromanagement.

So I don't necessarily think the economy should be simpler. We just need a much better UI and/or a culling of the degenerate mechanics.

The PA economy has a truly massive amount of micro. You should never be trying to spend more metal than your income, if you do and nothing bad happens then you have wasted metal on the construction of unneeded power generators. Assist can become very efficient when you have one set of constructors servicing two factories.

That's not what darac was complaining about though. Sure, you can get a slight boost in efficiency by running exactly at the breadline, saving the cost of a few engies and pgens (every pgen you don't build gets you two whole T1 tanks extra. So significant.), but that's high level play and the efficiency gains are tiny compared to the gains of, say, not running your tanks into a laser tower. Darac was complaining about players who just "built more eco" in their base instead of microing their units. What more eco is there to build? T2 mexxes, and that's it. Currently T2 mexxes are too good (quintupling your metal output with the same output:cost ratio of T1 mexxes), but this isn't someone who's annoyed at having to get a few extra percent out of their eco by manually ordering a group of engies to alternately assist two factories, he's someone who's annoyed at having to build a few T2 mexxes once he hits T2.

I wasn't annoyed that you answered it, it was the manner you answered it.

You are correct. Eco micro has been reduced relative to SupCom but that doesn't mean there's not more room for improvement.

You obviously haven't read anything including the title of this thread. I'm not talking about metal at all.

Yes. "Improvement". Keep improving the game you want and you may as well just go and play Dawn of War II or League of Legends. Those games have the economy systems you want and are out now. Or if you just want to watch tanks blow each other up, Gratuitous Tank Battles has no economy management at all and delivers exactly what it says on the tin.

I wasn't responding to the title of the thread, was I? I was responding to your complaint about players who sat in their bases building eco. There's no point to sitting in your base only building energy, so you must have been talking about metal.

IMO, its just to make overall gameplay harder for players or more of harder for defending. Theres no other reason honestly, as OP mentioned, actually most games can do with just one resource. If you exclude Lore.

Its easier to defend 2 Metal Mex than it is to defend 2 Metal Mex and 4 Energy Mex.

The energy is almost where it needs to be mechanically, but the numerical balance is way off. I was surprised when I built radar and my energy consumption went down (because two fabricators stopped working) instead of up (because radar started). More energy should be used on non-building functions (radar, artillery, etc.) and less on building.

Those games don't have planet smashing and thousands of units per side!

Just because energy by itself doesn't make eco doesn't mean i'm talking about metal. I means I'm talking about eco, which at the moment is both ENERGY and metal. If you'd read everything in this thread you would have seen that I'm not advocating the removal of energy. I just would like to see its role defined in the game a little better.

I'll reiterate so you don't have to read through the whole thread:

Right now your build power is defined by metal income, energy income and number of fabricators and factories. but energy also defines other things like powering weapons and radar, etc. I understand that energy is involved in the production of things because it is 'powering the nanolathes' but I think this actually confuses what energy is. It makes its role in the game split among to many components of the game. In contrast metal is used for one thing, building. Fabricators are used for building and repairing (pretty much just building). Tanks are used for killing. Radar is used for recon. Energy is used for building, repairing, recon(radar), shooting, and probably more by the time the game is finished but the first one, building, completely dominates energy and obfuscates all its other roles in the game.

Oh, so you're interested in simple spectacle over gameplay.

Why does it need to be more well-defined? Are you incapable of comprehending the action of using one resource for more than one thing? Fabricators are also used for reclaiming, so I suppose you want to split the build/reclaim/repair roles into three? And oppose any multirole units like SupCom's cruisers?

Reread post, mainly this line:

and then reply without being facetious.

You kids done yet? Two pages wasted and nothing to show for it. I only came to facepalm at this:

U fukkin wot Uber?

Care to explain your point?

Nah. If it's not obvious at this point, then nothing I can say will help.

This is bobucles-speak for "I don't have to justify anything I say",

In short, yes. But it's more apparent that I'd simply be wasting my time on an explanation which would go far above the current level of discussion.

If you really want to know, all the information is already in the game. Look it up and figure out what the end result and implications are for yourself. Then TELL me what it is happening and I'll see if you're right or wrong. This particular problem is barely level 2 difficulty.

If you aren't interested in figuring out even the simplest of oddities, then I'm not going to help ya.

You don't get how this works. You asserted something and are now refusing to back up said assertion with analysis or evidence. What this means is that the thing you asserted is not true and you're avoiding discussing it because you know you're unable to back it up.

Correction.

The energy storage only stores a little more than double of what it costs.

Its max storage is not an indication of how much energy it saves you. The real value of its usefulness is the total energy that would have otherwise been wasted and is then subsequently used. If you fill and empty your storage twice you have in effect benefited by double its max energy storage value.

Yes but is that much or little? That is my question to bobucles.