When will we see energy cost for structures and units?

This is likely going the be the biggest headache for the SupCom vets. I've found my habit to go insane on fabs and assist all over the place is REALLY bad for this game.

Slightly stalled in supcom, adding 5x fabs to your next fusion was no biggie and made it go faster, now you just tank your metal prod to like 25%, dont get the fusion any faster, and everything else is even slower.

Its different, but not bad at all. When building stacking and metal points are fixed this is really going to start feeling like a game. Having a bunch of factories is definitely superior to a couple heavily assisted factories.

Plus all the static defenses requiring energy to fire, so if you want to turtle up you need energy storage for 'peak demand'. That takes up room that could have been more factories, making you less energy efficient...

There is so many wrinkles for strategic gameplay and base building that comes from this system compared to supcom that I'm quite excited. Just give them some more time to get the system locked down to communicate better to the player.

And in response to Shandlar, It is even cooler in my opinion because of the way that they do teams. Shared teams are basically in control of one army, so one player can be solely focused on handling the economy for the team, freeing others to focus just on defense or tactics.

Honestly I always hated this behaviour. If possible I would have liked radar etc to stay online at the expense of mexes, metal making and building, although obviously if your energy economy is really in the toilet it wouldn't be possible.

This could happen with a simple priority system, as described in this thread. Although I would advise against that specific application as metal directly translates into additional power generation.

For a more simple answer:

Commander: (-30 metal, -1500 energy per second) = 2.0 metal per 100 energy used
Land fabbers: (-10/-1000) = 1.0 metal per 100 energy used
Adv Land Fabber: (-30/-3000) = 1.0 metal per 100 energy used
Air Fabber: (-6/-1200) = 0.5 metal per 100 energy used
(etc...)

So, an Energy Plant states it costs 450 metal to build:

Commander:____ 450 metal and 22500 energy (in 15 seconds)
[Norm/Adv] Land: 450 metal and 45000 energy (Norm: 45 secs, Adv: 15 secs)
Air Fabber: _____ 450 metal and 90000 energy (75 secs)

Some economy number crunching goodness here.

On the spreadsheet, pages 2/3 are construction cost/time, and the total energy consumed during that time.

Reality is that you need X pgens for each fabrication unit and some things like radar. As long as you have that, you're good. As far as I've learned, energy should never go negative, except for short bursts, like when you have artillery firing.

I enjoy this style of economy because instead of say the starcraft method. Where for a set period I have to make choices for what I'm after to optimise it, I'm not that great. If someone gives me 500 resources and 200 gas I'm gonna be an idiot. If I have to keep building building but stay good on my seesaw economy I do better it's a lot more intuitive and easy.

Nice... thanks for linking there. I'd made my own version the first week I got the game.. I'd assumed someone else would've done the same too and I hadn't found any evidence of such in the 3 weeks I've been wandering around the forums/scene...

I'll be honest, I didn't quite realize what was going on with the economy in this game, until reading all of this thread. I have to say after reading, I quite like this method.

Although the energy cost does differ from unit to unit a rough usage of power for the building you are about to build would be very useful.

I'm sure it's just feature incomplete right now. Mavor said he want's the UI to be as informative and transparent about things like metal/energy per second/shot for units/structures in one of the livestreams.

There hasn't really been changes to the ui in a while, and with 2 people working on it full time (according to a garat or neutrino post here) I'm hoping that there is an update to it soon

I personally dislike the idea of fixed energy per fab as energy then simply becomes something you have to build in proportion to metal income (max build speed proportional to metal income which is proportional to num fabs which is proportional to energy).

With energy cost per unit you may choose to go heavy on because you want to build high energy requirement units or light on for low energy requirement.

Personally, I like the fixed energy/metal needed per fab. I find it really easy to know where I'm at and where I need to be in terms of energy/metal, as well as how much impact on build time everything will have. Say my t1 factory (which "needs" 2 mex and one gen for 15m/675e per sec) is assisted by my commander. He outputs 30 metal (for the price of 20, bonus!), so build times will be a third of what they are from just the factory alone.

Hell, I even did a spreadsheet on it: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc ... rVVE#gid=0

Once they put the metal/energy per sec on certain mouseover panels (like the build order ones for comm/fabs) it will be a lot more intuitive as to what you need, how fast stuff will build. I'm hoping that the mouseover one for the unit itself will be a little more persistent when you have a unit/structure selected.

Seeing the energy cost of a structure on a builder's build list... isn't a terrible idea.

Also would be good, is the nanolathe shell displaying percent done in a number and the current metal and energy cost it is currently using with all of its fabbers

I think you both need to check out my signature........ ( viewtopic.php?f=71&t=49122 in case i change it......)

Well, until they add it to the game!

^this sounds an awful lot like work to learn in my opinion. I play street fighter and super Monday night combat, but not everyone else likes to have to learn at least 10 different flavors of ingame dynamics and how to correctly play to them.

Just saying, couldn't hurt to display them beside metal cost for the unit that is going to start building it, and the nanolathe shell, both calculated by the builder or current builders.

It would also teach more simply than having to crunch study the game that different builders cost different energy based on the convenience of the builder. They still need a tutorial on release to show people these gameplay mechanics, as well as all the buttons because not everyone knows how to currently snap a camera to a pole.