I would think it was really cool to have workers that collect resources, something more flexible than just one building doing everything automatically, maybe one of the resource types would be one that could run out after a while, anyone else?|||Timmy|||Timmy|||Introduce faction diversity to economy too.
Let's say the ancients have some sort of mana gathering pillar and the empire has a worker building that would send attackable but not controllable drones to nearby resources. Difference being that the mana pillar would have to be built on the source, but the worker building could work at long distances as long as the resource has been scouted out first.
The mana pillar would reinforce you to secure resources and fortify them, but the worker building would reinforce scouting with the expense of enemy easily finding out where your base is and you having to protect the entire route.
And no to resources that run out.|||Mazrix|||if you're out of resources, and out of units, then the game will stop. whoever turtles up and has the most artillery, before things dry-up, will eventually win.
boring.|||Unlimited resources are one of the key differentiators with the supcom/TA engine. Please dont remove it.
Also SC style resource peon micro would be annoying, but I like the idea of auto peons that just head back to the castle.
Also trees could be reclaimable, but not a major econ type. Or maybe have a easy way to turn gold or minerals into wood like a trading station?|||duncane|||I actually want to see a return to multiple types of "Mexes", i.e. small mex, medium mex, and big mex.
Apply to K&C, using mana as the mass replacement and you get small, medium, and large mana pools with multipliers of 1, 2, and 3, respectively. If the mana-extracting building -MEB- has a basic mana production rate of 1, when placed on small, med, & large pools, it will generate, 1, 2, and 3 mana respectively. A research that improved mana production by 20% would have 1.2, 2.4, and 3.6 mana production respectively.
Maps then become more interesting, as you don't just have a single mana pool type with a single MEB to build ontop.
Speaking of MEB's, if K&C had mutually exclusive upgrades, you could have one upgrade that increased the mana production, and another that fortified the building, turning it into a small fort. resources or defence, what do you choose?
On a similar note, if the energy replacement is gold (coin), then what could be the carbon powerplant replacement? A gold mine. Again, if the gold mine had several sizes: Small, med, large, you could get a more complex and nuanced map and gameplay design in them. Here, again, add some mutually exclusive upgrades that either improve gold generation or turn the mine into a miniature fort.
Turning lead into gold would be the equivalent of the metal maker, except in reverse, where mana is used to create gold, assuming that gold is the game's main resource instead of mana.
Having reclaimable objects around the map that are worth a decent amount of resources would also be a welcome return. stones and objects near mana pools have a considerable mana value in them.|||All I want is:
-Some kind of economy growth over time.
(Not just one level of mex)
-A strong need to expand and compete for map control.
(This can be done in a number or ways, either because resources are depleted as Timmy mentioned or because Mex points are in the middle and cheap enough to encourage a land war.)
-little or no mass conversion
(i.e., no eco system that can totally replace the primary, territory-based resource system with an infinitely spammable resource structure that can be built anywhere)
I'd like to emphasize that last one.. because I really think the mass conversion mechanic is a bad one, and I'm amazed to see that GPG didn't learn their lesson with SupCom2 after the way it worked out in SupCom1. Other games allow something similar to mass conversion (e.g., Pgens can be built almost anywhere in Dawn of War, and the Necron only need Pgens for their eco). But other games have always been clever enough to put limits on it somehow. (e.g., The Necrons face cost and build time increases as they build Pgens, so they face diminishing returns. And they still need to expand because capturing territory increases their build cap for the Pgens).
I like mass conversion as an expensive and risky supplement (as in FA). Please do not do anything like SupCom2's mass fabs.|||Mass conversion: Considering that K&C will be magic based, having one form of resource be turned into the other with a chance of things going wrong and spawning daemons inside your base, would seem like an interesting twist to the usual formulae.
-A strong need to expand and compete for map control.
If you have TA/TAK multiple "mex" points with different income multipliers (small, med, large), you can place the larger points further away from the starting positions, forcing people to expand to get access to cheap resources.
i.e. the area you start in has 6 small mexes. the surrounding area has a few medium mexes, and the area midway between you and your enemy has the large mexes with the biggest economic potential.
in SC2 terminology: small mex point halves mex production. Medium is current value. Large mex point has 150% production. You could argue that just putting more of one kind of mex point has the same effect, which it sort of does, except that mexes in SC2 are expensive. Expensive enough to discourage expansion, which is a rather bad development, at least in small to medium games. Large and/or late games simply devolve into mass-fab & pgen farms, which is another bad turn.
A possible downside is that someone could rush to this middle ground and take control over the area quickly and still be able to churn out enough units to defend the buildings to break even. The smaller the map, the bigger this problem gets.
-Some kind of economy growth over time.
Supcom/FA mex style, possibly with the economic veterancy from FA mod Total Veterancy that will slowly improve output over time. Combine that with a mutually exclusive upgrade system where you can either decide to improve the mex's economic potential (+150% income), or to improve its defendability by reinforcing it and giving it several guard towers, essentially becoming a fortified econ structure.|||re1wind|||Random chance is sots was only annoying when researching AIs. They would almost always rebel, until getting AI slave. the rest of the random events certainly kept me on my feet and made the game more enjoyable. :)
There is no drawback in converting one resource into another, and while the above example would fit quite well in campaign, in hindsight not so much in multiplayer.
say you have mana = mass & gold = energy. Mana is used to convert lead into gold in a magical alchemy process. The building will consume a constant amount of mana and produce gold at certain time intervals. This is the safe, slow, and low-risk process. Now apply a more risky but profitable system to it, and say you double the amount of mana the structure needs, but triples the gold production, with a small chance that the process will fail and you will loose the mana. % chance with a minimum number of success attempts before it will consider failing. i.e. the first 2 attempts will work, but after that following attempts have the chance to fail. Needs good UI support.
I still think that spawning daemons in your base from a failed magical spell would be a very good set-piece for a campaign mission :3|||Mazrix|||the only thing I ask for in the new econ system would be diminishing return - Especially things equivalent to mass fabrication is introduced. this prevents runaway economies that can afford to spam anything without consideration to their effectiveness.
Each additional Pgen equivalent should drop effectiveness of all Pgen equivalent by say 1%. And there should be a hard cap because after which additional Pgen would drop total power output.
And btw, if we things has to be paid up front, they should be paid for when production starts, not when they enter the queue.|||Mazrix|||seiya|||C.Lupus|||Infinite resources were one of the biggest design flaws of TA/SupCom =/|||_PINK|||LawnMower|||LawnMower|||_PINK|||"CHANCE IS NOT GOOD FOR STRATEGIC GAMEPLAY!!!"
Sweeping generalizations are not good for intelligent conversation.
Mr Pinguin|||been pondering this Today. came up with an idea; there's just too much mass being thrown about in FA. think about it; every second, your mexes (ignore fabs. for now, i'll talk about them in a minute) add some amount of mass to the game... they magic it in from another dimension. as you expand and upgrade mexes, that rate expands...
- ...a lot.
here's a nice purty picture of how much mass is in the game at any point in time;
that mass could go in storage, but that would be boring. lets say that you put all your mass into building tanks and buildings. that's where all the mass is; tucked inside things that go boom.
now, as they go boom, they magic away a little bit of mass (a tenth of their cost to be precise). obviously if we fight, blow up, and reclaim ten tanks; we'll be able to rebuild only nine of them. what is a little less obvious is the fact that the maximum rate at which you can build tanks is ten times your mex-income rate. why? ten percent of what you spend is freshly dug from the ground, the other ninety percent is reclaimed and recycled.
now, given that in FA, you can be making in excess of 200 mass/second from mexes on some maps, that means you can be producing up to 2000 mass/second worth of tanks, buildings, and T4's!
now, what does this simple analysis tell us? mathematically, it tells us something the pro. players have been screaming for years; reclaiming is incredibly important. maybe even over-powered.
part two: mass fabricators.
this is simple; fabs. can be built anywhere and are only limited by space and energy. we can easily include the space required for that energy, so really, fabs. are solely dependent on space. they're the exception to the rule, and if you let them pay themselves off, any rate at which they produce mass is going to make the game balloon out of control.
part three: Supreme Commander 2.
Eric, the clever devil that he is, appears to have cottoned onto my above revelation a long time ago, and saw fit to nerf reclaim values all the way down to 20%.
- ie. if you build five Yenzoos, reclaim them, you'll only get one Yenzoo.
is this too much? maybe. does BulletMagnet think it's a damn sight better than FA? certainly do. personally, I would have reclaim values at 50% (two for one offer). such a pity that Sup2's economy is ruined in two other ways... the pre-pay economy mode, and mass fabs.
since it's almost 1AM, and I need to be up at 6AM. I'm going to leave analysis of Sup2's fabbing situation for later.
part four: no reclaiming and conclusion.
you might be wondering, "what if reclaiming gave you no mass back? what if reclaiming was gone?"
well. it's simple: the rate at which units go boom is the rate at which mass leaves the game. this is also the rate at which mass enters the game. the games are much smaller and more spartan this way.
infinite economy isn't the problem at all; reclaiming is. reclaiming acts like a population amplifier, allowing you to field more units by recycling than you could otherwise. the reclaim modifier acts like volume control; turn it up for a bigger game. but like any amplifier... if you turn it up too far, it'll distort, sound really bad, damage your speakers, and piss off the neighbours.
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