Big question, big topic, i know. This isn't intended as a patch specific discussion for the current experimental build so for those concerns i refer to relevant threads. My intention is towards economy in it's broadest sense. I've been thinking about this for a while, and now that economy balance is made relevant i feel the spectrum needs to be widened a bit. Most of us know by now that there is a fixed cost to energy decided by the spending on the building unit (here i mean both factories of all kinds and to fabrication units, units in the broadest sense of the word) and this unit spending cost dictates our energy spending. We also know that most opening build orders (BOs) today revolve around getting an expansion going and then assisting the commander while it builds power generators (pgens) for a few minutes. The obvious reason for this BO is that metal is cheap and easy to come by (at least early game, later it depends on a couple of factors) while energy, in comparison, is expensive. This was further accentuated a few builds ago when the price on metal extractors (mex) was halved. In builds previous to that some changes had been made to increase how much storage the commander provided in what i understood was an attempt to allow for earlier factories and less focus on eco in the beginning of games. What do i mean when i say metal is cheap and energy is expensive? If we look at a t1 fabber, it consumes 1000e and 10m, making it consume slightly more than a pgen (+600e) and a mex (+7m) respectively. So far, balance seems fine. If we want to provide for another fabber so it can build unhindered, what are the costs of that? A mex costs 150m and a pgen costs 450. This means a standard fabber builds 3 mex at the same time it builds 1 pgen. So if we set two fabbers to building mex and pgen respectively, we are going to see roughly a threefold increase of metal income compared to energy income. (I'm not being super precise now, i know, this is estimates and things like walking distances are not take in to account. Trying to paint a bigger picture.) This means that if we want to spend all the metal we a getting in, we have to build energy at three times the speed we are building mex. As our commander builds at 30m 1500e what most of us do is build pgens with our commander. If we look at matches, most available will show us plenty of energy stall. Developer test games and competitive games alike. One of the consequences of this 3:1 ratio between m and e is that if one pushes eco and try to build as fast as one can (whether you are going for early t2, nuke or planet smash) stalling energy while making use of all the metal is very common. In competitive play there are a handful players who rarely even build radar but rely on units to provide the information radar would normally give and my guess it partially has to do with radars shutting down during energy stall. Radar comes in to play with t2 and the larger economy it allows for. Tier 2 mex gives 35m while t2 pgen gives 5000, that's 5 times and 8.3 times as much as t1 respectively. If we make the same comparison as with t1, a pgen cost 2700m and a mex 750 so we can almost build 4 mex at the cost of one pgen. As a game reaches t2, expansion is not as easy and more focus is usually put on building energy so the ratio between the two resources are not as obvious anymore. Radar plays a bigger role, as does build power and some weapons with energy cost, so more focus is put on t2 pgens and energy in general. Build power, as in what you can build and how fast, can be a very important factor later in the game. You scouted your opponents nuke, how fast can you build anti nuke? How fast can you build and move armies around to surprise your opponent? Having plenty of energy is vital for build power as it costs a lot of energy to spend metal. Maybe the balance between the two can be tuned more finely so it doesn't feel like we're being chased by energy stall while we play? I'm no math wiz so i don't have any greater plan other than reduce one and increase the other but i'm sure there are many other takes on this out there. I wanted to bring up the balance between resources with this post, maybe someone else has some other interesting take on economy. I'm all ears as i think this is the very core of the game. We fight over resources and it plays a huge role in the game, i want the subject to be thoroughly dissected. Especially by the fine folks at uber. Thanks for reading if you made it this far, sorry for the wall of text. I'm looking forward to hear everyones thoughts. Want to read more about economy? Here is some good reading in older threads: https://forums.uberent.com/threads/pa-economy-factsheet-for-new-improving-players.52514/ https://forums.uberent.com/threads/planetary-annihilations-economy-system.44173/
that's an interesting analysis. i think the "tuning" this balance needs is mex placement changes. There are way to many mass points for it to be a big hurt when you loose a couple. Loosing a mass point needs to be bad. bad bad bad.
Interesting read- I think the main problem is the amount of metal available. For example at the start of the game it's easy to get 1 factory, your commander and 1 con building and have enough energy to support that. Now the problem arises that the metal income produced is so much higher than consumption that you are *forced* to stall energy in order to use it. I personally think that metal output from t1 extractors should be reduced to about 3 m/sec instead of 7. This would shift the limiting factor back towards metal. Under these conditions you would build allot let fabbers, and have to consider everything you produce. You would also have to fight move over your expansion as metal extractors would be much more valuable. It would also extend the length of the 't1' game where you only have a few factories and you're playing with smaller groups of units, whilst skirmishing over territory. There would still be enough metal to expand your economy however the entire pace of the early game would be dropped back a little. At the moment the game feels very much like playing a 'metal map' from TA: where you had limitless metal and energy was your only limiting factor. Those maps always played the same, rush as much resources as possible, spam as much stuff as you can. They were fun for occasional play but to be honest took most of the depth out of the game and at the moment PA feels very much like this. T2 would also have to be rebalanced- I think T2 should be much more expensive than T1, and the T2 resource production shouldn't be too much higher than T1. This makes choices about units more important. Imo once you've just gone t2 it should be a serious consideration whether your going to rush a few units, maybe build 1 nuke, expand your power and so on. It should provide more energy but I think the efficiency in relation to cost only wants to be a fraction higher than t1- that way it gives you a choice, stick with T1 and pour your resources into units and try and take them out quick, or switch to t2 for a slight economical advantage + the additional strategies it opens up. At the moment T2 replaces T1 and you have enough resources to build lot of everything, so there is no choice. You can at least keep using your t1 stuff but *NOT* going t2 simply isn't an option. Also I would count the orbital launcher as a t1 factory, and the orbital fabber t2. I think PA's T1 game is allot better than its t2, try playing a game with all the t1 options open, including orbital fighters and the transport, but not using orbital fabs or t2 factories and it's a really dynamic game (although towers do take a bit of getting round I'll admit).
Yes, energy limits the economic growth more than metal does in the current version. Metal is more unpredictable however as enemy harassment can limit the initial metal extractors you can make. That is until you hit t2 and can start making advanced mexes on the initial starting mexes. It is similar to 'metal maps' in TA like cdrkf said until the point where you have saturated your initial metal spots with advanced metal extractors and after that expansion becomes important again. However if the enemy haven't kept up with your economy because they have focused too much on harassment and making an army, they won't be able to match your production and you will probably be able expand relatively easy and take territory from your enemy. The economic balance for individual players is largely about weighing economic growth against territory control and army size. The time it takes for economy to pay off and the distance to the enemy largely dictates the balance of economical investment and military investment. If the enemy economy can pay off before your military units can reach the enemy then they can also prepare a counter to incoming units. Since that players already have the Commander as a defensive unit and can produce cheap and powerful defense towers then the defending player can also easily consolidate territory where initial military units simply won't pay off. This limits initial aggression to preventing the enemy from expanding and sniping expanding Fabbers. A player might be able to take more territory by being aggressive but if he sacrifices too much economic growth to do so he might find himself outproduced as he can't put all that metal from the territory he has gained as he have too few fabbers, too few factories and too few energy plants to match the production of his enemy. Small correction. Tier 2 mex gives 28 metal although you get 35 metal from the metal spot as you can have both a t1 mex and a t2 mex on a single metal spot. http://people.dsv.su.se/~akbj7812/pa-db/table/economy.html When talking about the current energy plants, the individual energy production values aren't so important but rather the energy production for cost. You get almost 40% more energy production for cost when making advanced energy plants. Arguably there aren't really any drawbacks with advanced energy plants so they are simply more efficient than basic energy plants. When talking about mexes it is more complicated as their placement are limited. The amount of mexes you can make is highly related to the amount of territory you control. Advanced mexes allows metal production to increase without expanding your territory. It is also hard to judge as taking territory usually requires military presence while if you can take mexes from your opponent you also deny the enemy of metal income. Even though advanced metal extractors produce slightly less metal for cost than basic metal extractors, they are very good if you are going for an economic central build as you can make them in your base without having to spend production on military units and if your opponent are unable to use their metal income because they lack fabbers, factories and energy plants due to initial investments in military, they will quickly fall behind in production.
Just to clarify, i know a lot can be influenced by tweaking the availability of metal patches on planets (as was done somewhere in alpha) but i intentionally left it out because my hope is to talk about economy beyond if individual systems / planets are metal rich or metal deprived. I'm trying to dig to the core of things, what do we have regardless of how how maps / planets / system moght appear? And i'm well aware what i call t2 mex is actually t2+t1 mex But for my little equation 28+7 or 35 didn't really matter so i left it out, felt like the post was long enough as it was. I'm almost embarrased that i forgot to mentions it.. Check out godde's thread if you haven't already, a lot of good stuff in there too. https://forums.uberent.com/threads/defining-mathematical-unit-balance-metrics.56287/
No map or Planet showld have + then 12/14 mexes to eatch player,max on big planets 40x40 (20mexes) not moore. They showld balanced it to upgradble Advanced t2 and Advanced t3,that will solve all problems about mass income. All economy like it is now its rong in all possible ways ,that make the power /mass not balanced. This page shows the perfect solution off FAForever economy= http://supcomfaguide.uw.hu/chapter1.html Iff PA grab some off this ideas about ,relation between mass and energy PA will be a bether game in global. But i hope they wont do that or i might start like a bit moore PA.. Dont look to rong words im not english.....
Well, part of the problem with this is that there will not be a T3 in vanilla PA. Another is that PA is built around massive scale, so while I believe that metal spots should be limited, they should not be that limited. I would say a good base amount would be 20-25 metal spots per players, plus a number of bonus ones, the number of which is dependent on the size of the planet.
