Invitation to comment and speculate on the Energy resource in this game
-
Whole reasonings underline why Minerals and Vespene exist like they do in Starcraft. Vespene is limited in mining speed. An improvement by many accounts on Warcraft where the primary resource gold was rate-limited.
Likewise there is a lot on Age of Empires' more complicated resource system.
The Supreme Commander Mass & Energy resources are a bit different. Mass is somewhat rate-limited by mex count. Energy is unlimited but requires investment. Everything that requires mass also requires power, but not vice versa.
- Why did the designers make it this way?
- After 14 years: any good analysis available?
- Why do YOU think it works like it does?
- What do YOU think the RTS genre has learned / can learn from this?
-
what are you talking about? a T3 pgen is like 3.2k mass, it's not free at all
-
@biass I'm just asking a question about how this works, not making a declaration to be disected.
Edit to: Energy is unlimited but requires investment.
Hope you are happy now and can either answer the questions in the topic or just leave it if you are not interested to provide info or speculate.
-
Mass is intended to give value to map control, it is the bottleneck that determines “scale” in macro.
Energy is what decides the “type” of usage of mass. Certain things are high energy per mass, certain things aren’t. It’s what stops you from simply being able to transition from one thing into another haphazardly in the game.
There’s certainly a lot more to it and the game decisions are much more complicated than this, but that’s the impulse 30 second analysis for me.
-
Look into the game development of ta and you might find your answer.
Chris taylor did say the flow system was like a mortgage, money coming in and out at the same time
I do not know the official, but I think it's just straight up everything requires material and engery to be put together. Wonder if the ta devs knew they predicted the future with 3d printing
-
The answer is basically, to promote consistent and constant gameplay. And not waiting around to have to “afford” things. Its why Supcom can do things like infinite que’ing because we only pay as we build not when we build.
It also means if rip eco you don’t loiter around unable to do anything. Closest Starcraft/Warcraft gets to how TA-Style Eco works is, Alliance faction in Warcraft III. As important as flow of eco is. Which also important is the flexibilit represented by build power.
-
@ftxcommando said in Invitation to comment and speculate on the Energy resource in this game:
Mass is intended to give value to map control, it is the bottleneck that determines “scale” in macro.
Energy is what decides the “type” of usage of mass. Certain things are high energy per mass, certain things aren’t. It’s what stops you from simply being able to transition from one thing into another haphazardly in the game.
There’s certainly a lot more to it and the game decisions are much more complicated than this, but that’s the impulse 30 second analysis for me.
A UEF interceptor costs 50 mass and 2250 energy, a UEF Tank costs 56 mass and 266 energy. That is a difference of roughly 2000 energy.
The same transition dynamic could be accomplished if the UEF interceptor simply cost 2000 energy, and the tank 0 energy. You still need just as many additional power plants to build interceptors then.
So why does the tank cost energy at all?
-
Energy - as a resource, is one of the more flexible ideas in the SC world. It's mutable - which it is not in Starcraft - you cannot convert energy to mass - and technically, a power plant in SC is converting mass to energy - but that's another subject. Mass, therefore, is pretty much the only resource in SC (hydrocarbons excepted).
I've always seen energy usage while constructing being more a factor of 'complexity' - air units don't use much mass due to the way they are constructed - but - require super high detailed work - something a tank, by comparison, doesn't require much of. Likewise, naval units are more brute force and ignorance than a tank, and generally require a lot more mass than a tank, but are, if anything, a bit less complex to construct.
Anyhow - that's my take on it.
-
@valki said in Invitation to comment and speculate on the Energy resource in this game:
The same transition dynamic could be accomplished if the UEF interceptor simply cost 2000 energy, and the tank 0 energy. You still need just as many additional power plants to build interceptors then.
So why does the tank cost energy at all?
Mass is the more straightforward resource, while energy is the more complex resource since it requires conversion of mass into energy and generators can be sniped.
They probably didn't want to rob tank spamming players of the joy and the risks of handling the more complex resource.
it also gives generator adjacency on T1 facs a reason to exists, adding to the base building choices you have as a player.
-
For a point of comparison, Planetary Annihilation does it slightly differently.
In that, there are specific amounts that given builder units use per second, for the sake of an example say 10 metal and 100 energy.
In PA, if you're metal-stalling at 50% then your builder will only use 5 metal (as in FA), but the energy usage will not reduce.
It means that you don't have the catastrophic energy stalls that can happen after fixing a mass stall. It's a simpler version of the system that doesn't ruin it in the way that Supcom2 does.
-
@wainan how does that work if you mass stall through the entire construction of the unit. Does the unit cost 50% power in that scenario and it finishes at normal speed or 200% power and it finishes at half speed?
-
@valki said in Invitation to comment and speculate on the Energy resource in this game:
@ftxcommando said in Invitation to comment and speculate on the Energy resource in this game:
Mass is intended to give value to map control, it is the bottleneck that determines “scale” in macro.
Energy is what decides the “type” of usage of mass. Certain things are high energy per mass, certain things aren’t. It’s what stops you from simply being able to transition from one thing into another haphazardly in the game.
There’s certainly a lot more to it and the game decisions are much more complicated than this, but that’s the impulse 30 second analysis for me.
A UEF interceptor costs 50 mass and 2250 energy, a UEF Tank costs 56 mass and 266 energy. That is a difference of roughly 2000 energy.
The same transition dynamic could be accomplished if the UEF interceptor simply cost 2000 energy, and the tank 0 energy. You still need just as many additional power plants to build interceptors then.
So why does the tank cost energy at all?
I just thought this up, no dev input or lore.
Since we are 3d printer we can look at what we have in today's world. I can 3d print you something for a little bit of plastic (mass) and a couple hundred watts to power the printer (energy)
But let's take this deeper, we are not extracting plastic with a mex or printing with it, and you can't take the trees that have been reclaimed straight into a tank. So what we are really doing it extracting some resource and splitting it down to atoms and recreating it into a different material. Steel is a rather 'cheap' material since Fe is lower down the periodic table so it takes less atoms and less power to create steel, further the t1 tank is just amour, cpu, gun, and tracks, all simple components to create and print.
Now a aircraft has to be light and also built correctly. Just take a look at the cost and materials on our current jets. So the engies are making a lot of aluminum and titanium, which requires more energy to split and reform, also more mass than a tank since Al and Ti are father down the chart (I think) even though the intie will weigh less than the tank. The build quality on aircraft has to be top notch, so just energy consumed from just moving the printer will be more. Makes me wonder if you would make stands then break them off later like 3d printing now.
Every unit built has a power generator and a printer on board to produce propulsion and ammo, aircraft has tons more power required. Ww2 I think the tanks were 1000hp and the fighter plans around 5,000. We can already see the costs of power in supcom.
T2 tanks have more special amour, with different alloys and layers, just like today, to increase the cost of the unit.
