Resource management questions.

[Xeneonic]

Seen from the latest two alpha footages (Particle fleet & Emergence), the energy sources slowly increase the amount of energy they provide per second (Similar to how CW3 totems work if you keep them powered). This resource generation feature climbs pretty fast (I believe from 3.0 to 12.0 in mere 10 minutes or so). This means that keeping them under your control is very important. Losing it would set it back to 3.0. (presumably)

However, the other end of the spectrum also seems true. The longer you keep one, the easier it becomes to manage a fleet with just two or even only one energy source. Eventually, unless the mission forces you to expand rapidly (Such as time limits or defend goals further in the map), the best tactic would be to always go with two or at most 3 power sources. This makes it easier to keep it more secure compared to spreading your fleet thin for later power sources.

This motivation to expand is thus pretty much annihilated (High risk, low reward). The emergence feature offsets this a little bit, as controlling more "islands" means more defensive/offensive power for you. So this would motivate to expand once again. Though realistically, I think it's worth it to just spam particles into an island rather than trying to secure it by spreading your fleet thin.

In CW3 for almost any mission (Two exceptions or so), it's best to turtle up and slowly expand, but this was due to the power generation being limited only by space. And defensive turrets and mortars almost always were in endless supply.

I have a few questions regarding these, and other, resources:

1. Will there be a purpose to end-game power generation? As explained earlier, energy generation will be tough the first 10 minutes but then seem trivial the further you get past this mark.

2. The islands you can convert to help you block particles and create emergent particles, will they lessen in power if you harvest those? Does harvesting layer 1 remove the island completely, thus eventually not generate any more emergent particles?

3. Do the defensive upgrades that put land on the map (Looking like digitalis converting into dirt) also generate emergent particles, or are they there just to soak any stray enemy particles?

4. Easiest shown in the "Particle Fleet" video, one of those particle generating ships (Forgot the name) that bugged out for you (Supposed to fire in a straight line but shot in all directions), are the particles that they shoot supposed to despawn when they hit the edge of the map? The red particles bounce off the edge while the blue ones disappear. Is this an oversight by you or is this intentional?



And entirely unrelated to this thread; This new game totally makes me think it to be an evolution of CW3, but on a greater scale. I can totally see the ship that you fly in across the missions and Aliana uses to bombard the map in AC if you turn loki to be one of these here. The videos you show are very enjoyable to watch. The things you do with it and develop it is really nice. I'm looking forward to perhaps more features (Upgrades?) for the blue nebula. That feature is really great as you've showcased with those upgrade retrievals.

[knucracker]

Energy sources increase in output after the player purchases the max energy upgrade.  There are currently two levels of that each double the output.  The rate of increase and the cap per upgrade are definitely subject to balancing.  Right now the rate of growth is fast as that is how I set it during debugging :)

One thing about energy on some maps is that nearby land can provide an initial boost for the first half of the mission.  But that land is a finite resource and will run out.  When that happens your economy can collapse and you eventually will stalemate or lose the mission.  That's ok for some maps, but I wanted at least one other option to 'you have to play faster'.  That option is to collect the phasic necessary to upgrade you energy mines so they produce more output.  But you have to start early enough... All depends on the mission design, though.

1. Will there be a purpose to end-game power generation? As explained earlier, energy generation will be tough the first 10 minutes but then seem trivial the further you get past this mark.

Note likely... what is more likely is I'll just balance down energy generate, upgrade costs to max energy, and the rate energy generation can increase.  Getting them low (or high) enough and then setting the pattern in some story missions is my objective.

2. The islands you can convert to help you block particles and create emergent particles, will they lessen in power if you harvest those? Does harvesting layer 1 remove the island completely, thus eventually not generate any more emergent particles?

Currently they don't lessen in Emergent generation rate.  However, harvested land loses its mire.  So if you leave a harvester on an island you have to replenish the mire with with a Mire omni (a land unit) or blue particles.

3. Do the defensive upgrades that put land on the map (Looking like digitalis converting into dirt) also generate emergent particles, or are they there just to soak any stray enemy particles?

You might be talking about the "Defensive Struc" upgrade.  That creates "Struc" around energy mines and phasic generators.  Struc differs from land in that you can't put units on it and it doesn't 'mire'.  Struc is basically a physical barrier to enemy particles (including enemy doppels and enemy ships).  It annihilates on contact with the enemy.  So that upgrades purpose is to provide some local 'armor' around your energy sources and phasic mines so you don't have to leave a small ship parked there all of the time.  It can also help when taking an energy source that is very close to some front line action.

4. Easiest shown in the "Particle Fleet" video, one of those particle generating ships (Forgot the name) that bugged out for you (Supposed to fire in a straight line but shot in all directions), are the particles that they shoot supposed to despawn when they hit the edge of the map? The red particles bounce off the edge while the blue ones disappear. Is this an oversight by you or is this intentional?

Particles all have an optional "max lifetime" as well as a setting for what happens when the hit the edge of the map.  For the blue emitter in this mission I set it to make particles that are destroyed at the edge of the map.  For all of the red particles they are set to bounce off the edge.  I did that for the blue particles so you wouldn't end up with a clump floating off in the corner of the map that you had to go grab with grabber ship.  They also have a finite lifetime for similar reasons.  But that was just my choice in the mission.  There are plenty of other use cases in missions where I wouldn't want those settings.

[Xeneonic]

Thank you very much for taking the time to answer these questions. Great to see you've added a lot of flexibility in how particles behave with collisions, TTL and how nebula affects them.

Definitely looking forward to your next alpha footage!

[Crimson King]

Particles all have an optional "max lifetime" as well as a setting for what happens when the hit the edge of the map.

Can each edge of the map be set to have a specific effect on the particles? Is it possible to have a setting where the particles wrap around (i.e. go out the top, come in the bottom)?

[knucracker]

Not currently... but that might be an interesting setting (each edge is different).

For wrapping I don't do that right now for at least a couple reasons.  The game play reason is that it effectively halves the size of the map and can be a bit frustrating sometimes.  Also, it makes players want to wrap ships, guppies, weapon fire, weapon targeting, etc. Another technical reason is that is complicates things like bonds between particles (groups of particles held by little bars) and their calculations.  So in dev speak it is a lot of trouble for little benefit (if any) to gameplay. 

Now if I had planned for it from the beginning I might have used different data structures and such so that it wouldn't be as much trouble to implement.  But the game play concern would still be there.

[Crimson King]

Fair enough about the wrapping. I can certainly see how wrapping could create more problems than benefits for everybody.

[Xeneonic]

Interesting point. What about a mix and match of the two? So for example, a particle reaching an edge would get "stored", after a certain interval or amount reached, this "bank" of particles would seep or explode from a "spawn point" somewhere on the map?

Somewhat similar to the slip creeper mechanic in CW3 I suppose.

Probably not possible because of the same problems that the wrapping would have. Would give people an incentive on some maps or missions to try and prevent enemy particles from reaching edges. Then again, there's likely a lot of things possible similar to CW3 to keep maps interesting and challenging anyway.

[pawel345]

That would probably be possible with PRPL, that how it was done in CW3.