Pylons & Energy feedback
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1v0ry_k1ng
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- Joined: 10 Mar 2006, 10:24
Pylons & Energy feedback
at the risk of angering everyone, I think that pylon & energy field system is wholly overcomplicated and needless.
Re: Get rid of the OTA commanders
No, I like the energy-web system... I was just confused why they re-added the old Pylon into the energy web. Makes sense as transmission-only, but I liked the fact that building a Fus was a 1-step action to overdrive 3 mexes.
Re: Get rid of the OTA commanders
How should the economy work eventually, when it's finished?
Re: Get rid of the OTA commanders
I think the energy grid system is for two reasons:
- Localizing economy. This way players can't drop mexes here, power there, metal-makers back there... they have to network in order to optimize their base.
- Force territory expansion. With the metal-maker system, either metal makers are useless in end game or the dominant strategy; it's like trying to find the maxima of a slope. With the energy grid, they can force a diseconomy of scale upon players where investing further leads to lower and lower rewards... forcing players to expand.
Re: Get rid of the OTA commanders
Yes, with OD system its always better to have more mexes.
Grid effect is to reduce OD to smaller land. Because if its spread over all mexes, game becomes too sensitive to mex count due to diminishing nature of OD.
Basically if its on all mexes, the more of them you have (the less energy/mex) , the more sensitive you are to the loss of few border ones.
This was original reason why we came with grid system (on top of preexisting OD which addresses issue 2). We wanted to make economy more localized and make sort of "dead land" where losing mexes wont hurt your economy a lot so it does not lead to massive slippery slope.
Grid effect is to reduce OD to smaller land. Because if its spread over all mexes, game becomes too sensitive to mex count due to diminishing nature of OD.
Basically if its on all mexes, the more of them you have (the less energy/mex) , the more sensitive you are to the loss of few border ones.
This was original reason why we came with grid system (on top of preexisting OD which addresses issue 2). We wanted to make economy more localized and make sort of "dead land" where losing mexes wont hurt your economy a lot so it does not lead to massive slippery slope.
Re: Get rid of the OTA commanders
And OD itself also serves another important role - it puts breaks on exponential growth of economy. Its designed so that normally economic growth is close to linear.
We don't want exponential growth becasue it greatly amplifies small initial differences and freak accidents. Just few second delay and small difference in eco investing at one point can lead to huge differences later on - or small bonus in metal can be amplified greatly after few minutes resulting in economic dominance and victory due to small initial condition difference.
We are trying to make mid-game when the forces are balanced and winner is unclear - as long as possible, with common turn-overs and changes in dominance.
We don't want exponential growth becasue it greatly amplifies small initial differences and freak accidents. Just few second delay and small difference in eco investing at one point can lead to huge differences later on - or small bonus in metal can be amplified greatly after few minutes resulting in economic dominance and victory due to small initial condition difference.
We are trying to make mid-game when the forces are balanced and winner is unclear - as long as possible, with common turn-overs and changes in dominance.