In the previous devblog I’ve talked about what kind of economic model we’ve picked and our resources. (Economy part 1)
The build process
Now that we know they are resources, let's take a look at how they interact with each other. The cost of the unit is defined in our templates like this:
economy = {
buildTime = 240,
cost = {
alloys = 60,
plasma = 600,
},
}
From that example it's pretty clear how much alloys and plasma you're going to need to finish this unit, but the buildTime on its own won't tell you much. Well it is gonna tell you something, this is how many seconds it would take to build this unit with a build that has build power of 1.
And the resource required per second?
resourcePerSecond = resourceCost / (buildTime / buildPower)
alloys:
0.25 = 60 / (240 / 1)
plasma:
2.5 = 600 / (240 / 1)
One more example with the current cost of a T1 land factory and a build power of T1 engineer:
-- Factory build cost
economy = {
buildTime = 150,
cost = {
alloys = 150,
energy = 1500,
},
},
-- Engineer build options
construction = {
buildPower = 5,
canBuild = "Tags.EDA * Tags.BUILDABLE_BY_T1_ENGINEER",
range = 5,
},
The engineer will build the factory in 30 seconds (150 buildTime / 5 buildPower).
and consume:
5 alloys/second = (150 / (150 / 5))
50 plasma/second = (1500 / (150 / 5))
Gameplay
One of the main tasks in the game is to manage and scale up your economy. You start with your commanding unit that provides you basic resource production and a bit of storage.
- Getting more plasma is rather easy, since you can build plasma generators anywhere.
- To get alloys, you need to secure alloy wells all around the map.
- To scale your build power, you can build engineering stations, mobile engineers and factories.
The hard part is to balance everything out. If you build too many plasma generators without securing enough alloy wells, you will end up wasting the plasma. The same can happen the other way around. Securing a lot of the map and many alloy wells, but not building enough plasma generators. Having too much of a single resource is the most common problem the players will encounter. While balancing those 2 resources, you also need to manage the third one. Build too many factories without enough resource generation and you will end up stalling, so everything is gonna take longer to build. Build too few and you will waste your resources, because you can't spend them fast enough.
Next step to this puzzle is upgrading. We have 3 techs in the game and higher techs provide more various/more powerful units, but they also cost more. Of course there are not just higher tech mobile units, but also structures and with that economy structures. So alloy wells can be upgraded to higher tech. This will make them produce more. Plasma generators can't be upgraded, but you can build new higher tech ones.
Additional way of boosting your economy is by reusing dead units. All units that die leave a wreckage behind. You can get some of the alloys back from the wreckage. You can also get some resources from trees, rocks and other things. But all these things are one time only, once you get the resources from them, they are gone. They are not infinite like the alloy wells or plasma generators.
Adjacency
Adjacency is a bonus between two buildings when they are placed next to each other. For the bonus to be applied, the whole side of the building has to touch the other. The idea behind this is to have a reason to place structures closer together to make them look more like a planned base, rather than just structures scattered all around the place. The bonuses we have planned are:Build cost reduction
Alloy wells and plasma generators that are placed next to factories will reduce the cost of the produced units from that factory.
Maintenance cost reduction
Plasma generators placed next to shield generators, radars, etc will reduce the cost for keeping these structures operational.
Storage boost
Resource storages that are placed next to each other will provide a bigger storage bonus.
So generally:
- Structure that consumes some resource will get a discount if another structure that produces this resource is placed next to it.
How much is this bonus?
The exact numbers are not still not set, as they require a lot of testing. The bonus is some % for each adjacent building. Higher tech buildings give more % bonus than lower tech ones.