Abstract
Currently, energy storage is of very limited utility, with people only building one or two at most to act as a buffer (or if the commander's storage is lost). While the original idea was to have energy storages be viable economic targets, in practice they are only attacked in a base engagement for the bomb effect.
The aim is to overhaul energy storages so that they are worth building, and worth targeting in actual gameplay.
Energy Grid Proposal
One idea is to redo the energy economy to act like a real-life power grid. Energy producing structures (solar, fusion, etc.) can transmit energy to all buildings within a certain radius. Buildings outside this radius will not function (except for small things like radar and LLTs) unless they are connected to the grid by an e-store.
E-stores function both as capacitors and pylons, relaying energy from energy producers to other buildings. They can be destroyed to disconnect an outpost from its power supply, greatly reducing its defensive ability.
Advantages
- Makes E storages useful
- Creates more tactical options for attacking defense lines
Problems
- Need a way to avoid being a micro sink of building storages
- Make E-stores PW-style deployable? Breaks consistency with everything else.
Possibilities
- Allow very inefficient power transmission outside normal power radius.
- Ally sharing of transmission lines (but a player's buildings can only be powered by his own energy).
- Give each E-store its own power level, and if it flatlines local buildings stop working even if the main grid is fine?
- If disconnected from main grid, continue to operate by drawing power from local storage.
- S44-style reloading for units that require a lot of energy to fire, cloak or the like, such as Penetrators and Sharpshooters?
Google Frog: It's a good gameplay idea but I don't think it's for CA. From playing Fibre people always made their node lines 2 thick so they couldn't be easily broken. I think the power lines would have to cost a lot to make them not worth doubling, even then defence lines merge across the map so there will be a few lines into some defence so there is always a way for the power to get through. I don't think it would be possible to use it strategically in CA so it would just be extra micro, CA would need a redesign for it to work.
Power Distribution Node
This increases the effeciency of energy production within its radius, but if destroyed, sends out an EMP effect for that radius.
Problems
- Energy needs to be effecient early on, lategame energy is not so much of a problem. Adding something that makes all energy more effecient wont help address the early game problems
- Solution: Perhaps commander acts as a node? Would probably discourage compush/expand too much.
- Players will probably stack solars around their node, if not sink or bury it. Google Frog, sink can be fixed with requiring direct los to the node.
- Solution: Have some reason to leave space around the node, such as occasional unstable energy discharges that hurt/paralyze anything directly next to the node (probably wont stop terraforming though).
- Will make energy production even clumpier, things such as Solar Walls.
- Solution: Make the effeciency increase global, and the paralysis also global
- Problem: people will just stack nodes in a corner.
- Solution: Make the effeciency increase global, and the paralysis also global
Google Frog: I like this uplink node now that I think of it. Not having a node could make plants run at 0.1 effectiveness but nodes are cheap. This would fix fusion sinking> well sort of, the node could be floaty so it's easy to destroy if a fusion is sunk underwater. It would mainly provide a way to E stall the enemy without destroying all their E. It would need a bit of a redesign but it could be better.
Licho: I really hate this idea.. this is extreme economic micro for very little strategy added - why would I want this? It will make already complex game even worse. Not to mention its very hard to implement and would need lots of lua, possibly engine modifications.
Google Frog: There are 2 different ideas here; A full power grid or a node that increases E income. The first one would be excess micro as I see it because I can predict how will end up so it won't add anything. The second idea is a bit better but we'd need to redesign E with more hp so it's worth killing the node and emping the E instead of just killing the E. It would have to be implemented really well to make it not useless micro though.
