Bi-Weekly Update: New Economy news - Gundam RTS

In keeping with what you, the fans have asked for I come to post a status update. 2 weeks have passed and while it is still in the works, I feel it is time to unveil the new economy. Economy work continues, progress has been a bit slow as we ready for our private tests to begin balance work on the new economy. Since I have largely kept you guys in the dark, it would be nice to reveal the details of the new economy that Kdr and I have been working on.

Those of you familiar with TA and Gundam's old economy may want to skip this paragraph. In TA you have two resources, energy and metal, these resources can be produced in a large variety of ways and was the old economy used by Gundam. In Gundam you utilized large clusters of machine shops to mill out the materials used both for buildings and mechs. Different construction facilities used different combinations of energy and metal costs for each mobile suit or vehicle.

The new economy is meant to both better reflect this and to simplify base construction. However, it now comprises of 3 core resources and one power storage. I'll explain them below, names are tentative so I will use a general terminology.

Basic Resource: This represents metal/ore/whatever mined from the earth used in the creation of simple materials. It is harvested by a mine structure. This resource represents your most basic components used in the construction of vehicles, buildings and some mech components.

Refined Resource: This represents refined components which require extensive tooling or shaping to create. The refined resources are used in the production of most mass production mobile suit components. As such it is the core for many mobile suits

Exotic Resource: These components require exceptionally skilled craftsmen and represent top of the line components. These components are used primarily in the creation of higher performance weapons and mechs.

Power: This represents the capacity to power your base structures. If you exhaust your power grid newly created buildings are not going to perform their assigned operations.

It is my hope that this new economy will simplify base construction and make it easier to balance out mobile suit costs. As with all releases of gundam, I try to make large leaps with each version. This ultimately means that the new economy will have some areas of imbalance and testing can only catch so much of it. This economy breaks from the Total Annihilation based economy and thus breaks all current AIs that can play Gundam RTS. This sacrifice was made for better gameplay.

With each version I try to further streamline things, this is the first time I will be choosing to add complexity. I am somewhat reluctant to make the change but after it is added it can be further streamlined with later releases. In some ways the new economy is very good and speeds base construction. I cannot tell you guys how much easier base construction is now. Watch the video and see for yourself.

Anyway, I figure this is a good update to show you guys very clearly were gundam is going and what the big delay is.