Poll: We need to take a look at how multiplayer resource sharing is handled

[Wingflier]

Been playing since the new expansion with my best friend and cousin. We've been playing for about 15 hours now (3 restarts so far).

Now it's quite clear that in multiplayer matches, the game becomes much harder. It's also clear that, given the limited nature of the knowledge mechanic, it just makes *more* sense for one player to go the "ECON" route, spending all his knowledge on better harvesters and command stations, and then taking the planets over.

It makes no sense for multiple players to do this. I think to get MK3 Harvesters alone it's a 10K knowledge penalty, and to have multiple players doing that is logistical suicide. It's better for one person to pay the "economy tax" and have the others devote their knowledge into an actual army.

Well, since the game is designed in this fashion, one would think that it would have a streamlined process for handling this crucial game mechanic.

It does not.

Not only does the player have to go through several menus to reach a confusing and difficult to read stats screen in order to see how many resources his allies have, but in order to donate his resources, he's got to go through several more steps as well. Especially with the new resource caps that have been implemented into the game, waiting until the economy player is "capped out" like before is no longer as viable a option until the super late game, because hitting the threshold seems to take a lot longer.

There are two main options I would like to suggest in order to encompass this important gameplay mechanic that seems painfully unrefined:

1. An optional "resource bar" screen, which can be enabled in controls, that gives you the ability to view your allies' total metal and energy at a glance. This would help especially the "econ player" to manage their economy in such a way that they could always keep resources available for the "army players". This could be part of the "UI makeover" and would simply sit at the corner of the screen, allowing the player to glance at it whenever necessary.

2. A resource percentage sharing slider, also available in controls, which gives a percentage of your raw metal income to all allied players. So for example, if the slider was moved to 50%, half of all your metal income would automatically be deposited into the other players' accounts. If you want to get really fancy with it, you could make it an entirely new tab on the CTRLs screen, giving you flexible options such as choosing which players specifically to donate a percentage of your resources to and for how long.

So these are just my ideas, but as I said, extremely surprising that they haven't been mentioned or addressed in a game which heavily relies on constant resource sharing and communication between multiple people. Vote in the polls.

[Bognor]

It's also clear that, given the limited nature of the knowledge mechanic, it just makes *more* sense for one player to go the "ECON" route, spending all his knowledge on better harvesters and command stations, and then taking the planets over.

I was under the impression one player could research a Mark III Command Station (9000 knowledge) and capture every planet, while another player researched Mark III Metal Harvesters (9000 knowledge) and built every harvester.  I haven't actually tried it so can't confirm it works, nor comment on how fiddly it is, but in principle that's a better deal all round than having one player with two homeworlds researching both.

[Histidine]

It sounds like it would be easiest to simply implement "communism" and share all metal income equally. No need to spend time messing around with resource allocation. Of course, you might still want to two options given here for finer control as well.

1. An optional "resource bar" screen, which can be enabled in controls, that gives you the ability to view your allies' total metal and energy at a glance. This would help especially the "econ player" to manage their economy in such a way that they could always keep resources available for the "army players". This could be part of the "UI makeover" and would simply sit at the corner of the screen, allowing the player to glance at it whenever necessary.

Added bonus: Add a button next to each player entry in the list. Clicking it brings up a slider; drag mouse and release to quickly share a percentage of your currently stored metal to that player.

[Wingflier]

It's also clear that, given the limited nature of the knowledge mechanic, it just makes *more* sense for one player to go the "ECON" route, spending all his knowledge on better harvesters and command stations, and then taking the planets over.

I was under the impression one player could research a Mark III Command Station (9000 knowledge) and capture every planet, while another player researched Mark III Metal Harvesters (9000 knowledge) and built every harvester.  I haven't actually tried it so can't confirm it works, nor comment on how fiddly it is, but in principle that's a better deal all round than having one player with two homeworlds researching both.

Tried this, doesn't work. Plus even if it did work, every time the AI took out your harvesters the planet owner would have to manually destroy his automatically rebuilt  harvesters and the other player would have to rebuild them 1 by 1.

[tadrinth]

This seems like a problem better solved by good default behavior rather than a lot of extra controls in the UI.

The simplest solution would be for players to share all metal income equally. 

How does the metal cap work in multiplayer?  If player 1 builds econ stations and player 2 doesn't, then there is an incentive for player 1 to own all whipping boy planets that take waves, because econ stations raise the metal cap and the salvage cap per planet is proportional to the metal cap.  I suppose it's optimal to do that anyway since the whipping boys will probably have metal harvesters on them. 

Also, if only one player builds higher mark econ stations, they'll have quite a bit more energy than everyone else, but probably have the smallest fleet. 

[Aklyon]

The econ player with extra energy could buff other player's planets with more turrets then.

[Wingflier]

Even if players automatically share say 50% of their resources by default, which I agree makes more sense, I believe it's still necessary to be able to choose what percentages are shared manually as well.

If for example the military player(s) have already built their entire army and don't need the money anymore, and the econ player is trying to activate a Broken Golem or build a Spire City, it's still really impractical for the other players to keep sending his resources back through the current clunky manual interface.

[TechSY730]

Just a note about the current system. Any metal earned by a player while the player is already at their metal cap will be automatically shared with other (active) players, so no metal is lost (unless all other players are also at metal cap).
Not saying that is enough, but the game does already haven some form of auto-sharing ready enabled.

[keith.lamothe]

Adding a slider for what % it starts auto-sharing at (where the current value is 100) would probably be simple enough.

[Draco18s]

Watch out for infinite sharing loops~

(That is: what if both player set their sliders to 50%?)

[keith.lamothe]

It doesn't try to share with players that are already at their cap.  So the % slider setting will double as your "amount beyond which I share resources" and your "amount at which I stop accepting shared resources".

[Wingflier]

Thanks Keith. You're the greatest.

[TechSY730]

You would need two "tiers" of overflow though. One which would pay attention to this new setting and only "overflow" past that to other players below their share setting. The other for when the player is overflowing past 100% of their absolute metal cap, and should overflow to all other players below 100%, but preferring those below their share setting first. This way, even if every player has a <100% cap sharing setting, no metal will be wasted until everyone is absolutely full. (Obviously, if a player has their sharing setting at 100% of their cap, then only the second case needs to be considered)

[Bognor]

It's also clear that, given the limited nature of the knowledge mechanic, it just makes *more* sense for one player to go the "ECON" route, spending all his knowledge on better harvesters and command stations, and then taking the planets over.

I was under the impression one player could research a Mark III Command Station (9000 knowledge) and capture every planet, while another player researched Mark III Metal Harvesters (9000 knowledge) and built every harvester.  I haven't actually tried it so can't confirm it works, nor comment on how fiddly it is, but in principle that's a better deal all round than having one player with two homeworlds researching both.

Tried this, doesn't work. Plus even if it did work, every time the AI took out your harvesters the planet owner would have to manually destroy his automatically rebuilt  harvesters and the other player would have to rebuild them 1 by 1.

Doh, sorry to mislead you then.  Out of curiosity, what didn't work?  Is it just that the option for a mobile builder to build metal harvesters is disabled on an ally's planet?

[Wingflier]

When the non owner of the planet attempts to place a harvester on an empty metal spot, it just makes an error sound and doesn't work. At least that's how it was a few versions ago. It may have changed but I haven't seen it in the patch notes.