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Doctor Dread Administrator Posts: 1478
8/16/2017
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I'm thinking we need to tweak geo boosters. The standard exploit seems to be letting the demand go into the roof but counteracting the population decline with Geo boosters. Geo boostes are adding directly to the population without any consideration of the demand. Instead It might have to change it to,multiplying the existing population growth and add that instead. Or something like, it adds to the current growth percentage, which is based on demand rates, so if that's in the toilet, say -0.08% a turn the geo booster lifts it by 0.10 to bring it to 0.02 and barely gets is positive. The break even point for a geo booster to make 0 population growth could be at about 300 demand but it would stack with a planetary one so the population will break even even when at 400 demand, plus a solar one so 500 demand. but you wouldn't be able to throw a geo booster at 800 demand planet and get a positive growth like you do now.
Boosting the population with that kind of math mechanic breaks the game. Its very "cheap" to make a few artifacts to boost an entire 25 city planet into the stratosphere while everyone is selling at 1k demand. It should REALLY be it ONLY works on existing Positive growth, which means you would have to get the demand under 200 for anything to work
edited by DrDread on 8/16/2017
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Vulpex Posts: 390
8/17/2017
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The idea of geoboosters only working to increase population only when there is population growth is an interesting one I would second that though I would also have it slow down the population loss in the case that a city is losing population.
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Doctor Dread Administrator Posts: 1478
8/17/2017
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I don't have an average population growth rate to display on a city or planet to display because its actually PER PRODUCT and each product is linked to the 9 different pop levels at different rates so its difficult to show how a booster would effect this. If the population is 90% class 1 pop and the demadn for the class 1 pop products is really high but the other 8 pop classes are all demand 100 but with 1000 pop each, the "average" population growth would be tricky to understand.
it might be a lot easier to use the mechanic of geo boosting moves the Demand break even point for poulation growth up from 200 to 300. That would make a lot more sense and be a lot easier to see and understand by looking at the demand of the city. Then boosting the planet and system would raise it to 500. But you can never get population growth is the demand average is past 500
Since there are probably going tobe other things that "boot Population growth" like ring worlds and such, I might just have to go with a straight "bonus" that acts as a percentage boost that is easy to understand
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Ranged Posts: 10
8/18/2017
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I'd say reduce it back to 5% and see how that turns out first. The reason that we have 110 mil pop cities is because there's over 20% growth/100 turns pretty much permanently, and 30% every now and then. It needs a looooot of pop loss to make up to that. Halving it would have a noticeable effect.
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Aywanez Posts: 64
8/18/2017
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If I can make a suggestion, the current multiplicative system makes geotechnicals either useless or priceless (depdning on existing city size.) with a very narrow belt of middle ground. Why not make it more additive? Like instead of giving a multiplier of 1.0001 (+1‰) every turn, why not make it give a multiplier of 1.00001 (+1‱) but then also add 200 people to each population group (this will match the current, overpowered, system at population of 2 million people)
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Doctor Dread Administrator Posts: 1478
8/18/2017
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I can't allow geo boosters, or any population boosting structure to make a city prosperous past the average 200 demand threshold or it will break the game. If you can make a city have all 500 demand and still be going UP in population its going to ruin the game. Whatever mechanic we use has to not allow that to happen. Boosters, or pop boosting megastructures aren't meant to jump start a small city by adding a static number of population, they are just mean to accelerate the existing growth. Its something you can put on top of an already thriving city , not bring it back from the toilet. The only way to make a city "work" is to sell it products and keep the demand low. The game has to revolve around that base mechanic.
Just like Orbital Megastructures are useless around small planet (no ones warping or trading much) , you don't place booster on small cities either.
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Aywanez Posts: 64
8/18/2017
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Doctor Dread wrote:
they are just mean to accelerate the existing growth. Its something you can put on top of an already thriving city , not bring it back from the toilet.
See, that right there is what makes them volatile. Purchasing and using a geo-booster on your city makes the poor poorer and the rich richer. It doesn't matter what the boost is, that just determines at what size one becomes the other. If geo-boosters made small cities bigger, but was relatively little help to megapolia, it would have a stabilizing influence instead. Just something to think about. 
Doctor Dread wrote:
I can't allow geo boosters, or any population boosting structure to make a city prosperous past the average 200 demand threshold or it will break the game. If you can make a city have all 500 demand and still be going UP in population its going to ruin the game.
Well, let's see. a 500 demand city loses 3‱ of its population every turn, so if you want 500 to be the break even point for a triple-boosted city (you said in some places that you did, and in others you didn't, but for the moment we will assume you do) a boost should give 1‱ per boost. Roughly 1/10th of what it gives now. That is a massive nerf, and people will be upset. Rightly upset.
I do like the idea you had about geoboosts increasing growth and decreasing decline, depending on which is happening. Well, at any rate, I like it a lot more than the pop-multiplier we have now.
One problem I have with it, is that while the alt-boost is useful for a demand 10% city and really useful for an 999% demand one, has no effect at all on demand 200% city, theoretically the most common city there would be if the system stopped being such a crazy oscillator. But it is a matter of opinion.
edited by Aywanez on 8/18/2017
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Doctor Dread Administrator Posts: 1478
8/18/2017
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Aywanez wrote:
Doctor Dread wrote:
they are just mean to accelerate the existing growth. Its something you can put on top of an already thriving city , not bring it back from the toilet.
See, that right there is what makes them volatile. Purchasing and using a geo-booster on your city makes the poor poorer and the rich richer. It doesn't matter what the boost is, that just determines at what size one becomes the other. If geo-boosters made small cities bigger, but was relatively little help to megapolia, it would have a stabilizing influence instead. Just something to think about.
Doctor Dread wrote:
I can't allow geo boosters, or any population boosting structure to make a city prosperous past the average 200 demand threshold or it will break the game. If you can make a city have all 500 demand and still be going UP in population its going to ruin the game.
Well, let's see. a 500 demand city loses 3‱ of its population every turn, so if you want 500 to be the break even point for a triple-boosted city (you said in some places that you did, and in others you didn't, but for the moment we will assume you do) a boost should give 1‱ per boost. Roughly 1/10th of what it gives now. That is a massive nerf, and people will be upset. Rightly upset.
I do like the idea you had about geoboosts increasing growth and decreasing decline, depending on which is happening. Well, at any rate, I like it a lot more than the pop-multiplier we have now.
One problem I have with it, is that while the alt-boost is useful for a demand 10% city and really useful for an 999% demand one, has no effect at all on demand 200% city, theoretically the most common city there would be if the system stopped being such a crazy oscillator. But it is a matter of opinion.
edited by Aywanez on 8/18/2017
You are correct that it wouldn't have an effect on a demand 200% city if we do it like this. I don't see any other way of doing it if I need to prevent a over 200% average demand city from increasing in population.
Im ok with "Its useless to boost that city, its not even growing" . Its the same thing as "Its not worth putting a warp gate on this dead moon". Allowing the booster to scale down the decline is more of a bonus use for it. This also works with the persistent bonuses I'm already trying to incorporate through ringworld and Dysonsphere or whatever else we come up with. If its positive its more positive, if its negative its less negative. Thats the bonus of having this boosters in place. But if you put them on a dead potential city its going to fail
edited by DrDread on 8/18/2017
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Tunguska Posts: 7
8/20/2017
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I'm not sure how you expect this game to play out. When I sell products, I go for the best price, I'm not sure where the incentive is to sell at below 200%?
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Doctor Dread Administrator Posts: 1478
8/20/2017
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Tunguska wrote:
I'm not sure how you expect this game to play out. When I sell products, I go for the best price, I'm not sure where the incentive is to sell at below 200%?
There wont be much over 200 if it negatively affect the planets population. That was the original mechanic. The Geo boosters as is are breaking they simply multiply existing population which counteracts any negative from the demand.
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nynobernie Posts: 60
8/22/2017
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Another idea... Could you just scale down the bonus of the geobooster depending on the population? For example if population the city is 0 (hypothetical) the booster gives 10% (or 5% whatever) bonus. At 50 Mio the bonus ist halved to 5 %. At 100 Mio population the bonus is 0%. So no matter how many boosters are active in parallel, population could never grow above 100 Mio. And in larger cities, the demand effects would start to outweigh the boosters benefit.
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TimurThunder Posts: 28
8/23/2017
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What is your current thinking on what will change?
(And again. Demand dependant on price, Set sales price option. Wrong location for fix.)
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Doctor Dread Administrator Posts: 1478
8/23/2017
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nynobernie wrote:
Another idea... Could you just scale down the bonus of the geobooster depending on the population? For example if population the city is 0 (hypothetical) the booster gives 10% (or 5% whatever) bonus. At 50 Mio the bonus ist halved to 5 %. At 100 Mio population the bonus is 0%. So no matter how many boosters are active in parallel, population could never grow above 100 Mio. And in larger cities, the demand effects would start to outweigh the boosters benefit.
Scaling down the bonus just scales down the "max demand" you can achieve for a planet while still keeping its population breaking even. Currently You might be able to pull off say 600 demand and steady population while boosting it continually, cutting it to 5% might allow you to keep it at 3-400. We don't wnat any planet increasing in population if the average is past 200. Most of the game balance revolves around the demand staying around 100 for "normal" profits
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Aywanez Posts: 64
8/23/2017
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100 demand is not normal profits- its subsistence. It costs 100 credits to produce 1 piece of raw materials (in an idealized situation where there are no cost penalties or value bonuses) which means if you sell it at 100% you get no profit. No profit means no expansion, no expansion means no surplus raws, no Rae's means no components, no components means no products. Total economic collapse.
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Vulpex Posts: 390
8/24/2017
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Actually no, 100 demand is profitable. Because:
It does not cost 100 to produce 1 piece of raw materials. So long as you avoid massive penalties to production it is very easy to produce materials for 40-70 credits per unit. I give you an example - base cost for me right now making basic metals is 39/unit. Now I end up paying north of 150 per unit but that is because I have a total 280% penalty in that production.
Components, end products and services are way more valuable than their production cost. Even when producing raw materials at 150 each you will make a profit on end products. Let me give you an example.
Take any synthetics - they require 20 raw materials to make 10 end products. End product is valued at 750 (100%).
Cost breakdown: 3000 in raw materials give you 10 synthetics - so 300 credits invested per unit produced.
To that you add 83 credits which is the cost of producing the synthetics themselves gives you a total cost of 383 credits for a product which you are going to sell for 750 credits. That is a huge profit by any scale. The problem is actually that right now it is ludicrously easy to make huge stacks of cash which in practice greatly devalues cash.
But what does happen if you have 100 demand is that massive overcrowding and logistics penalties become unsustainable which is as should be, and the economic aspect of the game becomes challenging again as opposed to being little more than a grind right now since no strategy or planning is needed to make tens of billions.
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TimurThunder Posts: 28
8/24/2017
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I assumed that 200% was normal due to that being the point of population staying constant - the system is still unstable at that point, but if you get it there it does not change on it´s own if you manage to keep everything else constant. Average 100% leads to crazy fast growth.
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Vulpex Posts: 390
8/24/2017
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In practice what you see in a city are some products where the demand drops to around 100 while for other products the demand is above somewhere in the 250-300 range, and on average city growth stagnates - but it is STILL profitable to operate in such a situation, though growths is smaller and needs to be managed a lot more carefully than just throwing in another geobooster (I recall the economy before geoboosters were even implemented and that is how things looked mostly)
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TimurThunder Posts: 28
8/24/2017
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Demonstration of how to do it hopefully coming up. Still talking details. ALSO DESPERATELY WANT TO KNOW: Will gaia boosters modify the growth from each product, or the aggregate one?
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Aywanez Posts: 64
8/24/2017
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Vulpex wrote:
base cost for me right now making basic metals is 39/unit.
Woah. Let's drill down on this bit of info. How are you calculating this? Or, if this isn't a tricky statistical lie, how did you swing it?
Vulpex wrote:
I end up paying north of 150 per unit
This I believe. But it is after penalties, so the previous question is still interesting to me.
Vulpex wrote:
Take any synthetics - they require 20 raw materials to make 10 end products. End product is valued at 750 (100%).
Cost breakdown: 3000 in raw materials give you 10 synthetics - so 300 credits invested per unit produced.
You seem to have missed a step or two there.
Vulpex, edited by Aywanez for brevity wrote:
tier 3 products make you tons of cash
Yes, but you aren't going to be making any, because if you feed your city raws, you will have no money. And if you don't feed it, the city will die, and you will have no markets.
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Doctor Dread Administrator Posts: 1478
8/24/2017
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The value of tier 2 products used to be 250, and tier 3 was 500. Not they are 325(?) and 750, services went to 1000. It was done because no one was making end products and everyone was complaining that raw material was the way to go. Now its like the reverse, however the sells of raws is like 5x end products, you can see that on the Home page Game Status page , it has a graph.
If you have zero bonus at a 10 resource with 100% demand, yo make no profit. But just putting your HQ IN THE SYSTEM gives you a bonus and that is now profitable. Tier 2-3 is profitable by buying and selling alone but just barely, assuming everything at 100 demand
When everything is at 600 demand everything scales up and the cost of the structure itself is marginalized. If everything is at 80 demand, the cost of the structure is the biggest factor again
The mechanic is designed to insure a sustained high demand is impossible because the more you sell it the more it drops and if it does not get sold it counters population. TO have a sustained product at 500 while everything else is 100 to keep population growing or normal means 90% of the people are selling slim and one guy is selling at 500
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