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1yur Posts: 9
9/10/2018
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Hi all.
I'm here for a several months and still like this this game. The key factor which is very important for me and which allows this game to be differ from others - possibility to automatise a significant part of daily routine (of course, it could take a lot of time to make a proper setup, but it's another question). This saves me from spending a lot of time here, in comparison with other browser game. And ecnourages to build a sustainable business model, as far as I can. Owing to excel, I've made some progress, but still have some doubts. The main issue relates to logisitcal capacity, which is not dimensionless and this adds a lot of constraints for unlimited expansion. Of couse, you can don't care about logistic penalties, but somewhere will be a point, where your business stops be profitable at all, due to huge impact of penalties. And requires a lot of direct management. Finding a niche would help, but you still have to control cities demands, volums, keep it on balance and so on. Services are good, but tie you to exact cities. Industry has some limits as well.
So, in the light of this, what is the best & comfortable business model? Some kind of balanced model, which requires not so many management but still well-profitable.
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SVII | Offworld Engineering
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Wreith42 Posts: 58
9/10/2018
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The thing requiring the least management, in my opinion, would be to negotiate contracts to sell raw materials and/or components to other corporations, but that's hard to do because, currently, most people get to where they want to provide everything for themselves despite the logistic penalty.
Second to that would be to pick two or three components and sell them and the overstock raw materials to every city in a system. Have 6-8 freighters each looping through 5-6 cities.
You can go a very long time with that strategy before you have to change something.
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Guest
9/10/2018
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Lyurrr, one thing I will point out is the context of the galaxy we are in. We are in a time of massive log pens and players working to supply whole cities by themselves. What I would consider the best and most comfortable model would be quite a small corporation by the current standards, and would not be able to support a modern military force. So some of it depends on what your end goal is and how "tall" you want your corporation to be. Let it be said that even the biggest corporations have setups that are quite efficient and don't require extreme micro-management, it just takes time and effort to get it all setup.
I tend to prioritize reducing my micromanagement burden as much as possible. The galaxy is of a size that a corporation could produce a limited number of end product types (like 3-4 products, not full categories) and sell them all over the galaxy. Questa has huge demand for all product types. So my setup would look something like:
- 3-4 end products, all lv.10 facilities, that roughly all require the same component/raw materials to produce.
- All the infrastructure to slightly overproduce all the required raw materials and components.
- A small fleet of freighters all set on infinite loop orders.
This setup would have the following features:
- Almost no micromanagement, as all your production is constant and doesn't need to be tampered with
- You would avoid all the log pens
- A couple times a week you can check your freighters, where they are delivering to, and make adjustments as necessary. Basically always have your freighters selling to the highest price location in the galaxy. The key is to not over-supply cities, to where demand drops too fast. If done correctly, your ships can be constantly selling, thus making you money, without having to be checked on every day.
This setup can be scaled up as much as you want. I'm doing something similar to these, except I do 10 end products at lv.5 production simultaneously. I never have to adjust my facility output. I also do civ services, which adds some additional infrastructure. In general though its a pretty low maintenance setup. The trade-off is that I don't make quite as much money as some other corps (i'm also supporting 3 research facilities and a moderate military, so that takes a lot of my money).
This may not be the "best", but it has worked for me.
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Vulpex Posts: 390
9/10/2018
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There is no one answer to this question - as the guest has pointed out the context of the Galaxy is critical.
I've been around a bit and keeping micromanagement down is really important for me because... you know life. In each of the phases of the game a different model seemed to work best - note I say work best, not be optimal. Here is roughly how it went:
Beta - pre-release: This was the wild west, lots of cash floating around no one was really optimising anything we were finding broken things and uh... blowing things up. Lots of fun, but lots of micro management (or simply ignoring the economy, when you know the universe is going to reset in 7 days things are a bit different. When Seren announced that reset was pushed back a few days... I went broke. Good thing I had won the war by then...)
Early days - focus focus focus... you picked a type of product and grew with it or something like that... in my case it was synthetics, Obsidian was working on narcotics others had different focuses but trading between cities was HUGELY profitable - then the city events got toned down.
Earth - past the first month - Basically kept micromanagement down by focussing on a few products, a bit more expanded, and supplying all of earth. In the meantime some colonies were opening up - but it took a while for markets to become stable and often they would fail. Failed colonies in Centauri, Luyten and others, moderate success in Rigil but eventual collapse there as well. I minimised micromanagement by providing a limited set of products to a wide range of markets (I still remember my poor orders, dozens and dozens of lines long selling everywhere on earth and beyond too). It worked, but slowly diminishing returns and military build up required more resources which led to...
Gulyaev - war and colonization - big markets, big demands followed by a crash when the boosting mechanic was changed. Too unstable and required micromanagement for a long time. Required at times runs back to earth to sell excess goods (this was before we had warp gates...) meh...
The return... So I came back and now it seems as if things are simpler. I now produce everything (all end products, intermediate products, services and raw materials) focus on one city, to make it grow, sell excess to other neighbouring cities. Surprisingly light in management (a lot less than before) though still more than I would like. Requires a little tweaking every couple of days but mainly the economy runs itself quite well like this.
However, there are ways to have even less of a micromanagement, just have to find what works for you but be aware that whatever is working, will for sure eventually stop working. So always have a couple of alternative strategies available, and enough cash on hand to handle a bit of an economic slump.
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+1
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CptCommanche Posts: 69
9/10/2018
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Uh, that guest post earlier was me btw.
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Boldor Galactic Inc, AKA the old StarCorp
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Doctor Dread Administrator Posts: 1478
9/10/2018
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I'm still a little confused on how a single corp is managing to supply an entire city into the 10s of millions and remain profitable? Is it mostly buying and selling to make income? because running 200% log penalty on all factories seems like it would be counter productive
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Vulpex Posts: 390
9/10/2018
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All I know is... it works really really well. (Oh and 200% log penalty? Some corps aré running at over 600% logpenalty)
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1yur Posts: 9
9/11/2018
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Thanks for detailed answers.
@Dread, 200% logpen is not so critical, you still can receive a good profit from extensive development.
Well, I was right in my thoughts, some of them are similar to your approaches, I'm actually do some industry (covering 10 products in a single category to balance different demand/value issues) and selling them to different cities across the galaxy automatically. I've even switched my extraction completely to mining fleets, to reduce logpen and maintenance expenses. There are some 5lvl services as well, like a basic income.
But, yeah, if you want a bit more - to develop city/system/region, you begin realize that's quite difficult and you can't do everything alone. Growing cities requires a lot of efforts and I haven't found a best approach for that yet.
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SVII | Offworld Engineering
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CptCommanche Posts: 69
9/11/2018
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Dr. Dread, concerning the log pen: (This will not be a popular proposal for many players, but here it is):
(First off - I don't think most of them do any buy/sell. They are somehow turning a profit even with the large penalties. I reference just about everyone in Gulyaev as examples).
You could increase the penalties of the log pen. Current system is 1% log pen = 1% extra operating cost for all industries.
What if that formula became:
1% log pen = 1% * (.01 * total industry)% extra operating cost for all industry.
at 100% log pen, that would = 100% * (.01 * total industry)% extra operating cost for all industry.
Here are some examples to illustrate what it would do (assumes lv.10 HQ):
at 1% log pen:
Previous: 1% extra upkeep
New: 1.05% extra upkeep
at 175% log pen (my current level)
Previous: 175% extra upkeep
New: 490% extra upkeep
at 663% log pen (Sore Cogs level)
Previous: 663 % penalty
New: 5091% penalty
Now maybe that scale-up is too extreme, but at some point the log pen increases become too much and corporations are forced to stop expanding. But you get the idea.
This would probably be closer to the intended effect that you wanted Dread? It was also make you a bunch of enemies 
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Boldor Galactic Inc, AKA the old StarCorp
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Vulpex Posts: 390
9/11/2018
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I can confirm that there is absolutely no buying / selling involved in all this. Only production -> Sale.
And in fact we all have somewhat different models on how we do things.
If you don't want people going over the logistics level you might as well implement a hard cap and leave it at that. But that would make things a whole lot less interesting.
I understand the maths of your proposal Boldor but let me ask this - do you think it would make the game more or less interesting?
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1yur Posts: 9
9/11/2018
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I do buy/sells but very limited, according to well described situation around the galaxy. Cities aren't so big and they have to grow further, so buying will slightly hamper this already slow process.
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SVII | Offworld Engineering
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Doctor Dread Administrator Posts: 1478
9/11/2018
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In order to make a profit when you are at 100% log penalty you need to be selling at 200 demand (give or take tech and structure bonuses). At 500% you would need to be selling at like 500 600 demand give or take. Seems difficult
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1yur Posts: 9
9/12/2018
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There are still a lot of places where demand is more than 200. The next question is volumes though.
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SVII | Offworld Engineering
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CptCommanche Posts: 69
9/12/2018
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"I understand the maths of your proposal Boldor but let me ask this - do you think it would make the game more or less interesting?"
Well at this point, probably less interesting and would either drive people away from the game, or at the very least cause some great anger. I was just pointing out that the effect might be closer to what was intended.
Now personally I don't have an issue with it. Whats hard is that everyone has gotten accustomed to the game being played at a certain level and in a certain way. From what I understand from Dr. Dread, he has said the game was meant to go into the millions, not billions. I don't think corps were intended to have a 2.6 million military power, or be able to be profitable at over 600% log pen. But now players have a taste of it, and won't ever want to go back.
So anyway, no, probably not a helpful suggestion. I think it would have made it more interesting IF players hadn't been allowed to attain the levels they are at in the first place. We would have held different expectations and assumptions. Can't really go back from that.
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Boldor Galactic Inc, AKA the old StarCorp
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Doctor Dread Administrator Posts: 1478
9/12/2018
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If you can be profitable at 600% log pen its really on me to balance the mechanics. Back in the day the production was a lot different. Everything had the same value of 100 but the component and end product factories would be producing 25 and 50 units a turn at level 1. That made the game a different beast because when you scaled up production you were making 6000 units per turn and a whole planet might not have that much volume. Giving the different tiers different values I think causes some problems even though it solved others.. Raw mats aren't worth trading compared to end products which are 5x as valuable..
There also might be a little too much snowballing of production cost bonuses now. You get your cost reduction on the raw mats then you get it again on components and then again on the end product in addition to it already being profitable to produce mats into comps into end products with no bonus. There's also the problem of not enough players feeding enough demand
Its all difficult to balance without running real world simulation. What I might need today is a lowering of the volume across the board which would fore prices down even with a scare player base. I also think that the way demand rises and stays high for a long time before the population falls still makes for a cyclic boom bust.
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LunaMoth Posts: 47
9/12/2018
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Constantly tweaking things it until it is satisfactory doesn't seem like an effective way to do things. I think focus should be placed on that other forum "What should we work on next?" We can revisit "balance" later with a more effective overhaul of the system rather than a tweak and seeing what happens. Lay down the limits (probably storage limits) and then work from there.
For example, you might have a maximum limit on total credits a guild bank can have.
Then based on that you can set a limit to the total credits an individual corporation can possibly have.
Based on that, you can set a hard limit on the amount of credits a single corporation can earn in a single turn; perhaps to limit an individual corporation's military size to some limit.
From that you can set prices for products and scale (not necessarily linearly) logistics accordingly so it becomes more and more impossible to reach that upper limit no matter what bonuses are present.
edited by LunaMoth on 9/12/2018
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