5/3/2017
Topic:
Later game
Vulpex
|
Oh no...
See things are not so static. You could go for 10 lvl 10 production structures but that is unlikely to be very efficient. (But that's not the point here).
What will happen is conflict. As everyone ramps up production you run into two big problems:
First - scarcity of markets. Markets don't sustain this level of growth forever, some will start to collapse your products no longer sell... you need to be able to deal with it. Do you shift markets or find a way to defend your market share? Maybe blow up a freighter or two from the competition...
Second - Resources - guess what it's not just the markets which get saturated, so do the resources. This means you again have one of two options - either expand out of Earth and ultimately out of Sol (where things get violent much much faster) or once more - fight for the resources you are using. Blow up that metal mine that is pushing up your production costs to an unbearable level.
But here is the thing - conflict is a two way thing and once you start to fight people... they may choose to fight back. Or you might find yourself in the receiving end of someone who thinks you've been messing with their market and/or resource.
Which brings me to - alliances. This game will be built or die based on the allies and friends you have around you. Even the strongest corporation will collapse if others team up on them. So being able to make and keep friends is important. It can also have some very exciting economic benefits.
Add to that NPCs such as the raiders, machines and mother nature itself which is trying to make your life miserable and you already have a very interesting situation to cope with.
Think you are done? Nah not yet... I am really excited about the idea of orbital structures and platforms which require so many resources only organized alliances can build and use them to control space...
And that's just the stuff that's been announced as being in the works...
(Oh - also you could try to get yourself elected as emperor of Sol if that's how you like things. It's fun  |
5/3/2017
Topic:
Later game
Vulpex
|
First off - if I gave you the impression that the idea at the end game is to rebuild a few structures, I might have not explained things properly. What you will face is a changing environment which will force you to react with changing strategies and objectives. Sometimes that means changing structures, sometimes it will mean not changing them.
I personally find it challenging to help opening up the galaxy - this is clearly going to be quite a bit of work and require a concerted effort from a whole bunch of corps but it can be very rewarding, for instance by opening up more of the very valuable artifact sites.
About the issue with lvl 10 structures here is what can happen:
With those structures which are used to extract materials, a lvl 10 structure will have a penalty to production cost due to the Ocrowd penalty. This can be as high as double the normal production cost (depending on the productivity of the spot where you start) which kills all the profit - at that stage you can probably just buy materials straight from cities.
Ok but what about the structures which are non-extractive? Well there the situation is different and I'm going to differentiate between components (stuff like alloys or ceramics which are used to build bigger items), end products (e.g. vehicles or industrial goods) and services. Bear in mind that none of these are affected by the Ocrowd penalty so that's not going to be an issue.
In the case of components, you may want to start by making the components to sell directly but the real profit lies in making sure you make the components you need to make your end products. Are you going to continue to produce an excess of components to make your end product. For instance exotic clothes only needs one unit of exotic ceramics and one unit of exotic polymer vs 8 units of exotic fabrics. How big would you be making your ceramics or polymer facilities in this case?
When it comes to end products the issue which you are going to have to deal with is market saturation. Once several people are going to have lvl 10 production facilities your economy might find itself tanking hard and fast when the market gets saturated. Do you want to have all of your eggs in one or a few baskets by focusing on a few lvl 10 facilities or do you want to spread your risk around by having several lower level facilities? I don't yet have the right answer to that one. (In fact there might not be one).
Finally services - these are potentially the most profitable per unit but the problem is that you cannot ship them. They are automatically consumed in the city where the are built. If you build a lvl 10 facility of these profitability will tank. Hard and fast. I currently have one of each type at lvl 3 only and even though they contribute a nice chunk of change to my economy I have to rotate production every couple of days because, yes you guessed it - the economy tanks. Hard and fast.
Final word - this is not a solo game. Really cooperation is far more important than you appreciate right now which then begs the question - how far are you willing to work together with others to achieve a goal. Are you willing to scrap all of your corp and relocate production to another system to get a viable economy going there? Or not? Will you move once the economy is up and running (and highly profitable?). Just a few things to consider. |
5/5/2017
Topic:
City Ruler Benefits
Vulpex
|
It's based on the population of the city.
Gotta update my forum icon now :p |
5/5/2017
Topic:
Mid-construction at upgrade?
Vulpex
|
I can confirm how this works currently.
If a shipyard is updated in the middle of constructing a ship it does not change the time to finish the construction of that ship.
Happened to me a couple of times. |
5/5/2017
Topic:
City Ruler Benefits
Vulpex
|
Yeah... that's what I said too... a few months back :p |
5/5/2017
Topic:
Keeping track of company name changes
Vulpex
|
Ok here is my question.
How are we supposed to keep track of a company fate and namechanges?
To some extent the question has to do with the basic premise of what is intended by the namechange.
A bit of background:
When searching for a specific company the tools which we are provided with favour looking to corps by name or alternatively by name of the player. However both of these can be changed at will for no cost.
So.. it's really easy for someone to do hit and runs and then change their names... Now if the goal of the name changes is to provide anonymity for hit and run attacks, ok fair enough but is it really?
It has kinda nasty after effects. I recently decided to retaliate against a corp which had destroyed some of my key assets.
So I looked up the name on the list of corps - not there, Neither was the player name.
So... I looked around for corps of the same level and found one which had the same sort of units, unit names etc.
I went after that corp and essentially flattened it's military power. An expensive proposition by the way, war is really expensive.
Turns out ... in spite of being closely similar they were two different corps, the original corp had been disbanded completely ...
Ooopsie.
So... to the basic question. How is it we are supposed to keep track of corps? Shouldn't there be a simple way of doing this? |
5/5/2017
Topic:
Later game
Vulpex
|
I think it's good to trim down the structure upgrade times some - half seems like a good measure but 10x? That's... well that's a bit much. Seriously it would massively destabilize the market and also ocrowd griefing? You've not seen anything yet. If you cut structure construction time by a factor of 10 you can have a lvl 10 extractor in less than a day... yihaaa..... me and my mates put up a couple of them at each of your production facilities and you just went broke!
Also there is something else which was brought up here that will not happen on launch (but will later in the game) - on launch you won't really have much of an option of going around buying low and selling high. Why? Because no one will be crashing markets like it happened here. The reason some markets crashed was because the kickstarter backers had a pile of cash to rapidly build up infrastructure, which crashed the small markets concerned. That in turn created the buy low sell high opportunity but that won't be as prevalent on launch.
Back on the question of construction times though - there is one structure where a long construction time is really justified and probably should not be modified. Yes artifact exploiting research center I am looking at you. |
5/6/2017
Topic:
Keeping track of company name changes
Vulpex
|
Hutton wrote:
Was this misunderstanding what lead to the evacuation of Cairo?
Yup it did.
Turns out the company which did the attack didn't vanish - it simply liquidated all it's assets. By doing that though they fail to appear on the company list (If you have no HQ apparently you don't appear there) so I hunted out for the wrong person.
So a few ideas -
Maybe have a link directly to the companies involved in combat in a battle report? (Ideally even if they change name) would go a long way to mitigate the issue. I don't need to "see" the ID of the company per se, but if a company is attacking me I would like to have a simple way of knowing who to hit back.
Another thing which could be done (but is probably more complex as it is new functionality) is to flag certain corps as "enemies" and then you can always have a look at the list of your enemies even if they change name etc.
Anyhow just some ideas out there. |
5/6/2017
Topic:
Later game
Vulpex
|
Zip555 wrote:
Attacks are much too fast. Only a 10% chance that the game even sends you a message to tell you that you are under attack, so virtually no chance of reacting.
The game always sends combat messages - at least in the first round of a fight so you will know you are under attack. If you are around or not to do something about it something else. |
5/6/2017
Topic:
Consequences of a negative balance?
Vulpex
|
And repairs ARE expensive  my poor yellow monolith eats up 1.5 million in repairs for each percentage point in damage. |
5/6/2017
Topic:
Consequences of a negative balance?
Vulpex
|
The rule of thumb I've found is that repairs are roughly 2x unit maintenance per percentage point of damage. |
5/6/2017
Topic:
Small typo in Mech infantry unit critical
Vulpex
|
+25% bonus to damage message shows as: Snooth ride
I'm going to guess it's supposed to be Smooth ride instead. |
5/6/2017
Topic:
Cannot initiate unit construction
Vulpex
|
Heyo - seems that any attempt to initiate the construction of any unit results in - yes you guessed it... the black hole of death.
If I go to any shipyard or base, immediately after selecting a unit type the black hole of death appears oh woe.... |
5/6/2017
Topic:
Cannot initiate unit construction
Vulpex
|
All good again now! Great. |
5/7/2017
Topic:
The official Orbital Megastructures thread
Vulpex
|
I like the idea of making an orbital structure that can somehow increase the production of *some* resources - fields and pastures would be a great example because outside of earth they are not going to be terribly abundant - if you look at the Centauri system - meh not so many with which to develop a new city there (and this handicaps the expansion of the universe in a significant way).
I am also a bit concerned about how the strategic orbits would affect the current NPCs in game - e.g. I can just leave my fleet in the strategic orbit with permanent orders to attack raiders and KABOOM no raider. Ever. They get blown up before they get a chance to move. See the problem? Similar situation can potentially happen with the MAK incursions but those are dangerous and powerful enough that it might not be wise to have a permanent attack order on them. Mother nature though is a target too though again a tricky one. (That fighter Kaiju monster is nasty).
Thoughts on specific structures:
Starbase - Very nice. Maybe it could reduce repair costs too Depends on costs of the structure. However it would be the only defensive structure which would be able to initiate an attack - seems a bit odd in that respect.
DOOM Cannons - Simple get the job done. Balancing is going to be the question...
Warp Gate - GREAT idea - You might want to consider warp gates having an alignment e.g. the owner of the gate aligns the gate to centauri - that's where you get a speed bonus to, rather than a blanket speed bonus by anyone to anywhere.
I would also propose a couple of new structures:
Customs station - yes it is exactly what you think it is. Each ship entering and/or leaving the area it controls would have to pay tax based on the value of its cargo... (set by owner etc) tax however only partially goes to the owner of the structure, instead it goes to fund planetary infrastructure (city growth) and planetary defenses (like the terran federation on Earth - maybe in other areas of sol?).
Research station - this would function in a way similar to research points but for the entire planet, but with smaller effect. e.g. For each level of the research station a 1% production cost bonus to the resources selected by the owner of the research station. A way perhaps to help offset the cost of overcrowding - but of course, at a cost.
There is a question which has not been addressed which is - what is the logistic impact of these structures? Not obvious either.
edited by Vulpex on 5/7/2017 |
5/7/2017
Topic:
The official Orbital Megastructures thread
Vulpex
|
Ah... two more ideas...
Weather control hub: This structure influences the output of fields, pastures, water, woods and exotic plants. In my mind it would do two things - First it would increase the yield of the relevant production type by 1 at lvl 5 and lvl 10 to a given maximum - thus production by a weather control hub lvl 10 would be +2. It would also raise the level of Ocrowd penalty by 100 per level thus at lvl 7 the weather control hub would raise the Ocrowd such that it starts at 1700 units extracted rather than 1000 - see what I did? I would limit these to one per planet for obvious reasons unless you make it such that you need to select the kind of product that is being favoured.
Orbital Survey Station - Just like the weather control hub, but for minerals, metals and chemicals. |
5/7/2017
Topic:
The official Orbital Megastructures thread
Vulpex
|
Zip555 wrote:
Strategic Orbits
Can defenses and ground units be put in them? If only ships then that will make defenses almost useless. If you want to defend 4 places on a planet you have to build 4 sets of defense, a singe fleet in an Orbit will do the job much more efficiently
edited by Zip555 on 5/7/2017
My understanding is that the strategic orbits even with the starbase, do not defend the planetary surface only attack. Therefore putting defenses on the starbase (e.g. those missiles or railguns) will help to defend against any attacks to the starbase, but would have no impact at all planetside as defenses cannot attack.
edited by Vulpex on 5/7/2017 |
5/7/2017
Topic:
Changes
Vulpex
|
How much money are you making Bad and how much do you think you need to make? |
5/7/2017
Topic:
Changes
Vulpex
|
Thanks for the info - but my question was a little different - how much money do you make per tick (total income) and how much do you need? I want to explain how i do things which may help you get better at all this but income levels and goals are important.
Feel free to send a message if you prefer.
edited by Vulpex on 5/7/2017 |
5/7/2017
Topic:
Changes
Vulpex
|
Ok here are a few thoughts.
First - your storage costs are insane. It should not be more than about 100k at any given time. Get rid of those stockpiles and stop producing the stuff you cannot sell.
Prod and military costs are what I'd consider normal - though you should be able to afford a much bigger military with your production.
Here are my figures for comparison:
Production - 540k - but it's misleading as my artifact production alone costs me 150k
Military - 2.5 million - yeah it's the yellow submarine. And his friends.
Storage - about 150k - too high but there is a reason for that before the end of times.
Here is the kicker though - my income varies but regularly hits 3 million - i.e. I can afford all of those expenses long term (my highest income per tick to date has been 3.8 million)
It's not about me having more stuff than you - our production costs (excluding the artifacts) are similar so you should be able to get a similar level of income and at least triple the size of your military.
Need to learn to spend less - but also to earn more. It's a balance. The other hard thing is that you don't strive necessarily for perfection. I could if I really massaged all of my logistics consistently hit 3 million in income with my current setup but I would be bored to death. Instead I kinda let my income dwindle till it hits about 2 million then re-optimize to make it good again (I do have the benefit of a diminishing but still significant cash reserve though).
Think differently just like you are doing - you'll enjoy the game much more |