WeLoveYou wrote:

Stysiaq wrote:

...

Hi Stysiaq

Although I don't agree with Valhalla on decreasing strategics costs, I do think that there is something to be said for map spawn balancing when it comes to strategic and luxury resource spawns....

Valhalla, I'm going to try a slightly different tack as you want to get away from some of the claims in the original post. Can we consider instead what you would be nerfing if there was a decrease in strategics costs? At the moment I can think of the following:

All United Empire heroes - as they get a strategic production boost.
All Overseer heroes - as they get a general resource production boost.
All mining buildings - these are currently a must in systems with T2 and T3 strategics, but if you lower strategics cost, why bother?
Slag and sludge centres - not so bad as they increase luxury output as well, but still a nerf.
Mineral Misers law - The industry boost is mediocre, the real boon of the law is increased strategic mining.

...It's not that you would be making these things weaker, it's that you would be making everything else stronger, so it's a nerf via power creep. I don't think any of these things are too strong at the moment, so I don't see why there is a good reason to nerf them....

... If you don't prioritise these things, then you're going to have a hard time with strategic resources (but make gains elsewhere). As I've said before, a single 1 deposit of adamantian can become 8 or more adamantian per turn with the right buildings and heroes assigned. Two deposits, and you're laughing your way to the bank. Any more than that, then expect fully decked out adamantian fleets to be on the doorstep. The point is, there are tools in the game to alleviate the problems mentioned, so the first port of call should be to question whether those tools are being used effectively, rather than calling out game balance.

On the account of resources often being wildly unequal in their placement, I blame this partially on the Marketplace, which should be an effective way to mitigate geographical inequities but is not because that would require players to give up their own advantage by selling vital resources. I have covered that problem here, in an idea. Essentially, as long as the Marketplace does not simulate the existence of private sellers, we will continue to find it useless and face these issues of resource inequity, which sometimes really do wreck games. If a portion of our production was mirrored by a a Market increase, then every Empire would have access to a portion of every other empires production, for a price of Dust, including having access to a possible boost to their own production for said same price.

As to your suggestion that reduced costs would nerf deposit boosting effects, I quite disagree, on the basis that while these boosts may represent a smaller proportion of my empires total future demand, they would now represent a greater proportion of my empires current demand. It's only when my future demand matches or exceeds my current demand that these bonuses lose value. For example, a +5 boost to Antimatter production represents a fifth of the cost of a 25 Antimatter building, but a third of the cost of a 15 Antimatter building. A +5 boost to Hyperium production is nearly worthless because I likely no longer use Hyperium except as market fodder, but if a building costs 15 Antimatter and 25 Hyperium, it represents a fifth of the Hyperium cost. If I can take a system with deposits of both types, the relative value of a Deposit boost on that system is roughly doubled because both resources have a place in my economy. So overall, I don't think reduced A/A costs produce a noticeable nerf to Deposit boosting effects, and the addition of varied Strategic costs would be a relative buff.

But on the count that we already produce enough and the rest of us just aren't prioritizing, I present my own game as Horatio. I have no Overseer or United Empire heroes, but I do have Mineral Misers, Self-Mining NPO's, two of the three mining buildings, and a whopping four deposits, for total 9 Antimatter per turn each when all implemented, total 36 per turn. I can afford one Antimatter building each turn with 11 stocks leftover for Microwave Pipes, or I can build a single unupgraded Hunter class Horatio ship with Antimatter shields, engines and beams, with 2 Antimatter left over. If I had four UE Overseers and the last Mining building, I could produce 14 Antimatter per Deposit for total (annoyingly unrounded) 56 per turn. That means each turn I can be 12 Antimatter short to produce two unupgraded Hunter ships from the faction with the lowest module counts and full Antimatter gear, or I can produce two buildings with 6 Antimatter left over, or I can be 3 Antimatter short to produce one ship and one building. So at the absolute best, with every source of Deposit booster, I can only build two buildings at a time in my entire 25 system empire. But I don't have full Strategic specialization, I just have a lot.

I am the galactic leader in Antimatter production, full stop; the only other empires who produce Antimatter have 3, 2, and 1 deposit respectively, with another deposit unclaimed and possibly another one out there that nobody has ever discovered. As the galactic leader in Antimatter production, I should be able to build more than one Antimatter building in my vast 25 system empire each turn without going all-in on Strategic production, but even if I maxed my Deposit values I would still only be able to afford two 25 cost buildings at one time in my entire empire. If those 25 cost buildings cost 15 Antimatter and 25 Hyperium and I had maxed Deposit value, I would be able to construct just under four buildings at a time with sufficient Hyperium. So with absolute maximum investment, I could produce one building each turn per Deposit, and I would need more Resource boosters on Hyperium duty to pull it off. I think that's a much more reasonable deal for investing the maximum possible amount of techs, heroes, and buildings to increase Strategic production.

So overall I think the suggested price reduction would not overly affect the value of Deposit boosts, and the addition of diversified costs would represent an overall buff.

Note: I appreciate the refreshing civil economic debate here immensely.

@ValhallasAshes

I think that a nice way to increase T3 resource importance - even without adding any new game elements - would be to tie at least some bonus slots from upgraded hulls to those t3 strategics, if not adding t3 strategic slots even on top of the already existing ship schemas. This way you could have an earlier edge on your ship designs, even if you don't have access to t2 strategic components (or can't afford them). Or you could make them a "joker" material - for example an option to use the green t3 instead of antimatter (in a 2:1 exchange per piece) for antimatter buildings and purple t3 for adamantium (sorry, I don't remember the names). Finding a t3 resource deposit should be an exciting thing for the player; now it's barely so, because I am yet to play a game in which I reached the techs for the appropriate weapon components that I felt I needed to destroy my enemy (my perception is still limited to SP experience). I admit I kind of like finding Quadrinix (I checked the names!), because it's tied to the fleet movement upgrade; but the availibility of this resource is not the kind of the boost I think it should be. You could also add some t3 strategics (in small amounts) as a cost for important upgrades at the expense of decreasing the cost in A/A, though in general I don't support important upgrades that would need more than 1 strategics (because you potentially have double the chances for being frustrated and cockblocked by RNG).

The "lighter" resources as a whole - Hyperium, Antimatter, Quadrinix - in general feel like they yield more power because they're linked to both movement speed and research on top of current weapons (im)balance dominated by energy weapons and shields. This is also something I think should be taken a look at (for example I don't think it would be inappropriate if "darker" strategics could take at least some of the useful upgrades on their shoulders (for example lasers instead of missles).

I am not sure if the market should be the place to resolve all your woes. Making the market have all the resources in the world (from a "neutral player") feels like a cop-out to me. I also am still not entirely aware of how the dust inflation works and how the players dumping thousands of dust during mid-game in the market for A/A would affect the rest of the game.

IceGremlin wrote:

So I'd like to hold off until WeLoveYou retrieves their post from the void, but looking back after some time away I can see that my post was a pretty wild ride. The sheer loopiness of my explanation is hilarious in retrospect, but I totally understand not following it, I was barely following it while I wrote it. That's because I was describing a pretty basic idea in the most roundabout way possible.

Purchasing power. When things become more expensive, your method of payment becomes weaker. The reverse is also true; when things get cheaper, your money goes further, and its purchasing power increases. Ergo, a decrease to the cost of buildings does not nerf the effects you listed, but rather buffs them by increasing the relative purchasing power of those Strategic resources. If a building is the product, and Strategics the money we spend to build them, then those strategics are worth more if buildings cost less.

I completely forgot it was an actual economic concept, I was just working backwards from a a vaguely remembered hunch. So yeah; overall, reduced costs actually represent a buff to those effects, since they now represent greater value related to what they can help you purchase. I can build more, using the same bonuses, so those bonuses are more valuable because they get better results.

I went to edit it, and accidentally deleted it! I was so mad! Ermmmm, not sure how to bring it back I'm afraid.

WeLoveYou wrote:

I went to edit it, and accidentally deleted it! I was so mad! Ermmmm, not sure how to bring it back I'm afraid.

Been there, done that.  Things were smashed.  Never fun.

IceGremlin wrote:

Stysiaq wrote:

...

I(...)

The market already serves as a neutral player who pays the rest of us for our unwanted resources, when by rights it should be a neutral player who we compete to buy resources from. It's all backwards, less a market, and more of a recycling deposit center that transmutes our trash into cash. We should be able to buy things from the market to ease resource inequity with Dust, but we can't because nobody ever has a reason to sell something desirable, because then we're just handing it to our enemies. The Resource Exchange serves no purpose as a result.

Besides, with Inflation so high that we have to resort to mass selling of trash to afford buyouts, what other purpose does Dust serve if the market never sells anything but our trash which we sold to it? And why does the market even pay us so much for our trash? You'd think that at 999 stocks of Super Spuds on the market, we'd not be able to get any Dust for the stuff, as devalued as it is.

So, in other words, everything is terrible and should be revamped :P But yeah, market feels shoe-on-head. I would like it to be a place where I can go to either sell or buy resources, with the resource selling having at least some risk attached; I have Dust, but I can't buy X Y and Z. Except X Y and Z don't exist, you can't buy the useful stuff. Selling titanium/hyperium is a no-brainer because of how high availibility/low demand for those resources in the tech tree, so researching market only to immediately sell all your T/H is pretty standard game plan. That shouldn't be the case.

Another thing I would change about the market is the access to the ships tab; I think that enabling them earlier would create some interesting strategic choices, as it stands the buyable ships aren't all that great (especially without a way to upgrade them, unless there is such path and I simply am not aware of it). Having heroes in the tech is fair game though.

Maybe the buyable fleets could be a "strategics sink"? Introducing ships you can buy out with t1 strats or, in the late game, capital ships you can buy out with t3's? This way t3 strategics could also enable the player to delay researching capital-ship class hulls at least for a while. Anyway, all thi market talk by me is a bit offtopic..

Not a bad idea though.  May be worth making an idea post for it in the ideas section.

ValhallasAshes wrote:

Not a bad idea though.  May be worth making an idea post for it in the ideas section.

I probably will, once the idea will be more fleshed out.

Our game designers play the game extensively, but for the same reason it can be difficult to see England when you're in the middle of Trafalgar Square, sometimes you're so involved in hundreds of minute changes that outside perspectives come in handy: this is why, for instance, we held a closed beta for two weeks.

This is a great post, I like how in-depth you have gone with this.

I would agree that Adamantium & Antimatter are over used compared to other strategic in improvement costs. I have in every game found myself having much less Tier 2 Strategics (Adamantium & Antimatter) than I do tier 3 (Orichalcix & Quadrinix) even when I’m producing (per turn) less tier 3’s due to (as you have said) the large amounts that towards building system improvements. 

I will be looking over improvements in an upcoming version of the community mod project and will try to rebalance strategic costs along with benefits.

I agree with Aitarus in a slightly different way,

I think not having access to all improvements in every system is good.

Requiring a cost/benefits analysis before deciding to build something does make the game more interesting rather than just spam all the improvements everywhere.

But right now that only happens with the Tier 2 Strategic improvements (or the other Strategic improvements when you don’t have a deposit) I would like to see more requiring tier 1 Strategics (maybe with more powerful effects?) and a little less cost for Tier 2 Strategics or maybe split the cost somewhat, i.e have some of them cost 10 tier 2 & 30 tier 1 or 15 tier 3. 

But some change is definitely needed in this area.

CyRob wrote:

This is a great post, I like how in-depth you have gone with this.

I would agree that Adamantium & Antimatter are over used compared to other strategic in improvement costs. I have in every game found myself having much less Tier 2 Strategics (Adamantium & Antimatter) than I do tier 3 (Orichalcix & Quadrinix) even when I’m producing (per turn) less tier 3’s due to (as you have said) the large amounts that towards building system improvements. 

I will be looking over improvements in an upcoming version of the community mod project and will try to rebalance strategic costs along with benefits.

I agree with Aitarus in a slightly different way,

I think not having access to all improvements in every system is good.

Requiring a cost/benefits analysis before deciding to build something does make the game more interesting rather than just spam all the improvements everywhere.

But right now that only happens with the Tier 2 Strategic improvements (or the other Strategic improvements when you don’t have a deposit) I would like to see more requiring tier 1 Strategics (maybe with more powerful effects?) and a little less cost for Tier 2 Strategics or maybe split the cost somewhat, i.e have some of them cost 10 tier 2 & 30 tier 1 or 15 tier 3. 

But some change is definitely needed in this area.

I can agree with this.  Having more of a mix could be beneficial.

And thank you for the supportive comments.  It's really good to hear my work wasn't wasted.

Sorry if I'm repeating others here, but I think your evaluations of what is critical, and what isn't, is way off.

I rarely ever build any of the buildings you've stated in all my systems, or any of my systems for that matter. Predictive logistics and Graviton Research are the only ones I would consider 'critical' in the list as it gives you the next industry and science boost to begin making the T3 structures and ships, and as you've said, titanium and hyperium are well balanced. Fabrication license is up there, but as it's a population based building you wouldn't want to build it everywhere. Everything else is optional/situational on the win condition you are going for, and as everyone else has pointed out, you still wouldn't build them in every system. The approval buildings aren't usually worth the price on the tin as there are lots of ways to handle approval in the late game that don't require approval buildings (Terraforming, Autonomous Admin [thanks to Cyrob for that one I think?], anomaly reduction, laws). The dust buildings aren't really worth a whole lot either as they will never beat well developed trade routes for pursuing economic victory, and the buyout/maintainence costs can easily be covered by mass selling on the market.

There are also many options to hugely increase strategics output. With mines, slag and sludge, an overseer/UE hero, and mineral misers law, you can get 5-8 extra strategics from just one source. If you want the resources, then you'll need to adapt your playstyle to get them.

The biggest sink for strategics is ship modules, as it should be, because the strategic weapons are considerably better than the non-strategic ones.

Just for a bit of evidence, here is a screenshot of the final turn of a Riftborn game, Endless Difficulty, normal speed, large galaxy, Wonder Victory. Those are my strategics numbers after building 4 wonders (I stupidly thought I needed 4). Nothing particularly special about this game in terms of resource generation. 




The other thing I disagree on is the balance. I think endgame Quad and Orich buildings could do with a buff. They give some pretty lacklustre bonuses for their cost given that you should be gunning for a victory type by that point. For example: Why get 10% to all FIDSI for a big cost when you could be building ships with the strategics on the modules, or just infinite turning science/dust for 50% industry, all of which will actually push you closer to your victory type. IDK what others think about this.

Summary: Most of these buildings shouldn't be built in every system, or any system, situationally depending on your victory type. Strategics (especially on this patch) are easy to produce with the multipliers, once you actually have the systems with them on.