I already mentioned this yesterday, as for now the amount of all offers are added up and shown as number.
And as NaN stands for an infinite amount…
Sorry about being so straight, but if two out of 10 testers consider the usage of NaN as a shortcut for infinity (instead of “not a number” aka nothing) then it would be wise to consider the current usage as a bug.
Edit: Besides, even if we leave this nomenclature aside: I think that the average user will think that there an infinitive amout of e.g. Drinking water can be bought at 9.60 Credits with the current way the information is presented. And while you might say that this is not a bug as such, it is at least misleading and thus should be refined.
Don’t get me wrong, i back you on this.
And about that NaN, not a number doesn’t mean nothing and is used for undefined amounts, which infinity is.
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NaN is a bug in this context. I changed the behavior of this line in the comex to not show the highest bid/ask with price and amount but instead show the highest/lowest bid/ask and a sum of all order amounts. That way it is easier to see how much supply and demand there is.
But maybe that solution is not optimal either. I just discussed the topic with @martin and we agreed to revert the change and add an additional column showing supply / demand. Supply and demand will be infinite if there is a market maker.
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Sorry folks, I’ll leave for now and join in with the next Alpha. The main reason is the UI but there are also certains foundational aspects that you should consider more deeply from my point of view.
But before I come to my recommendations I would like to remind you on the classic rule in software development: 10% of the time goes into developing about 90% while the 10% left will demand 90% of the time. An example for a game where this rule is ignored is Star Citizen: They are constantly introducing new features but never get anything properly done because they ignore this rule then drop features again and hardly ever get anywhere. A good excample for how to get along with this is Elite: Dangerous: They finished the games core, released that and introduce new and refined features every few months ever since. Even the developers of No mans sky follow this rule: While the game is not that great each feature contained is playable and they introduce new features about every half year.
Now for my proposals:
- Unless you introduce drop-down (or pull-down-)Menues for e.g. the choice of Commodity Exchanges there is not much sense for an alpha test.
- You also need to introduce views that present tiles that are related in a context. Sorry about the fact that I do not state this in a polite manner: If you demand players to define almost all views they need, means that you haven’t invested enough work bring a structure into the game yourself.
- If bases (and their infrastructure) is all a player can control/build up on a planet, then the planets are lacking detail and are in themselves obsolete. Before introducing interplanetary or inter-solar-system-trade this inner-planetary trade/infrastructure should be refined.
- While the idea of a player driven infrastructure is great in itself, there has to be an active non-player-driven market where every player can buy and sell commodities. If this is not the case players will be stuck as they wont be able to sell their products or get necessary resources.
- It should be possible to offer a certain product directly to a demand (vice versa). That is you should introduce a “offer/buy”-button for any order on any market. Then a UI-Element should be shown where you can enter the amount a player wants to offer/buy.
- While banking is supposed to work similar to commodity trade, there is a no financial economy system. (If this sounds irritating: Think of a bank as an other kind of company: To trade different currencies actually demands an infrastructure and “workers”.)
- The fact that each player has to do the transports him/herself is also a problem: Most transporting companies are not producing anything (vice versa) and there is a simple reason for this: Both demand different strategies. So if you want this to be an economic simulation producers should not need to be transporters.
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Hey, thanks a lot for all your feedback. 
And don’t apologize, it’s important that you guys are up front with us, so the tests yield actual results. I’m not sure I understood all of your points, though, so if you don’t mind, could you elaborate the following?
Since you said “e.g.”, you are implying that you’d like to see more drop-down menus. Where are they missing in your opinion? Having all Commodity Exchanges in one drop-down list is an idea we will consider, even though it might get very long in later versions of the game.
I don’t understand this sentence. Do you mean we need to set up more pre-built Screens? That’s not much work at all, so if you have suggestions in this regard, shoot.
Do you mean roads on the planets, to add the aspect of resource transportation on the surface?
How would this be different from the current system of placing buy and sell orders? If you offer a product for a higher price than anyone is selling it for or vice versa, an order is placed that is fulfilled once an other player is willing to trade for the price you set.
As for the other things, we’ll definitely look into them. Especially the question which products Market Makers are supposed to sell and buy is a tricky one. We thought that Fuel, Rations and Drinking Water would be enough, at least once a critical mass of active players is reached. Maybe they should be selling and buying more, at least during the alpha test.
It would be great if you could elaborate, since we’re really trying our best to implement player feedback. Thanks!
I lack the resources to test this thoroughly, but here is something I noticed:
When I built a hab dome it immediately consumed the total supplies for the day for all my pioneers even though it had just previously consumed the supplies for pioneers with one fewer hab domes. I would expect it to consume only 4 rations and water.
I think that if I built 4 hab domes it might consume 4 + 8 + 12 + 16 rations and water immediately.
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Pretty sure that doesn’t work as intended. Thanks for bringing it up!
Hi Mjeno,
first of all: Sorry for not replying earlier, the current wave of the common cold showed by and celebrated a week-long party.
=== Proposal:
Unless you introduce drop-down (or pull-down-)Menues for e.g. the choice of Commodity Exchanges there is not much sense for an alpha test.
== Inquiry:
Since you said “e.g.”, you are implying that you’d like to see more drop-down menus. Where are they missing in your opinion? Having all Commodity Exchanges in one drop-down list is an idea we will consider, even though it might get very long in later versions of the game.
= Reply:
That would be an option. The point I’m making is that if you later on change the UI in a way where most/all interactions are started by clicking buttons/menu items/etc. there will hardly be any value in lessons learned from the interaction with the current text-based UI.
With this comes a second aspect: If the game is browser based (well … it is of course … so) … As the game is browser based users can interact with it via any mobile device. Now imagine using any iPhone/Android device: The auto-error-insertion (officially called auto correction) will drive you mad.
And since the release of HTML 5 there are so many browser-“native” features that will actually support you in developing a UI with hardly any text-entry features without reducing the number of features. But I’m getting off the point… So btt…
Instead I take your point about how there would be a drop-down menu with too many entries if all where listed in one. Well in that case how about one for the systems and a second that only shows those exchanges in the currently chosen system? And if the first one gets to crowded simply introduce groups of systems named e.g. constellations.
=== Proposal:
You also need to introduce views that present tiles that are related in a context.
== Inquiry:
I don’t understand this sentence. Do you mean we need to set up more pre-built Screens? That’s not much work at all, so if you have suggestions in this regard, shoot.
= Reply:
I’m afraid that you are underestimating this aspect. This is one of the game development aspects that can take dozens to hundereds of hours: To group some tiles to a supportive view may seem simple at first, the testing and refining is what will take the time. This is the case as you know how you intended certain aspects of the simulation will work but in the end you first need to have an understanding of the different possible combinations of tiles that can be usefull and those combinations that are rather confusing. During this process you might even find tiles that are not developed but would be supportive in a certain context.
To get back to your question: I don’t think that it would be of much use if I posted some ideas here; instead you should check out the views that players made themselves. Next you should analyze them: What are the possible use cases for each. (Usually there will be more then one.) Check out if multiple players constructed similar views. Try to find out where they are different and where they are similar. And while it may be tempting to check out those that many players come up with: There will be some views that only one player came up with and that supports a brilliant strategy.
=== Proposal:
Before introducing interplanetary or inter-solar-system-trade this inner-planetary trade/infrastructure should be refined.
== Inquiry:
Do you mean roads on the planets, to add the aspect of resource transportation on the surface?
= Reply:
That would be one aspect, but I’m not thinking of a planetary simulation as detailed as in Sim City or similar games. Still there is the situation that if a players base is not a commodity exchange itself, then any goods will have to be transported from comX to base (vice versa). Currently this is not the case in the simulation. Now there are different ways to transport goods: Train, lorry, ship, etc. Each needs a certain infrastructure. So you might say that for 100 km/miles distance from base to comX/spaceport a player has to pay a certain transport fee, depending on the transport medium. And depending of the connection (simple roads, offroad track, highway, …) the transport wil take a certain time. Now players might invest money so that a better road/an airport close by/… is built and while those costs might be high, you could implement this as an investment. And if players don’t have the money the planets government might start building better connections but players who benefit from the better connections would have to pay higher taxes for their bases.
Beyond that with the resulting differences in infrastructure at different regions of each planet some locations would be more profitable while others should be cheaper to start at. Next you might introduce aspects as pollution (by traffic) that would influence farms and similar.
=== Proposal:
It should be possible to offer a certain product directly to a demand (vice versa).
== Inquiry:
How would this be different from the current system of placing buy and sell orders? If you offer a product for a higher price than anyone is selling it for or vice versa, an order is placed that is fulfilled once an other player is willing to trade for the price you set.
= Reply:
This refers to two different aspects of the current trading system:
(a) Trading commodities: Any order on the market already contains all that is needed for the buyer except for a simple field where he/she can enter the volume of interest. So there is no need to remember the max quantity, the exact price and so on. And also there is no need to enter all the values that are already in that order. The current system is like a blackboard where noone calls back, instead people who are interested in an offer have to post a request as if there was no offer.
(b) Monetary trade: A player offers 1k of currency A for 1.3k of currency B. Now another player can only spare 1k of currency B. So instead of the chance to offer those 1k that other player has to calculate (it’s 0.762… of currency A) and if things go pretty bad (computer based rounding of numbers, illegal entry values) the simulation will not see this as a request that fits the offer and both players are stuck with their orders. (Of course they might send one-another ingame messages but that shouldn’t be necessary with a market system.)
So, I hope this helps you. If you would like me to elaborate further or would like to discuss some aspects in more depth, I’ll be happy to take the time.
Keep up the good work and lots of success.
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That is for @martin to answer, he’s the expert, but from what I know the consumed products should last longer than a day for these pioneers, since there have been some left-overs.
I am not sure if I understand you correctly, but are you aware that the text-based commands are an addition to get around quickly and all functions and tiles are accessible by clicking UI elements like links and buttons? For example there is the CXL command tacked to the left sidebar that shows a list of all commodity exchanges.
The textual, command based interface is not going to be replaced in the future. If there is some tile or functionality that cannot be reached by clicking on a regular UI element than we are happy to create a link or a button at the appropriate location.
Mobile devices are not officially supported right now (one reason being the one you mentioned). We haven’t made a plan on how to move to mobile yet, since that lies so far in the future, but we are pretty sure that the game as-is cannot be used properly on mobile devices.
The idea behind the UI of Prosperous Universe is that the screens are totally configurable by the players. What I’ve seen from the tests so far is, that every player setups their screens in a different way, because every player has her own style of playing. This is also a feature we intend to keep. The goal is not to find the perfect screens and then lock in the players. It’s part of the game mechanics to find the screen layouts that suits you best.
Of course we always can show good performing screen layouts and inspire the players, but what works for one player might not work for another.
This is a great suggestion, but goes a bit beyond what we have in mind with PrUn. In the design process we chose planets to be the smallest unit. A base has a planet-wide inventory, there are no transportation costs from a base to a co-located ComEx and so on. The idea let the players focus on the expansion to the universe.
But we have some features in mind, that go into the direction you suggest: We might add new space flight segments for take-off and landing. The consequences are that there are ships that have the capability to land on planets and ships that don’t. Players could build orbital structures to unload ships that cannot land on a planet and of course could charge other players for using the infrastructure. This could be a space-elevator or shuttles for example.
I am not sure if I understand you correctly, I’ll try So you want a button to buy a commodity and the only thing you want to enter is how much of it you want to buy? If that is the case, here are some questions:
- What should happen if there are no orders or not enough orders to fulfill your request?
- What if you want to buy 10 units and there are two offers one for 5 units @ 10NCC and 5 units @ 250NCC what would the displayed price be?
The ForEx system is modeled after real-life currency markets. Usually you buy in lot increments of different sizes. As a private trader some banks or services allow an arbitrary amount of currency to be traded (with the bank in that case, not directly on the ForEx) but since you represent a company in the game we went with the lots.
Didn’t happen. In fact I noticed it because it immediately put me into reduced production due to shortage.
Today total daily rations were consumed at about the time when the shortage was alleviated yesterday.
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I just built my 4th Hab1 and it consumed 7 RAT.
Think my daily consumption was about 6-8 hours before.
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If i understand him correctly, i think he wants a button behind every offer, to choose this offer only with a click and then enter only an amount.
Not the badest idea, i always feel annoyed to take the cheapest offer, even if it’s from a rival.
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Damnit, @molp beat me to it. 
But he’s the expert on our game design anyway, so I agree on all accounts. Thanks a lot for getting back to us! I hope some of the design decisions have become more transparent from @molp’s explanations, and in some others, we’ll definitely keep your advice in mind.
This is actually a feature I never knew I wanted, but yeah. Definitely. I want that too, now. 
This makes me feel all giddy.
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Noticed the fuel cost, both SF and FF, changes if I click back and forth between %s. At 25% usage the cost jumped around seemingly at random in a range of about 40 units for SF, FF only changes by 1-2.
Not sure if this is a bug or a simulation of finding ideal launch windows. If its launch windows will the cost be recalculated when you actually launch?
Edit: Noticed that I was sometimes clicking just over or under 25%. 
and it does stay constant if I actually click the right spot.
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Beer consumption of settlers.
I had 9 beer yesterday, after i constructed my HB2 it went down to 7, i thought okay, consumption was rounded up and i’ll have 6 beer after the consumption tomorrow, but it went from 7 to 5 today.
Edit: beer went down only 1 today
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Is here a bug? when I am buying thing it goes to an unproper ship, that I had set up.
I have to mention, I have two ships in one market planet and my base is in other planet.
When buying/selling you can usually choose the ship.
I can load only 99 units of FF in my Singularium store, even with 0.1m³ and 4t of free space, which should be just enough to fit the last FF.
I don’t think this was the case last round, where you could load 100 units into it.
Edit: Unloading the Singularium store fixed the problem, odd thing though.