I was directed here to provide some feedback on my lived experience with bundles, and to demonstrate why I have downscaled my PACs and XBU production already (I was running three, now I just run one for myself).
I also provide some suggestions.
Several issues were intertwined for me:
People want to buy bundles at a discount to their consumable components rather than at a premium for any convenience.
Therefore you must produce most, if not all, of a bundles components, or the economics are not just sub-optimal, but poor. If you do not produce key items, such as RAT/FIM, COF/KOM, then it is likely you operate at low-moderate margins only.
Even if you accepted the above, the PAC itself is a large building with mixed workforce requirements necessitating two types of HAB.
On a Manufacturing base heavy with, say, BMPs and WPLs, this created odd HAB requirements so the PAC itself took up slightly more than the 35 area on the label.
35-40 area is a very large building for something that is unproductive, especially in the cut-throat world of manufacturing.
Some suggestions for consideration, noting that not all need be adopted, but some combination:
Consider a mono-workforce of Settlers only, but increase it to 50; and
Reduce the size to ~20-25 area, AND/OR
Change it to a Food Processing building, so that it can reside more naturally alongside FPs in a food processing base where the size may matter less as it is a niche/specialty offering.
These slight adjustments would make it slightly easier or palatable to produce XBUs at the razor thin margins the open market seems to expect.
And, Admin, if I still have your eyes, this was just a trap for my real request - please, please, please implement a “Cancel All” button for production.
Oh and I think the production throughput of the building should be substantially faster. I shouldn’t need 3 bases of PAC’s to supply my empire of 40 bases.
Honestly, I think there is a simple but effective solution possible: if they added “heavy” storage facilities that were only available to bases, then by making them the same size but grant slightly reduced volume in exchange for a medium to large weight increase? Now you can have a benefit to using the packages for larger bases that make use of the extra weight AND the volume reduction from packages. The best part is warehouses would still be useful, because you could justify requiring more expensive/advanced resources for the “heavy” storage making them more expensive to build and avoiding on turning Warehouses to an obsolete mechanic (though arguably they would feel less NECESSARY, which I consider a good thing since I feel they are almost just a charity planets give so businesses will build more bases there).
I have to say coming back to this comment- I didn’t add the full context to properly address your concerns- however I think this additional context HELPS my argument rather than harm it.
We already have “heavy” variants of our cargo bays that exist in the game. They prioritize weight over volume- making the fact weight fills up faster than volume SLIGHTLY less of a concern for ships. The issue is there is no equivalent for this on planets. Functionally- we have a means to reduce weight AND volume on our ship storage (because of PAC and the alternate cargo bays), but at best only volume for the planets themselves (PAC not forcing you to open them until needed- until you have to open one to use the items). This means that weight is a greater concern in terms of both planetary storage AND distribution. You have a means to store greater weights on your ships- but that only benefits the TRANSPORTATION those finished products, so outside of sending something out in massive quantities (which from what I can tell isn’t exactly reasonable when the main problem of that industry is cost, especially for something that is MORE expensive for the end user than just doing it the old fashioned way AND to the person producing it) the PAC will have little impact. It simply provided convenience to anyone wanting to send large amounts of supplies to a specific area. Great for local markets, not so much for CX stations.
TBH- I’d totally be down for making local markets useful for not having to leave the planet for basic upkeep as much- however unless someone intends to become a “wide range distributor” for each system, the benefits aren’t really seen.