I have some comments / feedback on starting out and things I observed so far , not sure where to post it so I put it here. I read the packages and thought I would be a farmer because I read
“ Short description
Producing agricultural products that can be used in the food industries is the foundation of every colony. “
So i started on Prom, and I made some stuff and then I realized the actual foundation of the colony is the MM you have all the basic items needed for the colony made out the air by the MM. So then I thought I would reset and try something different I found something that seemed like it would make more money on Prom this was when I found out the next thing with the game there is really no way to trade when you are starting out. I found some items I thought I could sell and bring something back to help out Prom well when I check the fuel cost it was over 8,000 for the round trip. So now I am just waiting to reset again because nothing really shows up at prom and basically the best place to build is where all the metal is.
Based on that I have some questions / comments on things I will just try to make it short.
1: is the MM staying in the game? Or is it some kind of stop gap thing? If it is staying then what is the point of Prom and any of the basic food items or why not have the MM be a real MM where it buys food on Prom and only sells what it buys on other planets. And also why is the MM not just selling everything then?
From design perspective you seem to have one area for metal, one area for gas and had one for food but the MM sells the rations and drinking waters so what is the point of the food planet now?
2: Why not have a way to ship 25 - 50 units of any of the basic items for cheap from the main trade hubs. Not anywhere else just a way to trade from main hub to main hub. By basic items I would say anything that is maybe only processed once. So ores,metals,basic consumables, gas, ect… not final products like prefabs.
If the MM can take over all the basic items I don’t see why there can’t be a MM for trade routes. Or just rework shipping in general so people can ship more items. I would guess the people producing H would rather be able to ship 50 – 100 units and sell their own gas for 200+ on other planets instead of only getting 90 – 100 by selling to a few players that have the money to buy it up Kotoa.
I tried to keep it short I can expand on any of it if anyone wants to talk about it.
Other than keeping players from being able to inflate or undersell the necessary staples, such as DW and RAT, the MM is there to make sure those are always in supply. Because if they run out, a colony stops functioning. Also when you sell to the MM, would imagine those items -disappear- as equity, instead of another player being able to buy / sell and obtain it.
Making it easy to ship basic items around defeats the purpose of having Prom and other -starter- planets. Sure you can go another route, however the sensible thing is to make sure you are producing or able to purchase a steady supply of basic necessities to keep up with your hubs otherwise why even think to start a second base with scientists and such if barely able to afford the cost of shipping food and water to them?
The MM (market manager or market moderator) is there to ensure -people- don’t screw up the galactic economy by either hording , price gouging or undercutting to the point where it becomes easy to take advantage of other players whom have more reliance ensuring their is a -steady, constant, cost affordable- supply of the bare essentials. EDIT: Reverse is also true to ensure that players can always generate a profit if they accumulate a large surplus.
I’ve only played this game barely a month, began on Prom first go. About to break 100k equity and that with at -least- 10% CoGC contributions per week. There is no reason for anyone on Prom to be having a problem making plenty of revenue, purely on agriculture, other than lack of planning or patience.
So what is the point of a planet then that was made to make food and water? If it is that important to the entire game then I would think that players would make rations. Or maybe like now when nothing else gets delivered to the food planet the people on the food planet could stop selling food until they get the supplies they need. All the other factories on Pom will stop working if they dont have something they need to run so how is that any different?
“MM, would imagine those items -disappear- as equity, instead of another player being able to buy / sell and obtain it.”
Then its not a player run economy when the most basic items that are need for every colony are sold by the MM. If a game economy is truly player run then it should be allowed to crash. The MM could even be dynamic, For every X hours no one sells to the MM it would raise the buy price and the sell price would go up at same time say it would be double the buy price. Then as soon as someone sells to the MM the price would stabilize you could even have the MM lower the buy price if it is the only buyer after X hours. Same as if you are only buying from the MM the sell price should go up.
“Making it easy to ship basic items around defeats the purpose of having Prom and other -starter- planets.”
How would that defeat anything, it sounds like you figured out someway to make money and that is good enough for you just like in chat the people that think its a secret the buy H for cheap and sell it for over double. Yeah they don’t want everyone to take away their money but that’s about it.
How would everyone being able to ship 25 - 50 units of any basic item ruin the game besides that it would level the field and anyone / everyone could ship stuff from the start and trade from the start. I could ship my 40 units of food somewhere and bring back 2 or 3 units of iron of that was what I needed, and if I had the money some extra to sell back on the other planet.
I also said only from main hub planets, So I don’t how that makes them useless. I was thinking more like a container ship in space. You load your items up and they make their way to the other hub that is the only place they can go. You would have no control over it.
You are right, in a truly player driven economy there would be no place for MMs. It sure would be fun to see the DW/RAT crash once in a while, we also have to consider to keep the game interesting manageable for beginners. Imagine a player joining in the middle of such a crash. They would probably leave the game within a day or two. So we use the MMs to create some sort of price stability. Note that there are no MMs for higher tiers’ consumables or luxury consumables.
We had the same idea and might implement such a mechanism in the future.
As much as I agree with molp regarding new players, I even more agree with Gorron regarding the purpose of Prom:
No one in the galaxy really depends on Prom, but as a Manufaturer/Constructor on Prom I depend completely on the delivery of FE, AL, SIO, H,…
At the moment, MM-prices for DW and RAT are not as high as it is impossible to make a profit when buying at MM-prices. On the other hand, MM-prices limit the sell-prices for DW-/RAT-producers, and taking shipping-costs into account, make it not very lucrative to ship (at least for the “standard” player that maybe not has a whole shipload full to sell somewhere).
Some thoughts (partly taken from Gorron):
Make MM-prices for DW and RAT MUCH higher (sell-prices on the other hand much lower…).
(when buying at MM, a base should run but have a much lesser profit closer to zero!)
Limit MM: maybe just for new players (when to set the limit?), or another way:
Limit MM-sells and buys for each player and good…
max. 8 DW/day, 8 RAT/day (enough for 200 Pioneers)
max x BSE/BDE/BBH/BTA per day… (whoever has enough money to buy for new buildings should give it back to the “community”!)
Make trading affordable for small amounts. How about a MM-trader that simulates a trade network? Sell something from Prom on Montem, takes 1,5 days to arrive on the market as a “normal” selling offer, takes a fee of **** (think of something, % of the sell-price, depending on weight/size,…? have a “base fee” and a “success fee”…? no retransport included…? costs should (in my oppinion) be at least 2x as high as “self shipping” a full ship). By this, also new players could afford to sell on other markets.
As a variation of 3.: for the very future of the game, make “shipping contracts” possible…
“I’ve only played this game barely a month, began on Prom first go. About to break 100k equity and that with at -least- 10% CoGC contributions per week. There is no reason for anyone on Prom to be having a problem making plenty of revenue, purely on agriculture, other than lack of planning or patience.”
So what would be a way to make money then, I looked through a lot of the buildings they don’t seem to make that much. Farm is around 840 day rations are about 600 buy from the market, Incinerator is around 700 day buying from the market and
I think DW loses money buying from market., you can run it 8 times a day make 7 for 10 water so gross about 2000 but you need to buy 80 water that would push you up around 30 each so 2400 .
All the buildings above are around 15K each to build, + I need housing so another 15K. First building would be 30K for 840day profit. 30 days to get a return on my money.
So can you tell me what to build then to make money? This is why I talk about being able to ship small lots of items for something to do for the 30 days it would take to get me back to where I started if I build 2 buildings. When I check the cost of fuel it is around 8000 round trip with the current ship.
My account was locked so I could not post this earlier
Well that sounds like you should’ve considered more carefully instead of joining an agricultural planet as a manufacturer…
Again, I’m completely self sufficient. Harvesting my own H20 for DW, growing my own food crops on farms, processing both, -and- making Carbon. So if you’re having to buy basic necessities on a Prom, ya should’ve planned better because it is just fine making profit even if one is purely buying / selling at MM prices. The only things I’ve been buying from the market is OVA and PAD, and a 10 day duration for those barely costs 3-4k altogether.
EDIT: Also, regarding fuel, even before the recent patch that made it -much- easier, still seems to sensible that the only starting players whom would be manufacturers on Katoa / Motem , have a much easier time producing fuel than people on Prom do. Otherwise, players shouldn’t be thinking about shipping anything anywhere until they’ve arranged a way to make buying or refining fuel, cost effective.
EDIT 2: And here is my finances report, just copied, after donating 100 RAT and DW to the new CoGC, and my liquidity total is only in the negative because I purchase materials for another hab and food processor last period. Still +33% overall at the end. Now this period will probably see that be triple of quadruple because I won’t be buying any construction materials.
If i join Prom just to make Agri-Products, life is boring especially when just selling to MM, what is the use in this planet? And who would buy your C if not Manufaturers/Constructors? As a manufactorer/constructor, i can live quite ok, but still: i depend, others do absolutely not… (due to the MM)
Another topic (maybe split it off?):
the assets mean nothing as there is one major flaw (i would not say bug, but it is quite an error):
If i produce prefabs on my own and then consume then (building…), my balance does change negative:
Eg.:
buy 1xC for 300, 2xH for 300 => +900 in Inventory
make 200 PE from it => -900 in Inventory!
make BDE from it => no change…
build my base => no change…
Or in other words my line “Base Sections” looks like this:
Base Sections 66,184 ICA 66,215 ICA 48,437 ICA
Would you guess i built in the last 10 days:
HB2
INC
POL
PP2
WPL
POL and WPL within the last period!
(i tore down my FP, so the value went down a little…)
Before I post anymore comments I just want to say I am not talking about any player specifically. I am just talking about the design in general and subsets of the design and how I see them working if I happen to come close to what someone is doing when I describe something that is just by chance. I design things and when the design is done there is a review on the design as a whole and each individual item in the design.
“ya should’ve planned better because it is just fine making profit “
I don’t know how to get the sheet that you have but my fixed capital lists 35000, and my cash is 49000. What I am talking about is the design concept that there is three starter systems and one of them is for food. I quoted directly from the page when you pick package that is lists that you provide all the basics for all colonies. But when I look at it to me the MM provides all the basics, That is why I wonder what the point of a food planet is then.
To explain this better it seems like every other space game there is you can trade from the start. So that is why I think there should be a way to ship 10 units of items at the start. We start with 2 ships one of them could be able to ship 10 units.
Now I think units instead of weight is better because you need to take into account the volume of finished goods. So base items ore,metals,liquid would be 1 unit of space, gas you can compress so it would take .5 units of space. Prefabs 10 units of space.
Its hard to explain without a picture but I think of prefabs as like wall sections of a base, and using something like a TEU for space. So all rounded off for easy numbers say a TEU inside dimension is 10’ x 10’ x 20.
Now say I want to make a prefab from iron, a wall 1’ wide, 10’tall 20’long 1x10x20. Also lets say iron is 1x1x20 . So you take 2 iron bars for the top and bottom cut 3 bars in half to give you 6 risers. This will give you a 1 x 10 x 20 wall when fastened. And prefab means that it is assembled into a wall unit.
So back to the TEU, iron at 1 x 1 x 20 you could fit 100 in the TEU (10 rows across x 10 high) but the prefab is 1 x 10 x 20 so you would only fit 10 in the same space. So my 10 unit ship would fit 1 prefab. or 10 iron or 20 gas
It can be done any numerous ways but here is an easy way to think of it any planet with the galactic exchange has a special beacon and you can jump direct from beacon to beacon only at exchange planets. You can use a current fuel or add a third fuel. But have it cost 100 each way. Then anyone can ship 10 units each way for 200 round trip.
That’s why there are two other starting planets, each with their own market values, currency, and starting potential to whatever starter type colony a player wishes to pick. And yes, the manufacturers would be buying my carbon, as well as DDT farmers and anyone producing plastics for the many various things that is also require for, which is why it has a bottom MM price only so if you’re making it can still make a profit even if no one is buying however I always make sure to sell anything to players rather than let the MM take it.
And your balance changes negative because the value of the materials you used is greater than the value of the fixed assets (buildings), that is not an error that is economics and unless they implement a property value mechanic, its sensible that the value or return value of something degrade upon use and further over time. You should spend some time actually building up revenue with your materials for a bit before building stuff and having to wait on raw resources to produce.
…the finances tab. FIN. And there are more detailed itemized lists that can be opened from there.
Prosperous Universe is a semi realistic small scale economic colony team simulator, which is not like every other space game otherwise I’d be uninterested as those are just click farming. I like the fact it’s possible to make irrecoverable mistakes because that means players will have to -plan- properly and be patient, which is reassuring as it keeps the game play as intended. Plus the focus is about logistics and economy.
Again, the recent fuel production and ratio changes make it a lot easier to fly around, even if only having the two ships with starter fuel.
How are the dev’s suppose to make a weight to space / fuel cost ratio using dimensions when there are no physical dimensions of any ‘units’ in the game? That’s why they do it by volume / mass with capacities.
But then that would defeat the purpose of starter planets and making it take vast sums of time and resources, like it would realistically, to reach the point of having multiple hubs with space freighter lanes running constantly back and forth between planets and keeping the logistical chain productive. The point is to -not- have an ‘easy’ way…
The value becomes negative the moment I produce prefabs. They have a value of “0” (can be seen in the inventory!). At least buildings should have a “fixed value” (based at least on MM-buy-prices, that would be what I get when selling the prefabs instead).
And as for waiting:
I think I am doing quite well to invest money in raw products, move them up the manufatoring/construction chain, then sell to be able to buy double the raw materials to…repeat and at some point you have the materials for construction but also need to have some left (or money or raw material) to continue…
money on the account is just dead and not working same goes for large piles of raw materials
Long text about shipping
what I just today realized:
FE weights 7.874 t, 1 m³
LST weights 2.73 t, 1 m³
Prefab BBH consists of 2x FE and 1x LST, weight 0.5t, 0.8 m³
So shipping prefabs is much easier to ship than any one of the input products? I think something should change here, as this is one of the other flaws of Prom: it is not very lucrative to ship FE, AL, FEO, ALO,… to Prom, but the constructors can “easily” ship their prefabs there?
I think prefabs need to be much heavier and especially larger!
“So shipping prefabs is much easier to ship than any one of the input products?”
I know isn’t that funny they even take less space than all the inputs, That was my point on shipping units and the prefab example because in the game they are off for shipping. And it is also funny the people that say no the most to anyone being able to ship even 10 units of anything cheaply are the ones shipping prefabs and gas.
Its like when you ship something on a truck what ever you ship has class rating and a NMFC code they use those and the weight to figure out what the charge, Short version class 50 (think FE) is dense clean freight it is the cheapest per pound, the higher the class the lighter per cubic foot and the less durable (Prefab) the more per pound you pay.
“molp: You are right, in a truly player driven economy there would be no place for MMs. It sure would be fun to see the DW/RAT crash once in a while, we also have to consider to keep the game interesting manageable for beginners. Imagine a player joining in the middle of such a crash.”
Yes players normally do drive prices into the ground in most economic games, But wouldn’t it be like it is now on prom when say you have a factory that needs FE or LST and if no one brings any of the item in then your factory is on “strike” I can see the potential for a total crash though with no DW/RAT. That is why I have been wondering about a way to order / ship myself even 10 units of an item. It has nothing to do with making the game easy or taking anything away from people that ship 100’s of units. Because in general terms right now the things the MM takes care of are all the things that seems to me was the reason for Prom in the first place.
Yes, it becomes negative because you have used those materials to construct a prefab, which is less in asset value than the materials used to create it, and becomes even less when building to a fixed asset. This should also tell you that probably means when there does become a surplus, that you say is pointless, then the prices of those raw materials will begin to drop, and with it, so will your assets value when holding them as well as the price of the prefabs depending on where you’re selling.
Having holdings of equity is -never- a pointless thing in -any- economy, whether it be to use when starting another base, as a safety net, or being able to liquidate at an opportune moment, for example if wanting to take advantage of a large currency trade. Which also , to a degree, holding large sums of cash is never pointless either.
And do you have any concept of how raw materials and construction works? First off, raw materials do generally weigh more than what they produce. Raw lumps of unrefined iron ore weighs more than refined iron brick, and when used to make steel, is -much- lighter in alloy form which is what your prefabs are. So your logic is incorrect.
A factory, on prom, only make sense if you, yourself, are mining the raw materials from another planet and shipping them to Prom yourself, or in a secondary alternative scenario if direct trades or able to buy under MM price was implemented somehow for special circumstances like if in the same corporation. Maybe even if simply making enough revenue to afford buying the raw materials. Otherwise, that is inefficient and detrimental.
“Talonos: raw materials do generally weigh more than what they produce. Raw lumps of unrefined iron ore weighs more than refined iron brick, and when used to make steel, is -much- lighter in alloy form which is what your prefabs are. So your logic is incorrect.”
I don’t think you even read what we post half the time but that’s ok, maybe we just don’t explain it correctly we are not talking about smelting iron ore into iron. The bulkhead are made from Iron the final product its all abstracted in the game to keep it simple there not any of all the steel alloys or alum alloys just steel and alum, and then none of the 100’s of shapes each are formed into. Again just Iron, Steel, Alum. My guess is the iron represents structural steel shapes like channels and beams and the LST is like drywall.
Here is the description from the game of a bulkhead
“Basic Bulkhead
Divide ships and buildings into several rooms, increase their structural rigidity and seal off fires or breached sections in case of an accident.”
So like I said before its walls, you would not order 15T of iron and make something that weighs .5 tons. Yeah it could weight marginally less maybe 10% - 25% less for just weight. But it would take more space. Again it is pre fabricated walls, so imagine going to the lumber yard buying 6 or 8 2x4’s the would stack up to about 12” tall. But you could assembly them into a wall 10’ tall, it would be marginally lighter but it would take more space.
I did read what was said, perhaps you should be saying the chemical formula’s are improper if anything as well as being fully familiar with the simple interface functions before questioning mechanics. And you seem to have an understanding of how freight shipping works so should also know that 15T of iron chunks takes up the same amount of -space- as the only 2.5T worth of well stacked walls does, because iron ore has 6x more mass than those walls do plus it fills more of the same space equally. Just like how one train car full of iron chunks weighs more than an entire built house being transported on the back of an extra long.
So like I said, it makes sense how the mechanics are from as close to realism as a simulator in alpha can merit.
“talonos: I did read what was said, perhaps you should be saying the chemical formula’s are improper if anything as well as being fully familiar with the simple interface functions before questioning mechanics. …… “
Go look in the game at BBH, they weight .5 tons the volume is .8. but to build them you need 15 tons of just iron and just the iron has volume of 2 and it uses almost 3T of Lst and another 1M of space. So something that uses 18 Tons of product would not weigh only .5 tons 15-17 tons would be more reasonable and it should take more space.
especially when just selling to MM, what is the use in this planet? And who would buy your C if not Manufaturers/Constructors? As a manufactorer/constructor, i can live quite ok, but still: i depend, others do absolutely not… (due to the MM)
same goes for large piles of raw materials