I will preface this by saying that I will be speaking largely about the Castillo-Ito region.
It’s been a long time since I started playing myself, so I barely remember what the whole experience is like anymore. But one thing that continues to be abundantly clear is that the game is pushing all of the new players who want to get into fuel refining to start on Katoa. While this in and of itself is not an issue, I would argue that this comes at the cost of players wanting to start in manufacturing forgoing Katoa in favor of say Phobos. Phobos meanwhile is an electronics COGC.
I would argue that manufacturing on Katoa is one of the single strongest starts. The faction bonus provides at least a 10% (multiplicative) bonus, which in addition to the COGC all but guarantees a sturdy foundation to grow from for any new player. Yet I do not remember there being anything during planet selection that reflected this reality.
I have a feeling that the interface for new players has simply become outdated and is no longer applicable like it was. The universe has changed, factions have changed, and the citizens of each faction have grown in unique directions.
I propose looking at the planet selection process for new players and overhauling it to reflect today’s universe.
COGC should be displayed (eg: “25% Bonus to Manufacturing Buildings” somewhere next to Katoa)
SF refining on Katoa has historically been very unpredictable in terms of profitability. Until some local players stepped in to stabilize prices for SF inputs and started exporting the SF to other CXs to keep the price on BEN from crashing, a lot of new players just quit all together and restarted in another region. Furthermore, fuel refineries require settlers. The lack of a COGC bonus alone is a large enough hit to productivity to make profitability precarious, but then a further hit to efficiency from not having settlers at first makes SF refining a mediocre start at best on Katoa. Fuel refining simply isn’t a beginner friendly profession. But if we want to keep it, I would recommend customizing a planet specifically for fuel refining somewhere in the universe that actually gives new fuel refiners better odds at not going bankrupt after 2 weeks.
Katoa should in my humble opinion be emphasized as a uniquely good manufacturing planet during planet selection, in the same way Deimos should be emphasized as a uniquely powerful metallurgy planet. Phobos should not in my opinion be a starter planet, and Hephaestus should take its place.
The community has evolved along with the universe. I think it would be truly awesome if snippets of the PrUn community were reflected in the description for each planet and region. Antares is home to the Antares Development Initiative. Moria has its own biological market maker (lowstrife). Benten has the Benten Economic Union. KW-688 was renamed “New Antares”, kicking off a feud between Benten and Antares that to this day is spoken of. These are parts of the universe I would love to see become canonized in how planets and regions are described to new players when they first create an account.
At the very least, Katoa needs a redo. It is only a fuel refining planet with a manufacturing COGC because the game has pushed all new fuel refiners to start on Katoa. I don’t really know what the right answer is here in terms of solutions. Perhaps the community will chime in with their own ideas.
This has come up in the Antares Development Initiative several times. As the centralized stewards of newbies in Antares, we are often dealing with the Phobos problem.
SilentReaper is spot on with our recommendation that Heph be added as the manufacturing starter planet instead. We also note that Antares has one fewer starter planet than other regions- when the players start the game, they don’t really have much context about the choices they make, so they are essentially choosing a planet at random… so the count does matter.
I think showing the COGC during the new player experience would be good- although I note that players tend not to understand that for quite a while.
Fuel Refining is particularly tough. The person who got me started on Prosperous Universe (many years ago) began as a fuel refiner. He played diligently (and totally solo) for about 9 months but never got his starter base half full. He did a mix of FF and SF. I just went to look at the profits for full expert bases and matching COGCs, and it’s still pretty rough:
Fuel refining is such a niche industry- an industry and COGC with only a single building. Not matching the starter planet, just a few recipes and extraction products that come from experienced players with large numbers of ships on distant high-extraction rate planets that new players can’t compete with.
KW-688 was renamed “New Antares”, kicking off a feud between Benten and Antares that to this day is spoken of.
I always considered both Malahat and Etherwind to be part of Antares But there’s a lot of fun lore like that, I agree!
@archiel I think the nuclear option there is necessary. Fuel refining honestly should just be Chemistry COGC. That’s how you actually solve that problem.
As for the rest:
I fully support refinements to the new player experience like this being a development focus. This is by far the most important thing, as player retention is important!
This ties in with the plot system as well. I’ve said it before and I’ll say on the soap box again - planets being “full” is a limitation on endgame players at the expense of hurting nobody except new players by no fault of their own.
I’ll say that again - the plot system does nothing but hurt new players. Adding economic incentives or other management systems instead of a hard cap is necessary.
Fully agree with updating the new player experience, especially to highlight the COGC bonus of each planet as that is very important. Archiel, if it was highlighted from the start then new players would quickly understand. I think it is not as well-known as a new player precisely because the game does not tell the player this.
Fuel refining should 100% be absorbed into chemical COGC and also not be a starting profession choice. As Archiel pointed out, it likely has driven numerous players away from the game due to it being low profit and logistically challenging while being hindered by a capped profit potential. It also provides no advancement up a tier tree to higher level production. The other professions have pathways towards more expensive, but usually higher profit items for the player to work towards. If not that, at least the player can make a multitude of different recipes to react to changing market prices. Fuel refining has none of that.
Rolling fuel production into chemistry is a great idea. There are a ton of great options in chemistry for new players and it gives them a lot more variety. We could add Griffonstone as a starter planet in ANT. I like this a lot.
Maybe molp or martin have player retention numbers based on starting profession? I feel like this would genuinely improve the new player experience and player retention.
I would love to see the player retention and COLIQ numbers broken down by profession. My gut says fuel refining is driving the most players away by percentage.
I started as a fuel refiner on Katoa three weeks ago and on my 3rd day I COLIQed on the same planet as a manufacturer after reading the guide on Discord.
Faction selection as the first step only unnecessarily narrows down the possible starting planets to choose from.
Profession selection step suggested that manufacturing is slightly more difficult than other roles.
I didn’t know what a COGC was before reading discord and using prunplanner.
Sorry for taking so long to actually see and read this.
I wasn’t aware ANT had 1 fewer starter planets. A very much “out there” idea perhaps would be creating a tier 1 electronics building that can only produce TRN and SWF, and at slightly worse ratio than a CLR can (like the PG recipe for DW - slower but more resource efficient). TRN and SWF are both used in basic manufacturing processes which these players could grow into in parallel if they wanted to. While not a perfect solution, it could give Phobos an excuse to remain a starter planet while giving new players access to the electronics COGC without changing the broader nature of the supply chain. All that while making Heph the region’s manufacturing start and giving Antares an equal number of starter planets.
And as for Etherwind and Malahat. They are as much a part of Antares as Phobos is a manufacturing planet. That is to say not at all.
In my humble opinion, fuel refining should not be a starting profession at all in its current form. It either needs a significant rework, or should be left to older players who understand the tradeoffs and can setup on fuel refining cogc planets. It requires so much shipping that new players can’t realistically supply a single full refinery base with their starter ships (they need to commit both ships to the single base full-time!)
But there’s a lot of fun lore like that, I agree!