Packages in their current state are a dead end

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Many have spoken of the economic toll of taking the role of packaging, but it hasn’t been discussed how the packages themselves don’t actually benefit you logistically. I would even argue it is worse overall to attempt to integrate these into your logistics, whether by producing or buying.

The Polymer used to create the package specifically, makes the overall process less efficient in both volume and weight compared to the raw resources for storage and transportation. You take up MORE room by packaging things, which is the exact opposite of the main benefits why things are packaged in real businesses. Anyone wanting to transport a wide variety of materials in bulk would be better off doing so by allocating all of the volume and weight to hold more items that can be sold, rather than losing some of it from having to account for the PE/packaging of the final product that will eventually become those raw resources again once they are needed.

Even if the packages were identical weight and volume in storage/transport compared to the raw materials, they still require the producer to have access to all the same materials anyway. This will most often mean those in the best position to produce these will already be close to producers for all of the relevant resources, or a commodity exchange. That means more often than not the cost in fuel for whoever they are selling to would be less than the cost providing this service would ask, especially if the packaging corporation (rightfully) takes into account the fuel cost that might be required for transporting their inputs and outputs.

Worst of all is the combined detrimental requirements to produce these packages. Unlike most bases, having an upgraded base and multiple storage buildings would be a necessity. The amount of storage space the inputs would require, regardless of which package you are producing, is greater than what a normal base can accommodate. A normal base already will struggle to hold enough consumables for larger groups of a work force to maintain itself, your base would be required to hold enough of the inputs to provide for multiple other bases each day WHILE ALSO storing the outgoing result of equally as bulky products to keep up with any real demand. The only alternative with less than 5 hours to produce each package, is treating that as the time you have to replace and refill your base storage with the required consumables to produce with again.
Neither of those options are realistic or feasible in terms of economics or logistics.

The more you dedicate infrastructure to this, the worse it becomes. Maintaining your business around packaging and nothing else would still mean it remains less efficient, less cheap, and less useful than simply getting the raw consumables directly for all parties involved and dedicating all of that space and manpower towards something tangible and profitable.

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The easy way to fix this is just to penalize not using the new pac commodities.

What if there were a satisfaction penalty for not consuming supplies from a package. Like RATs consumed directly as RATs would only give 75% of the satisfaction bonus instead of 100% if they come from the pac.

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Sorry for the long post, but I felt it necessary to get across how fundamentally this approach fails compared to already available methods.

I technically could do deeper in the nitty gritty details of how the space required for storage of your input would need to be weighed against the buildings you actually use to package and profit. However I felt the post was already longer than I would like.

My point in this post is to show how there needs to be an entirely different approach if anything like this is to be successfully implemented.

As for solutions? I came up with three interconnected “additions” that would cleanly tie up this system without having to actively remove or alter Packages.

Because increasing the time and resources to each production building doesn’t actually benefit you in efficiency or cost effectiveness, there will naturally be a greater need for those who produce more “basic” items. This means that larger quantities of the most needed products cannot be gained by buying directly, as each business has a relatively small and static output compared to demand.

Bulk products provide a solution to that. Instead of multiple consumables in a single product, it’s multiple of the same product brought together at a greater scale and efficiency. For example: a “bulk Drinking Water” would require something like 300 drinking water, yet only take the up 60% of the volume (you can change the numbers as needed, this is just an example) each. Much like packages, requiring an item and only having the bulk variant will “unpack” one of them into their normal equivalent and use as many necessary and available before placing what remains in storage or repeating the process if more is required (if the entire bulk is used, they are treated as still having been unpacked if you cancel the order). Having a bulk item “unpack” and cause a higher volume than your storage allows will cause a reduction in condition (meaning the storage can now reduce in condition, every 10% less than 100% condition temporarily decreasing the base storage by 15 and moving excess items to any other storage on the planet if possible) and workforce or overall base efficiency equal to the percentage excess volume taken up. That way there are consequences to not properly maintaining storage discipline without outright deleting excess items.

How you would get Bulk products is the second mechanic: Planetary Drone Bays

Much like how a planet will let you store some items in a warehouse for a fee, you can rent a ‘drone’ (which will be a new item to produce that the planet will have to buy to fill each drone bay as upkeep) that once per day will “bulk” all the items you assign to it in any of your inventories. A nice way for more established planets to profit from the larger businesses on them.

Having these two systems would make volume even less of a problem. Why does this matter? Because with the addition of Bulk Products, the value of Packages can focus on the ease of use on the scale of individual bases rather than trying to have them make more efficient use of storage. At the point you are buying packages? Storage of worker upkeep is more efficient on a 10 day basis, because you just need that amount of space dedicated to the workers needs and production for that period. Trying to receive consumables in bulk would take up too much volume between the different items.

Weight is another limiting factor in transportation, which makes it odd that we have been given a way to reduce our volume use with no equivalent to weight. I don’t think this is bad, but I do think it limits the value of reduced volume when you can’t benefit from it due to your weight being much more constrained.

Realistically, the answer is right in front of us: advanced storage.

Many alloys are used for very little except ship building. Having these alloys be used for new and expensive storage variants that take up a slightly larger area, but in exchange having far greater weight capacity, would be a great way to make them useful to the average base owner. This increased utility and value making alloys more profitable and accessible than they used to be.
(I think having the volume increase less than the weight, but still increasing somewhat, would be a great way to let players feel and see their progress as they grow their business while also making storage more dynamic)

Do not get me wrong, these changes I am suggesting I don’t expect to be easy to implement. However, I feel they would allow players to interact with packages as close to how they were intended while opening up new opportunities at the same time.

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I am against that simply because doing that will penalize smaller and less established players who are less likely to have the income necessary to acquire these consistently. What you are describing functionally makes consumable production just an intermediary for actual worker upkeep, because satisfaction affects your overall production efficiency on a base. It will artificially tank the value of those products for no longer being as useful as just grabbing the package to accomplish the same thing they used to do. Reducing the value of the consumables means there must also be a reduction in value to the items that make them to maintain profit, as well the items that are used to produce those inputs. It would have a domino effect pressuring and restricting consumable trade.

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There has been much discussion and lots of arguments made as to why these packages won’t work. The short answer is - we’re about to find out. The dev’s rolled this out pretty quickly after it was originally suggested so obviously it was much easier to implement than other methods of packaging goods (I suggested making it a new feature of warehouses).

The intent was to:

  1. provide another industry that newer players could get into
  2. provide something to reduce the tedium and large amount of time wasted by older players when restocking their many bases.

Even though there will be waste in terms of cost the devs feel that players will accept that in exchange for reducing tedium and wasted real time. (There is no longer a space penalty as the devs have adjusted it to give the bundle a lower weight/volume than what the contained items would have).
If it works out that way then great. If not, then it will be just another unused game element that forever sits there reminding us of what could have been.

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Without benefits = no utility

I was curious about new commodity. There is about 1% less weight, and 9% less space used.

Once, liquidity, and price improves…it may be interesting

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Well, a few people have started producing packages and listing them on the market. Unfortunately, the initial price bands that the devs set are way too low so, having a Basic license, I can’t buy TBU, EBU or CBU.

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These will not offset the very obvious cost requirements. Opportunity cost of the building, and the plastics that are needed. You raise the cost of your goods by a noticeable amount. And the throughput of the building is quite bad, I would need several bases dedicated to supplying my empire. The building itself consumes 7% of its output if it were to feed itself.

The concept solves a very real problem, it sucks to load 20 different consumables for a base with 3 different workforces. But as new and old players, not many people are probably gonna pay the economic tax to use it. Certainly not when it’s probably going to add 20% to your workforce upkeep.

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How about introducing unpackaged goods to start degrading/spoiling? This would simulate real life curcomstances and provide a valuable incentive to buy pacaged for established players.
Degradation could be a percentage of the stock per week with different rates per MAT.
This would also decentivise hording, unless pacaged.
Newer players would not suffer as much due to the small stocks and quick turnarounds. One could also introduce a X month grace period for new players.

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That’s an interesting idea BooKliko. I’m afraid it would be a bit more difficult for devs to implement and it would add too much complexity to gameplay.

Lowstrife, I agree with you there are factors that may make these too expensive to be worthwhile. However, I’m willing to pay a certain amount of overhead in order to reduce the real-world time I spend clicking and dragging.

When discussing production costs are we talking about the cost to produce the inputs for the bundles or their retail cost? For example, it would cost about 16000 to buy the consumables that go into a PBU at the CX. PBU’s are currently being sold for 17200. I’m fine with paying that markup.

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Actually, I want to wrap back around on the warehouses idea. Rather, giving bases specifically more options for “heavier” storage would make a massive difference if implemented right. They could be the same size as the normal storage facilities, but would require more advanced materials AND reduce the volume they can hold based on how much weight is increased (hopefully by a lot, weight is BY FAR a more limiting factor right now). This would produce and bolster EVEN MORE industries for the demand of greater weight carrying, while also letting packages have a use. Bulk selling and storage is made possible, yet because it is more costly to an individual business than just renting a warehouse let’s them remain useful for a planet to construct to extract taxes from.