Recommendation for Drone MM Buys

1

As many know, I’m not a big fan of the MM buys. But they inject currency into the market. We’ve now entered an era that everyone is going to remember. Deflation has pushed prices down in many regions. People are feeling it. HE, S, MG, and RAT sold directly to the market maker is becoming more profitable than selling to other players. This results in very poor gameplay experiences. In the previous universe, we endured this era for many months until electronics producers came into play, injecting new money.

The electronics MMs have been nerfed, and I have looked at them and deemed them completely unworthy of our attention. It would be more profitable to settle Prism and setup COLs and just mindlessly dump resources into the CX.

As I’ve said before, nerfing MM buys does nothing but move the bar to the next product, so I won’t propose that.

Instead I’ll propose adding a new MM buy that doesn’t exist, that is incentivizing us to tech up. Drones are a great product that encapsulates a lot of industries. They require electronics, high end materials, and subsequently will, if produced, create huge demand in all aspects of the universe - from SF and FF, from PE to PG, from Bfab to Rfab, and from FE to SI, TI, AU, and CU.

I created a spreadsheet to help me calculate the growth rate of various products given a matrix of prices. This let me equalize all growth rates across all products and see their theoretical equilibrium price. I locked RAT at 51, which I believe is going to be the biggest currency generator in the universe. Then, given an equal growth rate, I found that Drones would be valued as follows:

CCD	49708.99
RED	43820.86
SDR	61147.62
SRD	49022.54
SUD	68854.80

Now these prices as MM buys would let us create currency by selling a much later tier of products. But those prices are low because we should not be rewarding complex drone production (extremely long chains, high tier products, and capital intensive requirements) with the same growth rate as say… putting down a collector on prism. Instead, I believe we should take these theoretical drone values and double them - this will create a huge amount of incentive for players to tech up.

Suggested MM buys to add:

CCD	100000
RED	88000
SDR	122000
SRD	98000
SUD	137000

Full disclosure, I am an extreme case of conflict of interest here. I stand to make a lot of profit should these MMs be added. But I still think they are the most ideal solution to the current problem that will grow over the next few weeks.

The original idea came from Carepanda, and I only take credit on suggesting a price.

Cheers,

Rain
(P.S. we can probably remove the SP ask as well)

3 Likes
2

Please remove the MG and S MM as well.

It should be like CLI and I. Only CLI has a MM but its refined product I does not.
This is unfair and a left over from last universe were MG and S were Minerals and directly extracted.

They need to be adjusted.

3

Going to disagree here, I think the MG and S MM, while not used often, provide an important safety net for newer players in manufacturing and smelting (and yes, larger companies may benefit from the safety net too). Newer players are often playing with less than a week’s worth of inputs and consumables, and have very little ability to move to another planet or switch industries without COLIQing, meaning any downturn where they are unable to sell their goods can be disasterous. These MMs give them a different option to stay afloat, and are low enough that under normal market conditions their use is sub-optimal and they will naturally remain unused.

(Disclaimer: I am a part of the industries mentioned above)

4

I disagree, isn’t this Drone MM just replacing the Electronics MM that was just nerfed?

(Disclaimer: I am bias because I am Prism for the HE, leave my planet out of this ;p )

5

Then what about turning CLI into I?
Its also done on the BMP.
What about players in that field?

CLI / I is the same as SCR / S and MGS / MG - so they should have the same rules when it comes to the MM, applied to them.

6

the electronics MM got nerfed since it was nowhere near balanced (kofkof at 30m/week last uni)

It was also the only reason to get anything past a LAB, and ships are still too “exclusive” to be a reason to go past settlers/small amt of techs

These numbers look fairly balanced, especially when drone chains requires multiple planets and hauling (I did it last uni and it sucked) + tons of upfront cost, all of that, for 2x just brainlessly spamming T1 building

This also means at least a few ppl will want to get into drones for POPI, with a failsafe net. Without it, no one in their right mind will do it, especially for the cheap prices proposed there.

7

We definitely need new sources of currency, but I don’t know that I really want to see more extensive use of MMs for higher tier products.

I would like to (again) advocate for populous to buy upkeep from the governor or governing corporation. This would greatly incentivize the governing corporation to build infrastructure as an investment, source upkeep materials from other players, inject currency into the economy while removing a large variety of products from circulation. Ultimately this would make being governor a much more rewarding and interactive experience, and encourage players to develop planets and setup supply chains.

The current donation system is really not fun, and there seems to be very little incentive to build population infrastructure at all right now.

8

It was previously suggested that POPI donations act as a sort of MM…

9

I really like this idea. We need a form of money tap that encourages teching up. Right now there is very little need for T3+ except to make T1 items more efficiently (Gas giants settling for example). This would be the perfect spur to getting the economy running and people to tech up and building more advanced items.

1 Like
10

What we really need is for a demand curve to exist for all products. Right now there simply isn’t enough space for individual actors to carve out a niche for themselves.

Population demands should be a thing and the price people are willing to pay should continue to rise until the demand is met, at which point the curve begins to retract… AKA basic macroeconomic principles.

I’m not sure if putting the MM top-out with Drones is the right move (does it produce sufficient demand curves down the vertical?), but it is interesting.

11

The reason I like Drones is because it requires technician electronics and rare resources. The MMs will make something the most profitable due to deflationary forces. I’d rather the most optimal be a complex product like a drone than HE. Otherwise the player base ends up doing what it’s doing now, using my base planner tool to scope out a new base on Prism full of COLs.

HE, HE, HE.

Not funny tbh.

1 Like
12

Why stop there? Why not top out at outputs that require Scientists?

Is your proposal only until we start having a dense field of technicians and then we move the bar upwards towards Eng / Sci?

13

Yes, my proposal would be to have a higher bar at the scientist level that would be more appealing than drone MM buys. This would further incentivize teching up (but also do it in steps). There are already MM buys for NV1, NV2, and other high end scientist electronics so it’d be a matter of upping them to be appealing enough for players to want to go that high.

Ultimately I’d prefer to not have a deflationary economy that requires MM buys, but that is another topic.

14

we already have MM from scientist products tho…

15

@Madnewmy I did not run the numbers but the current SCI MM buys are certainly not a great incentive to make people throw down a complex chain over multiple planets, if there is the alternative of throwing down 2-3 T1 MM Farms.

I would also like to suggest that there are Tech and Sci items with MM-Buys that are otherwise unused for shipbuilding, as that contributed to higher Ship prices at the end of last universe.

On the matter of injecting money into the game economy: It would be great to have it tied to something rewarding like providing some use in POPI or something otherwiseuseful other than just have commodities just vanis to the MM. For that matter I like @Visinvictus idea of turning the unpopular and frankly unrewarding POPI donation mechanic around into a rewarding and necessary mechanic. Providing a cash injection into the economy and also creating an interesting dynamic around governance.

16

I did. At 300k, the NV2 and all products that go into it would have an equal growth rate to that of a PP1 making BSE at 1050 each.

That does not account for POPI to get to scientists, inefficiencies of running buildings without proper consumables/workforce prior to attaining such consumables/workforce (looking at you DA), input buffer costs, inefficiencies due to recipes overproducing materials (need only 1, it produces 32, so 31 are just waste), inability to run buildings full time due to recipe ratios not all being 1:1, logistics/complexity of shipping, etc, etc, etc. It’s really nowhere near as easy as just setting up an EXT, SME, and PP1 combo on Montem and shipping your goods out every 10 days or so.

If NV2 was 600k, I’d probably consider going for them right now. However, if these drone MM buys were in place, I’d probably skip the NV2 and focus on the drones. So I’d vote for 800k-1m for the NV2.

IIRC the NV2 was nerfed from 6 million each down to 150k each. Was there a step in between there? I don’t recall. NV1 is basically the same as an NV2. If the NV2 is 1mil, the NV1 ought to be about 800-900k. There is very little difference in production.

I don’t understand why MM buys for NV1/NV2 contributed to higher ship prices. Aren’t ships made out of materials, not currency? Is it because players wouldn’t sell the NV2 to another player for anything less than 6mil, so it made the ships cost an extra 5 million? But that doesn’t seem to make any sense because in theory the extra cash from MM sales would juice up the market and players who sold NV2 would then buy all sorts of stuff from other players… Maybe the other players weren’t producing anything useful because they were all stuck in T1 land making DW, RAT, and BSE still? Is it possible that maybe the problem was that ships are completely uneconomical from a material and work standpoint? If ships were supposed to be cheaper, wouldn’t EVERYONE have gotten into the NV2 market last universe?

:thinking:

Anyway, I ran some #s on sci stuff and thought i’d share.

17

You know, and I know, that people don’t act logically at all times.

Growing into T2 sales is tough when there’s not a guaranteed consumer of the product. People avoid challenge and seek stable “easy” growth… Plus, if enough people sell into the MM it balances out the deflationary economy a little.

Your sarcasm is noted. Ships are not balanced. Not even close.

What might be done to encourage movement from T1 production to T2 production? I have been thinking about the issues with the game and I believe you’re right… we need Technician goods MMs; however, I also think we need MMs at each level of the tech tree.

Since you have the “big sheet,” what payoff ratios currently exist to incentivize people to migrate out of T1 production and towards a “Settler Goods” MM to act as a stepping stone towards Tech / Eng / Sci?

18

This.
From my experience when someone out of corp was asked how much for a NV1/2 they said “Not under MM, because why should I throw money away?”
In the end NV1/2 was produced incorp and sold for just material cost + consumables which came down to like 300k or so. I don’t remember clearly.