Simple changes to improve the game

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1

Some relatively simple changes to the game that I think would improve it a great deal. For these I tried to pick things that would have relatively little effect on the current universe and would be quite easy to implement.

  • Remove beans only protein paste recipe, algae is required to make it. This is a huge beginner trap and victuallers would have a lot better starting experience if they couldn’t make a totally useless item.
  • Change the default delivery time on buy/sell local market contracts to 1 day. With 3 days being the default, players have no idea if the person posting was lazy when they posted the ad or if they actually mean to deliver after 3 days. Making the 3 day timer meaningless.
  • Do something about the current demand on the new player start screen. Way too many players are starting as metallurgists, victuallers, and carbon farmers. These jobs are way oversaturated in the current universe.
  • Add additional STL fuel recipes that are not dependent on rare resources like GAL and AMM. The universe is over 100 days old now and still the only place producing GAL and AMM is Benten. There should be other options so that there’s less dependence on the mm for fuel. Here’s a couple ideas.
    ** A very weak O and H recipe that is only used when currency has depreciated heavily or if the mm buy price of SF is raised (to ~20).
    *** REF: 4H + 2O >12 hours> 100 SF
    ** An improved O+H recipe that also uses hydrocarbon plants refined at the chemistry plant into methanol. Still not as good as GAL+AMM, but gives an option for places without access to either that’s good enough to get off the market maker for SF.
    *** CHP: 6 HCP >9.6 hours> 3 methanol (new resource)
    *** REF: 1 methanol + 2 O + 2 H >6.8 hours> 100 SF
  • Raise drinking water market maker buy price to 100+. The only real reason that DW has a much lower price right now than RAT in Moria and Hortus is because RAT is harder to overproduce. Benten and Antares they’re almost the same. In terms of raw production costs, the two cost nearly the same to make on Promitor. Though on most other fertile worlds it’s much much more expensive to make DW. It would make a lot more sense for the DW market maker price to be either the same or more than the RAT mm price, but the current gap is especially silly and gives little economic reason to produce DW when the market is inflated in the majority of systems.
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  • I don’t think we need to remove PPA. Simply add a very low MM buy for people to get rid of their mistake. But let people make mistakes and learn from them
  • 3 days as a default is fine. It actually gives you the opportunity to accept it and still slow burn from another planet to fill it. If someone wants a quicker delivery he should adjust the timer.
  • Do you have an idea how to improve the current demand info? Do you just want to remove it? It is quite hard to have a proper recommendation which is not immediately made obsolete by new players flooding that specific market.
  • I don’t see the need to adjust SF prices. Supply is finally starting to appear on BEN and will be distributed to the other CXs no problem. I am more worried about FF and the distinct lack of TS this universe. I would propose to make sure there is TS available on some starter planet. Though I agree, that the Refiner start is one of the weakest and could really use some love in the options they have available.
  • You want a higher DW MM price because DW is easier to overproduce? I don’t quite see the point in your argument here. DW on a decent H2O planet simply IS cheaper to produce than RAT.
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PPA being a newb trap is probably the cheapest way to understand to look at the use of the item before doing it. I would be against removing it atm, but maybe give it more uses mid-game instead

3 days is fine IMHO, 1 day you cannot get from an exchange to another + ppl have real life. If anything, make the default something you can set

Start screen… yea… imho even have access to market/chats before choosing your faction/starter would be top notch

New STL recipe would basicly remove the only use out of katoa. AMM and GAL arent hard or rare, they are just in very high demand and low supply, kinda like H a month ago, or BSE for the first 2 months of the game. AMM GG are being settled this week so price should be going down in any case. I would advocate for more REF recipes, but more late-game ones instead of early-game ones.

MM sells dont matter past 2 months so dont really care about that… but they were made to make early game playable no matter what. In that same idea, bfabs MM probably shoudnt exist, and FF MM is way too low compared to production price, but its not realistic for gameplay to make those higher

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To clarify, I’m not suggesting removing protein paste. I’m merely suggesting removing the beans only version of the recipe, so players require algae to make it.