+1! I have this file called “Feature requests.txt” on my PC (don’t tell the coders 
), and a “notes” command is pretty much at the top.
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I sense a conspiracy…
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could you make the left sidebar customizable? there are certain buffers I open frequently, but do not want to have open permanently in a screen as they would take up too much space. I, of course, can open a new buffer and type the code to get there, however, if I could simply add new “links” to the left sidebar, I could easily open and then close a buffer after checking it.
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Thanks for the suggestions! I personally like both of them and would like to see them implemented. But since both are rather cosmetic there is a ton of other stuff with higher priority. We are going to discuss how to keep track of your suggestions at tomorrow’s team meeting!
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Two suggestions:
1st of all yes I know these are very big changes and they are more of a for Beta implementation (or a wish list) rather then Alpha.
Contract Trading
People have already suggested private trading, but contract trading is more complex.
By this I mean you can make an extended contract with someone for them to produce or buy a set quantity of your production at a set price for a given time. For example I make steel and someone wants my steel. So we setup a contract where for one week they buy 10 steel every day at 300. Now then if the market increases or decreases they still buy steel for that price. If they for some reason fail to buy the steel or I fail to produce the steel then the party at fault will get a penalty(ie they pay the other party a set sum) and the contract will be ended early. Now this system reflects the real world where companies make plans like this all the time. Why? Because it makes it easier to determine future supply or demand and make better investment decisions.
Ideally such a system would be very customisable. For example it could just be a market exclusively contract whereby they don’t have to buy any of your goods they just have to buy from you if they want that good.
Compete on Quality not just price
Currently the only way to compete is via lowest price. If someone undercuts you then there isn’t a lot you can do, but drop your pricing. However products could be set a quality rating (ie 1-1000). The quality of a product could then affect other stats. For example a mine built with better quality materials should be more efficient(or produce better quality ores). A house that’s built with better quality products might for example let you house more people or drop the maintenance for those people, or boost those peoples productivity).
The quality of a product could be determined by the quality of inputs(Different planets could have higher quality ores, thus encouraging people to build bases elsewhere), the skill of the workforce, RNG, etc.
This I think is a bit more controversial, but you also don’t have to tell other players the quality of the object before they buy. That way trust becomes an important mechanic. This can then let players build a brand for themselves as someone who always delivers high quality material, or as someone who isn’t trustworthy.
Furthermore such a system could encourage branding(This could be easily done by letting players name their sales contracts) and then you could look at having a marketing mechanic as well… (My biggest concern would be for people who set buy orders, but the simple solution is to then let people send offers to the buyer and they then choose the best deal).
I personally think these two systems alone would really improve the realism of the business simulation. Anyway what are your guys thoughts? Do you out right hate it, see it functioning in a different way?
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Thanks a lot for your suggestions! We’ve actually discussed similar ideas internally in the past and here’s what we’ve come up with so far.
Contract Trading
This falls into a larger category of features we’re a little bit on edge about because they clash with one of the core ideas behind Prosperous Universe, which is that players have to manually take care of their companies rather than setting up pipelines and schedules once and then never thinking about them again. As a result, every feature allowing for automation (like in Space Engineers, Factorio etc.) somewhat goes against the game’s core design. However, we expect the manual workload to become fairly big once a company has grown to a certain point. That’s why we’ve come up with the idea of tying different kinds of automation to different specialized buildings - which will be rather expensive, to account for the fact that they only become relevant when a company has gotten fairly big. To get back to your specific example, contract trading could be tied to a structure like a “market place building” rather than becoming a feature that is instantly accessible to everyone.
Edit: I should add that contracts between players are definitely a planned feature, a quite important one even, without which the game won’t go into Early Access. However, automated, self-renewing contracts (that might even make the purchases for you) will only be accessible via specialized builings, if at all.
Quality levels
Having quality levels ranging from 1 to 1000 for each commodity would probably split the market beyond repair because, in my opninion, the quality level would have to be indicated. You can’t privately contact every person selling goods to inquire about their quality level and then hope they’re telling you the truth. That said, we’re thinking about introducing two or three quality levels for certain commodities. To produce certain outputs with a Production Line, you would need a high-quality input product. An important detail: You can create high-quality versions of a commodity from low-quality versions of it. For instance, there could be “regular leather” and “super leather”. Producing some commodities requires you to input super leather, which in turn can be created directly from producing it, but also by combining 100 regular leather into 1 super leather. This way, low-level resources produced by new players would still be needed by everyone, even high-level companies that only use them for combining them into high-level resources. Plus, there would be more room for progression around a singular product; from producing regular leather to refining it into super leather to directly producing super leather.
That said, as you pointed out, it’s unclear at which point these mechanics will be implemented. Both are planned in some form, though. 
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I really like the idea of goods having different qualities. Especially if the Engineers, Technicians and Scientists required medium and high quality goods, or goods produced from them, for their upkeep or facilities.
Something like this could be combined with the expert system by requiring 5 experts in a field to produce high quality goods and 1 expert for medium quality (or something like that). This could also help encourage players to keep their business specialized if they want to get into the more profitable higher tier markets by having to stick to one or two fields to produce the experts required, but still allow them to set up a more diverse self sustaining operation if they want though it will limit their available market tiers.
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I imagine improved/advanced food can even work as an efficiency buff or the other way round, feeding them only basic food results in a penalty.
I also see some sort of cap to self-sufficiency with different quality tiers. You can do all the basic stuff easily by yourself, but you have to specialize, if you want to get to the higher tiers.
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@Mjeno
Contact Trading
I’m glad you guys have had similar thoughts with the contract trading idea. I also agree it shouldn’t automatically refresh. I just think players should be able to make deals on a larger time frame, for example a week, rather then just on a day to day basis. This encourages people to think in advance rather then just focus on the here and now.
Quality levels
You’re right, but that doesn’t mean the underlying implementation of what I suggested changes. I really think the quality of a product needs to be determined by several different factors, such as the base quality of planet, the quality of the workforce, rather then just one overall factor. This will add a lot more to the decision making process of the player. Partly because it links quite nicely with your other roadmap features. For example if different planets can boost the quality of some industries, it encourages companies in those industries to explore to find higher quality materials. By offering several different ways to produce higher quality products. Players can choose how they will make those products. One player might find a planet that has better raw materials, while another might focus on improving their workforce. While another might choose to refine the product further. They all get to the same quality, but they do it differently because they have that choice.
PS: I really like the idea that some products will require higher quality of resources to be produced, meanwhile other products are basically not even affected by the quality of the input.
What do you guys think? Am I missing something important, will it be to difficult to develop, are their any ideas you want to add to either suggest? Do you agree or disagree? Its important that the devs get a wide range of opinions because it will ultimately help them make a much better game
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I think the quality of materials on a planet is already represented by the yellow indicator bar for the resources on each planet. Resources are never depleted so I think of it as quality more than abundance. Low quality/abundance planets take longer to produce the same amount of units as a higher quality planet due to the time it takes to refine the resource into the finished product. Water, gases and ore all need to be filtered or classified and separated from contaminants.
In that respect, planets already affect some industries and there is an incentive for players who rely on raw materials/natural resources to seek out planets with better quality/more abundant resources valuable to their business. I think adding another level of quality to raw materials/natural resources beyond that would be over complicating things.
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These are all very interesting thoughts we’ll definitely explore further. We’re still thinking about how specialization could tie in with (potential) upcoming features like quality levels of commodities, and your ideas sound very plausible to me.
Indeed! Keep 'em coming, guys! 
No promises, though; our capacities are pretty limited and much of what we’re discussing now might not make it into the game until a couple of months in the future, if at all. But rest assured that they’re not going to disappear quietly, we keep a tidy and extensive backlog.
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I had an idea of making some sort of “competitive” mode where there is a set goal in each round maybe lasting two days or so. A goal can be something like first person to build something from the scientist tab. The time is also much faster so produce can be quick and strategies focused on. I think this would add a bit more replayability to the game.
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Clicking a shortcut or buffer at the side or bottom of the screen opens/maximizes the window.
Clicking it again should close/minimize it.
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If there is an exchange on the planet, and I’m in a construction menu, or an production menu it would be great if you could open the exchange by clicking on the resource and that then takes you to the resource page which can then take you to exchange. I am aware this would be hard to do, but you could have a “search for nearest exchange” function for example. Or you could just reference the planet from the production menu and briefly store that in the resource card page and then link to the exchange through that, at least that’s what i’d do in C++ 
.
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Also the ability to prioritise different buildings for workers would be great.(Ie I want all my workers to focus on producing products in Smelter 1 and then I take the efficiency hit on Smelter 2). I am aware this could lead to abuse and a smaller workforce, but that could be fixed with a very long cooldown switch, with a warning, so it can’t be abused.
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I don’t know, if it has been mentioned yet, but the idea of specialized queues in your factory seems like a good idea. At the moment its impossible to specialize a product slot into producing only one type of good, as it gets filled with whatever is next from the queue… which maybe is not what I want. I’d liek to dedicate the factory slots to a product, maybe several products, that can be produced in one chain?
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While it does sound handy, I can quickly think of several cases that would make this pretty complicated. Let’s see what @molp or @martin say.
I updated the “Flexible workforce” feature in the feature backlog to include this idea. 
If this feature makes it into the game, it would be logical to extend it this way.
I’m not sure I understand. There is a dropdown menu titled “Primary Output” in the PRODCO buffer that lets you choose what to produce with each order. Isn’t this already what you described?
I’m not sure I understand. There is a dropdown menu titled “Primary Output” in the PRODCO buffer that lets you choose what to produce with each order. Isn’t this already what you described?
I think I forgot to state, that I use several production lines of the same type (say 2 food processors). Now the dropdown you mentioned just tells, what it is I will produce, it will go to the order backlog, BUT I can’t “save” say one of my two lines for beer, and the other for drinking water. As soon as there is a production slot free, it gets filled with the next order.
I want to have the feature, to manage ech production line seperately.
(The problem here is, with the way it is right now, I cant have a line wait for a resource, when there are multiple order in backlog, it is automatically filled with the next order. I think of a queue for each fab, not one single queue per fab type)
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You want to put one FP to infinite production, so to say, right?
Kind of, eg. I want to put it to produce only ever beer, regardless if theres a ration job in the queue (which would ruin my beer plan because of the time it blocks the prod slot, as it is right now)
So I want to put that particular FoodProcessor in “beer only” mode 
As you can see in the image, I have 3 FP but only 1 queue with no preference settings …