I think a lot of the issues could be solved by simply not requiring the building to need pioneers. It could be like a supervisor building. Those only need 1 guy and we all know they get paid too much (unrelated I know)
You could make this buildings area not tied to MCG cost. Use whatever reasoning you want. Maybe the supervisor only gets a tent and he likes his office “big”. bastard…
Personally, I think that this is too naïve. I dislike the idea of having a “make things better” building; however, what I do like is the idea of a “make things less wasteful” building.
Here is how I would do this:
The planning office is an essential part of any complicated operation. A planning office can be staffed by Pioneers, Settlers, Technicians, Engineers, or even Scientists! On its own, a planning office does nothing; however, with each output cycle that goes by the planning office outputs an efficiency bonus to the workforce which is occupying the PO. This bonus follows a square-root ish function in that it will grow to 50% bonus somewhat quickly, but then the slog to 70+% takes fairly long. Switching population in the planning office resets its progress to 0. Failing to upkeep a planning office causes it to decay at 3x the rate it advanced.
The planning office decays somewhat quickly as its bonus grows higher due to increased traffic in and out of the building. A planning office increases the amount of consumables that your workforce consumes albeit at a favorable rate to the overall increase in production.
You may have n planning offices, where n is the number of permits used on your base. All planning offices at a base must be staffed by the same workforce.
But Fuyutsuki, isn’t this just another expert line? Why would you ever not run this?
Increasing global workforce consumption means that PIO staffing a PO would cause SET consumption to go up as well. Most people don’t run single vertical bases so this building focuses on someone who is doing one thing really well.
Is this even fair?
Yes. It wreaks havoc with your logistics.
The fundamental problem with all these “buildings that give a boost” ideas are that they give a bonus to existing players that isn’t available to beginners.
When a new player joins, their efficiency should be the highest possible, right at that moment, so that they can start making a profit and trade without being easily out-competed on the markets. Otherwise the new players will be frustrated and leave the game the first time they send a shipment of goods to the CX. Once they have a full base, and are benefitting from economies of scale on shipping, then it’s okay for production efficiency to slip a little. In fact I’ve argued before that the game as a whole would benefit from some kind of logistics penalty that grew with base size. The current unused base permit bonus is like a very mild version of this.
So while I still like the concepts of the Planning Office and Efficiency Monitoring Station, I think that in practice they should be implemented as a way to mitigate a logistics penalty that’s applied to large companies, rather than as a straightforward production boost.
Also, another fundamental problem, the developers are going to need money. The more they get the quicker these updates would come out.
Then how do you give meaningful progression? How do you allow a player to “upgrade” their stuff to make their production more streamlined? If you started out with 5 experts it would be a bit lackluster.
At the end of the day, the big incentive should be to have larger, older players sustain the economy of the newer players. And we do see this to a degree. They buy up the bfabs en’masse, they outsource DW\RAT production, etc.
I don’t see how the DEVs can differentiate between industry unless you’re suggesting production % increases to the DW/RAT/Bfabs? I think naturally these markets are already more incentivized to be invested in because of the volume demand. That much of a direct market manipulation would be frowned upon by me atleast.
The meaningful progression is in adding production buildings and bases and ships and… basically everything that there currently is.
Sure, that would be great. New players sell basic goods to veteran players, and veteran players sell… what? To whom? What is there a demand for at higher tiers? This is one of the main issues with the game - that there is no demand for higher tier products. This is why I keep banging on about creating a demand for tier 2+ goods from lower tier players. It’s the only way to generate real demand - as opposed to the current fake demand from MMs.
If the game were set up differently, to simulate individual planet inhabitants who worked in our factories for money, which they then spent on luxury goods, then it would be fine - the game could just declare that there was demand from the workforce for high tier things like smartphones. The MMs sort of simulate this at the moment, and maybe the devs are planning to go more in that direction, with faction driven demand. But that’s moving further away from the basic theme of a player driven economy. And ultimately, the only thing a player really “wants” is increased production quantity or efficiency. So that’s what veteran players have to sell to beginners, in the form of COF, FLX, PG, etc.
First of all, high tier products are already used in ship building and in POPI.
There is also an other way to add demand for higher tier products. Basically introduce a conflict system (on the official roadmap) and destruction. Starting players produce basic goods for more advanced players. More advanced players produce goods for yet more avanced ones. The most advanced players build battleships to take control over strategic ressources. These battleships get regularly destroyed. The destruction creates a never ending demand for production.
This is the economic recipe used in EVE Online.
I think the ‘meaningful progression’ argument is kinda iffy on both sides. I don’t think having future content to explore is in itself meaningful progression, and I also don’t think having things be moving as fast as possible in the beginning eliminates the possibility of meaningful progression later.
Building a ship isn’t meaningful unless it means something to you, all the profits it’ll rake in don’t mean anything unless those profits mean something to you, this is why I focus on having a lore perspective/justification for my arguments. At the end of the day, if your company doesn’t mean anything to you, all the progress in the world doesn’t make it meaningful.
On the flip side, I think having things be zipping along at the start, and then slowing down feels very natural and is possibly a root good in game design. Think of any mobile game ever, they give you the juice to hook you, then put it all behind a paywall. Think of the games that start with your Player Character being fully upgraded, only to get ‘reset’ at the beginning, that’s the same thing but way less evil. Get hooked, take it away, make that long climb back the meaningful progression, if you can get the player to identify with the character even better, and if the player thinks the character is cool while also identifying with them, then thats a solid trifecta. They like the character, they are the character, they are motivated to see the character progress.
Here’s a thought that may solve some of the mentioned issues.
Make these buildings a ‘gift’ when someone renews their PRO license. Don’t give them 24 if they buy 2 years worth all at once, but it shows up in their inventory or at a CX as a contract needing to be fulfilled once a month until expired. It’s not like this suddenly makes the game pay-to-win, if it can’t be built then it can’t be spammed by a vet and it’s not too expensive for a beginner to build, the discussed constraints mean it doesn’t overly impact established players, it provides a little more sugar to push people to buy PRO which keeps PrUn kicking, and it drums up some demand for those higher tier products.
There’s a couple different routes on the table for specific implementation but the general idea seems to be input T2 materials and boost anything other than T2 material output, namely, T1 material output. Same math applies for T3 inputs boosting T2 outputs, and on and on up the chain.
I think the idea to loosen the staffing restrictions to any tier is a good one.
I like Fuyutsuki’s name, and ideas on consumable rate impacts and failure to staff. The idea of having the bean counters in the Planning Office being turned into finnicky caffeine addicts no matter if they’re PIO or SCI just fits. Though I am a bit foggy on what separates a make things better vs a make things less wasteful building. The only issue I see is how does the Planning Office link a higher tier input to a lower tier output?
excited. but thats like how long off though? I think the thought of having other uses for these resources is still valid.
Yes! And then we could exchange money for some sort of virtual currency like space bucks. $10 for 100 space bucks and then $100 for 1,200 space bucks. Be able to buy resources with space bucks. And there we go! The games ruined. Sorry to be so sarcastic, but I am very strongly against any idea that gives extra production based on how much money you spend. Once you go that route, it just becomes more and more.
Firstly, I did not advocate for premium currency or micro transactions. Nor would I.
Secondly, Apology accepted
Thirdly, If
I am very strongly against any idea that gives extra production based on how much money you spend
^ that is true, then you might simply against the game having pro licenses even if you don’t realize it. Drawing a meaningful distinction between paying to boost production and paying to access premium features that provide a numerical advantage is a damned hard ask.
Once you go that route, it just becomes more and more.
This is not true, you’re either assuming or you’ve been burned. For each game that famously slipped down the MTX slope, there is a completely unheard of game that will die before doing so or has clawed their way back to the light for one reason or another. Greed starts with publisher/management/devs and it dies there too. For that reason, the inclusion of such buildings in the Pro License no more opens the door to MTX than access to the LM does, or any number of future features that will land behind the paywall. Their inclusion also doesn’t somehow corrupt the ‘purity’ of Pro licenses since they already provide a paid advantage.
What it does do, is solve for vets spamming the boost, beginners not being able to afford it, and sweetens the Pro license deal.
PS: If at any point the talk about the buildings gets frustrating for people interested in the recipes, please just spin it off into it’s own topic and I’ll move the related points over there and delete them here. I don’t want to just go do it since this isn’t my thread and I don’t want to peel its thunder.
I think your plan is fair because it only gives 1 building, but how effective is that building? Does it only affect one other production building or them all? Once we do that though the argument, the game being pay to win becomes more valid.
I think this game could make some money from cosmetics as another revenue source.
My thoughts on this are that it can affect any 1 production building and can be changed to any other 1 building at any time.
Agreed, I think this can be neatly sidestepped with a little marketing, instead of it being basic and pro licenses, the game is marketed as having an open-ended demo with full progression, but to truly engage in the depth of features, you have to ‘buy the game.’ This way it’s not pay-to-win, it’s pay-to-play, of course you’re frustrated at the lack of progression in the free version, that’s because we don’t expect anyone to play PrUn to completion on a free account, but we don’t want to restrict your ability to really dig in, try out the core experience, and build your network.
Agreed, but this may run counter to the devs anti-MTX stance. It could be limited to the Pro License, but then the act of avoiding MTX hamstrings the growth of the cosmetic catalogue which lowers the primary draw of having the cosmetic market.
I had the thought for a newfangled form of cosmetics using NFTs since those are visual, exclusive, transferrable, and fluctuating stores of value. However this is such an off the wall proposal I fully expect it to be DOA from any number of wild and unforeseen complications.
I think there’s a middle ground where you could provide a lot of popular cosmetics included in the pro, and then offer niche cosmetics for micro transactions. It would separate the cost of those niche cosmetics from the price of the more popular cosmetics.
Okay.
I feel like by giving a production boost to 1 building is not an effective additional incentive to add to the game. And if we do make it an effective one by increasing the % boost, then it will change the core experience for any player that doesn’t buy pro. Because they’ll be competing against lower cost per unit/product companies who can sell lower. they’ll make less money and it wont be as fun for them.
Huge farms everywhere
One day I will make spaceships
Please buy my RAT
We are out of COF.
Our PO is deserted.
No one is working.
The devs may want to just retain a digital artist(s) and have them produce a starter set of pieces and from there just produce the art as demanded, ‘commissioning’ an original piece costs $X and is exclusive to the commissioner for say 1 year, then it is available to all with Pro, can pay more to get the original work sent to your home/framed. In this way the collection can grow at market demand, the devs and artist can get a slice of profit, the commissioner gets to be big dick on campus for a while, and the commitment to absolutely no MTX is retained. Of course, I have no idea the economics for such a retention and it may be completely impossible. These pieces could also be the previously mentioned NFTs, I suggest PrUn retain the NFT rights but sell a single signed print to the commissioner, then after a year put it in the Pro catalogue, make say 100 unsigned prints, and sell the NFT and prints to the community in the shop.
By no means is the buff building a ready to ship idea, but there’s some there there. The big focus to me in this conversation is more about how much demand can their inclusion drum up for the input materials, the output is all about making the use of those input materials economical enough so the demand gets drummed up in the first place.