While trying to figure some of the finances on Proxion, I was clicking around the globe to see what I could find… ultimately low utilization cause some challenges for COGC funding…
So I’m clicking…
PPI 5fbdb08c (inactive, trial, founded 156 days ago)
PPI 5b397292 (inactive, trial, founded 158 days ago)
PPI 6b99256d (inactive, trial, founded 214 days ago)
PPI a32dcdd7 (inactive, trial, founded 183 days ago)
PPI b42eebc9 (inactive, trial, founded 296 days ago)
PPI 077a4bea (inactive, trial, founded 460 days ago)
You may think I’m cherry picking data… I’m not. Those are 6 random clicks on Proxion’s globe and pulling up the info.
These plots are costing COGC money by being there but not having any production (and thus no production fees).
It feels like there’s a non-trivial number of them on the planet and this then becomes concerning at trying to make the budget balance - especially with caps on.
Devs, please consider checking your cleanup scripts for abandoned bases… or look at adjusting the CoGC to not consider bases that have not produced any materials in the past COGC period.
Let me check on Vallis:
12x clicked, 12x “noname” with a inactive and age over half a year. The chances are pretty high that these accounts went inactive after the first session and their comps should be purged a few days later freeing up that plot.
(Btw Vallis was already full at the point they started so not sure why they got a surface plot and not me.)
I checked some of these and they seem to follow the current activity rules. The first one for example is a Steam account. Usually we don’t have an email address for Steam users, except they choose to do the “complete your account” step. So we cannot send them emails about the pending company deletion, which is why we decided that the deletion period is way longer than for regular accounts (200days+). We increased that value from the relatively short periods that are normally used, because we received some bad feedback. For a Steam user it absolutely not transparent why their company suddenly got liquidated.
The one with 296 days ago has BASIC and a last activity timestamp of end of May.
The last one also has BASIC and a last activity timestamp of early June.
Then it might be something to consider a change to how COGC bases are calculated.
What percent of bases on, say Proxion, have not produced a material in the last 7 days?
Each plot that isn’t being used is adding 2 RAT, 3 DW, 4 PE, and 4 MCG (about 1000 credits worth of materials) consumed each week for COGC without having contributed any production fees. Even having 100 of those represents 100,000 credits of resource consumption for COGC that represents a significant portion of a starter world’s income… which in turn means raising taxes on those mostly starter players to support the players who aren’t playing.
Setting up the deletion time from 11d (6+5) to 200d is a big difference as the majority of new players on starter planets play one session or maybe two and then never log in again (12/12 of the plots I tested only had the tutorial base or even less).
This drives up the CoGC cost which are the main cost on many planets and with it the taxes for other (newer) players. And then there is also the tax limit for higher tier pops which is reached on many planets and should be updated (or at least be updateable by the faction gov with the update).
It also artificially fills up the plot count of starter planets which is already a problem.
The max for very new Steam accounts should be 21d or max 30d as like 99% of them won’t touch the game again and after a longer time (45d+) they will need the tutorial again and even if not they need to repair their base for which they don’t have the funds.
So there is no use of keeping their base around longer than that, but they should get a message when they come back like “due to inactivity your company was liquidated to not put a strain on others in the universe.”
I agree. Also, I understand that the reason for extending the deletion grace period is because there is no way to notify them of a pending deletion and people were complaining. Maybe instead just make it more clear up front – “Welcome to PrUn. We hope you enjoy the game. Note that inactive Trial accounts get liquidated after 45 days so if you leave and come back much later you may need to start anew.” Or how about reference somewhere on the player screen that indicates “Account auto-liquidates after x days (depending on license) of inactivity.”
Tbh I don’t think a “doom timer” is a good idea but a "Welcome to Prosperous Universe, a dynamic living universe with limited amounts of resources and space. Because of that inactive companies will be liquidated after some time. Accounts and with it payment status will be untouched, more information here^.
If that is present somewhere in at the beginning of the tutorial (or at the end of the first tutorial) nobody has a right to complain because it was announced.
If they only play one session, and come back in a month or two or three, they’re going to have no workforce consumables, a bunch of repairs, and probably lacking production materials (even if a farmer since they don’t have repeating orders) will have another day or two of wait before they can get the base running again.
I would contend that this is likely an even worse experience compared to “your base was removed because of inactivity.”
This gives me an idea. How about “real” starter planets (i.e. training planets)? One near each CX that have these qualities:
NEW PLAYERS ONLY: All new/COLIQed accounts start here automatically. Nobody else can build a base.
TEMPORARY: The planet is intended only for training and to get your new empire off the ground. After a set time (30 days) the base is automatically demolished. After some milestone (1 week of play, X number of ship flights, etc) you get a CM that can be used to set up your first permanent base.
UNIQUE/SPECIAL: More resources so that any profession can be successful. Boosted production rate so new players can get rolling quicker and be prepared for the “loss” of this first base. Any other “special” you think might be a good idea (zero damage on takeoff/landing, automatic 100% employment with no POPI/ADMN needed, etc.)
This reduces the number of inactive plots draining planet economies, reduces some of the overcrowding on the original starter planets caused by people who start playing then quit after 2 days, and gives the devs a more structured training-ground area to implement tutorials and communicate with new players. It also helps with the complaint, “I started my first base before I knew what I was doing and I picked the wrong planet.”
You could limit plots to a 200 area on that planet or something like that.
Then you wouldn’t have to kick players. (I don’t think there should not be too many mechanical benefits, though)
Since these planets would have lots of players they’d naturally have quick employment for low tier pops.
I like the idea of a starter planet that has endless ghost plots and a “CoGC: Starter” with a boost for all professions by 25% or even more (higher would give new players more margin for mistakes). The downside would be to only have like 200 usable area to incentivise moving away on their own.
But I don’t think that turning off game features like ship damage would be nessesary.
Problems that I see are with the government of this planet. With this planet only (or at least mainly) inhabited by new players how should the government be decided? I don’t think having only new players vote on the gov of likely the biggest planet of the region is a good idea, as is giving them the right to run for gov there. So either the rest of the regional players (with more than one base) vote for the government or the gov and parliament just gets appointed by the faction gov.
And then there are other problems like “you need a base on planet to fill CoGC” and the usual gov things.
The benefit I see besides the obvious ones to new players is that all other inactive plots on the starter planets would die off with potentially even bigger ones falling below the plot limit (I don’t think Promitor would be included there though) but with the side effect that if all good planets are full the new players will be left with no good first planet. For Insitor that would mean that new players can’t get a base on Promitor.
=> The idea is good for new players but best suited for the next universe with already reworked non static plot limits for planets. Or it would need to be introduced together with the plot rework.
Government, plot size, COGC… with the unique qualities given to these planets none of those would be relevant or necessary.
As for being locked out of the full “good” planets – simply don’t count these as base #1 and new players are still free to put their first permanent base on any of those planets just as they currently can.
I think this is something that could be implemented without the need for a universe reset.
A relatively easy way to fix at least a part of the issue would be to have a dynamic number of retention days: If a player without notification support didn’t really play the game (e.g. didn’t found a base, didn’t create production lines, didn’t send ships, etc) we could reduce the number of days until liquidation significantly.
That would help with the plots being held by players who started and didn’t proceed. One of the parts of the “left and didn’t come back for 3 months” as a new Steam player (I believe) would be an even worse experience would be the trying to get a base up and running again after it has been left unattended.
You’ve got 90 days of repairs that were never done. The production line is at significantly reduced productivity.There’s no workforce consumables in inventory. You’ve got to fly to the CX to buy consumables (and BFabs)… and likely some production consumables too and then fly back… for a two day round trip (if they come back again).
With all that in mind, is this a better experience for a new Steam player who is launching a game they haven’t run in a few months?
I realize a review on steam with the “I came back after three months and my stuff was all gone.” isn’t good… but I’m not sure that the “base wasn’t reclaimed and nothing works” is a better one.
I suspect that a “reboarding” from start would be a better experience … especially with the accelerated new player start (that someone from January didn’t have). However, that will require some explanation of mechanics when a Steam player starts playing again after the extended time.
For COGC funding, could this instead be calculated instead from the number of bases that had a production line complete during the last period (I realize that this is potentially too simple allowing for people to queue up a month’s worth of 20x production runs and then skip out on being counted … though I can’t pinpoint where its either a non-trivial amount or where it isn’t lost in the larger population on the planet).
Calculating COGC from the active production on the planet should address the inactive bases too - so that they’re not requiring COGC upkeep without contributing production fees to that upkeep.
That would already help a lot as many of the bases I have checked on Vallis were abandoned somewhere through the starting tutorial (no buildings built up to the standard buildings built) or shortly after. So after the first or second session.
But then there is still the point that after a certain amount of time restarting is just better compared to reviving the base, see Shagie above. So imo a timer over 30d or even 14d doesn’t make much sense unless there is a “freeze empire” system, which again has the problem of what happens to plots, workers and so on.
If after an update many player come back what happens to the plots? As they are removed during the freeze to avoid CoGC cost and plot bloating, what happens when they come back and have bases on full planets that maybe don’t have ghost plot support. A side effect is that it creates artificial plot and CoGC cost jumps.
And what happens to the workers? Either the workers get freezed with the empire which is pretty weird for govs to handle as pops can randomly vanish and come back again. Or the worker are untouched and only the base is freezed which means that after an update when players come back there is likely a bug empty jobs spike followed by an unemployment spike.
=> however that part is handled it just seems artificial and opposed to the dynamic of the universe to me
So the way easier way would be to just give returning players the normal tutorial with a contract with their money and wares they had on deletion (which is 11d for fresh accounts and over 200d for BASIC so not exploitable).
Something like “Welcome back CEO, there are still wares and money from your old company left which can help you to grow faster” (open for rephrasing). The contract could be: all inventories + the money they had (not sure how CX orders should/could be handled) which can be picked up at the CX of their current starting faction. The contract is not counting ships and buildings as they are of considerable worth for new players and there is nothing left after 200d for BASIC players. HQ levels could be left as that would help returing bigger players to get up faster.
=> the benefit would be that it would be easier to handle for the systems (also for storing the “dead” accounts as it would only be a list of wares, and money and HQ count), and that they would grow dynamically back into the universe
Yes, that would reduce the number of inactive accounts sitting on the server but would it really fix anything being discussed? Presumably if someone didn’t found a base then he isn’t taking up a plot space or adding to the COGC cost. Also, if he never took any actions to play the game then coming back three months later he would still have all of the materials and cash that he started with and won’t be handicapped by a base without consumables and in need of repairs.
But what would be the differenct to just starting from the beginning again when they already haven’t done anything?
That would only mean that they don’t get the up to date tutorial, so not a single advantage (and thus an edgecase that can be ignored and handled like the other “left during/after tutorial” cases)
review on steam with the “I came back after three months and my stuff was all gone.” isn’t good… but I’m not sure that the “base wasn’t reclaimed and nothing works” is a better one.