Captain Hills

I'm replying kind of late to this discussion. I have read only the first few pages of replies so my reply might include or repeat ideas mentioned in replies before mine.
 
I believe these changes will only hurt the game at this point and especially the starting players, who are vital to the game's sustainability. It would not change much for an older player already possessing enough capital to buy schematics, instead it will launch them further ahead from everyone else. I believe that the economy is not working as it should right now because the resources are not spent in any way. The only ones buying new elements are more or less the starters. We are depending on them to sell our products and make profit, since even the elements of ships lost in pvp return to the market again. Atmospheric pvp/ territory control/ element destruction have to be implemented first. After these are in the game, then you see how the economy moves and only then you can decide on a change like this. Right now the economy simply cannot move as it should.
 
Problems with this idea:
 
1. "Omni" factories that can produce everything will still be made. The only thing that will change is the amount of units required to achieve the same result and that not by much. I have such a factory myself right now and I'm not a member of an organization yet. 
2. If all refined/product/intermediate/complex parts are maintained the only units requiring changes to schematics will be the assembly lines. People will just do that instead. 
3. How will a new player build his/her first ships? Considering you do not have a way of transporting goods from and to the market in order to start by selling and buying. A new player will have to rely on help from other players to get jumpstarted, otherwise it will be a pain and will definitely send players away.
4. It will exaggerate the already existing problem of finding specific low cost items on a nearby market, like specific small lights for example, that not many producers will work on. 
5. It will render many existing factories inoperable making the economy go haywire for a while. 
 
What i would propose instead:
 
Leave industry as is and consider only changes that will make it more fun and engaging instead of tedious. Like total energy management for example. Something that will not require unit to unit micromanagement but general base management. 
 
Instead, you could add a feature like organization talents which will require not only time but also resources from organizations to level. Each organization will be able to choose talents only from a limited amount of categories (mining/industry/military) etc. These talents should give the organization's members tremendous advantages in their respective field making the economy revolve around that. Organizations will need each other and solo players will be buying from these organizations because of the price efficiency these orgs will have making the market come to life. For example a starting player would still be able to craft something on their own but will never be able to match the price of an optimized organization factory made for said item.
 
A "Quality" factor could be introduced to elements. For example let's say an engine was produced from one of the best industry organization factories. This engine could have let's say a quality of 120% making it 20% more efficient and powerful than normal low quality engines. The starting/average player would still go for the low cost/ low quality engine whereas the savvy player will definitely use the market to buy one of these.
 
Allowing construct blueprint modification would work great along with this. Or adding this functionality to the repair unit. For example changing all space engine L on a blueprint with HQ space engine L without having to change them on a deployed construct. Then on deploy the construct would deploy exactly the same with the only difference being that the engines are of a different quality. This would also be useful for the high tier elements already planned to be introduced to the game. Replacing all elements on existing constructs manually would be a pain, considering how hard it is to place an element close to another at correct orientation without it going red with all the small bugs going on. 
 
Organization alliances could be introduced. Which would be an alliance of a limited number of organizations working together towards a common goal. It would be like forming a small nation. Of course population number restrictions will have to be introduced to organizations or mega orgs that will dominate the server will rise.
 
 

Wonderful, now the people with billions in the bank will get even richer as they will be able to still have a whole factory producing everything and this change will mean very little if anything to them where as the little people who didn't game the system early release will get the shaft /golfclap

Hi NQ
 
Nobody can dispute making everything in megafactories was too easy, linear, and out of balance. But there are so many issues with your approach to fix it.
 
 
PROBLEM 1) You are putting yourselves in quite a position with treating the game as a beta and non-beta whenever it works. On one hand, with the promise of keeping our wealth into the release, we're expected to treat the game as it's an actual launch to compete with other players and organizations. But then there is no support, mechanics can change dramatically, etc. You're also putting at least a 6-months gap between those who could exploit the unbalanced mechanics early and accumulate wealth, and those who couldn't.
 
SOLUTION: I don't really have a solution to this. Perhaps the best way to operate right now is to announce a full wipe at the end of beta if you can financially handle it.
 
 
PROBLEM 2) This update leaked to lots of people for several weeks. The knowledge put those people further ahead.
 
SOLUTION: Either enforce your NDA, or do not disclose (economically sensitive) details of how you'll change things.
 
 
PROBLEM 3)  Completely unhelpful talents just to unlock elements are a bad idea. Eve Online learned this lesson over the years and they are doing away with artificial prerequisites to start playing the game. Industry is one of the rare domains where talents actually GREATLY matter. Most production will eventually become unviable overtime without respective talents. It's bad analysis if you thought the lack of talents was an issue.
 
SOLUTION: If you want to wall element usage behind talents, you should do so behind the existing talents. This way at least people get a benefit alongside element access. A sense of actual progression and no waste of days of training.
 
 
PROBLEM 4) I am quite worried whether the game actually has enough quanta supply recipes for sufficient production.
 
SOLUTION: The game needs isk faucets besides the honeycomb NPC order businesses. I have low-cost proposals for that in the idea box.
 
 
PROBLEM 5) Machine-based recipes create lots of issues. It'll be quite tedious to teach the recipes to every single element and to keep tabs on them even in non-megafactories. Moreover, how will our investments be saved? I hope (but am not certain) the recipes will be saved under "dynamic properties" of a machine. But then we won't be able to deploy the same factory from a blueprint. It'll be impossible to move factories. So you're not only investing in the machine, but also in the location of the factory. That'll have even greater repercussions with territory warfare. 
 
SOLUTION: You should have at least made the recipes character-based. Given that you don't tolerate account sharing and ban those who do, this would still achieve specialization, yet make it way less tedious.
 
 
PROBLEM 6) Cost is an artificial and unsustainable way to motivate people to specialize. Once people accumulate enough capital, megafactories will begin popping again. Then those who can afford them will be miles ahead of others.
 
SOLUTION: To achieve truly sustainable differentiation and specialization, there needs to be differentiation in the ways the source materials are acquired. Ore is equally available to every individual. It should take organizational level effort to access some building materials; it should take outside-the-box intelligently developed systems to access others. Moreover, it should make more sense to make one product somewhere and to make another elsewhere (geographically). 

I'm a early backer but couldn't really play or enjoy DU in alpha.
The start of the beta was not so good I admit, but periods were great and the tutorials very helpful. I felt the addiction coming up.
 
The last two days were fantastic for me and a friend learning the game and improving the starter Base.
thanks to NQ for all their effort
 
I now believe DU might be a very good and long lasting game.

I'm a early backer but couldn't really play or enjoy DU in alpha.
The start of the beta was not so good I admit, but periods were great and the tutorials very helpful. I felt the addiction coming up.
 
The last two days were fantastic for me and a friend learning the game and improving the starter Base.
thanks to NQ for all their effort
 
I now believe DU might be a very good and long lasting game.

I'm a early backer but couldn't really play or enjoy DU in alpha.
The start of the beta was not so good I admit, but periods were great and the tutorials very helpful. I felt the addiction coming up.
 
The last two days were fantastic for me and a friend learning the game and improving the starter Base.
thanks to NQ for all their effort
 
I now believe DU might be a very good and long lasting game.

I'm a early backer but couldn't really play or enjoy DU in alpha.
The start of the beta was not so good I admit, but periods were great and the tutorials very helpful. I felt the addiction coming up.
 
The last two days were fantastic for me and a friend learning the game and improving the starter Base.
thanks to NQ for all their effort
 
I now believe DU might be a very good and long lasting game.

I'm a early backer but couldn't really play or enjoy DU in alpha.
The start of the beta was not so good I admit, but periods were great and the tutorials very helpful. I felt the addiction coming up.
 
The last two days were fantastic for me and a friend learning the game and improving the starter Base.
thanks to NQ for all their effort
 
I now believe DU might be a very good and long lasting game.