Schematics

[Revelcro]

18 hours ago, GraXXoR said:

How is SLI doing as of April 1st?

 

Still pretty united actually.   Just not entirely united in DU ?

.....starbase is looking promising btw.

 

We keep checking in and hoping that some magic patch will fix things in DU and every few days that hope wanes a bit more.

 

 

[SirJohn85]

1 hour ago, Revelcro said:

We keep checking in and hoping that some magic patch will fix things in DU and every few days that hope wanes a bit more.

I hear this from every corner by now. Some miracle is supposed to fix something. How is that supposed to work?

Please keep in mind, in 4 months it will be August and technically 1 year beta aka softlaunch. You can now draw your own conclusions.

[Revelcro]

2 hours ago, SirJohn85 said:

How is that supposed to work?

 

Notice I said the word "magic"?  Reports of some of the vanguard members quitting publicly in the last few months was a real eye opener for those paying attention.  It sends a powerful message to the devs, but I'm not sure they are even there to receive it.  We appreciate your work regardless.

[SirJohn85]

3 minutes ago, Revelcro said:

Notice I said the word "magic"? 

I certainly noticed that when I read it. I still have a few problems and projects that need magic and miracles. I will come back to that. Thank you for taking the time. 

[Unknown]

On 3/28/2021 at 6:04 PM, Unknown said:

Yep, its really stupid and unfair to punish solo players. I'm gonna just wait and see if they roll with this or they fix this mistake and then I might come back.

Well, it's been a while... How is things looking in-game? Schematics are still a thing?

[Hecticus]

My org is generating them faster than we are consuming them. Looks like down the road we will have stockpiles of all types. Obviously that may change as industry scales. 
 

tl;dr schematic handling is a new mini-game

Edited September 29, 2022 by Hecticus
Removed inaccurate statement

[OrionSteed]

I haven't delved very far, but one small thing that bugs me are lights.  Lights are uncommon (Long light, S - L), and the schematics are expensive for what you get, how much you produce.  I think cost on a long light is like 4700 per (not counting ore - not playing rn, just going off memory)?  To me that's dumb. I'm sure there's other examples.

 

Probably down the road when people are richer, it won't be a thing, but I wish some elements would have more common sense.  Especially lower tier items that aren't game balance changing.

[Unknown]

Reinstalled the game there for a week - completely unplayable to a casual solo player. Uninstalled again 😕

 

I don't say this to be smug, I'm genuinely saddened by it. I really wanted this game to be good, it looked amazing in the early promos, alpha was great, had tons of fun, but I prefer being a solo player and I am not the only one. But the game is not targeted at us anymore.

 

At least alpha was a great experience, well worth the 15 euro kickstarter fee - if other players find the game good still, then all the better, at least it wasn't wasted. But it's not for me anymore.

[Pleione]

On 12/12/2020 at 5:42 PM, Daphne Jones said:

To slow down progression. It remains to be seen whether it will do that or just run the remaining players out of the game.

 

Well, almost a week into this.  Was really excited, but now it feels like all I do is pay taxes.  Taxes to add territories, Taxes to build anything non-trivial, trivial taxes to sell.  I can't tell you how many times I've run out of Tier 1 Product schematics after leaving for a bit of sleep just to discover I'm out of them again in the morning and nothing happened overnight.

 

Taxes every WEEK to keep what I've built.

 

Not feeling very good about this right now.

 

Update:  By "a week into this", that's after playing for years, disappearing after 0.23, and coming back about a month before launch to refresh the mechanics in my mind.

[Daphne Jones]

1 hour ago, Pleione said:

 

Well, almost a week into this.  Was really excited, but now it feels like all I do is pay taxes.  Taxes to add territories, Taxes to build anything non-trivial, trivial taxes to sell.  I can't tell you how many times I've run out of Tier 1 Product schematics after leaving for a bit of sleep just to discover I'm out of them again in the morning and nothing happened overnight.

 

Taxes every WEEK to keep what I've built.

 

Not feeling very good about this right now.

That's why I'm just focused on building a base on Haven - property tax free - and having fun flying the ship I designed at the end of beta specifically to be able to get flying with nothing but a source of T1 and a nanopack.

 

I did build a fuel factory and a general workshop to make things I can't nanocraft. Maybe I'll get back to bigger ships when the markets are healthier, but I don't expect to ever claim any taxable land. That was a PITA in beta and I'm just avoiding it now.

[Pleione]

6 minutes ago, Daphne Jones said:

That's why I'm just focused on building a base on Haven - property tax free - and having fun flying the ship I designed at the end of beta specifically to be able to get flying with nothing but a source of T1 and a nanopack.

 

I did build a fuel factory and a general workshop to make things I can't nanocraft. Maybe I'll get back to bigger ships when the markets are healthier, but I don't expect to ever claim any taxable land. That was a PITA in beta and I'm just avoiding it now.

 

Understand.  Play any way that makes you happy.

 

Personally, I like to deep dive and do solo what would make a team of 6 proud - but these taxes are really bumming me out.  Have to learn to play when not tired too - sent 500,000 credits to the wrong org, because, you know, the UI doesn't just let you deposit to an org wallet, you need to search your org name each time, and mine is a superset of another.

 

Also feels like it won't be long before I hit a tax ceiling I won't be able to break through - just in terms of hours per day per character they can spend creating schematics, presuming I can find a way to fund them.

[Novean-61657]

5 hours ago, Pleione said:

presuming I can find a way to fund them.

NQ has you covered, introducing DAC, for all your needs! Just swipe right with your credit card! 😉

 

[Samedi]

On 10/5/2022 at 4:22 AM, Daphne Jones said:

That's why I'm just focused on building a base on Haven - property tax free - and having fun flying the ship I designed at the end of beta specifically to be able to get flying with nothing but a source of T1 and a nanopack.

 

I don't have a problem with there being some money sinks, but the whole tile tax thing does seem badly thought out (like so many aspects of the game design).

 

I grabbed a nice tile on Alioth near District 3. I started building out my factory there, completely forgetting about the tax. A week later, boom - nothing working until I pay my 500k.

 

For now I've done it, but I'm seriously contemplating decamping the whole thing to Sanctuary, even though it will be a massive hassle. I'm not aiming to be making 10s of millions a week, so that rent is subtantial.

 

The stupid thing about this from a game design point of view is that I like being based around a relatively high population area like D3, as it means that there are people around most of the time, which gives me a sense that I'm actually playing an MMO - even if a lot of the time I'm just doing my own thing.

 

If I move everything to Sanctuary, I'll spend most of my time on my own (even though my tile there is also near the equivalent District 3, it is deathly quiet compared with Alioth).

 

So the net effect of this bit of game design is to discourage me from basing myself near other people - which does not seem like a positive for an MMO... 😕

[Pleione]

I'm an addicted player, although very grumpy about it.  I have 6 tiles on Alioth's south pole, within linking distance of the marketplace there.  All 6 are completely mined, and heavily produce Quartz - my main cash ore since my factory uses it the least.  Cash for taxes is not a problem.  Ore for building is.  I'm completely dependent on calibration charges now since I've already raided all the adjoining public tiles and stripped them of ore.  Really throttling me now.

 

So the 500K/week/tile isn't a problem for me, but sure would be if I, god forbid, only wanted to play a few hours a day (or *shudder* a few hours a week).  In that case, Sanctuary (if I was a backer), and Haven otherwise would be my only option. 

 

Whats making me grumpy:  Constantly running out of schematics!  Not particularly fun to finally get my XL assembler up and running just to discover a single run schematic takes 8 hours to build.  Just sucks the fun out of what is suppose to be a creativity game for me.

 

Oh, I've reported it as a bug a week ago, and of course have not heard back, but adjacency bonuses apparently don't apply on Sanctuary.

[Samedi]

1 hour ago, Pleione said:

Whats making me grumpy:  Constantly running out of schematics! 

 

Yep, that's the other thing. Keeping the machines loaded with schematics is tedious in the extreme, even for a small factory. I've got 8 assmeblers right now, and I can never keep them (and the machines that supply them with parts) all happily fed!

If the idea is to discourage mega factories, then they should have done something where the difficulty started lower, but scaled exponentially - so it was easy for small setups and much harder for large ones. This feels like the balance might be a bit off. In order to stock all the machines for a long time, I'd need a hell of a lot of money, to make a hell of a lot of schematics.

[Emptiness]

14 hours ago, Samedi said:

I grabbed a nice tile on Alioth near District 3. I started building out my factory there, completely forgetting about the tax. A week later, boom - nothing working until I pay my 500k.

Did you set it as HQ? I can still do industry on my unpaid tile.

[Kezzle]

13 hours ago, Samedi said:

 

Yep, that's the other thing. Keeping the machines loaded with schematics is tedious in the extreme, even for a small factory. I've got 8 assmeblers right now, and I can never keep them (and the machines that supply them with parts) all happily fed!

 

Yup. 'Tis a pitiful and inelegant mechanic. Better than "You have to pay upmty million Quanta to start your machine" that was the first iteration of schematics that drove me instantly out of Beta. But "making players do busywork" isn't adding to the USPs of the game that might raise it above the competition.

 

13 hours ago, Samedi said:

If the idea is to discourage mega factories, then they should have done something where the difficulty started lower, but scaled exponentially - so it was easy for small setups and much harder for large ones. This feels like the balance might be a bit off. In order to stock all the machines for a long time, I'd need a hell of a lot of money, to make a hell of a lot of schematics.

Yeah. Scaling doesn't seem to have been a consideration in the implementation of the "stop the servers dying from overwork" mechanic. I guess a thousand facs of 100 elements each is just as server-killing as 10 facs of 10000 elements.

[Pleione]

7 hours ago, Kezzle said:

Yup. 'Tis a pitiful and inelegant mechanic. Better than "You have to pay upmty million Quanta to start your machine" that was the first iteration of schematics that drove me instantly out of Beta. But "making players do busywork" isn't adding to the USPs of the game that might raise it above the competition.

 

 

You me both... twas the 0.23 exodus of players.  I was 2 days away from my warp beacon to start cooking and came back to discover a 800,000,000 (yeah, if memory serves, it was 800M, later reduced to 200M) schematic fee to start up the warp beacon factory.  Left the game until a few weeks ago after that point.

 

Only good news:  once you start racking in quanta, just start making 12 hours of schematics before you call it a night.  Those T1 Product smelters will run for awhile is you load them with 500 schematics each.  Still feels its a crappy solution that just adds distraction and worse, frustration, to the game.  e.g.  it makes the game less fun to play, not more.

[SpacemanSpiff]

The person who came up with all the schematics thing can be credited for almost, if not truly, killing this game.

 

The way it was implemented was the worst possible way and a big eff you to all. 

 

All big streamers left after .23 and the game lost all it's relevance on YouTube and twitch. 

[Aaron Cain]

Indeed, and the newly refreshed schematic system is even worse than the old.

 

-Time sink added

-Quanta sink added

-minigame put new schematic in the machine added

-copy reproduce poof schematics from thin air minigame added

 

Did i miss anything?

[Pleione]

Oh, just the game play aspects - like the XL Scanner I've been working on.  Takes 625 Uncommon Power supplies, at 4 minutes each - so 40 hours just for those parts.  That's fine, except I can't tell you how many times I've found it halted in the morning because some sub-component (Al-Fe was the latest) ran out of schematics.  Seems like I spend one hell of a lot of time just feeding Tier 1 product schematics into my factory.  I'm doing 250 at a time now, and still running out.

 

This is suppose to be fun, right?

[Kezzle]

And having to familiarise yourself with what machines and parts need which Schematics... And find the spare ones that are in a different machine (of potentially a different size) to complete the run in the machine you've got set up.

 

Are there LUA hooks into every machine's Schematic Bank so someone can at least create a visual aid for knowing what you've got in a given Construct, at least? It'd be great if such a utility already existed, but I have a horrid feeling the information isn't accesible to script.