The Mass Issue

[Copperwire]

Dear NG,

When I first started playing this game and got around to looking at the markets one of the first thing that I flagged as a sign something was off was that pures, alloys, and components of all kinds are not traded in meaningful volumes.  My first guess was it was holdover from the period before schematics when everyone had everything factories (I started the day after .23) and I think this has some truth.

 

Down the road, I had time to dig into more of the games systems and I found another reason;

On average (an exception being quartz/silicon) Ore is lighter then the Pure Materials it is refined into (T1 ores average mass change; 108% with zero skills, 146% with max skills).

[This is the equivalent of taking 1kg of raw wheat, putting it in the mill, and having 1.46kg of flour come out.]

Pure Materials into Alloys, without skills 15% of the mass disappears.  With max skills, 15% more mass appears.

[This is like taking that 1.46 kg of flour and mixing it with .73kg of clean water you got from purifying .5 kg of water and making a ball of dough weighing 2.51kg.]

Alloys into Intermediary Parts, no skills, 70% of the mass disappears.  With max skills, 55% of the mass disappears.
[This is like taking that 2.51kg of dough and making it into a Baguette that weighs 1.12kg]

While this ends somewhat correctly making Baguettes (assuming you ignore some the middle steps and chalk the last up to evaporation) this makes zero sense with Minerals.

Lets go ahead and ignore the fact that this violates reason and physics, because, its just a game.

At a game level, this means there is no incentive to ship anything but ores and finished products.  This means there are less incentives to specialize production/talents, no incentives to industrialize outer worlds, and in the end, to develop markets on those worlds.  It directly reinforces the Alioth markets being the only markets, player interaction being at a minimum, and the only activity there is worth doing on the outer worlds is mining state of the game.

In case its not clear, even if what you care about is PvP, this hurts you - because it reinforces the low risk/low reward/everyone live in the Bubble style of game play that dominates the game.

Good news, fixing this issue is not a coding challenge.  When you do fix this, it would help if you shared this in a clear way in the update notes.  Past that, you might consider changing the bots from buying ore to pure materials and in turn alloys, to incentivize players to begin creating a more diverse economy and game.

My suggestion is that you look at real world ratios for how processing minerals results in refined goods and then tilt your numbers so that talents will never lead to more mass being created then was used as inputs.

If figuring out mass ratios that do not choke your games economy is past your current resources, I am among the many under-employed as a result of Covid and I am sure you can find one of us with those skills for fairly cheap.

Thank you for your time and I look forward to this issue being resolved, along with my few weeks old ticket concerning the fact that my characters RDMS screen is a large empty box.

Sincerely,

Copperwire