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Break the mega factory meta


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On 5/11/2021 at 11:51 AM, Physics said:

That is the exactly opposite to what industry needs. I said it once I’ll say it again, stop thinking about how to gate industry because that is complete rubbish. Think about ways players could manage to buff their industry and quality of items they produce. Either it be through talents or having their industry static part of a city project, or both.

 

Gating industry from producing basic products has not (0.23) nor will ever work. 


Any kind of gate in my mind should be a natural outcome of gameplay; what I mean by this is we aren't thinking about artificial limitations but instead thinking about the gameplay loop and how to make it engaging and fun - even thought provoking - which should naturally provide a limit to what players want to manage regarding industry.

If a player has the chance to be known as the best screw maker for engines the galaxy has ever known they will choose that over being a jack of all trades master of none I would say; the day I can specialise in all manner of screws will be the day DUfix is born.

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1 hour ago, bleakcon said:

.something more than sticking resources in a container every now and then.

It already takes a lot more. Claiming it is easy to maintain a factory is just as wrong as the list of claims I made in my post above.

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3 hours ago, bleakcon said:


Any kind of gate in my mind should be a natural outcome of gameplay; what I mean by this is we aren't thinking about artificial limitations but instead thinking about the gameplay loop and how to make it engaging and fun - even thought provoking - which should naturally provide a limit to what players want to manage regarding industry.

If a player has the chance to be known as the best screw maker for engines the galaxy has ever known they will choose that over being a jack of all trades master of none I would say; the day I can specialise in all manner of screws will be the day DUfix is born.

Exactly, basic off the shelf elements should not be hard gated at all, that is one of the biggest flaws with industry. Industry progression should be in quality of items produced. Making manufacturing open to everyone but if you are a “best in slot” chaser then gonna have to spend that quanta buying from the manufacturers who have invested time and talents in their field of play or invest yourself.

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1 hour ago, Gottchar said:

It already takes a lot more. Claiming it is easy to maintain a factory is just as wrong as the list of claims I made in my post above.

If you’re saying server errors stopping machines, that shouldn’t count as an activity for maintaining industry since it’s not actual game mechanics. 
 

Currently it takes almost no effort to run a factory, drop ore in, spend time setting up and you then can forget it’s even running. Like every other mmo out there, industry or crafting was something that took a lot of effort and time to reach the top, those that did reaped the benefits and profits of putting all that effort in. 
 

Adding in some maintenance mechanic or puzzle type mini game that gives a chance to boost machines could help add more depth to industry. 
 

 

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Additional depth is something most certainly appreciated, and as I recall there is plenty of research saying in a game offering a buff for an action you want people to perform will be far better received than penalizing them for not doing it. At the same time, making it game-breaking isn't advised, it would need to be limited to things like tiny buffs to material usage efficiency our output volume, or possibly larger buffs to something like production speed.

 

Again though, as I mentioned in my previous post, you can't currently really do anything to mega-factories that isn't just going to cause even greater burden to the more specialized factories possessed by smaller groups, the player-base and variety of things to make needed to produce the demand for that level of specialization just doesn't exist in DU right now.

 

As for maintaining production facilities IRL, the exact amount of maintenance required can vary from one type of facility to the next, and as tech improves that amount of required maintenance is always going down. Even food processing facilities make use of self-maintaining machines, some needing no attention at all for weeks aside from keeping the hopper topped off. Some (non-food) facilities I've worked in have even reached the point where the equipment would suffer more wear-and-tear from weekly or monthly maintenance than it would from just being left to run unattended, the maintenance guy literally just shows up once a week (or month) to watch the equipment run and more or less look for any spots where the security has accidentally tripped and scratched the paint on something with their gear, and the facility manager just schedules a shutdown every year or two to have some stuff replaced and get the paint-scratch punch-list dealt with (assuming they arn't in one of the facilities where things run so well it is more economically feasible to just keep security outside and not hire a maintenance guy at all, while literally just waiting for the machinery to fail before paying to have it quickly replaced).

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On 5/14/2021 at 3:18 PM, Izon2887 said:

Currently it takes almost no effort to run a factory, drop ore in, spend time setting up and you then can forget it’s even running. Like every other mmo out there, industry or crafting was something that took a lot of effort and time to reach the top, those that did reaped the benefits and profits of putting all that effort in. 

What I read there is "I have no idea about it, but others do it and I guess it is easy, please make it harder"

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19 minutes ago, Gottchar said:

What I read there is "I have no idea about it, but others do it and I guess it is easy, please make it harder"

I built a mega factory before .23 and currently have a mini factory for what I use to build with. It doesn’t take much effort once you map out the flow. Basic excel, bunch of transfer units, know your 10 link limit and naming your boxes is all it truly takes to setup a factory.  
 

I thoroughly enjoyed setting up my factory the first time, exploring how to setup the machines and understanding the limiting factors. Though once that’s understood there isn’t anything more to it. There wasn’t a reason for me to think more about it after it’s running other than maybe completed industry skills or occasional server error. 

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On 5/14/2021 at 10:03 PM, bleakcon said:

If a player has the chance to be known as the best screw maker for engines the galaxy has ever known they will choose that over being a jack of all trades master of none I would say

 

Totally! I’m known as the goto guy for honeycomb in the org. I make a few other things on the side, but it’s honeycomb I specialise in, its honeycomb my talents go into (and refinery naturally as we don’t have a spealistist for that, but would use if we did so I could have even more talents in honeycomb)

On 5/15/2021 at 1:18 AM, Izon2887 said:

Like every other mmo out there, industry or crafting was something that took a lot of effort and time to reach the top, those that did reaped the benefits and profits of putting all that effort in

 

Once you’ve got all the talents it ends. The only thing which can make you better is then a better supply line. That’s a shame, we need a way so you can keep getting better and better, and the narrower you invest the better you will be compared to somebody who invests wider.

 

Maybe we need to end the 5/5 for talents, but make them endless but with dismissing returns. Then it’s a decision when to stop getting better at being the screw guy rather than you have reached the same hard limit everybody else has reached. 

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On 5/15/2021 at 7:46 PM, CoyoteNZ said:

 

Totally! I’m known as the goto guy for honeycomb in the org. I make a few other things on the side, but it’s honeycomb I specialise in, its honeycomb my talents go into (and refinery naturally as we don’t have a spealistist for that, but would use if we did so I could have even more talents in honeycomb)

 

Once you’ve got all the talents it ends. The only thing which can make you better is then a better supply line. That’s a shame, we need a way so you can keep getting better and better, and the narrower you invest the better you will be compared to somebody who invests wider.

 

Maybe we need to end the 5/5 for talents, but make them endless but with dismissing returns. Then it’s a decision when to stop getting better at being the screw guy rather than you have reached the same hard limit everybody else has reached. 

 

I think the thing you are looking for there is a cap on max-sp per avatar. People would have to specialize rather than going generalist and still maxing everything. This would be acceptable as long as there was a way to re-train. (Perhaps once you hit the cap, you need to que up talents to un-learn at the same pace you learn new ones?)

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  • 1 month later...
On 3/31/2021 at 2:14 PM, NQ-Naerais said:

I'm wondering what people think of this? Would having to repair factory bits be a fun thing? or just feel grindy?

I am of course biased, and probably not the majority of the population but I came here for a space-sim more realistic than others. If I want to play space factory manager I want some form of system where once I have a super factory which can make everything and all of it fast all at the same time, there is still a small challenge or annoyance. The bigger the factory the harder it should be to maintain or keep track of some how, but at the same time at the small scale of a mere 500-1000 factory units shouldn't be much of a bother. I don't think things should "break" but I think there should maybe be something which affect efficiency, thus requiring the occasional attention of players to hit the powercycle button to bring it back to full speed. Different things would have hidden values and lots of random mixed in. Then players who are really dedicated to maximizing logistics can have the fun of analyzing and balancing how often the refresh button needs to be hit, and then players who will actually do it.

 

On the flip side, I consider this a sim not a game. I hate simple, simple would be boring like most games. If its easy and most people can do it given enough time...then is there really any achievement at all? No there isn't. I want the pinnacle of any path in DU to be hard to obtain, even given all the time needed.

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On 3/31/2021 at 9:14 PM, NQ-Naerais said:

I'm wondering what people think of this? Would having to repair factory bits be a fun thing? or just feel grindy?

It would just be another negative impact in the freedom of play. What more do you have to make complicated?

Slow destruction will not change the problem, it will just make prices go up.

It won't solve the real problem of having complete facilities from T1 to T5 and not needing small traders to specialise at all.

In general, the skill system should be drastically rebuilt, you should have to decide what to skill because skill points are finite and not infinite. This means that in the end you can NEVER have everything 100% skilled. Then you would have to think carefully about what you skill and how, or outsource some of the production lines.

BUT: That's when the next problem comes crawling up-> MultiAccountPlayer, with which you manage to lead this principle back into absurdity and then only punish those who only have one account.

Fact: The economic system is not working as it should at the moment, because you don't have to rely on small specialised producers.



 

It would be fun to be able to flag accounts so that changing accounts on a computer would create a re-login rate.

Example 1 (Singleplayer)
Acc1 logs in.
DC- Acc1 logs in: instant.
acc1 logs out. 
 

Example 2 Multiaccount)
Acc1 logs in.
Acc1 logs out.
Acc2 logs in, is recognised by the system and logs in only after a 20-minute lockout period.
Acc2 logs in after 20 minutes of locking time.
Acc2 logs out.
Acc1 logs in. Triggered by 3rd round again 20min lockout time +10min.
Acc1 logs in after 30min.
Acc1 logs out.
Acc3 logs in, triggers 20minute lockout time, + 4th attempt to log in 2x10minutes.
Acc3 logs in after 40 minutes. 

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11 hours ago, Zarcata said:

rate.

That is just a bandage to a system that works. Plus once a factory is running you would rarely have to log into the other accounts, only when you got a new line or a new skill level.

 

The problem with factories are that they are two easy and the only thing which makes them stand apart from each other is the players talent points. 

 

No matter how smart you are, doesn’t matter if you are willing to spend two minutes or 400 hours setting up a line for basic screws, after a few weeks of talent training you will both be making basic screws at the same (ore) cost.

 

Go to the other end of the scale, I don’t care how much you want to make warp cells; a new player just isn’t going to be able to compete on the market with somebody who has been passively training the correct talents for six months. How demoralising is that. No matter what you do you won’t compete.

 

Yes it is good that players who have been playing longer get an advantage, but the current factory system the advantage is just way to big!

 

I like the system SB are planning. Simple mode, and complex mode. Why can’t we have that. 

 

Simple mode for basic screws (from the top of my head)

refiner coal, bauxite

smelter steel

metal works

 

complex, but more efficient mode

bauxite refiner... which includes

... intake skip

... seperators

... controlling the skip rate for the quality of ore

... deciding which seperators to use

... how much of the seperators can you recycle

... making or buying the seperator

... dealing with the left over non reusable seperator (no, can’t just delete it)

.. power management, cheap solar during the day, unreliable but hi level wind, costly but steady coal, thermal. How much does each cost, should you slow down when the spot price is high

.. flow control, if you get ahead of the next part in the line do you keep the melting pots running sucking power, or do you suffer the cooldown, cleaning and heat up,of letting the pots go cold

.. virables ambient temperature of the factory, quality of ore, desired quality of the iron

.. control, you know what hates factory environments, computers. Do it all on logic, counter, and delay circuits

 

Somebody who knows anything about refining Iron could probably go on for a few pages more.

 

If a person is willing to put work in to some of these processes shouldn’t their skill give them an advantage other than “haha I played longer than you, my talents are better”

 

In JC’s video about not liking mega factories he was complaining that each of these machines is an entire factory in itself. Should we be given the ability to make that factory for better efficiency?

 

Or maybe size is the problem, if each of these machines is an entire factory, rather than bing not as tall as a human, and only a little longer, maybe they should be the size of an XS or S core per machine. That will stop the one factory makes everything meta.

 

Personally I think factories could do with a lot of love. But sadly they won’t get it, because they are one part of the game that kind of works and they have so many to work on which don’t. 

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On 6/24/2021 at 4:10 AM, Zarcata said:

It would just be another negative impact in the freedom of play. What more do you have to make complicated?

Slow destruction will not change the problem, it will just make prices go up.

It won't solve the real problem of having complete facilities from T1 to T5 and not needing small traders to specialise at all.

In general, the skill system should be drastically rebuilt, you should have to decide what to skill because skill points are finite and not infinite. This means that in the end you can NEVER have everything 100% skilled. Then you would have to think carefully about what you skill and how, or outsource some of the production lines.

BUT: That's when the next problem comes crawling up-> MultiAccountPlayer, with which you manage to lead this principle back into absurdity and then only punish those who only have one account.

Fact: The economic system is not working as it should at the moment, because you don't have to rely on small specialised producers.



 

It would be fun to be able to flag accounts so that changing accounts on a computer would create a re-login rate.

Example 1 (Singleplayer)
Acc1 logs in.
DC- Acc1 logs in: instant.
acc1 logs out. 
 

Example 2 Multiaccount)
Acc1 logs in.
Acc1 logs out.
Acc2 logs in, is recognised by the system and logs in only after a 20-minute lockout period.
Acc2 logs in after 20 minutes of locking time.
Acc2 logs out.
Acc1 logs in. Triggered by 3rd round again 20min lockout time +10min.
Acc1 logs in after 30min.
Acc1 logs out.
Acc3 logs in, triggers 20minute lockout time, + 4th attempt to log in 2x10minutes.
Acc3 logs in after 40 minutes. 

 

This wont work.. my wife plays... and so does my kiddo.. so how would NQ differentiate this? should they be impacted? no. 

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A lot of you seem to be trying to combat predominantly well established completionists and industrial min-maxers in a game by adding more stuff. All this will do is move the goal-posts further for people that want to play industry and are trying to catch up to their more established competitors.

 

You wont break mega-factory play by adding complexity. DU has no limits to how many industry units you can have running, no cap on how much industry you can stuff in to a hex, resources are too abundant, the player-base too small, everyone is working with the same numbers and the same end points, and there's no pvp where people are building them to incentivize not keeping all your stuff in one location. Even if you make things too big for 1 core, the factory-players will just plop a second down right next to it and divide the work between them.

 

At the end of the day the only thing I can think of that might put an end to mega-factories would be to put a cap on how many industry elements you can have in a hex, such as by using the power system and some sort of solar-battery rules where a given hex only allows so much power to be generated. People would of course try to circumvent this by building either at the corner of 3 hexes (with multiple cores if needed), or assuming power can be transferred between constructs via fuel or battery invo items, by building their factory in the middle of a hex and harvesting power from all the near-by hexes to transfer via linked can range.

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But we have to ensure we don’t cripple large orgs wanting mega cities at the same time.

 

If you REALLY want to cripple mega factories, make it so they all run from the talents of only one person. All of a sudden the people with ten alts training in parallel different parts of their factory are screwed... but once again you are also smacking the org which has ten people training different things to run a big factory. Plus you would still realistically have a mega factory, it would just be a mega industrial complex over multiple buildings.

 

The best solution I can really think of is making it so factory’s have things you can keep fine tuning to be more efficient.

 

Then the org with ten people looking after the factory will be able to keep a certain amount of it running very efficiently, the solo player who has focused will be able to keep his little factory very efficient, and the guy who trained 10-20 alts in parallel will still have a big factory running with good production benefits due to all the talents, but is only one person so will only be able to keep a small part of it running efficiently 

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Hmm, looks like half the problems derive from the P2W conundrum of multi-accounters. Just maybe I mentioned how this would create long term issues for a game like this about two years ago.

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@NQ - Fixing industry is a struggle we all understand, from the full blown industrialists to the part time weekend machine starters who destroy the economy with underpriced goods. 

There is are some ideas that have floated around the pvp community as well as the pve community and here are just some thoughts from those discussions;

1. Like Moriar said, fix the talents that aren't working. (Step 1)

2. Provide a "Parts recycler" for salvaged (damaged only) parts from destroyed pvp ships and haulers, these damaged parts go into the recycler and provide a "unique" item.  Something not currently used in industry, but could be a part for "upgrading" machines/elements.  Here are some examples:

 

Low Burn Efficiency Atmospheric Engine Upgrade- Provides more thrust at low atmosphere levels.
Industry Cable Management Module - +1 link per machine when installed.
Advanced Fuel Combiner - Allows similar fuel tanks to be linked together. (ie Atmo/Space/Rocket) So you can fuel all the tanks from one location.

3. Add Salvager Talents that allow players to remove parts from damaged pvp ships with a "RNG" chance to proc one of these Upgrade Parts but remove the ability for players to "remove" damaged parts without the talents. (This would add a whole Salvager gameplay loop)
-Combine Salvager Talents with Industry Talents and require both Industry to Craft the Upgrade and Salvagers to get the parts.

This is what other MMO's would call "chase items".  Items that players would need to go out and blow stuff up in order to acquire.  Those who love pvp would engage in this practice, but it doesn't affect those who don't want to pvp, as these items could be sold on the market by pvp players to earn some quanta.  These items could not be "mass produced" as they would require "parts/components" unique to pvp salvage, and the market supply would determine the Industrialists chance to produce these.  (smart industrialists could put up "fair" buy orders)

 


The main issue with industry vs mega factory is the fact that once the factory is up and running with schematics, there is really no "future" gameplay loop for these players at all.  Its a simple; Buy ore, produce X, Sell X to players/markets.   There is nothing for them to "chase" (other than t3+ ores) which is currently going to be solved by the Asteroid post previously announced by NQ.  

I could easily generate hundreds of these "unique salvaged parts" just simply based off of feedback from the community in various discussions.  Many "I wish this could do...X better" conversations and I know NQ could as well. 

Within the spirit of Dual Universe is the motto "interconnected gameplay" which is something that currently does not apply to DU.  Miners spend 1000+ hours alone in tunnels, Industry tycoons spend the same time alone in their factories, and builders never talk to anyone because they can't even see the chats in build mode (don't change this).  So currently there are only 2 interactions I see between players frequently.   Ship Designers/Sellers interacting with players looking to buy ships.  And PVPers destroying ships. If NQ adds more reasons for pvpers to engage in communication with ship builders, and with industrialists, we might actually get somewhere on this motto.

Just my thoughts on this.  (I have 2 mega factories I help with and use parts from, I know the complexity of industry and the difficulty to source parts to build ships on distant planets)

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2 hours ago, DekkarTV said:

The main issue with industry vs mega factory is the fact that once the factory is up and running with schematics, there is really no "future" gameplay loop for these players at all.

What do other factory build games do, or are they rather than maintaining a factory they are more about how fast you can get a factory up to running efficiently; then game over start again?

 

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

 

On 7/1/2021 at 12:48 PM, CoyoteNZ said:

What do other factory build games do, or are they rather than maintaining a factory they are more about how fast you can get a factory up to running efficiently; then game over start again?

 

 

 

For the few factory games I've seen, they don't involve quite such potential complexity, aren't mmo, and can be attacked.

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I think eventhough ppl say it is tedious, the player time is the limited resource and should be factored in and make a difference in what you achieve (not only in industry, but also with mining; active gameplay should always be rewarded). This by the way couldn't be circumvented by using Alts.

 

As for industry I think they should add quality of items and as mentioned above unique traits/buffs both achieved by actively playing. Stats of the product should increase/vary. so you could still run megas and flood the market but you would only achieve average quality and no unique traits. By this megas can supply cheap massproducts. high quality and unique items/material could be provided by active and specialized factories.

 

Active talents. Beside the passively growing talents they could add talents, that only advance by actively using the talent and slowly declining over time if not used anymore

 

More Products. If they added diversity in products (elements, parts etc), an all producing mega wouldn't be feasible anymore.

 

Generally consumption and wear. Often it is claimed that this game ain't survival. Yet there is limited consumption in the game (scrap, fuel, ammo). of course it shouldn't be overdone but still it should be implemented to remove static in gameplay and enhance exchange and interaction. (Otherwise, at least without new players, industry has no real purpose)

 

Like mentioned above energy management and the salvage/PvP giving unique materials or elements.

 

Also I think ppl should get used to achievements being tedious or risky. That goes for everyone. If you found the uber meta great, should it stay in-game forever? No. The PvP avoiders, the mega-runners, the autominers. Like in RL you want it easy there will be less gain. If you want the game to stay a static niche simulator/editor, then you can insist on current advantages/positions. If you want a dynamic, living game you should consider accepting change. Also if it makes your niche in the game more challenging. It will serve the game. It seems to me ppl tend to forget, if you don't like a task, outsource it. You like planning megas good, do so. Contribute by doing that. Don't like running them, then have someone run/repair/feed them.

 

As said this is not against industrialists. Same goes for mining. Mining/Automining should have the same challenges. Same goes for designers and haulers.

 

All this of course taking into consideration the complexity of the changes and it most likely being a process of trial and error for NQ and the community. But I think it would be worth trying to actually start the gameflow

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