Industry schematic replacement

[Serula]

It's often been discussed that schematics are a pain for anyone that wants to do industry. I understand the goal of the schematics was to make it more difficult and costly to build a factory so you have to commit to a specific product and not so easily be able to change it. I'ts not clear to me if this idea was based on how it works in real life or weather is was done to improve gameplay. Either way it feels as though something needs to change to make it more user friendly without sacrificing what seemed to be the initial intent of schematics.

 

The idea

Whenever you place an industry element you have to choose what it will produce and pay x amount of quanta to "repurpose" the unit to produce exactly that. Doing so might create "dynamic properties" on the element, like for instance with scripts in a cockpit or a screen. In this state it either cannot be picked up or it can but cannot be sold since it has dynamic properties. You can remove the dynamic properties for free so you can sell it but will have to pay again for setting anything that it will produce.

 

This way it is easy to start a factory while still costing you and also promotes keeping the factory as it is. Nou obviously it depends on how the software works that will determin weather or not the unit will get dynamic properties or not but the general idea is that you pay for installing the item like schematics do and ideally still be able to pick it up so you can more easily reorganize your factory. This idea would be more closely related to reality however this would also take away the ability to steal schematics. But I don't think that is a big part of the gameplay yet. Stealing schematics would become much more interesting when territory warfare is in effect. Provided that people will actually make factories in the PVP zone.

[hdparm]

8 hours ago, Serula said:

Whenever you place an industry element you have to choose what it will produce and pay x amount of quanta to "repurpose" the unit to produce exactly that.

In a game that's described as "the space MMO entirely built and driven by the players", a currency issued by NPCs (quanta) should not be required for anything. Not for unlocking or changes recipes, not for territory upkeep, not for anything else. Quanta should only be used to optionally trade on NPC markets.

[Serula]

10 hours ago, hdparm said:

In a game that's described as "the space MMO entirely built and driven by the players", a currency issued by NPCs (quanta) should not be required for anything. Not for unlocking or changes recipes, not for territory upkeep, not for anything else. Quanta should only be used to optionally trade on NPC markets.

Sure but where is your arguement? You are just relaying a feeling with no reason to back it up. Should it be easy to change a factory to produce anything? If not then how would you achieve that without quanta? Enforce a long timer between changing recipes?

[ADCOne]

I am not fond of schematics since I preferred, working my way through building what I could on the road to making my own ships myself. I have found once you have the blueprints up and running - I do still need to get some of the Blueprints I need. It works as it used to so I am ok with that. I am certainly not fond of the idea of turning the entire game into a kiosk, where you pay for everything and anything in game. If that happened it would be unplayable for me - would literally be a job.

 

So I am on too keen on the idea of replacing schematics with spending money each time you place an industry unit. I think if you were going to replace it with anything, simply make manufacturing anything a skill you have to train and some things cannot be trained before other things - like a tech tree - I think that would be a much better way to avoid everyone having a massive factory.

[Serula]

24 minutes ago, ADCOne said:

I think if you were going to replace it with anything, simply make manufacturing anything a skill you have to train and some things cannot be trained before other things - like a tech tree - I think that would be a much better way to avoid everyone having a massive factory.

I was thinking about the exact same thing. You would get a seperate skill tree maybe even for each element or part. That way the choice for what you want to make becomes important and you can't quickly change to make anything else unless you are a long time player. Would that not be an issue?

[huschhusch]

English (deepl used)

Hello Serula,

I think things and skills should be earned and not by waiting, not by multiple accounts, not by ingame or RL currency.

 

Such game mechanics as they are used now only lead to distortions in the game and yes the frequent players will have more opportunities, but then the progress in the game is fairer and can be better controlled in its speed by NQ.

 

Events of NQ can also be used here to balance casual players by lottery.

Or by chance, e.g. wrecks, rare objects, special technologies, etc.

 

Changing the recipe procedures only lead to other distortions in the game.

 

 

Quote

 

German (original)

Hallo Serula,

Ich find Dinge und Fähigkeiten sollten erspielt werden und nicht durch abwarten, nicht durch mehrfach Accounts, nicht durch ingame oder RL Währung.

Solche Spielmechaniken wie sie jetzt angewendet werden führen nur zu Verzerrungen im Spiel und ja die Vielspieler werden dadurch mehr Möglichkeiten haben, aber dann ist der Fortschritt im Spiel gerechter und kann besser in seiner Geschwindigkeit durch NQ gesteuert werden.

Durch Ereignisse von NQ kann hier auch ein Ausgleich von Gelegenheitsspielern per Lotterie erfolgen.

Oder durch Zufall, z.B. Wracks, seltene Objekte, besondere Technologien, usw.

 

Die Umstellung der Rezeptverfahren bringt nur andere Schwierigkeiten.

 

 

Die Waldfee
 

[ADCOne]

Other distortions = people who have been selling schematics loose the money they invested however, with a wipe now looking to be on the horizon no money matters in game anyway.

[Taelessael]

Paying to have things repurposed in that way would just be an annoying money-sink for when players have to re-purpose things a lot at the start, it would hurt the newer manufacturing players more than the more established ones.

It would perhaps be more practical to make schematics have limited runs before they must be replaced, and then reduce the cost of schematics a bit to make it seem like a more easily played path for newer players while adding in a money-sink for more established ones. Perhaps let t1 stuff run infinitely, t2 a few hundred runs, t3 fifty to a hundred runs, ect... 

 

It would perhaps also be advisable/practical to allow players some method of researching schematics themselves instead of having to buy them. An industry unit could be added for such a task, with the "required materials" perhaps being a lower tier schematic and a volume of other resources suitable to keeping the cost of research high enough to prevent the return of "everyone has their own private mega-factory".

 

As for everyone always saying "they must wipe" or "they will wipe", and their argument always seems to be that someone somewhere has an advantage others don't. These advantages can't be avoided in an mmo, someone will always be more experienced, or have more time invested, or a bigger cooperative group. If there is an exploit, it should be patched, nuking the possessions of everyone that isn't exploiting in a game like DU will just drive off the player-base.

[CoyoteNZ]

I also don’t like schematics. They were added for one reason, to put a money sink between players and their mega factories. I agree with needing some mechanic so everybody doesn’t have their own mega factory, but I don’t believe this is the right one.

 

firstly, I don’t like the current talent system for industry. A player who plays every day in his factory for his three month sub has no advantage over the player who on day one made a three month que for his talents and never logged back on, that is just wrong.

 

Based on above, I would prefer a usage based system.

 

for example each item has a point value. Each unit of that item produced gives the user (or org) who created the item skill points to invest in industry. 

 

I do t actually like the idea of a skill tree though, as it limits cooperation and trading. If every player who knows how to make a warp beacon for example has to know how to make every single item to make said warp beacon, then they aren’t going to buy or trade for parts, they will make them all. But if said player could learn warp beacon straight away, all of a sudden there would be a market for the parts required.

 

As for actual talents; I think there should be a talent for every item that can be produced. I don’t think it should be limited to 5/5, but keep going with diminishing returns naturally. This way people can specialise as far as they chose, not just be 5/5 done and won.

 

The only issue with my system is once somebody has learned a particular talent, how to slow them down from running a thousand machines producing that. Schematics currently slow that down. Maybe add a third talent on top of efficiency and productivity which allows quantity?

[Taelessael]

6 hours ago, CoyoteNZ said:

I also don’t like schematics. They were added for one reason, to put a money sink between players and their mega factories. I agree with needing some mechanic so everybody doesn’t have their own mega factory, but I don’t believe this is the right one.

 

firstly, I don’t like the current talent system for industry. A player who plays every day in his factory for his three month sub has no advantage over the player who on day one made a three month que for his talents and never logged back on, that is just wrong...

 

I am fairly certain your advantage would be that you'd have a 3 month lead on getting your factory constructed and operating over the guy that has done nothing. As for the inevitable "what if they spent 3 months doing something else to make the same amount of money instead?" question, they'd then either have to spend a chunk of that to buy all the components for their factory, or spend a boat load of time making all of those factory components and chasing down all those prints themselves, ultimately leaving your dedicated factory guy with a lead in time, money, or both.

 

 

6 hours ago, CoyoteNZ said:

...Based on above, I would prefer a usage based system.

 

for example each item has a point value. Each unit of that item produced gives the user (or org) who created the item skill points to invest in industry. 

 

...

 

As for actual talents; I think there should be a talent for every item that can be produced. I don’t think it should be limited to 5/5, but keep going with diminishing returns naturally. This way people can specialise as far as they chose, not just be 5/5 done and won.

 

The only issue with my system is once somebody has learned a particular talent, how to slow them down from running a thousand machines producing that. Schematics currently slow that down. Maybe add a third talent on top of efficiency and productivity which allows quantity?

 

A limited/capped skill point system (the 5/5 one you said you don't favor) would turn in to "grinding cakes until they're trivial", while the unlimited one with diminishing returns you specified would inevitably allow the person who realizes and acquires their skill points the fastest (assuming multiple parallel lines allow for that much more skill gain) or first (assuming speed of skill gain is not affected by having parallel lines) to price all of their local (and/or possibly distant) opponents out of the market by virtue of the fact that their returns, while diminishing, are not 0. This would allow them to always have some slim advantage they could use to reduce their prices that much more.

 

The unlimited thing wouldn't necessarily be an issue quickly, particularly given the huge amounts of money some players have at their disposal to manipulate the market with, but it would be a thing eventually

 

The capped version wouldn't have this issue, but it would feel like just adding more grind to the game for most people.

[Hirnsausen]

On 12/16/2021 at 3:25 PM, CoyoteNZ said:

Based on above, I would prefer a usage based system.

Excellent points you are makin, I could imagine something like that, too.