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Frustrated Industrialist banging head at every turn


Pleione

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The game starts out pretty well if you keen on becoming an industrialist.  Biggest early problem is not running out of Tier 1 Pure schematics, but eventually you get over that. 

 

Soon you discover you need more Tier 2 ore and spend days scanning territories - took me about 50 scans to find a tile with T2 and I'm told I was lucky.  An additional 50 scans and no more T2, but I did find a sliver of T3.  Hurray!

 

Doesn't take long to discover you need an Advanced Mining Unit (T3) to mine T3 ore - ok, that makes sense.  Let see what that takes to build... An Uncommon Assembler.  Easy enough, my everyday Assembler's can do that... bit of a sigh that it will take 6hours and 24 minutes to build one, but ok.  Oh, but lets not forget - you need a Tier 2 L element schematic as well, kiss goodbye another 4 hours and 10 minutes.  So call it a day and come back tomorrow.

 

Tomorrow comes, you have the schematic, the Uncommon Assembler is cooking.  Damm that 6 hours and 24 minute cook time, but we were expecting that.  Do some maintenance, run around and calibrate, and hope its a weekend and you started early so that you don't have to wait another day.

 

Uncommon Assembler ready!  yeah!  Plop it down and configure for an Advanced Mining Unit L.  Processing time - 24 hours?!?!  Oh, that is after you fork out the better part of 2 days allowance (187,500 quanta) to make a schematic that will produce all of two of the units.  10 hours, 25 minutes of wait time for those schematics.  Well, at least we have time to go build all the advanced industry we need to feed this production run.

 

Finding it hard to consider this fun.  A game should be engaging, not hurry up and wait.  Plenty of Chinese porn games that have mastered that for cash.

 

I'm frightened to think of what Tier 5 ore is going to take to find and process into something...

 

And for those that will say it, no, I'm not playing solo, although I log more hours than most in my org and am their master builder.  At least for now.

 

 

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On 10/24/2022 at 12:31 PM, Distinct Mint said:

Industry and automining has always been like this, with the exception of the modified schematics.

No. The quantity of T2 ore available has been nerfed by an order of magnitude. Even finding T2 is now an exercise in frustration or sheer blind luck. Some are finding single tiles in 2-300 scans. 
 

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16 minutes ago, Distinct Mint said:

Industry and automining has always been like this, with the exception of the modified schematics.

Hardly "always".  Note I'm an Alpha Tester.  Prior to 0.23, industry was fun.  You would make progress based on effort expended and could feel good doing so.  Optimizing a layout, using Transfer Units to keep things running - this was fun.  Now it feels like the head banging in the title of this thread.  Oh, not to mention you could take a two week vacation and come back and pick up where you left off.  With luck, might have even raised some quanta via your dispensers.   Now everything is based around paying the tax man.

 

I've invested 4 years of my life in this game, and subscribed myself and 2 alts for a year in hopes it wasn't as bad as I heard.  It is.

 

I really feel bad for anyone coming into this game 6 months down the road, presuming its still running.  Surface ores are going to be the stuff of legends.

 

The balance is simply broke.  We tried for years to discuss this with NQ... but they knew better.  Not.  Most everything I've seen since 0.23 has been implemented to reduce the cost of running the servers - and sold as "performance enhancements", at the expense of players.

 

Its depressing.  I'm too old with too much medical history to every hope to get in the ground floor of another game with this potential.  Sad, just sad.

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I don't think it's supposed to be easy to bootstrap up a T3+ industry setup and make everything yourself.  I like the factory gameplay, and I like making things for myself as well as for the market, but the planning and complexity of it is part of what I enjoy about it.  I wouldn't want a button to instantly create all of the factory units, partly because it would make the game too easy and partly because everyone would have these factories so there would be no value in making things to sell to other players.

 

Also part of the skill with industry, IMO, is knowing what to make and what to buy.  On launch day, for example, you could buy a couple of S containers and M assemblers then use the nanopack to feed them and have a factory relatively quickly.  Those advanced mining units might be expensive but the machines you need to build them are available on the market at a reasonable price.  Same for the advanced machines (accepted if you did this a few weeks ago they weren't but that's just a bootstrapping thing).

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Here's a thing: Mining != Industry. They're two distinct endeavours. If you want to be an industrialist, there's no need to go prospecting for good tiles and setting up MUs. That's the miner's job.

 

Sure, the Industrialist should be making the miner's tools and selling them to them, but expecting to ramp up directly without taking the time to build a profitable core is probably a bit optimistic.

 

It may be that soloing as a pure Industrialist is impossible, or it might just be that the expectations aren't matching the planned game loops; people still want Basic containers...

 

 

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Yeah yeah... heard all that before.  NQ wants us all to be specialist... but I have no desire to be the best Advanced LED manufacturer out there.  This game should be about having some creative fun - you know - sandbox and all.  It shouldn't be about trying to recreate some economy where people live on 2% margins, paying the taxman no matter if they profit or not.

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Two of us are running the remains of our once double digit member pre release small org. But we have already managed to set up a factory that can create everything we need T1. We have all the tier 1 ship parts and all the industry machines required along with any honeycomb we require.
 

We have determined that it will only take a small amount of re-tooling to refit the factory to run tier three schematics.

 

We are currently very busy and fully  understand the timescales involved. This we have time to pre-plan and organise the lead times required on schematics and building. There’s been very little in the way of idle waiting. There’s always something to do in the meantime.

 

by the way, if you think 6 hours is long, check out the handily named, exotic XXXL super-expanded, extra-large gravity-inverted container. 
 

it takes 36 days to build and requires two relics, if my memory serves me… longer than a warp beacon… for a single container.  Add to that all the time required for the parts and so on and the schematic lead time and you could be at over two months. 
basically you’d need to have invested 45$ or 3DACs into the game to see your final container through from start to finish. 
 

now imagine you walk past your machine five weeks in only to see the dreading orange-red light and “server error” displayed on the control panel and know that you won’t see the container for another 2 DACs or $30 paid. 
 

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4 hours ago, Jinxed said:

Two of us are running the remains of our once double digit member pre release small org. But we have already managed to set up a factory that can create everything we need T1. We have all the tier 1 ship parts and all the industry machines required along with any honeycomb we require.
 

We have determined that it will only take a small amount of re-tooling to refit the factory to run tier three schematics.

 

We are currently very busy and fully  understand the timescales involved. This we have time to pre-plan and organise the lead times required on schematics and building. There’s been very little in the way of idle waiting. There’s always something to do in the meantime.

 

by the way, if you think 6 hours is long, check out the handily named, exotic XXXL super-expanded, extra-large gravity-inverted container. 
 

it takes 36 days to build and requires two relics, if my memory serves me… longer than a warp beacon… for a single container.  Add to that all the time required for the parts and so on and the schematic lead time and you could be at over two months. 
basically you’d need to have invested 45$ or 3DACs into the game to see your final container through from start to finish. 
 

now imagine you walk past your machine five weeks in only to see the dreading orange-red light and “server error” displayed on the control panel and know that you won’t see the container for another 2 DACs or $30 paid. 
 

 

 

And you guys still don't see that this sounds LIKE WORK .... and not PLAY anymore?

 

How can someone be so blind is beyond me ..... 

 

 

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7 hours ago, Jinxed said:

No. The quantity of T2 ore available has been needed by an order of magnitude. Even finding T2 is now an exercise in frustration or hair blind luck. Some are finding single tiles in 2-300 scans.

You forgot the most important part: "On ALIOTH!"... Open the planet view of the outer planets, look at some of the clusters, take particular not of who owns what...

 

DU is a puzzle, industry is one of the bigger puzzles in DU. Schematics (0.23) required a bit more planning (and grinding for quanta), the current schematics require way more planning, especially when you expand quickly and to higher tier levels. Does the schematics make the game more fun? Not really... At least not for me. It throws even more limits at us, all those limits NQ have introduced since the start of beta instead of expanding the game, they've just removed more stuff and put more limits on it. But it might make DU more playable by smaller groups and single players in later stages of the game. BUT imho DU needs to be around for such an amount of time for that to be noticeable and that might be a problem.

 

During beta we've seen many things that at first look seem OK, until they aren't. Removing things like schematics will impact the game in unforeseen ways, that most people playing now either don't care about (all about me right now) or don't have a clue about what kind of issues that will bring (and happily gripe about those issues when they show up)...

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3 hours ago, sHuRuLuNi said:

 

How can someone be so blind is beyond me ..... 

 

 

Imma comment on this one, it's my namesake! DU was better in Beta, minus some small QoL changes. I'm glad I at least got to play the suppirior version of it before release, even if it had its issues it wasn't nearly this time gated/grindy to start and was easier to establish yourself.

 

Plus DU has better support response times and was cheaper in Beta with... more planets. Better mining rates. Even roid mining was a bit better because of respawns every weekend... they did no real balancing of the game before release... and it shows. 

 

If Empyrion had DU's voxel(it does, just not as detailed) tech and larger server size it'd be pretty much be what DU promised to be... at a one time buy in price. Playing both at DU launch and... kept feeling like I was playing what DU was attempting to do. Even the start with the landers are nearly the same. 

 

Fun part? I bought empyrion year+ ago for $15, it added a bunch of features and updates(still active development, arguably faster paced than NQ dev team) 

 

Funny enough the industry in that game is more like what DU announced for kickstarter, using factory units without the need for tooons of machines. Can even have your factory make the parts/deploy a blueprint of a ship/base That can take hours for it to manufacture all the parts. So many free BP's on steam workshop. 

 

So you started singleplayer? Well you can spool up the save on a dedicated private

Server and build a community as others have and even charge access to via patreon. Putting the server owner in control of their game world. 

 

Every feature DU has, arguably Emperyion has and soooo much more. 

 

Need quick ore? Use a mining hover vehicle with drills on it to mine underground like DU used to have, but you can hand mine them or use constructor blocks. Want to automine? Its there!  Asteroids?! Takes a few minutes to find one... although you can go hunting for rich roid spots in a near limitless amounts of solar systems to explore... that have game related POI's to find and explore. 

 

 

My eyes are wide open after trying the latest version of Empyriom during DU's launch. 

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5 hours ago, sHuRuLuNi said:

 

 

And you guys still don't see that this sounds LIKE WORK .... and not PLAY anymore?

 

How can someone be so blind is beyond me ..... 

 

 


Please keep your insults to yourself... cheers. We get enough from NQ.

 

if that sounds like work to you, you must have a certain type of mundane job. It’s nothing like my job which is far less structured,  more free form and moderately creative…

 

I enjoy the disciple and the puzzle nature of the beast that is DU industry, much like people enjoy factorio, a good crossword puzzle or even chess. 
 

some of us like to actually use our brains for recreation. 

 

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And back to the point:)

 

Lets not shift this from NQ

 

Industry is indeed a beast and while i even have professional experience with industry, to be honest the beast created is even more challenging as real-world industrial lines.

 

there already is a recepy in every industrial unit but beside that we need a schematic to run a recipy, crazyness 101. its the same as needing a licence to read a cook book to actually cook dinner and not only that, you need a different licence for everything you cook.

 

But if you shove the materials in your mouth and just chew them all together no licence is needed.

 

And Thats schematics.... If they ever make a 101 on what killed DU i would say that schematics is number one starting with the introduction in 0.23 that sent about 60 to 70% of all active players flying. if not even more

 

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1 hour ago, Aaron Cain said:

And back to the point:)

 

Lets not shift this from NQ

 

Industry is indeed a beast and while i even have professional experience with industry, to be honest the beast created is even more challenging as real-world industrial lines.

 

there already is a recepy in every industrial unit but beside that we need a schematic to run a recipy, crazyness 101. its the same as needing a licence to read a cook book to actually cook dinner and not only that, you need a different licence for everything you cook.

 

But if you shove the materials in your mouth and just chew them all together no licence is needed.

 

And Thats schematics.... If they ever make a 101 on what killed DU i would say that schematics is number one starting with the introduction in 0.23 that sent about 60 to 70% of all active players flying. if not even more

 

 

Completely agree.  Of course, it was much worse at 0.23.  At least now you can make them, but beyond the 1M a day I'm spending on tile taxes, I'm spending about that on schematics.  Functionally, in my typical 10 hour game day, I'm spending about 4 just working to raise cash to pay taxes.  Note the term "working", as in "work", as in not-enjoying myself, as in hoping I didn't make a mistake signing up my main and 2 alts for a year.

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was great to read here, lots of the good voices here in the forums ! Looks like there aren't ..  that many any .. more .. anyway

 

I really was too lazy to restart DU - or much more to invest my time again, so I'm really glad to get some impressions from you guys still playing and trying hardly not to starve !

With respect for your courage and engagement giving it a retry. I think I cant.

 

hard to think of all the grind to do again - and now after the restart even harder

so sometimes I feel bad not to play DU, but right now, it just feels to be the better choice

 

I'll just keep that carpet and some pottery in memory, of what this Game to me once was

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I think that everyone will be complaining about industry as everyone needs to do industry to have something to do. Specialization will only happen if there are other proper avenues of making money and the ability to loose stuff.

 

I am also not happy with the schematics but mega factories will destroy smaller orgs and outsell them. Perhaps there is a better way? Like Eve where if your factory is setup in null space you get benefits and having a true "risk vs reward"

 

Another aspect that is bothering me is the availability of higher tier ore and it seems like it is going the same way like Eve where major alliances controlled all the moon mining. They had to change this to balance the game.

 

Bottom line is that we need something else except industry to make decent money.

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Decent money in DU:

- Industry

- Asteroid Mining

- Automining

- Harvesting

- Trading

- Mission running

- Makings designs of ships/structures and sell the BPCs

- Sell tile scans

- Do x for y quanta for other players, move stuff, voxel stuff, remove a mountain, etc.

- Sell you're 'put down' talents for ships, industry or mining units...

 

There is a TON of ways to make quanta in DU, some more effective then others. You can do casual stuff to make a little quanta, but if you want to scale it up, expect to spend a LOT of time and quanta on it doing the same thing over and over again! Repeating the same thing is boring as F! But in the end it'll often give a big payout... You also do one thing a lot, to safe up for another or doing it BIGGER...

 

You don't want to do any of that, then DU isn't the game for you.

 

Looking at the prices of ore, not just T1, but T2-T5 (the whole spectrum). I'm thinking that ore distribution both on tiles and on asteroids is just fine! I would even go so far as to say that higher tier ores are kinda cheap!

 

 

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OP listed pretty much everything that is good about industry startup. Schematics aren't even as bad as people make them out to be. Really not seeing the issue here. Sounds like everyone had it really easy and now it's oh so much more complicated and time consuming. Yes.. yes it is and it's a good thing.

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On 10/28/2022 at 5:02 PM, Cergorach said:

 

 

Looking at the prices of ore, not just T1, but T2-T5 (the whole spectrum). I'm thinking that ore distribution both on tiles and on asteroids is just fine! I would even go so far as to say that higher tier ores are kinda cheap!

 

 

That's because the distribution doesn't matter.  All you need is a 1L tile of each high end ore type to take 6 digit quantities of ore per day in calibration ore and this is crashing the high tier ore market.

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