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How to bring T1 bots back


Pleione

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21 hours ago, Rimezx said:

Applying bandages after shooting yourself in the foot does not solve your issues.

 

Current mining unit and tax and flower system should be removed from the game all together in my opinion. Make mining units placable on dynamic cores and draining a large amount of ore from a tile in a small amount of time, depleting the tile. Have tile ore contents reset and change every month. Include no territory units and claiming in this system. That's 100x more fun and engaging. Also fair to new starters. 

 

 

Yet applying bandages would still be the first thing you would do.

 

And if you shot yourself in the foot last time you fired the gun.  And the time before that, and the time before that.  Maybe firing off 10 more shots isn't the best idea...

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2 hours ago, Wyndle said:

If you genuinely believe the game is already dead why put any energy into the forums?


Honestly cause we are pissed that we were duped into investing hundreds of dollars, by developers who don't seem to care about veteran players. Wiped our progress promising it was necessary to fix the unfair advantages of exploiting. Then post launch said things weren't exploits, and then went and nerfed them, but not before letting their favorites benefit at the expense of the majority of community. After a botched launch with people that still haven't gotten all their backer rewards.

- Wipe was for what?
- Launch changed what?
- Economy works... what?
- Customer service... what?

So us being here is kinda like a dog that has been quilled by porcupine, when you see one again you know the upcoming result, but can't help being pissed about last time.
 

Edited by Rokkur
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Im kinda new on DU and I would like to have a better understanding about the economy.

I'm aware of some cash sinks such territory taxes, schematics, etc, but what about the faucet? On the long run, the only way to make new money will be courier missions?

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54 minutes ago, Pleione said:

Well... that is the end of this discussion:

 

 

They opted for Option X - do nothing.  Guess that solves the problem right?  At least it doesn't cost them anything beyond the post time.

It sounded more to me like this was the plan from the start.  If they had told us that plan up front I would have applauded and probably championed the decision (and probably have previously).  To hide the plan in case it didn't work only harms trust between NQ and the community.  

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37 minutes ago, Baenre said:

Im kinda new on DU and I would like to have a better understanding about the economy.

I'm aware of some cash sinks such territory taxes, schematics, etc, but what about the faucet? On the long run, the only way to make new money will be courier missions?

This.

 

The question they need to be asking is 'where does the money come from?'.    From the T1 bot order announcement it seems that they thought generating 3-4x the tile tax cost was somehow bad.  IMO that's actually quite low for a functioning economy in a video game.  Video games aren't like real life where you only earn just about what you need in order to have a life.  People want to play, grow and gain resources, build things or do things or whatever and then eventually they will stop.  The biggest quanta sync is going to be people who stop playing the game with tons of quanta in their wallets.

As it happens, mission running will come to the rescue here!  I would love to see (since NQ obviously has it) the amount of quanta injected into the game via missions compared with the amount that was being injected from the T1 bot orders.  There are people literally making billions of quanta per day from missions, it's so broken!  I played the factory game since launch and probably made close to 500 mil since launch (re-investing most of it in a bigger factory).  I switched to missions (only 5 characters, nothing silly) and have made about 100 mil in the first 2 days using a ship that cost under 20 mil.

 

What bothers me is that with no T1 bot orders it's going to be really hard for them to fix missions without answering the question 'where is the money coming from now?'.

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2 hours ago, Wyndle said:

It sounded more to me like this was the plan from the start.  If they had told us that plan up front I would have applauded and probably championed the decision (and probably have previously).  To hide the plan in case it didn't work only harms trust between NQ and the community.  

 

I agree that I spent some millions of quantas to acquire tiles. I purchased a 1L of limestone's tile which worth nothing now without calibration and also bauxite and coal flowers... There is nothing more frustrating that playing a game and changing the rules mid way.. Im kinda tired to be a payer tech tester... happened during the wipe for the release, then the calibration and now the bots. 

Seems to me a lack of leadership and vision from the dev team.

 

2 hours ago, Zeddrick said:

I switched to missions (only 5 characters, nothing silly) and have made about 100 mil in the first 2 days using a ship that cost under 20 mil.

 

Maybe but courier missions are boring and definitively not worth 3 accounts at 10$ / month. You can't just open game's API from one hand and forcing people doing brainless missions/mtu to gain money on the other hand. This game have no identity nor end game goals.

 

I think I will take a break for now and see what the Devs will do to change the game for something motivating, rewarding and a definitively a goal (yes but its a sandbox, blabla.. NO just building isnt enough). But that will need something better than a simple letter after 2 months to tell us what will happens in another 2 months.. Your creative director should have play games like eve online, prosperous universe, etc instead space invader, we're in 2022 after all.

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1 hour ago, Baenre said:

I agree that I spent some millions of quantas to acquire tiles. I purchased a 1L of limestone's tile which worth nothing now without calibration and also bauxite and coal flowers... There is nothing more frustrating that playing a game and changing the rules mid way.. 

 

The worst part about this change for me was all someone from NQ had to do was comment in the thread where they said calibrations were allowed. One or two lines saying that multi-calibration was generating too much ore and they were developing a fix to prevent it. That would have taken 10 minutes of someone's time. Rather than that, they were developing the fix for however many days/weeks while knowing that players were wasting their time scanning, buying and training talents to use what they claimed was a feature.

If they think the capability needed to be removed, that's fine. It's just so inconsiderate of players' time to say something is allowed, give zero notice that you're going to remove it and then remove it in a standard maintenance as an 'Improvement.' 

Edited by fiddlybits
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I will not say now whether bots are needed or not.
One moment bothers me.
Twice in the last week we have been deceived.
First, they introduced restrictions on calibration, although it was said that this was not an exploit.
Now they write that market bots are not needed, although a month ago they said that they should be updated.
The game is more and more like a scam...
It seems that none of the statements of the developers can not be trusted. We must conclude...

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8 hours ago, Baenre said:

 

Maybe but courier missions are boring and definitively not worth 3 accounts at 10$ / month. 

 

Who said anything about 10$ per month.  DAC is selling for around 28mil for a month of gametime.  I can make enough to DAC all my characters in 3 mission loops.  Then I can play for free!

 

I do agree with the rest of what you said though.

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1 hour ago, Zeddrick said:

Who said anything about 10$ per month.  DAC is selling for around 28mil for a month of gametime.  I can make enough to DAC all my characters in 3 mission loops.  Then I can play for free!

 

I do agree with the rest of what you said though.

Only for the moment... all the money and DACs will be gone in a couple of months.

Then people will be flooding the market with unsellable multimillion quanta mcguffins that nobody can afford.

 

 

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13 hours ago, Zeddrick said:

  I switched to missions (only 5 characters, nothing silly) and have made about 100 mil in the first 2 days using a ship that cost under 20 mil.

 

What bothers me is that with no T1 bot orders it's going to be really hard for them to fix missions without answering the question 'where is the money coming from now?'.

 

What bothers me is that a player can say "only 5 characters, nothing silly"  and keep a straight face.

FML.

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4 hours ago, Zeddrick said:

Who said anything about 10$ per month.  DAC is selling for around 28mil for a month of gametime.  I can make enough to DAC all my characters in 3 mission loops.  Then I can play for free!

You don't actually play for free, your computer needs to run and that costs energy, and depending on where you live, that can be quite expensive... Here in the Netherlands it's getting towards €1/kWh. So those mission loops people are running are costing power, and since you need your computer running to run the long missions, that costs power, probably a LOT!

 

Back in Beta I ran missions 4.5 days/week 12-16 hours per day. I have a SUPER efficient mini PC (4800U) with integrated graphics that can actually run the DU client at very low settings. At those very low settings, it still consumes 40W, the monitor that's connected takes 55W. At current power prices here, that's already €4.38 PC/account/week, that's ~€19/month per PC running missions... I could get that to half if I turned off the monitor for most of the time... And that's on a pretty good and efficient machine (probably only the Steam Deck will be more efficient and DU doesn't currently run on a Steam Deck... A 1080 (Ti) machine can easily pull 250W, easily €60 PC/month. More modern cards will up that by a LOT, A heavy 4090 could easily start to cost €100-€200 when run day in day out...

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I thought a little and I don't understand.
How do bots for T1 ore give "excessively" a lot of money. Where is it "too much"?
Let's take a rough look. To calibrate 7 flower tiles to the maximum on T1, you need to spend somewhere around 5 calibrations per 1 tile 1 time in 3 days. A total of 10 calibrations per week (the ideal is not always achievable and calibrations must be saved). In total, 70 calibrations are obtained per flower. As you can see, I'm not overbearing. Even if the skills are not at 5. If the skills for calibrations are pumped to the maximum, then we get one calibration in 3.5 hours. Total for the week 48 calibrations. As you can see, with one character at the maximum, even one flower cannot be held. So you need 2 characters. Moreover, they constantly carry and visit their farms every 3 days.
Right now I brought a load from one flower. I roughly got 470 kl of T1 ore.
Let's round up to 500.
In total, for the "simplicity" of the calculation, we get a revenue of 25,000,000 quanta - 3,500,000 quanta for the territories. On hand for 2 characters we get 21,500,000 quanta.
And now some other arithmetic. Without flying out of the safe zone, you can put these 2 characters on the ship and complete a mission for 1.8 M quanta once a day. We will assume that we will also perform 6 days.
For two characters, you get 21,600,000 quanta. Well, minus the fuel. Let the fuel go for 1kk.
Total 20,600,000 quants.
So what is the excess of income from bots? And there are generally convenient ways from tades to madis and back, when it turns out 2.7 kk per circle. And fly only 80 su.
This is the first.
Second.

If bots seem excessive to someone - make the price 20 or 15 quanta. What is the problem?

Why did I write this.
It seems to me that someone is guided more by sensations and not by numbers. I don't see any redundancy in bots compared to missions. But people have a choice of what to do. Moreover, the ore does not remain in circulation when sold to bots and is actually destroyed.

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13 hours ago, fiddlybits said:

 

The worst part about this change for me was all someone from NQ had to do was comment in the thread where they said calibrations were allowed. One or two lines saying that multi-calibration was generating too much ore and they were developing a fix to prevent it. That would have taken 10 minutes of someone's time. Rather than that, they were developing the fix for however many days/weeks while knowing that players were wasting their time scanning, buying and training talents to use what they claimed was a feature.

If they think the capability needed to be removed, that's fine. It's just so inconsiderate of players' time to say something is allowed, give zero notice that you're going to remove it and then remove it in a standard maintenance as an 'Improvement.' 

It's even worse than that. They actually posted to say that the calibration thing was not an exploit and was intended behavior of the mining unit. So they actually eased people's suspicions about it and told them it was fine.

 

NQ doesn't post often, but boy when they do....

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8 hours ago, ColonkinYT said:

 

If bots seem excessive to someone - make the price 20 or 15 quanta. What is the problem?

 

 

This is absolutely my thought. Rather than adjust the values to something reasonable, they just remove them? Do they always have to "solve" things in the most inconsiderate manner? I think they just killed mining, for me.

 

I just decided to use some DAC like a week ago, and I really didn't even want to return at all. I put most of my XP into mining units (a fair bit into piloting and surface harvesting too, before I found out they don't respawn), because that's how I made money in beta 6-8ish months ago. Now I'm wondering why tf I bothered, because I have no reasonable way to move that T1, and I only got the news they weren't coming back AFTER I set up my first 4xL MU tile. I invested everything I had made so far into that.

 

I'm not doing the same boring af hauling missions over and over and over, just to save up for a bigger ship to do it over even longer distances. At least with MUs, I could do what I wanted to in between calibrations, which is make cool/fun things, help with projects, or just explore/scan. Now I'm beholden to waste 90% of my game time afk in the void of space, just so I can afford to do what I REALLY want to do? I don't mind investing time into making money, as long as it there's some enjoyment in it - right now, I'm not finding either.

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4 hours ago, Novidian Prime said:

 

This is absolutely my thought. Rather than adjust the values to something reasonable, they just remove them? Do they always have to "solve" things in the most inconsiderate manner? I think they just killed mining, for me.

 

I just decided to use some DAC like a week ago, and I really didn't even want to return at all. I put most of my XP into mining units (a fair bit into piloting and surface harvesting too, before I found out they don't respawn), because that's how I made money in beta 6-8ish months ago. Now I'm wondering why tf I bothered, because I have no reasonable way to move that T1, and I only got the news they weren't coming back AFTER I set up my first 4xL MU tile. I invested everything I had made so far into that.

 

I'm not doing the same boring af hauling missions over and over and over, just to save up for a bigger ship to do it over even longer distances. At least with MUs, I could do what I wanted to in between calibrations, which is make cool/fun things, help with projects, or just explore/scan. Now I'm beholden to waste 90% of my game time afk in the void of space, just so I can afford to do what I REALLY want to do? I don't mind investing time into making money, as long as it there's some enjoyment in it - right now, I'm not finding either.

Exactly.
Good game design is about different ways of making money for different professions. For pilots - delivery missions, for miners - bots (or mining missions with the delivery of ore), for production workers - their missions or their bots would also not be bad, and for shooters their missions would also not be bad.
Balancing the prices of all this so that the income is equivalent for each profession is not such a difficult task. Especially with numbers from the database.
We constantly see attempts to force us to go strictly in one direction.
And this causes misunderstanding.

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17 hours ago, ColonkinYT said:

How do bots for T1 ore give "excessively" a lot of money. Where is it "too much"?

Because each account could mine/harvest 1.5 million to 2 million ore per week. That is 37.5-50 million quanta per week per account. 9+ million of that goes to tile taxes. It costs quanta, resources, talents and time to set up. But when setup you can run it once per week, taking a couple of hours of calibration and harvesting with zero risk.

 

Now compare that to mission running:

Doing the 180k mission with 1 character would take 170-200+ runs and probably more hours in the week then you can safely spend on DU.

Doing the multi million quanta missions often takes you out of safe space and easily take up many hours while running the DU client (costing RL money). And there is risk in pvp space, the 5-10 missions you need to run take up way more time then the couple of hours of keeping your auto-mining operation going.

 

Both don't scale in the same way with multiple accounts and especially the mission running limits people from doing that at scale, as they lack multiple computers and Geforce Now requires active input...

 

Heck! With the current cost of energy and depending on the eventual cost of DAC (both ingame and in RL cash), it might be just cheaper to buy DAC, sell that for quanta, then to keep a computer running for 40+ hrs/week doing missions...

 

EDIT:

And it's not just automine, you can do both, run missions and automine. And especially if you have multiple accounts/computers you can automine, run missions, and do asteroid mining. That is a LOT of quanta entering the economy! Way more then can exit the economy via taxes and schematics, even with the new talents that NQ is introducing in the next patch...

 

With this change, if you have tiles and do your max schematics research, you need about 25M/week, that's a lot of mission running before that balances out in the faucet/sink scheme, especially if you run multiple accounts.

Edited by Cergorach
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So in short, the bots had to go to keep people playing stupid time consuming missions. And thats also why i need to invest around 4 million on schematics just to get some lights in my build.

 

This setup is just build for failure. Somehow they got the idea that if we just drag people they will subscribe more months. Well, there still is no reward and thus no rason to subscribe, even better if you just stop all these time consuming things like the npc missions and just actually play you will see what is there to do ingame with others.......nothing.

 

Because building stuff is not just a grind but an ubergrind these days almost nobody does it. there are no reasons also for large buildings next to glammour, a bed but you cannot sleep in it or have a function on it and the same for the rest of the glamour stuff.

I am building my HQ building and within 2 days i had all of it done but it needa about 70 lights and that will take me about a month to get with all restrictions, and yes i am not going to do stupid missions or feed the failing system so its a oneman job and that plainly shows the issue with DU at this moment. A TL armenture i can buy at a local store for 10 euros costs about 300k in DU and its almost impossible to make without a grand network. It is easier for me to build a perfect space vessel in a week (actually i did it in 1 day) but impossible to build 70 lights..........

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1 hour ago, Cergorach said:

Because each account could mine/harvest 1.5 million to 2 million ore per week. That is 37.5-50 million quanta per week per account. 9+ million of that goes to tile taxes. It costs quanta, resources, talents and time to set up. But when setup you can run it once per week, taking a couple of hours of calibration and harvesting with zero risk.

 

 

First, not everyone.
I have tiles with 400 l/h of bauxite. There is no such amount of ore there. I admit that there are tiles with a total output of 600 l / h. But I haven't even seen them. About 500 max.
Secondly, as I wrote below, who prevented immediately from putting not 25 quants per liter, but 20 or 18. To balance the cash flow.
Thirdly. I don’t know about you, but I really don’t like it when they force me to one way of making money in the sandbox. I do not like to ride in the game on the ship for hours in afk mode.

 

P.S. Calibrating a flower once a week will never yield 7 tiles at 1.5-2 million ore. Performance after 3 days after calibration starts to fall very rapidly, even with bonuses.

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