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Author Topic: Once More, with Feeling  (Read 31567 times)

Alex

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Once More, with Feeling
« on: October 05, 2018, 03:12:14 PM »

Blog post here.
« Last Edit: October 05, 2018, 03:14:30 PM by Alex »
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Bribe Guntails

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Re: Once More, with Feeling
« Reply #1 on: October 05, 2018, 03:55:25 PM »

Excited!  ;D

I was a little afraid we'd be losing more nuanced optimizing of our Colony economy, but it's just condensing everything further into a more easily accessible system.
So the old 3-tab Economy overview window is now this current window with no tabs?
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FooF

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Re: Once More, with Feeling
« Reply #2 on: October 05, 2018, 03:58:39 PM »

On one level, I feel bad because the previous iteration seemed pretty interesting and well-developed (which means a lot of thought and effort went into it). On the other hand, this new system looks/feels pretty intuitive, so I'm happy you went through the process. It's cool to see the market share impact and I agree with your assessment that it gives you a general overview of the Sector as a whole.

I can't imagine playtesting and having that gnawing thought in the back of your head going "this isn't working..." Ugh.  :-[
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DrakonST

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Re: Once More, with Feeling
« Reply #3 on: October 05, 2018, 04:06:51 PM »

Quote
Of course, someone at Sindria is probably looking at a similar set of charts on their TriPad and fuming at the market share lost to an irritating upstart…

 :o

Hint about more deep faction war!
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Alex

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Re: Once More, with Feeling
« Reply #4 on: October 05, 2018, 04:33:46 PM »

I was a little afraid we'd be losing more nuanced optimizing of our Colony economy, but it's just condensing everything further into a more easily accessible system.
So the old 3-tab Economy overview window is now this current window with no tabs?

Yeah, but it's got 2 tabs - "Producers" and "Consumers".

On one level, I feel bad because the previous iteration seemed pretty interesting and well-developed (which means a lot of thought and effort went into it). On the other hand, this new system looks/feels pretty intuitive, so I'm happy you went through the process. It's cool to see the market share impact and I agree with your assessment that it gives you a general overview of the Sector as a whole.

Yeah, it just didn't work, unfortunately. Some stuff I didn't go into too much, for example: it was possible to rake in insane profits by stacking accessibility, right. So I had to put in an "overhead" mechanic which was just diminishing returns for profits from exporting and it just kept getting uglier and uglier. And all the time spent trying to figure out the colony-colony relationships with the outcome just being "need to stack X% more accessibility" which is a lot of work for not very exciting gameplay.

I mean, now you still need to stack accessibility - or at least, want to - but there's no hard cutoff and it's just an easy thing you do, not something you dig around in for a long time. In general the goal is to have the system be clear and simple enough that it's sort of just there making everything else possible, if that makes sense. This most recent paring down feels like a huge step towards that.

Definitely the thing I've wrestled with the most, probably owing to it plugging into too many things that just weren't there up until now.

I can't imagine playtesting and having that gnawing thought in the back of your head going "this isn't working..." Ugh.  :-[

Have to admit, that really wasn't fun. Like, "god damn it, but I just can't leave it like this, it's bad". Thankfully hit on a viable and not-too-different alternative fairly quickly.

Thank you for empathizing :)
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Nick XR

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Re: Once More, with Feeling
« Reply #5 on: October 05, 2018, 04:48:03 PM »

Nice work Alex, better to take time and get it right.  As you know, with many things it's not possible to tell if they'll work/be fun until you try them.

Also thanks for the post, any and all are appreciated  :)

Arkiuz

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Re: Once More, with Feeling
« Reply #6 on: October 05, 2018, 04:56:58 PM »

Can we ban what we don't want from being traded?  Similar to how other factions would ban, say, drugs.
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Voyager I

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Re: Once More, with Feeling
« Reply #7 on: October 05, 2018, 05:58:26 PM »

This is the first economy take that didn't make my brain bluescreen, so it's definitely a positive change.
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Delta7

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Re: Once More, with Feeling
« Reply #8 on: October 05, 2018, 06:22:24 PM »

Single player Eve online! I approve!
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ArkAngel

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Re: Once More, with Feeling
« Reply #9 on: October 05, 2018, 06:25:24 PM »

I will say i was quietly worrying that I would be completely lost on the colony system and have to look up how to do things on the forum after release. This is much easier to follow and work with, I think.
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Histidine

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Re: Once More, with Feeling
« Reply #10 on: October 05, 2018, 06:59:38 PM »

Hurrah! No more "only one supplier allowed per buyer" surrealism, and dispensing with the binary nature of being a supplier or not certainly sounds good.

Is the max global export just the export capacity of the largest supplier? I'm guessing yes (so it works the same as everything else, i.e. you can't have enough 5-fuel suppliers raise max global fuel exports from 7 to 8 ).

Should a Free Port condition increase accessibility? It sounds logical enough, and without it pirate/Pather markets look like they'd have a semi-permanent scarcity of most goods.

The "hostilities with other factions" percentage is calculated as (sum of market sizes of hostile factions) / (sum of market sizes of all factions in the Sector) or something along those lines, I take it?
« Last Edit: October 05, 2018, 07:28:39 PM by Histidine »
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Cyan Leader

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Re: Once More, with Feeling
« Reply #11 on: October 05, 2018, 07:24:57 PM »

I agree with the others that this system is pretty easy to wrap the mind around. While I would have liked to try both, I'm trust your judgment that the previous system wasn't viable. My main concern about colonies is if they trivialize the rest of the game too quickly ie. really quickly very profitable, though I imagine that there is a lot more to spend our hard earned money on now.
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Midnight Kitsune

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Re: Once More, with Feeling
« Reply #12 on: October 05, 2018, 07:29:51 PM »

I agree with the others: This is the best looking econ revamp so far
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Cik

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Re: Once More, with Feeling
« Reply #13 on: October 05, 2018, 07:42:36 PM »

it seems like a good system. are you going to implement relationship changes based on increasing/decreasing competition? i could definitely see the impetus for wars in this handling of economics- if you can plunder, destroy or steal pieces of the pie with a limited war it could definitely be worth it.

personally i wouldn't see most factions taking that lying down- i expect for instance that the sindrian government and military especially is basically funded solely by their energy monopoly and you threatening the basis of the economy could easily inspire military action against you or another competitor.

anyway, i think it's an excellent system and i'm interested in where it's going to go in terms of implications for diplomacy.
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Alex

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Re: Once More, with Feeling
« Reply #14 on: October 05, 2018, 07:46:40 PM »

Nice work Alex, better to take time and get it right.  As you know, with many things it's not possible to tell if they'll work/be fun until you try them.

Also thanks for the post, any and all are appreciated  :)

Thank you :)



Can we ban what we don't want from being traded?  Similar to how other factions would ban, say, drugs.

To a degree - your colonies by default ban the usual set (drugs, organs) but setting a colony to "free port" makes these legal and allows for profit to be made from exports of these.

I did think about having more detailed per-commodity controls, but it seems more like a solution looking for a problem - complex and I wasn't coming up with anything particularly interesting as a result of it being an option. Especially not with the "Free Port" toggle covering much of the same ground.


This is the first economy take that didn't make my brain bluescreen, so it's definitely a positive change.

I'll take it!

Single player Eve online! I approve!

Hah! Riight.

I will say i was quietly worrying that I would be completely lost on the colony system and have to look up how to do things on the forum after release. This is much easier to follow and work with, I think.

Awesome! That's really making me feel more positive about the new system.


Is the max global export just the export capacity of the largest supplier? I'm guessing yes (so it works the same as everything else, i.e. you can't have enough 5-fuel suppliers raise max global fuel exports from 7 to 8).

Yep. I didn't touch on this in the post, but - what I think you're getting at here - imports can only raise availability up to what the largest supplier has. So if the max supplier has 7 fuel (or has more, but can only ship out 7 units) then a colony with demand for 8 fuel would have the following modifiers:
+8 Desired import volume
-1 Global shortage

(Or -1 In-faction shortage, if this is an in-faction supplier.)

Should a Free Port condition increase accessibility? It sounds logical enough, and without it pirate/Pather markets look like they'd have a semi-permanent scarcity of most goods.

It does increase it! There's actually a mechanic where the increase goes up over time, up to a limit.

Pather/pirate markets are currently kind of hosed right now despite this, so I might have to do a bit more balancing.

The "hostilities with other factions" percentage is calculated as (sum of market sizes of hostile factions) / (sum of market sizes of all factions in the Sector) or something along those lines, I take it?

Yep, almost exactly. It's max(1, marketSize - 2) to give larger markets more weights.


My main concern about colonies is if they trivialize the rest of the game too quickly ie. really quickly very profitable, though I imagine that there is a lot more to spend our hard earned money on now.

I think that's definitely a valid concern and this'll take some fine-tuning. In particular, the dangers faced by colonies should be an indirect drain on profits, but quantifying that is tricky. That said, yeah, lots of stuff to spend money on. In dev mode, I start with a million credits and frequently have to give myself more after setting up a test colony or two.

I agree with the others: This is the best looking econ revamp so far

Thank you!


it seems like a good system. are you going to implement relationship changes based on increasing/decreasing competition? i could definitely see the impetus for wars in this handling of economics- if you can plunder, destroy or steal pieces of the pie with a limited war it could definitely be worth it.

personally i wouldn't see most factions taking that lying down- i expect for instance that the sindrian government and military especially is basically funded solely by their energy monopoly and you threatening the basis of the economy could easily inspire military action against you or another competitor.

anyway, i think it's an excellent system and i'm interested in where it's going to go in terms of implications for diplomacy.

& also thank you!

I may or may not be coding something directly related to what you're talking about as we speak :) The Diktat certainly seem like the type that wouldn't mind getting their hands a little dirty with some plausibly-deniable bombardments out in the black.
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