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Author Topic: Resource management sucks  (Read 5945 times)

Q8

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Re: Resource management sucks
« Reply #30 on: September 20, 2019, 02:33:39 PM »

@SCC
Im with u man, whatever thats worth, but i just dont see, how u could fix that, without like close to total economy revamp. And the amount of work is not the worst part about it. First, you would have to convince Alex that economy should come before the player, and not the other way around.
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SCC

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Re: Resource management sucks
« Reply #31 on: September 20, 2019, 02:36:15 PM »

You can start by making more resources useful to the player and by restricting the access the player has to those resources. Nothing will happen to the economy, if only the player has to get a commission to buy certain commodities, or if he has to get a high enough reputation with a certain station commander.

Q8

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Re: Resource management sucks
« Reply #32 on: September 20, 2019, 02:54:57 PM »

At this point u dont, and i dont neither, but im afraid, that just after u think of a way to make a resource useful to the player, ull find it out.

lets say u make a change, that requires the player to spend transplutonic to swap weapons on ships. That wouldnt be too big of a change, but it would require economy to come before the player. Basically anything u could think of, will force u to go thru that loop. And since its inception, or atleast since i remember, this game was always about the player, and not about the world. Thats why u have such things like  uncaped selling, weird spawn mechanics that just spawn *** out of the blue even on ruined worlds, or economy simulating prices and all only for the player, while not simulating it even for itself.
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SafariJohn

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Re: Resource management sucks
« Reply #33 on: September 20, 2019, 04:23:14 PM »

Gating access to resources sounds like a good idea to me. It seems like it would particularly add nuance to being a merchant. The Tradewinds games, for example, limit you to the lowest-value goods at the beginning.
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Q8

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Re: Resource management sucks
« Reply #34 on: September 20, 2019, 04:35:27 PM »

Holy crap! Tradewinds! thats a blast from the past!
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Morrokain

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Re: Resource management sucks
« Reply #35 on: September 20, 2019, 06:51:19 PM »

Many other posts have already defended the inclusion of multiple commodity types and I agree with them so I won't touch that further.

So, instead of removing them as an option, I'll talk about the second idea of making them more useful. A couple things have already been suggested.

What stood out to me: Metal used for ship repairs would be an easy-to-implement and welcome change for me. You get a lot of metals from salvage and they take up more in your inventory than anything else. Especially in the early game, I'd rather save that space for supplies, fuel and weapons so I end up dumping a lot of metal if I can't get back to a colony in time and I am low on inventory space. This would make that commodity in particular much more valuable and add more immersion. +1 :)

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That's only one commodity though, so what about the others?

I will say I am in the camp of having colony/ship construction require commodities, however Alex has already given reasons why he is not a fan of that change:

http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=16611.msg263485#msg263485

- To summarize, he feels that having construction cost materials would result in the endless chore of carting those materials to every colony and in the end- essentially make for grindy, boring gameplay during mid/end game colony management.

First and foremost: I completely agree with that assessment. If the player is responsible for keeping colonies stocked with resources then that will most certainly become a chore to some if not most players. There is probably a percentage of players who would agree to that change in order to make colony management more fun, but like most things the entire player population needs to be considered here.

My potential solution to the above problem: (If this specific implementation has been suggested before, I apologize. I, personally, have not seen it.)

- The game is already set up to have npc trader fleets "trade" with player colonies, so why not have npc trader fleets sell those colonies' needed commodities and more realistically tie them into the global Core Worlds' economy? A trader fleet docking with a colony will simply give an offer to the player in the intel screen where they can accept/deny the purchase of goods. Prices are determined by proximity to the faction's colony offering the deal, the commodities value itself to that particular station (shortage/demand etc), the reputation of the player faction with the trader faction, and even the quality of the colonies' administrators. As you can see, that change alone could broadly affect multiple parts of the game in good ways, imo, and also make sense from an immersion standpoint.

However:

Two immediate issues from the above suggestion are apparent and I will attempt to solve them after pointing them out:

1)
We are right back to the first issue. Having to accept all those requests during the late game where the player could potentially have many colonies would become a chore. So what can we do about that?

Potential Solution:
Spoiler
- Just like faction doctrine management there would have to be additions to the UI to do a couple key things: (I know UI work is awful and that is probably a tough consideration in this case)

First and foremost: An option to "accept/deny all" npc trade requests- No faction reputation penalty for this, that is a key point. Mayybe long-term rep penalties if all offers are rejected repeatedly and market share is lost for the faction?- for good ol' immersion's sake- but even that could be problematic or difficult to implement.

Second: When "accept all" is selected, a maximum credit amount per month to spend on offers (to not bankrupt the player by accident) and a "maximum offer that will be accepted" box so the player can set a value to prevent what they feel is a "bad deal" on a global player-owned colony scale (could mean no npc offers are accepted and shortages will occur but the player will probably catch on if that happens- Maybe an intel alert would occur if that really became necessary down the line.)

A couple of global player faction economy settings like these in the colony management window lets late game still remain mostly automated, yet still gives hooks to do certain things to improve colonies beyond simply saving credits for structures. Filling shortages (should be mostly a mid-game thing that can be solved by late game) to temporarily boost production could be a fun gameplay mechanic that ties into exploration and salvage and encourages trips to the core worlds if the player chooses to go that route. Choice is important, though. The player shouldn't feel obligated to perform that task all the time past a certain point, and that brings me to the second problem.
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2)
What if we want to make deep space or fringe colonies? Prices would certainly be much higher, if we even got offers at all, and that's not good for fun and draws back to problem one because the player has to provide the commodities personally again.

What if we want to eliminate the Core Worlds in our quest for sector domination? Same issue. That wouldn't work very well with the above suggestion either and we don't want to do anything to eliminate or hinder those play styles. So what's the potential solution here? Buckle up, this is going to get a little RTS-y!

Potential Solution:
Spoiler
- To tie into the "Deny All NPC Trades" selection for the market management UI, new buildings could be constructed that would be Gatherer buildings to gather colony resources for construction of ships, weapons and new infrastructure. This could be a single building, or spread out over a couple or all commodity types. Its pretty scale-able so that's good.

Like Patrol HQs, these buildings/building would send out harvester/collector fleets that can bring resources to the colonies instead of the player having to get involved. That being said, there are a number of obvious hooks there to get the player involved that are also very scale-able:

Spoiler
1) Harvester fleets could be attacked by pirates/REDACTED/other nearby factions - under the hood this can be handled a number of ways either dynamically or through the current marauding fleets; whatever seems the easiest solution to such possible outliers as: "my collector fleets always die no matter what I do" kind of thing. Again, the idea behind this is automation rather than giving the player chores so in the purest implementation of this suggestion the collector fleets could be mostly fluff for immersion and disappear at the system's jump points and either "always return" and only consider in-system threats or have a chance of "encountering trouble" (random event that is handled behind the scenes rather than player-visible) that could then be modified by the next tie-in to the campaign:

2) Patrol HQs have a secondary function of "protecting" harvester fleets. As before, this is also scale-able to: low impact spectrum- only in-system impact, and high impact spectrum- actual campaign integration into hyperspace, etc; Whatever seems the best or easiest to implement. Simply having the building can reduce the chance of "trouble" in the purest implementation (low impact spectrum), or actually have player patrols escort collector fleets in the most in-depth and nuanced implementation (high impact spectrum).
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So how do all of these suggestions affect the campaign in a positive way?

1) A better sense of player progression and more solidification of intuitive transitions between early-mid-late game. Details:

Spoiler
- Early game would now require more careful resource management since more commodities are required to get a colony up and running. It needs to be noted that it only impacts the transition stage into colonies and can be completely avoided if colonies are avoided. This would extend the length of the early game in a good way if commodities where then better gated to the player. Multiple suggestions have already been offered there.

- Mid game would now be more about colony management and growth through a more in-depth and fun advancement system (it already is mostly, but this greatly extends the nuance and complexity of this mechanic in a fun way, imo). It would also directly tie into a current mechanic: choice of colony location is even more important based on the above mechanics. Do you choose to go the route of automation through your own factions collectors? (that would of course anger nearby factions not aligned to you much in the same way as AI cores do now), or rely on nearby allies in exchange for their interference, drawbacks etc? Both have their own considerations, benefits, and drawbacks and operate on a sliding spectrum on currently tracked campaign values such as distance, price and reputation. That would streamline implementation at least.

- Late game; other than specifically planned setbacks that could tie into those two mechanics like pirate raids, faction warfare or reputation loss, etc, the late game would mostly remain as it is now due to the automation features. This suggestion, however, is designed to scale from 0 late game impact- (full, easy automation of commodity requirements in order to preserve the current feel and better distinguish mid game concerns from late game concerns so that late game is mostly "colony management free")- to some impact that can be precisely controlled for better campaign balance.
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2) Easy tie-ins to many existing mechanics- but can still remain "hands-off" or untied to those mechanics if scope or scale becomes an issue. Details:

Spoiler
- Raids, faction rep, traders, colony threats and existing defense structures have already been given examples.

 - These mechanics could also be impacted by skills. Industry skills could specialize the player in either player faction automation by benefiting collection structures or npc faction automation by reducing npc trader offer price or increase commodities gained, etc.

 - Administrators can also impact every layer of the suggestion- whether through better management of collectors or getting the player better commodity deals from factions.

 - Commissions: players with faction commissions could get much better commodity deals, and some factions (such as Luddic Church, Independents or Sindrian Diktat) could even be made to be more attractive choices than they currently are through these kinds of incentives. Especially for Independents, this would certainly tie into the lore in an obvious way.
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And finally: considerations I cannot easily solve:

Spoiler
- It would be a lot of dev work even considering the purest implementation since it would require U.I work and at least some limited tie-in to the current economy. Certainly not something that would likely be accomplished by the next update, I'd imagine.

 - There are a couple campaign balance pitfalls that would have to be avoided through potential mechanic tweaks after player feedback. For instance, if either player faction npc collectors or faction commodity deals were obviously optimal for whatever reason, that would cause issues or make player's feel obligated to go one way or the other.
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I defintely think it is do-able, though, and I would suspect that many, many players would appreciate this kind of nuance. The best part is (unless I missed something which I may have) that players who want to forgo these mechanics still mostly retain their choice to do so- barring mechanics already in play that force player reactions.
« Last Edit: September 20, 2019, 07:20:38 PM by Morrokain »
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Serenitis

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Re: Resource management sucks
« Reply #36 on: September 21, 2019, 12:26:22 PM »

Missions could be used as resource sinks.

Have the player faction generate a mission for the player infrequently, something along the lines of "bring x amount of <resource> to <colony>"
Upon completion it would then give some kind of boost to an aspect of that colony. That could be a small permanent boost, or a larger temporary one.

Example:
Quote
Our Mining Techs have brought to our attention an interesting idea we belive could prove beneficial. They have come up with the rough outline of a machine which could increase our production of metallic ore on the world of Myrmidon. Sadly the device depends upon some unique local peculiarities, and so cannot be replicated elsewhere. A shame really.

It is estimated that the machine would require the following materials in order to be constructed:

2500 Refined Metals
1000 Machine Parts
250 Transplutonic Metals
250 Volatiles
10 Gamma AI Core
And would have the following effects:
+1 ore production (permanent)
x1.5 Mining maintenance cost
+1 Mining Pather interest

Gather the requested materials and take to them to Myrmidon within 60 days to begin contruction.

A benefit to completion, to encourage players to undertake the mission and burn resources.
No penalties for "failure" so players don't feel put upon by the random event and feel like they're forced to participate. (Just quietly goes away if the timer runs out.)
« Last Edit: September 21, 2019, 12:29:50 PM by Serenitis »
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Plantissue

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Re: Resource management sucks
« Reply #37 on: September 22, 2019, 02:04:48 AM »

I don't like resource management because it takes away attention from the most important business of having fun in combat or exploration or smuggling, but it's not particularily onerous.  I don't see any value in adding complexity for no real reason as the last few posts have been suggesting at the complete opposite of the intention of the opening post. What's the point of different quality types and gating away resources?
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SCC

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Re: Resource management sucks
« Reply #38 on: September 22, 2019, 02:50:44 AM »

What's the point of different quality types and gating away resources?
Creating demand (currently, the player doesn't need most resources for anything, or has a very limited need for them, with the exceptions being supplies, fuel and crew) and limiting supply (locate a planet that makes what you need, go there, buy stuff, done. You don't need to prepare or face any difficulty in acquiring them).

Plantissue

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Re: Resource management sucks
« Reply #39 on: September 22, 2019, 05:05:01 AM »

If the player engages in procurement missions, he will "use" every resource at some point or another. But that's besides the point. What is the point of different quality types and gating away resources? Do you really think having "low-quality food or drugs" adds anything to game play? Or being unable to buy transplutonics or volatiles, because they've been gated away as interesting? Theres a lot written on what could be done to make trading more complex, but not why it should be done. Is it fun? No. Is it interesting? Does it add atmosphere? No. Does it solve a game design problem? No. So what's the point of all these suggestions?
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SCC

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Re: Resource management sucks
« Reply #40 on: September 22, 2019, 05:57:48 AM »

If the player engages in procurement missions, he will "use" every resource at some point or another.
About the only case currently where you use any commodity. You might as well haul generic "trade goods" commodity that has varying prices every time you check. I mean, what else are you going to do with the shipment? It always leads to more money, never to anything else.
What is the point of different quality types and gating away resources? Do you really think having "low-quality food or drugs" adds anything to game play?
I did not suggest creating different quality goods, but intended for existing goods to be gates. And the point of gating away resources is that, if you want them, you cannot get them right away. You need to do something to obtain them. This, by extension, means that attacking trade fleets has a point besides "I want to sell what they are carrying somewhere" or "I want to cripple that colony's trade" and that finding a cache of a given commodity when exploring can lead to changing the player's plans, besides "now I get more money from exploration", when making money was the point in the first place.
But not why it should be done.
Because there are so many resources, when most of them are useless to the player. If they are useless, why do they exist?
Is it fun? No. Is it interesting? Does it add atmosphere? No.
Fun? Possibly. Interesting? Does it add atmosphere? Yes! Now you can feel that gaining reputation and interacting with factions and colonies does lead to something and trading is more involved than "press F1 on commodity, go from the best seller to the best buyer, repeat" or "go to bar, accept a shipment mission, go from point A to point B, get money". Now there's some planning and trade-offs involved, you can use reputation or spend credits to gain reputation, credits or possibly some other things.
Does it solve a game design problem? No.
Is "basically everything but 3 commodities is worthless to the player" not a game design problem?

Megas

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Re: Resource management sucks
« Reply #41 on: September 22, 2019, 06:44:57 AM »

Is "basically everything but 3 commodities is worthless to the player" not a game design problem?
Not to me it is not, if I means I need haul more cargo at all times (less cargo space for salvage).  I do not want to lug around a bunch of junk.  Even hauling every last resource to my colonies' resources so that they are immune to shortage events is a bit annoying.  #2 reason why I dislike Neutrino Detector is I need to lug Volatiles around.  (#1 reason is it burns a skill point better spent on Officer Management or other combat stuff.)

I am fine dealing with only supplies, fuel, crew, and machines.  (I prefer to haul even less items, but... okay.)  Occasionally, I haul other stuff as needed.  This is a reason why I like crew levels nuked from orbit.  Only one crew type to deal with - no more crew Tetris.

Maybe it is a problem that there are too many flavor items, although if I had to solve it, I would lump them all into a single item called... commodities or trade goods.  I would not mind a name called "vendor trash" to lampshade the trope.  Maybe "resource units" or RUs for homage to Star Control 2 (and coming part 2 of Transcendence).
« Last Edit: September 22, 2019, 06:52:07 AM by Megas »
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bobucles

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Re: Resource management sucks
« Reply #42 on: September 22, 2019, 07:05:50 AM »

What about the flip side? Gating important things behind rare resources will provide new obstacles to overcome, but being stuck without those same resources will leave the player trapped. Forcing players into the trade game regardless of their play style is not a good idea.

From what I can tell there are two major themes of the game- build your own fleets, and dismantle enemy fleets. Creating needlessly complex logistics does nothing to support either goal.

I wouldn't mind being able to turn combat casualties into extra organ salvage, but that's just my inner capitalist itching.

Plantissue

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Re: Resource management sucks
« Reply #43 on: September 22, 2019, 07:06:29 AM »

Does it matter if it wasn't you that suggested different quality types, if you replied to my asking about their point? At least you have now answered what you think gating away trade goods is supposed to achieve. But it just makes resource management even more of a annoyance. Do you really want a vital needed resource to need a commission for instance? Metals and transplutonics are used for building nav buoy and comm relays.
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mvp7

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Re: Resource management sucks
« Reply #44 on: September 22, 2019, 07:26:56 AM »

All anyone needs to haul around in cargo space is Supply and, to lesser extent, Machinery. Everything else is completely optional or uses its own storage space.

From cargo point of view, it doesn't matter at all whether there's 1 or 100 types of commodities. All that matters is value per storage unit. Chances are that if there were less types of commodities, they would have lower value per unit than current top commodities, which practically means less space for loot. Total volume of commodities involved in trading and other activities would also likely be the same as it is now.

I really don't think the current amount of resources in the game is at all confusing or unnecessary. Some are fairly redundant at the moment because refining, light industry and heavy industry produce the same relative amounts of products. However I imagine this is something that will be fleshed out as the lend-game is developed beyond the current placeholder state.
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