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Author Topic: Resource management sucks  (Read 5947 times)

Yunru

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Re: Resource management sucks
« Reply #15 on: September 17, 2019, 11:41:50 AM »

That said, few of them could be cut, i guess... wtf are organics anyway?
Fossils, oils, coal, bioplastics, etc.
It threw me for a loop too at first until I thought about it.

intrinsic_parity

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Re: Resource management sucks
« Reply #16 on: September 17, 2019, 11:44:05 AM »

On the colony management level, there are differences in which buildings supply/produce stuff. That could maybe be a bit more fleshed out. I also would like more ways to interrupt/boost production (i.e. cause shortages and surpluses) on AI worlds so that the player can make money buying/selling opportunistically.
That much is true, but you don't necessarily always have a colony, and even if you have one, you don't necessarily have shortages that require you to go hunting for those resources. They are fine for economy, but when it comes to player fleet, most of it is sell-only junk.

When I said interrupt/reduce production, I was referring to the AI colonies. The player can (to some extent) mess with the supply chain to artificially increase prices so the he/she can sell goods for more. Right now I don't find that super practical (at least on demand), but if there were more ways of doing that, it could be something interesting to do with resources. That's more about making the selling process more interesting than trying to create other uses for the resources though.

I think this is what Thaago was saying: that the buying/selling process is different for each resource since you would want to go to worlds where it is cheap/expensive or legal/illegal etc. Maybe doubling down on trying to make the buying/selling process more unique/interesting for each resource is a better direction than eliminating the resources.
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SCC

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Re: Resource management sucks
« Reply #17 on: September 17, 2019, 12:17:50 PM »

Making supplies and fuel the same resource would be terrible and require massive reworks to CR, campaign level events, and the UI.
I perhaps have overexaggerated things, but even with just supplies and fuel, my point still stands, mostly. Most of other stuff isn't interesting enough to justify being so cumbersome to manage.

1) Immersion. This can be argued, as having the generic "Trade Goods" is at first glance just fine. However...
This is fine and all, but I want more! I want them to exist for more reasons than "they just should".

2) Colony supply chains/shortages/conflict. The resources fulfill different requirements and require different buildings. Being short of different ones causes different effects (depending on building mostly). More importantly, having different resources will put different factions into conflict with the player: no one cares about food production as its a big market, but making a major fuel center sooner of later will make Sindria attack.
This is mostly colony stuff and industries, which is not the point of this thread, but the fact that those goods are mostly useless to the player fleet. And with colony stuff being mostly automatic, that's not a particularly good argument to leave it exposed to the player.

3) Illegal goods/smuggling: Having some goods be illegal incentivizes avoiding scans, sneaking into ports, etc. This is a major section of gameplay for some players. Having different goods be illegal in different places encourages the player to visit more, different, systems.
In my experience, smuggling isn't hard, unless you are smuggling a lot of stuff. "Coincidental smuggling" is most likely what happens to most of us, if the loot from battle or exploration happens to be locally illegal. Not to mention that besides AI cores being legal in independent colonies, luxury goods being illegal in Luddic Church space, and Tri-Tachyon having most of its ports be free ports, there are no differences what is illegal. It's drugs and organs everywhere but TT.

4) Contract fulfillment. If the only trade good was the generic "Trade Goods", then players could ALWAYS just have a bunch in their holds and fulfill any contract that pops up. Boring. With the current plethora of goods, while its possible for a player to say have a stockpile on an abandoned terraforming platform and draw them out as needed, both the cost and space required is multiplied by the number of different goods. More goods incentivizes attempting to procure them on the fly when a contract appears rather than stockpiling. Procuring on the fly means visiting a system the player wouldn't normally - this is an opportunity both to see more of the sector (more flavor text/lore/immersion) and to get into conflict with more enemies depending on what they are doing.
IIRC Alex wants to move away from "procurement" missions and have bar stuff be the main reason to "trade". I might misremember that or take it out of context, so if Alex happens to visit this thread, perhaps he could clear that up.

Maybe doubling down on trying to make the buying/selling process more unique/interesting for each resource is a better direction than eliminating the resources.
I don't necessarily want them removed. I want them to either be gone or be more interesting than they are now.

Q8

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Re: Resource management sucks
« Reply #18 on: September 17, 2019, 12:28:15 PM »

Maybe doubling down on trying to make the buying/selling process more unique/interesting for each resource is a better direction than eliminating the resources.
Only for that, am afraid, you would have to run something more complicated than todays economy. It wouldnt need to be 10/10 realistic, but it would have to be serious about itself. And that is a problem, because since the time immemorial, this game tried her hardest to not be about the economy.
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: Resource management sucks
« Reply #19 on: September 17, 2019, 01:11:52 PM »

Making supplies and fuel the same resource would be terrible and require massive reworks to CR, campaign level events, and the UI.
I perhaps have overexaggerated things, but even with just supplies and fuel, my point still stands, mostly. Most of other stuff isn't interesting enough to justify being so cumbersome to manage.
This is the thing I don't really understand, how are they cumbersome to manage? It's just a few extra clicks now and again to pick up stacks and then a few more to sell them, or you can just not pick them up. It's hardly a major burden on the player. Presumably if they were removed, some other resource or item would take their place and you would probably pick that up instead. It seems like a small price to pay for adding some ambiance/immersion to the world. Certainly I would like if they became more interesting but I don't really see the downside to the way things are now.
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Daynen

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Re: Resource management sucks
« Reply #20 on: September 17, 2019, 04:20:09 PM »

Having more uses for some goods does sound like a good idea, but only if there's ALSO a real CALL for those uses.  The neutrino detector, for example, uses volatiles, which is great but...I never find myself using it even IF I actually pick up the skill.  I should probably start a playthrough just to specifically play with it a bit more...

Using metals for repairs is one thing in particular I could see making sense though; you pick them up as junk CONSTANTLY, they're worth next to nothing and supplies are expensive.  Maybe they could serve as a repair aide, consuming metals for repairs as long as you have them and using supplies as normal once your metals run out.  It might extend your long voyage range just a bit depending on what you manage to scrounge up without completely freeing you from reliance on supplies.

As far as the actual interface goes, I wouldn't mind having a way to store/pull all my weapons with one click, so long as it's a smart enough feature to not dump everything ELSE at the same time.  Making use of the inventory tabs could make this fairly simple I think.  SS's interface is mostly pretty elegant with just a few trouble spots; inventory management could use a little touch up for polish's sake I suppose.
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Buff Skeleton

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Re: Resource management sucks
« Reply #21 on: September 17, 2019, 07:43:33 PM »

So I disagree that the goods should be condensed: having multiple types is a net benefit to the game.

I 100% agree with everything in this post. Having fewer good types would not improve the game.

I've made small fortunes by capitalizing on inter-faction conflicts by buying low and selling high, and that requires carefully managing your plans so you make stops at the best buying locations while also minimizing travel time, because shortages are something other trade convoys will absolutely fill if you take too long to make your runs. This adds immense strategic depth to the game for me, even if the goods themselves do nothing for my fleet.

The game may be mostly about the combat for some folks, but to me it's just as fun trying to optimize cashflow and taking risks with timing, faction reputation, and maneuvering. Knowing I can get a ton of organics cheaply in a distant system vs. not quite as cheaply (but still profitably) in one nearer to the destination with a shortage means I have to make some strategic decisions about where to buy. If the destination with shortages is also low on a lot of other stuff, I have to decide which of those shortages I want to get at minimal cost based on my current location and other factors.

Existing relations with various factions also play a part. Do I take these drugs/organs/heavy weapons and sell them in-system to an independent station who won't care about my transponder being off, or do I risk going somewhere more heavily-defended with a shortage and trying to sneak past patrols to sell on the black market for maximum payoff without taking a hit to my rep (if I can sneak in and out successfully)?

It's also interesting to me that various goods tend to come in different quantities. You can make a lot more money while using a lot less cargo space selling illegal stuff than you can selling food or organics, even though the profit margins are usually more stable for the high-volume (but boring) legal goods. The illegal stuff can be extremely profitable, but only if you make your runs skillfully and beat other sellers to the punch, and the markets aren't consistent. Meanwhile, there's always somewhere to buy food and organics super cheap, and there's usually somewhere to turn a decent profit off of them too, but the best money comes from the riskier deals -- if you can get quantities large enough. Sometimes you just need to make any profit to pay for something you need, and sometimes you hoard stuff until a rainy day hits another planet and you can swoop in to capitalize.


I do agree that it would be a huge benefit if you could actually utilize all of those goods yourself, too, though -- with or without a colony. This would add more interesting "hmm" type decisions, like do I use this stuff now for immediate-but-small benefit, or hold on to it for possible major profits?

Using metals to bolster ship repairs, using volatiles to produce fuel in small and inefficient quantities but enough to help save your ass if you burn too much, using organics and food to create new supply packages for the crew, etc. Stuff like that could be really interesting. And then of course using stuff like drugs and luxury goods as ways to improve morale (i.e. CR recovery rate bonuses by pumping everyone up with space meth) could be too, and organs to help reduce crew losses, or something along those lines.


Even in its current state, though, I really like having the variety of goods there are. There's a few that I could do without, like the ores, since those require immense quantities to turn a profit. It's hard to find Atlases for sale (let alone blueprints), so hauling them isn't usually worth it despite the extremely high profit margins (buy for 1, sell for 10 isn't uncommon with ore). Volturnian lobster is OK, but it's never available in quantities large enough to justify going out of your way for it. But with guns, drugs, and essentials sold to unstable planets, there are a lot of ways to make solid cash and you just couldn't get that to work if you condensed the resource list much more than they already is.

I'd actually really love to see more kinds of unique vendor trash items, like lobster. Even here on earth -- even in a single city, let alone country -- you'll find thousands of varieties of specialties bought and sold throughout the area. On a galactic scale, it only makes sense that there'd be immense varieties of goods. Cultures would be radically different across planets, and inhabitants would absolutely be coming up with their own specialties to try and stand out; it's human nature. Some of them would make it big, becoming planet-famous or system-famous. Of course, going far enough to make trade diversity truly realistic would eat up all the system resources you could throw at the game and make it extremely time-consuming to handle... but, well, a few extra unique (or uncommon) items wouldn't hurt.

It could be cool if you could play a hand in turning some local phenomenon into an intergalactic sensation just by buying up lots of it and selling it everywhere, spreading the word to drive up demand. It would also be really neat to find caches of old Domain-era products in distant ruins, sellable for huge profits for their rarity. Unless you took them home to a colony and learned how to produce them yourself, that is... lots of possibilities.
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33k7

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Re: Resource management sucks
« Reply #22 on: September 17, 2019, 08:29:50 PM »

I want more resources and not just new resources I want resources to have different quality types

example high-quality goods to low-quality Goods I want repercussions if you sell low-quality food or drugs to a colony they might send the Bounty Hunter after you if you lie about the quality of the goods or they don't pay you as much because they know they're getting crap because you told them they were crap .

 yes a lot of the resources really don't have to do with anything outside of maybe  helping with your colonies needs but a lot of these supplies add another layer to the economy and the resources you saying aren't useful will probably have some use later down the road.


about the stuff taking up room in your Fleet buy more cargo ships dude. end game I have an atlas ship with me at all times

« Last Edit: September 17, 2019, 08:32:12 PM by 33k7 »
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scrye

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Re: Resource management sucks
« Reply #23 on: September 19, 2019, 03:51:15 PM »

I am not sure I agree with the argument that some item types are a bad idea just because they have no direct relevance to the player.

It has already been pointed out that many supplies are relevant at the colony stage.  As well, this goes for AI factions and supply shortages/gluts. 

The fact is that merchants and traders don't expect to be able to personally have a use for all the items they acquire and sell.  It makes sense that a planet needs luxury goods and biomatter, while a starship captain does not.  That's how trades and courier services work.

Yes, this is a game, not reality; but I don't see a game mechanical problem with some resources being relevant only for trade in many cases.  I don't think it detracts from the game, and it gives added context to items at the colony stage that were irrelevant to you except as trade items before.

That being said, I do agree that there could be a few more uses found for certain item types in the game, and/or that item uses at the colony stage could be fleshed out more.  For example; rather than just throw credits at colony upgrades, why not have resource manifests that must be fulfilled, either through colony trade or via player acquisition? 

Want to build a star fortress?  You need 2000 military hardware, and some other resources, as well as lots of credits, to start construction.  As one example.  Granted, specific resources are needed for each colony facility upkeep, and I think that works too.
 

TL;DR; I think that some more player/ship-related uses for some commodity items would be welcome, but I don't think every trade item needs to be directly relevant to the player all the time.  Trade is completely optional and you don't have to ever buy those commodity items if you don't care about them. 
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Amoebka

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Re: Resource management sucks
« Reply #24 on: September 20, 2019, 03:19:01 AM »

I like having multiple types of vendor trash for immersion reasons, but the way it's implemented now indeed feels lacking. Some goods are just so much cheaper than others you never want to bother with them. What's the point of buying ore for 2 and selling it for 10 when you can buy weapons for 400 and sell for 1200? What's the point of looting ore from ruins/stations? It's literally useless even as vendor trash because it doesn't sell for anything.
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DatonKallandor

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Re: Resource management sucks
« Reply #25 on: September 20, 2019, 07:08:44 AM »

You can dump ore (and other goods) in colony storage and use it as a demand replacement and you can get missions for it.

And, something that is true for all "vendor trash" items - they're all vital components in the various economic chains. They need to exist. Raw ore is cheaper than weapons for the same reason buying scrap metal is cheaper than buying a brand new car. Less processed resources are less valuable than processed ones.
« Last Edit: September 20, 2019, 07:11:04 AM by DatonKallandor »
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LucusLoC

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Re: Resource management sucks
« Reply #26 on: September 20, 2019, 12:55:51 PM »

Having a variety of generic "trade goods" that serve no other purpose for the player is 100% fine, but I definitely think a lot of the various materials need more uses. Here are my ideas for how things should change:

  • Supplies: Still used for pretty much all ship activities. should still be used for survey work, but should be significantly toned down for use in colony construction.
  • Fuel: Still used for travel, though I think the "munitions" use should be rethought and expanded, maybe requiring the fuel to be modified first?
  • Crew: Working as intended, no need to change.
  • Marines: used for raids. Working as intended.
  • Heavy Machinery: Works fine.
  • Metals: Use should be expanded. Metals should be required for major repair work on ships (i.e. recovering hull hip points, removing dmods etc.). This should also be required to establish a colony.
  • Transplutonics: similar to metals these should be expanded to be used in major ship maintenance. This could be another balance factor with ships, as some of them may require more TPs to recover from damage than others.
  • Volatiles: This should be expanded to more use types, other types of scanners, and maybe be required to make the munitions grade "fuels"
  • Food: You should need a lot of this to establish a colony.
  • Domestic Goods: In addition to food both these types of goods should be able to help a player "buy" stability for their colonies, instead of it being just a straight up cash transaction. You would need to "invest" them in a 5:3:1 or 3:2:1 ratio (food:domestic:luxury), with more needed for each point of stability as your population increases and with increasingly diminishing returns as you try to buy more and more stability.
  • Luxury Goods: *notes above*
  • Drugs: Drugs can be used to buy a temporary increase in production from a specific facility in a colony, at the expense of stability. (players could take advantage of increased market demand to boost colony profits, or simply produce a needed material faster. increased production lasts for one month or so, but the stability decrease takes longer to wear off, to prevent to player from using the mechanic 100% of the time)
  • Harvested Organs: Used as an alternative to currency as a way to "buy" increased population growth rates. It is significantly more effective than attempting to increase pop growth through the use of cash to encourage immigration, but comes at the cost of stability.
  • Heavy Armaments: You should be able to use these to *make* marines from crew.
  • Ore: Generic trade good, is fine as-is.
  • Organics: Generic trade good, is fine as-is.
  • Transplutonic Ore: Generic trade good, is fine as-is.
  • Volturnian Lobsters: Generic trade good, is fine as-is.

Another way to view this is:

  • To run ships you need: crew, fuel, supplies
  • To repair ships you need: supplies, metal and TP
  • To survey/salvage you need: supplies, heavy machinery, crew (volatilizes for various specialized scanners)
  • To set up a colony you need: crew, heavy machinery, food, metal (maybe a small amount of supplies)
  • To run a colony you can use: food, domestic/luxurey goods, drugs, organs (these will still be required to fill the basic needs of the colony too)
  • To set up satellites you need: metal, heavy machinery, TP
  • To attack a colony you need: marines, fuel, volitiles

I also think you should be able to make setting up industries on colonies cheaper by pumping various materials into them. This would of course need to be roughly the equivalent cost on the open market for balance reasons, but means if you are diligent about hoarding your goods you can use those in lieu of dumping them for cash to buy the industry (saving a step for the player).
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Q8

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Re: Resource management sucks
« Reply #27 on: September 20, 2019, 01:40:14 PM »

God damn, and here i tough that i was pushing immersion over mechanics when i suggested a fork for building with cash OR materials...
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Megas

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Re: Resource management sucks
« Reply #28 on: September 20, 2019, 02:13:17 PM »

I only bother with about half of the commodities only to haul them in bulk to colonies and stockpile them so that if I get a shortage from trade disruption or something that knocks out an industry, I click draw from stockpiles and ignore the penalties during the event.
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SCC

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Re: Resource management sucks
« Reply #29 on: September 20, 2019, 02:15:45 PM »

It is true that many useless resources are required to run the economy. It is not true that the player has to interact with them directly. It should be possible to auto-manage vendor trash, with it being automatically thrown out whenever you take something more valuable.
The issue that wasn't addressed isn't just that those resources are used in the same way (i.e. not at all), but that they are also gained in the same way for many of them. You can just fly to Chicomoztoc with minimal reputation and get as much heavy armaments as you would like. You aren't restricted in any way for most commodities, except for banned goods, where you just have to also get some chaff allowed goods as well. Basically everything in the game can be just bought at some market right from the get go. You don't need to put any effort, get high reputation with a faction or a local commander, no mission or anything.
Wouldn't it be better, if you had to get high reputation with Hegemony to buy transplutonics from Chicomoztoc? Or even a commission to legally buy heavy armaments? But before that, perhaps Hegemony could offer some shipment missions and you just might consider that you have a greater need of those mechs and guns. Too bad you don't have any need of them currently. And that you can grab them from any random planet that isn't hostile to you. Demand is very low and supply is very high.
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