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Author Topic: are colonies too profitable?  (Read 7623 times)

shoi

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are colonies too profitable?
« on: January 22, 2020, 07:20:27 PM »

Getting the colony up in the first part is difficult because of the inital investment and the time you need to baby sit it before it can defend itself, but once you have a battlestation up and patrols flying around it (or even less if you are friendly with pirate), a good colony pretty much trivializes everything  else?

as soon as my single, 125%ish hazard colony hit size 5 or 6 it was pulling in 250k a month with a good governor.

im deliberately not trying to min max and can only imagine how much money you could make if you seriously tried colony building on the best worlds spamming AI cores.

I do have a good governor on the planet, and a synchotron, so I guess I don't know if this is normal or intended, or if I just got lucky with rng on the synchotron + governor to be so profitable. Is it normal to make so much money so fast?
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geminitiger

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Re: are colonies too profitable?
« Reply #1 on: January 22, 2020, 07:44:02 PM »

Well, I've never had a planet pull in that much money a month, they seem to get up to about 150k, but that is after an investment of several million developing it. Usually after you can afford it I think you supposed to sink that extra cash into another planet.

Regardless, money after a while won't be problem, instead the logistics of your master plan coming to fruition will be on your mind.
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wei270

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Re: are colonies too profitable?
« Reply #2 on: January 22, 2020, 09:27:05 PM »

colonies profitability depends on hazard rating, the high the hazard rating the more monthly upkeep in space bit coins you have to pay.

by default a planet hazard rating of 100 is VERY profitable, every industry will rake in lots of $$ even on small size planets, some more than others, most profitable industry thus far are fuel production and ship/supply production.

Profit is always revenue - cost

revenue is pretty much = industry type*planet size modifier*market share modifier*a stability modifier. and skills + ai core

Cost on the other hand is primary hazard rating, + if your own faction can supply your own industry input there is a -20%? cost reduction? + there is also skill and admin and AI cores that can reduce cost.

market share is a function of your production quantity and access, you need certain production quantity to supply different market, and access determine who exactly can you can supply given your production quantity..

my size 6 planets are raking in like 1,000,000 every month, i guess that is why people said once your planet hit size 6 you beat the game cause at that point you can do anything you want, money is no longer a constraint.
« Last Edit: January 22, 2020, 09:29:23 PM by wei270 »
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geminitiger

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Re: are colonies too profitable?
« Reply #3 on: January 22, 2020, 10:28:15 PM »

while I agree that eventually money isn't an issue, after grinding up years in-game for a decent fleet and colonly(ies) I don't know how you guys can make so much on your planets because I certainly don't get those returns even on my low hazard worlds.
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Null Ganymede

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Re: are colonies too profitable?
« Reply #4 on: January 22, 2020, 10:42:35 PM »

How many months does it take your investment in industries and upgrades to pay for themselves? What about the AI cores and nanoforges/synchrotrons you didn't sell?

Credits-wise you're usually better off investing in ships and grinding bounties or exploiting trade deficits.
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Daynen

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Re: are colonies too profitable?
« Reply #5 on: January 22, 2020, 11:38:45 PM »

I feel like colonies CAN become obscenely profitable, but not because of how much money they make; it's because they become a "set it and forget it" type of money that you no longer have to earn.  Once you find a system with, say, 5+ planets and load them all up with at least patrol HQ's, your system is pretty much impenetrable to most attacks; once all those planets are bringing in a net profit of any margin, you'll never be broke again.  Once all those planets pass colony size 5, you never need to worry about money for the rest of the game.  That's not even counting AI cores, synchrotrons and nanoforges.  Sure it takes a bit of work to get there but once you hit that breakpoint money becomes completely superfluous. 

"Oh no.  They blew up my fleet of six paragons.  Time to queue up six more."  It does kind of neuter any sense of challenge and risk when you can just replace everything without batting an eye...

It's kind of an inherent side effect of an open economy where resources are effectively infinite.  Now, if colony upkeep weighted the need for actual commodities instead of just credits that would be a VERY different story...
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Morbo513

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Re: are colonies too profitable?
« Reply #6 on: January 22, 2020, 11:43:24 PM »

Simple answer: Yes. Even colonies on not-particularly-good planets can become insanely profitable, to the point they outweigh everything the player has to spend money on. Every uncolonized planet is free real estate.
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Mordodrukow

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Re: are colonies too profitable?
« Reply #7 on: January 23, 2020, 05:32:19 AM »

Colony profit is OK. The problem is: player just has no way to spent this much money.

I mean:
1 colony is enough to sustain your main fleet.
2 more, if you wanna just pay money to other factions to stop their attack missions.

What things also demand money? Lets see:
- investing in new colonies. Yes, it can take lot of cash. I remember how i fell from 10kk to 1kk having 4 colonies and starting 3 new simultaneously. But mostly, you will not need that much. May be you do, if you farmed a lot of alphas and now you wanna to colonise each planet in the sector (lol, looks like a nice challenge...)
- building ships. I saw some ships with 1kk building cost. But it is always one-time buying. I mean: you pretty rarely want to lose ships and replace em with new. It is very expensive. Even repairing D-mods is expensive. So, if you do, may be you need that much money. But most players dont do that. Just because, if you play like that, you cand get enough money to get your first colony.

At thats pretty much it. We just have no lategame options. Thats the problem. Is it that bad? Well, yes and no.
No, because Starsector is a sandbox game. It is ok to get to the point when you can just threw money into ships building just to try some interesting setups, which you cant try during early game, because other way enemies can beat your face.
Yes, because theres no actual gameplay. It is a sandbox, you need to invent problems to yourself, then solve em. We need to remember here, that the game is intended to be a sandbox. So, if we dont like it, we can fix it, but only through mods. Or, may be, later we will get some vanilla build-in game modes. Like "play sandbox", "play strategically" and so on. We have missions mode after all, so why not...

What can be done right now? It is hard to say precisely, but at least we need some changes in reputation system and in colony management.

Problems in rep system: you can kill a baby, then save 20 kittens stuck on the trees and society will forgive you for the murder. Sounds stupid, but right now rep works just like that. System must be more complex. May be counting some "unforgivable deeds", removed rep farming during the system bounty event and so on...

Problems in colony management: there are no real choices. What to build: fuel production or mines? Or, may be, lets build some medical facilities? Lol, you can just build all of them. And if you have no space left, you can just get more colonies.
How can we fix that? May be, make some industry-tiers. Just like battle station tiers. 1st tier allows the colony to sustain its demads in that product. 2nd allows some export. 3rd tier opens some unique abilities, which can describe the planet as "sector's bestand most innovative *place your product here*-producer". And may be: 1sr tier demands 1 industry slot, 2nd - two, 3rd one - 4 slots. Number of slots can be increased to 5. And may be we need some new buildings like medical center in Nex.
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Schwartz

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Re: are colonies too profitable?
« Reply #8 on: January 23, 2020, 06:02:07 AM »

No.

Why not? I would argue that colonies work as they are designed to work. They sound the bell for endgame, meaning that once you have broken your horns on enough bounties and other money opportunities, they will take a large up-front investment and in return make money virtually (but not immediately) endless. This provides an interesting gear shift.

They also force the player to spend a considerable amount of time chasing down pirates and warding off invasion fleets.

Money isn't the only resource in the game. AI cores and blueprints are the real endgame currency.
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Logiwonk

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Re: are colonies too profitable?
« Reply #9 on: January 23, 2020, 06:45:13 AM »

For me, maxing out colony skills and plowing a lot of money back into growth incentives within a few years I was pulling down 300k+ but that comes at the cost of fewer skill points for combat skills.
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KCR

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Re: are colonies too profitable?
« Reply #10 on: January 23, 2020, 07:51:13 AM »

No.

Why not? I would argue that colonies work as they are designed to work. They sound the bell for endgame, meaning that once you have broken your horns on enough bounties and other money opportunities, they will take a large up-front investment and in return make money virtually (but not immediately) endless. This provides an interesting gear shift.

They also force the player to spend a considerable amount of time chasing down pirates and warding off invasion fleets.

Money isn't the only resource in the game. AI cores and blueprints are the real endgame currency.

I've tried to collect all blueprints at once (including some mod added), but at some point it just becomes so long and boring, so i just consider that i have enough and genocide every other faction that was left. AI cores also becomes very grindy and repeatedly after some point. You just bring your best guns and sit in tight place, crushing ordos one after another, until you have enough blue shiny spheres (but some mods adds some spicy things to this, so ye, it depends just on the environment you are playing).

Colonies ARE profitable. Not too, just are. Because, as was mentioned here, when you've established and "babysitted" a colony, so that it can bring you like 100k+, that's where a real game starts. Colonize every single planet? Take 100% of heavy armaments marketshare? Install alpha cores on every single building? It all depends on you, what you will do and how you will spend this money. It's a sandbox, after all. Again, in vanilla, there is not much things that you can consider, but mods and big imagination can fix it. And more money colonies produce, more opportunities you can consider. 

Now that i've think about it, i've come across a question. If i really just colonize EVERY single planet in this universe, will it stop pather and pirate bases from spawning?
« Last Edit: January 23, 2020, 11:35:58 PM by KCR »
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Grievous69

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Re: are colonies too profitable?
« Reply #11 on: January 23, 2020, 07:57:01 AM »

Now that i've think about it, i've come across a question. If i really just colonize EVERY single planet in this universe, will it stop pather and pirate bases from spawning?
Someone has actually done that. He gave himself a bunch of Alpha cores and then just went to town colonizing every damn system. He didn't mention anything about pirates and ludds but honestly at that point, would you even care? This was somewhere on Alex's twitter, sorry I don't have the exact link to it since it was some time ago.
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SCC

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Re: are colonies too profitable?
« Reply #12 on: January 23, 2020, 08:19:37 AM »

Pirate and pather bases can spawn only in uninhabited systems.

Edit:
As they are now, colonies are a strong tool that lack an impossible obstacle to surmount. Or, well, maybe not impossible, but just imposing. Currently, the player is showered with money, after setting colonies up, but presumably the endgame content will require just that much money or other power. I expect colonies to be rebalanced again after Alex gets to making the endgame.

Megas

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Re: are colonies too profitable?
« Reply #13 on: January 23, 2020, 10:47:08 AM »

Colonies are only profitable if core worlds are alive.  If they die (because player kills them all), then profits are much less due to no income from exports.  (Player may make about 100k instead of a million.)  At that point, player needs to grind more cores and build more colonies (far more than seven or eight) to get income from more Population and Infrastructure.
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Locklave

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Re: are colonies too profitable?
« Reply #14 on: January 24, 2020, 05:29:34 PM »

Colonies are only profitable if core worlds are alive.  If they die (because player kills them all), then profits are much less due to no income from exports.  (Player may make about 100k instead of a million.)  At that point, player needs to grind more cores and build more colonies (far more than seven or eight) to get income from more Population and Infrastructure.

If you ally with the pirates, which is tedious but doable in vanilla, you still have exports.
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