Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Megas]

No, because credits are too easy to come by -- they should be used to enable the player to get (re)started at building a fleet, but to reach its maximum effectiveness should be through combat. The game's reward mechanisms are toward combat. Buying upgrades through credits would mean the player can just use the latest drug shortage or whatever to max out their fleet without touching a battle.

That is exactly why using credits is good.  SP gain late in the game is too slow unless player is at the endgame with the Ordos slayer fleet.  Also, it would give incentive to kill more bounties and less Ordos.

If firming up credits means player does not need flawless victories for bounties to be profitable enough, that would be good too.

[Hiruma Kai]

I will point out mechanism of gain (i.e. how one goes about earning something) is different from rate of gain (i.e. 1 story point per 5-10 minutes of play time).  If you could buy 1 story point for 100 million credits, you'd probably say the rate of gain has gotten slower.

If the issue is rate of gain, then it's probably more effective to address that directly rather than shifting incentives for activities around which then get calculated to late game incomes and late game rates.  It'd be weird if story point credit costs scaled with levels, meaning you'd be incentivized to stay low level, make lots of credits (i.e. trading), buy your ships, buy your s-mods, then level up to 15, at which point the credit costs for story points are higher.

If you don't do that, you won't be able to afford anywhere near the same number of story points you have now (because it's calibrated to late game income), or alternatively, you remove any meaning of story points at late game (as it is calibrated to early game income).  Although the later might be the desire in such a change.

So one really needs to answer the questions of:
What amount of effort should produce what gains or changes in your fleet (or colony empire) in the late game?  How should that differ from early and mid game?  How long would a typical playthrough take to reach said stages of the game?

Should I be able to completely retool a 240 DP fleet, going from a low tech Onslaught/Legion/Erradicator/Enforcer fleet I'd been using the entire time to a new high tech Radiant/Hyperion wolf pack, in 5 minutes of personal time at end game?  I'd hate for it be along the lines of waiting an hour AFK while letting colony passive income roll in.  At that point, I'd rather just see at level 15 you achieve infinite story points rather than incentivize AFK play.  It's also why I like the idea of a super simulator (either in campaign or probably better as stand alone mission).  It lets you try out things in an experimental way quickly without risk or investment.

At the end of the day, ideal rate of gain depends on what you think you should be able to do with X amount of effort/time in the late game.

[Megas]

Agreed.. Especially the part about not grinding ordos - I've only ever done it as the challenge of fighting many maxed ones at once, never to get experience points. If I'm there, there's nothing else to do anyways, so why would I want to? Maybe if I'm spending exponential story points on colonies, but other than a few points to meet the requirements of some items I don't really see the need to do that either so its hard for me to relate to that motivation.

In my last game, I obtained Ziggurat and Janus Device by year 6, but first colony was only size 4 and second colony at size 3 (and I had no others).  If I consider the victory condition as when I build five colonies to size 6 (because I want my empire), I would need to find three more colonies and wait about ten more years for them to grow.  (Seed did not have great planets, aside from one good system with two planets and a gate near core.)  In the meantime, I could kill the Tesseracts for weapons then grind Ordos.

I have put that game on pause.  I am probably more inclined to find a better seed (I do not want to spend many in-game years on a mediocre seed) or replay the seed (MN-1) of my first game.

I only grind Ordos for story points, alpha cores, and their ships if they are almost pristine (I have Automated Ships).  Double Ordos is the most I care to fight.  Triple Ordos makes PPT exhaustion a major problem.

[Doctorhealsgood]

Maybe s-mods would be less of an issue when there is not  2^n story point costs in the game with no caps in place.