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[NephilimNexus]

IDEA #1

Let's consider what probably constitutes colonist Domestic Goods, which are produced by Light Industry: Clothes, toilet paper, toothpaste, shoes, light bulbs... pretty much everything you need around the house that you don't put in your mouth.

Now let's consider what probably constitutes ship crew Supplies, which are produced by Heavy Industry: Clothes, toilet paper, toothpaste, duct tape, spare fuses... pretty much everything you need around the ship including things that you eat.

It looks kind of familiar, yes?  Except for food, ship supplies are probably at least 50% of the same sort of things domestic supplies would have inside their crates as well.  Meanwhile, you've got the Fuel Production facility which makes fuel and... that's it.

Which lead me to wonder: Would it not make more sense to put all this stuff under one roof, or more specifically, one facility?  So here is my idea/suggestion, and if not for main game then at least to consider as a mod:

1) Remove Supplies from Heavy Industry.
2) Remove Fuel Production facility entirely.
3) Allow a small amount Supplies to be created by Light Industry and add organics to their base cost (figure MREs can be made from nutrient paste rather than real food).
4) Where Fuel Production was add a new facility, Space Industry.  This facility produces both fuel and supplies in modest amounts, using the same resources as before (i.e. volatiles, organics, etc).
5) Allow a toggle to allow players to shift priority for the facility for the coming month.  50/50 or 75/25 in favor of one or the other.

This would help a lot on the logistics side, as it would allow even a starter colony provide some kind of support to the player's fleet.  It would also streamline the process of satisfying the needs of things like space stations and starports as well.  You would no longer be forced into spamming Heavy Industry on every colony that wants to have a space station and ultimately end up with far more Custom Production points than you could ever hope to use as a side effect.  Now you could just keep you Heavy Industry to a more practical level while the Space Supply facility would be enough to keep the colony able to support its own fleet/spaceport/space station on its own.

IDEA #2

Allow the use of surplus Nanoforges in Light Industry as well.  Results & reasons should be obvious.  I can't imagine why such an advanced technology would be so limited in its utility.  If it can fabricate spaceships then it should be able to make shoes & toothbrushes as well.

IDEA #3

Allow use of surplus Nanoforges in the base colony slot (1st slot) to build housing and whatnot, thus creating a free bonus to population growth.  Concrete is even easier than toothbrushes.

IDEA #4

Add toggle to Heavy Industry to shift production priorities (see above) - leave balanced, or put an emphasis on ship hulls or military hardware.

IDEA #5

Add a Hybrid Composites facility.  What does this do?  It combines both the effect of a Mining Facility and a Refinery, but is only half as effective as either.  For those with more cash than free space, this would be a handy crutch until your colony grows enough to properly support having both of the more dedicated types of facilities, or for colonies that had poor mineral wealth to begin with and thus aren't really worth investing too much into.

IDEA #6

Allow multiples of the same type of facility.  Dedicated farming worlds that do nothing else.  Dedicated mining worlds that do nothing else.  And so on.  Even just expanding the limit to two of each type would be enough, honestly.

[Plantissue]

Let's consider what probably constitutes colonist Domestic Goods, which are produced by Light Industry: Clothes, toilet paper, toothpaste, shoes, light bulbs... pretty much everything you need around the house that you don't put in your mouth.

Where do you put your toothpaste if not in your mouth? On your feet?

[intrinsic_parity]

Let's consider what probably constitutes colonist Domestic Goods, which are produced by Light Industry: Clothes, toilet paper, toothpaste, shoes, light bulbs... pretty much everything you need around the house that you don't put in your mouth.

Where do you put your toothpaste if not in your mouth? On your feet?

There's no need to be rude, they were obviously referring to food with that comment.

This would help a lot on the logistics side, as it would allow even a starter colony provide some kind of support to the player's fleet... You would no longer be forced into spamming Heavy Industry on every colony that wants to have a space station...

Maybe you aren't aware, but you actually don't need any local production on a colony, they will import whatever they need if you have a spaceport. A waystation allows your colony to stockpile supplies and fuel, regardless of whether you have heavy industry and fuel production at the colony. I rarely build more than one or two heavy industries and I have max stations on every colony.

Allow multiples of the same type of facility.  Dedicated farming worlds that do nothing else.  Dedicated mining worlds that do nothing else.  And so on.  Even just expanding the limit to two of each type would be enough, honestly.

I don't think this would work with the balance at all. If they stacked additively (i.e. each provides the production level of the world and they add together) you could end up with absurd 14-20 production levels that make no sense with how demand works in the game. The largest demand you could possibly have is 10. That world would just corner the entire market.


As to devices like nano-forges being able to go into other industries, that's definitely and interesting idea and stuff like that has been suggested before. I don't think it makes sense for nano-forges to just go everywhere. From a gameplay perspective, it would make nano-forges much less exciting and unique (I think they should be much rarer than they are) and you also wouldn't expect a car factory to just start pumping out bicycles or something so I don't think it makes sense to just stick them in everywhere, but having some +1 production item for more industries would be cool.

[Grievous69]

There's no need to be rude, they were obviously referring to food with that comment.

And there's no need to act like a white knight, he was obviously making a joke. God, these things keep happening everywhere lately, get a sense of humor people.

[Plantissue]

It was a joke, and I didn't mean to be rude. I should had added a smilie to the end. Grevious69 however can also learn to be polite to others. I don't share his animosity towards newer posters and I don't appreciate the gist of his sentiment.

Anyways, toothpaste excepting, what I think: Fuel and supplies do have different uses and should remain separate, rather than joined together. There are many circumstances where one will be consumed and the other does not. I can understand the idea of supplies coming from light industry. However I dislike complicated but shallow systems like X3 does. I can see no reason why nanoforges cannot be used for light industry, though it seems a waste since domestic products are a small and overcrowded market. Though I guess if you have open port, it would be useful and there is something very amusing about using a nanoforge for recreational drugs.

However supplies is described as including spare parts and ship components and microfab feedstock (whatever that is), so it doesn't really make sense to be able to have 2 production sources of supplies. You either would have 2 different type of supplies requiring 2 different industries, or a dedicated supply industry that would require supply of organics, metals and transplutonics.

The other ideas suggest you don't understand the economy.

[Grievous69]

Help dozens of new players around and no one bats an eye, call one guy blind and everyone remembers you as the rudest piece of trash on the forums. Yep, this seems like the internet.

[DatonKallandor]

Nanoforges basically seem like core components of shipsyards since their primary effect is increasing quality of ship hulls. Having them produce consumer goods seems....odd. Especially with the theme of technology being hyper-specialized due to DRM. It wouldn't make sense that you can just use nanoforges as generic replicators.

Also Supplies are probably mostly spare parts for ships (since they are consumed by periodical maintenance and significantly by repairing damage and restoring readyness - both things that would require spare parts) - and those don't make sense as being in any other commodity. Neither consumer nor luxury goods would contain ship parts.

As for combining fuel and supplies - they both serve entirely different gameplay functions. Combining them would make no sense at all.

[NephilimNexus]

Some good arguments here, though no one mentioned the housing thing.  So let me think about what you said and revise some things for you:

Nanoforge DRM/blueprint limits are a good point.  What if there were blueprints for things like domestic goods that had to be found & unlocked before they could be used for that?  Would that be more balanced?  And should they be buyable or loot dependent?

A lot of these nanoforge extensions do indeed revolve around the idea that, frankly, they're overabundant.  I've found that if I've got 3-5 colonies, only one will have heavy industry until their populations get into the 6-7 range.  Yet by the time I've got to even starting 3-5 colonies I'll have already hoarded just as many nanoforges (mostly the glitched kind, but still) and currently have no use for them beyond the first one.  So rather than pitching making them rarer drops I instead tried to find a way to put them to use for something, which I think more people would enjoy overall (I mean, do people actually enjoy loot nerfing?  Why?)

As for the rest of the production ideas, keep in mind that most of this revolves around the early game, or at least the part where players are getting their first colonies started.  They are means in which a player can have a more robust, or at least self-sufficient, means of colony production without having to spam more colonies or try to force their rapid growth through massive spending sprees.  If you look again it's clear that most of this stuff would be pretty irrelevant to someone who already has even 2-3 high population colonies with multiple industries apiece.

OK so instead of industry stacking what if we allowed two AI cores per industry?  Again, these are something that I, at least, often find themselves in surplus of - at least the cheap gamma level ones.  So what if we had some kind of secondary, lesser bonus to using a second core?  Let two gammas act as one beta, or two betas work like an alpha?  Or perhaps something else?  Because frankly I couldn't care less about the whole "trading for money and rep" option.  Screw that, I fought for these things, they're mine - and I want to use them for something, dammit.

[Plantissue]

There's no need for any of those ideas.

As for nanoforges, it is easy to imagine that the volume for 1 unit domestic goods far exceeds whatever volume of starship components the nanoforge can make. Changing from producing complicated components does not directly transfer into producing large volume of an item. 3D printers can produce complex shaped metal components, but they wouldn't be able to produce large amounts of simply shaped metal.

[iamlenb]

One thing that we aren't looking at is that a +1 to production is an entire magnitude larger or more.  A size 10 colony with size 10 production can supply every market demand within range of size 10 or less, if my understanding of the economy is correct.  So we're not looking at a single factory, or even a single nanoforge, we're looking at an entire planetary economy upgraded to nanoforge production.

Maybe a solution would be to have the base population produce every good at a level of 1/3 the population, so at population 3, 6, and 9 it produces 1, 2, and 3 of each good respectively.  Investing in a specific industry slot simply makes the base population production reach higher levels.

Going even further, one could add the nanoforges, synchrotrons, and cores to the specialized industries or base pop structure with effects that vary by where they install.

[NephilimNexus]

Maybe a solution would be to have the base population produce every good at a level of 1/3 the population, so at population 3, 6, and 9 it produces 1, 2, and 3 of each good respectively.  Investing in a specific industry slot simply makes the base population production reach higher levels.

I appreciate the constructive feedback, thanks!

There's no need for any of those ideas.

And then there's this guy...

[Plantissue]

I was being nice. Would you rather I say that there isn't a single gameplay idea there that would improve the game?

That your suggestion accomplishes nothing but needless complexity? Poorly thought out game mechanics to produce complexity for complexity's sake with misunderstand reasoning what the commodities in the game represent? No idea that your colonies get supplied by outside factions, so the proposal makes no sense? Fuel and Supplies have different uses and are used and consumed at different rates for different circumstances to create decisions based on resource usage, so cannot be combined? No idea that supplies are starship supplies not just crew supplies? Not only do you lack the idea of what game mechanic you want to improve, but you also gave no thought to the effects that your suggestions would have.

[NephilimNexus]

I was being nice.

You must be real fun at parties.

("Parties" are events where groups of friends all meet up for fun)

("Friends" are... ah never mind.)

[Thaago]

This thread has gotten a bit out of hand; lets get back onto the topic of the thread. As a reminder, if you feel that a post has been insulting, please use the "report" button rather than escalating, and as always please follow the forum rules. Plantissue, you have a PM.

[NephilimNexus]

Maybe a solution would be to have the base population produce every good at a level of 1/3 the population, so at population 3, 6, and 9 it produces 1, 2, and 3 of each good respectively.  Investing in a specific industry slot simply makes the base population production reach higher levels.

Actually, I was thinking even less output than that.  The idea of these "colony starter" structures would be to have a small, fixed production amount so that colonies built out in the middle of nowhere could actually produce enough stuff to survive and grow a level or two. 

The nerfing that keeps them from being OP would be that their production would not increase with population and, in very short order, end up quite inferior to the more dedicated, vanilla production structures.

If you look at colony building simulations, you'll often find that the starter building has small production values for everything the colony needs, but that these output amounts are not enough to sustain anymore than the smallest foothold population.  They're meant as a way for players to survive long enough to even get on their feet while they're waiting for the bigger, better, and more dedicated structures to finish.

So again, if "colony in a box" structure produces 2 supplies, 2 fuel and 2 domestic goods for a new size 3 colony that's great.  But since that's all it will ever produce, regardless of colony size, that structure becomes pretty useless once you're up to size 5+ and you're starting to get enough room to expand into the regular building types.  Then it's time to tear it down and build something with much higher outputs.