Nice mod.
Not sure if the ability to disable individual ship's forging by toggling repair & recover CR for the ship was a new feature in the latest release, but it was very appreciated. I keep 4 atlas, one with each of the types of forges, and never really use the fuel refinery as I usually have more fuel than I need wherever I go...but it's always smart to have a backup plan in case you get stuck in deep hyperspace and need to mine a few asteroids for some emergency fuel. The ability to selectively toggle when it's just business as usual turning ores into metals and metals into machines, and when it's emergency time to dip into those volatiles stockpiles for fuel so the fleet can make it back to the core worlds, is a really handy feature.
On the note of balance, I'm sure other people have their opinions, but I'm a bit confused on the default choice of input -> output ratios (though it's easy enough to change). Adding a forge to a ship is expensive; OP cost, additional crew requirements, lost cargo space, extra ship maintenance. Running a forge is expensive; lost CR (which can total a full 1 supply per day for an atlas), broken machinery, and the indirect cost of basically doubling fleet expenses by moving at half normal speed (though I only really use forging when in deep hyperspace through large patches of muck when I'd otherwise choose to move slow to avoid damage). I don't understand the point of making the forge additionally expensive by giving unprofitable production ratios for most processes. Metals are easy enough to come by through battle loot, and I'd normally have to sell them to black markets for $12-15 (despite a base value of $30), but transplutonics are either rarely found in caches or derelicts or else I have to buy them from markets in small amounts for their $200 base value or $160 if I find a bargain (or I smash ludd path buoys
) .
Take machinery assembly on an Atlas as an example:
I take 72 metals I'd otherwise sell for $12 each ($864), add 6 transplutonics I bought at market or found and could have sold to market for $200 each ($1200), burn 1 supply to recover CR costing $100, and the result is 12 machinery, less the 1.44 machinery that will probably break down during the cycle, for a net gain of 10.66 machinery, a total worth about $1600 on the market. $2064 worth of inputs for $1600 worth of outputs. Get $0.77 on the $1.
Now add-in all the indirect costs: extra crew salaries & supply maintenance increase for the forge hullmod (which combined cost an atlas an extra $800/month), the cost of the lost cargo-hauling efficiency (5 atlases with forges only provide the cargo capacity of 4 atlases without forges, so basically a forged-atlas costs 25% more to run, an atlas costs about $4000/month to operate, so add an extra $1000). That adds an extra $60/day operating cost whether or not you're running the forge. Running the forge only 1/3 of the time? Get $0.71 on the $1.
Plus the intangible cost of the increased sensor profile, slow moving, inability to use other abilities, having to keep an extra 96 machinery on hand plus extras for expected breakdowns, having to keep a stockpile of transplutonics on hand to covert metals into valuable items, etc.
I get there is value in compressing loot, but in some ways it isn't compressing loot. I've taken my atlas which could have carried 2000 cargo of loot, removed 400 for the forge, taken up another 100 for extra machinery needed to run the forge, plus maybe another 100 for a small stockpile of transplutonics to be ready to use to run the forge whenever I get a huge loot drop of metals, plus haul an extra 50 or so supplies to account for the extra CR loss and extra maintenance over a 2-3 month voyage, leaving me 1350 space of my original 2000. Is my forge going to regularly compress enough metal into machinery or supplies to make up for losing 1/3 of my original cargo space? Is it worth all that added expense, in total earning maybe $0.50 on the $1 to run the forge and turn large piles of metal loot into more valuable loot, versus just taking the supplies and other high-value loot and chucking the low-value metals and ores out the spacelock?
The ore refinery sure, it can be quite profitable as you travel around the inner systems to snag large discount stockpiles of $2 iron ores and $60 transplutonic ores from planets, refine it, and sell it off for $12 / $200, you can easily profit $40k a month per atlas even if you only run your refinery 1/3 of the time as you hyperspace between systems. But all the other forges are substantially unprofitable with all costs considered, and most of their value is in providing an off-market source of the supplies and machinery inputs needed to run the ore refinery, or providing an emergency fuel source.
You've provided very straightforward coding to be able to simply adjust the production ratios, and my fix was just to remove transplutonics from the formulas and increase the metal input amounts to keep the $in->$out balance the same so that the forge is just entirely compressing low-value loot into higher value loot. So yes, I take a money loss in operating the forges, but the value of the forge to me is in compressing thousands of units of junk metal loot gained from outer system exploration into just hundreds of units of higher-value supplies/machinery I can resell when I get back to core worlds, thus allowing me to visit a system on mission, acquire 1000+ metal loot, refine it into 200 machinery or supplies as I travel to the next mission, freeing up my holds for the next system's loot, and repeat for the 3-4 more stops before returning back to civilization. Plus having an emergency source of supply or fuel generation if I miscalculate my needs or I come back to a core world that demands 3x normal prices. Plus, as my fleet gets huge, having a source of being able to whip up supplies & fuel for when the markets of the core system I've visited just quite literally don't have enough fuel/supplies to sell me for all my needs as I head out on a 1-3 month voyage.
If I could make a suggestion for future improvements to the mod, I'd add a few more forges:
- Heavy Armaments - Most factions don't sell these on open markets, or if they do it's just small amounts, so having a means to make your own and in larger volumes could be valuable for Nexerilin military operations. Could be made from metals & transplutonics, or metal & heavy machinery, etc.
- Transplutonics - made from regular metals, i.e. 10 metals turns into 1 transplutonic. Would help create a closed-economy in the forges; if you balance your fleet's forges properly you can run a mining fleet with a continual pipeline of mined iron ore -> metal -> transplutonics -> machinery for running said forges + supplies for the whole fleet + extra stuff to sell off.
- Volatiles - basically a reverse fuel centrifuge. Looting more fuel than your tankers can hold? Stabilize it into volatiles that you can store in your cargo haulers for those rainy days when a
friendly scavenger dumb pirate armada doesn't attack you to give you the fuel you need to get home, forcing you to turn on the fuel centrifuge.
All in all, great mod. Thank you for your hard work.
