Manumit

Join Date 02/2015

Mechanic Complexification & General Review

First of all thank you so much for an economic RTS. It's something that I've been wishing for ages!

Let's talk impressions that I feel are important to a enjoyable, even, fair game:

I really like the resource scarcity that exists. In my second game I built up water and had a near monopoly and could buy out the other companies quickly. One problem with fairness is that water has a cost associated with it. For instance, the infrastructure required to move power, and the logistics required to move water should be taken into account:

1) Infrastructure: If water requires power to move, the power cost to get water industries going should increase as you move away from power infrastructure. If you lose 0.5 points of power per ten tiles then there would be a game play decision associated with the diminishing returns of building far from home, and far from use areas.

2) Water has to be taken to storage or industries that use water. (I think chemicals should require water to produce, and greenhouses should just have an upfront water cost.) If I choose to monopolise water I'm going to get reduced benefit as I stockpile water. If I need 5 shipping trucks to get a stable supply of water from my leases tiles I should be paying extra fuel to move that water increased distance. I can store water at the lease, but if water has to be moved I should be paying a cost to move it, or building infrastructure (i.e. pipes) to move it.

I think the pace of the game picks up well, you start with short waits, and you invest your resources thoughtfully. At a certain point you are just throwing money and resources out as quick as you can and not having lease squares is holding you back. I think I'd prefer to have a lease purchasing system. There was this old Canadian board game called "Oilman". First you'd spend money to buy leases, then you'd test the leases for oil, then you'd get a return based on your successes. I'm not saying this would work in this game, I think that having a lease purchasing system, and a lease trading market could enrich the game.

I love the fact I can play this game with one finger on my Surface Pro 2. I'd give the sell and buy buttons more screen real estate though.

I'd like to have civilization investments, not too many but something to make me feel like I'm building a functioning society with my workers. illed chemical engineers This brings up a few ideas:

1) Outpost storage facilities

2) Logistics between outposts and bases, and between industries (having a charge cruiser pick up carbon for my chemical factory etc.)

3) Improved efficiency from placing habitation around the planet for fly in fly out workers

4) Skilled chemical engineers needed for factories, training facilities and immigration depts. Lower immigration cost for very liveable and desirable habitation.

Just playing around, Thanks so much for this game looking forward to improvements very much.

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Quoting ,

quoting post

That is already taken into account, but it's not the electricity costs that increases but the fuel cost, on a map with a lot of spread and scarce resources, fuel cost will inevitably skyrocket.

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I agree with the OP's general point about 'complexifying' the logistics side of the game. I don't think the player should be forced to plot logistics routes, etc, but should have the flexibility, particularly mid-game, to tweak and optimize this resource flow.

As mentioned, a 'distribution point' or other such building could serve as a secondary resource hub, allowing raw materials to be routed directly to their 'refineries' instead of having to go back to the outpost first, for those times when you can't manage to put a refinery adjacent to an extractor.

Also, with regard to transportation distance costs, it'd be nice if the lines indicating distant resource sites provided some indication of required fuel cost per trip.

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Quoting NavyFish,

reply 2

Also, with regard to transportation distance costs, it'd be nice if the lines indicating distant resource sites provided some indication of required fuel cost per trip.

In an earlier version, we had some information about how much it will cost in fuel to ship from a non-HQ connected building. One thing that's strange is that the fuel price changes a lot during the game.

What would you want to see in the fuel consumption/use on the building construction display?

-Scott-

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I think a simple "1/2/3" fuel 'stack', akin to how you display other resources on the board, would suffice. Perhaps even a "3.4 fuel used per trip" line of text for more information.

I'd picture this text/icon being displayed floating next to the ghosted building prior to placing.

Finally, when you hover over a constructed building, in addition to seeing the production/consumption rates, you should see the fuel (or water) quantity expense per trip.

Again, don't tell me cost - tell me quantity.

Thank you for looking into this!

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average fuel consumption per second would be really useful.

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While I agree, that would have to be a past average value, as predicting that value would be quite difficult. Why? Because it inherently depends on the number of trips per second, which is inherently unpredictable: raw material shortages or player-directed early shipments would case less/more trips per minute than normal.

While I don't think average fuel consumption per second would be useful for an INDIVIDUAL route, displaying this for ALL transport routes would be quite useful. I understand you can get close to this by hovering over the fuel resource icon and tallying up the consumption rates, but it's not particularly clean. Having a separate 'line item' of "Transport Costs", and averaging that over a small period of time would help players measure the impact of their transportation costs on overall productivity. This kind of information would be greatly useful (particularly over the course of many games, as a feedback mechanism for players looking to fine-tune their economy).

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Fuel consumed per trip to HQ when placing non-connected buildings would be awesome.

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The numbers would be off if you manually sent an early shipment, but I think the tooltips should show numbers based on the assumption that you'll only ship full blimps.

Actually, the number I really care about is fuel cost, not fuel consumption, but given that everything else in the game requires you to check the market price and do the multiplication yourself, I think that should be the case here as well.

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Quoting emaise,

reply 8

The number I want to know is fuel consumption per delivered produced resource, since a blimp holds different amounts of different resources. For factories, The calculation should include fuel consumption for shipping the inputs needed to produce the outputs.

The numbers would be off if you manually sent an early shipment, but I think the tooltips should show numbers based on the assumption that you'll only ship full blimps.

Actually, the number I really care about is fuel cost, not fuel consumption, but given that everything else in the game requires you to check the market price and do the multiplication yourself, I think that should be the case here as well.

Yeah, I agree, keep it in line with everything else. Like when you look at a building you see, it consumes x power, y input resource and produces z output. So add that it consumes w fuel. I think per second would make most sense as it would be most in line with everything else. But if it is something else you would have to say it.

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You're right, it makes sense to show it that way. Under ideal conditions, X fuel per tick and X fuel per produced resource are the same (or rather, proportional), because output production is a constant rate per tick.

Fuel consumption is not necessarily constant-rate, because it's bursty, and you might have partial deliveries. But for the tooltip I think it's okay to assume the ideal case and express it as (expected, averaged) fuel units consumed per tick.

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