Re: Facility balance

Naismith wrote:

The other is a small QoL improvement, just making it public information somewhere in the game that owning an outpost returns 50-75-100% of NIC spent in facility X, Y, Z. A lot of corps didnt know about this until we told them about it, and in many cases it was an incentive for them to go out there and own an outpost. Does that make sense to you Zoom, or is it too much hassle for you guys?

As I said some posts above I think this would be better if it had its own topic. But yeah, maybe we could do a new tab in the outpost controls window and put some info and slider controls there.

Re: Facility balance

Awesome it would be a good idea for sure, and lets you tweak with it further if you choose to adjust how stability impacts returns or w/e.

So currently, we are looking at:
Alpha 1 - 0
Alpha 2 - 50
Beta Main - 100
Beta Outpost - 50

Or am I misunderstanding something?

P.S.

It might be interesting to consider differentiating Beta 1 and Beta 2 with facility pts to incentivise competition over Beta 2 terminals? I think Beta 2 dead land was a concern that was raised at some point.

Re: Facility balance

Look at my previous post, the only update is all 100 for beta main terminals.

Naismith wrote:

It might be interesting to consider differentiating Beta 1 and Beta 2 with facility pts to incentivise competition over Beta 2 terminals? I think Beta 2 dead land was a concern that was raised at some point.

I was thinking about this but I only saw drama and conspiracy theories.

Re: Facility balance

Im the first to point out stupid sh*t, but Alpha 2 is better then Alpha 1, IMHO it would be logical if Beta 1 and Beta 2 followed a similar pattern.

The only problem would be incorporating it into the overall scheme, if Beta 1 is reaching 300 pts now you'd have to squeeze Beta 2 between 300 and Gamma max available.

Re: Facility balance

Beta 1 is nowhere close to 300 pts even with the changes, that would have been the case only with your idea of being able to put all 10 points on 1 facility.

But I don't really see Beta1 and 2 as linear progression like in the case of Alphas, more like horizontal diversity.

Re: Facility balance

Sorry I meant total 300 pts (facility points & relation & extension), going from your +25 idea, not 300 just in facility points. My producer for example has 275 pts in Koykili.

Ultimately it's your call, but speaking from my experience Beta 2's are a logistical nightmare with their TP layout and NPC roaming patterns compared to the Beta 1 islands (where TP's are typically close to the outposts). If you asked me they are currently worse off then Beta 1's, I imagine that's a large reason why they're not being used (POE lives on Domhalarn, NSE lives on Hokkagaros, Ethos lives on Norhoop - nobody really lives on the Beta 2's except OTHERS until recently).

Horizontal diversity is awesome though, the game can only benefit from more of it.

Re: Facility balance

But on gamma you can get about 300 points solely from the facility so I didn't quite understand the comparison. But that sort of point difference is needed compared to betas to ultimately have a noticeable difference in efficiency due to the diminishing curve.

And both the TP layout and NPCs will change soon on betas so that alone might turn things around, if they are indeed the reason for the underusage.

Re: Facility balance

Yup best not tweak too many things at once, there are already huge changes coming to the game as you pointed out.

Re: Facility balance

You know, balancing this becomes a lot easier is you change the underlying diminishing returns formula.

Currently it is purely arithmetic which means that changing the parameters just moves the curve rather than changing its shape.

Currently the curve is too steep at the low end to allow real differences between the 9 or so levels of facilities available* especially when you get to having level 8 relevant extensions.

A short while ago I suggested this exponential function: Recent post.

You should seriously consider it or something like it. It is far more flexible.

* Thinkng Alpha1, Alpha1 outpost, Alpha2, Beta1 Terminal, Beta 1 outpost, Beta2 outpost and Gamma T1, T2,T3

Re: Facility balance

I think that skills should make a difference but the figures you give should be AFTER skills, not before. The difference between Alpha and Beta facilities needs to be significant even with max skills.

I also do think that Beta 2 should be better than beta 1 from a facilities point of view, and Beta 2 should also be better than is achievable on Gamma.

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Re: Facility balance

Ludlow Bursar wrote:

You know, balancing this becomes a lot easier is you change the underlying diminishing returns formula.

Currently it is purely arithmetic which means that changing the parameters just moves the curve rather than changing its shape.

Currently the curve is too steep at the low end to allow real differences between the 9 or so levels of facilities available* especially when you get to having level 8 relevant extensions.

A short while ago I suggested this exponential function: Recent post.

You should seriously consider it or something like it. It is far more flexible.

* Thinkng Alpha1, Alpha1 outpost, Alpha2, Beta1 Terminal, Beta 1 outpost, Beta2 outpost and Gamma T1, T2,T3


Ludlow is right, we can look into the slope of that function, you can make it less steep so 0-900 point differentiation can be acciavable and then you can balance really well everything and significant improvement is allowed then.

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Re: Facility balance

Beta 2s should be better than Beta 1s simply because there is -1 terminal on the island.

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Re: Facility balance

Ville wrote:

Beta 2s should be better than Beta 1s simply because there is -1 terminal on the island.

Counting is hard.

-2

Proverbs 23:20-21 warns us, “Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat, for drunkards and gluttons become poor, and drowsiness clothes them in rags."

64 (edited by Inda 2015-08-19 14:26:43)

Re: Facility balance

But there is no open terminal also, so more safe.

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Re: Facility balance

Jita wrote:
Ville wrote:

Beta 2s should be better than Beta 1s simply because there is -1 terminal on the island.

Counting is hard.

-2

I'm referring to the ones players can adjust.

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Re: Facility balance

I would disagree that Beta 2's should be better then Gamma, Gamma should always trump everything industry-wise when it comes to actual efficiency after all is said and done with diminishing returns.

I would agree that perhaps looking over the industry formulas and adjusting it so high-end production skills have more of an impact would be good, but I'm more in favor of getting all the quick and easy improvements in with small patches every couple of weeks like what was done when Steam release hit.

The more I think about it the more I'm in favor of sparks staying as a convenience feature with something like a 30hr cooldown, with a extension that reduces it 1hr per level, maxing out at 20hr cooldown. Removes the worst aspects of power projection while retaining the utility and convenience of the spark tp's, which will be more important IF the Devs choose to at some point make the world bigger by adding more Beta / Gamma islands.

Re: Facility balance

More on topic however, Zoom is this a good place to mention QoL features or should we just discuss whether 25pts buff to Beta is a good idea?

Cause I have a pet-peeve about not being able to reverse engineer 10 prototypes with 1 click, even though I have enough decoders and prototypes. Having to drag that sh*t into the window for each prototype is painfully annoying. There is a way to circumvent it by spamming the button and then sometimes it'll queue up 4-5 at a time, but that's unreliable.

How do you figure keeping the Beta NPC terminals on the same level as Alpha 2 will attract people to use the NPC terminals more?

The way I understand it, you intend to put the Beta NPC terminals at 100 pts (same as Alpha 2), but the default level for outposts will be 50. I see how that incentivizes corporations to take things in stride and move first to the NPC terminal then capture their own outpost, but isn't it counterproductive when they can just be producing out of Alpha 2's at the same efficiency and none of the risk?

Or did you have something else in mind with Beta NPC terminals?

Re: Facility balance

I also think Gamma every time need to be the high end.

Beta NPC terminals 100 point but Alpha 2 terminal will be 50 and less at some point maybe 25 as I understand.

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Re: Facility balance

Naismith wrote:

More on topic however, Zoom is this a good place to mention QoL features or should we just discuss whether 25pts buff to Beta is a good idea?

Let this topic be only about facility points, otherwise we'll just lose track, and as you said "I'm more in favor of getting all the quick and easy improvements in with small patches every couple of weeks".

Naismith wrote:

The way I understand it, you intend to put the Beta NPC terminals at 100 pts (same as Alpha 2), but the default level for outposts will be 50. I see how that incentivizes corporations to take things in stride and move first to the NPC terminal then capture their own outpost, but isn't it counterproductive when they can just be producing out of Alpha 2's at the same efficiency and none of the risk?

Or did you have something else in mind with Beta NPC terminals?

That's why my initial proposal for Beta main terminals was 50 points with some facilities at 100 (probably 2, with faction variance, so different ones for all three beta main terminals). That would still make it slightly better than a stability 0 outpost, but it would already get even at 20.

edit: and no, Alpha2s would be 25-50 with the same factional variance applied.

Re: Facility balance

DEV Zoom wrote:
Naismith wrote:

More on topic however, Zoom is this a good place to mention QoL features or should we just discuss whether 25pts buff to Beta is a good idea?

Let this topic be only about facility points, otherwise we'll just lose track, and as you said "I'm more in favor of getting all the quick and easy improvements in with small patches every couple of weeks".

Naismith wrote:

The way I understand it, you intend to put the Beta NPC terminals at 100 pts (same as Alpha 2), but the default level for outposts will be 50. I see how that incentivizes corporations to take things in stride and move first to the NPC terminal then capture their own outpost, but isn't it counterproductive when they can just be producing out of Alpha 2's at the same efficiency and none of the risk?

Or did you have something else in mind with Beta NPC terminals?

That's why my initial proposal for Beta main terminals was 50 points with some facilities at 100 (probably 2, with faction variance, so different ones for all three beta main terminals). That would still make it slightly better than a stability 0 outpost, but it would already get even at 20.

edit: and no, Alpha2s would be 25-50 with the same factional variance applied.

I understand better now what you're doing, you're returning the old terminal specializations in addition to the global effect on station facility points (like before when Koykili, Nauwy and Karapyth were strategically important stations because they were refineries).

So it would be like this:

Alpha 1 - 0, but 2 "specialized facilities" at 25, achieving 25 across the board on the whole island
Alpha 2 - 50 (only 1 terminal there so not sure if you're gonna make differences between Alpha 2 islands for example Tellesis is good for proto/RR, hersh for refining/recycling, shin for factory and repair? I always thought it was overpowered that Alpha 2 terminals was almost as good as a full stability Beta station)
Beta NPC - 50 across the board with 2 "specialized" at 100
Beta Outposts - 50 across the board with 10 upgrades to throw around and customize a corp's outpost (or are you thinking about adding specializations here too?)

That sounds like you'll be shaking up the game world quite a lot in the industrial sense, I really like the idea it's deviously clever. Implement tomorrow!

Re: Facility balance

Yes that's pretty much it.

Alpha1 - Main terminals all 0, while outposts each have two 25 pts facilities, one island covers all 6 facilities at 25 (so variance is not factional here but within island).
Alpha2 - 25 pts with 2 facilities at 50 (factional variance)
Beta1 NPC - 50 pts with 2 facilities at 100 (factional variance)

Factional variance meaning these facilities would be higher:
TM - Prototype, Refinery
ICS - Factory, Repair shop
ASI - Reverse engineering, Recycle

(I tried to pair them up in a sense of a complex facility+a simple one.)


Beta outposts wouldn't have default specialization, that's up to the owners.

Re: Facility balance

I agree Beta outpost specialization would be too much, thats why station-owners have 10 pts to customize their outpost to their liking.

Everything else sounds really good, sounds like a Perp I'd like to play. Gief tomorrow plz.

Re: Facility balance

A few points here there make little differences pff... complete waste of time.

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Re: Facility balance

DEV Zoom wrote:

Factional variance meaning these facilities would be higher:
TM - Prototype, Refinery
ICS - Factory, Repair shop
ASI - Reverse engineering, Recycle
...

if you had real "factions" in... that would make sense. But right now, you have different colored robots.

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Re: Facility balance

I was looking into how I could try to make newbies refine for me so it would make sense. However the balance between alpha1 and alpha2 make it quite hard.

Iget that there is a goal to make advanced players move to alpha2 but I think curretnly it insulates it too much.

I also feel that alpha1 being distributed over several outpost is ahuge disadvantage compared to alpha2 housig everything under one roof.

I suggest that alpha 1 special facilities be more effective than alpha2 even if by marginal amounts. Alpha2 doesn't need to pay for intraisland logistics while alpha1 does. And yes I suggest this so I it makes financial sense to post private transport agreements between alpha1 facilities. But I am also backing this up in that when a players facility usage is more based on EP than facility points then alpha2 allows better scaling. Many of the facility services happen instantly while moving resources between outposts is inherently limited by the resource U usage making moving them take time.

So for alpha1 outpost make each outpost have 2 facilities with 60 points and alpha2 make all facilities with 50 points.

There is also a lack of trade between alpha1 and alpha2. By using this alpha2 properties is that it is still close to alpha1 and betas making it a trade hub. However alpha1 has better absolute efficency. But the efficency of moving resources from example beta to alpha1 compared to moving them to just alpha2 and trade there would not make alpha1 dominate.