Topic: Degrading CTs in Industry 2.0

Since I use almost all of my Perpetuum game time on industry and the open market, I decided to take a look on how the Industry 2.0 changes would affect me, and especially what I found analyzing the CTs, surprised me.

If we look at a practical example of 2 “Miner charge (titan ore)” CTs from the live server.
The agent has 4.2 relationship and 10/10/10 mass production extensions and the factory is level 2 (Tellesis main terminal)
CT 1: New CT made with a level 5 decoder (100% materiel efficiency, since 100% is the highest possible there is no need to use a higher level decoder)
http://i49.tinypic.com/34qtwqq.png

CT 2: After 16 cycles, with 11 production units in each (83% materiel efficiency)
http://i46.tinypic.com/2exyhax.png

so after 16 cycles the the Titanium requirement have gone from 60 to 72 per production unit, an increase of ~20.75%.


On the test server with the same agent at the same terminal:
CT 1: New CT made with a level 10 decoder (135 materiel efficiency points from the CT)
http://i46.tinypic.com/dd2dft.png

CT 2: a CT on 0 points
http://i50.tinypic.com/16riox.png

I don't know exactly how many production units that one can build before a CT on 135 points degrades to 0 points but it is more than 1000, and the Titanium requirement have only gone from 28 to 29 per production unit, an negligible increase of 3.57%

Even the more expensive stuff like Mesmers show the same kind of negligible increases in materiel requirement between the highest and lowest CT points.
Again the agent has 4.2 relationship and 10/10/10 mass production extensions and the factory is level 2  (Tellesis main terminal)
CT 1: New Mesmer CT made with a level 10 decoder (85 materiel efficiency points from the CT)
http://i50.tinypic.com/ncf9ep.png

CT 2: a Mesmer CT with 0 points
http://i48.tinypic.com/20r1z50.png

The Statichnol price only increase from 5665 to 5859 per production unit, or 3.42%. Even the day to day price on raw materiel some times increases more then that.

I think that is enough numbers for now.
Unless I am missing something and this is how it is going to look on the live server after the patch, I hardly see any reason to use high level decoders to make CTs, in fact I hardly see any reason to make a new CT when I can just keep using the same without any noteworthy difference in price.

So what am I missing? Did I miscalculate something?

Re: Degrading CTs in Industry 2.0

well simple thing:
with the new point system the ct is only one component. if you have high skills and a good facility then the ct with low points will not make that much of a difference. as you have pointed out.. a few percent. so i think as well that decoder will basicly only be used for minimum requirement. or maybe ppl will use better ones that dont have the skills yet.

we will see how this will unfold. but even with the decoder forges, the use of decoders has greatly decreased. and will most likely drasticly fall in worth.

3 (edited by Arga 2012-05-31 20:12:51)

Re: Degrading CTs in Industry 2.0

The ME of the factory is based on:

Base Factory points
Relation points
Skills points
CT points

The total ME points have dimishing returns.

If Factory/relations/skill points bring you up past about 75% ME, then the CT pts have little effect.

The CT then, helps players with low skills or relations.

As for CT degrading, in the testing I did, the CT lost 1-2 points PER unit, but this was for a high-end item. It's possible that ammo CT's degrade more slowly, did you actually run a bunch of ammo in the factory?

Additionally, did you actually try to run a 0 CT? If it did, that could be a bug, or if they degrade by decimals for ammo, then it wasn't actually 0 yet.

If there are no points left on a CT, then I believe you can no longer use them. Which would require you to make new ones.

Edit: what Zort said too

Re: Degrading CTs in Industry 2.0

Arga wrote:

If there are no points left on a CT, then I believe you can no longer use them. Which would require you to make new ones.

Wrong; If you use a 0p ct you are just relying on the points you get from factory for calculating materials.

Because the voices told me to do it.

Re: Degrading CTs in Industry 2.0

Saramara wrote:
Arga wrote:

If there are no points left on a CT, then I believe you can no longer use them. Which would require you to make new ones.

Wrong; If you use a 0p ct you are just relying on the points you get from factory for calculating materials.

Then its broken, because part of the whole process is the need to remake PT's and RE them. If you can run it past 0, no one will ever need to build another prototype.

Re: Degrading CTs in Industry 2.0

The observations are correct, using 0p CTs will be a seriously good way of producing. Even if there's a slightly more efficient way of producing the gains will be at most 5% (more likely 1-2%).

Re: Degrading CTs in Industry 2.0

I think putting points in ct's would be for lower ep players who want to compete, but i dunno. Thats how it works.

Because the voices told me to do it.

Re: Degrading CTs in Industry 2.0

This thread really raises some eyebrows, with just one ct you can make 1000s of cycles with minimal material cost penalty and still keep using it. Devs is all this intended?

RIP PERPETUUM

Re: Degrading CTs in Industry 2.0

so .... what about us artifact hunters? this effectively negates the need for a mk2 ct market. will artifacts offer new loot to offset that? E.g., structure tokens in large quantities?

Re: Degrading CTs in Industry 2.0

Lucius Marcellus wrote:

The observations are correct, using 0p CTs will be a seriously good way of producing. Even if there's a slightly more efficient way of producing the gains will be at most 5% (more likely 1-2%).

This.

Currently, if you have a 50% CT, your going to think about making a new one, because there is a big difference between 50% and 72%, enough to offset the cost of consuming a PT.

400 points is 90% ME.

300 points is 87.5% ME.

Lvl 10 decoder is going to give you about 77 pts for a T4 module.

Combining (2) 77 point CT's give a 120 pt ct, and (2) 120's gives 200 (ish).

So for the cost of (4) prototypes, you can get 200 pts, which decrements by 1-2 pts for EACH ITEM.

Even if you needed the 200 pts to reach 400, you only get the benefit of 2.5% ME for 75 items, again at the cost of (4) PT's.

All around, you'd be better off making (4) 77 pt CT's and running them in parrallel to 0, and because you can make units 1 at a time, simply build filler items as need off 0 pt ct's after that.

Maybe, if your talking about some future bot, that needs 100B units, 2.5% may make a difference, but than your not likely to make (4) of them either to get to 200 pts.

Re: Degrading CTs in Industry 2.0

Also, infinite modules from one prototype!

Re: Degrading CTs in Industry 2.0

I would assume 0p CTs don't degrade any further!

RIP PERPETUUM

Re: Degrading CTs in Industry 2.0

Maybe the rate of decay should be made constant so that a CT can actually reach 0p, and at that point it is destroyed?

Re: Degrading CTs in Industry 2.0

The system is just different now.

75% CT @ 10 pieces per, losing 2-3 per cycle, would still result in about 10 cycles to 50%; or about 100 pieces. And another 50 pieces if you wanted to push down to 40%.

I suppose, you could run CT's down to 0%, but i've never done that, because the difference between 40% and 75% was always worth making a new CT for (and typically it would pay off at 50, you'd only go 40 if you had to buy the PT)

There are some new extensions in the pts, that have CT in the name, but there's no info on what it does. Probably has to do with the CT combination facility, but I don't see any need for using that, unless materials become very rare.

15 (edited by Annihilator 2012-06-01 00:45:07)

Re: Degrading CTs in Industry 2.0

Zoom already wrote into other topic that the everlasting 0% CTs probably wont stay in the new system.

btw, i brought up this issue already some time ago wink

*Disclaimer: This post can contain strong sarcasm or cynical remarks. keep that in mind!
Whining - It's amazing how fast your trivial concerns will disappear

16 (edited by Arga 2012-06-01 00:55:13)

Re: Degrading CTs in Industry 2.0

Annihilator wrote:

Zoom already wrote into other topic that the everlasting 0% CTs probably wont stay in the new system.

btw, i brought up this issue already some time ago wink

My hero!

Edit: wait, isn't it like 2am in hungry/germany? Go to bed )

Re: Degrading CTs in Industry 2.0

Is the decay still diminishing as CTs reach close to 0 though? If so, you'll still get ridiculous amounts from one CT.

18

Re: Degrading CTs in Industry 2.0

Certainly looks like it. Did a test yesterday and managed to produce 40+ bots with the CT decreasing only from 50 to 38 or so.

Re: Degrading CTs in Industry 2.0

Doesnt say much mqx, need to compare that decay with the decay of a CT from 12p to 0p

20 (edited by acidraid 2012-06-01 17:32:07)

Re: Degrading CTs in Industry 2.0

The fact that you can continue to produce even after the CT reaches 0 points, is not really what I wanted to point out here, to me that is clearly a bug/exploit.

What I wanted to point out is
1.The insane increase in production units that can be made from a CT before it breaks (witch it should at 0 points)
2.That there is no reason to actually stop using the CT before it breaks
3.There is very little reason to use high level decoders be course it does not add any noteworthy efficiency to the CT

In the old system I used a miner charge CT for 16 cycles before I replaced it, with 11 units in each that gives 176 production units from 1 CT (or 176 000 miner charges in total)
In the new system I have made 800+ units of miner charges going from 110 points down to 51 points
that is already 4.5 times as many charges from one CT and it is still good for 500+ units, in total I would end up with more than 1 300 000 miner charges from 1 CT.
I also took a Guardian shield hardener (T4) CT from 80 points (level 10 decoder on alpha 2) down to 2 points and I now have 900 shield hardeners with less the 5% materiel cost difference between the first I made and the last I made.
I am sure that Lucius or any other producer out there can back me up on the fact that you would not even be close to 900 shield hardeners when you change the CT to a new one in the old system.

The balance between prototype cost/CT cost on one side and manufacturing cost on the other, seems to me to be completely out of, well out of balance.
One of the “challenges” in mass production is to find that spot on the CT where you would be better off with a new CT, that spot does not seem to exist anymore.
The number of decoders needed to produce the same amount of items as before the patch will also drop, so unless the drop rate has changes we could end up with more decoders then the game actually needs (decoder inflation?)

To further emphasize how wrong I think this is, let me tell a little about what I do in Perpetuum.
I produce and sell 201 different items on the open market on Tellesis, the item catalog spans from all producible ammo/charges and a lot of T1, T2, T3 and T4 items.
When I replace a CT I do not delete it I extract it and put it in a folder, this means that I now have close to 500 CT that is or rather was no good. Almost all of the CTs is above 50% (some like the miner charges is at 80-83%) seeing that all CTs except the MK2 CTs is converted 1:1 which means that I will now have ~500 CTs with above 50 points.
Doing a little calculation in my head and comparing how many items I will be able to make with these CTs with the number of items that is usually sold on the open market, I am guessing that if I chose to only keep producing these 201 items I will not have to make a new CT in 6-9 month.

And just to end with a few questions.
What is the difference between a 50 point MK2 CT that you find commonly on alpha and a 150 point MK2 CT that is rare even if you do artifact scanning on beta?
If the answer is less then 5%  materiel efficiency, then the system seems broken.
What is the difference between using a level 9 decoder and a level 10 decoder?
If the answer is that you get 5 more points on the CT which is only 10-20 more items from a CT that will give you more then 900 anyway, then the system seems broken.
Who is going to use the Calibration complex if all CTs are used until they breaks?
...

Re: Degrading CTs in Industry 2.0

well, that CTs dont break is not a bug

its just that under the old system, noone ever used a CT that long. because the production costs already started to skyrocket below 50% CT Quality.

As far as i can see, the DEVs got two hotfix options:
- CT vanishes if its down to zero
- lower the CT minimum quality down to -200 points, where its completely negating your extension, relation and alpha-factory points.

*Disclaimer: This post can contain strong sarcasm or cynical remarks. keep that in mind!
Whining - It's amazing how fast your trivial concerns will disappear

22

Re: Degrading CTs in Industry 2.0

The only possible fix i see is to redesign the CT decay formula. Being able to produce 900 Mods/Bots from a single CT is not good for the economic and it contradicts the very idea of the CT having any importance whatsoever.

Make the CT decay linear and work out how many mods/bots should be producable per CT.

23 (edited by Lucius Marcellus 2012-06-01 18:20:37)

Re: Degrading CTs in Industry 2.0

acidraid wrote:

1.The insane increase in production units that can be made from a CT before it breaks (witch it should at 0 points)
2.That there is no reason to actually stop using the CT before it breaks
3.There is very little reason to use high level decoders be course it does not add any noteworthy efficiency to the CT

Well written post and I completely agree with these points. The new system is much more simplistic and does make CT facilities, decoder facilities and CT's in general quite redundant.

@Anni: I think a DEV hinted in another thread that it does actually break down at 0, but not sure. Anyhow, allowing negative CT points is definately a solution, but without also adjusting the rate of decay you can still get insanely many items off one CT. Further, with decent relation and extensions you'll have close to 200 in 'base points', so even a -100p CT would work quite fine!

@mqx: Yes I agree, the diminishing returns are just far to extreme, and should only seriously start kicking in at beyond 300 points or so. With current system with no extension, relations, crap factory and 0p CT you still only require 50% more materials than a perfect counterpart. This number should be more like:

Total points (factory+extensions+relations+CT) | Additional materials needed:
0p | 300%
100p | 100%
200p | 50%
300p | 30%
400p | 20%
500p | 15%

And decoders should add 10p for each level above complexity.

Re: Degrading CTs in Industry 2.0

Annihilator wrote:

well, that CTs dont break is not a bug

its just that under the old system, noone ever used a CT that long. because the production costs already started to skyrocket below 50% CT Quality.

If you forced a degradation of the CT in the old system, by extracting a CT with an agent with no extraction extensions you could get a CT to 0%
If you continued to add the 0% CT to the factory and extract it again after it had reached 0% it would still increase the materiel cost every time.
After a number of times the CT would actually become blank (as it would not even show the 0% in the information) and you would get an error if you tried to add it to the factory again after that.
I also used the word exploit, be course it has never been the intention that you could continue to use the same CT without any increase in materiel cost, or at least I do not think it is intended.

As far as i can see, the DEVs got two hotfix options:
- CT vanishes if its down to zero
Again the problem is not really the 0 point CT but the fact that we can now make 7+ times as many production units from one single CT.
Even an agent with 0/0/0 Mass production extensions, 0 relation, using a level 1 factory (0 point) will only go from 31 Titanium at 125 point miner charge CT to 38 Titanium at 0 point, an increase of only 22.58%
I use the word “only” be course as I showed in the first post an agent with high level extensions in the old system would have an increase at 20.75% in just 18% CT degradation

- lower the CT minimum quality down to -200 points, where its completely negating your extension, relation and alpha-factory points.
So after the CT gets to 0 points, it will start to give negative points if you continue to use it? If yes then we would still be able to make 7+ times as many items as before and I would still have ~500 CT that becomes almost as good as new and will give me 10s of thousands of items for the next 6-9 months

Re: Degrading CTs in Industry 2.0

can you really make that much more items?

old system you could do up to 11 items PER cycle, now you can do max 1. so for the same degration of CT you can now produce ~0.1 the items.

*Disclaimer: This post can contain strong sarcasm or cynical remarks. keep that in mind!
Whining - It's amazing how fast your trivial concerns will disappear