Tund: if you mean what I think you mean then your suggestion would have only short-term positive effects. Yes, it would consume a lot of resources from the current elite, which would seemingly narrow the gap, but eventually newbies would have to spend the same amount of resources to get to the same level. And by that time we may have already rectified the issues that made that huge resource surplus possible in the first place, making the current newbies fall short of the honeypot.

Unless you are doing away with instant respawning ore fields, the ability of new players to create stockpiles will not be impacted. Anyone can sit on alpha 1s and farm to their hearts delight in perfect safety.

Jenny: originally the plan was to affect mass production only, but now that I think about it I don't see a reason why it shouldn't affect prototyping as well.

That's the idea though. You don't need prototypes that often as you're mass producing them. If we only have a bonus for prototyping then the only thing we have achieved is that we gave a bonus for researchers/prototypers who have the knowledge in the first place. If we wanted that then we could just simply reduce prototyping material multipliers globally.

in general i find the idea of prototyping structures good. then this will greatly limit the spread of them to the ones that accually have the tech avalible. atm as soon as one set of buildings is given out it may spread to the server. just like bots do (scarab).
if we have prototypes then the distriution of that tech is to the ppl that accually have it researched (the way it should be).
same goes to bots.

still the problem with the prototyping costs. or maybe something has to be done here to get them down and not appy the standard x10 rule.

for all who cry that noobs cant compete in production: a noob is not ment to compete in the high level production with a veteran. thats simply how it should be.
on the other hand a noob that joins a gamma corp can produce even better then a vet on alpha. so i dont realy see any problems here. you simply are not a good produce with 2 weeks of skill time. and you should not be. there is stuff like ammo or t1 stuff that might be suitable for noob producers. its siply a missjudgement that a noob should be able to compete in t4 production. wrong game. this is for long term players who dedicate some time and effort to it.

one more note for prototyping:

the main reason if there should be a prototype variant or not should be if you want free tech distribution over the game. if you are fine that everybody can "copy" it without the tech at hand then you dont need the prototype.

that is currently avalibe to (if i havent missed anything):
- T1 items
- ammo and charges
- bots
- structures

i thinl the first two are totally fine.
for bots and structures i think the prototyping would be nice. but needs reballancing to cut not too heavy into production costs. but ballancing here should not be that hard if you stick to hungarian math.

when i remember when the scarab was introduced a few ppl had a real hard time to get the tech, just that everybody else copied it after the first few were out.
same goes most likely to the structures atm.
of cource i am aslo a benefactor of the current system. i neither have the tech for scarabs or structures. but i can copy it as long as i have at least one item or ct left.
thats good for me, do i think its the right thing? no!

Homer: uh wow, you managed to misinterpret all of those points

This actually meant that we're not going to put in an imbalanced mechanic out of fear that the game is dying. If we caved for that then everyone would have a black gropho by now.

We are really thankful that all of you are still here, and yes you have the right for those, but this situation what we have now is a really imbalanced one. And I mean here that the majority of our current players are veterans with ample resources to go around. Naturally you will suggest features and mechanics that will fit to your situation and playstyle. But we have to keep in mind that hopefully you'll become the minority soon, and we have to balance the game to that setup.

And here I meant that we should rather fix a broken mechanic instead of keeping it and putting a new one on top of it.

At this point I'd like to see more bots in game in the next couple of months.  It would be nice if some of this could be subcontracted out to some programmers so it doesn't interfere with current production.  Maybe the players could donate money directly to that project.  Like it would take $3000 to get three bots one of each coded and we put up a fundraiser for it.  Lol it's an idea.

@zoom
i just noticed that the nuimqol defense tree contains all types of armor repaires.

do i guess right that thelodica will contain all resistance platings and pelistal will contain all shields?

and one more thing:
the offensive tree starts with the weapon which leads to the first light bot.
would it not make more sense to start with the light bot. yea production wise it might be more handy with the weapon, but a weapon without a bot to fit it to might be a bit senseless. so logic wise, first bot then equip for it.
always depends what was there first, the egg or the chicken...

I think that repairers, armor hardeners and shields distribution looks fine, because it's their raical advantage - they have a bonuses for that. Whats for guns before lights - well you still have Arkhes, don't you?

Yeah why aren't the bots in their own linear progression?

I have to correct myself on this one, resistance armors are distributed among factions by type, just like ERP. We noticed the Thelodica have less defense specific tech than the other factions, so we're now thinking about reassigning some common stuff to them. Maybe armor plates?

Also, remote armor repair tech is actually common tech, not Nuimqol.