Re: New devblog: New tech trees
Arga wrote:6 for 1 sale on Karma (pronounced Comma).
Arga, stop slacking and post one of your wall-o-text
I still remember our discussion a year ago or so about research changes. It was somewhere along these lines of changes that are about to happen. You where concerned about how much easier getting a to a specific top tier module would be, that's why I think now, that adding EP into the knowledge base will balance this out Nicely.
I like the direction this is going with balance.
Everyone in PIE wanted to get their research maxed out, it's sort of the unmbrella personal goal for all producers.
With the current system, I did feel like it was balanced OK for completing the tech tree, but it was also nearly impossible for solo/small group players to get all through small and into medium T4 which is where most of the demand was/is.
It should STILL be a long haul to get all T4 for any solo player, but the upside is now a producer can concentrate on a specific tree and possibly 2 or 3 trees done in a year; building on the NIC they get with the first tree to fund buying research points for the rest.
There are already LOT of reserach out there that's going to turn into RP, so existing corps that had all T4 done are still going to be sitting good, if the players donate those points to the corp. If they want to keep those points to max out the trees, then they are likely to run into EP issues with the extensions; that is the limitations that solo players SHOULD be running into.
As Zoom says, there's incentives for producers to keep some research for themselves, as it will increase the factory specs of the mass runs. So no single Prototyper should donate all their RP to the corp, but they should also not horde it all to try to get all (7) trees complete. Conceptually, if mulitple prototypers dontate a portion of their RP to the corp, the corp should have enough RP to learn all (7) trees, and than the individual PT's produce from the 2-3 (more or less depending on thier advancement) trees that they kept the RP for / and spend the EP on.
Dynamically, what's likely to happen out of the patch, is most players spending RP/EP on T4 weapons/T4 Mining trees, since these were the hardest to get in the old system; and likely that markte will be oversaturated by mid-level prototypers that have been working for years and are 'almost' there. Of course materials will still limit the volume and pricing of those items on a mass scale, but there will be a lot more players that can prototype them. This could actually make the PT market viable however...
For those that think the new RP system is going to be somekind of 'easy' mode, remember that the total amount of RP needed to fill out all (7) trees is likely to be adjusted to similar levels of kernels; including the 1000's of wasted kernels that were lost due to the old process.
Everyone wants the system to be easier to max, but in the long run that won't benefit anyone, it is and is likely to remain a costly and time intensive process to get mulitple tech trees complete. But the system is better now, because players can choose exactly where they want it to go, with a reasonable expectation of when they will reach it.