451

(7 replies, posted in Balancing)

The question about balancing the number and usefulness of Highways is not easy, as it is connected with the question of general pathing.

On Hershfield the highways end near terminal, but due to labyrinth layout you will need roughly 2 min between Terminal and highway with larger bots. This way is needed to move far enough away from terminal to use mobile tp while on Tellesis and Shin you can drive quite fast away from terminal to use mobile tp.

So when balancing highway you need also to balance general island layout especially the part from alpha tp to terminal, but also to the beta tps.

For instance I consider the way hershfield initia and hershfield TMB as quite fast compared to all other routes from alpha2 terminal to beta terminal or outpost.

On the other side, don't balance too much, there should always be some differences to give people reason to choose one staging point over the other.
It should just be balanced enough for light bots as well as HM, to have no reason to change island color just due to path length.

452

(33 replies, posted in Balancing)

Actually since this patch, you can farm T4 assault in assignment spawns on alpha as well as a high level spawn with lot T4 HM on Hershfield. I heard but didn't check that this is valid for Tellesis and Shinjalar as well.
I even saw Indu Mech now in random spawn.  My opinion is, that there need still to be a thrill to enter beta for T5.
We could talk about having one spawn per alpha2 island that can't be farmed reasonable with HM MK2 with one support bot due too mass an geography. But in general I see the potential of advanced farming is there, even better as before patch IMHO.

It is just bad, that there are to few spawns atm. Three of these high end spawns for all alpha islands together is too few. Just add another with bad geography to avoid this second spot to be solo doable would be a good start.

ATM Tutorial assiignemnet III asks to scan for Titan and mine some. This assignment is actually a hard task, if the nearest titan spot is guarded by NPCs.

A more experienced player just jumps though the nearest TP and start scanning there, but I guess most beginner think about how to reach that mineral spot which will render maybe impossible and therefore lead to frustration.

As there is no easy solution without reverting the mechanic of ore distribution I suggest to change Tutorial assignment III in a way that you do not mine an actual needed ore, but some solibdid or similar which can be placed near terminal in large amount without imbalancing game.

454

(10 replies, posted in General discussion)

The ICS tutorial #3 asks to scan for titan and mine some. ATM the next titan spot near the ICS-A Terminal is guarded by Camelon and Yagel which is impossible to deal with in Arke.

For those having this problem it is good idea to move as fast as possible as far as possible away, which atm means move to "New Brandenburg Teleport", jump through and start scanning there.

455

(0 replies, posted in Balancing)

Assignment Passat III is complete off limit if you consider effort and reward. So please modify it.
The way it is designed costs a lot of time and will be nearly impossible to be solved by solo player without decent equip and EP.

I would not expect, that anybody doing this assignemnt once, will repeat it the way it is today.

Assignment Helicon V has in German translation the complete wrong assignment text which should belong to an geology assignment instead of an production assignment.

Line, it would be good for me to hear how long you would need for this assignment. I performed it with my Indy char who has spend several EP in reduction of RE time and Production time, but has these extensions not maxed, as I saw no need for up to now.

When doing production assignments I find it quite bad, that these timeout after 24h, as it is difficult for casual players like me to fullfill these assignments when you need to wait 2h until production is finished

E.g. Meteora VII requieres you to get some item, then use RE to generate CT with duration of 2h. After this you need to get 2 additional items and produce two items with 20 min production time per item. Meaning this assignment will take 3h in best case, but if you don't have time to be on for 3h after starting this assignment, you have trouble to finish within 24h.

I think it is hard enough, that this assignment blocks your assignment list for 3h as no fighter will take that long for his assignments.

BTW I consider the relation reward for assignment Meteora VII as too high.  I f you say the high reward reflects the tough time contraints, I would say that this assignment is no problem for player with long online time, but near impossible for someone playing for 2h every day and should be therefore changed to give more time to fullfill, but reduce reward.

I would consider the conversion quite more difficult. Prepatch 66% was normal, but considered quite good for a Alpha facility and T4 equipment, while a 50% CT was only used by desperate producers.

When you look how to create a CT and not how useful it is in production than a 75% is not equal to 150

After patch a 100 CT is not as bad as as 50% before, you will need good extensions and a T10 Decoder to get a 100 CT on alpha for T4 equipment. Nevertheless, I would consider a 60-75 CT worthless. T4 equipment with minimum required Decoder and moderate skills give you better than 75 CT on T2 facility.

I would assume, that it would have been better not to double CT values, but to add 20-40 points.

And I still would like to see the  CTs in storage treated that way to compensate for conversion loss.

460

(75 replies, posted in Balancing)

I support the initial point to discuss the future of alpha mining, as all improvements with gamma patch will be lost forever, if mineral prices will rise to insane levels just because the  support of alpha minerals dries out.

I think it is a bit early, to gave final conclusions, but my experience is, that the amount of mineral I will mine per week will on long view drop significant. From the experience after path I expect my future mining amount to be ~1/5th than before patch and I bet I'm not the only miner for whom this will stay true. Together with the increased amount of resources needed for T3&T4 Equipment this will have significant effects on long time economy.
For me this is not the big deal, my storages are in good shape but for the game itself it will be quite drastical if equipment prices will rise again drastically due to increased ore prices.

To Dev Alf: I stop mining, when I don't have any more time (either need to log out directly, or have not enough time left to bring further ammo charges/haul additional ore back to terminal/need my miner back in terminal/...)
The amount of minerals left in spot I'm actually on is only weak reason and will only influence the time when I stop mining, when I decide that I don't have the time to change to next mineral spot if the actuall field is empty. No "Code of mining" will keep me online, if I need to go offline.

Actually I'm on travel, so can't check every detail, but I can ensure you, that all my CTs in factory got doubled while other CTs of similar values in storage got no doubling, this doubling is even valid for a CT generated after Indy2.0 Patch.

As I had a lot of CTs in storage that are not produced down to a value which you would not use any further I would like to see a treatment for these CTs that is euqal to the treatment you gave the CTs in factory.

At the Indy Patch all CTs were converted 1:1 from old values to new values, without seeing, that after patch a 60/60 CT is quite bad and should not be used for production, while it was before something considered a good CT worth for several production cycles.

A patch later the CTs stucking in factory where doubled to repair this, but all old CTs not in factory seem to be forgotten. On the other hand side a CT new created and allready in factory seems to be doubled as well. This can't be the intended behavior for the DEVs.

I would like to have none of the new CTs doubled, but the old ones that got no doubling still handled properly.
I was first told, that there might have been an algorithm, checking the old CT value before doubling, which would be good, as I think an old 50% CT should not be a new 100/100 CT, but old 60/60 should get values that you can still use further.

But after checking my CTs I see a plain doubling for all in Factory and nothing done to all other CTs. Was there a bug preventing proper handling of CTs in storages and containers?

463

(26 replies, posted in Bugs)

I would still see a usage for a "bomb" that removes all mineral tiles with less than lets say 10 cycles.
On the long run this will be the major trouble for miners on alpha. And I see up to now enough other troubles for miners that will on long run lead to less minerals beeing mined out per player than before.

464

(14 replies, posted in Bugs)

Usually Dailies use full island read assigment text carefully if this is the same for ics daily.

Some Terrain is marked as passable but could not be crossed, so either  visual of passable terrain or Terrain Blocking is bugged.
It is quite annyoing to learn that not all ways shown as passable could be used. In some cases this might be the difference between live & death in Pvp.

466

(2 replies, posted in Resolved bugs and features)

+1 if this would be no bug, but intended, you should change intension or assignment.

As I already wrote in IRC it is ridiculous to mine ~5h Siglium on perfect spots within 24h with T4 equipped Riv MK2 to fullfill assignment that gives that low reward.

Especially if you consider that it is not likely that you could close this assignment on one mineral spot.

Edit it took me very close to 1000U to finish assignment

467

(34 replies, posted in Q & A)

A miner specialized on a certain color will only need to mine some specific ores, but no longer mine all ores.
Up to now there was a reason eg. beeing specialized in Stermonit, from now on, this specialisation is only for some miners relevant while others will never mine Stermonit.

A bit more tricky is the question for producer wheter you put your EPs in material reduction or time reduction. With Indy 2.0 I expect this to have severe changes. A top end producer would have still both maxed, but for the medium old producer (3-9 month) this will be a major issue wheter to be able to respend EP or not.

468

(10 replies, posted in General discussion)

The pvp-Islands are only those with yellow bars above and under the island name on the map. Most good stuff is for sale on the oute alpha islands also called alpha+. You can travel there without risk, as long as you stay away from NPCs, as these are often harder on outer alpha islands

469

(82 replies, posted in Testing server)

Undocked with some empty terraform module and terrafrom charge in Cargo. When try to load nothing happens. Retry bring message that module is still reloading, but ther is no visual lafding nor show the charge up in the next 2 mins.

Edit propably crash on server/island? I can't finish lock either

Actually I see a usage for a bomb that reduces the number of ores in a pile to clear the remains that are too less to be reasonable minered but enough to be removed for ore respawn. If you limit this bomb in a way that "good" piles can't be destroyed, I would even see usage on alpha.
Maybe something like restistance_against_nuke = (number_of_cycles/5)^^3

This would ensure that you could only clear dark green piles.

+1

In fact market have already moved partly from original alpha to alpha+ because the seller don't want to move the stuff they build and they build on alpha+ instead of alpha for the better facilities and more important the better ore supply. There are things you better buy on alpha and things you better buy on alpha+.

In case of further quite bad supply of minerals and plants on alpha compared to alpha+ this won't change. So I say +1 for short connection between the three alphas while please maintain some travel time between alpha and alpha+.

For the newbies (and also the items newbies will buy and sell) I consider it good to have short distances.
It should also be possible for new red players to buy argano or sequer from a more active market than Asi

For the different markets we lack simple agents buying on market, so no reason to build complete independent markets. And to be honest if we had three times the agents,  would not expect the market situation to change on long term as there is no utility to specialise on market, as you could not really specialize in prototyping, there is no place for specialized markets.

I would strongly suggest you to rethink prices and if you came to the conclusion that bots need to cost that much, please think about raising prices 2-3 smaller steps. For now, you will see drastic changes on bot market.

Edit: if you wish, I can prepare open office spreadsheet for Devs to show my numbers on changes for commodities.

In my opinion there is a reason why you don't get T4 equipped HM for free to blast, but I agree that a price change in that order is not good for the game.

If we assume that ore price won't change (what I doubt due to fact that I predict you have more effort to mine than now) a lot of things will eb come much more expensive especially for those living on alpha without access to beta/gamma ore beside market.
I assume that it will cost me after patch ~3 times the amount of ore to produce a HM on alpha+ outpost compared to now. Titanium eg is much less needed but will cost roughly 5 times the amount it will cost now.

Bot the worst thing is that even  assault bot will be most likely raise above 1.5M NIC to produce on alpha. Don't think that helps the game.

474

(11 replies, posted in Q & A)

I detected a light 75% CT on alpha like 10 days ago and an 75% assault CT on beta the last week.
I even got some cortex. So no bug that they are complete removed.
But actually I finde quite less of both compared earlier artifact hunting 6 month ago. When opening 100 chests, you might end up with no cortex or CT above 25% at all.

475

(28 replies, posted in Q & A)

I appreciate the clear answer from Devs. But consider that a full fledge Riv MK2  will not compete against 6 Trial Termis and look the amount of Trial Termis hanging around I would like to see this possibility removed rather today than tomorrow.

I know that it is a quite small way between the good idea of free Trial account and restictions to avoid abuse.

But would it be really that harsh if Trials are limited to ores and plants, but could not mine liquids?