Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: Sild

I take issue with your point 3.

No need to cut anything out. Please don't do it. If anything give other means of obtaining said resources and new avenues in using them. Don't fall into the pitfalls of cutting things just because. It's the last thing I'd want to see.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Miletkir

If Pre-warp mechanics annoy you, my suggestion is to just start at the Warp era. What you describe is meant to be, sub-light speed is slow and planning/management necessarily different. But this is where it starts.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Jorgen_CAB

For pre-Warp they have included an "early" type of FTL drive that are mainly viable for system jumps called a skip-drive... you should be able to research this drive very fast (as seen from the preview)... probably around the time you build one or more structures around your planets neighbouring bodies (if any).

quote:

ORIGINAL: Jorgen_CAB

In regards to resources I also think it would be a mistake to remove resources, the more resources there are in the game the more the reason there will be for trade as you are always going to lack some valuable resources.

quote:

ORIGINAL: zgrssd

Valuable resource are the operating words. If it is very common and found on 3 kinds of stellar objects - it is not a valuable resource. Tracking it is really just busy work and wasted CPU cycles.

Now I can only go of DWU data, but using that:
Aculon? Very common, but only on one planet type. A keeper, as the place to roll it is rare.

Argon, Helium? Very common at both gas Giants + Gas Clouds. Pointless to track.
Gold, Lead, Steel, Iridium? Very common. At Barren Rock, Continental and Asteroids.
Those are all way to common. When were they ever a valuable and/or limited resource? Something you could aim a raid at?

Caslon? Very common and found like Argon/Helium/Hydrogen, but it is rather important as early game fuel. So it is worth tracking.
Hydrogen? While it works like a Fuel like Caslon, we can literally gather it from the interstellar medium. That is what a Ramscoop or Star Treks Bussard Collectors do. It is also advanced fuel, so we might be able to just entirely ignore it as a limited resource. You may still ened refueling, but getting the fuel is childs play.
Unless we talk about a rare isotope, like Helium-3 or something.

Carbon Fibre? seems way to uncommon. We built almost everything out of the stuff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_fiber_reinforced_polymer#Applications And the main ingredient is carbon - a stellar fusion product and the basis of all carbon based biochemistry. it is literally in the air we are exhaling.
But I heard they replaced it with the Fictional "Carbonite", so it can be rarer. As long as iti s not quite that universally nessesary.

quote:

ORIGINAL: zgrssd
1. Things should tell me how much of any given resource they still need/need in total. That is both planets doing a construction and ships in the designer.
All DWU tells me "we are missing X and have no mining station for X" or "Production stalled because X is missing".
No indication how much X we need, how far away my only supply of X is, etc.

quote:

2. A Empire wide overview
I would need a empire wide overview for all resources of:
- Demand. That should include all currently undergoing operations - every ship or mining station in the queue across my entire empire.
- Supply. All the deposits I got under my mining stations/on my colonies
- In transit. How much is currently in transit to be delivered - on freighters of my own empire, in mining ships of my own empire. Can include how much si already delivered (waiting for the rest of the resources to start production).
- Extended in transit. Like in Transit, except it includes stuff that has not yet been retreived from the station/mined out or will have to be bought from another empire (indicating the lack of a stable supply).

quote:

3. Less is more. There are so many resource, it is hard to even understand wich one is important/a bottleneck/a important resource. If you got a lot of resoruces, a lot of them just become noise. Noise that makes it hard to figure out the ones that really mater.
And to top it off, some of them are pretty...trivial to get anyway. Carbon Fibre? Can be made from Carbon.
Steel? That is literally just Iron + Carbon.
The need to extract Hydrogen from Gas giants? it is the most common element, with a estimated 75% of the total visible weight of the universe!
Helium? That is a estimated 24% of all visible mass in the unvierse. (The remaining 1% are the heavier elements).
How is any lost colony going "space age", if it has no access to steel? Or Carbon? Or Helium?
You could cut them out entirely, without much loss. If you still want it for idel traffic, consider combining them into "Common Solids" and "Common gasses".

quote:

4. Pre-FTL in system drive
A big issue with the pre-FTL setting, is the difficulty of using the resources in your home System. On top of travel between Systems, the FTL especially allows quick travel within a System.
The same mining station/planet can be simulation years away or simulation minutes, depending on if you got Warp drive. This makes both the exploitation and defense of those assets impossible. Basically unless it is in the same moon/planet system as your starting colony, it might as well not exist.

Maybe you could give us a early "proto Warpdrive"? One that allows FTL or near FTL travel - but only within a system.

Erik Rutins
CEO, Matrix Games LLC



For official support, please use our Help Desk: http://www.matrixgames.com/helpdesk/

Freedom is not Free.

quote:

Resource abundance is decreased from DW1, mining rates are decreased, some resources (even construction resources) are more scarce than others, etc. Typically, the more scarce resources are needed for the more advanced technologies.

quote:

ORIGINAL: zgrssd

Good news on the Skip Drive and better UI.

quote:

Resource abundance is decreased from DW1, mining rates are decreased, some resources (even construction resources) are more scarce than others, etc. Typically, the more scarce resources are needed for the more advanced technologies.

The problem with making construction resources scarce, is that there is a realistic chance that you can not build anything - at all - if you ever a shortage of them.
I learned the hard way that being unable to do something, is a realy crappy situation to be in as a player.

Also the part where rare resources are "only" used for advanced technologies, would clash with the auto-designer feature. It either:
- makes designs with those advanced technologies, wich would always cost those resources and the rares could quickly become the bottleneck
- does not make design with those advanced technologies, meaning they would be never really used even if the resources are availible

I did once thought up a solution for Stellaris:
There Tier 1-3 of gear just costs the basic construction resource, but 4+5 does costs rare resources
What if you could order give a "do not use rares" build order, where all the T4+5 gear of a design is replaced with Tier 3 gear - thus removing any need to accumualte those rare resources for those instances. You could still retrofit it with the proper weapons later.
Maybe you could apply it here? Maybe two designs, one high tech and one lower tech? Maybe a toggle that simply replaces existing components with lower tier ones if the costs for rares works similar?

quote:

ORIGINAL: Jorgen_CAB

quote:

ORIGINAL: zgrssd

Good news on the Skip Drive and better UI.

quote:

Resource abundance is decreased from DW1, mining rates are decreased, some resources (even construction resources) are more scarce than others, etc. Typically, the more scarce resources are needed for the more advanced technologies.

The problem with making construction resources scarce, is that there is a realistic chance that you can not build anything - at all - if you ever a shortage of them.
I learned the hard way that being unable to do something, is a realy crappy situation to be in as a player.

Also the part where rare resources are "only" used for advanced technologies, would clash with the auto-designer feature. It either:
- makes designs with those advanced technologies, wich would always cost those resources and the rares could quickly become the bottleneck
- does not make design with those advanced technologies, meaning they would be never really used even if the resources are availible

I did once thought up a solution for Stellaris:
There Tier 1-3 of gear just costs the basic construction resource, but 4+5 does costs rare resources
What if you could order give a "do not use rares" build order, where all the T4+5 gear of a design is replaced with Tier 3 gear - thus removing any need to accumualte those rare resources for those instances. You could still retrofit it with the proper weapons later.
Maybe you could apply it here? Maybe two designs, one high tech and one lower tech? Maybe a toggle that simply replaces existing components with lower tier ones if the costs for rares works similar?

Scarce resources is what drives conflict which you generally need in a game to some degree.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

quote:

ORIGINAL: zgrssd
1. Things should tell me how much of any given resource they still need/need in total. That is both planets doing a construction and ships in the designer.
All DWU tells me "we are missing X and have no mining station for X" or "Production stalled because X is missing".
No indication how much X we need, how far away my only supply of X is, etc.

First, resource cost is now paid when you build something rather than starting to build and then getting the resources over time. Also, the cost is made clear and resource shortages are much, much easier to see and understand.

quote:

2. A Empire wide overview
I would need a empire wide overview for all resources of:
- Demand. That should include all currently undergoing operations - every ship or mining station in the queue across my entire empire.
- Supply. All the deposits I got under my mining stations/on my colonies
- In transit. How much is currently in transit to be delivered - on freighters of my own empire, in mining ships of my own empire. Can include how much si already delivered (waiting for the rest of the resources to start production).
- Extended in transit. Like in Transit, except it includes stuff that has not yet been retreived from the station/mined out or will have to be bought from another empire (indicating the lack of a stable supply).

This exists but not with every category above summarized but still much more easily accessible and transparent than in DW1. We might add more break-out categories if it proves useful during the beta.

quote:

3. Less is more. There are so many resource, it is hard to even understand wich one is important/a bottleneck/a important resource. If you got a lot of resoruces, a lot of them just become noise. Noise that makes it hard to figure out the ones that really mater.
And to top it off, some of them are pretty...trivial to get anyway. Carbon Fibre? Can be made from Carbon.
Steel? That is literally just Iron + Carbon.
The need to extract Hydrogen from Gas giants? it is the most common element, with a estimated 75% of the total visible weight of the universe!
Helium? That is a estimated 24% of all visible mass in the unvierse. (The remaining 1% are the heavier elements).
How is any lost colony going "space age", if it has no access to steel? Or Carbon? Or Helium?
You could cut them out entirely, without much loss. If you still want it for idel traffic, consider combining them into "Common Solids" and "Common gasses".

Resource abundance is decreased from DW1, mining rates are decreased, some resources (even construction resources) are more scarce than others, etc. Typically, the more scarce resources are needed for the more advanced technologies.

As far as re-doing the resources along more real-world lines, that's certainly possible, it's just not quite what we were aiming for.

quote:

4. Pre-FTL in system drive
A big issue with the pre-FTL setting, is the difficulty of using the resources in your home System. On top of travel between Systems, the FTL especially allows quick travel within a System.
The same mining station/planet can be simulation years away or simulation minutes, depending on if you got Warp drive. This makes both the exploitation and defense of those assets impossible. Basically unless it is in the same moon/planet system as your starting colony, it might as well not exist.

Maybe you could give us a early "proto Warpdrive"? One that allows FTL or near FTL travel - but only within a system.

We did, it's called the Skip Drive and you can/should get it quite quickly in base DW2. :-)

Regards,

- Erik

quote:

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

Clearly there is a balance to be struck and that's our job to get the balance right, where between the abundance of resources and the effectiveness of the private sector, you feel that you can create a nicely working economy in peace-time, but when your lines of supply are being raided and your mining stations destroyed or captured, some resource may start to become scarce.

First, you'll start depleting the stockpiles you've built up at your colonies and spaceports. Then, if you can't prevail and protect your economy, you may have to rely on more expensive sources of the scarce resources, either from independent traders or other empires with whom you have trade relations (hopefully good trade relations, so they don't charge you extra), or even explore (or conquer?) for other alternative sources. In the worst case, you may have to settle for lower tech options for your ships and stations until the more scarce resources become available again.

There's a lot to consider in all these cases and a lot to balance, but done properly it should create a lot of interesting situations and challenges when your empire is pushed out of equilibrium, without making things frustrating to plan and optimize.

As in DW1, there are also a few resources that are ultra-rare, perhaps only one or two sources in the entire galaxy. These are most likely, if trade is denied, to cause a conflict. The others are more likely to have the effects described above during a conflict.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Miskatonic81

For a game with such heavy focus on logistics, supply chains, and resource flow, I'd argue that having more types of resources is better than less. More resources means more reason to keep exploring and exploiting, and I guess trading if you're into that sort of thing.

If it's just the realism of things like hydrogen and carbon, then it seems like it would be easily moddable. But removing resources feels like it would remove a large drive of what makes the game work.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

Clearly there is a balance to be struck and that's our job to get the balance right, where between the abundance of resources and the effectiveness of the private sector, you feel that you can create a nicely working economy in peace-time, but when your lines of supply are being raided and your mining stations destroyed or captured, some resource may start to become scarce.

First, you'll start depleting the stockpiles you've built up at your colonies and spaceports. Then, if you can't prevail and protect your economy, you may have to rely on more expensive sources of the scarce resources, either from independent traders or other empires with whom you have trade relations (hopefully good trade relations, so they don't charge you extra), or even explore (or conquer?) for other alternative sources. In the worst case, you may have to settle for lower tech options for your ships and stations until the more scarce resources become available again.

There's a lot to consider in all these cases and a lot to balance, but done properly it should create a lot of interesting situations and challenges when your empire is pushed out of equilibrium, without making things frustrating to plan and optimize.

As in DW1, there are also a few resources that are ultra-rare, perhaps only one or two sources in the entire galaxy. These are most likely, if trade is denied, to cause a conflict. The others are more likely to have the effects described above during a conflict.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

First, you'll start depleting the stockpiles you've built up at your colonies and spaceports. Then, if you can't prevail and protect your economy, you may have to rely on more expensive sources of the scarce resources, either from independent traders or other empires with whom you have trade relations (hopefully good trade relations, so they don't charge you extra), or even explore (or conquer?) for other alternative sources. In the worst case, you may have to settle for lower tech options for your ships and stations until the more scarce resources become available again.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Miskatonic81

For a game with such heavy focus on logistics, supply chains, and resource flow, I'd argue that having more types of resources is better than less. More resources means more reason to keep exploring and exploiting, and I guess trading if you're into that sort of thing.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Perry_Rhodan

Galactic Civilization III, despite all its flaws (and they are numerous, but it mostly comes from the devs not wanting to fix long standing bugs) had done it right on the special resources. This is not systematical in the tech tree, but you'll notice that some techs provide 2 variants of the same weapon. One requiring a special resource, and a weaker one only using credits (no resource). This second line of weapons allow you to continue progressing in tech and combat efficiency, but you'll definitively want to put your hands (or tentacles, whatever) on more special resources.